Sam balanced on the edge of consciousness, unwilling to leave that safe, starry realm just yet. Somewhere within her waking mind she knew something terrible awaited her, but her dreaming spirit resisted the pull to reality. She did not want to abandon the creamy comfort of her sheets, which felt especially cozy this morning…

Wait. As she finally shook the veil of sleep and opened her eyes, she saw an extra pair of arms curled around her. JB held her in a protective embrace, his chest rising and falling against her back. No wonder she felt so safe…No. No no no no. This was no time to fall back asleep, not after everything that happened last night. What was wrong with her? Normally, just the sound of a loud car could make her jump out of her skin. Now someone wanted to kill her and all she could do was lie in bed? There was no way her close call in Gévaudan had somehow made her less paranoid, was there?

What time was it anyway? Through the cracks in the closed curtains at their window, daylight bled inside. It was mid-afternoon, for all she knew.

Time to get up. On the count of one…two…three. She didn't budge. Come on, Sam, for real this time: One…two… And still she resisted.

An urgent knock made the decision for her. "Amelia? Mr. Byron?" Sarah sounded breathless on the other side of the door.

Sam felt JB jolt upright. For a millisecond, his eyes widened as he looked at Sam and seemed to acknowledge where he was. Then the instant passed and he called back to Sarah, "Just a moment, Miss Carr. Is something the matter?"

"I'm afraid it is. Do meet us down in the drawing room with Amelia as soon as you can."

"We shall join you shortly, Sarah," said Sam, but the scurried patter of Sarah's footsteps had already faded.

"Someone must have discovered Mary," JB said grimly.

Sam tried to ignore the pang in her stomach. She hadn't known Mary long enough to consider her a close friend, but she couldn't help but feel like she'd failed her. If she had only accompanied JB last night…

"Sam?" JB's voice was soft. Sam shoved her regrets aside for the moment and met JB's eyes. Their knees were still touching under the blankets and neither had made an attempt to pull away.

"Yes?" she said.

He raised his hand as if to cup her face, but abruptly let it drop to her shoulder and looked away. "We should get ready," he sighed.

...

Word of Mary's death had spread quickly from Erdington to Birmingham. It was all anyone talked about and JB could hardly keep up with the flurry of rumors that darted all around town that afternoon. He and Sam had met with Mrs. Daley and Sarah in the drawing room at around eleven that morning and Mr. Daley filled them in on the discovery of Mary's body in the field. Sarah was a sorry mess with puffy eyes, constantly reaching for her handkerchief. Sam remained beside her, white-faced and stiff. Mrs. Daley muttered a few prayers and expressed how grateful she was that Sarah had behaved responsibly at the dance and had not wandered off with anyone.

He hardly had another moment alone with Sam until that evening when she stomped into the bedroom and flung her bonnet onto the floor, her face contorted with frustration.

She slammed the door behind her and exclaimed, "I can't listen to them anymore!"

JB had been reading more about the carbon copy murders, but he quickly looked up from his elucidator at Sam's outburst. "What's going on?"

"The way everyone talks about Mary now, it's making me sick." She kicked off her boots and settled beside him on the chaise-longue, hands at her temples. "I mean, I get it. I can't expect everyone in the 1810s to have a twenty-first century understanding of crime victims—especially since the twenty-first century still doesn't do a great job—but it's upsetting anyway."

"What are they saying about Mary?"

"Just the usual," she said. "In every murder case, you have the people who victim-blame and say she was 'promiscuous' or 'headstrong,' and then you have the people who place her on a pedestal and describe her as this delicate flower who never had a single inpure thought. Well, it's all garbage. Mary was a person, not a tool to be used in cautionary tales."

"I see." JB wanted to offer some comfort, to say something like, Mary's in God's hands now, but he knew that wasn't the best approach.

"I can't take much more of the 1810s," Sam said. "It's obvious I don't belong here."

What? His breath caught in his throat. What did she mean? Had she somehow figured out the Agency's plan? Did she know more about her past lives than she'd been letting on?

No, that wasn't what this was. Her downcast eyes revealed only sadness, and JB realized that somehow, intuitively, Sam simply felt out of place in the twenty-first century. Perhaps it wasn't her deep fascination with history that had convinced her to join him on his mission, but rather a desire to belong somewhere. It was a feeling almost every one of the missing children had faced at some point in their lives—JB included. The sense of isolation was amplified for kids whose adoptive parents were either physically or emotionally absent, like Chip and Andrea. Until his ordeal with Mileva Einstein, JB never noticed the aching nostalgia for a life unknown, but now he realized it had always been there, gnawing at his subconscious. Only Jonah appeared unphased, but JB often wondered if even he felt it sometimes.

"…I mean, obviously we don't have to worry about Jane Austen anymore," Sam said, dragging JB back to the present. "Clearly it was Mary's murder that messed up 1817, not Jane Austen's death."

JB nodded. Neither had said it aloud until now, but it had become abundantly apparent that the hooded man was responsible for at least some of the blocked time periods.

"Remind me what the creepy guy in the field told you last night?"

He shrugged. "A lot of it didn't make any sense. He tried to pass off Mary's murder as merciful, then he threatened you and referenced an old saying about beautiful women and death, and…"

Her eyes magnified. "Was he quoting someone?"

"Possibly."

"Was it…let me try and remember…" She furrowed her brow and chewed on her bottom lip. "Was it, 'the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world'?"

"I think so! You know it?"

"Of course I know it!" For an instant, her face brightened and she looked almost smug. "That's an Edgar Allan Poe quote."

JB waited for her to explain, but she just stared at him expectantly. "Am I supposed to recognize that name?"

Sam gaped at him in a manner that might have been comical if someone hadn't just died the night before. "What kind of a time agent doesn't know one of America's greatest poets? Does 'The Raven' ring a bell? 'Once upon a midnight dreary,' et cetera?"

That sounded mildly familiar. "I think I know that one. Did he go on to have a friendly poetry war with Emily Dickinson in some New York newspapers after the Civil War?"

Sam shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense. Emily Dickinson never published during her lifetime and Poe died in 1849, over a decade before the Civil War. I mean, unless we're remembering two entirely different dimensions…" The color drained from her face. "Oh no."