Antonia shrieked again, this time in pain as well as fury, and her hands were grasping now, clawing at his clothing, raking across skin.

"Never," she panted, her eyes going unfocused as she reached for the farthest limits of her powers…

And Varian released another bestial sound, his hands lifting to her throat even as his mouth crushed hers…

As a huge full moon rose between two mountain peaks and beamed down on the valley, the Curtain was abruptly disturbed by wild streams of energy lancing upward from the Old City. With a sound like thunder, the Curtain rolled and snapped, and the earth heaved and groaned with a new violence.

Shrieks and a roar of rage erupted from the Old City, where only the stoic night watched as two figures struggled frenziedly in a lighted window while jagged bolts of raw power emanated from them.

Lashed by the effects of a titanic battle, Atlantis broke under the strain.

Serena had forgotten the unnerving sounds and sensations of time travel. like stepping into total darkness with no idea if she would find solid ground beneath her feet or only miles of air… There was a whistling like wind rushing by, yet no sensation of its passing, and colors she couldn't see and yet sensed were exploding all around her like starbursts. Something yanked at her as powerfully as gravity, but she was weightless, carried along on a raging tide of space and time. What she knew of reality was warped, shaped, and molded into obedience by the skilled and mighty hand of a Master Wizard.

It seemed to last forever, thousands of years… or maybe it was only a few seconds. Then, with jarring abruptness, her foot touched something hard and the silence was almost deafening and there was light.

She blinked away the retinal shock of passing from total darkness into the normal illumination of daylight and lamps, and looked around her at the familiar outlines of Merlin's study. And it wasn't until her breath flooded out in a shaky sigh that she realized how afraid she'd been.

"Serena? Are you all right?" His grasp on her hand tightened.

"Fine. I think. We're back, aren't we? We're really back?"

"Yes, we're back. Did you expect the gate to fail?"

"I don't know." Then she shook her head. "No, of course I didn't. You built the gate, and I trusted it to work. It's just that…"

Quietly, Merlin said, "You weren't sure what we'd find here."

"No," she confessed. She glanced behind them to find that the gate had vanished; designed for a single trip, its job was done. And she didn't have to touch the base of her throat or look at Merlin's hand to know that the marks had vanished, left in the past where they had belonged.

She looked down at herself a bit warily and then at him, finding them dressed as they had been when they had left the present for the past. Jeans and sweaters. So… normal. So modern.

Merlin sent the box containing his staff back to its accustomed place on one of the shelves. Not letting go of Serena's hand, he waited for her to reacquaint herself with their present.

"It looks the same," she murmured, gazing around them. There was the handsome but sparse furniture of the room: a few sturdy chairs and small tables, the desk, a bookstand near the window holding an open, very large, leather-bound manual detailing the abilities of wizards-written entirely in a cryptic language that resembled Latin but wasn't. There were the other heavy dark volumes and neat scrolls on the shelves, a number of them open on his big desk. "Just the same."

"Of course. We've only been gone a few minutes."

Intellectually, Serena knew that, but physically and emotionally she was just as certain that nearly a month had passed. She shook her head. "I guess… I expected us to find some kind of visible consequences of the trip here when we came through the gate. I mean, we travelled back in time. Way back. Shouldn't our return be greeted by-by something?"

"Like what?" Merlin was amused.

"Bells and whistles. Fireworks. A siren or two. The wizard police charging in ready to punish us for travelling in time without the proper permission. A layer of dust on the furniture. Something."

Merlin looked around them at the peaceful study. "No, I don't think so. like so many things of consequence, our trip is going to pass unheralded by everyone except us."

Serena bit her bottom lip as she gazed up at him. "Well… did we do it? Did we change the present for us?"

He answered quietly. "I don't know. I wouldn't expect to see anything changed here in the house-or here in Seattle-whether or not we were successful, since only the society of wizards is likely to be different if we were. To help wizards avoid unnecessary conflict with one another, we live scattered over the globe and gather together as infrequently as possible. When we left, you and I were the only wizards in the Northwest, and that may not have changed."

Serena was a little surprised. She had known they were the only wizards in Seattle, but she hadn't really thought about why that was so. "The decision to live apart from each other-did that come about after Atlantis?"

"Yes, I think so. And even if we were successful in changing what went wrong, Atlantis was still destroyed, and given the negative influence of the wizards there, it was undoubtedly taken as a grave warning by the other wizards of the time. It would have been prudent to avoid having too many beings of power together in one place; the society of wizards is still likely to be a scattered one no matter what else changed."

"Then… how do we find out if we were successful?"

"We ask," Merlin replied simply. "I can call my father. If we failed, and women are still forbidden to be trained as wizards, I'll know soon enough. He'll want to know how the procedure is going."

"The procedure… to render me powerless?"

"Yes."

There was no phone in Merlin's study; Serena glanced toward the door and thought about the one out in the foyer. Such a simple thing, to make a phone call. Such a simple thing to measure success… or failure.

"Serena?"

"I'm not so sure I want to know just yet." With effort, she managed to smile up at him.

Merlin leaned down and kissed her, gently but with his strong desire for her unhidden and barely restrained. "Waiting won't change anything," he reminded her.

Serena didn't know how she would have responded to the truth of that, and before she could think about it, the sudden peal of the doorbell nearly made her jump out of her skin. The sound was both alien and familiar, and definitely disconcerting.

"Was it always that shrill?" she muttered.

"You've just forgotten," Merlin replied, gazing thoughtfully toward the front of the house.

Because he was still holding her hand, Serena was immediately aware of his probing, and also of the results. She was pleased that the physical contact enabled her to share a portion of his considerable abilities, but the knowledge of just who had come calling on this already unsettling Friday morning put a damper on her pleasure.

"Kane."

"Mmmm." Merlin looked down at her with a slightly rueful smile. "We didn't have the time to do anything about Mr. Kane before we left-but he does have to be dealt with."

"You don't think he'll stop digging into our lives if we just ignore him?"

"He's here, isn't he?" Merlin squeezed her hand and then released it. "Let him in, Serena. Let's find out what he has on his mind."

Serena was curious herself, so she went out into the foyer and opened the heavy front door. Studying the reporter-who, as usual, looked rumpled and slightly hung-over-she said mildly, "Well, well, if it isn't my favorite former journalist. Good morning, Kane. What can I do for you?"