August slams the door, but god knows why because it won’t exist in a matter of seconds. Without a thought, we tumble through the rift, out of this devastated universe and into the next, for better or for worse, till death do us part.
CHAPTER FORTY
GOOD AUGUST
SLIPPERY WHEN WET
We crash down in a tangle of arms and legs and bodies, falling over in impenetrable black. I’m flung backwards, landing hard against a wall. “Shit!”
“August?” What sounds like glass bottles almost being knocked to the floor drowns him out.
“I’m here.” I fling out a hand, meeting nothing but air.
“Thank god. Where are you? Did we all make it?”
“I’m here.” Shashi’s voice. “Amber?”
“Yep,” she calls back. “I’ve got Jon.”
“August Three?” my August asks.
“You know, in my mind, he’s actually August Three,” he mutters.
“That’s fascinating. Slayer, where are you?”
I grope my way up the wall to standing, reach out a hand in the direction of his voice, and at the touch of his fingertips, sighs of relief escape both of us. He pulls me across, and his lips meet mine, exactly where they need to be, for now and forever.
Everyone else struggles to their feet, hands sliding over walls, bodies bumping into furniture, as we all try to figure out where we are. Finally, someone finds a door handle, flings the door open, and a sliver of pale light reveals that we’re in the same room in the pub we got a short look at before we crossed over.
The first of the group are tentative to step out, but we all soon grow more confident. The place is locked up tight, with us inside. Moonlight filters in through the large translucent glass windows, dying embers in the fireplace casting the grand room in a friendly glow.
Shashi takes it all in, then turns back to me with a painfully fake smile. “Could you please warn us next time you’re going to do that?”
Okay, maybe that’s fair. A bit. We did almost obliterate them from existence. But still the small words bubble up, “No. Not really.”
She sighs, taking the answer for what it is. Thankfully. Instead of arguing about my sex life, she goes to the window to try to see through the milky glass. “Augusts, is this modern London or old London?”
“Oh, shit,” says my August.
“What ‘oh shit?’” she asks.
But Assassin August takes up the answer. “We skipped in the past. We’re all almost definitely stuck in the past.”
The mask of horror that takes Shashi’s face is only outdone by her immediate splutter of, “No, no, no! Nope. No, I’m not being stuck in Victorian London. It was nice for a night, but that’s more than enough for me. I’ll die here. I’ll have to turn to prostitution within the week. I’ll die of syphilis before the year’s out!”
“I think they quite liked me,” Jon reflects. “If I could get a guitar?—”
“And worse than that,” Amber cuts in, “I’m pretty sure they won’t have a particle accelerator here.”
“Shit,” August hisses out. “Shit, shit!”
“It’s okay,” I lie, trying my best to get things back to a nice post-sex glow. “The slip will end. Right, August? Wait. Are we in a slip? Or did we slip out of the slip, or now we have to unslip?”
“I have no idea,” he mumbles, turning me on with his own slip of a finger, pushing his glasses back in place.
I pursue, “What happens if we slip into a slip when we’re in a slip?”
“August, why would you ask me that?” he wails. “I have literally no idea.”
