11:26 p.m.

She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but when she turned the key in the lock and stumbled into her first floor apartment, she was alone.

Maybe some part of her had hoped Beck would be waiting, either in the hallway or inside the apartment, his arms folded with impatience and his mouth hard with worry but his brown eyes soft with regret. He'd tell her he was sorry, that he shouldn't have yelled at her, that he was just glad she was okay. He'd hug her and she'd hug him back and just like that, everything would be okay again. Just like that.

Except it wasn't like that.

Iman leaned the door shut with her shoulder. She slid to the ground, her back against the door, her legs folded underneath her. The hardwood was chilly against her bare legs and the living room furniture made strange, gothic shadows in the dark; she tilted her head back and studied the ceiling, a low sigh filtering out of her mouth.

There were no notifications on her phone. Of course.

I should get up, she thought. I should get up and walk to my bedroom and go to sleep.

When I wake up everything will be fine.

When she stood, the airy feeling was back again—like a child blowing bubbles somewhere inside her, and everything that was blood and intestine was now wind and clouds instead. Iman took a step, but staggered. She said, "Wait," but by then she was already gone.

DECEMBER 23RD, 1986, 1:07 A.M.

The world spun back into focus again in a blur of yellow.

The first thing she noticed was the cold—biting like small teeth against her skin, racking shivers through her body. It was the sort of cold that wouldn't be that cold if she were aptly prepared, but she was not. Her coat was on the floor in front of her apartment door, back in DC, back in the present.

She was on Julien's front stoop. She recognized the concrete stairs strewn with the dust of former vines, now dead and gray with winter. A wreath decorated with red and silver ornaments adorned the sun-yellow door in front of her; the street beside her was vacant, quiet save for the faint jingling rhythm of a bell somewhere far away.

Christmas?

Another shudder tore through her. She searched for any indication of the time, the date, but all that accompanied her was a startling darkness.

Iman exhaled, her breath pluming in front of her in a cloud of white, and rung Julien's doorbell. She waited a while, still freezing, before impatience won over her and she knocked three rapt times.

Finally the door swung open. "Come on, kids, isn't it a little late at night to be Christmas caroling—ah. Immy?"

Julien stood in the door frame. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of navy blue plaid pajama pants and a flour-dusted apron that said, What's cookin', good lookin'? in big white letters. One hand was cloaked in a large oven mitt. To her admitted surprise, he looked almost the same: firm, brown skin, tumbling loose curls of black hair, a smile that could kill millions. She always expected him to look like he'd aged and she was always surprised when he didn't. "Did you—are you—"

Iman nodded. "Yes, genius. Now I know you don't feel cold but it's absolutely freezing out here so can I please come in?"

Julien smirked, turning sideways in the door. "Be my guest. I just made cookies."

Iman rushed past him and into the foyer, finding the heating vent in the floor and standing directly on top of it. Julien shut the door, amused, and turned to face her, flipping his oven mitt off and stuffing it in the pocket of his apron. "When are you coming from, Miss Patel?" he asked. He regarded her spaghetti-strapped mini dress and tilted his head. "Some time when it's warm, I'm guessing?"

Iman wrapped her arms around herself and glared at Julien. He never got tired of this, did he? Being here in his warm house and playing slow, waltzing holiday music over the radio and making cookies at—she glanced at the wall clock for the first time—one in the morning. He got to be here and be comfortable while she got jerked around in time and space like it was child's play.

Iman certainly got tired.

"2019," Iman answered. She leaned her ear toward the hall, where the music was wafting from, until she could recognize the tune: "Last Christmas." The old, pre-Taylor Swift version. She scowled. "August."

"2019, hm?" Julien said. He hummed along to the music for a second before adding, "I wonder what the hell I'm up to right now."

"You're in DC, actually."

Julien's eyebrows rose, his face suddenly alight with surprise. "I'm—but that's all the way on the other side of the country."

"I know. But you're there. In the same city as me. I just met you in the present. You were—"

He shushed her, shaking his head and starting in the direction of the kitchen. "Don't tell me any more," he said, brushing past her. He called over his shoulder, "It's better if we just let things play out on their own, yes? You told me that once."

After a beat of hesitation, Iman pivoted and followed Julien into the kitchen, strolling past his array of lazily hung up string lights and his bare Christmas tree. Until then she hadn't been aware that vampires even celebrated Christmas. It almost seemed sacrilegious, especially when she thought of the fact Julien couldn't even go anywhere near a church.

The kitchen was sugar and baking powder and vanilla, an explosion of ingredients across the small island as if a tornado had blown through. There was a baking sheet balanced on the stove; Iman counted twelve cookies, all shaped like various Christmas items. Snowmen, elves, candy canes, a reindeer or two. Somehow they were immaculate; whenever Iman tried to bake her own, they always came out as strange-looking blobs.

Julien thrust a piping bag filled with bright red icing at her. "Here," he said, handing her a cookie, too. "Decorate something. May as well make yourself useful."

Iman narrowed her eyes at him, but nevertheless lowered the bag to the cookie—a candy cane-shaped one. She drew the outline of a rectangle and started to fill it, trying at once to reconcile this Julien with the one she'd just met back home. "You haven't told me where—or when—I am."

"Oh. 1986. California. You got lucky, sweetheart. It's the coldest night of the year, they said."

Iman grimaced. "Lovely." Then: "Jesus. I'm not even born yet."

Julien sputtered. "You aren't? You absolute baby."

"Everyone's a baby to you, Jules. And no, I'm not born yet. My oldest sister isn't even born yet, not for another year."

"As I said," Julien reiterated. "You absolute child."

She finished her red stripes, set the pipe down, and motioned Julien to hand her the white piping bag. As "The Christmas Song" began to play and Julien started humming again, Iman asked, "Who are these for, anyway? It's not like..."

"I can taste things," Julien explained. Iman thought she heard a peeved note in his voice, like it was a misconception he was tired of debunking. "It's just that nothing has any nutritional value anymore."

"So you can eat whatever the hell you want and not get fat."

"Yes. Sort of."

"Sounds like a deal to me."

Julien paused. "What's the point of food if it doesn't nourish you anymore?"

Nat King Cole's voice sang, soulful but staticky, over the speakers. Iman set her piping bag down. The airy feeling was in her stomach again.

"Julien?" she said. She didn't know how much longer she had, but she didn't want to leave, couldn't leave now. She wasn't comfortable leaving him alone like this, with that faraway look in his dark eyes, with this jolly song playing to remind him of all the jolly things he no longer had. A part of her wanted to be back with Beck, and yet a part of her was anchored here.

"What's the point of anything if it doesn't nourish you anymore, you know?" he said, frowning. "I wish a good meal could make me feel full again. I miss that feeling. But now the only thing that does that is—well—blood. And sometimes I just really wish that weren't the case."

Iman brushed her fingers across his knuckles, but if he felt it, he did a good job of acting like he felt nothing at all. Too good of a job. "I know it's frustrating, but there's nothing either of us can do, Julien. We have to adapt. That is what humans do best."

"I'm not human," he snapped.

Iman recoiled.

Nat King Cole seemed to grow quieter, too.

Iman's insides were turning to clouds again. Julien asked her, ducking his head and looking at her from underneath his eyelashes, "Am I happy in your present, Im?"

She hesitated.

"I don't know," she said, but she had no way to know if he heard it, because by then time had already called her back.

AUGUST 9TH, 2019, 9:27 A.M.

Iman was so relieved to land on her bedroom floor again that she could have kissed it. Instead, she pulled herself up to her knees, dusting dried frosting from her fingers and squinting at harsh sunlight as it filtered in through the dirty window. She turned her head, catching sight of herself in the mirror. Her dress was a smorgasbord of dirt and food stains and her hair was frizzy with all the sudden weather changes. She got to her feet, stepping over a pile of undone laundry in front of her unmade bed and making her way to her closet. She'd just thrown on an oversized Pink Floyd T-shirt and was shimmying her dress down her legs when she heard the key in the front door.

Iman exhaled. Not a second too early.

She rounded the corner into the kitchen, standing awkwardly in the shadow of the hall. Her boyfriend stood just as awkwardly by the kitchen island, a drink carrier in one hand and a small paper bag in the other. The curls of his hair sprung like an artistic garden from his head, his broad shoulders plain in the fit of his black crewneck.

Beck set the drink carrier and the paper bag down on the counter. "Misto?"

"Sure."

He removed one of the to-go cups from the carrier and slid it down the island with practiced caution. Iman stepped forward, taking her drink gratefully. As she took a slow, lingering sip, she pointed to the paper bag. "What's that?"

"Those books you wanted," said Beck, adjusting his glasses by nudging it with a gentle knuckle. "They just came in at the bookstore down the street, so I thought I'd go pick them up..."

Iman nearly dropped her coffee. She set it down, careful to make sure it hit the island and not the floor, and bound over to the paper bag, lifting the two hardcover books carefully out of it. She ran her fingers over the embossed covers, mouthing the titles to herself: The Hidden Tales of the Black Aristocracy; Women Warriors: The Forgotten Ones. They were books none of her history classes would ever assign to her, likely for their lack of emphasis on old white men. Thus, she was going to read them for herself.

Her eyes shot up to Beck's. "I nearly forgot."

He smiled, though it didn't make it to his eyes. "I didn't."

Beck's face settled again into a tense frown, his brown eyes like honey in the basin of a spoon as the sunlight hit them. All around them, the capital city hummed to life, car horns blaring and sewers hissing and the faint sound of a news station blabbering in the next apartment over. She was glad to be home again. She really was.

Iman moved the books aside, placing them beside her forgotten coffee cup. She leaned one hand against the island and popped her hip slightly and frowned right back at the man in front of her. "I said I was sorry," she said. "Didn't I?"

"Yes. You did. But you didn't tell me who the hell this old friend is, or just what awfully dire situation he was in that was cause for you to ditch me," Beck said, his voice lowering as he added: "You know I don't do well in crowds if you're not with me."

Guilt panged somewhere deep in Iman's chest. She lifted a hand, brushing his cheek. "He was running from someone. I've known him for years but we hadn't seen each other in a while and I just...I felt obligated to help him. I'm sorry, Beck. That was a crappy thing to do. I should have called you and taken you with me."

"I thought someone kidnapped you."

"No one kidnapped me."

"I thought someone had murdered you and thrown your body in the Potomac."

"I'm not in the Potomac," said Iman. She rubbed circles behind Beck's ear, loving the quiet way his mouth parted like he was enjoying it but was trying hard to look like he wasn't enjoying it. "I'm right here."

"Immy..." Beck took in a long breath through his nose and pulled her close, burying his face in her neck. Iman smiled to herself and rubbed her hands down his back, breathing in the scent of him, like green tea and parchment. "I feel awful for yelling at you. I'm sorry for yelling at you."

"Hey. It's okay. It was just a very high-emotion night."

"This guy," said Beck. His fingers were in her hair, twirling a curl or two slowly around his fingers. "This old friend of yours. Can I meet him?"

Iman hesitated. Beck and Julien existed in two separate worlds to her, and she couldn't imagine them colliding.

"We'll see," she said then. "We shall see."