smoke. Does she? Something’s not right here. I think I’m in the middle of a very strange dream.
“No, you’re not,” said Bibbie, cheerfully. With a tap of one elegantly manicured fingernail she ignited the cigarette in the gold-inlaid ivory holder. “You’re wide awake, Gerald.” And then she laughed. “How odd, having to call you Gerald. I might have to think up another name for you. Pity your parents didn’t give you any spares.”
What? What the devil was she talking about? Nonplussed, he stared a little closer at Monk’s sister. She looked… subtly different. Like Bibbie, and yet not. A thin stream of cigarette smoke curled ceilingwards in front of her face. Her-her painted face.
Good lord. I must be dreaming. Bibbie’s wearing makeup.
But how could that be possible? In Ottosland only socially inferior theatrical ladies and those fallen girls who regrettably sold their-their-charms-to unscrupulous gentlemen put paint and powder on their faces. A respectable girl who-who-what did they call it? Oh, yes. Tarting up. A respectable girl like Bibbie who tarted herself up would be subjected to the most astringent criticisms. From what he could understand, even tweed trousers were preferable. With her face painted like that, Markham or not Bibbie would be an instant social outcast. Her family would come down on her like the proverbial ton of bricks.
Reg disapproved of the restrictions, of course. Called them fuddy-duddy and anti-female. She’d worn her war paint every day when she was queen. Nothing wrong with it. Looking her best was the birthright of every woman and bugger the old sourpusses out to rain on the parade.
But Bibbie refused to listen to Reg’s demand that she take the fight for female suffrage that next important step. At least, he thought she’d refused to listen. But here she was in his bedroom with powder on her cheeks and paint on her lips and something on her eyelids and lashes that made her blue eyes almost too beautiful to bear. Wearing scarlet.
Bloody hell. How long has it been since I got into that portal?
Bibbie was grinning now, and at least that hadn’t changed. Her smile could probably power entire small countries. “Poor thing. You do look confused.”
“Um-probably because I am,” he said. With a glance down at his chest-good, he was wearing a nightshirt, except- Oh, lord, who put it on me? — he cautiously eased himself to sitting and rested his back against the knotty old bedhead. The chamber’s curtains were closed, and his clock was missing from the bedside nightstand. “What time is it?”
Bibbie waved the cigarette holder. Smoke wafted through the air, the smell of burning tobacco unpleasantly mingling with her muskily floral perfume. “Oh, yes, well, time,” she said, disparaging, and inhaled deeply on her unlikely cigarette. Tipping her head back, she proceeded to produce seven perfectly round smoke rings and then pierced all seven with a startling smoke arrow. “D’you know-Gerry-I think we’ve more important things to talk about than time.”
She’d done something different to her hair, too. On first glance he’d thought she’d just twisted it up in a new style but now, as she turned her head to watch her smoke rings on the arrow dart about the room, he could see that she’d cut it. Cut off her long golden hair and-and-slicked it down with some kind of feminine pomade. And there was something else, too. Something… unwholesome… that had nothing to do with face paint and cigarettes. A sour tang in the ether.
But that can’t be right. Bibbie would never get her thaumaturgical hands dirty. Not like that. Not Bibbie.
Dismayed, he stared at her. “ Bibbie — enough nonsense, all right? I want to know what time it is-what day it is- and I want to know what’s going on!”
She flicked him a cold glance. “You’d be wise not to take that tone with me, Gerry. I warn you, taking that tone will get you into trouble.”
His jaw dropped open. “ What? Emmerabiblia Markham, are you squiffed? Or running a desperately high fever? Or is that not exactly tobacco you’re smoking? And anyway, since when do you smoke? And-and-wear makeup. And scarlet. And when did you cut off all your hair?” Fed up with the disadvantage of being in bed, like a child, he flung back his blankets and faced her on his bare feet. “Look, either I am dreaming or the world’s been turned completely upside-”
With a blast of raw thaumic energy the bedroom door blew open and banged against the wall.
“Ha! So he’s awake at last!” said the man framed in the doorway. “ Excellent. Now we’ll really have some fun!”
“D’you think so, Gerald?” said Bibbie, pouting. “Because so far he’s not been any fun at all.”
Dumbstruck, Gerald watched as Bibbie undulated out of her chair, sashayed across the bedroom floor and- and entwined herself around-around Me! That’s me! But-but-how can that be me? I’m me. Aren’t I?
And then, with a second shock that punched right through his middle, he realized: No. That’s not me. At least-not any more.
The man lounging in the doorway wore his face. They were the same height, the same weight. All right, the man in the doorway had a-agloss, a polish, that he absolutely lacked. Nevertheless, on the outside-except for the two good eyes-they were the same man.
But on the inside? Thaumaturgically? Oh, Saint Snodgrass…
The man-the other Gerald-had a potentia that choked the room. It reeked of death. Of murder. It stirred his blood with a visceral dread.
Heart thudding, he looked at the Bibbie before him, with her short hair and lipstick and the powder on her face. At the gold-and-ivory cigarette holder and the sheer scarlet silk dress clinging to those curves that day after day he made himself not notice. He looked at the man she’d called Gerald, whose familiar face hid a heart he couldn’t recognize. Who wore the most extraordinary, outlandish scarlet and black full-length silk dressing-gown embroidered with gold dragons, and on his fingers exquisitely wrought and fabulously expensive onyx and ruby rings.
And whose brown eyes burned with a flame he’d not seen since the last time he faced mad King Lional of New Ottosland.
Lional… Lional… bloated with stolen potentias, his greedy mind teeming with the worst kind of incants ever devised and contained in the grimoires he’d kept by his bed, for handy reading.
Terrible memones woke, searing him. The man in the doorway stank of Pygram’s Pestilences, unforgettable after nine days in that cave. He reeked of Grummen’s Lexicon and other foul grimoire incants whose names he’d never learned because the texts Lional stole from Pomodoro Uffitzi had been confiscated without him ever laying eyes on them.
I had the chance to use those grimoires and I didn’t. But he did. So if this isn’t a dream-if he’s real, and he’s not me, and that’s not my Bibbie, and this isn’t my bedroom…
Sickened understanding crashed over him, so he had to sit on the bed.
Oh, bugger. So much for the theoretical part of theoretical thaumaturgical metaphysics and the postulated existence of parallel worlds.
When Sir Alec found out about this he was going to go spare. It was hard enough keeping one world safe from thaumaturgical villains. And as for Monk, well, he’d likely explode with excitement. Monk…
Oh, God. Don’t tell me he’s gone rotten too.
The thought was enough to make the room spin and his belly heave.
No. No. I don’t-I won’t-believe that. Not Monk. I have to have one friend left in this place.
The other Gerald was grinning. “I knew you’d work it out. No flies on us, Professor Dunwoody.”
He felt like an idiot in his striped flannel nightshirt, but it couldn’t be helped. All that mattered now was getting answers… and getting home.
“So I’m right? This is a parallel world? An alternative reality? You’re some kind of copy of me?”
“No, Professor, it’s the real reality,” said the other Gerald, a snap in his voice. “ Your world’s the impostor. And so are you.”
His double’s anger lit up the room like sheet lightning. Right. Yes. So not to be making him cross, Dunwoody. “Sorry. Sorry,” he said hastily. “Poor choice of words. So… how did you do it? How did you bring me here?”
His-his- counterpart — examined fingernails as beautifully manicured as Bibbie’s. “Oh, I can do a lot of things, Professor,” he boasted with airy self-congratulation. “Things you can only dream of.”
He decided to take a chance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Monk didn’t help you?”
“Monk?” The other Gerald raised an eyebrow. And then he smiled. “Oh, Monk. Good old Monk. Yes. Our Mr. Markham’s been wonderfully helpful.”
