I wrote this book originally to along with a cover I’d won in a giveaway (not this cover). And now, I’ve discovered a real love for writing time travel, and this story has turned into something more. Starina is one of the main characters in my serial story, Searching for Apollo’s Chalice, and I hope to write the book of what happens between this one and her arrival in that new division at some point.

Excerpt

Some days there wasn’t enough coffee in the world. I stared bleary-eyed at my boss, Reginald Serwer, or the Sewer as we joked behind his back, and at the black box sitting on his desk. Normally papers, most of them stained with coffee rings, crossed his desk, never mind the Musa Armis goal of becoming a paperless office. Seemed like as soon as some numb nuts announced the initiative, we became buried in reams of reports, most of them in triplicate. I suppressed a yawn. “You wanted to see me?” I leaned nonchalantly against the door frame, thinking if I actually sat down, I’d probably fall asleep.

“Sit, Starina.” Reginald pointed a thin finger toward the chair, his ragged nail leading the way.

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

“Sit. That’s an order.” Reginald wasn’t smiling.

Well then, that was different, I thought sarcastically. As if I followed orders. Which may be why I was seeing my boss at the eight o’clock buttcrack of the morning.

He pushed the box across the desk, and I eyed it as if it were a rabid dog. “You got a promotion.” He didn’t sound happy about it and that made me wonder if it was even his idea. Reginald threatened to write me up for insubordination more often than a rooster crowed, which my friend Marcie told me happened often. I’d take her word for it. Since the Great Dividing I hadn’t had so much as a goldfish. Armis kept me so busy I could barely keep a cactus alive; I was home so seldom.

“A promotion?” I reached for the box and a sense of magic washed over my hands. Now that was interesting. My fingers tingled when I touched the box. I slid it across the desk and reached for the latch. “I didn’t think I was the promoting type. Can I open it?”

“No, just carry it around and use it as your issued weapon.” I grinned at him, and he waved his hand at me. “Yes. Open it.”

I flipped the latch and opened the box, not quite sure what to make of the material. It looked like black plastic but was cool like metal. I opened the box and there, on a blue velvet so dark it might have been black, except for where the fluorescent lights overhead hit it, sat a funky looking watch. Not an iWatch, but maybe one of the wannabe clones or a really high-tech step tracker. “What is it?” I lifted it out of the box. As soon as I touched it, the watch vibrated. A blue and purple display illuminated the screen. “Hello, Starina Jasmine Kwan. Welcome to MusaTempus.” I flicked my gaze to my boss. “Tempus?” I searched my memory for my way-too-rusty Latin, a dead, dusty old language we all had to learn when we were inducted into Armis. “Time?” I glanced at the watch again. It looked future-y, maybe a bit scifi. Perhaps not big budget, but better than some of the B-grade flicks on Syfy. “Time travel? Me?”

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