strangerverse

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Honey breezed through the Imperial Room, trying to scan every table while not staring anyone in the face, or rather, chest, since it was a costume and a nametag she was trying to identify and not a face per se. Young, seriously cute, and in a black military uniform wasn't much of a description, but it was all that the staff manning the registration table had given her, so she figured searching for the uniform was her best bet Of course, she could just find the room number of this—she rechecked the card: Alasdair Darke—but that seemed awfully intrusive. She'd rather catch him in a public space, if she could. Besides, it was tea time. Surely no one would attend an event like Autumn, 1934 and lurk in their room through tea time, right?

The guests were a sea of black, but all domestic uniforms, not a military figure in the bunch. She sighed, and headed for the Library Bar. That made more sense, anyway, now that she thought about it. Thanks to this stupid class system experiment, the Library Bar was reserved for upper class players, and chances were this uniformed guy considered himself one of them.

She clenched her teeth. When she'd signed up for her stint on the steering committee, Honey had imagined it would be a walkover. She'd served before; how much worse could it be to chair it? There were only four events for the committee to plan, and they were largely a matter of rote—spring, summer, fall and winter, the year determined by a free vote, divided among posh venues like this one and a handful of more affordable ones. Aside from that, there was the newsletter, cunningly disguised as a small town newspaper, which recorded all the smaller private parties. There were none of what Honey thought of as the unpleasant side-effects of fandom: no BNFs; no real arguments over canon, fanon, or shipping; no pressure to be active in any sense other than attending.

What God had she offended, she wondered for the umpteenth time, that it should all fall apart on her watch? First there'd been a petition asking for a salesroom. She'd been powerless to dissuade the pro-salesroom faction or to soothe the committee's hysteria, but at least she'd managed to postpone further discussion until December. This year's winter was scheduled to take place at a Day's Inn, and so could hardly be said to be lowering its standards by allowing debate about sales tables.

Then Annalee Rose had had to resign from the committee, and that dreadful man from the Sherlockians had bullied his way on in her place, preening and lecturing and dragging the taint of BNFdom with him. Honey was damned if she could understand why so many of the committee members claimed to find him charming. She thought he was dreary and self-absorbed, and if she had to hear about his schemes for “indie” publishing one more time she was going to stab him. Honestly, you'd think no one had ever put out a book before he came along to tell them how.

And now poor Annalee Rose had cried off altogether, claiming she simply couldn't manage all of the three seance-and-lectures she'd agreed to conduct. Fair enough, Honey supposed—certainly she'd sounded sick with nerves, so it was probably unreasonable to ask her to perform—but from where on earth were they supposed to produce a replacement psychic well-enough versed in 'The Occult in Victorian and Edwardian Society' to lead three highly participatory sessions on it?

She'd been moaning about the problem to her staff, something she'd never normally do, which only showed how much this was upsetting her, when one of them had, completely unexpectedly, come to the rescue. One of the new attendees had given her his card, the girl had said, and had handed it over cheerfully, remarking that he sounded just the thing.

Honey had grabbed at the card like a lifeline. Alasdair Darke was her last, best hope; now if only she could find him, and if only he turned out to be capable of pulling an authoritative lecture out of thin air...

Please, please, please be able to think on your feet, Honey prayed as she spotted him—it had to be him, slender and handsome, his dark hair hanging over his eyes as he bent his head to whisper to the blonde woman sitting with him. Awfully familiar, that blonde, but Honey was too agitated to place her.

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