it was as if someone had dumped a very large bucket of authentic over everything. She wondered briefly if maybe she had bumped her head, but there was no bump there that she could feel.
She looked over her shoulder and there was the Globe, though it was looking slightly more rustic than what she had seen five minutes ago.
She looked around for her pursuer. She supposed that was the only bright spot in the gloom, because he was nowhere to be found.
Then again, neither were sidewalks or nice, tarmac-covered streets.
She pulled her phone out of her bag and frowned. She had power, but no signal. She looked over her shoulder at that ring of mushrooms in the grass, then at the air shimmering there in the middle of that ring.
That was odd, wasn’t it?
She sniffed. London in the summer was pretty fragrant, but somehow that had just been kicked up a notch. Well, several notches, really. She thought she might lose what lunch she had managed to gag down.
She looked up, then realized there was not a single tall building within her line of vision. Not only that, the buildings that she could see were something out of a vintage period movie. And the language was, well, it was rather more authentic than she would have expected for modern-day London.
She wondered if maybe she had actually suffered a bonk on the head that had landed her in some sort of self-inflicted hallucination where everyone was living out their lives in her least favorite time period. Well, perhaps that wasn’t completely accurate. She didn’t really dislike Elizabethan England. She just didn’t want to be responsible for curating its treasures—or those of any other vintage, as it happened—any longer.
She frowned. How was it possible that everyone around her could be sharing in her delusion?
And why were those men over there looking at her as if she had just walked out of a fairy tale—and not one they had been happy to listen to?
She decided that there were two things she needed to do: first, blend into the crowd; and second, get rid of what people were following her for.
And the sooner she saw to both, the happier she would be.
Chapter 8
Derrick watched Samantha Drummond disappear in front of him and felt his mouth fall open. He gaped at the ground at his feet, then backed away instinctively. He looked down at the patch of grass, not unheard of in the city, and saw that in it was a ring of mushrooms, half of them opened, half of them closed. The fair attendees seemed to steer clear of the place, a show of good sense for which he would have congratulated them had he been capable of it. As it was all he could do was stand there and swear.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and texted Oliver.
Where are you?
“Right behind you.”
Derrick turned to find that was indeed the case. He looked at him seriously. “I’ve got to go get her.”
Oliver’s expression didn’t change. “Where did she go?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back.” He needed clothes, and quickly. He walked over to a likely-looking stall, purchased what he thought might be necessary, then ducked behind a screen and changed jeans for baggy workman’s trousers. He simply pulled a tunic down over his shirt. He had no intention of being wherever Samantha had gone any longer than necessary, but he had to at least attempt to look the part. He could only hope she had perhaps gone to Elizabethan England. It was a random thing to hope for, he supposed, but they were near the Globe and he was standing on the edge of a Renaissance faire. It was a good guess.
Heaven help them both if she’d disappeared into a far different and perhaps much less civilized century.
He could hardly believe he was even thinking any of it with any degree of seriousness, but the unfortunate truth was, he knew better than to doubt.
He shoved his jeans in his pack, then found Oliver and handed his pack over. He put his phone into his pocket only to realize that he didn’t have any pockets. After indulging in another choice word or two, he decided he would just have to hold on to it.
He sighed, then went to stand on the edge of the grass. He looked over his shoulder at Oliver. “Push me into that ring of mushrooms.”
Oliver looked for the first time faintly startled. “What?”