“Where’s my sister?” he demanded of the butler.
“I beg your pardon?” The man looked sincerely confused.
“We were with three other people,” Reese said. “Where are they?”
“Aunt Nellie said all we could tell you was that the year is 1850,” a young woman in a maid’s costume said, stepping into the room. “Your friends have not yet arrived, and they may not. The magic may have missed them altogether.”
“Wait. What was that?” Jem shook his head, like he was trying to dislodge something inside. “Did you saymagic?”
“Yes, sir, but Aunt Nellie must be the one to explain it all to you,” the maid said.
Reese put a hand to her temple. They had definitely been drugged.
“Magic and time travel.” Jem gave the two servants a flat look. “That’s not possible.”
“Ah, but time is a fuzzball,” the butler said. “Many things are possible with faerie magic.”
“Where’s the camera?” Reese mumbled, squinting around the room. “I don’t want to be mocked on YouTube for falling for a prank.”
“I thought a fuzzball had to do with quantum physics,” Jem said.
Reese’s headfeltlike it was a fuzzball. She couldn’t shake the drugged feeling and wondered again if someone had put some kind of hallucinogen in their food or drinks. Were they going to be kept as prisoners here? What about the others?
“Please take us to our friends.” She had to blink her eyes several times to focus.
“We cannot, miss.” The butler’s expression held sympathy for the first time. “Aunt Nellie may be able to determine their whereabouts, but that will take time.”
“It looks like we’re not going to get any answers. Can you walk?” When Jem offered her his arm again, she took it. All this touching was just one more thing to mess with her head. They followed the butler to a large staircase, where he handed them off to a footman.
“Your rooms are in the family wing.” The man led them up the stairs and then down a few doors of a long hallway.
Still feelingfloaty, like she’d been given gas for dental work, Reese tried to take in her surroundings. The house was so much like the one she’d just spent the last week in—yet there were subtle changes in furniture and picture arrangements, numerous enough that the servants couldn’t have made them all so quickly. And why would they?
Was it possible they really were in 1850? The sick feeling in her stomach grew. Would they be able to get home to their families again? If they didn’t, her poor mother would be left alone.
Reese’s mind woke up, registering the implications of this time period. What if they died here? To support herself through school, she had worked as a nurse’s assistant and a phlebotomist, drawing blood at a local clinic for the poor. She had seen enough to give her a real fear of getting sick without the benefits of modern healthcare.
“People died of simple staph infections in 1850,” she said, stopping short.
“What?” Jem turned back and stared at her, seeming a little lost himself.
“If we’re really in this time, they don’t have antibiotics yet.” Reese put her hands to her cheeks, the pitch of her voice rising as she spoke. “They still have smallpox, and we haven’t been vaccinated against it. Doctors don’t wash their hands because they don’t believe in germ theory yet. Theybleedsick people in 1850.”
“It’s going to be okay.” Jem put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to meet his gaze. He quirked a brow in the way he did when he was amused. “We’ll just keep away from the doctors.”
The humor in his voice brought her back, like it always did when she overreacted. She gave him a wan smile.
“Your room is here, sir.” The footman indicated a door to the right. “If you will follow me, miss, your room is a bit further down the hall.”
“Will you be all right?” Jem asked.
“No.” She didn’t want to be alone with these people yet.
“What can I do to help?” He stepped up to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
Besides take her in his arms and tell her it was all a terrible dream, that she’d wake up in a minute.
“Tell me this isn’t real.”
