When the dust settled and I could see again, I was still in Campo de’ Fiori, but the market stalls were gone. Instead there were thickset men in leather aprons, toothless women with dirt-smudged skirts, soldiers holding pikes and lances, and monks in shadowy hoods, a crowd of people cheering and jeering. And in the place of the sculpture, there was a man, a real man, tied to a stake with flames already reaching up to his chest. I felt sick to my stomach, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was Bruno.

He writhed in agony. I wanted to throw water on the flames, to free him from the stake, but I was horribly helpless.

“Bruno!” I screamed, tears streaming down my face. I needed him to know I was there. That he wasn’t alone in this nightmare. “Bruno!”

He turned and found me with his eyes. He looked like he wanted to shout something, but his mouth was blocked with a wooden gag, a last twist of cruelty. The smell of scorched flesh was nauseating, but the crowd cheered as if they were at a sporting event, not a murder. They were all excited to see the spectacle of a public execution. Mom had to be in the crowd. Maybe the Watcher, too.

I had to get away, it was all too sickening, but I locked eyes with Bruno one last time. He was still alive, and I swear he recognized me. He stared at me in a way I’ll never forget, fierce and proud. Then he closed his eyes and went limp against the ropes that bound him.

“Good-bye, Bruno,” I murmured. I turned to push my way through the crowd. People were packed together tighter than in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I had to elbow into a skinny man with a bulging goiter and shove aside a woman with hairs bristling out of her warty chin. I squeezed past a young man in an elegant cape and hat, relieved that not everyone around me was dirty or ugly or both, but when I turned for a closer look at the gentleman, I gasped. It was the Watcher, Madame L. She reached out to grab me, but I edged behind a fat, smelly monk, leaving her with a handful of the man’s paunch.

“I told you to stay away!” She seethed, shoving the startled monk aside.

“Leave my mother alone!” I demanded, suddenly furious. “You killed Bruno—isn’t that enough?”

“I haven’t touched your mother. And Bruno got what he deserved. Just be careful you don’t earn the same fate!” The woman shoved me down a side alley. “Now get out of here—and tell your mother I mean it! Bruno’s all the proof she needs.” She melted back into the crowd, a sinister smile playing on her beautiful lips.

I stumbled away, scared and sickened. How could I stop the Watcher? I thought of Bruno, of his faith in positive thinking. If I really wanted, could I control any of this? Was I strong and smart enough for that? Focused enough?

I needed desperately to go home, back to my own time. Dad and Malcolm would help me. I knew they would. All around me the faces of ordinary people looked like evil demons now, all cheering on Bruno’s torture. The man pushing the wheelbarrow, the woman carrying water, even the boy with baskets of bread—they were all deformed with ugly, sneering faces.

I touched walls frantically, wishing hard for the future, but none of them were touchstones. Then I saw it—a strange statue in the corner of a small piazza. It was clearly an ancient ruin, dragged from the Forum probably, a classical head and torso set on a broken column. On the figure itself, on the column, on the wall behind it, pieces of paper had been stuck up somehow. It was like an old-fashioned community newspaper, a place for people to post their opinions, their arguments, their grievances.

One note criticized the Pope for being the biggest sinner of them all. Another railed against an inn where the wine was watered down. Yet another complained that a certain butcher had a heavy thumb he kept on the scale. And then I saw a note that made my stomach knot up. I knew that handwriting! It was from Mom.

If the mirrors of the world would reflect truly, they would see that hope for the stars lies in men who have bold vision and can see ahead of their time. And in one girl who is brave and true. She knows where she belongs and must go there.

What did Mom mean? She was writing in some weird code, which I guessed she had to do, posting this in public for anyone to read. I had to be the girl who was brave and true. It sounded like she was telling me to go back to the present. I reached for the note, peeling it gently from the statue. My knuckles grazed the stone.

Purple light blazed around me, and the sun wheeled overhead at dizzying speed, chased by the moon and stars. I closed my eyes, trying to still the shaking in my knees.