“First, you need to take these,” she said, and while he downed them, she felt his forehead. It was still hot. “You’re still feverish. You need to try to sleep. Whatever it is, you can tell me in the morning.”

“No,” he said. “Now.”

“All right,” she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

He took a deep, ragged breath. “The continuum will go on attempting to correct itself whether it can succeed or not.”

Like a vanquished army fighting bravely on, Polly thought.

“And since we’re the source of the damage,” he said, “and since access to the future is no longer available—”

“It will have to kill us to stop us doing any more damage.”

Mr. Dunworthy nodded.

“You think that’s why Mike—Michael—was killed, to stop him from altering any more events?”

“Yes.”

“And it will do the same to us,” Polly said. “Including Eileen.”

He nodded.

“When?”

“I don’t know. Before the end of the Blitz, I would say. That’s its best opportunity. There are a number of large raids between now and the tenth of May.”

“But you know where the raids are and where and when the bombs hit, and we can make certain we’re in Notting Hill Gate on those nights. It’s safe!” she insisted, but even as she said it, she could hear Mrs. Brightford reading Sleeping Beauty to Trot, could hear her reading about the king destroying every spinning wheel in the kingdom, vainly attempting to stop the inevitable.

“Isn’t there anything that can be done?” she asked.

He was silent, and she thought, appalled, He still hasn’t finished. There’s more bad news to come. And how could anything be worse than a death sentence for Eileen?

“What is it?” she asked, but she already knew. Their actions hadn’t just affected the course of the war. They’d affected Theodore and Stephen and Paige and Mr. Humphreys. Eileen had kept Alf and Binnie from going on the City of Benares, and Mike had kept Hardy from being killed at Dunkirk. Those alterations would have to be corrected, too.

And how many others? Marjorie? Major Denewell? Miss Laburnum and the rest of the troupe? If she hadn’t done that reading of The Tempest with Sir Godfrey, they wouldn’t have formed the troupe. They wouldn’t have been safely in Notting Hill Gate every night instead of at home being killed, like they were supposed to be.

“It’s not just going to kill us, is it?” Polly asked, her throat dry with fear. “It’s going to kill everyone we’ve come into contact with, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?

—CHARLES DICKENS, A CHRISTMAS CAROL

London—Winter 1941

FOR SEVERAL LONG MINUTES AFTER MR. DUNWORTHY TOLD her, Polly simply sat there next to his bed. In the long nights lying awake on the platform, in the emergency stairway, she’d thought that she’d imagined every possible explanation for their plight, every possible dreadful outcome, but this was unimaginably more terrible. Not only were they going to die, but they would be responsible for the deaths of everyone who’d befriended them, everyone who’d helped them and been kind to them—Marjorie and Eileen’s vicar and Daphne and Miss Laburnum and Sir Godfrey. Everyone they cared about.