Page 88 of Misadventures with a Duke

“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.