I run my hand over the blood-orange five-pounder Nate hacked into before going in search of better knives. Its tangerine guts have been laid bare, filled with white jewels. I don’t know why pumpkins make me poetic, but they do.

The sour, earthy scent hits me, and suddenly I’m in the quantum realm, leaping into the past. No rules here in Quantum Land, remember? One minute I’m in Nate Russo’s dining room, the next I’m back in Venice.

Joni Mitchell is playing in the kitchen. Pumpkin spice soup. Mom humming along.

“I’m thinking Einstein.” Dad holds up a knife. “And we use the leftover cobweb decor for the hair. I bought mini battery-powered fans so it’ll blow constantly. What do you say?”

“That’d be sick,” Micah says, approving. I nod.

Mom sticks her hand into the gourd, pulling out seeds. “Ambitious, Professor. You think you’ve got what it takes?”

Dad glances at me. “We’ve got a naysayer, Winters. Help me out here.”

“It can’t be harder than researching extreme particle acceleration.”

He grins. “Girl after my own heart.”

Mom rolls her eyes. “You two.”

“Someone did Einstein for the NASA pumpkin-carving contest last year,” I say. “The Jet Propulsion Lab doesn’t mess around. I could look up some stuff and see how they—”

“Amuck! Amuck! Amuck!” Hannah squeals from the living room. “Why is no one watching this with me?”

I glance into the living room. “Because we’ve seen it ten thousand times!”

It’s quiet, and then I hear the beginnings of Nah’s favorite part. She’s fast-forwarded. We all know what’s coming.

“Don’t do it!” Micah yells, already laughing.

“I put a spell on you, and now you’re mine…” Hannah slides across the hall’s wooden floor, wearing the witch’s hat that had been sitting as a decoration in the living room window.

“Oh God, she’s gone full Hocus Pocus on us,” Mom says.

Hannah strikes a pose, more Lady Gaga than Bette Midler, but it works. “You can’t stop the things I do…”

Mom grabs the broom leaning against the fridge and uses it as a mic, and now it’s a duet. “I ain’t lyin’ …”

Dad holds his hands up, trying not to look amused. “Ladies, please. We have serious work to do if we’re going to get this thing in by the deadline!”

“Hello, Salem!” Nah shouts. “My name’s Winnifred. What’s yours?”

Mom does a snazzy—

Coffee.

Bitter and sweet.

And boy.

And wind.

I leap back through the spacetime continuum. To now. To a boy who watches me, concerned and curious.

“You’re here,” I say.

“I am. Got off an hour early for good behavior.” Ben is studying my face very intently. “Is your olfactory bulb messing with your hippocampus and amygdala?”

I blink.

Sense memory. He’s talking about sense memory.

“Yes.”

“I hate when that happens.”