“Is it just me, or do the rest of you feel as if someone is building a subway system through your brains?” asked Paul.
I couldn’t help laughing. “I feel exactly the same,” I assured him. “There’s too much information coming in to be digested all at once. Every single idea starts off ten more.”
“And that’s not by any means all,” said Gideon. “There’s still a lot to discuss. Unfortunately we’ll be traveling back soon. But we’ll be here again—say in half an hour’s time? That is, for you—for Gwyneth and me, it will be tomorrow morning, if all goes well.”
“I don’t understand,” murmured Paul, but Lucy looked as if light had suddenly dawned on her.
“If you’re not on an official mission from the Guardians, then how did you get here at all?” she asked slowly, turning pale. “Or rather, what got you here?”
“We’ve—” I began, but Gideon cast me a quick glance and shook his head very slightly.
“We can explain all that next time,” he said.
I looked at the grandfather clock. Then I said, “No.”
Gideon’s eyebrows shot up. “No?”
I took a deep breath. Suddenly I knew that I couldn’t wait a second longer. I was going to tell Lucy and Paul the truth, here and now.
All at once I didn’t feel nervous anymore, only utterly exhausted. As if I’d run forty miles without stopping and hadn’t slept for about a hundred years. I wished to goodness that Gideon had let Lady Tilney ring for that hot peppermint tea with sugar and lemon. As it was, we’d have to do without it.
I looked straight at Lucy and Paul. “Before we travel back,” I began quietly, “I have to tell you something else. There must be time for that.”
* * *
WHEN CYNTHIA’S BROTHER, in costume as a garden gnome, opened the door, it was as if he’d flung wide the gates of hell. The music was turned up to maximum, and it wasn’t the kind of music that Cynthia’s parents liked to dance to—it was somewhere between house and dubstep. A girl with a little tiara on her head pushed quickly past the garden gnome and threw up in the bed of hydrangeas near the porch. Her face was suitably green, but it could have been makeup.
“Touchdown!” she cried, straightening up. “I was afraid I wouldn’t make it this far.”
“Oh, high school party,” said Gideon quietly. “How nice.”
I gawped, puzzled. Something was all wrong here. This was the Dales’ posh house in upmarket Chelsea. A place where you usually kept your voice down. So why were people dancing even in the front hall? Why were there so many of them? And where did all the laughter come from? There wasn’t usually much of it at Cynthia’s parties, just the odd giggle now and then. If the word boring hadn’t already existed, it would certainly have been invented at one of those occasions.
“Great, you’re all green, so come along in!” crowed Cynthia’s brother, handing me a glass of something. “Here! Green Monster punch. Very healthy. Pure fruit juice, fresh fruit, green food coloring—organic! And a tiny little drop of white wine. Organic white wine, of course.”
“Have your parents gone away for the weekend?” I asked, trying to get the huge skirt of my Queen Alexandra dress through the door somehow.
“What?”
I repeated the question ten decibels louder.
“Nope, they’re around here somewhere.” The garden gnome’s voice was slightly slurred. “They quarreled because Dad just had to juggle those little green soya balls, and then everyone wanted to do it too, and anyone who scored a hit on Mum’s spiky hat was supposed to win a prize. Hey, Muriel, what are you doing in that cupboard? The toilet’s that way.”
“There’s definitely something wrong,” I told Gideon. I had to shout for him to hear me. “Usually people have to stand about in little groups as stiff as broccoli at these parties, waiting for midnight. And trying to get away from Cynthia’s parents, because they always want to get you playing ‘nice games’ that no one enjoys but themselves.”
Gideon took the glass from me and tried a sip. Then he said, grinning, “I guess this is the explanation. Tiny little drop of white wine? It must be half neat vodka, half at the very least.”
Okay, so that did explain a good deal. I peered at the dance floor in the living room, where Cynthia’s mum, dressed as the Statue of Liberty, was dancing wildly. “Let’s find Lesley and Raphael and get out of here as fast as we can,” I said.
A large green pepper collided with Gideon.
“’Scuse me,” muttered Sarah, who was sewn into the green pepper costume. Then her eyes widened. “Oh, my God … are you real?” She dug her forefinger into Gideon’s coat to find out.
“Sarah, have you seen Lesley anywhere?” I asked. This was getting me down. “Or are you too drunk to remember?”
“I’m stone-cold sober!” cried Sarah. She was staggering so much that she’d have fallen over, if Gideon hadn’t caught her. “I can prove it. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper. Go on, you say it too. No one who’s drunk can say it. Right?” She cast a soulful glance at Gideon, who seemed to be enormously amused. “Hey, if you’re a vampire, you’re welcome to bite me.”
For a moment, I was tempted to snatch the glass back from Gideon and tip the Green Monster punch straight down my throat. This seething, noisy, green inferno was more than my shattered nerves could stand.
We hadn’t really meant to go on to the party, Queen Alexandra dress or no Queen Alexandra dress. After we’d peeled off our Edwardian clothes and left the church, I was still feeling very trembly from our conversation with Lucy and Paul. All I wanted was to get into bed and not come out until everything was over. Or at least (because I soon rejected that idea as unrealistic) to give my brain, which was suffering from information overload, a chance to work everything out properly in peace and quiet. Using notes and little boxes and arrows in different colors. Paul’s comparison with a subway being built in our brains was only too apt. All we needed was a plan of the route.
However, Lesley had sent me four text messages telling us to come on to the party right away. The last in particular sounded kind of urgent. “Better get yourselves over here double quick, or I can’t answer for the consequences.”
“Wow! Gwenny!” That was Gordon Gelderman, in an artificial turf overall. He was looking down the low neckline of my Queen Alexandra dress and whistling through his teeth. “I always knew there was more than a kind heart under your school uniform!”
I rolled my eyes. Gordon couldn’t help being embarrassing, but did Gideon have to grin in that silly way?
“Hey, Gordon, say Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper four times running!” Sarah shouted.
“Peeker Pepper pecked a pop of pippled pepper, Pepper Picker popped a pick of pippered popper, Pickle Popper packed a pip of peppled potter!” cried Gordon confidently. “Easy peasy! Hey, Gwenny, have you tried the punch?” He leaned closer to me in a confidential way and shouted in my ear, “I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought of … er … giving it a bit more zing.”
For a moment, I had a vision of party guests strolling past the buffet, surreptitiously spying out the land, and then, one by one, adding smuggled vodka to the punch.
“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” chanted Sarah, staggering and clutching at Gideon’s behind. “Lesley’s in the conservatory. There’s karaoke in there. I’m going to listen, only I want a little more punch first.” The tip of her green felt pepper costume wobbled on top of her head. “This is the best party I’ve ever been to!”
Gordon giggled. “Cynthia ought to be grateful. After tonight, no one will say her parties are boring ever again. She’s so lucky! And the catering service delivered far too much green finger food, so we all called a couple of friends to come along. Some of them aren’t even in costume, let alone green!”
I rolled my eyes again and firmly hauled Gideon away, right through the crowd of dancing lunatics and into the conservatory.
Gordon followed us. “Are you going to sing karaoke again too, Gwenny? Last time you were the best. I’d have voted for you if Katie hadn’t drenched her T-shirt with water, so she looked kind of hot, and I—”
“Oh, shut up, Gordon.” I was going to turn back to him, but at that moment, I saw Charlotte. Or someone who could have been Charlotte if she hadn’t been standing on a table in the middle of the conservatory, belting out Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” into a microphone.
“Oh, my God,” murmured Gideon, holding on to the door frame.
“Ready for those flashing lights,” sang Charlotte.
I couldn’t say a word for a moment. Any number of groupies were standing around the table catcalling, and Charlotte didn’t sing at all badly.
Gordon immediately mingled with the fans and started demanding a striptease. “Get your things off!” he bellowed. “Get ’em off!”
I spotted Raphael and Lesley—she was looking lovely in the nearly green Grace Kelly dress, with her hair water-waved to be right for the period—and pushed my way through the crowd and over to them. Gideon stayed in the doorway.
“At last!” Lesley yelled, giving me a hug. “She had some of the punch, and now she’s not herself at all. Since nine thirty she’s been trying to tell everyone about Count Saint-Germain’s secret society and how there are time travelers living among us. We did all we could to make her go home, but she’s as slippery as an eel, and she keeps getting away.”
“And she’s much stronger than us,” said Raphael, who was wearing an amusing green hat, but didn’t look at all amused himself. “I almost got her to the front door just now, but then she twisted my arm and threatened to break my neck.”
“And now she’s grabbed the mike,” said Lesley gloomily. We stared up at Charlotte as if she were a ticking time bomb. Admittedly, a prettily packaged time bomb.
Caroline hadn’t been exaggerating. The elf costume was stunning. Even a real elf couldn’t have looked lovelier than Charlotte, with her slender shoulders emerging from a cloud of green tulle. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were shining, and shimmering ringlets of hair curled their way down her back to the perfectly made wings, which looked as if she’d been born with them. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her take off next moment and fly through the conservatory.
However, her singing voice wasn’t at all elfin. In fact, it wasn’t unlike Lady Gaga’s own.
“You know that I’ll be your Papa-Paparazzi,” she bawled into the microphone, and when Gordon shouted, “Get ’em off!” again, she began suggestively removing one of her long green gloves, finger by finger, helping it off with her teeth.
“She got that out of a film,” said Lesley, reluctantly impressed. “I can’t remember what film it was right now.”