For a moment, the words didn’t register, kind of like the room. I finally figured out that I was still in my bed at Gertie’s, but turned the wrong way around, which was why everything looked weird. My face was also hanging off the end, with my chin crushed between the mattress and the footboard, and there were no warm bodies beside me.

I frowned. Was there supposed to be? Because it felt like there was supposed to be. I reached out with the arm that wasn’t trapped below me and half asleep, but felt nothing but air.

And the wood of the headboard when my knuckles knocked into it, which—ow.

After a moment, I pried myself out the gap and rolled over, feeling a sense of loss and joy and pain and serious confusion. It was like rising to the surface after a too-long dive underwater. It was like awakening upside down, hanging over a gorge, supported by a single bit of rope. It was like…

I didn’t know what it was like, but it was discombobulating.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

“What?” I croaked.

“Lady Cassandra? Is that you?”

Well, who else would it be? I thought crabbily, and managed to accidently flip a pillow onto my face. I stopped waving my arms around, which I’d been doing for some reason, and just stayed there, like a turtle suddenly tossed onto its back.

Help, I thought.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

“Coming!” I yelled, without having any idea how I was supposed to do that. But something told me that I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself. That maybe I’d done enough of that for one day, and should act all casual like for a while. Before the Edwardian equivalent of the guys in the white coats came to… came to… do whatever it was they did, and what had I been thinking about?

Pound. Pound. Pound.

Oh, holy shit.

“Lady Cassandra? Do you need any help?”

“No! I’m fine!” I finally got the damned pillow off. And also managed to recognize the voice that was determinedly not going away.

Crap, I thought blearily. It was Iris. Or Lily. Or possibly Rose. Some flower name, anyway. She was the acolyte I’d borrowed the now-ruined coat from.

Guess nobody had told her that she wouldn’t be getting it back.

I rolled off the bed, muttering, and still not sure which way was up. I took a shot and must have chosen correctly, because my feet found purchase on the floor. I stood up, and then just stayed there, swaying a bit, because the room was slowly revolving, like a fun house ride that wasn’t very fun.

Even worse, my brain kept insisting that something was wrong, that something was coming. A blow, an attack, it didn’t know, but something. Something bad!

I waited.

Nothing happened.

I waited some more.