By the time I got home, the aroma of rancid poultry and I had become old friends. Or at the very least, I had stopped paying attention to it.

The TV, still on from that morning, bathed the living room in eerie blues and twitching shadows. At least it saved me the trouble of finding the remote.

Some vapid celebrity chef started prep on a trio of autumnal meals while I shrugged off my jacket, kicked off my flats, and went through my nightly ritual of locking the door and sliding the heavy deadbolt—an additional security measure that probably violated my lease, not that I cared—into place. I belly flopped onto the couch with a groan, ready for an evening of living vicariously through people who ate way better than I did.

"The key to really good tortilla soup is the broth," the smiling brunette said from the TV. "I use bone-in chicken breast to make a hearty stock and it's fun to pick 'em out later!"

Never mind. Where did I leave the remote?

I patted around the coffee table blindly. Nothing. Then I weaseled my hands between the couch cushions. Still no luck. I grunted in frustration. Tearing apart my living room was the last thing I felt like doing.

The sudden buzzing of my phone threatened to vibrate my entire purse off of the table. I dragged it from my bag as though it were made of lead. "Hello?"

"Heya bosslady." Celena's Puerto-Rican-tinged Brooklyn accent had taken some getting used to when we first met, but I gladly welcomed the respite from wallowing in my own self pity.

"Hey, Cel. How'd closing with the new girl go?"

"It went fine." I could hear the purse of her lips in frustration. "Woulda went better if she could stop texting for twenty seconds, though."

"Oh. She's one of those." I heaved a deep sigh. "And she interviewed so well."

"Twenty bucks says somebody was texting her the right things to say." The statement was punctuated by a devious giggle. "Okay, okay, enough shop talk. Did you bag Mr. Darcy?"

I rolled onto my back, rubbing at a temple. "Ugh. I really don't want to talk about it."

"Aw, c'mon, you can't do this to me," Cel pouted. "Let me guess: You had a night of passion and now you're your own grandma."

"Okay, so maybe it wasn't that bad. The agency thankfully screens for things like that," I managed to say through sputtering laughter. "They just set me up with a total pig, that's all. One thing lead to another and now I smell like that mystery tub of chicken salad in the breakroom fridge."

"Hey, I'm telling you, it's not mine. I don't even like chicken salad."

"I seriously think it's been there longer than I have." A glance around the room showed no sign of the remote.

"Maybe it should be the bank manager. It has seniority," she said. "So like, how does it work? Do the bachelors sign up for a matchmaking service and they just don't know you're from the future, or what?"

"Not exactly." I considered how much effort it'd take to just get up and manually change the channel, but then immediately decided against it. "They don't know they're in the agency's database. There's too much potential for discovery. The agency vets them, though, and keeps tabs on their whereabouts in case they get picked from the pool of bachelors."

"Huh. That's a little creepy." She brightened as she continued, "Well, here's hoping the next one goes better, honey! It'd be pretty cool if you could bring somebody to the Halloween thing."

"Okay, two talking points," I said, finally resigning myself to the current channel. At least the chef had finished her tortilla soup and moved onto the most pretentious sweet potato casserole I had ever seen."First, it doesn't work like that. It's a one-way deal. I can go meet them, but they can't come meet me."

"Aw, you're no fun."

"I'm your boss, I'm not supposed to be." Just when I thought I'd gotten used to it, I caught another whiff of bad poultry. I sniffed my shoulder self-consciously, but didn't detect anything. "But seriously, historical integrity and all that. Imagine if somebody from a Protected Era went back to their own time with knowledge of smartphones and microwave dinners. It'd be chaos."

"Yeah, yeah," she sighed. "Okay, what's the second point?"

I wasn't sure if the headache I was developing was from the smell or the direction our conversation was heading. "I'm really not sure about Halloween."

"What? But, but, you're like the only other person I know can recite the entirety of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Who's gonna help me lead The Time Warp?"

"I really don't want to hear about time warps right now, all things considered."

"Very funny," she said. "Come on. Please?"

"Binge drinking and strange men are scary enough the other 364 days of the year." Heaving myself off the couch, I trudged down the hall, shrugging out of my clothes. A trail of coral pink office casual stretched from the living room to the bathroom.

But Cel was insistent. "I'll be your best friend."

"You're already my best friend. Well, besides Teddy."

"He's your brother, he doesn't count," she answered. "Come on, please? Pretty please with Oreo crumbles on top?"

"Oreos, my one weakness." I lit a trio of candles, hoping it'd cancel out the reek of rancid chicken. A whimper on the other end crumbled my resolve. "I don't know. Call it a tentative yes—"

"YAY!" she whooped.

"—But I may have to back out."

"I've already got the perfect costumes picked out for us. I thought we could be, like, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck—but like, weirdly sexual, as is the trend for Halloween costumes." Cel paused thoughtfully. "You can be Bugs, 'cause I think he'd be the one with the bigger rack."

I was suddenly feeling very tired. "Honey, I've got to go. I'm in desperate need of a shower. I'm surprised you can't smell me through the phone."

"Oh, yeah, for sure. Go get cleaned up," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow for opening. Maybe it'll be slow and we can pick out slutty tutus together."

"Looking forward to it," I lied. "Have a good night."

The call ended. I plugged into the clock-radio and scrolled through my music collection. A sudden thump and muffled shriek of laughter from upstairs startled me. Staring up as though my neighbors could sense my annoyance radiating through the ceiling, I picked out a Peggy Lee album and turned up the volume until it was all I could hear.

Satisfied, I tugged a makeup wipe from its plastic container. Something black clattered against the bathroom tile.

"What the heck," I muttered as I stooped to pick up the remote, half of my face scrubbed free of regency era rouge and lip paint. While I'd always been a little absentminded, this was an all-time low. Shrugging it off, I stood and finished taking off my cosmetics. I was checking my reflection for any smears of mascara when my stomach soured with a realization.

That morning, I had finished breakfast and turned off the TV. In my rush to get out the door, I'd dropped the remote on the couch.

Someone had broken into my apartment.

And, judging from the shadow lurking behind the shower curtain in my reflection, they had never left.

"Teddy?" I called.

There was no answer. I shivered at the sound of the curling iron sliding off the counter as I brought it in front of me like a club.

I wanted for him to be the one behind the curtain. More than anything, I wanted it to be him and his thoughtless practical jokes. I wanted to scream four-letter words at him as he laughed until he hiccupped, red-faced and crying, and then we'd get dinner and watch bad movies like everything was okay. I wanted things to be okay.

But it wasn't Teddy. With his new job, my brother worked later hours than I did. And the shadow was too short, too solid to be him.

"Teddy, please." I tried again, ignoring the desperate strain in my voice. "I'm not in the mood for this."

Once again there was no response. Peggy's cover of Mack the Knife came up on my playlist. I could call for help, but what would I say? Something told me the police wouldn't have much interest for a story hinged on lost remotes and boogeymen hiding in the shower.

Taking a deep breath, I studied the shadow. During our standoff, it had never moved. Not to shift its weight from one foot to another. Not to breathe.

It was ruling me, and I was letting it. This was all in my head. I swept the curtain back with the tip of the curling iron.

My invader stared back at me with empty eyes. A mannequin.

I didn't own a mannequin.

She leaned against the fiberglass wall, silk robe undone to give a coquettish peek at a familiar burgundy bra and panty set. Her hair was not the right shade of red—it was artificial, more plum than crimson—but it hung in loose, bouncing curls like mine. The rhinestone earrings Teddy gave me for Christmas the year before were jammed through her plaster ears.

The slightest touch sent the mannequin sliding to the bottom of the tub where it laid like a corpse in a casket. I stared at it for what felt like hours.

One of Peggy's torch songs died mid-note as I pulled my phone from its dock and called 9-1-1.

***

I stood on the breezeway in a tank top and a pair of Hello Kitty pajama pants a female officer had rescued from the bedroom while the area was still being secured. It hadn't taken long for them to determine that my stalker was long gone, but I still hadn't been given the OK to come back inside. Instead, I watched helplessly through the open doorway as people in uniform snapped dozens of pictures of my home, the comfortable clutter turned crime-scene. In a way, it was almost as invasive as the break-in.

At first, I had clung to the hope that the investigation would come and go discreetly. The last thing I needed that evening was to find myself the subject of neighborly gossip, too, on top of everything else that happened. But as fifteen minutes stretched into forty five, and more and more of the other apartment dwellers peered through their blinds at the flashing blue lights in the parking lot, I realized that like it or not, this was becoming a spectacle.

My neighbors were subtle about it, at least. No one wants to let on that they're a rubbernecker. Under the guise of a smoke break or a trip to the mailbox on the ground level, they'd trickle from their homes one or two at a time, lingering on my floor just a bit too long. They tried to piece together the story starting with me. They flashed uneasy smiles, searching my face for bruises from an angry boyfriend, or a drug dog in my home. But they never asked me what had happened. Not once. It was easier, more interesting, for them to come up with their own stories. They could cast me as a villain or a hero over a cigarette or sifting through junkmail in their own time.

"Ms. Blum." The sound of the officer's voice dragged me out of my thoughts. Between his slow drawl and fading farmer's tan, he seemed more suited to mowing hay than overseeing the scene of a crime. "I'm Officer Toussaint. Bit nippy out here, huh? You want a jacket?"

"No, that's all right." I hugged myself tighter for warmth. "Have you found anything?"

He joined me on the breezeway. "They've got some partial prints, but if you handled the remote before you called, they may be yours."

I nodded, numbed by surreality.

"We checked all the windows, and you've only got the one entrance here," he said, jerking his chin to the doorway. "Nothing shows signs of forced entry. Could you have left your door open at any time, ma'am? Doing laundry, out on a quick errand...?"

"No." The answer came sharper than I intended, in equal parts indignation and revulsion. Officer Toussaint was clearly too stunned to respond. I forced a patient smile. "This isn't the first time this has happened."

The raise of his eyebrows put a wrinkle in his forehead. "Somebody done broke into your place before?"

"No," I said on a deep exhale, shoulders dropping. "But I've gotten messages. Letters with no return address. Unknown numbers, threatening e-mails. Things like that."

"Mm." He bit his cheek. "Can I see 'em?"

Dread pooled in my stomach. "I get rid of them. Delete them. Throw them away."

"What?"

"I know, I know." Taking a step closer to him, I pleaded with his soulful brown eyes, wishing he could just understand. "I thought that it was normal."

He shook his head, pulling a small notepad and pencil from a coat pocket. He started to jot down some notes, but his handwriting was so messy I couldn't make it out. "Ain't nothing normal about being harassed, Ms. Blum."

"I made some mistakes in college," I confessed, "And some enemies too. I used to call the station all the time, maybe before you worked there. They never took me seriously. I put another lock on the door and got over it."

"Mmhm." He made another note. "Seems like an awful big thing to 'get over,' don't you think?"

I laughed in disbelief. "With all due respect, Officer Toussaint, I didn't have many other options. I can't spend my whole life wringing my hands in fear."

The pencil paused. "Do you have any names for me? These enemies of yours?"

"No." I shook my head. "They've always been anonymous."

With that, the notepad and pencil slid back into his pocket. His smile was tired. "Breaking and entering, but no forced entry. No stolen property. Perp no longer on premises. We'll take what evidence we got, ma'am, try to get some statements from your neighbors, but know there's not a lot we can do in these sorts of cases."

"I understand." I watched him step back into my apartment.

I couldn't do this anymore.