“Only if I put a collar on you.”
He wanted to bury himself in her lap and nap for a million years. Not yet. “Where did Zadie go?”
“The girl who was pretending to be my sister? She marched across campus to yell at some people.”
Boswell leaped up, looking around the quad. The rest of them hovered nearby, awkward and unhelpful. Typical. “Did anyone go with her?”
“Oxford did,” said Ruthven, sounding sour. “He seems to be the only one around here who knows what’s actually going on.”
“Well, then,” said Boswell, pulling his haughty professorial persona on like a pair of tiny spectacles. “I suggest we join them. Unless you all wish to remain in ignorance?”
“Are you all right?” Lovelace asked in an undertone as they marched across campus, led by Boswell and Cressida.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Monterey. He smelled of misery and confusion.
She butted his shoulder with her head. “I’m still here. We’re still here.”
“I know, dear one,” he said. “Stick close.”
Tunbridge had been waiting outside the Reading Room in the Museum of Lost Things for hours. Whatever dire emergency had required the Founders to summon all the cats here in the middle of the night was clearly not as crucial as the nine of them pacing up and down, pouring more wine, and gesticulating wildly at each other behind sound-proofed glass.
Every time Tunbridge glanced around to check on the most dramatic committee meeting of all time, the Founders of the three colleges of time travel looked more and more unhinged.
Still, no one had attacked the campus. They were all safe, for now. Ptolemy was asleep on Tunbridge’s lap.
Abydos was asleep too, sprawled across the lap of Zephyr Kincaid. Zephyr slumped against the shoulder of their younger brother Bellerophon, either asleep or close to it.
It was sweet that Ptolemy and Abydos had been so keen to extend their protection to their favourite humans, but surely this could have waited until morning.
The doors of the museum flung open. Fenella from Costume strode into the main hub of the museum like an opera singer about to launch into her big number. She wore an odd, baggy blue jumpsuit that looked like it had been printed on a machine — it had surely not been tailored by anyone human. Oxford, long-legged and miserable-looking, trailed after her as if he would rather be anywhere else.
Fenella stopped short, just in front of Tunbridge. A small woman, she bristled with fury. “Lakshmi,” she said, her tongue hissing on the name. “Do you know me?”
Ptolemy sat up straight on Tunbridge’s lap, ready to defend his human.
“Fenella?” Tunbridge said hesitantly. She stood up, pushing Ptolemy to the ground.
Clearly that was the wrong answer. Fenella’s brows drew down in anger. She came striding forward and clasped Tunbridge’s face in both hands as if she was about to kiss her, or maybe break her jaw.
Something cold and small and round hummed against Tunbridge’s cheek. Reality blinked, for a moment, out of existence and back again. She could see purple lights at the back of her eyes… and oh, she had such a headache.
“Zadie,” she breathed.
Everything went to hell, shortly after Zadie Kincaid marched into the Founders’ meeting and let them have it: her father and his eight colleagues, at the mercy of one angry young woman holding a circle of glass.
Oxford had gone in there with her. Tunbridge was at her side, as were Zadie’s siblings: one Anachronaut and one Banksia-affiliated traveller.
Monterey was in there too, hands in the air as he confronted his parents. Lovelace had nearly bitten Monterey’s mother at least twice.
Oxford stood between both his mothers — Melusine from Admin and Celeste, the Dean of Aleister College.
It was chaos, pure and simple. And that was before the cats woke up. Every cat from all three colleges had been napping in the other Reading Room. Now they were awake, they all had opinions about how much memory loss had been going around.
Ruthven could not keep track of any of it. He stayed well out of the way, drank half a glass of expensive red wine, and felt like death warmed over.
At one point he caught Oxford’s eye, and motioned that he wanted to talk. Privately. Away from here. Surely Oxford wanted that too, even just to catch his breath…
But then a time hoop opened up in the middle of the museum, and Nero hopped through, followed by Fleur Shropshire, Anne Boleyn, Emperor Claudius, and every other Anachronaut who had been whisked off to the thirtieth century.
They had, after all, rescued themselves. And they had plenty to add to the committee meeting from hell.
There was a lot of screaming, and sarcasm, and emotional blackmail, and Ruthven was pretty sure it was all going to end with either Nero or Zadie Kincaid as Dean of the Colleges.
He felt like his head was about to explode.
So, he walked away.
The other end of the Museum of Lost Things was an oasis of calm. Ruthven made his way around the dusty glass cases, looking for somewhere quiet to have an emotional collapse.
He found Professor Boswell and Cressida by the Pens Nicked From Famous Authors Display, observing all the new additions to the collection from the last seven years. Cressida had snagged herself a large glass of wine, and an over-sized tweed jacket to layer over her baggy blue prison jumpsuit.
