The journey took them to a different part of the city. It looked deserted, just some old warehouses and storage units. It made Sebastian nervous, and without thinking too hard about it, he squeezed Orson. The dog’s warm fuzziness was reassuring for some reason.
“Okay, we’re almost there. Time for you to hide yourselves,” said the Kid.
“Right,” said Evie, sliding onto the floor of the car. Sebastian did likewise, and Orson seemed thrilled that they were properly face to face. He gave Sebastian’s nose a little lick. Sebastian stifled a laugh and was quite relieved when the lighting shifted in the car and he had the sense that they’d pulled into some kind of garage. Slowly the car pulled to a stop. They were surrounded by silence.
“Okay, so you two stay here out of sight. I’ll come back and drive you home soon,” whispered the Kid like he didn’t want anyone to hear him.
“Is someone in here?” asked Sebastian quickly.
“No,” the Kid replied quickly, and jumped out of the car, but not before leaning over to the backseat and taking the chocolates with him.
“What’s going on?” asked Evie once they were alone.
“No idea,” replied Sebastian.
“We can’t just wait here for him to drive us home,” she said.
Sebastian really didn’t know what other choice they had. He had to trust that there was a reason why the Kid wanted them to stay put. Probably something to do with their safety, and Sebastian was all about that.
Evie, on the other hand…
She popped up from below the seat and peered around the garage.
“Evie, duck down! We promised!” Sebastian whispered as loudly as he could, without speaking too loudly.
“We need to know what’s up,” she replied. “He refuses to talk to us, and maybe it’s because he’s scared of something and needs help. Come on.” And she scrambled out of the car.
Sebastian didn’t know what to do. Okay, he knew exactly what he had to do, but he really didn’t want to. He wasn’t about to let Evie face all the danger on her own. He knew she could take care of herself, but he felt guilty about the night before, and he’d stayed in the vehicle with her. It was starting to feel like too much. But he didn’t have another choice. Anyway, being alone in the car didn’t feel all that safe either.
It was his turn to climb out of the car, and as he put a foot out, he saw Orson about to jump onto the ground to join him.
“No, Orson, no,” he said. “You can’t come with us. Stay.”
The little dog stared at him happily. He made to take a step out of the car again.
“No. Stay here.”
Now the dog looked at him a little more sadly. He lowered his chin and stared up at Sebastian so that the whites of his eyes could be seen. Man, it was cute. But Sebastian knew this was the safest thing. He crouched down. “Orson. Listen to me. You have to wait here, okay?” He gave the dog a little scratch behind the ear. Orson thought about it for a moment and then curled up on the floor mat.
“Good boy,” said Sebastian, surprised. Orson had actually listened to him. Why?
He shook his head. He didn’t have time for wondering. He had to catch up with Evie. He closed the car door and turned around. The Kid was nowhere to be seen, and Evie was walking slowly, looking around uncertainly. He didn’t blame her. This garage, of all the garages he’d been in, was the most unusual yet.
It was small, and aboveground, if the light coming from the single dusty window above the door was any indication. Evie was heading toward a door, so he walked quietly and carefully past three other old-fashioned cars, which were parked in what almost appeared to be stalls for horses in a stable. In fact, though Sebastian didn’t really have a lot of experience with horseback riding or horses in general, he could have sworn they were in a stable.*
All of it felt a bit…well…not of this time. Just like the Kid had looked. Just like the car they had been in. What on earth was going on, and where on earth had they ended up? It seemed like they had traveled through time. And remembering the position of the steering wheel in the Kid’s car, maybe…to England? Or one of its former colonies?
He caught up with Evie at the door.
“So, have you noticed how…odd all this is?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. You don’t think we’ve traveled back in time, do you?”
He looked at her for a moment, but saw that twinkle in her eye. “You’re joking.”
She grinned. “Still, would be neat if we actually had.”
Sebastian wasn’t so sure about that.
Suddenly the door was thrust wide open, causing Evie, who was closest to it, to stagger back. She stumbled into a wet spot on the ground, which made her slip and almost do a split. Sebastian winced, watching her.
“Ow!” she cried as she toppled over.
“Cor blimey!” said an enthusiastic blond woman with bouncing curls. She was wearing a dark dress, a white apron, and a cap on her head. “Where the devil did you come from?”
She leaned over to help Evie up, but as the floor was too slick for Evie’s soles, every time the woman pulled her up, Evie fell again, pulling the woman halfway down as well, so that eventually, after a few futile attempts, they were a heap on the floor. It could have been funny, but Sebastian was confused, watching it all unfold. Also, had the woman just said “Cor blimey”?
“Oh me goodness! What a mess this is!” said the woman, clambering out of the heap and sitting upright on the floor.
Sebastian watched the woman and winced yet again—not at her ridiculously long fall or her contorted legs beneath her. No, it was the terrible English accent the woman spoke with. It sounded like an American actor trying the East London Cockney accent on and failing miserably.
“Come on, ye wee rapscallion. Let’s get ye up off this floor, then!” she said with a laugh and a quick glance toward Sebastian. Then he noticed her glancing up at something beyond his shoulder. He couldn’t help turning to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing there. He turned back as the woman finally managed to get herself to her feet and extended a hand to try once more to help Evie.
This time they stepped away from the wet spot, and soon they were both miraculously upright.
The woman placed her hands on her hips and appraised Evie carefully. “Well, yer a small urchin, it seems to me. Maybe yer both some poor children of one of his lordship’s tenants?” She gave Evie and then Sebastian a rather meaningful look, the kind of look that said “Now agree with me.”
Sebastian really didn’t know what to do with that, but as usual, Evie seemed game to play along. “Yes,” she said. The woman stared at her hard. “I am,” she added.
The woman gave a solid nod at that and said loudly to an audience of none, “Well, let’s get some victuals in you, then.”
“Some what?” asked Sebastian.
The woman looked at him. “Victuals.”
He stared back at her.
“Food,” explained the woman with some annoyance.
“Oh, okay,” Sebastian replied.
“Blimey, yer neither one much fer speakin’. Must be the hunger in ye talkin’. Come along witcha.”
“ ‘Witcha’?” asked Evie.
“With…you…,” said the woman, her accent suddenly dropping for a moment and her voice now tinged with a rising frustration.
“Of course. Yeah, of course.”
The woman didn’t say anything further, just turned in a bit of a huff to the door and led them not into the house, as he’d expected, but outside into a small cobblestone courtyard. A few feet away was another door, beside which stood a pimply teenager in a tuxedo, looking miserable. He watched as they walked past him, and he seemed to mouth something to them as they passed. Sebastian was probably wrong, considering his own mental state, but he could have sworn it was “Help me.”
They found themselves in a long, low-ceilinged white hallway, the floor a dark brown wood, and the same wood framing as the interior windows and doors running along the hallway’s length. There were other women and men dressed like the woman in the apron and the tuxedoed teenager. They all appeared very busy and also a little depressed. Or anxious. Or…even scared, maybe?
The costumed people stared at them as they passed, as if maybe Sebastian and Evie actually were from the future. The house’s inhabitants looked Sebastian and Evie up and down as though the clothes they were wearing were strange and unusual. Sebastian was starting to worry that Evie might have actually been correct. Maybe they really had time traveled. And if they had, how on earth would they get back to their own time? And would they affect the future, their present, by being here in the past?
No. That was absurd. He had to think rationally. They hadn’t time traveled. That was silly, he told himself as Evie and the woman stopped in front of some windows, through which he saw a very old-fashioned-looking kitchen, with a black iron stove smoking, and a young woman in gray with her arms elbow-deep in a white basin of water that was probably a sink.
Nope. This wasn’t the past. Not…at…all…
The woman with the terrible British accent went into the kitchen and spoke with an older woman who was standing at a thick wooden table in the middle of the room. The older woman was chopping up vegetables with a great deal of violence. They spoke briefly, and then the older woman saw Sebastian and Evie peeking through the windows. She stared in that same utterly confused way that everyone else had when noticing the kids. With a guarded, slow, unsure nod, she motioned for them to join her.
They stepped down the few steps into the kitchen. The cook wore a funny expression.
“Hi,” said Evie carefully as they approached the two women. “So, um…actually, we’re searching for the driver.”
“The driver?” asked the cook gruffly.
“Yeah, he’s a friend of ours.”
The cook turned to the other woman. Then looked back at them. Finally the blond woman leaned in and whispered to both of them. “Stop talking,” she said, with no trace of a British accent.
“What?” asked Evie.
“Shhh!” She stood upright, and her eyes flicked up and around the room before she leaned back in. “Stop talking. Find your friend, but do it silently. Your accent gives you away.”
She pulled back and then left the kitchen as quickly as she could. Almost as if she was running away from something.
Evie glanced at Sebastian, but he had no idea what had happened either. He just turned and stared at the cook, who stared back.
“So, you’ve come beggin’ fer some food,” she said in a harsh tone and a rough accent.
Sebastian knew that the right thing to do was to say “yes” at this moment, but then he remembered their instructions and just nodded. The cook swiveled around for a moment and then turned back and handed them each a cookie. Evie was about to say something, but then stopped herself and nodded too. The cook marched away then, and Evie turned to Sebastian. Another meaningful look, but this time one he understood. She wanted them to go in search of the Kid. Quite frankly he was more than happy to get out of this kitchen, so he nodded slightly.
They slipped into the main hallway and started walking along it again, looking carefully through the hall windows to see various workrooms. The more Sebastian examined their surroundings, the more confused he felt. At first he’d assumed they were in some kind of historical reenactment place where tourists went to see how things had been in the past, but he’d seen no tourists—and why were all these people still pretending to be in the past if there were no tourists? Then he’d thought maybe, it being Hollywood and all, they were on a film set. But usually those had things like cameras and lights and a crew dressed in jeans and T-shirts and stuff. He assumed.
Time travel still felt like the most reasonable conclusion. And Sebastian knew that there was nothing reasonable about that at all.
Out of the corner of his eye he suddenly saw a blur of black. He and Evie both turned just in time to see the Kid with the large bag of chocolates making his way up a narrow staircase at the other end of the long hall. After a quick glance at each other, they started to move toward him, making their own way down the hallway. Evie started to speed up, so Sebastian did too. Her fast walking became a slow jog. Then a faster jog. And then she was outright running and dodging maids and butlers, Sebastian panting close at her heels and not nearly as good at not running into people.
“Sorry,” he said as he knocked into a butler. And then he said sorry again because he wasn’t supposed to say anything at all. He was able to stop himself from saying sorry a third time for talking aloud, and chased Evie up the stairs. They reached the top just as the door the Kid had slipped through shut behind him. Evie threw it open, and she and Sebastian burst into a large, fancy room, where three stunned humans and one mildly confused dog turned to stare at them.