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three to four hundred years of my life.
    No, definitely not something a man told a woman on their first date. He would
    have to woo her. Quickly. And win her over to wanting to stay here with him.
    Preferably before a dragon ate one of them.
    "Look, why don't you just think of this as a great adventure. Instead of reading
    about the history you teach, you can live it for a couple weeks."
    "What are you? Disney World?" she asked. "And I can't stay here for a couple
    weeks. I have a life in the twenty-first century. I will be fired from my job. I will
    lose my car and my apartment. Good grief, who will pick up my laundry?"
    "If you stayed here with me, it wouldn't be a problem. You'd never have to worry
    about any of that again."
    Channon was aghast at him. Oh, God, please let this
    be some bizarre nightmare. She had to wake up. This could not possibly be real.
    "No," she said to him, "you're right. I wouldn't have to worry about any of that in
    Saxon England. I'd only have to worry about the lack of hygiene, lack of plumbing,
    Viking invasions, being burned at the stake, lack of modern conveniences, and
    nasty diseases with no antibiotics. Good grief, I can't even get a Midol. Not to
    mention, I'll never find out what happens next week on Buffy!"
    Sebastian let out an elongated, patient breath and gave her an apologetic look that
    somehow succeeded in quelling a good deal of her anger.
    "Look," he said quietly, "I'll make a deal with you. Spend a few weeks with me
    here, and if you really can't stand it, I'll take you home as close to the departure
    time as I can manage. Okay?"
    Channon still had a hard time grasping all this. "Do you swear you're not playing
    some weird mind game with me? I really am here, in Saxon England?"
    "I swear it on my mother's soul. You are in Saxon England, and I can take you back
    home. And no, I'm not playing mind games with you."
    Channon accepted that, even though she couldn't imagine why. It was just a feeling
    she had that he would never swear on his mother's soul unless he meant it.
    "Can you really take me back to the precise moment I left?"
    "Probably not the precise moment, but I can try."
    "What do you mean, try?"
    He flashed his dimples, then turned serious. "Time-walking isn't an exact science.
    You can only move through the time fields when the dawn meets the night, and
    only under the power of a full moon. The problem is on the arrival end. You can try
    to get someplace specific, but you have only about a ninety-five percent chance of
    success. I might get you back that day, but it could also be a week or two after."
    "And that's the best you can do?"
    "Hey, just be grateful I'm old. When an Arcadian first starts time-walking, we only
    have about a three percent chance of success. I once ended up on Pluto."
    She laughed in spite of herself. "Are you serious?"
    He nodded. "They're not kidding about it being the coldest planet."
    Channon took a deep breath as she digested everything he'd told her. Was any of
    this real? She didn't know, any more than she knew whether or not he was being
    honest about returning her. He was still very guarded. "Okay, so I'm stuck here
    until the next full moon?"
    "Yes."
    Oh, good grief, no. Had she been the kind of woman to whine, she'd probably be
    whining. But Channon was always practical. "All right. I can handle this," she said,
    more for her benefit than his. "I'll just pretend I'm a Saxon chick and you..." Her
    voice trailed off as she recalled what he'd said about time-traveling. "Just how old
    are you?"
    "My people don't age quite the same way humans do. Since we can time-walk, we
    have a much slower biological clock."
    Oh, she really didn't like the way he said humans, and if he turned fangy on her,
    she was going to stake him right through the heart. But she would get back to that
    in a minute. First, she wanted to understand the age thing. "So you age like dog
    years?"
    Sebastian laughed. "Something like that. By human age, I would be four