Ava fell back into the shadows and waited, her breath caught like a hook in her throat. The scuffle of feet and approaching candlelight told her she only had seconds before they discovered her, and she instinctively walked back down the hall to avoid being caught in the light. She couldn’t go too far -- she knew she had to straighten out whatever moment in time her grandfather had messed with if she wanted to get back.

"I know you are there, American!" the man said in a thick French accent. He scanned the shadows furiously, but his candlelight was dwarfed by the weight of the catacomb’s darkness. He still gripped the poor woman’s wrist in one hand, and her eyes, too, shifted back and forth as she also searched the corridor. “You coward!” he said with a curl of his lip. “Hiding in the shadows, leaving me with your woman!” The girl whispered something in French, and the man laughed. “Did you hear that, American? Lisette thinks you are a fantôme - a ghost! Why don’t you come out and let me kill you so she will know how truly human you are?”