I’m positive I’m a hundred shades of red, all from the neck up, despite how the equal number of gown layers are a sufficient shield for my modesty. Bastien isn’t so lucky. There he is, half-gloved and fully erect, gloriously on display for our three new guests. Fortunately, two of them are friends who’ve received enough dick pics in their lives to handle the unexpected view. And the third is a person who’s probably seen Bastien’s crotch more than me.
“And now we know he is a De Leon,” Max declares. His punctuating shoulder roll is a combination of Buffalo Bill and Steve McQueen.
“On that note, it’s time to turn off the bounce house, kids.” The creative verbiage only enhances Drue’s strictness. When she has even Max backing down, my own tension takes over again. “We’ve got to focus on ways of sneaking little Rae-Rae right out of here-here.”
“And then right to a physician,” Bastien inserts, only to be speared by a sterner look from D.
“It’s on the priority list. Just not the immediate one.”
“No. Not acceptable.” Bastien stiffens. “Do you understand that she lost consciousness in my arms? Do you understand—”
“Desperado.” I bolt to my feet now too. Though all the blood in my body recirculates in crazy directions, I push past it to bypass him and beeline for Drue. “I think we need to listen to her.” I stop and sway but tack on a silent look in the nick of time. D doesn’t say anything. “What is it?” I demand. “Is Logan—”
“No.” She pulls in a tight breath. “I mean…not yet, at least.”
“Not yet?”
“She’s trying to say we don’t know,” Allie offers. “About a half hour ago, the Hemline brass summoned Max and me for a photo op with the other network personalities. We had to walk through the area where MTA security is coordinating with the police for tonight.” She reaches for one my hand. “They were on the radio, talking to Liam Logan. About you.”
“Shit.” I mutter it at the same time that Bastien spits it in French. “So, there’s no time to waste.” I throw my gaze to Drue. “Do you think we can double back to the Greene?”
“You mean can you go back.” Allie squeezes my fingers, taking on an expression I haven’t seen since the night I threw up in her foyer bathroom for hours. “Yours is the only name on the alert, sweetie. They’re not talking about Bastien or Drue.”
D now looks as miserable about that as her. “When we walked into the consulate, a lot of my face was hidden by that dorky wig and beret. And officially, Bastien doesn’t yet exist in this century. That means they probably got a positive face match on you alone.”
“Double shit.” I plant my left foot to add traction for the inevitable leg jiggle. “Okay, so I’ll just try to sneak out through the bar’s Vanderbilt Avenue entrance—”
“And I shall be at your side,” says the proud soldier who’s reinserted himself next to me. I let him see the grateful smile in my eyes before I go on.
“We’ll get a cab from there to the Greene,” I say. “I’ll change into fresh clothes and then cut my hair—”
“What?”
“You have a better idea on how I can throw off Dick Logan?” I rebut to Bastien’s outburst.
“Dick Gorgeous is such a better way of saying that,” D says.
“Huh?” Allie flings. “What else have I missed?”
“Fun story for later,” D rejoins. “With better lighting and tastier cocktails.”
“All sounding like idées parfaites,” Max cuts in. “But, as Drusilla aptly expressed, for later. Much later.”
Allie, D, and I honor his wisdom by wasting no more time—except to bunch together in a tight triangular embrace.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Sister Tigger,” Drue decrees. “We’ve got your back, okay?”
“We’ll redirect Dick Gorgeous and his friends to someplace fun. Maybe Brooklyn. Or Siberia.”
As I giggle, a few nervous tears slip through. “Well, there are a couple of great ideas.”
“We’ll find a way to get in touch,” Allie assures. “But not until it’s safe.”
“Which it will not be if we do not depart in all haste.”
The charge is wrapped in so much of Bastien’s bossy bearing, I don’t even think it’s strange to look up and see him in his full regiment regalia for a couple of seconds. But I blink and the vision is gone, thank God. If he had stayed in his time for even a few hours longer, that uniform would have been the ultimate signature on his execution orders.
But while the hallucination is gone, it hasn’t given me back my spine. Every vertebrae is a chunk of ice, enough to make me tremble in place. Bastien, attempting to tug me toward the Campbell’s entrance stairwell, already peers at me in concern.
“Rayonnement? What is it?”
I shiver again. Even harder. “I don’t know. I…can’t move all of a sudden. I don’t know why. I—”
“Ssshhh,” he admonishes. “It is going to be all right, my sweet.” He scoops up my other hand. “I am right here with you. Just stay with me this time. You promised you would. Remember?”
“I did,” I rasp, but that’s all I can get out. My heart is an ice-covered mallet against my ribs. Everything between my neck and knees is locked as if already frozen.
The most inaccurate comparison of the night. Perhaps of my whole life.
Because when I look back up to Bastien, praying his strength is enough to melt my biological iceberg, I instead gawk up and over his shoulder.
At the huge curio cabinet along the wall behind him.
The ornate thing has held many treasures and oddities in the nearly hundred years since John Campbell installed it, but right now it looks to be consumed by…fire.
The same surreal flames that flashed in the wardrobe in Max and Allie’s apartment—right before Bastien stepped out of it.
The same heat that casts frightening shadows across my friends’ faces as they acknowledge the bizarre sight.
The good news? I’m really not going crazy this time. Everyone else can see this too.
The bad news? I’m not the only one experiencing this.
It’s real.
And it’s frightening.
This cabinet is a lot bigger than the one Allie had shipped over from France.
So what does that mean? Is this thing another time travel machine? If so, who’s in it? Or what? Have the Jacobins found a way to follow Maximillian and Bastien here? Is there an entire battalion of them braced inside? If so, what are we going to do about it? Fight back with barware and expensive bottles of booze?
Already, the answer flares in my mind.
Yes. If we damn well have to.
The light show doesn’t go on for too long. As it fizzles and dims, Max stomps forward. Bastien joins him. The looks they shoot back at Allie, Drue, and me aren’t to be brooked. This definitely isn’t the time for reckless one-liners.
“Halt! Whomever you are, inside the closet, you are commanded to show yourself. Keep it slow with your hands where I can see them!”
Though as reckless zingers go, Bastien does know how to fling them.