An extremely frazzled-looking majordomo stops to discuss. His mistress de Dreux is up there, and seething. “What? No! Of course not,” he says, shooting another nervous look above them. The women are sheepishly clutching their voluminous skirts to not have them fall up around their ears and expose their bloomers.

“We do not go in for orbs or summoning spirits.”

“Not even,” Strange cuts in, “as some unusual curiosity to show off? Some priceless new artifact for inspection? We do love our trinkets and our curios.”

“No! The Baroness does not find magic curious! The less of it the better, for precisely reasons like this.”

One of the trapped guests throws a canapé — it might be out of irritation, it might be testing the limits of physics, but either way the snack goes flying up/down until it reaches the midway point of the room. Then perspective warps as gravity snags, catches it, and it continues down/up instead, a sausage roll now plummeting directly towards them.

Strange instinctively twitches, a hand jerking up to summon a magical shield in place, and the food bounces harmlessly off rather than braining him in the head.

(In the background, the Fade hums a little louder.)