Nick had no sympathy, and stormed up to him. “What kind of idiot keeps a collection of live ammunition and armed bombs?”

“I ain’t no idjit,” screamed the Ripper. “You’re the idjit! I got nuthin’ now, thanks to you!”

And that’s when Nick realized something.

In truth he had realized it before, only it hadn’t fully registered. It was there in the Ripper’s eyes, in the shape of the face, and in the lilt of the voice. Nick reached for the Ripper’s Confederate cap, trying to pull it off, but of course it didn’t come. Just like Nick’s own tie, it was a permanent part of the Ripper.

“Get yer hands off!” Zach the Ripper said, slapping Nick’s hand away.

But Nick knew this was no “Zach” at all.

“You’re a girl!”

The Ripper’s eyes narrowed, boldly staring right at him. “You got a problem with that?”

CHAPTER 7
A Fistful of Forever

It was not uncommon once war was declared between the North and South for boys to lie about their age so they could serve. Nor was it uncommon for battle-ambitious girls to cut their hair and lie about their gender. Few got away with it, though.

Fourteen year-old Zinnia Kitner was one of those few.

Named after her mother’s favorite flower, she had always hated her name—hated the fact that so many Southern girls of their day were named for such passive things as flowers: Violet. Rose. Magnolia. She shortened it to Zin, and allowed only her father to call her Zinnia.

She was not a girl of privilege—no Southern belle. She knew little of fancy things and delicate education. In fact, she had no schooling, and hated the prissy girls of the South’s high society. She had no love of slavery, either, but she did love her father and brothers who all hated the North.

Then the South seceded from the Union, and war was declared. With her mother long dead, she knew she would be the only Kitner left at home; a Confederate War orphan left in the care of weepy neighbor women who wrung their hands raw in vain attempts to worry their men home.

Zinnia would have none of that. So she cut her hair, and practiced jutting her jaw and shifting her stance so she would look more like her brothers and less like herself. She became Zachariah Kitner. Then, through a combination of the exhaustion and nearsightedness of her recruitment and training officers, she somehow passed for male.

Little did she know she would be stuck passing for a boy for a very, very long time.