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“Oh, my God,” murmured Gideon, holding on to the door frame.
“Ready for those flashing lights,” sang Charlotte.
I couldn’t say a word for a moment. Any number of groupies were standing around the table catcalling, and Charlotte didn’t sing at all badly.
Gordon immediately mingled with the fans and started demanding a striptease. “Get your things off!” he bellowed. “Get ’em off!”
I spotted Raphael and Lesley—she was looking lovely in the nearly green Grace Kelly dress, with her hair water-waved to be right for the period—and pushed my way through the crowd and over to them. Gideon stayed in the doorway.
“At last!” Lesley yelled, giving me a hug. “She had some of the punch, and now she’s not herself at all. Since nine thirty she’s been trying to tell everyone about Count Saint-Germain’s secret society and how there are time travelers living among us. We did all we could to make her go home, but she’s as slippery as an eel, and she keeps getting away.”
“And she’s much stronger than us,” said Raphael, who was wearing an amusing green hat, but didn’t look at all amused himself. “I almost got her to the front door just now, but then she twisted my arm and threatened to break my neck.”
“And now she’s grabbed the mike,” said Lesley gloomily. We stared up at Charlotte as if she were a ticking time bomb. Admittedly, a prettily packaged time bomb.
Caroline hadn’t been exaggerating. The elf costume was stunning. Even a real elf couldn’t have looked lovelier than Charlotte, with her slender shoulders emerging from a cloud of green tulle. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were shining, and shimmering ringlets of hair curled their way down her back to the perfectly made wings, which looked as if she’d been born with them. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her take off next moment and fly through the conservatory.
However, her singing voice wasn’t at all elfin. In fact, it wasn’t unlike Lady Gaga’s own.
“You know that I’ll be your Papa-Paparazzi,” she bawled into the microphone, and when Gordon shouted, “Get ’em off!” again, she began suggestively removing one of her long green gloves, finger by finger, helping it off with her teeth.
“She got that out of a film,” said Lesley, reluctantly impressed. “I can’t remember what film it was right now.”
The crowd roared as she threw the glove and Gordon caught it.
“Go on!” they all shouted, and Charlotte turned her attention to the other glove. But then she suddenly stopped. She’d seen Gideon in the doorway, and her eyes narrowed. “Well, well, look who’s here!” she said into the mike, and her glance moved on over the heads of all the guests until it stopped at me. “And my little cousin, too … of course! Listen, did you know that Gwyneth’s really a time traveler? It was supposed to be me, but that’s not how things turned out. And suddenly here I am like one of Cinderella’s stupid sisters.”
“Go on singing!” shouted her bewildered groupies.
“Get ’em off!” shouted Gordon.
Charlotte put her head on one side, and her burning eyes fixed on Gideon. “But I won’t stop until that boy is mine!” she sang. “Ha, ha, that’s a joke! I wouldn’t stoop so low.” She pointed her forefinger at Gideon, and called, “He can travel in time as well. And soon he’ll be healing all the diseases in the world.”
“Oh, shit,” muttered Lesley.
“Someone must get her down from there,” I said.
“Yes, but how? She’s a fighting machine. Maybe we could simply throw something heavy at her,” suggested Raphael.
Charlotte’s audience wasn’t sure what was going on. Somehow people seemed to notice that she was in anything but a relaxed mood. Only Gordon went on shouting cheerfully, “Get ’em off!”
I tried to make eye contact with Gideon, but he was looking at Charlotte. He slowly made his way to the table on which she was standing.
She took a deep breath, and the microphone broadcast her sigh to every corner of the conservatory. “He and I … we know all about history. We studied time travel together. You should just see him dancing a minuet. Or fencing. Or playing the piano.”
Gideon had almost reached her.
“He’s eerily good at everything he does. Oh, and he can make declarations of love in eight languages,” said Charlotte dreamily, and for the first time in my life, I saw tears come into her eyes. “Not that he’d ever have made one to me—oh, no! He has eyes for no one but my silly cousin.”
I bit my lip. That sounded like a broken heart, and no one in the world understood broken hearts better than me. Who’d have thought Charlotte even had a heart? Once again, I hoped that Lesley’s marzipan theory was right. Although my own heart felt a painful pang, and I had to work hard at suppressing the waves of jealousy that threatened to submerge me.
Gideon reached his hand up to Charlotte. “Time to go home.”
“Booo!” shouted Gordon, who was about as sensitive as a combine harvester, but all the other guests were holding their breath in suspense.
“Leave me alone,” Charlotte told Gideon. She was swaying slightly. “I’m not through with what I have to say yet.”
With one bound, Gideon was up on the table himself, and next moment, he had wrestled the microphone from her grasp. “The show’s over,” he announced. “Come along, Charlotte, I’ll take you home.”
