“It’s getting worse,” said Cressida, looking up at the sky. “Last time I came through this party, there weren’t nearly as many anachronisms. Event Space has to be on the verge of collapse.”
“You don’t want me to enjoy this, do you?” Monterey complained, snatching up a platter of miniature hot dogs from a passing waiter on roller skates. “I’ve missed this century.”
Lovelace coughed. “It’s technically our fault you couldn’t get back here before…”
“Not my point, darling!”
“Don’t let me stop you fiddling while Rome burns,” Cressida said sourly. “I can worry for both of us.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t worried,” Monterey snarked back. “But this could be our last chance to nick a pen from Molière. I never managed it last time.”
Cressida gave him an impatient look, then barked an unexpected laugh. “Don’t you dare.”
“Was that a dare I heard? If you insist…” Monterey liked it better when Cressida was laughing. It made him feel like all of time and space might not be ending right this minute.
Oxford, meanwhile, had a face like a wet weekend. Monterey had been far too busy chatting up Cleopatra in 48 BCE (Take that, bucket list!) to notice when Oxford’s dour mood set in, but it was entrenched now.
Fenella had that wide-eyed, frantic look of the newbie traveller who wants to do everything at once but is terrified of getting it wrong. She still wore a white Ancient Greek peplos under a Napoleonic great-coat, now with the addition of a scarab necklace given to her by Cleopatra. It was a remarkably appropriate outfit for Event Space, where the electric scooters were piling up with all the abandoned skateboards, and the seventeenth century orchestra down by the stage was playing a cover of Rocket Man for the entertainment of the Sun King.
Monterey passed Fenella a mini hot dog, to keep her strength up.
“This is lovely,” Fenella said. “But I’m not sure why we rushed out of Egypt so quickly. Cleopatra was quite willing to fend off Anachronauts with her taser army. We could have slept for more than ten minutes.”
“You want food and sleep?” Cressida said, looking distracted. “What are you, a cat?”
Cressida, who had spent longer in Event Space than any of them, was starting to look worn around the edges. Her enormous Victorian bustle gown had lost its dramatic flounce, the tie-dye colours were not nearly as vibrant, and the hem dragged down with centuries of dust.
“I’m looking for someone,” she said to Monterey in an undertone.
“An Anachronaut?” He didn’t think they were likely to be all that friendly after what happened with the velociraptor back at Fenthorp Manor, 1899.
She shook her head. “I think we only need one cat to get us all back to Basic Time. But I don’t have the theory in my head. Not all the pieces, anyway. I need to pull myself together, literally.”
Monterey screwed his face up at her. “I understand nothing of what you just said. What does this person look like?”
“Me in a Viking helmet.”
Monterey’s eyes widened in response. Okay, then. Cressida was losing it. Maybe she’d already lost it.
She looked annoyed at his reaction. “Monterey. I’ve been scattered. Do you know what that means?”
“Of course,” he said, offended. “It happened to a fellow I trained with. The basic definition was in our exams.”
“The basic definition doesn’t cover what happened to me.”
“It’s when your brain gets all scrambled from too much time travel. Risk is higher when you have a near miss with an Event. It’s amazing Lovelace and I are sane, frankly.” Monterey blew a kiss at his cat, who was helping herself to a sushi tray and ignored him. “Memory loss, hallucinations, and sometimes you think you’re more than one person.”
“Typical of Chronos College,” Cressida said bitterly. “Coming up with a fancy term to explain memory loss like it’s natural, like it just happens.”
“It does just happen. I told you, my mate Simeon forgot his parents. Completely forgot them. No explanation.”
Nearby, Oxford choked on a mouthful of sparkling mineral water, and kept coughing for some moments.
Mixed emotions crossed Cressida’s face: pity, panic, and then mild fury, like she wanted to smack Monterey over the head but not so much that she wanted to explain why.
“It’s slightly different in my case,” she said, finally.
Monterey was unconvinced. “Because you’re special?”
“Because there are literally several of me. Monterey, listen for once.”
A cat yowled out in pain.
Monterey spun on alert, his eyes going directly to Lovelace. She looked confused. Her head tipped to one side, listening for the source of the cry.
“Oh, hell,” Monterey said, as his eyes fell on the revellers further down the slope from them. Louis XIV’s glamorous, gilded party guests now included several female figures in very familiar blue cloaks. “The jade pineapple cult are back. Heading this way.”
“There’s a cat in trouble,” Lovelace protested as he scooped her up.
“You, darling, you’re the cat in trouble,” Monterey babbled. “We have to get out of here.”
“Stop them!” cried one of the bald women in blue: a clear sign something terrible was about to happen.
“Oxford, where’s Fenella?” Cressida demanded.
Oxford flailed, his arm almost knocking over a waiter carrying a tray of Calippos. “She was here a minute ago.”
“Did you lose my sister?”