My circulation seemed to spring to life. Suddenly, I could breathe again. Relief washed over me in waves.

He wanted to stay. Jesse wanted to stay. He would rather stay than live. He would rather stay - with me - than live.

"You can't," I said, my voice sounding freakishly high-pitched even to my own ears. That was the relief I felt, making me giddy. "You can't stop him, Jesse. Paul will - "

"And just what do you intend to do, Susannah?" he demanded sharply. And if I hadn't been convinced before of the sincerity of his wish to remain in this place and time, his gruff tone then would have been enough. "Talk him out of what he plans? No. It's too dangerous."

But love had given me courage I'd never even known I had. I shrugged into my leather motorcycle jacket and said, "Paul won't hurt me, Jesse. I'm the reason he's doing this, remember?"

"I don't mean Paul," Jesse said. "I mean time traveling. Slaski says it's dangerous?"

"Yes, but - "

"Then you're not doing it."

"Jesse, I'm not afraid - "

"No," Jesse said. There was a look in his eye I had never seen before. "I'm going. You're staying here. Leave everything to me."

"Jesse, don't be - "

But a second later, I saw that I was talking to thin air.

Because Jesse was gone.

I knew where he'd disappeared to, of course. He'd gone to the basilica, to have a word with Paul.

And I was betting that that word would be accompanied by a fist.

I was also betting Jesse was going to be too late. Paul wouldn't be at the Mission anymore by the time Jesse got to him.

Or rather, he would be. But not the basilica as we knew it.

There was only one thing, really, that I could do then. And that wasn't, as Jesse had urged, to leave everything to him. How could I, when I could quite possibly wake up in the morning with no memory of Jesse whatsoever?

I knew what I had to do.

And this time, I wasn't going to make the mistake of consulting with anybody beforehand.

I strode across the room, lifted my pillow, and pulled out the miniature portrait of Jesse - the one he'd given to his one-time fiancée, Maria. The one that I'd been sleeping on since the day I'd stolen - er - been given it.

Looking down into Jesse's dark, confident gaze, I closed my eyes and pictured him . . . pictured Jesse in this very room, only not looking as it did now, with a frilly canopy bed and princess phone (thanks, Mom).

No, instead I pictured it as it must have looked 150 years earlier. No ruffled white curtains over the bay window. No window seat scattered with fluffy pillows. No carpet over the wood floor. No - ack! - bathroom, but maybe one of those, what were they called? Oh yeah, chamber pots.

No cars. No cell phones. No computers. No microwaves. No refrigerators. No televisions. No stereos. No airplanes. No penicillin.

Just grass. Grass and trees and sky and wooden wagons and horses and dirt and . . .

And I opened my eyes.

And I was there.

Chapter thirteen

It was my room, but it wasn't.

Where the canopy had stood sat a bed with a brass stand. The bed was covered with a brightly colored quilt, the kind of quilt that my mom would have gone nuts over if she'd seen it in some craft shop. Instead of my vanity table with its big light-up mirror, was a chest of drawers with a pitcher and bowl on it.

There was no mirror anywhere, but on the floor was a rug woven from . . . well, lots of different stuff. It was kind of hard to see really well, because the only light was what little moonlight spilled in from the bay windows. There was no electric switch. I felt for it instinctively the minute I opened my eyes to so much darkness. Where the light switch had been was just wood.

Which could only have meant one thing.

I'd done it.

Whoa.

But where was Jesse? This room was empty. The bed didn't look as if it had been slept in anytime recently.

Had I come too late? Was Jesse already dead? Or had I come too early and Jesse hadn't yet arrived?

There was only one way to find out. I laid my hand on the doorknob - only, of course, there was no knob now, but a latch instead - and went out into the hallway.

It was nearly pitch-black in the hallway. There was no electric switch here, either. Instead, when I groped for it, my hand touched a framed picture, or something . . .

. . . that promptly fell off the wall with a banging sound, although no glass broke. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't find the thing I'd knocked over, it was too dark. So I continued down the stairs, navigating the various twists and turns by memory alone, since I had no light to guide me.

I saw the glow before I heard the quick footsteps approaching the bottom of the stairs. Someone was coming . . . someone holding a candle.

Jesse? Could it possibly be?

But when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw that it was a woman who was coming toward me, a woman holding not a candle but some kind of lantern. At first, I thought she must be enormously fat, and I was like, God, what could she have been eating? It's not like they had Twinkles back in Jesse's day . . . er, now, I mean.

But then I saw that she was wearing some sort of a hoopskirt, and that what I'd taken for girth was really just her clothes.

"Mary, Mother of God," the woman cried when she saw me. "Where did you come from?"

I thought it better to ignore that question. Instead, I asked her as politely as I could, "Is Jesse de Silva here?"

"What?" The woman held the lantern higher and really peered at me. "Faith," she cried. "But you're a girl!"

"Um," I said. I would have thought this was obvious. My hair, after all, is pretty long, and I always wear it down. Plus, as always, I had on mascara. "Yes, ma'am. Is Jesse here? Because I really have to speak to him."

But the woman, instead of appreciating my politeness, pressed her lips together very firmly. Next thing I knew, she was reaching for the door, holding it open, and trying to shoo me through it.

"Out," she said. "Out with you, then. You should know we don't allow the likes of you in here. This is a respectable house, this is."

I just stood there gaping at her. A respectable house? Of course it was. It was MY house.

"I don't mean to cause trouble, ma'am," I said, since I could see how it would be a little weird to find a strange girl wandering around your house . . . even if it was a board-inghouse. That happened to belong to me. Or at least to my mother and her new husband. "But I really need to speak to Jesse de Silva. Can you tell me if he - "

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" the woman demanded not very nicely. "Mr. de Silva wouldn't give the time of day to a . . . creature like you. Need to speak to Jesse de Silva, indeed! Out! Out of my house!"

And then, with a strength surprising for a woman in a hoopskirt, she grabbed me by the collar of my leather motorcycle jacket, and propelled me out the door.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," the woman said and slammed the door in my face.

Not just any door, either. My own door. My own front door, to my house.

I couldn't believe it. From what I'd been led to believe, from Jesse and those Little House on the Prairie books, things back in the 1800s had been all butter churns and reading out loud around the fire. Nothing about mean ladies throwing girls out of their own houses.

Chagrined, I turned around and started down the steps from the front porch . . .

. . . and nearly fell on my face. Because the steps weren't where they used to be. Or would be one day, I mean. And except for the moonlight, which was sadly lacking just then, due to a passing cloud, there was no light whatsoever to see by. I mean it, it was spookily dark. There was no reassuring glow of streetlights - I wasn't even sure there was a street where Pine Crest Road ought to have been.

And, turning my head, I could see no lights on in any nearby windows . . . for all I could tell, there were no nearby windows. The house I was standing in front of might have been the only house for miles and miles . . .

And I'd just been thrown out of it. I was stranded in the year 1850 with no place to go and no way to get there. Except, I guess, the old-fashioned way.

I could, I supposed, have walked to the Mission. That's where Paul had supposedly gone. I craned my neck, looking for the familiar red dome of the basilica, just visible from my front porch, perched as it was in the Carmel Hills.

But instead of seeing Carmel Valley stretched out below me, all winking lights stretching to the vast darkness of the sea, all I saw was dark. No lights. No red dome, lit up for the tourists. Nothing.

Because, I realized, there were no lights. They hadn't been invented yet. At least, not lightbulbs.

God. How could anybody find their way anywhere? What did they use to guide them, freaking stars?

I looked up to check out the star situation, wondering if it would help me, and nearly fell off the porch again. Because there were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen before in my life. The Milky Way was like a white streak in the sky, so bright it almost put the moon, finally flitting out from behind some clouds, to shame.

Whoa. No wonder Jesse was unimpressed whenever I successfully located the Big Dipper.

I sighed. Well, there was nothing else I could do, I supposed, but start hoofing it in the general direction of the Mission, and hope I ran into Paul - or Jesse . . . Past Jesse, I mean - on the way.