“How was a member of the Cooch Behar family born in America?”
I look around yet again.This isreallyweird.“Are there multiple events here tonight?To be honest, I might be in the wrong place.I hit my head earlier, and everything is…off.”As nice as this conference is, they didn’t even spring for coffee.I can’t see them spending this much for actors to entertain us on the last night.
“This is one of Queen Victoria’s homes.The only events here are the ones she hosts.Like this ball at the end of her birthday celebrations,” Leo says carefully, like he’s confronting a wild animal with a hungry look in their eyes and he’s the only meat within a mile radius.
And while he is an appealing piece of meat, I may have bigger problems on my hands.
“No.”I stop dancing.“This doesn’t make any sense.”I break of out of his arms.“If you’ll excuse me, I…I think I need to leave.”Or at least find my phone and call Luis.Because panic is starting to set in at how confused I am.
I turn abruptly and walk out of the ballroom.Relying on my very probably concussed brain, I go down hallways and look through doors, trying to find the coat check.
“Where are you going?”Leo asks me from behind.Following me.Why is he following me?Can’t he take a hint?
“I’m trying to leave.”But I don’t know my way around.This is a giant house with more rooms than I have books, and the party was only in a few of them.I can’t even take the time to appreciate the historic furniture, because nothing is right, damn it!
“Right.And I do support you in your endeavors.It is only that the front door is in the opposite direction,” Lord So-Helpful says.“Here, if you give me your arm, I can lead us out of this labyrinth.”
That sounds better than me being forever lost in a house museum, a warning for docents to give visitors in the future.Although as places to be trapped in goes, a palace isn’t that bad.Still, the whole situation is less than ideal, and the way he’s treating me, like I’m a small child who’s lost in a mall on a back-to-school shopping trip, is grating.“Sure.Let’s do that.”
Much more efficiently than I was doing it, Leo leads me to the front door.I’m about to thank him so he knows I’m fine and he can leave me alone, but I get distracted when I realize there’s no coat room.
“Where’s our coats?My purse?”I look around the giant foyer, my stomach dropping when I don’t see it.
A white plaster cast Victoria and Albert sculpture, the figures dressed in medieval garb, looks down at me.Mocking me.Because I don’t remember that there this evening.In fact, it should be in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I saw it two weeks ago when I was playing tourist in London.And there should be a small table and racks set up for coats in its place, which was there at the beginning of the party.
I drop Leo’s arm and push through the massive front doors.Outside is no more helpful than the interior.Our shuttle is gone and replaced by some horses and carriages along the drive.Which is no longer a paved road.I can’t see any of the bright lights of the town that was just past the trees when I got to this party.
The vague feeling of panic intensifies as the evidence mounts that something is very wrong.
“None of this is right,” I whisper to myself, for the hundredth time tonight.“What’s the date today?”I ask desperately.
Time travel isn’t real.But what other explanation is there for all the strange things happening here?It’s either time travel, a concussion, or a really elaboratePunk’dprank.
And that show hasn’t been on the air since 2007.
He looks at me like he’s worried about me, but answers, “It is May 25, 1895.”
CHAPTER4
No.This isn’t real.Time travel isn’t real.And if it was, it would involve complicated physics that I don’t even know well enough to casually throw out.Maybe something to do with quantum or quasars… something with a Q for sure.And elaborate machines that spin or whirl, with buttons that sayDo Not Touch.
I’m just a girl who’s clumsy enough to fall down some stairs.There were no machines!Quantum or otherwise.
No.We still have the explanations of this being an elaborate coma-dream resulting from the fall and too many nights falling asleep while doing research on this very period of time, or it being a joke.
If this is a dream, no one will admit to it or be aware of it, but as for the other… “Am I being pranked?You have to tell me if I ask; I’m pretty sure that’s the rules of pranks.”It would be the worst time for historians to develop a sense of humor, and a kind of cruel one that’s making me doubt my sanity, but it would be a relief right now to find out I wasn’t imagining the impossible.
“No.Unfortunately, if you want this to be a prank.”Leo is looking at me like I’m a candidate for Bedlam.
Shit.Bedlam.What society does for mental health isn’t great in the present, but it was even worse in the past.I should try not to get sent there, on the off chance that this isn’t a dream and I have somehow figured out time travel.
I sit down at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the house and hold my head in my hands, which is pounding with confusion and frustration.And a lack of hydration.
Tears I don’t need right now leak out of my eyes.Because I want my mom, and she’s at least an ocean and maybe a lot of years away.
“What do you want to do now?”Leo kneels in front of me, using a voice so careful, calmer and softer than any he’s used so far tonight, that I know I must look on the brink of a panic attack right now.
“I don’t know,” I say hopelessly, sniffing so I don’t outright bawl in front of him.Usually, most of my problems, questions, or general boredom can be solved in the pages of a book.But I don’t think there’s a manual for this.Nor do I know where the closest library is.
