Bloody Fabulous by Ekaterina Sedia Read Free Book Online Page B

a Vagabonding to each of their children as 21st birthday presents. Of course, you had to be twenty-five before you were allowed to Bore back in time, but somehow exceptions were always made for O’Rourkes, who had to fit a lot of living into notoriously short life spans.
    Simone escorted Fantasy O’Rourke personally to the center of the shop, a low dais with a three-frame mirror. The curtains in the windows were already closed by request; the O’Rourkes liked to maintain an alluring air of secrecy they could pass off as discretion.
    “Ms. O’Rourke, it’s a pleasure to have you with us,” said Simone. Her hands, clasped behind her back, just skimmed the hem of her black jacket.
    Never cut a jacket too long, Simone told Petra her first day. It’s the first sign of an amateur.
    “Of course,” said Ms. O’Rourke. “I haven’t decided on a destination, you know. I thought maybe Victorian England.”
    From behind the counter, Petra rolled her eyes. Everyone wanted Victorian England.
    Simone said, “Excellent choice, Ms. O’Rourke.”
    “On the other hand, I saw a historian the other day in the listings who specializes in 18th-century Japan. He was delicious.” She smiled. “A little temporary surgery, a trip to Kyoto’s geisha district. What would I look like then?”
    “A vision,” said Simone through closed teeth.
    Petra had worked at a tailor downtown for three years after her apprenticeship there was over. She couldn’t manage better, and had no hopes.
    Simone came in two days after a calf-length black pencil skirt had gone out (some pleats under the knee needed mending).
    Her gloves were black wool embroidered with black silk thread. Petra couldn’t see anything but the gloves around the vast and smoky sewing machine that filled the tiny closet where she worked, but she knew at once it was the woman who belonged to the trim black skirt.
    “You should be working in my shop,” said Simone. “I offer superior conditions.”
    Petra looked over the top of the rattling machine. “You think?”
    “You can leave the attitude here,” said Simone, and went to the front of the shop to wait.
    Simone showed Petra her back office (nothing but space and light and chrome), the image library, the labeled bolts of cloth—1300, 1570, China, Flanders, Rome.
    “What’s the name?” Petra asked finally.
    “Chronomode,” Simone said, and waited for Petra’s exclamation of awe. When none came, she frowned. “I have a job for you,” she continued, and walked to the table, tapping the wood with one finger. “See what’s left to do. I want it by morning, so there’s time to fix any mistakes.”
    The lithograph was a late 19th-century evening gown, nothing but pleats, and Petra pulled the fabrics from the library with shaking hands.
    Simone came in the next day, tore out the hem, and sewed it again by hand before she handed it over to the client.
    Later Petra ventured, “So you’re unhappy with the quality of my work.”
    Simone looked up from a Byzantine dalmatic she was sewing with a bone needle. “Happiness is not the issue,” she said, as though Petra was a simpleton. “Perfection is.”
    That was the year the mice disappeared.
    Martin Spatz, the actor, had gone Vagabonding in 8,000 BC and killed a wild dog that was about to attack him. (It was a blatant violation of the rules—you had to be prepared to die in the past, that was the first thing you signed on the contract. He went to jail over it. They trimmed two years off because he used a stick, and not the pistol he’d brought with him.)
    No one could find a direct connection between the dog and the mice, but people speculated. People were still speculating, even though the mice were long dead.
    It was only some plants left, and butterflies. By the next year the butterflies were swarming enough to block out the summer sun, and Disease Control began to intervene.
    The slow, steady disappearance of plants and animals was the only lasting problem from