Click.
A noise like a giant vacuum cleaner fil ed the room, so loud Cam clapped her hands over her ears, and wind blew everything off her desk, flinging her purse like a rugby bal into her lap and her chair into the radiator behind her. It was like the blast of a jet plane, only Jeanne, who looked at her, horrified, didn’t seem to be affected by it at al . Cam was on the verge of dropping to the floor for protection when the wind stopped, the room went black and the edges of her laptop stretched out like arms to envelop her.
6
Boom.
Cam exploded into the doorway of a high-ceiled, rococo-trimmed room fil ed wal to wal with naked women
—a good thing, she thought with a part of her brain that apparently processed input even in the face of chaotic upheaval, since she, too, was naked. She flung her arms around herself and gasped for air.
A thousand questions flew through her head. Where am I? Who are these women? Where’s my laptop? Am I dead?
She felt confused, slightly nauseous and hugely exposed.
“My apologies,” she said as the women’s heads swiveled. “I, ah, tripped.”
Several had been playing cards on a heap of cushions, two were admiring a horned hat, one was leaning on a carved club, another was dangling a loop of yarn over the batting paws of a kitten and one, holding a shield and wearing an armor helmet with an enormous plume on top, was swinging a wooden broadsword, chanting “I am Athena. I am Athena.” Not one seemed even moderately concerned by her own state of undress or the arrival of an equal y undressed companion.
The women were long-limbed and shapely, and Cam scrambled to determine which prospect of her body would be the least revealing to share with the room, deciding at last on a foot-forward beauty pageant stance, with her arms taking the place of both an underwire bra and Spanx and her ass tucked beside the doorframe. The woman with the kitten said, “Oh, look, Kate, ’tis the new girl.”
Kate tucked the club under her arm and ran over with an amiable smile. She wore cuffs of maple and oak leaves around each ankle.
“Oh, thank the Lord,” Kate cried, “a tal one! At least we are matched.” Kate drew a hand along an invisible line between the top of Cam’s head and her own. She extended the club, which, after a spit-second deliberation, Cam accepted with her Spanx hand, and picked up another.
“Supporters make a very poor showing if they are not matched, I think.” Kate laid the club across her shoulders like a Highlander ready to do battle and took on what Cam assumed to be a supporter’s proper sneer. “We are the wild men on the Danish coat of arms, do you see? The lord-general of the Danish army is coming. Peter said it would amuse him. Are you cold?” she added, looking with curiosity at Cam’s stil -rigid arm.
One of the card players said, “I’d be more interested in amusing Peter,” and they laughed.
Cam heard the sound of a far-off door opening.
“You had better get your headdress on and be quick about it. He doesn’t like it when we’re late.”
Kate held out a large furred and antlered headdress, which made Cam think of Fred Flintstone’s Loyal Order of Water Buffalo or the natives who hunted the castaways on Gilligan’s Island. Reluctantly Cam freed the bra hand to accept it.
“Put it on.”
Cam did. The front hung past her nose, like a centurion’s helmet with two eyeholes. Great. Now the only thing she had covered was the one part of her she didn’t care if people saw.
“Oooh, this is a fine bit of enamel work.” Kate touched the ring at Cam’s breastbone with awe on her face. “Was it a present from Peter?”
“I, er—” There was more going on than she could process. But before Cam had a chance to answer, the sound of men’s voices rose beyond the doorway and terror leapt up in her now uncovered chest.
“Peter’s here!” Kate chirped. The women bounded toward Peter, and Cam flew in the other direction, toward the open door of a large darkened closet, slipping between a ladder and some stacked buckets. It wasn’t til she was safely
