Long Hot Summoning

3. LONG HOT SUMMONING

ONE

THROWING HER BACKPACK OVER ONE SHOULDER, Diana raced out the front door and rocked to a halt at the sight of the orange tabby crossing the front lawn. Or more specifically, at the sight of what dangled from the cat’s mouth. With one of its disproportionately long arms barely attached and dragging on the grass, and something that looked like intestine wrapped around one bare ankle, the bogey was unquestionably dead. An eyeball bounced gently against its bloody forehead with every step. “Nice catch,” shenoted, half her attention on the approaching bus. “Where did you find it?”

“Ood ’ile,” Sam told her proudly, his voice distorted by the body.

“You know you can’t eat it, right?”

Amber eyes narrowed, he let the bogey drop and fixed Diana with an incredulous glare.“Do I look like an idiot?”

“No, but you haven’t been a cat for very long…” Six months ago, he’d been an angel. Angels didn’t concern themselves with the small things that slipped through the possibilities. “…and you know how my mother feels about that whole puking on the white wool rug thing.”

“Once! I did it once!”

“Yeah, so did I, and she’s never let me forget it either.” With a scream of abused brake linings, the bus stopped more or less at the end of the driveway. “I don’t have time to bury it now, so try to leave it where Mom’s not going to trip over it.” Turning, she took two steps and turned again, pulled around by the weight of Sam’s regard. “Oh, right. Sorry. You are a mighty hunter. Your skill with tooth and claw is amazing. Fast. Deadly. I stand in awe.”

“Hey! Sarcasm.”

“Not sarcasm,” Diana protested hurriedly. There were any number of imaginative places the dead bogey could be left. “But I’ve got to go. Mr. Watson won’t wait forever.”

“I’m amazed Mr. Watson stops at all.”

“Yeah, well, need provides and all that. Remember, I’ll be home early,” she added, trotting backward up the path, “just in case there’s anything you don’t want me to catch you doing.”

A presented cat butt made his opinion of that fairly plain.

Mr. Watson looked more nervous than impatient. He nodded a silent reply to Diana’s cheerful good morning, closed the door practically on her heels, and jerked the bus into gear. Had Diana not already been reaching into the possibilities, she’d have landed on her ass as he burned rubber trying to outrun half-buried memories. Fully burying them would have messed with his ability to drive, so only the less likely edges had been fuzzed out, leaving him in a perpetual state of nearly remembering things he’d rather not. Which was actually a state fairly common among school bus drivers.

Diana tried not to resent his attitude, but it wasn’t easy. This semester alone she’d stopped a black pudding from devouring an eighth grader, saved Chrissy Selwick from a three-headed dog attracted to the aconite in the herbal body mist she’d been given for Christmas—might as well have had “eat me” tattooed on her forehead—and prevented a Gameboy™ from taking over the world. Handheld computer games were more competitive than most people thought.

She’d also stopped Nick Packwood from hanging a second grader out the window by his heels, but since she still wasn’t entirely certain the kid hadn’t deserved it, she usually left that particular incident off her “reasons Mr. Watson should thank his gods I’m on the bus” list.

Making her way back through the rugrats, Diana noticed without surprise that the last six rows—the rows reserved for the high school students on the route—were nearly empty. On this, the last day of the high school year, only two freshmen had been unable to find alternative transportation.

“My brother was going to give me a ride,” said the first as she passed. “But he had to go to work really early.”

“Yeah. I was going to ride my bike, but I had, like, an asthma attack,” the other explained, holding up his inhaler for corroboration.

Diana ignored them both. First, because a senior acknowledging freshmen would open up all sorts of possibilities she had no desire to deal with. Second, as the youngest, and therefore most powerful Keeper, as one of the Lineage who maintained the mystical balance of the world, as someone who had helped close a hole to Hell and faced down demons, she didn’t need to justify her reasons for taking the bus.

Settling into her regular seat, she thanked any gods who might be listening that this would be the last day she’d ever be at the mercy of public education.

*

Frowning, Diana crossed the main hall toward the stairs, trying to get a fix on the faint wrongness she could feel. It wasn’t a full-out accident site; no holes had been opened into the lower ends of the possibilities allowing evil to lap up against closed doors leading to empty classrooms, but something was out of place and, as long as she was in the building, finding it and fixing it was in the job description. Actually, it pretty much was the job description.

As far as Diana was concerned, all high schools needed Keepers. Nothing poked holes in the fabric of reality faster than a few thousand hormonally challenged teenagers all crammed into one ugly cinder-block building. Unattended, that was exactly the sort of situation likely to create the kind of person who developed an operating system that crashed every time someone attempted to download an Amanda Tapping screen saver.

The sudden appearance of a guidance counselor actually emerging from his office and heading straight for her nearly sent Diana running toward the nearest washroom. She didn’t want her last day ruined by yet another pointless confrontation. Fortunately, she realized he felt the same way before her feet started moving.Fuck it. What’s the point? flashed into the thought balloon over his head and he slid past without meeting her gaze.

The thought balloons had appeared back in grade nine when, after half an hour of platitudes, she’d wondered just what exactly he was thinking. An unexpected puberty-propelled power surge had anchored the balloons so firmly she’d never been able to get rid of them and she’d spent the last four years finding out rather more than she wanted to about the fantasy lives of middle-aged men.

Pamela Anderson.

And hockey.

Occasionally, Pamela Anderson playing hockey.

Some of the visuals were admittedly interesting.

The wrongness led her up the stairs, through the first cafeteria and into the second—weirdly, the hangout of both the jocks and the music geeks—empty now except for a group of girls who’d laid claim to the far corner by the northwest windows. A flash of aubergine light pulled her toward them. The senior girls’ basketball team, Diana realized as she drew closer. Probably hanging around in order toremain the senior girls’ basketball team. Over two thirds of them were graduating, so once they stepped out the door, they’d be a team no longer.

“…so I said to him, I’m not puttingthat in my mouth.” Tall, blonde, ponytail—Diana didn’t know her name. “First of all, I don’t know where it’s been and secondly, this lipstick cost twenty-one dollars.”

“And what did he say?” asked one of her listeners.

“Oh, you know guys. He took it so personally. All like, ‘you would if you loved me.’”

“So what did you say?”

“That I loved my lipstick more.”

In the midst of the laughter and catcalls that followed her matter-of-fact pronouncement, Blonde Ponytail looked up and spotted Diana.

“Did you want something?” she asked icily.

“Uh, yeah.” Diana leaned a little closer; trying to get a better look at the heavy bangle Blonde Ponytail wore around her left wrist. “Please tell me where you got your bracelet.”

“This? At Erlking’s Emporium in the Gardener’s Village Mall. I got it last weekend when I was visiting my father in Kingston.”

Great.

Kingston.

Where there used to be a hole to Hell.

Oh, sure. Itcould be coincidence.

“It’s silver, you know.”

Well, it was silver colored; the broad band embossed with large flowers each centered with a demon’s eye topaz. It was quite possibly the ugliest piece of jewelry Diana had ever seen. “No, it isn’t. It only looks like silver.”

“What? You mean that troll lied to me?”

Troll.

With any luck, that was a colorful exaggeration rather than the mystical version of a Freudian slip.

Diana didn’t feel particularly lucky. Stretching out a finger, she lightly touched the edge of one metallic petal.

A much larger flash of aubergine light.

A moment later, Diana found herself pressed face first into one of the cafeteria’s orange plastic chairs discovering far more than she wanted to about the olfactory signature of the last person sitting in it. Then she realized she was actually under the chair and heaved it to one side.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just a little bruised.” Accepting the offered hand, she pulled herself to her feet. “Static electricity,” she explained, trailing power through the basketball team. “I must have completed some kind of circuit.”

Several heads, probably the ones who hadn’t passed physics, nodded sagely.

The insistent trill of a cell phone broke the tableau.

“Mine,” Diana admitted, digging her backpack out from under the table. Eyes widened as she unzipped an outside pocket. After the unfortunate 1-800-TEACHME incident back in the spring of 2001, students were not permitted to use their cell phones while on school property.Oh, yeah, I’m a rebel, she thought flipping it open, then added aloud,“It’s my mother.”

When the team seemed inclined to linger, she threw a little power into,“Everything’s cool. You can go now.”

“Diana? What just happened?”

“You felt that at home?” She headed back toward the other cafeteria as the girls reclaimed their table, Blonde Ponytail muttering, “What a piece of cheap junk; I’m going to wring that troll’s neck.”

“Felt it? Yes, I’d say we felt it. Sam’s hanging from the top of the living-room curtains and the coffeepot’s bringing in radio broadcasts from 1520—apparently Martin Luther was just excommunicated. I missed part of Suleiman the Magnificent’s birth announcement as your father called to say he’d felt it in the next county. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I touched a piece of jewelry from the Otherside and there was a bit of a reaction. Don’t worry, I covered everything up, and the jewelry’s been totally nullified.”

“Where…?”

“Was the jewelry?” Diana interrupted. “Around the wrist of a fellow student. How did she lay her hands on a bracelet—and an incredibly ugly bracelet, I might add—that came from the Otherside? She bought it in a store called Erlking’s Emporium. Just where exactly is Erlking’s Emporium?Kingston.”

“Oh, Hell.”

“Probably.” Leaving the cafeteria, she headed for the main stairs and the front doors. “I figure I just blew a crack through their shielding and that Claire ought to be getting the Summons any minute.”

“Claire’s not in Kingston right now; she’s answering a Summons in Marmora.”

“Well, if it’s important, I’m sure the id…powers-that-be will give it to someone else.”

“You’re not getting anything?”

“Nope, nothing.” There was no one in the main hall. Another fifteen meters and she’d be out the doors and home free.

“Good. And while I have you, I thought we’d agreed you weren’t going to wear that T-shirt to school?”

“Sorry, Mom; the school has a ‘no cell phone’ rule. Gotta go.” Flipping the phone closed, Diana paused in front of her reflection in the glass of the trophy case. The writing across her chest—red on black—said,My sister’s boy toy went to Hell and all I got was a lousy T-shirt. She seemed to be the only one in the family who found it funny.

“Ms. Hansen.”

Phone still in her hand, Diana spun around and smiled up at the vice-principal.“It was my mother, Ms. Neal. I had to take the call.”

“Yes, I’m sure. But that’s not what I wanted to speak with you about. You’re an intelligent young woman, Diana, and while your years here have not been without…incident…”

The pause nearly collapsed under the memory of the whole football team thing. Some changes lingered, even in the minds of the most prosaic Bystander.

“Yes, well, your marks are good,” the vice-principal continued after a long moment, “in spite of your frequent absences, and I can’t help but feel it’s a real shame that you’ve decided not to go on to college or university.”

Diana shuddered. More time spent under academic authority? So not going to happen.“I’m afraid I’m just not the higher education type, Ms. Neal.” Sliding sideways, she moved a little closer to the door.

“Job prospects…”

“I have a job. Family business. Pays well, chance to travel, making the world a better place and all that.” Also demons, dangers, and the possibility of dying young but it still beat pretty much any other profession as far as Diana was concerned. Well, maybe not sitcom star or Hollywood script doctor but everything else. “You might say it’s the kind of job I was born to do,” she added reassuringly.

From the sudden contentment on Ms. Neal’s face, a little too reassuringly.

“It’s nice to know that at least one of my students will be leaving the school for a bright and beautiful future,” she sighed. “I’ll never forget you, Diana.”

Diana smiled.“Actually, you’ll forget me the moment I step out the door.”

“I don’t think…”

And then the threshold was between them.

Ms. Neal’s brow furrowed. She stared at Diana for a long moment, shook her head, and walked away.

Although not by nature a bouncy person, Diana almost skipped down the steps of the school. It was two thirty on Thursday, June the twenty-third, and she was finally free to be what she’d been intended to be from birth. Crossing the threshold for that last time had moved her from reserve to active Keeper status.

At two thirty-one, the Summons hit.

Both hands clamped to her temples, she tried to uncross her eyes.“Okay. I probably should have expected that.”

[Êàðòèíêà: img_5]

“Mom? You home?”

“She’s at the Pough house,” Sam told her, coming out of the living room. “There was some kind of emergency involving ravens and bad poetry. She said…” He paused, stared at Diana for a moment, then rubbed up against her shins. “We’ve got a Summons!”

“We do.” She told him about the bracelet as they pounded upstairs.

“Kingston?” Sam jumped up on the end of the bed. “Shouldn’t it be Claire’s Summons, then?”

“No. It’s mine.”

“Yeah, but…you know…it’s just…”

“Austin.” Diana dumped assorted end-of-year crap out of her backpack and shoved in her laptop, a pair of clean jeans, socks, underwear, and her hiking boots. There were places Otherside where even heavy rubber sandals wouldn’t be enough. Actually, there were places where hazmat suits wouldn’t be enough, but she planned on staying away from the Girl Guide camp. “You’re afraid to go onto his territory.”

“I amnot afraid. But he doesn’t like me.”

Zippered sweatshirt. Pajama bottoms. Tank tops.“He’s old. He doesn’t like anyone except Claire.”

“He likes you,” Sam protested following her into the bathroom.

“He tolerates me because I can operate a can opener.” Shampoo. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Soap. Towel. “Don’t worry. We’ll be in and out before Claire and Austin even know we’re there.”

Eyeing the toilet suspiciously—who knew porcelain could be so slippery—Sam jumped up onto the edge of the sink. “You know, a hole big enough to pass physical objects through might be harder to close than you think.”

Diana snorted, threw in a couple of rolls of toilet paper just in case, and headed for the kitchen where she packed a box of crackers, a jar of peanut butter, a nearly full bag of chocolate chip cookies, and six tins of cat food.

“Less chicken, more fish,” Sam told her.

“Fish gives you cat food breath.”

He looked up from licking his butt.“And that’s a problem because…?”

“Good point.” She made the change, pulled the small litter box and a bag of litter out of the broom closet and packed them as well. “I think that’s everything. Now I just need to leave a note for the ’rents.”

“Make sure they can see it.” A few moments later, his pupils closed down to vertical slits, Sam stared up at the brilliant letters chasing themselves around the refrigerator door. “That seems a little much.”

“Well, they’ll be able to see it.”

“Yeah; from orbit.”

“Some cats are never happy.” About to pick up the pack, she paused. “You want to get in now? Our first ride’ll meet us at the end of the driveway.”

“Might as well.” He flowed in through the open zipper, and the green nylon sides bulged as he made himself comfortable. “Hey…” Folded space distorted his voice. “What’s with the rubber tree and the hat stand?”

“They’re holding open the possibilities.” Zipping up all but the top six inches, Diana swung the pack over her shoulders and headed for the road.

Their first ride took them into Lucan.

Their second, to London.

In London, they got a lift from a trucker carrying steel pipe to Montreal. Diana spent the trip strengthening the cables that held the pipes to the flatbed—a little accident prevention—and Sam horked up a hairball on the artificial lamb’s wool seat cover. Which was how they found themselves standing by the side of the road in Napanee, a small town forty minutes east of Kingston.

At Sam’s insistence, they stopped for supper at Mom’s Restaurant…

“No, that’s not a cat in my backpack. It’s an orange sweater that just happens to enjoy tuna.”

…where they met someone willing to take them the rest of the way.

*

Her back to the West Gardener’s Mall parking lot, Diana waved as the metallic green Honda merged into Highway Two traffic. “That was fun. I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘It’s Raining Men’ sung with so much enthusiasm.”

“My ears hurt,” Sam muttered, jumping out onto the grass.

“I suppose you’d rather have angelic choirs?”

“Are you nuts? All those trumpets—it’s like John Philip Sousa does choral music.” Carefully aligning his back end, he sprayed the base of a streetlight. “It’s all praise God and pass the oom pah pah.”

“I’m not even sure I know what that means, but just on principle, please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Okay, I’m kidding.”

She turned to face the mall.“Now say it like you mea…” And froze. “Oy, mama. That’s not good.”

The circles of light that overlapped throughout the parking lot had all been touched with red, creating a sinister—although faintly clich?d—effect. At just past nine, with the mall officially closed, the acres of crimson-tinted asphalt were empty of everything but half a dozen…

“Minivans. It’s worse than I thought.”

*

He had stood at this door, at this time, every Friday night for the last twenty-one years. There had been other doors in the long years before, but there would be no other doors after. He would make his last stand here. The door was open only to allow late shoppers to exit; he, a human lock, protected the mall from those who would enter after hours.

He watched the girl stride toward him. His lips curled at the sight of bare legs between sandals and shorts. His eyes narrowed in disgust at the way her breasts moved under her T-shirt. He snorted at her backpack and her youth.

Were it up to him, he’d never let her kind into the mall. He knew what they got up to. Talking. Laughing. Standing in groups. Standing in pairs. Pairs tucked away in Bozo’s School Bus using lips and hands.

He stiffened as she stopped barely an arm’s length away.

“The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

Pink lips parted.“Please move out of my way.”

Twenty-one years at this door.“The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

Dark brows rose and dark eyes tried to meet his, but he stared at the drop of sweat running down her throat to pool against her collarbone and refused to be drawn in.

“Okay, fine. We’ll just have to do this the hard way.”

“The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

“Yeah, gramps, I got it the first time.”

His eyes burned and he blinked, only a single blink, but when his vision cleared, the girl was gone.

*

Good. It was good that she was gone. Gone with her shorts and her breasts and all her infinite possibilities.

Diana stopped just the other side of Bozo’s School Bus, set her backpack down on the yellow plastic kiddie ride, and waited while Sam climbed out.

“That was creepy,” he muttered, licking at a bit of ruffled fur.

“Very. And aren’t people that old supposed to be retired or something?”

“Or something,” the cat agreed. “Hey.” Front paws on the Plexiglas window, Sam peered into the bus. “This thing has seat belts. They don’t take it out of the building, do they?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then why seat belts?”

“I have no idea. But you know what’s really whacked? My bus—the one I rode down potholed dirt roads at a hundred and twenty klicks every morning and afternoon with a whole lot of very small bouncy children—no belts.” Swinging her pack back onto her shoulders, she headed for the main concourse. “Stay close and no one will see you.”

Sam fell into step by her right ankle.“Considering what that thing smelled like, I can think of one reason for seat belts. This place is huge. How are we going to find the Erlking Emporium?”

“Easy. We find the you-are-here sign. It’s probably at the end of this side hall.”

It wasn’t.

Although the side hall and one of the huge anchor stores spilled out into the main concourse at the same place, there was nothing to help mall patrons find their way through the two-story maze of stores they now faced.

“Maybe someone from the Otherside took it,” Sam offered when it became clear they were directionally on their own.

“It’s possible.” Motioning for Sam to be quiet, Diana froze as a final shopper slipped through the partially barricaded Kitchen Shop storefront, clutching a cheap manual can opener and trailing the ill wishes of the teenage clerk like black smoke behind her as she hurried down the side hall. “She feels like the last one in here. We’d better get moving before that creepy old security guard heads this way.”

Sam butted his head reassuringly against her leg.“You can take him.”

“Well, yeah. But I’d rather not. Come on. Blonde Ponytail said…”

“Who?”

“The jock with the bracelet. I never got her name. She said the store was on the lower level, so let’s find some stairs.”

Behind reinforced glass or steel bars, the stores themselves were places of shadow.

Unless the bracelet was the only piece of the Otherside they were selling, Diana should have been able to sense the Emporium, her Summons directing her like a child’s game of Warm and Cool where the parts of “Warm” and “Cool” were played by “I Can Live With the Headache if I Have to” and “Shoot Me Now.” Unfortunately, the Summons was unable to poke through the interference from the back rooms where a hundred part-time teenagers counted up a hundred cash drawers and ninety-seven of them came up short. By the time the cash had to be counted for the third time, the emanation of frustrated pissiness was so strong Diana couldn’t have sensed a trio of bears if they were sneaking up beside her.

“Hey, Rodney River has orange polyester bellbottoms on sale for $29.99.”

“Is that good?” Sam wondered.

Diana shuddered.“I can’t see how.” Pleased to see that the escalators had already been turned off—cat on escalator equaled accident waiting to happen—she led the way to the stairs.

Only the emergency lights were lit on the lower level, and the footprint of the mall seemed to have subtly changed.

“There’s too many corners down here. And if I can smell the food court, why can’t we find it?”

“I don’t…Someone’s coming.” Scooping up the cat, Diana backed into a triangular shadow and wrapped the possibilities around them both half a heartbeat before a flashlight beam swept by.

“I know you’re here.” One shoe draggingshunk kree against the fake slate tiles, the elderly security guard emerged from a side hall. Massive black flashlight held out in front of him, he walked bent forward, his head moving constantly from side to side on a neck accordion-pleated with wrinkles.

Diana would have said the motion looked snakelike except that she rather liked snakes.

Shunk kree. Shunk kree.“I will find you; never doubt it. I know you’ve hidden your lithe bodies away in the shadows.”

Sam twisted in Diana’s arms until he could stare up at her. His expression saying as clearly as if he’d spoken, “Lithe?” She shrugged.

“Long, loose limbs stacked unseen against the wall.”Shunk kree.

Who was he looking for? It couldn’t be her and Sam—he thoughtthey were gone.

The flashlight beam flicked up, caught the pale face of a store mannequin, and stopped moving.

“Can’t run now, can you?” He shuffled past so close to her hiding place that Diana could almost count the dark gray hairs growing from his ear. “Can’t run with your muscles moving inside the soft skin.”

Diana gave him a count of twenty, then prepared to slip out and away. She had a foot actually in the air when cool fingers wrapped around her upper arm and held her in place.

Shunk. The security guard pivoted on one heel, turning suddenly to face back the way he’d come, flashlight beam exposing circles of the lower concourse. “Not too smart for me with your young brains,” he muttered, turning again andshunk kreeing his way toward the mannequin.

The cool fingers were gone as though they’d never existed. Since Diana was certain she and Sam had been alone in their sanctuary, the logical response seemed to be that they never had. That they’d been a construct of self-preservation. Her own highly developed subconscious holding her back from discovery. On the other hand, logic had very little to do with possibility, so Diana murmured a quiet thanks to the fingers as she left the shadow.

Cat in her arms, staying close to the storefronts, she raced down the concourse toward a side hall they hadn’t tried, at least half her attention listening for theshunk kree following behind her. After weaving through a locked-down display of hot tubs, she sagged against a pillar, adding its bulk to the space she’d already put between them and the old man.

“Okay,” she whispered into the top of Sam’s head. “I am officially squicked out. Where did they find that guy? He’s like every creepy, clich?d old man rolled into one wrinkly package and wrapped in a security guard’s uniform. I mean, I know he’s just a Bystander and I handled him at the door, but still…”

“Still what?”

“You know,still.”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked,” Sam pointed out, squirming to be let down. “And by the way, we’ve found the food court.”

Only six of the seven food kiosks were currently occupied. Directly across from them, a poster on plywood announced the future site of a Darby’s Deli. At some point, a local artist had used a black marker to make a few additions to the poster’s picture of Darby Dill, creating a remarkably well hung condiment. Tearing her gaze away from the anatomically correct pickle, Diana spotted yet another hall on the far side of the food court, the rectangular opening tucked into the corner between Consumer’s Drug Mart and a sporting goods store.

“It’s got to be down there.”

“Why?”

“Because it isn’t anywhere…What are you eating?”

Sam swallowed.“Nothing.”

As they entered the hall, the tile turned to a rough concrete floor. The bench and its flanking planters of plastic trees, although outwardly no different from other benches and other trees, had a temporary look. Only three stores long, the hall ended in a gray plywood wall stenciled with a large sign that read,“Construction Site: No Entry.” The last store before the wall was the Emporium.

Tucked into another convenient shadow, Diana studied the storefront through narrowed eyes.“I can’t sense a power signature, so I’m guessing the power surge only went one way.”

“If they’d known you were coming, they’d have baked a cake?”

She stared down at the cat.“Something like that, yeah. Who…?”

“Your father.”

“Well, do me a favor and don’t pick up any more of his speech patterns because that would be too weird.”

“Why?”

“Sam, you sleep on my bed. Just don’t, okay?”

He shrugged, clearly humoring her.“Okay.”

Diana turned her attention back to the store.“They’re not being very subtle, are they? If any of the Lineage had ever window-shopped their way down here, the name alone would have given the whole thing away.”

“The Lineage is big into window shopping?”

“Not my point.”

“Okay. But I think Erlking Emporium has a marketable ring to it.”

“Marketable? First of all, you’re a cat; marketable for you involves a higher percentage of beef byproducts. Second; do you even know what an Erlking is?”

Sam shot her an insulted amber glare, the tip of his tail flicking back and forth in short, choppy arcs.“According to German legend, it’s a malevolent goblin who lures people, especially children, to their destruction.”

Which it was.“Sorry. I keep forgetting about that whole used-to-be-an-angel had-higher-knowledge thing.”

“Yeah, you do. But I learned that off a PBS special on mythology.”

“While I was where?”

“Cleaning the splattered remains of a history essay off your bedroom walls.”

“Right.” A lapse in concentration and the Riel Rebellion had spilled out of her closet. It had taken her the entire weekend to clean up the mess, and most of it had turned out to be nonrecyclable. “I think I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”

The purely physical lock on the door took only a trickle of power to open.

Sam radiated disapproval as he slipped through into the store.“Breaking and entering.”

“Technically, only entering.” Locking the door behind them, Diana tried not to sneeze at the overpowering odor of gardenia coming off the display of candles immediately to her left. A quick glance showed that the gardenia had easily overpowered vanilla, cinnamon, bayberry, lilac, belladonna, monkshood, pholiotina, and yohimbe. Unless the Colonial Candle Company was branching out into herbal hallucinogens, at least half the display had clearly been brought over from the Otherside.

Not just the bracelet, then.

Rubbing her nose, she moved cautiously into the store, skirting a locked glass cabinet filled with crystal balls, and ending up nearly treading on Sam’s tail as, hissing, he backed away from…Diana bent over to take a closer look and had no better idea what animal the pile of stuffed creatures was supposed to represent. In spite of neon fur, they looked remarkably lifelike—given a loose enough definition of both life and like.

“I was just startled,” Sam muttered, vigorously washing a front paw.

“If I was closer to the ground, they’d have startled me, too.”

“I wasn’t afraid.”

“I know.” She stroked down the raised hair along his back as she straightened. “I think we can safely say the hole’s not out here. Let’s check out the storeroom.”

“It’s not back there either.”

Not Sam. Not unless Sam’s voice had deepened, aged, and moved up near the ceiling.

Diana dropped down behind a rack of resin frogs dressed in historical military uniforms and began to gather power.

“Think about it for a minute, Keeper; if I wasn’t on your side, I’d have already sounded the alarm. Why don’t you drop the fireworks and come over here so we can talk.”

He—whoever he was—had a point. Diana stood, slowly, and looked around. The shadows made it difficult to tell for certain, but she’d have been willing to bet actual cash money that she and Sam were alone in the store. “Where are you?”

“Up in the corner.”

The only thing she could see in the corner was the convex circle of a security mirror. Just as she was realizing the reflection seemed a little off, a familiar pair of blue-on-blue eyes appeared.“You’ve got to be kidding me. They’re using a magic mirror for security?”

“Ain’t life a bitch,” the mirror agreed. “Got pulled out of a well-deserved retirement—quiet hall, nice view out an oriel window—and got stuffed up here by Gaston the Wondertroll.”

“So there’s a real troll?”

“Large as life, and twice as ugly. Actually, larger than life if we’re reflecting accurately.”

“Great.”

“I wouldn’t worry about him, kid; he’s just the front man.” Faint blue frown lines. “Front troll. Those actually running this segue are keeping their heads tucked well down until it’s too late for your lot to stop it.”

Good thing she’d touched that bracelet, then. The energy discharged had been enough to crack the shielding and send the Summons. No touching, no Summons, no chance to stop the…“Wait a minute. Did you say,segue?”

“I did.”

“Okay. This is one of those times when I really wish I could swear.” She took three quick steps away from the mirror. Three quick steps back. “I should have known there was more to this than a cheesy gift shop selling…” A glance down. “…fake fairies on sticks.”

“Look again.”

Under the lacquer and the glitter…

“Eww.”

“Duck!”

“Where?” Diana didn’t even want to think about what these guys could do to a duck. A sudden circle of light hit the back wall of the store and she dropped to the ground. Oh.Duck.

The emporium’s door rattled as someone shook it, testing the lock.

Now who could that be? Two guesses and the first one doesn’t count. Flat against the carpet to keep the curve of her backpack behind cover, she tried not to think about the dark stain just off the end of her nose.

“Think you can get away with anything. Young bodies, supple, lissome.”

Adding that to lithe and limber, there seemed to be a thesaurus specifically for dirty old men.

“You can’t hide forever.” The circle of light swept across the store and disappeared. Through the glass came a muffledshunk kree, shunk kree as the security guard moved away.

Remembering the warning delivered by imaginary fingers, Diana hissed,“Sam, stay down,” a heartbeat before the light flashed back through the window. She counted a slow ten afterthat light disappeared before she stood.“Sam?”

He crawled out from behind a box of glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty and shook his fur back into place.“Don’t worry about me. I’m way faster than a geriatric rent-a-cop.”

“Good. So.” Arms folded, she stared up at the mirror. “Let’s cut to the chase before we’re interrupted again.”

“Fine with me, Keeper. Here’s the deal: I give you what help I can; in return, you get me out of here when you shut this place down.”

“Agreed.”

“And you recognize that when the shit hits the fan, I’m breakable and more than just a little exposed.”

She nodded.“We’ll be careful.”

“We? That would be you and the cat?”

“Us, too.” Diana took one last look around the store and decided she really didn’t need to know just what exactly the weights on the wind chimes were made of. “I think we’re going to need a little help.”

TWO

[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]

DROPPING HIS SPRAY BOTTLE of window cleaner onto the old-fashioned wooden counter, Dean McIssac crossed the small office and caught the phone on the second ring.“Elysian Fields Guest House.” A small frown of concentration appeared as he flipped open the reservation book, a leather-bound tome with the phases of the moon prominently displayed by each date. “Yes, sir, we still have rooms available for next Wednesday. We can certainly accommodate you andyour mother. Sorry? Oh. Your mummy. No, that’s fine; many of our guests arrive after dark. We’ll hold the rooms until midnight. A dehumidifier? That can be arranged, I understand how mold and mildew could be a problem. No, unfortunately, I can’t guarantee the Keeper will be here, but I’m sure you’ll find our…” His cheeks flushed. “Thank you, sir. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

“Flushed is a good look on you.”

“Claire!” The receiver fell the last six inches into the cradle as Dean flag-jumped the counter and gathered the smiling Keeper into his arms.

“You made good time,” he murmured when they finally came up for air.

“I had a good reason.”

“One that I should know about?”

Dark brown eyes gleamed suggestively up at him.“Definitely.”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders and he began to pull her close again.

“Hel-lo! Crushing the cat here!”

Dean released his hold like he had springs in his fingers, and Claire leaped back, exposing the indignant, black-and-white cat cradled between them.“I’m sorry, Austin. I just got excited about being home.”

“Oh, yeah,” he muttered as she set him carefully on the counter. “It’s home that gets you excited. Tell us another one. No, wait…” He turned and glared at her from a single emerald eye. “…don’t.”

“Okay.” Her hands free, she slid them up the sculpted muscle of Dean’s torso and around the back of his neck, fingers entwined in thick hair. “I can’t resist a man in a pink T-shirt.”

He shifted his grip to her waist, thumbs working against the damp line of flesh between cropped tank and skirt.“Someone buried a red catnip square in the laundry basket.”

“That’s right. Blame the cat. The starving cat!” Austin snapped after a moment when it became quite clear he’d been forgotten again. “The old starving cat who just spent three hours in a car listening to sappy tales of dear, departed Muffy—who probably threw herself in front of that truck in an effort to escape the schmaltz with what was left of her dignity. The old starving cat who’s going to give you a count of three before he starts making pointed comments about your technique!”

“Austin, there’s a package of calf liver in the fridge.” Dean slid his hands down to the backs of Claire’s thighs and lifted her up onto the counter, hiking her skirt up over her knees. “It’s after being yours if you’ll disappear for ten minutes.”

“Fifteen,” Claire growled, licking at the sweat beading Dean’s throat. She kicked off her sandals, crossed her ankles behind him, and dragged him closer.

“You guys do know this is a hotel, right? Like, get a room!”

Forehead to forehead, Dean stared deep into Claire’s eyes. “You didn’t lock the door?”

“Apparently not.”

Lip curled in disgust, Diana closed the front door, pointedly locked it, and strode across the lobby toward the long hall that led to the back of the guesthouse.“We’ve got a bit of shopping-mall-takes-over-the-world situation here, but you guys go right ahead and continue with that whole blatant heterosexuality thing; there’s probably time. I’ll just make myself a sandwich and feed the cats. Coming, Austin?”

“Finally,” he snorted, jumping carefully down off the counter, “someone who has their priorities straight!”

“Are they always like that?” Sam wondered as the older cat fell into step beside him.

“Are you kidding? They’ve only been apart for three days—you should see them after a week. Spontaneous combustion.”

Sam frowned.“Wouldn’t that kill them?”

“You’d think.”

As the footsteps of the two cats and her sister faded toward the kitchen, Claire sighed.“Well, I’m no longer in the mood. You?”

“Not so much. That was after ending things for me.” He lifted her down off the counter and steadied her while she slipped her sandals back on. “Just so I’m clear on this; strangling your sister is not an option, then?”

“If you want to strangle my sister,” Claire told him as they left the lobby, “you’ll have to wait in line.”

“I hope you guys postponed instead of finishing,” Diana snorted as they entered the kitchen, “because if that was it, Claire should file a complaint. I mean it’s not like I’m an expert on these things,” she continued, assaulting a leftover roast with the carving knife, “but someone’s getting left a little short. No offense.” She grinned up at Dean.

“And yet, I’m offended anyway.” Grasping her wrist with one hand, he confiscated the knife with the other and jerked his head toward the dining room table. “You sit. I’ll do this.”

“I don’t know, Dean. I like my sandwiches made slowly and with care.”

“And you might want to reconsider further commentary,” Claire interjected from the dining room, “since he’s eight inches taller than you and holding a knife.”

“Please,” Diana scoffed, grabbing a bottle of juice from the fridge and coming around the counter that separated the two rooms, “Dean’s a pussycat.”

“Now,I’m offended,” Austin muttered.

Sam looked up from his cat food and frowned.“I thought you liked him.”

“Yeah. So?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not supposed to,” Claire told the younger cat comfortingly. “Let it go and move on.” Pulling out one of the antique table’s dozen chairs, she folded a leg up onto the red velvet seat and sat, indicating that Diana should do the same.

Diana didn’t so much sit as gang up with gravity to assault the furniture.

Claire winced as the chair protested, but hundred-year-old joints and wood glue held.“You said something about a shopping mall taking over the world?”

“I’m amazed you heard me.”

“You have a talent for attracting attention. I assume this concerns your first Summons as an active Keeper?”

“Got it in one.” Smiling her thanks at Dean for the sandwich, she waited until he sat down and pulled his seat up close behind Claire’s before she continued. “It all started this afternoon on what was, thank God, my very last day of school…”

When the story arrived at the mall, Claire interrupted.

“You should have called me.”

“Chill, uberKeeper. You weren’t in Kingston, and until I actually got to the Emporium, all I had was a piece of ugly jewelry. I’d have been further ahead closing down the Home Shopping Network. Unfortunately, once at the Emporium, I discovered we’re talking about a little more than a mere accident site—according to the magic mirror they’re using for security…”

“Magic mirror?” Dean leaned forward, one hand on Claire’s shoulder. “Like in the fairy tales?”

“Just like. Well, not exactly like,” Diana amended after chewing and swallowing the last mouthful of sandwich. “He’s a little pissed about being yanked out of retirement by Gaston the Wondertroll and is willing to do what he can to close the whole thing down.”

“Troll?”

She nodded.“They’re not just under bridges anymore.”

“According to the magic mirror,” Claire prompted, poking her sister with a Tahiti Sands-tipped finger.

“Ow.”

“Diana…”

“Okay, fine. According the mirror, whose name is Jack, it’s a segue.”

“A segue?” When Diana nodded, her expression making it clear she wasn’t kidding around, the older Keeper ran a hand up through her hair. “I have a sudden need for profanity.”

“Yeah. That was my reaction. That mall’s got to cover at least four acres. Maybe as much as six.”

“Segue?” Dean asked, dragging his chair around far enough to see Claire’s face.

“A metaphysical overlap intended to displace reality.”

He switched his attention to Diana.

She scratched thoughtfully at her left elbow and tried to come up with an explanation he could understand.“You know how the Otherside is neither here nor there? That everyone—good guys, bad guys, the Swiss—can all get in but can only get back out into their own reality, the one they left from? Well, in a segue, someone, or something, matches up a piece of the Otherside to this reality and blends them together until enough of the copy occupies the space of the original whereupon the copy takes over. That puts a piece of the Otherside inside this reality so that anyone can enter it from their reality and exit here. The Erlking Emporium is anchoring the biggest segue I’ve ever heard of.”

“The biggest?”

“Well, you can’t count Las Vegas, that’s a metaphysical heritage site. All that bad taste in one place put a real strain on reality.”

It took Dean about half a heartbeat to decide that was one of those comments he didn’t need to understand. “But how did the segue in the mall get so big without you guys noticing?”

“Hell,” Austin answered before either Keeper could. He put his front paws up on Claire’s knee and she lifted him onto her lap. “They hid a smaller bad inside the noise of the biggest bad. They probably set the anchor last fall while we were closing the hole and after that, it was just a matter of keeping things moving ahead, slow and steady.”

“And they are?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Oh, wait. No it isn’t.” He paused and licked at the quarter-sized bit of black fur on his front leg. “For simplicity’s sake, let’s just call them the bad guys.”

“But the Otherside isn’t necessarily bad.”

“Doesn’t matter; with a segueanything can cross over. Bad, good…”

“Hey!” Sam protested, coming out of the kitchen. “This world could use a little more good in it. I ought to know.”

Austin sighed.“Yeah, yeah. Light. Angel. Cat. Yadda. We all know the story and you’re missing the point. A little good is fine. A lot of good isn’t.”

“Keepers maintain the balance, Sam. A functional segue could tip it in either direction, and if they’re using trolls, well, I’m guessing we’re not heading for hugs and cheesecake.” Claire rubbed her thumb gently over the velvet fur between Austin’s ears. “Shutting them down is a tricky business,” she added thoughtfully. “It can’t be done from this side; I’ll have to cross over and go to the source.”

Diana rolled her eyes.“You’ll have to? Trywe’ll have to. If I can’t close something this big on my own, you certainly can’t—Basic Folklore 101, the younger sibling is always more powerful. I have the power, you have the experience. United we stand, divided we fall, yadda yadda. So I suggest you get over yourself, drop the whole I’m-the-only-one-who-can-save-the-world crap, and recognize thatwe’ve got trouble.”

“Right here in River City,” Sam added.

“Show tunes?” Austin glared down at the orange cat. “You have got to be kidding.”

“I have three words for you, Austin.” Diana leaned a little closer to Claire’s lap and flicked up a finger for each word. “Andrew Lloyd Webber. But that’s so not what we’re talking about. We need to get back into that mall and close that segue. It’s going to take some time, so I suggest we start tonight.”

“Ignoring your less than flattering opinion of my character,” Claire muttered darkly, “I agree.”

“I don’t.”

“Listen much, Dean? Segue bad. Keepers good. And I don’t know where I was going with that, but the sooner we get the sucker closed down the better.”

“Not arguing,” Dean told the young Keeper calmly. “You said it’s going to take some time—that means you’ll be there for a while?”

Diana shrugged.“Yeah, but…”

“So you can’t just rush in all unprepared.”

“I guess not.”

“You’ll have to pack.”

Claire twisted around until she could see his face.“We have everything here…”

“It’ll still take time.” He glanced over at the old school clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen. “It’s past eleven now. It’ll be close to midnight when you’re ready to leave. By the time you get to the mall, you’ve both already been up for what—sixteen, seventeen hours? You’ll be facing whoever created this thing when you’re tired. You won’t be thinking as quickly or as clearly. The bad guys could win before you even get started and then where’s the world? Up sh…the creek without a paddle.” Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly, holding Claire’s gaze with his, lacing the fingers of his right hand through the fingers of her left. “You’ve got to weigh the delay against going in tired and unprepared. You should sleep tonight and go in tomorrow morning.”

Diana opened her mouth to deliver a blistering reply, and snapped it shut again as Austin said,“He’s right.”

“He’s a Bystander!”

“And I’m a cat, so listen up.” He climbed from Claire’s lap up onto the table, leaving sweaty paw prints on the polished wood. “Going in tired and unprepared is a good way to get our collective butts kicked but, more importantly, going in tonight gives the advantage to the other side.”

“You mean the Otherside?” Diana sniped.

“Don’t interrupt. Two Keepers and two cats head into an empty mall in the middle of the night and we might as well call first to tell them we’re coming. There’s no way even the most idiotic, written for television, evil overlord isn’t going to notice something like that. The moment we cross over, BAM! And that’s if we’re lucky. We all know there’s a whole lot worse than BAM waiting out there.”

“No, we don’t.” Ears saddled, Sam sat down on Diana’s foot. “What’s worse than BAM?”

“Splat. Crunch. Grind. Chew.” When no one seemed inclined to argue, Austin continued. “We get a good night’s sleep and go in tomorrow morning with all the other shoppers, hiding in plain sight. We slip across with no one the wiser, you two close down the segue, and we’re home by lunch.”

“Lunch?”

Austin snorted.“Okay, it’s a metaphorical lunch some days in the future.”

“Look, it’s my Summons,” Diana protested, tumbling Sam off her foot and jerking her chair away from the table. She had a strong suspicion that had come out sounding whinier than she’d intended.

“You came here for help,” Claire reminded her. “You were there, in the mall; is there a chance the copy will be matched up before morning?”

“No. But…”

“Then I vote we wait. But you’re right.” She raised the hand not holding Dean’s in surrender. “It’s your Summons. Only you can make the final decision.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Then stop acting so childish. When you got here, you were willing to stop for a sandwich, and now you’re set on charging in where angels fear to tread.”

“Angels don’t fear much,” Sam began, caught sight of Austin’s expression, and decided he’d rather be under the table.

Diana folded her arms and just managed to stop her lip from curling. Knowing they were right didn’t help. “All right, fine. We’ll go in the morning.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“And now that’s settled, I’m going to bed.” Austin stepped from the table to Claire’s lap to the floor, glaring at Dean on the way by. “These days, if I don’t stake my claim early, all the good spots are taken.”

“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” Claire told him, her tone very nearly making the words a warning.

“Oh, joy.” He stopped, one paw in the hall, and glanced back over an immaculate black shoulder. “Don’t forget to pack the cat food.”

“And thus we have the subtitle for my life,” Claire sighed, getting to her feet. “When you left to answer this Summons, did you tell Mom and Dad where you were heading?”

“They weren’t home. I left them a note.”

“You should call before you go to bed.”

“Yeah. Right.” Picking up her sandwich plate, Diana headed for the kitchen only to be stopped by Dean’s outstretched hand.

“I’ve got it.”

“I was just going to put it in the dishwasher. Claire said business was good enough that you guys bought a dishwasher.”

“We did.”

“So?”

The blue eyes behind the glasses met hers without apology.“I like to load it.”

“He has a system,” Claire put in.

“Whatever.” Diana handed over the plate and watched Dean walk into the kitchen. “He’s just a little obsessive,” she murmured as Claire moved up beside her.

“A little…”

The faded jeans stretched tight as he bent over to set the plate in the lower rack.

“…but there are compensations.”

“Oh, yeah. I can tell you’re with him for his mind.” Grabbing her backpack, she headed for the hall. “So, in the interest of being rested and prepared, I’m going to grab the key to room one and crash. Come on, Sam.”

Eyes still on Dean, Claire waved absently toward her sister.“Call home.”

“Bite me.”

*

Accelerating to make the end of the advance green, Dean cranked his truck hard to the left and roared up into the mall’s parking lot. Just after ninea.m. the temperature had already climbed past thirty degrees C; unusually hot for the end of June. Three adults and two cats didn’t leave a lot of room for air flow in the cab and exposed skin would have been covered in a glistening layer of sweat had not the fine patina of cat hair caught—and dimmed—the glisten.

“That’s the entrance by the food court,” Diana declared, pointing out the open window. “Turn here.”

Dean turned.

“If it’s the closest entrance to the Emporium, it’ll be the most watched and therefore the most likely to be guarded,” Claire argued, holding her skirt up off the damp skin of her legs with two fingers. “Turn back onto the roadway and head for the door Diana used last night. We know we can get through that one.”

Dean turned.

“We don’t know that we can’t get through the closer one.”

“We don’t want to risk setting off an alarm.”

“And the longer we spend wandering around the mall, the greater the chance we’ll be discovered. Dean, turn here.”

Dean turned.

“Charging in on a direct line to the Emporium is a lot more likely to get us noticed. Dean, turn here.”

Dean stopped the truck.

Both sisters shot him essentially identical looks of disbelief as they rocked forward against their seat belts.

“You either walk from here,” he told them calmly, “or you agree on an entrance.”

The cab filled with overlapping protests and no agreement.

Irresistible brown eyes met immovable brown eyes.

“Okay, that’s it.” Austin flowed up over the back of the seat. “Since two of us are out here sweltering in fur coats…”

“I’m okay,” Sam interrupted.

“Shut up, kid….sweltering in fur coats,” he repeated, “and there’s air-conditioning behind whatever door we decide to go through, I’m making an executive decision.” He jumped down onto Claire’s lap and put his front paws up onto the dash. “What’s wrong with those doors? They’re closest.”

Claire shook her head.“They lead to one of this reality’s anchor stores. The way things are skewed, we might not be able to get out.”

“Fine. What about the next doors?”

“Same store.”

“And the doors after that?”

“That,” Diana told him, arms crossed and sitting as slumped as her seat belt and the crowded conditions allowed, “is where I went in last night.”

“Then that’s where we’re going in today.”

“But it’s my Summons. I should be in charge.”

Austin’s head swiveled slowly around and caught Diana in an emerald glare.

“Okay,” she muttered, wondering whose bright idea it had been that Keepers hang out with cats. “We’ll go in there.”

“Excellent idea. Claire?”

She decided not to point out that it was where she wanted to go all along.“I agree.”

Unable to stop himself from grinning, Dean put the truck into gear. Given the nonfeline connotations, he didn’t think he could say the wordspussy whipped to his true love and her little sister—no matter how accurate the observation.

As they came around the corner of the building, he felt Claire stiffen beside him.“What is it?”

“Minivans.”

“They were here last night as well,” Diana said grimly.

“You should have told me.”

“Why? There’s nothing we can do.”

“It’s just…”

“Yeah. I know.”

Minivans? In the nine months Dean had known Claire, he’d gone briefly to Hell, driven around northern Ontario after a demon, and discovered that all those clich?s about regular sex were pretty much true. He’d also learned that there were some things he was happier not knowing. This seemed like one of them.

“What was wrong with that parking spot?” Claire demanded as he drove past open pavement.

“Nothing. But I can get closer.”

“Okay, there’s one.”

“I see it.”

“And you just drove by it.”

“I can get a better spot.”

“The doors are right there!”

“I see them.”

“Sopark already.”

Speeding up to cut off a circling red sedan, Dean pulled in between a midnight-blue and a seafoam-green minivan and shut off the engine looking proud of himself. They were four spaces in, straight out from the door.

Claire rolled her eyes.“You are such aguy.”

He grinned and threw one arm along the seat back behind her, the close quarters allowing his fingers to trail down the damp, bare skin of her arm.“You have a problem with me being a guy.”

“Well, not right at this minute…”

Unbuckling her seat belt, Diana threw open the door and dropped down onto the pavement.“You guys are terminally embarrassing and…I’m sinking.”

“What?” Setting Austin on Dean’s lap, Claire slid across the seat and peered down at her sister’s feet. “That’s impossible. It’s notthat hot out.”

“Hey, you don’t have to take my word for it.” Stepping two careful paces back, heavy rubber tread imprinting the asphalt, Diana gestured for Claire to join her.

The low heels on Claire’s sandals poked square holes into the pavement. Pulling her skirt against her legs so that she could see her feet, she frowned. “This isn’t good. The influence has reached the parking lot.”

“Well, duh.” Diana swung one arm out in a wide, demonstrative arc. “Minivans?”

“Right. We’d better carry the cats. Dean, can you get the backpacks?”

Even with the extra weight, the pavement remained firm under Dean’s work boots.

“That’s a relief,” Diana noted as she set Sam down on the concrete pad outside the door and began scraping the felted layer of orange cat hair off her arms. “If it’s only affecting us, it hasn’t spread as far as we thought.”

“And I’ll be pleased about that in a minute,” Claire muttered, glaring down at the tar stuck to her heels.

“I told you those were stupid shoes to wear Otherside.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Didn’t I? I meant to.”

“I was after thinking that the whole rubber tree/hat stand thing kept these light.” Stepping over Austin, who’d sprawled out on his side in the shade, Dean set both packs on the black metal bench to one side of the door. “What’sin here?”

“A serious lackage of rubber trees and hat stands.” Wondering why Claire seemed to be cat hair free, Diana crossed to her pack and lifted it. “It’s against the Rules to access the possibilities once we’ve crossed over, so stuff like that won’t work. Which means we have…” She swung it up onto her shoulders. “…a few clothes, some preset odds and ends—possibilities having been used to create them but no longer necessary, so hopefully they’ll still work….”

“Hopefully?” Dean interrupted with a searching glance at Claire.

“Hopefully,” Diana repeated when it became obvious that Claire had nothing reassuring to say. “But mostly we’re carrying food and water because it’s dangerous to eat or drink on the Otherside.”

“Why?”

“Are you kidding? They put sauces on everything so it’s all high-cholesterol-let’s-slap-the-calories-right-onto-the-hips time.”

“The food changes you,” Claire interjected, shooting Diana astop messing with his head look. She laced her fingers through Dean’s and smiled up at him. “Different foods do different things, and all of it ties you to the Otherside, making it harder to get home. You’ve heard of Persephone and the pomegranates?”

Dark brows dipped down under the upper edge of his glasses.“Early eighties girl band? Had one hit ‘You’re Not Seeing My Depression’?”

Diana snorted.“It was, ‘You’re Not Seeing My Repression.’ Although, given the hair, I totally admit they had reason to be depressed.”

“How do either of you know what was going on in the early eighties?”

“MuchMusic Classic Videos,” Sam told her, sitting down by Austin and wrapping his tail around his toes. “There’s, like, two hours of them every Saturday afternoon.”

Claire looked from the younger cat to the older.

“Don’t look at me,” Austin sniffed disdainfully. “If we’re not out saving the world, I’m usually napping Saturday afternoons. And speaking of saving the world, I’d just like to point out that we still haven’t reached the air-conditioning. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Much.”

Hearing impending volume and duration in that final pause, Claire released Dean’s hand and reached for her backpack only to find Dean there before her. She turned so he could lift it up onto her shoulders and shivered as he kissed the back of her neck, murmuring, “Be careful.” against damp skin.

“I’m always careful.”

“What about Sharbot Lake?”

“That wasn’t careless, that was just unexpectedly deep.” She turned again, facing him now. “Will you be okay?”

He lifted her chin with a finger.“Without you? Probably not.”

“Enough with the clich?s, already.” Thumbs through her pack straps, Diana paced to the edge of the concrete and back making gagging noises. “I’ve just figured out why Keeper and Bystanders together are such a bad idea. You’re boring. And sappy enough to cause insulin shock.”

Dean ignored her, his eyes remaining locked on Claire’s face. “I’ll be waiting here.”

“We’ll be a couple days; remember?”

“But only on the Otherside.” When Claire shook her head, he frowned. “Time runs differently there. You can come out just after you went in. Right?”

“Probably not. Time might run faster or slower in pockets, but in order for the segue to work, they’ll have to make time run concurrent on both sides.” Hands flat on his chest, she studied his expression. “You knew that, right?”

“And how would I be knowing that if you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t tell you?”

“No.” He sighed and pulled her closer. “You’ll actually be a couple of days on this side as well?”

“Maybe more. I’ve set my watch so that we’ll know.”

“Okay, now we’ve got that settled,” Diana prodded, “just say good-bye already, suck a little face, and let’sgo before the Otherside comes to us.”

Dean stared down into Claire’s face for a long moment before his mouth finally curved into a worried smile. “Got my heart?”

She laid a hand lightly against her chest.“Right here. Got mine.”

He mirrored the motion.“Safe and sound.”

“And did I mention, barf! Hey! I said suck alittle face. You do know she’s already had her tonsils out, don’t you? So if you’re in there looking for them, you’re out of luck.”

Claire pulled out of Dean’s embrace, turned on one heel, smacked Diana lightly on the back of the head, and walked toward the doors—all in one smooth motion. “Someday, as unlikely as it seems, you’re going to find someone able to overlook certain personality flaws and I’m going to be there to do the color commentary.”

“As if,” Diana snorted, waving to Dean and falling into step beside her sister.

“I thought the color commentary was my job?” Sam asked Austin as they followed the Keepers through the doors.

Austin sighed.“There’s usually enough to go around.”

Once through the inner doors, Keepers and cats both disappeared. Standing with one hand spread out on the outer door, Dean could see his own reflection and little else. It was just a trick of the light, at least that’s what he told himself as he walked back to the edge of the concrete and stared out at the heat-silvered sky and the minivans keeping a silent vigil. He felt fidgety, restless—what his grandfather, an outport minister back in Newfoundland, would have called flicy. Hands shoved deep into his pockets, he turned and stared at the mall.

The vertical concrete slabs were almost the same shade as the sky.

Even without knowing what was going on inside, something about the building made his skin crawl. He would have said it was because it looked like a prison except there were two prisons within Kingston’s old city limits and both of them were more attractive.

Claire figured they’d be in there for a minimum of two days.

“When do I start worrying?”

“When another Keeper shows up with the Summons,” Diana snorted.

“Don’t worry,” Claire told him, shooting her sister a quelling glance. “I’ll always come back to you.”

Austin rolled his eyes and horked up a hairball.

Not an entirely comforting memory, Dean realized walking back to the bench and sitting down.

*

“Oh, my God. They’ve muzaked Alien Ant Farm. It’s the second sign of the Apocalypse.”

“What was the first?” Claire wondered, shifting her pack straps.

“Orange polyester bellbottoms. On sale.”

“How much?”

“You’re not serious.” A quick glance over at her sister and Diana winced. “You are serious. One of ushas to be adopted.”

“I tried adopting you out for most of your childhood. No one would take you.”

With the cats hard on their heels, they stepped out into the main concourse and paused. Four senior citizens sat soaking up the air-conditioning on a bench close by the escalator. There was no one else in sight.

Diana pushed damp and rapidly cooling hair up off her forehead.“So much for that hiding in the crowd theory; there were more people in here last night.”

“All right, we’re a little early for the crowds. But as far as the Otherside is concerned, we’re still just shoppers with a perfectly valid reason to be in here. Nothing for them to worry about.”

“And the cats?”

“Given the metaphysical buzz this place has, they’ll never notice the trickle of power it’ll take to hide the cats…provided one of the cats doesn’t decide to use a planter as a litter box,” she finished glaring at Austin who was digging in the plastic bark chips.

“Old kidneys; give me a break. Besides…” One last swipe with a back leg and he jumped up onto the planter’s broad rim. “…I might have been the firstcat, but I wasn’t the first.”

“That’s mildly disturbing,” Claire admitted, scooping him up into her arms. “Diana, where…”

Eyes closed, head swiveling slowly from side to side, Diana waved a silencing hand.“There’s something,” she murmured, trying to pin it down. “Something close.”

“Something? I’m amazed you can sense anything in this.”

“Feels like the bracelet. It’d be harder to find if I hadn’t already touched…There!” Her eyes snapped open and she pointed across the concourse to Heaven Sent Cards and Gifts. “Whatever I’m picking up, is in there.”

“Overpriced ceramic angels?” Claire stared at the storefront in dismay. “Lots and lots of overpriced ceramic angels?”

“They’re not angels,” Sam sniffed, whiskers bristling. “They’re cherubs. Useless little twerps in the heavenly scheme of things.”

“Well, it’s not them.” Diana crossed to the store, her soles squeaking faintly against the tile. The moment she stepped onto the dark gray carpet, the feeling strengthened, and she turned to face the cash desk. “It’s over there.” A quick glance showed Claire and the cats had followed her across the concourse and were standing just off the edge of the carpet. “I’ll deal with this while you guys search the rest of the store, just in case. And Sam, donot spray those angels.”

“Cherubs,” he muttered, trying to look as though he hadn’t been about to lift his tail.

Claire reached out and poked him lightly with her foot.“Come on. We’ll start at the back and work our way forward.”

When Diana turned to face the cash desk again, the heavily mascaraed teenager standing behind it was watching her in some confusion.

“Who was she talking to?” she asked, gesturing in the general direction Claire had taken. “If somebody sprays those angels they’re, like, going to have to pay for them, you know.”

Closing the distance between them, Diana smiled at her.“Please, don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” She nodded slowly, looking slightly stoned and remarkably happy. Looking, as it happened, very much like she was never going to worry about anything ever again.

“Oops.” Apparently, her power problems hadn’t been solved by moving off reserve status. Reaching out carefully, Diana tweaked things, just a little, and was relieved to see a frown line reappear.

“If you’re looking for something, I can’t, like, leave the cash desk, so you’ll have to find it yourself.”

“Not a problem.” There were a dozen tubs, boxes, and spinners of impulse kitsch nearly covering the glass counter. If customers actually wanted to buy an item larger than a foot square, they were out of luck. Problem was, in a dozen containers of assorted bits and pieces, the thing she sensed could be…

In the tub of magic wands.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The clerk blinked and focused. Lips almost as pale as the surrounding skin twitched.“Kids love these.”

“I’m sure.”Especially if they get one that actually works.

The wands were about eight inches long; a hollow tube of clear Lucite partially filled with a metallic or neon sparkling gel and topped with a plastic star the same color. The fourth one Diana pulled from the tub jerked in her hand, rearranging a display of‘flower of the month’ tea cups into a significantly larger porcelain cherub. She was beginning to understand why Sam disliked the things. A quick flick of the wand changed it back.

“What was that?” the clerk demanded, whirling around toward the sound of metal ringing against china.

“Falling halo,” Diana told her, continuing to pull wands out of the tub.

“What?”

“Forget about it. Specifically, aboutit,” she added hurriedly, heading off inadvertent amnesia.

“Forget about what?”

Nothing like a clich? to measure effectiveness. “Exactly.”

The remainder of the wands were no more than they appeared.

“I’ll take this one.”

“Whatever. That’ll be twelve ninety-five. Plus tax.”

*

“Fourteen ninety-four,” Diana complained, showing Claire the wand. “For a piece of plastic crap.”

Claire stepped aside so that the neon pink star no longer pointed directly at her—she’d seen what had happened to the cups and had no wish to suddenly acquire a useless pair of wings and a winsomely blank expression. “Not a bad price for a working wand, though.”

“And the plastic crap was on sale for five dollars,” Sam added. “There was a whole box of it at the back of the store.”

“From the Otherside?”

“No, I think it was from a Rottweiler.”

Should have seen thatcoming. Reaching behind her, Diana slid the wand into a side pocket on her backpack.“Taking this across with us should neutralize it. You’re sure there was nothing else?”

“A few Chia Pets left over from Christmas—made on the Otherside, but I checked their bar codes and they were all legally imported.”

“Then our work here is done.” Diana nodded down the concourse toward the stairs. “Let’s go close this sucker down.”

“Chia Pets are imported from the Otherside?” Sam asked, as he and Austin fell into step between the Keepers.

“They were part of a whole Free Trade thing that fell apart over softwood lumber.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“And that’s what I told them at the time.”

“That wasn’t what I…” A half glance over at the older cat and Sam realized that it didn’t really matter what he’d meant. “Okay. Never mind.”

There were more shoppers on the lower levels and a dozen senior citizens in the food court, having coffee and complaining about the way the younger generations were dressing.

“I’ve had it with my granddaughter,” one sighed loudly as the Keepers and cats passed her table. “She’s constantly borrowing my clothes.”

Her companion set down her blueberry bran muffin and smoothed herCanadian Girls Kick Ass T-shirt over artificially perky breasts.“I hear you, Elsie. I hear you.”

“That was disturbing,” Diana muttered as they headed down the last short hall toward the Emporium. “Didn’t you find that disturbing?”

Claire shrugged.“Not really, but then I’m not wearing the same shirt as a seventy-year-old.”

“Hey, hers was red on white, mine’s white on red. Not the same shirt!”

“Okay.”

Marvin Travel, The Tailor of Gloucester, The Erlking Emporium…

Trying to appear as though they were just resting, they sat down on the bench across from the Emporium and took turns glancing through the open door.

“Is that your troll?” Claire asked.

“Okay, first; notmy troll. And second, why couldn’t he have a part-time teenager covering the weekend shifts like almost every other store in the mall?”

“That could be a part-time teenager.”

“Good point.”

Given the wide variations in human physiognomy, the troll could pass—provided no one looked too closely and were willing to ignore an unfortunate truth; most humans his color had been dead for a couple of days. A couple of hot days. His head was bald, his goatee had probably come off a real goat, his sunglasses appeared to be Ralph Lauren. He was just over six feet tall and only one short third of that was leg. Huge fists dangled even with his knees.

“At least he dresses well.”

“Yeah. Nice tie. I wonder what kind of leather it is.”

“Not what,” Austin said, jumping up onto the bench. “Who.”

“Eww.”

“His shoes seem to match.”

“Like I said, eww.”

“It’s your Summons,” Claire pointed out. “How do we get past him?”

“We’ve got someone on the inside, remember?” Diana stood, stretched, and started toward the window. Do-it-Yourself Voodoo Kits were forty percent off. Faking an interest in the display, she slid sideways until she could see herself reflected at the very outside edge of the mirror’s curve. Blue-on-blue eyes drifted up from the depths.

“Hey, Boss!”

The troll’s head jerked around, taking most of his upper body with it owing to a distinct lack of neck. “Are you insane? What if we’d had customers?”

“Then they’d probably be a little freaked by the way the rubber snakes are moving.”

“What, again? I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that warty little reject from Santa’s workshop.” Bitching about the way salesmen took advantage of honest retailers, he stomped out from behind the counter and across the store.

Diana, who’d returned to the bench, grabbed Claire’s arm. “Now.”

When they reached the store, she tugged her sister lower.“Duck!”

Claire almost pulled out of her grip.“Where?”

“Cute, but we did that one already. Just stay low.”

A rubbery squelch and a satisfied,“Let’s see how much moving you do with your tail stuffed down your throat,” propelled them all through the door to the supply room.

There was no immediate sound of pursuit.

And the one nice thing about trolls, Diana acknowledged,they don’t sneak worth a damn.“Do you think he saw us?”

“Let’s not risk it.” Claire took three long strides across the storeroom to the steel door that led to the mall’s access corridors. She frowned at the hand-lettered “Staff Only” sign, then yanked the door open. “Come on. We’ve got to be out there to cross over anyway. This is the safest place to emerge into and in order to emerge, we have to exit.”

Diana nodded.“An obvious but valid point. Sam…” She slipped through after the cat.

Austin followed her.

Claire followed him, checked to make sure they could get the door open again, and carefully closed it.

They found themselves in a concrete corridor where grimy fluorescent bulbs shed just enough light to illuminate a recurring pattern of stains at the base of the walls. The air smelled of old urine and older French fry grease.

Pivoting to the right, Diana took a step toward the ninety-degree turn only a few meters away.“I’ve always wondered what it looked like back here.”

“Here specifically?” Austin snorted.

“No, you know, in back of the shopping parts of shopping malls.”

“You need to get out more.”

“And we need to get out of here,” Claire reminded them, her hand on the latch. “This is where the troll crosses over; there’s so much power residue on and around this door, we’ll be able to use it without even causing a blip on their radar.”

“Unless we send up a major ‘hey look at me’ flare because we’re going in the opposite direction.”

All eyes turned toward the younger cat.

“Sorry. Bit of leftover higher knowledge. It’spossible. But not very likely,” Sam added hurriedly as Austin advanced on him. “I mean, power residue’s power residue; right? And besides, what would I know.”

“Austin!”

Austin shot a“spoilsport” glare at Claire and suddenly became very interested in cleaning his shoulder, his claws almost totally retracted again.

“It’s my Summons.” Diana reached out for the latch. “The risk should be mine.”

Claire shook her head, blocking Diana’s hand. “If one of us is going to send up a flare, I’d rather they knew about me—leaving the more powerful Keeper in reserve.”

“That’s a good point, but here’s a better one. We don’t know what we’ll face on the other side of this door. I should cross first to make sure we’re not stopped before we get started.”

“Why don’t we cross together. They won’t get a good reading from either of us and we’ll be ready for whatever we have to face.”

“But I get to take it out.”

“Be my guest.”

On Diana’s nod, Claire threw open the door.

*

The storeroom on the Otherside looked almost exactly like the storeroom they’d left behind. The same metal utility shelves, the same jumble of empty boxes, the same overstock. The only real difference was the light—low, diffuse, and slightly green.

The two Keepers stood weighing the silence for danger.

“Hey.” Sam jumped up on a stack of old plastic milk crates. “Where’s Austin?”

THREE

[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]

ONE MINUTE, he had the tip of an orange tail in his face. The next, he felt the possibilities shift and he was walking alone into the storeroom they’d just left.

The door to the access corridor was closed.

The door to the store was closed.

Austin sat down, wrapped his tail around his front feet, and glared at nothing in particular. The urge to piss on something was intense. Like all cats, he knew when he was being told“No!”; he usually ignored it, but he knew.

He’d just been told in no uncertain terms.

The possibilities would not allow him to cross over.

When the door to the access corridor remained closed, his eye narrowed. Had she been able to, Claire would have returned immediately to find him. She hadn’t, so therefore she couldn’t. The question now became: why?

Fortunately, there was a way to find out.

Unfortunately, even up on his hind legs, he could just barely stretch to touch the bottom of the latch plate.

Okay, new plan.

Dropping to all fours, he stared at the closed door, a position proven to bring a talking monkey trotting to his assistance.

“Not a problem, ladies, I’ve got more T-shirt sizes in the back room.”

Or possibly a talking whatever the troll claimed as an evolutionary precedent.

As the door opened, Austin slid in behind a crate marked with both a biohazard and a live cargo symbol. Curious, he took a sniff at one of the air holes, but the crate was empty and had been for some time—probably a good thing although he could easily imagine scenarios where it wouldn’t be. With the troll’s full attention fixed on pulling an XXX largeAstarte Fan Club out of a shipping carton of Tshirts, he slipped through the doorway and into the Emporium.

A fast right, a dive under a raised display case, a quick creep forward belly to the ground brought him behind a basket of small plastic jewelry boxes. Head cocked, he listened for the straining gears that would indicate someone with a desire to hear music played on pieces of bent tin had wound the key. When he finally found a silent box, he flipped it open. The miniature Republican in a frilly pink tutu remained motionless in front of the mirror.

Austin smacked the tiny politician out of his way and tipped the box back until its mirror reflected only the security mirror up by the ceiling.

Fortunately, cats were masters of refraction.

The direct approach would have taken him right into the troll’s line of sight now that the big guy was back at the counter explaining washing instructions to the T-shirt’s new owner—apparently, the bloodstains were not supposed to come out.

Blue-on-blue eyes drifted up from the depths of the jewelry box mirror.

“What are you doing here?” the mirror demanded, its usual booming tones more of a low tinkle.

Muzzle so close his breath fogged the glass.“The possibilities wouldn’t let me cross.”

“Age thing?”

Austin shrugged.“Maybe. Maybe the idiots in charge think two cats would give the good guys an unfair advantage; I don’t know. Can you get a message through to my people on the Otherside? I need to know that Claire’s all right; she needs to know that I’m safe.”

“I can do better than that. I should be able to patch you through, cat to cat. Video only, though, no audio. You want full bandwidth, you’ll need a crystal ball.”

“Video’s fine.” If Claire could see him, she’d know he was okay and could concentrate on doing her job. He scanned the store for something visual that would help get his message through and just when it seemed that nothing at all said “Dean,” he spotted the rack of ceramic nameplates.

The rules governing tacky gift store purchases clearly stated that no one was to ever find exactly the name they were looking for.

Cats made their own rules.

Utilizing the speed that could hook a fry from unsuspecting fingers during the instant it passed between plate and lips, Austin leaped into the air, got a paw under his objective, and was on the floor with it before the troll could look up from making change, the impact with the carpet barely audible over the muttered,“Five and six is thirteen plus eight is twenty.”

The name was right although the decoration of two obscenely cute mice eating a giant strawberry didn’t exactly say six foot two, obsessively tidy, Newfie hockey player. Oh, wait, not a giant strawberry—they just had most of the skin off.

Positioning himself by the mirror again, Austin leaned in until his whiskers touched the glass.

“Do it.”

*

“What do you mean, where’s Austin?”

Sam rolled his eyes.“I mean, he’s not here.”

Diana grabbed Claire’s wrist as she reached for the door. “Where are you going?”

“Back. He could be hurt.”

“He could be anywhere. Just because the possibilities didn’t bring him through here doesn’t mean they left him in the other mall.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“And if he isn’t there?”

Pulling free, Claire took a deep breath and looked her sister in the eye.“Then I’ll come right back.”

After a long moment, Diana nodded.

Claire closed her fingers around the latch, and froze.

Footsteps. Marching footsteps.

Distant, but coming closer.

Hard soles against concrete.

Hardsomething against concrete. Hooves, maybe? Impossible to tell.

The Keepers could feel the floor vibrate against their feet. Sam’s tail puffed out to four times its usual sleek diameter.

Diana wound her fingers through Claire’s pack straps and hauled her toward the other door. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Closer.

A pair of snowflake paperweights vibrated so violently they shattered, spilling out miniature Grendels chewing on the bloody ends of Viking arms.

“We don’t know what’s out in the store,” Claire protested, as Diana yanked the door open.

“It’s got to be better than what’s out there!”

Sam leaped off the milk crates and raced between their legs.

“Sam thinks it’s safe! Move!”

They dove through the door after the cat. Diana slammed it behind them.

The sudden silence was almost overwhelming.

The hair lifting off his spine into an orange Mohawk, Sam moved out into the store.“It’s so thick, it’s like walking through pudding.”

“You should know,” Diana muttered, hands flat against the door, straining to hear if they’d been followed.

“That was anaccident.”

“Maybe thefirst time. I can’t hear anything moving in the storeroom.” She turned to her sister. “You?”

“Nothing. Wait here. I’ll go back for Austin.”

“No need.”

“Sam!” Claire glared down at the younger cat…

…who ignored her, his head raised, his eyes locked on the back corner by the ceiling.

The mirror on the Otherside was a sheet of thick, silvered glass, about half a meter wide by a meter long, in an antique wooden frame. It was currently reflecting the store they’d just left. The troll flirted with the two teenage girls standing by the counter, a woman pushed a baby stroller out into the concourse, one of the rubber snakes disappeared under the pile of stuffed toys, and Austin stared down at them from beside a basket of tiny plastic music boxes.

“He’s all right.” Claire released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Thank God.”

“You’re welcome.”

Diana rubbed her hands over the goose bumps texturing her arms.“Uh, Claire, ixnay on the anking-thay odgay while we’re erehay. Attracts the wrong kind of attention.”

“I know.”

“I know you know. You were just relieved to see, you know.” She nodded toward the cat in the mirror.

“What’s he trying to…oh. Dean. He’s going to go to Dean.”

Eyes narrowed, Diana peered up at the ceramic name plate Austin had pushed out into the aisle.“Are those mice eating a pixie?”

“What? No, they’re eating a straw…Okay, that’s really, really gross.”

Then they were staring up at themselves.

“Hey!” Claire folded her arms and stomped one foot—which would have been a more effective protest had the tar residue not temporarily attached her heel to the carpet. She jerked it free, caught hold of a display shelf as her backpack shifted suddenly, threatening to topple her over, and snapped, “What happened?”

The blue-on-blue eyes managed to look slightly sheepish.“Sorry. Lost the signal.”

“How?” Diana demanded. “You forgot to disable call waiting?”

“No, it’s a hardware problem—those newfangled convex mirrors distort everything. Look, I’ve got to get back on duty, but don’t forget what you promised.”

She nodded.“To get you out of here before we shut the place down. I remember.”

“You remember now,” the mirror acknowledged. “Harder to remember when you’re pinned down under enemy fire.”

“What enemy fire?” But the eyes were gone and her reflection looked as annoyed as she felt. “What enemy fire?” she repeated in her sister’s general direction.

“What difference does it make? Stop thinking about it!”

Diana blanched. The Otherside built substance from the subconscious of its inhabitants and she was suddenly unable to think about anything else. Distraction, distraction…“OW!”

Looking smug, Sam removed his claw from her foot.

“So I’m suddenly less convinced that mirror’s on our side.” Dropping to one knee, she licked her finger and dabbed at the blood. “What do you think, Claire?”

“About what?” She forced her gaze off the mirror. “Sorry. I’m worried about Austin all alone in that mall.”

“Austin’s older than most of the weekend staff,” Diana reminded her. “And it goes without saying he’s smarter. I’m totally sure he’ll have no problems getting back to where we left Dean.”

“We’ve been here a while. What if Dean’s not there?”

*

His biggest problem was going to be getting out of the Emporium unseen. Capture out in the mall would mean, at most, a few unpleasant hours until he escaped custody. Capture in the store would mean mustard. Trolls put mustard on everything they ate. Usually, to kill the taste. Occasionally, to kill the food. Austin had no intention of dying by condiment.

Concentrating on keeping his tail close, he crept along the floor using every bit of cover an eclectic array of merchandise provided and trying not to notice what he was creeping through. Trolls weren’t known for the cleanliness of their carpets and some of the merchandise was eclectic in ways that stained. A little over a meter from the door, he ran out of things to hide behind.

No customers remained to distract the troll.

Even at this distance, the wards around the door stroked energy into his fur. If he read them right, which went without saying, they needed only a single word to close them down and create an impenetrable barrier. Given that he had to cross directly through the troll’s line of sight, it would take luck as much as speed to ensure he was on the right side of the barrier when that word was spoken.

Okay. He drew his legs in tight to his body, weight to the back, ready for powerful haunches to launch him forward.Remember, you’re only as old as you feel.

…ready for powerful haunches to launch him forward.

And I feel like I’m going to be eighteen in August.

…launch him forward.

Eighteen’s old for a cat. If I was a dog, I’d probably be dead. Of course, if I was a dog, I’d want to be dead.

…forward.

Oh, crap.

His first leap took him nearly to the threshold. He heard the troll yell“Cat!”, then he heard him yell “Endoplasmic reticulum!”, saw a flash of aubergine light, smelled the unmistakable odor of burning cat hair, and was in the concourse under the bench, patting out the smoldering end of his tail. Fortunately, his fur was long enough so that no actual damage hadbeen done.

Another flash of aubergine light and an impact that set his whiskers vibrating.

Heart pounding, he turned toward the Emporium.

The troll lay flat on his back just inside the door. Apparently, the wards were set to keep everything in.

“Idiot,” he muttered, and washed a triumphant paw.

“Kitty!”

His attention had been so completely on the store that the toddler squatting down and peering under the bench, his diaper nearly touching the tiles, one chubby hand reaching for Austin’s head, came as a complete surprise.

“Are youtrying to give kitty a heart attack,” he gasped when he could catch his breath.

“Pretty!”

“Don’t touch that!”

“Come on, Brandon.” A woman’s feet came out from behind a massive stroller. Large hands tucked themselves into the child’s armpits and hoisted him out of sight while ducky sandals kicked futilely in protest. “Let’s get you home while you’re still in a good mood.”

Austin inched carefully forward until he could get a good look at young Brandon’s destination. The stroller not only had plenty of room for hitchhikers but a large flat canopy. When the back rack was full of bags—which it was—the adult pushing couldn’t actually see the seat. He waited while the seat belts were secured, waited while the woman went around to the handle,then, just as the stroller was about to move, he leaped.

“Kitty!”

“No kitties this trip, big fella,” the woman corrected, adding with some pique, “and next time we’ll stay away from the pet store.”

He hadn’t been seen and Brandon already had a cover story in place. “Way to go, kid,” he murmured into a chubby ear. “Hey! Arm does not go around kitty’s neck.”

“Kitty soft.”

“Yeah? Well, baby smelly.” Tucking legs and tail close to his body in an attempt to look as much like a stuffed toy as possible, Austin settled back to enjoy the ride.If they turn left once they’ve crossed the food court, I’ll have to bail.

The stroller turned right.

What are the chances, they’ll head for the upper level…?

The stroller’s front wheels bumped against the escalator.

“You okay in there, Brandon?”

“Okay!” The stroller tipped back and began to rise. “Kitty?”

“I’m good. And donot put that in your mouth, it’s attached!”

At Sunshine Records, his luck ran out.

“Just going to make a quick stop, kiddo, then we’ll head for the parking lot.”

With the stroller stopped, someone in the record store would be sure to do that“make faces at the baby” thing that adults found so impossible to resist. After a lifetime of similar faces looming over him, Austin had a strong suspicion the babies weren’t as thrilled by it. As they began to turn, he murmured a quick good-bye and jumped clear, racing for a planter and the cover of a plastic shrub.

No hue and cry.

Now to find out exactly where he was.

It looked good. Ten meters of main concourse, then the short side hall to the doors where they’d left Dean. A little exposed until he got to the side hall, but if he remembered correctly—which, of course, he did—once there, he’d have plenty to hide behind.

Play the skulking music, boys.

Checking that no one was looking his way, he jumped down and began moving along the clear Lucite barrier that kept the careless, the stupid, and the carelessly stupid from falling through a hexagonal opening to the lower level.

Clear Lucite barrier?

“Hey!” The shout came from across the concourse. “There’s a cat over there! Let’s get it!”

Oh, crap.

*

Wondering how much longer he was going to wait, Dean tried to find a comfortable position on the metal bench and picked up his last remaining section of the Saturday paper. He’d read the comics, the sports pages, the wheels section—which was pretty much the newsprint version of infomercials but about cars so that was okay. He’d read life, and entertainment, and even the report on business. There was nothing left but the actual news.

The front page shared space about equally between a doom-and-gloom prediction of an economic slowdown caused by consumer inability to realize the need for more electronic crap and the continuing disappearance of Kingston’s street kids. “Look, the day you can keep track of three hundred and ten cases and not lose a few of the mobile ones, you let me know. Until then, get off my fucking back!” a social worker was quoted as saying. Dean couldn’t decide which impressed him more, the social worker for saying itor the paper for actually printing it.

The Children’s Aid Society requested that anyone with news contact them at any time, day or night, where any time actually meant between eight and four Monday to Thursday, and eight to noon Fridays because of government cutbacks.

“Okay, now I’m depressed.” Folding the section neatly, he piled it with the rest. Claire’d told him that they’d be inside for a couple of days; maybe it was time he went…

Paws drumming on glass.

Paws?

Leaping to his feet, he ran for the doors.

Up on his hind legs, his stomach fur a brilliant streak of white, Austin pounded to be let out. As Dean yanked the door open, he fell forward, hit the concrete running, and disappeared into the parking lot before Dean could get a question out.

The trio of teenage boys in hot pursuit made at least one of the questions moot. They rocked to a halt at the edge of the asphalt, stopped as much by the heat as the sudden disappearance of their prey.

“Lose something?” He had four or five years on them and a couple of inches as well as a lot of muscle on the biggest. If it came down to it, Austin was in no real danger.

“You let the cat out, man. We were trying to catch it!”

“Why?”

“Why?” The speaker exchanged a clear but silent“Dude’s an idiot” with the other two.“’Cause there’s not supposed to be cats in the mall.”

Dean glanced pointedly out at the parking lot.

“It’s not in the mall now ’cause we chased it out of the mall.” Eyes narrowed. “It’s not your cat.”

“I know.” Austin considered Dean one of his ambulatory can openers, but that was beside the point.

“If it’s anyone’s cat, it’s our cat. We saw it first.”

“I don’t want the damned cat, man.” One of the other boys hauled up the shorts falling off skinny hips and looked longingly back toward the air-conditioning. “Come on, it’s hot out here.”

Under the shadow of a scruffy teenage mustache, the first boy’s lip curled. “So we just let the cat win?”

The third boy sighed and scratched at the growing damp spot under his arm.“Cats always win. One way or another.”

“Oh, yeah, hiding under a parked…” Narrowed eyes widened. “…minivan.” He shifted his gaze across the nearly uniform rows of family vehicles until it returned, eyes wide, to Dean. “You find the cat, man, you can have it. We don’t want it.” Hands shoved deep into his pockets, he turned on one heel. “Come on.”

Does everybodyknow about the minivans? Dean wondered as the three boys slouched back inside the mall. He waited until he heard the doors close, then he waited a few minutes more, just in case. Picking the folded newspaper up off the bench, he walked out to his truck.

As he stepped off the concrete pad and out of the building’s shadow, the heat hit him like a warm, wet sponge. By the time he had the driver’s door open, his T-shirt was clinging damply to his back.

“Took you long enough,” Austin panted, crawling out from under the truck bed.

“Sorry.” Scooping the cat up in one hand, Dean dropped him gently on the seat and slid in after him. “What happened, then?”

“The possibilities wouldn’t let me through, but the others are fine, so don’t sweat it.” An emerald eye turned briefly toward Dean. “That was sort of a joke. Is there any water in here?”

After their last visit to the vet, Claire’d begun keeping a bottle of water and a small bowl in the glove compartment. It was tepid, but Austin drank almost all Dean poured.

“Are you okay?”

“Give me a minute.” The cat sat up, rubbed a paw over wet whiskers, and sighed. “Ever notice how much a group of teenage boys resembles a dog pack?”

“Uh, no.”

“So that was some other guy doing all that alpha male posturing?”

Dean thought back over the encounter and frowned.“I didn’t…”

“You didn’t sniff their butts, but other than that, it was all big dog, little dogs. Don’t get me wrong. If it weren’t for my whole dogs-are-anaccident-of-nature belief system, I’d have been very impressed.” He folded himself into tea cozy position. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Dean asked, still working his way through the dog thing.

“Well, why are we still sitting here? I have some serious napping scheduled for this afternoon and I’d like to get to it.”

“We’re just going to leave, then?”

Austin sighed.“Yes. I don’t like it any more than you but that’s the way it is. We leave. They stay. They save the world. We go home and you feed the cat. At least now you also have vital and important duties to perform.”

“Right.” Dean fished his keys from his pocket and started the engine. “Don’t be taking this the wrong way, but I’d be happier if you were with Claire.”

“Likewise.”

*

“You know, I’m starting to think this isn’t the actual anchor. That it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Mixed metaphors aside, I think you’re right.” Claire straightened up from examining a display of remarkably realistic stone garden gnomes. “I also think they’re using a basilisk, so keep your eyes peeled.”

“That would explain the stone guy with the stone net and the wet stain on his stone trousers,” Diana acknowledged, crossing toward her sister. “I was wondering why they’d only stock one of such a guaranteed big seller. Where do you think it is?”

“The basilisk? Hopefully, not here.”

“Not the basilisk, the anchor.”

“It’s got to be close. It’s not in the store. It’s not in the storeroom…”

“It’s probably behind the construction barrier,” Sam yawned. He closed his mouth to find both Keepers staring at him. “What? It’s covered indanger, keep out, authorized entry only, this means you signs. It seemed kind of obvious.”

After a moment, Diana sighed.“He’s right.”

“You say that like you’re surprised,” the cat protested.

“Only because I was,” she told him reassuringly as she shoved him off her backpack and heaved it back up onto her shoulders. “Let’s get a move on. They’ve got to know we’re here by now.”

“If they don’t, they will in a moment.” Claire nodded toward the door. “It’s warded to keep things in.”

“Given the basilisk, good. Otherwise, that kind of sucks.”

“And it explains why no one’s shown up so far. They know they can take their time coming to get us because we’re not going anywhere.”

“We aren’t?”

“Hypothetically. Do you think you could not want those wards there enough to get rid of them?”

“I could justget rid of them.” As Claire turned toward her, Diana raised both hands. “Except I’d be imposing my will on the Otherside, and that would be breaking the Rules, and so I would never, ever do it because that would make me just like the bad guys.”

“Hey!” Sam bumped her in the calf with his head. “What are you talking about?”

“You can influence the Otherside with strong subconscious desires or by consciously wanting or not wanting something badly enough, but you can’t just demand it be one thing or the other,” Diana explained, bending just enough to stroke the end of his tail through her fingers. “Even if you’re very young and it was sort of an accident, no matter what people say.”

“Is this another doesn’t-know-her-own-strength story?” the cat wondered.

Claire nodded.“Every door that had ever been used as an access was blown off its hinges.”

“Okay, okay, fine. But nobody got hurt, so no harm, no foul.” Diana stepped closer to the wards. “You do something once…”

“Twice.”

“Okay, twice, and all of a sudden you can’t be trusted.”

“I trust you. I’m the one who asked you to not want the wards, remember?”

“Right.” Her brow furrowed. The absolute last thing she wanted was to be stuck in a shadow Emporium with a possible basilisk and her sister telling remember-how-Diana-blew-up-the-sofa stories. The wards flickered. And again. And disappeared to the sound of sirens and a blinding array of flashing lights.

“I think you set off an alarm!” Sam yelled.

“What was your first clue?” Diana shrieked back at him as the three of them ran out the cleared door and into the concourse.

“It was either the sirens or the flashing lights!”

The shadow construction barrier was the same painted gray plywood as the original.

“Unless this is the original and the other one’s the shadow.”

“Not important right now!” Claire had both hands pressed flat against the wood. “We’ve got to get through this.”

“How? There’s no door!”

“Then want to get through harder!”

“I am!” Diana scanned the barrier for any kind of a seam, but all she could see were the warning signs and the ubiquitous,Kilroy was here.“Oh, sure, but he’s not here now. The obnoxious gnome owes me ten bucks.”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

Claire smacked the barrier with the palms of both hands, then backed away.“We’re going to have to use the access corridor to get behind it!”

“I hate this, but you’re right!”

They turned back toward the store, but before they’d taken a single step, the door to the storeroom crashed open and half a dozen misshapen bodies in badly fitting navy blue track suits charged through. Essentially bipedal, they looked like someone had crossed a rhinoceros with a hockey player.

“Great! Not wantingthem doesn’t seem to be working either!”

“What are they?”

“Who cares?” Diana grabbed Claire’s hand, yanked her around until she was facing down the concourse, and gave her a shove. “RUN!”

Sam was already almost at the food court.

The Tailor of Gloucester had become The Tailer of Gloucester with a number of samples hanging in the window. Diana would have liked a closer look at the multicolored fog swirling about inside the travel agency, but something slammed into her backpack as she passed the store and she decided that maybe concentrating on running would be the better plan. Fortunately, here on the Otherside, concentrating on running was enough to lend new speed to her feet.

“What are they throwing?” Claire demanded as they began weaving through the tables in the food court.

Something buzzed past Diana’s ear with an almost overpowering scent of gardenias, dented one of the metal chairs, and bounced out of sight.

“I think it’s scented candles!”

“Oh, that’s just great! Those things are deadly!”

“Only in enclosed spaces!”

On the far side of the food court, they followed Sam to the right; the crashing and banging of their pursuers through the tables and chairs drowning out the distant sound of the sirens.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know!”

“Hey! Up here!”

Both Keepers skidded to a halt and squinting up through the hexagonal opening to the upper level trying to make out the features of the person leaning over the edge.

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” the spiky silhouette demanded.

“We’re not…” Claire began but Diana drove an elbow into her side.

“Good witches!”

“Then haul ass to the stairs! We’ll hold them off.”

“We’re not…”

Diana grabbed Claire’s hand again. “Close enough. Shut up and follow Sam!”

Something whistled through the air behind them as they pounded up the concourse after the cat. The escalators were insubstantial, but the stairs were much as they’d left them. Except for the piled barricade at the top and the half-dozen teenagers standing behind it.

Sam scrambled up and over but as the Keepers neared the top step, a genuine wood finish laminate armoire was rolled back out of the way. The packs made it a tight fit, but they both squeezed through and collapsed panting to the floor.

Candles pounded the barricade, hitting with enough force to slam through a display counter and into the piled barbeques behind it. The tempered steel rang like a gong but held.

The whistling noise was defined as the teenagers fired ceramic cherubs from heavy duty slingshots.

“Did you want these guys?” Claire murmured.

“I wanted rescue,” Diana admitted, “but I don’t think either of us had anything to do with this. It’s too…”

“Clich?d?”

“I was going to say too real, but strangely enough, too clich?d also works.”

“They’re hitting the things,” Sam reported from the top of the barricade. “It’s stopping them, but they don’t seem to be taking much damage.”

“Nah, they never do,” explained the teenager next to him, aiming and releasing again. “But if you hit them in the head, the bits of broken ceramic get in their eyes and they totally hate that. Damn! I don’t know what you guys did to get ’em so worked up ’cause usually they got a zero attention span.”

Another volley. And then another. And then a cheer went up.

“And we win again. The meat-minds’ll mill around for a while, then they’ll head home.” She tossed long, mahogany dreadlocks back behind her shoulders and stared down at Sam. “You talk.”

He shrugged.“So do you.”

“Good point.” Holding her bow across her chest, she turned to face the Keepers. “I’m Kris, Captain of the Guard. Who are you?”

“Too real?” Claire whispered.

Although Kris and the other archers were dressed in combinations of clothes obviously pulled off the rack, there could be no mistaking the pointed ears or the great hair.

Elves.

Except, of course, that elves didn’t actually exist.

FOUR

[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]

AS THE OTHERS MOVED TO STAND BEHIND KRIS, it became obvious that some ears were less pointed and some hair less blatantly great. Lined up in order, the seven would have looked like time lapse photography—from almost human to full elf.

Claire’s eyes widened. “They’re Bystanders.”

“Maybe once,” Diana agreed, watching one of them flick a brilliant red braid wound through with neon tubing back over his shoulder, “but not now. This place is changing them.” Feeling like a turtle stuck on its back, she tried to stand, struggling against the weight of the backpack. When Kris grinned and held out a hand, she accepted it gratefully. The elf’s grip was warm and dry, surprisingly callused and remarkably strong; Diana found herself lifted effortlessly to her feet.

“You’re ’bout right for walkin’ on the weird side,” Kris observed as Diana reluctantly released her hand, “but your…sister?”

Both Keepers nodded. Probably because of the Lineage, the family resemblance had always been strong.

“Well, she’s a little old for this sort of thing.”

Diana hid a smile as she helped a glowering Claire stand. Since Dean and the seven-year age difference, the whole age thing had become a sensitive point.

“And, no offense,” Kris continued, “but you’re both too well fed.”

“Too well fed for what?” Claire demanded, smoothing her skirt over her thighs.

“For livin’ rough.”

“That’s because we haven’t been.”

“Totally obvious they didn’t fall in off the street,” the redhead snorted.

“No, we didn’t.” Diana agreed, breaking in before Claire’s tone got them into trouble. “We came here deliberately.”

That got everyone’s attention.

A very pale blond with eyes so light only the pupils showed, stepped forward.“You can do that? Come here deliberately?”

“Well, duh.” A boy who might have been East Indian jabbed him with the end of his slingshot. “They’re here.”

“Well, duh, maybe they’re lying.”

“Yeah? Maybe you’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a…”

“Colin. Teemo.”

Names held power. Whether Kris had known that before or had discovered it after crossing, she certainly knew it now. The argument stopped cold, both boys looking sheepish at suddenly being the center of attention.

“We can cross deliberately,” Diana said into the sudden silence. “Not everybody can.”

“How?”

“Did we get here?”

“Yeah. That. And why did you come? And who the hell are you?”

Diana exchanged a speaking glance with Claire. If the, well, elves—for lack of a better word—could still swear with impunity, then they were influencing the Otherside on a subconscious level only. However they’d changed, they remained Bystanders, and the Lineage worked very hard at keeping Bystanders unaware of their existence.

“Your Summons,” Claire murmured. “Your choice.”

“The Rules…”

“Diana, there’s a sign in that shoe store window advertising ruby slippers for half off. Unless they’re trying to attract the Otherside drag queen business, I’d say that the Rules have already been twisted pretty far out of shape.”

“O–kay.” Claire had been a total Rule follower her entire life. Dean had obviously loosened her up a lot more than Diana had suspected.Bad, bad mental image. Think about…

Kris folded her arms and glared. Her expression promised violence if she didn’t get an answer soon.

Yeah, that works.“My name is Diana. This is Claire. That’s Sam. Essentially, we’re a sort of wizard called a Keeper.”

“We’re not wizards,” Claire sighed.

“Okay,” Diana muttered sotto voice, not the least surprised Claire’d had to stick her two cents in regardless of what she’d said about choices and whose they were. “You explain to themall elves exactly what we are in three thousand words or less.”

Claire’s eyes narrowed, then she sighed again. “Essentially,” she told their fascinated audience, “we’re wizards. It’s our job to make sure that metaphysical balances are kept.”

“That the magical stuff between the worlds doesn’t go out of whack,” Diana clarified as half a dozen pairs of eyes stared at them blankly.

Kris shook her head, dreadlocks bouncing.“You’re wizards?”

“Essentially wizards,” Claire amended reluctantly.

“They’re wizards,” Sam snorted. “I’m a cat.”

“Right.” Kris acknowledged him with a quick smile and turned her attention back to the Keepers. “Well, since you’re here and since we’re here and since our candle throwin’ friends with the negative number IQs are here and since this is a fuckin’shopping mall, I’m guessin’ that the magical stuff between the worlds is way whacked.”

“Good guess.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not stupid.”

“Kris.” One of the others, a skinny, dark-haired, androgynous kid probably no more than fifteen jumped the barricade. “The meat-minds have retreated back past the food court.”

“Thanks, DK. All right, the rest of you go back to what you were doing before Jo gave the alarm. Me and Will’ll take these guys in to Arthur.” She jerked her head down the concourse toward the anchor store at the far end. “Let’s go.”

Will turned out to be the redhead.

“Actually,” Claire announced in a tone that suggested she’d neither forgotten nor forgiven the earliertoo old and too well fed observation,“we’ve got to get back to the other end of the mall. We appreciate your assistance, but we have a job to do here.”

Kris shrugged.“So do I. And my job says I take new people in to see Arthur.”

“Claire…”

“Diana?”

She flashed Kris a smile, grabbed Claire’s arm, and yanked her close enough to mutter into her ear. “I know that time is a factor, I mean, it ismy Summons and all, but these guys are a factor, too, because whoever’s running this segue isn’t going to be able to finish it while they’re still here. I mean, we weren’t expecting indigenous life.”

“They aren’t indigenous!”

“Maybe they didn’t used to be, but they are now.”’

“All right, fine.” Claire pulled her arm free. “But if this thing goes critical while we’re talking…”

“Then we’ll be in the right place because it can’t go critical until the forces of darkness attack and destroy this last bastion of the light.”

“The forces of darkness are throwing scented candles!”

“Yeah, but they’re throwing them really hard. And besides, you know as well as I do how fast things can change on the Otherside.” Diana patted Claire’s bare shoulder in a comforting sort of way and turned back to Kris. “So, take us to your leader. Heis your leader, right?”

Claire sighed.“Well, if he isn’t, you’ve just wasted that line.”

“Heis our leader,” Kris told them, and this time when she indicated they should start moving, there was very little room for arguing with the gesture.

As the Keepers stepped away from the barricade and Sam jumped down to walk between them, Will fell in on one side, Kris on the other. They were clearly being escorted. Diana decided to think of it as an honor guard.

“So,” she prodded after a moment. “This Arthur; what’s he like?”

Kris glanced over at her and shrugged.“Not like us.”

“Like you are or like you were?”

“What’s the diff?”

“You know; the whole ears, thick flowing tresses thing.”

“The what?”

Bystanders could lie to Keepers; they just couldn’t get away with it. Kris honestly didn’t know what Diana was talking about. Apparently their perception of themselves had changed as they had changed. Now why they’d changed the way they had; that was a whole different question without an answer. “Never mind, it’s not important. So, howis Arthur different from you?”

“He came from outside.”

“Outside?” Diana was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

“Yeah, outside the mall.” Kris waved to the tall, slender girl standing guard at the intersection of the main concourse and the short hall leading to one of the outside doors. “We don’t know how he got in, ’cause we can’t get out, but he understands this place. He keeps us together; he made us strong. We were getting our asses kicked by all sorts of strange shit until he showed up.”

“And he made you the captain of his guard?”

“Yeah. He did. You got a problem with that?”

“No. Of course not. You’re obviously really good at it and you, you know, you’re in charge and um…”Babble much? She’s going to think you’re an idiot. Get a grip! Diana took a deep breath and ignored Claire’s raised eyebrow. “So, were you the first one who crossed over?”

A muscle jumped in Kris’ jaw. “Second.”

Something in her tone made Diana remember all the things Austin had listed that were worse than BAM. Splat. Crunch. Grind. Chew. For some reason, especially chew.

They were heading toward the large department store at what had been the west end of the mall. Cosmetic counters had been stacked on their sides to make a solid wall across all but a small section of the store’s wide entrance. A nod of Kris’s head and Will lounged in the opening.

“Just so you know,” Claire said, delivering a speaking look to her sister, “you can’t hold us.”

Kris shrugged.“Just so’syou know, I’m not planning on it. But I believe in coverin’ my ass, just in case.”

“Of what?”

“Whatever.” She led Diana, Claire, and Sam into a large open area where the faint, antagonistic scents of a dozen different perfumes lingered, told them to wait, and disappeared between two racks of plus size winter coats.

“You know they might be able to hold us,” Diana murmured, with a quick glance at Will’s back. “This being the Otherside and all. If there’s enough of them wanting us held…”

“You were the one who wanted to see their leader. I just think we should go in from a position of strength.”

“They had to rescue us from walking cat food throwing scented candles,” Sam pointed out, tail lashing as he paced the perimeter. “Oh, yeah, that’s a position of strength.”

Claire glared at the cat.

Diana punched her lightly on the arm.“Missing Austin?”

Claire shifted her glare up and over. After a moment, she sighed.“Yes. A lot. I hope he’s all right.”

“Don’t worry, he’s with Dean. On second thought, worry about Dean.”

“Very funny. I’m sure Austin will be a huge help to Dean at the guest house.”

“You’re delusional. You know that, right?”

Claire smiled tightly.“It helps when you work with cats.”

They watched Sam explore nooks and crannies they couldn’t see and listened to the distant sound of someone beating a drum kit to death with a couple of guitars and an electronic keyboard.

“So, Arthur,” Diana said at last, rubbing her nose and moving away from a particularly strong patch of Phobia™ for Men. “He came in from outside the mall to bring them together and make them strong.”

“The name could be a coincidence.”

“Oh, please.”

Claire sighed as deeply as the weight of her backpack allowed.“They needed a leader; he’s what their subconscious created.”

Fur between his eyes folded into a darker orange“w,” Sam frowned up at them both. “Do you guys know this Arthur?”

“Notthis Arthur, but he’s just the sort of opportunistic archetype who’d show up in this kind of story. And you never just get him, do you?” Her own brow furrowed, Diana folded her arms.

“We should be glad they’re not a little younger,” Claire reminded her. “Or we might have been dealing with Peter Pan.”

“Yeah, but they’ve turned themselves into elves. Wouldn’t Oberon make more sense?”

“I doubt this lot’s read much Shakespeare, but you have; you’d honestly rather deal with Oberon?”

Diana considered it for a moment.“Okay, good point. Ass ears; not a great look. But still, that whole Immortal King crap just gets up my nose. Follow me, serve me, love me…gag me!”

“Your opinion aside, Arthur is a nice, classic, archetypal answer to a leadership dilemma.”

*

Arthur turned out to be a tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped young man in his late teens with startlingly blue eyes and a wild shock of blue-black hair that kept falling attractively forward over his face in spite of a silver circlet.

“Okay,” Claire said slowly as they walked toward him, drawn by the brilliant, perfect white crescent of his smile. “So he’s a niceanime archetypal answer to a leadership dilemma.”

“And we can be grateful they’re becoming elves, not Pok?mon,” Diana added.

Dressed in black and silver—jeans, boots, T-shirt, leather jacket, lots of buckles—and wearing a very large sword across his back, he waited for them in the electronics section of the department store. The sword, at least, should have looked out of place. It didn’t.

A burgundy leather sofa and two matching chairs, heavy on the rivets, defined three sides of the space. Under the furniture, was a square of carpet patterned in shades of gray. The fourth side was a massive, rear projection television—its screen a reflective black. The mere lack of accessible electricity wouldn’t have been enough to keep the TV off had enough of the mall elves wanted it on but, subconscious desires or not, the programming would have been beyond their control. Diana had seen a TV in one of the bleaker Otherside neighborhoods that showed nothing but reruns ofThree’s Company. Next to the Girl Guide camp, it was as close to actually being in Hell as she ever wanted to get.

There was no sign of Arthur’s usual entourage and although the coffee table had smoothed corners, it could in no way be called round.

“When Kris said that a pair of Keepers had crossed over, I thought the news was too good to be true,” Arthur announced, moving to meet them as they stepped onto the carpet. “And yet, here you are.” He looked so pleased that Diana found herself grinning foolishly in response. A quick glance over at Claire showed she was having much the same reaction.

“Sire? About some us heading out scavenging?”

“Of course.” Arthur nodded toward the Keepers. “If you’ll excuse me.” When he turned his attention to Kris, it seemed almost as though the lights had dimmed.

Oh, great. Diana scowled at her reflection in the television.That’s so notgood.

Wait a minute, the lights havedimmed.

She glanced up at the ceiling. The huge frosted squares over the fluorescent tubes were becoming distinctly gray.“Claire…”

“I see it. I think this store is almost real and the mall in the real world is closing down for the day.”

They were right under one of the emergency lights. As the rest of the store filled with shadows, the area defined by the sofa, the chairs, and the television remained, if not bright, at least lit.“But it’s barely midafternoon.”

“A little past.” Claire thrust her wrist and watch into Diana’s line of sight. Six fifteen. The second hand swept around the dial almost too fast to see. Six sixteen. Seventeen.

*

“Give me one good reason why I should feed you anything different than I would if Claire were here?” Dean demanded, lifting Austin off the table and out of his supper.

“Claire’s not here.”

He thought about that for a moment then cut the cat some cold beef.“Okay. Good reason.”

*

“But time was running one to one when you checked at the Emporium.”

Claire nodded toward Arthur, who was still speaking quietly with Kris.“I think he’s a time distortion. He’s pure Otherside. Whoever’s running this segue can’t control him.”

“Yeah, but they clearly can’t control theelves either.”

*

“It’s June.” Austin settled himself in tea cozy position on the coffee table. “Why are they still playing hockey?”

“Because they’re not finished.”

“You know, the world made a lot more sense when I was young.”

Dean twisted the cap off a beer and toasted his reluctant companion.“Oh, yeah, I’ll drink to that.”

*

“They had no trouble controlling the elves before Arthur showed up. Kris said they were getting their asses kicked.”

“Okay, so these kids get caught in the segue, but it happened over time, so the darkness had to know about it, which means it has to want them here to…” Diana glanced around at the department store, complete to the sale banners hanging from the ceiling. “…to help define this end of the mall—which is where they’d end up, running from the darkside at the other end. The darkness figures it can remove them easily enough before the segue’s complete, but it doesn’t count on them banding together and being able to bring in outside help. Darkness underestimates Bystanders, the latest in a continuing series. But it must have realized that Arthur was a threat to its plans—so why hasn’t it moved to destroy him and his merry men?”

“Watch it, you’re mixing archetypes.”

“So? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I can think of a dozen really bad movies that essentially answer your question,” Claire told her in a low voice. “And bits from any of them could show up if you’re not more careful!”

Diana shuddered and checked out the surrounding shadows. So far, they seemed clear of movie clich?s. “Sorry. But I’d still like to know what the darkness is waiting for.”

“Maybe it’s not waiting. Maybe it’s just that the other end of the mall’s running a lot slower than this end.”

Time was relative, sure, but the Otherside took it to extremes.“Given your vast years of experience, what are the odds that our presence acts like a catalyst for a little localized Armageddon?”

“Pretty good.”

“How good?”

Before Claire could answer, Arthur clapped Kris on the shoulder and sent her on her way. Forgetting Armageddon, Diana watched her leave, watched the swing of her hips and the movement of her hair against her back until she disappeared around a corner. Then she stared at the corner as though wanting could make the other girl come back. Actually wantingcould make her come back. As Kris reappeared, looking confused, Diana forced herself to think of other things.

Like being overrun by the forces of darkness.

On second thought, let’s not think too hard about thateither.

“Come, drop your gear. Sit and we will speak together.” Arthur’s voice was deep and a little rough. It was a voice that spoke of fairness and trust and responsibility and the kind of values people always said they were looking for but never much liked once they found them.

He sounds just like the kind of guy you’d buy a new operating system from, Diana realized suddenly.And he sounds a lot older than he looks. Which he is. Thus the immortal part of that whole Immortal King thing. Duh. Still, losing the backpack seemed like the best idea anyone had had in days. Diana let it slide down her arms, caught it just before it was about to drop, and fell back gratefully onto one end of the sofa.

“Here, let me help.” Arthur stepped forward and lifted Claire’s pack off her shoulders. He showed no surprise at the weight, merely settling it to one side as Claire thanked him.

Stronger than he looks, Diana noted.Just another piece of the whole, too good to be true, package.

He waited until Claire and Sam were sitting before shoving his sword back out of the way and sprawling bonelessly over one of the armchairs. Archetype or not, he still sat like a teenage boy.

A teenage boy with a big honkin’ sword.

“Will you take refreshment?” He waved at a stack of juice boxes.

“No, thanks.” Diana pulled a bottle of water and Sam’s saucer out of a side pocket. “We brought our own. We’re not staying,” she added, as Arthur began to frown. “And we’d just as soon not have our ears sharpened.”

*

Wrapping himself in his tail, Austin glared up at Dean.“Just so we’re both clear on this, no cuddling.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be sleeping on Claire’s pillow, then.” Setting his glasses carefully on the bedside table, Dean reached up and turned off the light. “Suppose I wake up lonely and confused?”

“Lonely, confused, andlipless if you come anywhere near me.”

“No tongue…”

“Because I’ll have ripped it out and batted it under the bed!”

“Good night, Austin.”

*

“Eating or drinking while we’re on this side, will make it more difficult for us to cross back,” Claire explained.

“I could be insulted that you refuse my hospitality, but you are of the Lineage, so I bow instead to your wisdom.” Suiting action to the words, he bowed where he sat and then straightened, flipping his hair back out of his face. His revealed expression was serious. “So, Keepers, whatare you doing here?”

Diana passed the water bottle to Claire and told the story of the bracelet one more time.

“I don’t remember your bits of the dialogue being quite so witty the first time I heard this,” Sam muttered.

Ignoring him, she told Arthur about the Emporium, the mirror, and the segue.

“That explains a great deal,” he said thoughtfully. “Whoever is behind this no doubt allowed my people through in order that their beliefs hasten the reality of the mall, figuring to pick them off when their usefulness was done.”

“Yeah, we think so, too.” Diana fought the urge to be unreasonably pleased that Arthur agreed with her.

“They can’t be happy that I have made them one people, strong and able to defend themselves.”

“No, they can’t—mostly because these sorts literally can’tbe happy. The best they can manage is triumphant glee.”

“In order to complete their plan, they must attack us in force and wipe us from their reality.”

He caught on fast. Diana reluctantly admitted she liked that in an archetype. It made for less exposition.“Yes, they must.”

“You must close the segue before this happens.”

“Duh.”

Arthur lifted a single brow.“I’m sorry?”

“We have every intention of closing the segue before anyone is hurt,” Claire explained, shooting Diana a look that promised a future lecture on the inappropriate use of the smart-ass response. “Unfortunately, the anchor’s hidden somewhere in the construction zone, and when we left the Emporium, we set off an alarm. The dark guards your…people call the meat-minds arrived before we could get to it.”

“And if that’s not enough happy happy,” Diana broke in, “we can’t seem to influence that end of the mall, so we’re going to have to go into the construction zone through the access corridor.”

“Darkness has more deadly servants than the meat-minds patrolling the access corridors,” Arthur said quietly.

Claire nodded.“We heard some—or one—right after we crossed over.”

“Some of themare large,” Arthur admitted, pensively rubbing a buckle between thumb and forefinger. “Some are smaller but dangerous still. We’ve barricaded them out of our territory, but I fear they stay away more out of their desire than ours.”

“They don’t push because, so far, they don’t want to, not because they’re afraid of you?”

“Of me and my people, yes.”

“That’s not good.” Which, given the situation, was pretty much a gimme. Diana glanced up as the ceiling lights came on, glanced down to note that Claire’s watch was still keeping speedy time, and decided not to worry about it. “So, about your people; from what Kris said about living rough, I’m guessing no one’s going to miss any of them back home?”

“Until they came here, they had no home.” Releasing the buckle, he curled his hand into a fist. “They are the unwanted youth of your world. Rootless and wanting to be elsewhere. With the shadow mall in place, it took only the opening of a door to cross over. Most of them crossed when leaving the public washroom by the food court.”

“Oh, yeah, public washrooms,” Diana snorted. “Always an adventure. The food court would put them pretty close to the Emporium and a whole bunch of the bad stuff.”

“This is why not all of them survived.” He studied all three of them for a long moment, his pellucid gaze moving unhurriedly from Keeper to Keeper to cat. “You told them you are wizards,” he said at last, the sentence falling between question and accusation.

Diana’s tone sharpened in response to the later. “Keepers, wizards—it seemed the simplest explanation since it’s essentially true.”

“Essentially,” Claire muttered under her breath.

“Essentially?” Arthur repeated. “Are you saying then that Merlin was of the lineage?” Full lips twisted up into a half smile.

“Sorry, classified. But speaking of Merlin…” Diana leaned left and peered past the television, searching the shadows around the stacks of boxed DVD players. “…don’t you usually come with a side of fries?”

Azure eyes blinked.“What?”

“Yeah, what?” Sam turned around on her lap, fabric bunching under anchoring claws, and stared up at her. “Even I didn’t get that one.”

“Extras. Baggage. Bad choices. Betrayal.” Diana sighed. “I could go on, but we all know the story. No Lancelot? No Guinevere?”

“Not so far.” Arthur looked pleased with himself and remarkably young. “I think I managed to ditch them this time. That whole star-crossed lovers thing—definitely getting tedious.”

“Tedious?”

When he nodded, Diana shook her head.“Nice try. But isn’t it part of what makes you Arthur?”

“Not in the oldest stories. In the oldest stories, I make one people out of a number of warring tribes and then lead them out to face a common foe. All the sex? You can blame that on the French.”

“Actually, we can’t; it’s a Canadian thing. And,” Claire continued in her bestI’m a Keeper and you aren’t voice,“none of that’s important. What’s important is that we close this segue down before there’s an open access into our world and before your people are…”

“Crunched?” Sam offered helpfully.

“I was going to say ‘attacked’, but ‘crunched’ works. Maybe a little too well…” She started to stand. “Which means…”

“We’re going to need your help.”

Dropping back onto the sofa, Claire glared at her sister.“What?”

Diana shifted around to meet Claire’s glare. The protest had been expected, an argument had been prepared. “These guys know every accessible inch of this mall. Plus, they know the safest way into the access corridors, what to expect when we’re there, and how to avoid it.”

“They’re Bystanders!”

“So’s Dean.”

“Iknew you were going to bring him up.”

“Who’s Dean?” Arthur asked.

“Something you can’t blame on the French,” Sam snickered.

Arthur looked confused, but both women ignored the feline non sequitur with practiced ease.

“Dean has nothing to do with this, Diana.” Eyes narrowed, Claire punctuated her protest with a stabbing finger. “I agreed to exchange information, but I draw the line at bringing Bystanders any further into our business.”

“First, it’s my Summons, so it’s my line. Second, this is totally their business. This is their world now, they’ve changed too much to go home, and they have a right to defend themselves. Their best defense…” She spread both hands. “…and I’m willing to bet that it’s their only defense—is helping us to close this thing down before the bad guys make their move. Considering how complete things look—time shifts or no time shifts—that move can’t be too far off.”

“My scouts have reported more activity in enemy territory,” Arthur allowed.

Diana jerked around to stare at him.“You havescouts?”

“Not the scary kind,” he reassured her. “No shorts, no apples.”

“Good.”

*

“Where were you?” Austin demanded as Dean closed the front door.

“Where I told you I was going, playing ball with some friends. Just like I do every Sunday afternoon.” Tossing his glove onto the counter, he headed for the kitchen. “The answering machine was on, and you were asleep.”

“Well, I woke up and I was hungry.”

“I left you a bowl of dry.” Something crunched underfoot and Dean noticed the kibble spread evenly over the floor. “Which you obviously found. You think you could have caudled things up any more?”

“This is a big place,” Austin reminded him. “But before you start looking, how about feeding me.”

*

Head to one side, hair falling attractively, Arthur studied the Keepers.“If we have battle coming—which I’d be a fool to deny—why should I split my strength by helping you?”

“When we remove the anchor and close the segue,” Diana told him, peeling her bare thighs one at a time off the leather and scooting to the edge of the sofa, “we’ll be able to influence the other end of the mall. Our influence could save your butts.”

“Even though our influence would betotally subconscious,” Claire added.

Diana waved off the warning.“And besides, you said it yourself, it’s part of your original raisin of the day—you make one people out of a number of warring tribes and then you lead them out to face a common foe.”

“Raisin of the day?”

“I assume she meansraison d’etre.”

“Hey, I’m trying to keep the French out of it. We don’t need Arthur’s baggage finally making it through customs.”

Arthur glanced around uneasily.“Could that happen?”

“Keepers. Otherside.” Diana shrugged. “Anything could happen.”

A siren shrieked out on the concourse.

In the heartbeat of silence that followed, Claire and Sam turned to stare at Diana.

“What? I didn’t do it!”

On his feet and running full out between one moment and the next, Arthur charged past them, clearing Electronics in three long strides and disappearing between the racks of winter coats.

“You know that question about us being a catalyst?” Claire snarled, swinging her pack up onto one shoulder. “This answer it?”

“Unfortunately!” Grabbing her own pack in both hands, Diana pounded after Arthur, Claire behind her, Sam taking the high road over the furniture to end up leading the way.

Chaos filled the concourse. Meat-minds, some wearing a fine dusting of ceramic cherub, lumbered after the more limber mall elves. Arthur leaped forward, shouting orders and using his sword like a baton to direct a reorganized defense. Claire and Diana rocked to a halt in the entrance to the store.

Sam skidded out into the battle, claws scrabbling for purchase against the slick tile floor. When a massive foot slammed down in his path, he let his slide close the distance, bumping up against an enormous instep, sinking claws deep into gnarled flesh. Finally able to control his momentum, he pushed off and raced back to Diana’s side.

“You okay?”

Ears saddled, he looked as though he was trying to back away from his own feet.“Word of advice, don’t stick your claws in those things!”

The meat-mind ignored him, pounding off after the tiny female elf in the PVC corset.

“I thought those things got easily discouraged?” Diana protested.

Claire pointed to a tall, slender figure in black armor. The red plume on his helm bobbed over the battle.“Meet their motivation.”

The figure turned to meet Arthur’s charge.

“A dark elf?”

“Given what the kids are turning into, it almost makes sense.” On one knee beside her pack, Claire rummaged out her bag of prepared possibilities.

“It looks like the barricade at the stairs is intact,” Diana told her, yanking a bulging belt pouch out from under the half a dozen cans of cat food in her pack. “They must have come through another way.”

“The access corridors?”

“No. Arthur said they’re guarded. Someone would’ve given the alarm.”

A pair of charging meat-minds crashed to the floor for no apparent reason. A pepper grinder in one hand, Claire glared at Diana.

“Totally subconscious, I swear; they just lookreally clumsy!” Here and now, she wasn’t going to risk feedback. It was one thing to break a Rule with only her own life hanging in the balance, it was another entirely to risk Claire and Sam and a group of teenagers she’d only just met. With a powerful enemy on site, any power she released would, at the very least, be sucked up and used against them. Definitely embarrassing. Probably fatal.

One of the meat-minds stepped on its own hand as the two she’d dropped scrambled to their feet. It bellowed in pain and swung what looked like a plastic tote bag at its companion, knocking it down again. One of the mall elves darted in, wielding an aluminum baseball bat, and it stayed down.

“You’ve got to like the kid’s enthusiasm.”

“I don’t have to like anything about this,” Claire snapped. “I’m going to try and take a few of those things out. You find out where they’re coming from and close the door!” Waving the pepper shaker, she plunged into the fight.

“How is seasoning going to help?” Sam demanded as Diana buckled the belt pouch around her waist.

“Peppercorns are seeds.” She stuffed the wand into a pocket, just in case. “Seeds carry certain distinct possibilities.” A running dive took her past a meat-mind’s outstretched arms. “Claire has hers rigged for sleep,” she grunted, sliding into one of the plastic wood planters.

“But why pepper?” Sam jumped up onto the planter’s edge.

“Except for the Minute Rice, it was the only seed Dean had in the kitchen and Minute Rice comes with that unfortunate time restriction.” Scrambling to her feet, she joined the cat and took a moment to study the battle. The clash of blade against blade and the distinctly less musical clash of aluminum against meat, echoed under the twenty-foot ceilings. From her vantage point, she could see that the meat-minds in the main concourse were fighting in a random pattern, but by the entrance to the short hall—the one leading to the entrance where Claire’d left Dean way back when—they all faced one way. Into the concourse. Even the bulky body stretched flat at Kris’ feet and being efficiently bludgeoned pointed in the same direction.

Then, between one swing and the next, a meaty hand snaked out and closed around a slender ankle.

Kris’ next swing went wide.

Then the meat-mind was on its feet and Kris was swinging, dreadlocks sweeping back and forth across the floor.

*

Darting into the melee, Claire pounded one of the meat-minds on the shoulder—given the location, it was probably a shoulder. When it turned, she ground fresh pepper into its face. It looked affronted, then blinked onyx eyes, scrunched up its nose, and sneezed, covering Claire in a dripping patina of snot before falling backward to the floor.

Teemo, his orange-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt clutched in bratwurst-sized fingers, went down with it.“Is it dead?” he panted, bracing red hightops against the meat-mind’s stained sweat suit and yanking himself free.

“No,” Claire spat, scrubbing at her face with the hem of her skirt. “Asleep.”

“Bummer.” Switching to a two-handed grip, he set about changing that.

Given her sudden, desperate need for a shower, Claire wasn’t at all surprised when the sprinklers went off.

*

“Geez, these guys are clumsy,” Diana muttered, as she ran. “Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy.” But it was hard to hold the thought when the only thing she could see was Kris dangling by one foot. Her mouth might be saying clumsy, but her brain kept insisting,don’t stop her.

Closely followed by:Would you stop whaling on it! You’re just pissing it off!

Closely followed by:I guess that answers the‘do they or don’t they’ genitalia question. as Kris’ flailing bat impacted between the creature’s legs with no effect.

Its knees were significantly more sensitive.

Howling in pain, it whipped Kris twice around its head then threw her toward the concourse.

Diana rocked to a halt, spun around as Kris sailed by, yanked open her pouch, and broke a lime-green feather in half.

The mall elf floated gently to the floor as the sprinklers came on.

A tote bag whistled past Diana’s head fast enough to part her hair, the letters on the bag a red-on-white blur. Heart pounding, she raced past the furious meat-mind while it struggled to recover its balance, the force of the swing having nearly tipped it over.

“Diana! Over here!” Sam paced in front of the optical shop, tail lashing marmalade lines in the air. “Something’s happening!”

Inside the store, a multicolored fog had begun to swirl.

A familiar multicolored fog.

Diana skidded to a stop by Sam’s side. “The travel agency?” All of a sudden, the whole attack made a horrible kind of sense. The red plume on the dark elf’s helm, the tote bags. The darkside had chartered a trip into the mall elves’ territory. “Who’s comingup with this stuff!” she snarled, reaching back into her pouch.

“Hurry!”

As the fog grew thicker, a familiar trio of shapes began to take form.

“Not this time, bologna for brains.”

As the three meat-minds charged toward the door, Diana dropped to her knees and slammed a key down on the threshold. Slamming into the barrier with enough force to vibrate glass all the way to the exit, they bounced back into the fog and disappeared. It was probably imagination that provided the crash of impact at the travel agency, one level down and a quarter of a kilometer away.

“You sure that’ll hold them?” Sam demanded, looking dubious as he checked out the key.

“Hey, when I lock a door, it stays locked.” She rocked back on her heels and stood. “Why aren’t you wet?”

“Why should I be?”

“The sprinklers…”

He stared up at her, amber eyes challenging.

“…never mind.”

A quick run back to the end of the hall.

Out on the concourse, about two thirds of the meat-minds were down, those parts of their faces not being covered by the impact of baseball bats, covered in fresh ground pepper. Claire sat slumped against the art supply store, cradling one arm. Scattered, brightly colored heaps marked fallen elves, Kris and Colin weaving among them pulling downed comrades to safety.

Wet blades glistening, Arthur and the dark elf fought on.

As Diana stepped forward, Arthur danced sideways to avoid a lunge and tripped over a discarded tote bag.

He began to fall. His sword rose to block a descending blow, but the angle was wrong and everyone could see it.

The Immortal King was about to die.

A simple“no” could prevent disaster.

Diana could feel the word rising.

But that“no” could provide the enemy with power enough to complete the segue.

She had nothing in her pouch, nothing that might…

The wand. The wand belonged on the Otherside.

Yanking it from her pocket, Diana pointed the pink star at the dark elf, tried very hard not to think of how stupid this had to look, and opened herself up to extreme possibilities.

The sudden spray of pink power froze him in place, his dark sword no more than a centimeter from Arthur’s throat. Glistening lines raced over his armor, connected the water droplets, and flared into a rose-white light too bright to look at.

When the light finally faded and everyone had blinked away the aftereffects, the dark elf was gone.

The few meat-minds still standing threw themselves over the barrier to the lower level, landing five meters down with a disconcerting splat.

“Wicked.”

Diana turned to see Kris smiling at her admiringly.

“And thanks for that, you know, feather thing.”

Diana would have liked to have spent a moment basking in Kris’ admiration, but the wand dropped from numb fingers and a heartbeat later she followed it to the floor, not entirely certain if she wanted to puke or pass out. Unable to decide, she did both.

*

Dean brushed his palm over a depleted spray of lime-green feathers and sighed.“Austin, what happened to my feather duster?”

“Don’t look at me.”

“I thought you knew everything.”

“I do.” Rolling over, he exposed his other flank to the square of sunlight. “I just don’t want you to look at me.”

FIVE

[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]

“IT’S BEEN THREE DAYS.”

“Four,” Austin corrected morosely from his place on the counter. “They left Saturday, it’s now Tuesday.”

“They left at nine-thirty Saturday morning. It’s only eight forty-five.” Dean expertly worked the broom into a corner of the office, capturing an elusive clump of cat hair. “Technically, it hasn’t been four days.”

“You’re amazingly anal about a lot of things, aren’t you?”

“If I’m going to do something, I’m after being accurate.”

Austin sighed and dropped his chin down onto his front paws.“You missed a spot.”

Dean bent to push the broom under the desk. He knew he was displacing his anxiety, but even the hand-waxed shine on the old hardwood floor seemed less, well, shiny than it had.“I miss Claire.”

“I miss her more,” the cat muttered.

“I’m not arguing.” Mostly because he’d finally learned there was no point in arguing with a cat but also because, in this particular instance, there really wasn’t anything to argue about. Austin probably did miss Claire more than he did. The two of them had been through a lot together over the last seventeen years. In fact, given what the three of them had been through over the last nine months, Dean was willing to bet that “been through a lot” didn’t even begin to start covering the highlights of the previous sixteen years.

Straightening, he glanced over at the counter.“I bet you’ve got a lot of great memories.”

“Great memories, good memories, and a few ‘holy crap I can’t believe we survived that’ memories,” Austin agreed. “But don’t get your hopes up, broom boy; I’m not sharing stories of what a cute little Keeper Claire was. Nothing against you personally, it’s just not something cats do.”

“Why not?”

One black ear flicked disdainfully.“Hey, I don’t write the rules.”

“You don’t even follow the rules,” Dean pointed out, frowning down at a set of parallel scratches gouged out by the desk chair. “Before Claire went in, she said they could be in there for a couple of days. We’re already past that estimate.”

“True. But they could still come out yesterday.”

That was enough to pull Dean’s complete attention from the floor. “What?”

“Time on the Otherside runs differently: four days here isn’t necessarily four days there, so they could come out at any time.”

“What?”

Austin sighed and sat up.“If they can come out any time,” he reiterated slowly and distinctly, “then as long as they don’t come out before they left, they can come out yesterday.”

“But we’ve already lived yesterday and part of today without them.”

“Doesn’t matter, we won’t know that we did. This particular reality will simply disappear, a new reality with Claire and Diana and that orange thing replacing it and becoming the only reality.”

“Really?”

“Nah. I’m just messing with your head.” He looked significantly more cheerful than he had for days. “Once time’s been used, it’s done. Nobody wants time with turned-over corners and pencil scribbles in the margins.”

“Do cats get senile?” Dean asked the room at large. When the room didn’t answer, which around the guest house wasn’t always a given, he knelt to whisk the pile of dirt and cat hair—mostly cat hair—onto a dustpan. Still on his knees, he heard the outside door open and half a dozen peopletromp in. Without wiping their feet. Wondering why Newfoundlanders seemed to be the only people in Canada who grasped the concept of not tracking dirt inside, he called, “I’ll be right there.” He spilled the dustpan into the garbage and stood.

A young woman waited in the lobby, half leaning on the counter and stroking Austin. Tied back off her face with a ribbon, her shoulder-length hair was so black the highlights were blue. Her skin was very pale, her fingers amazingly so against Austin’s fur, and her lips were a dark red…red as blood. Dean looked out the window and once he was certain the sun hadn’t set early and no unscheduled total eclipse had darkened the sky, he exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The continuing presence of daylight came as a distinctrelief. He had nothing against vampires in general, but they always drew groupies and those guys just weirded him right out.

He smiled what Claire called his innkeeper smile.“Can I help you?”

“We were wondering if you had rooms available.”

We? Dean leaned forward and found himself staring down at seven muscular men in shorts and tank tops. The largest of them barely cracked four feet tall.“Uh, we only have six rooms and they’re all doubles…”

She waved off his protest.“Not a problem. Four rooms are fine; we’re not made of money, so we’re used to sharing. It’s just we’ve been on the road all night and we’d like to catch some sleep before the game.”

“Game?”

“Yeah, we’re basketball players,” one of the men announced belligerently, weight forward on the balls of his feet as though daring Dean to make something of it.

“Okay.”

“They’re the Southern Ontario Midget Basketball champs,” the young woman announced proudly. “I’m their manager, Aurora King.”

Dean shook her hand.“Pleased to meet you.”

“We have an exhibition game this evening at the community center.” Leaning toward him, she dropped her voice and added, “If you can knock a little off your room rates, I’m sure I can score you some tickets.”

To a midget basketball game.Were people even allowed to say midget anymore? Dean wondered. Although all things considered, he had to assume Ms. King would know the politically correct…label? Word? Description? Realizing she was waiting for his answer, he shrugged. “Uh, sure.”

“Come on, come on, enough of the chitchat,” yawned a member of the team. “I’m so tired I’m going to sack out right here.”

“Low blood sugar,” snorted the young man standing beside him.

“Premed,” Aurora murmured as Dean pushed the registry toward her. “He diagnoses everything. Drives us nuts.” Her voice rose back to more generally audible levels. “You guys work out who’s sleeping where and with who.”

A strangled cough drew everyone’s attention to a redhead blushing almost the exact same shade as his hair.

“Lord fucking save us, the new guy’s shy,” muttered the first player who’d spoken.

Teasing the new guy kept everyone amused while Dean finished the paperwork and reached for the keys.“I’d just like to point out that there’s no smoking in the rooms.”

The entire team turned to stare at a diminutive blond.

He pushed short dreadlocks back off his face and shrugged.“Hey, man, I’m cool. No mellow the day of a game. I know the rules.”

“Strangely enough,” Aurora laughed as Dean’s eyebrows rose, “he’s one of the best guards we ever had.”

“That’s because I control my own space, Dude.”

After a short tussle over the keys and a little more teasing of the new guy, they started up the stairs. Six steps up, one of them sneezed violently.“I think I’m allergic to the damned cat.”

“Well, he won’t be in the damned room,” Aurora mocked, slipping her arm around the shoulders of the last man standing in the lobby. He wrapped his arm around her waist and they walked in lockstep up to the second floor.

“I’m guessing that one’s happy,” Austin murmured as they heard the fourth door close.

Dean removed his glasses and polished them against the hem of his T-shirt.“I’m not going there.”

“Probably wise.”

*

Struggling up through a pounding headache and the kind of nausea that made even breathing seem like a bad idea, Diana opened her eyes. The ceiling—a long, long way up—didn’t look familiar. Where was she? Mattress and pillow under her. Blanket over. She was obviously in a bed. In her underwear. So she’d been here for a while.

Her head flopped to the left and she could see a row of beds stretching off across a…store?

To the right, baby and toddler pajamas were twenty percent off.

Okay. Got it now. Otherside. Mall. Meat-minds. Mall elves. Battle. Wand. Ow.

The two nearest beds were also occupied. She identified Colin by his pale hair but didn’t know who the second wounded elf was.

Raising her head, she could see another row of beds facing the first. Since all the beds were made—bedding, aisle fifteen—she assumed the elves were using it as a dormitory slash infirmary.

“Hey. You’re awake.”

“Claire!” A strong hand behind her back helped her sit. The world tilted. “Bucket!”

A bucket appeared with an efficiency that suggested this was not the first time.

Legs crossed, Diana grasped the turquoise plastic sides firmly and bent over.

“I can’t believe you’ve still got that much in your stomach,” Claire murmured worriedly when Diana finally sat up.

“I don’t. We’re on the Otherside, remember?” Diana gratefully took the offered water, poured some into her mouth, rinsed, and spat. “I could be channeling it from anywhere. Why is everything on an angle?”

“I’m guessing that when you sat up, the world tilted. It’s been happening every time you vomit, but don’t worry, it settles down.”

“I hurl and the earth moves?”

“I know, just what you need, more ego reinforcement.” Eyes averted from the contents, Claire set the bucket into the lower cupboard of the bedside table and closed the door.

Diana thought about that for a moment and shuddered.“Uh, Claire…”

“Do you want to deal with it?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Well, I don’t want to deal with it either and that means we don’t have to. Next time it comes out of the cupboard, it’ll be a new bucket. Okay, once it was a new cauldron because a couple of the kids were hanging around, but, mostly, it’s a bucket.”

“Cauldron?”

“We’re wizards.”

“Right. Don’t cauldrons go with witches?”

“I suspect the kids were a little confused by that wand trick.” Arms folded, brow furrowed, Claire walked almost all the way to Baby and Toddler Pajamas, returned, and reluctantly continued. “And they were also impressed.”

“I get the impression you’re less impressed,” Diana sighed.

“When you used the wand to destroy the dark elf, it didn’t pull power from the possibilities, it pulled it from you.”

“No sh…kidding, Sherlock.” Throwing back the covers, Diana cautiously swung her legs out over the side of the bed. The world wobbled a bit but went no farther off center. “That certainly explains why I feel like I’ve been puked up and left to dry on the sidewalk. Do you think the wand wasa trap?”

“No, I think it was thrown together for the tourist trade with no real thought. It’d have little effect on a Bystander and a Bystander would have less effect on it, but a Keeper…”

“…it sucks dry.”

“It’s why you collapsed.”

“Yeah, I got that.” She glanced around for her clothes, saw them folded neatly on the end of the opposite bed, and sent a pleading look toward Claire.

“Are you sure you’re well enough?”

“My head’s pounding, but I don’t actually want or enjoy the feeling of my brain being ground between bricks, so I should be better soon.” It wasn’t until Claire picked up her shorts and T-shirt with her left hand that Diana realized her right arm was held tight against her chest. “You okay?”

Claire followed her gaze, flexed the fingers, and nodded.“I took a hit from one of those tote bags when the dark elf realized what I was doing with the pepper. It’s almost healed.”

“How long was I out?”

“About four hours.” Three words. A whole lot of feelings.

Diana reached out and touched her sister lightly on the shoulder.“I’m okay.”

“I know.”

“And if I wasn’t okay, it wouldn’t have been your fault.”

“I know.”

“I’m an active Keeper now, and I’m my own responsibility.”

“Iknow.”

“Okay, that last one sounded like you actually believed it.” Diana would have grinned, but it hurt to move the muscles of her face. “So give me a hug and let me get dressed. Since we seem to be stuck with him, I’d just as soon not appear before the Immortal King in my underpants and a sports bra.”

“You saved his life, he wouldn’t mind.” Claire pulled her into a fiery one-armed hug. “And you haven’t seen what his elves consider party wear,” she added, as they separated. Scrubbing away a tear, she nodded toward Diana’s clothes. “Although we do have the dignity of the Lineage touphold.”

“Right. Dignity.” Carefully, she pulled her shorts up over her hips. “So. Four hours. Big delay in our plans to close the segue. That’s not good.”

“No. The darkside may have lost the battle, but it won time, and it has to be pleased about that.”

“What about Colin and the other kid?”

“Colin took a tote bag to the forehead while he was dragging Alanyse to safety and Stewart got pounded against a wall.” Claire walked around to the end of the next bed and lightly laid a hand on the blanket covering Colin’s foot. “They’ll both be okay, though.”

“How do you figure?” Diana demanded, emerging from the

T-shirt with teeth clenched. Dragging the reinforced neck over her head had done nothing to help the brick-grinding-brain problem.

“Arthur’s convinced them that they can’t die. As long as they believe that, everything heals.”

“Nice if he could have convinced them they couldn’t get hurt.” A quick, careful search found her sandals under the edge of the bed.

“I think that’s beyond even his powers of persuasion. These kids came off the street and before that from places even less pleasant. Theyknow they can get hurt.”

“Good point. Hey, where’s Sam?”

“Sam’s fine. He’s out by the fire.”

That pulled Diana’s attention off her fight with a buckle. “Fire?”

“They have one every night. Here, let me get that before you vomit again.” Claire hiked up her skirt and knelt by Diana’s feet. “I don’t know how it started, but it’s become symbolic, so now it’s self sustaining.”

“Like the one at the Girl Guide camp?”

The older Keeper shuddered.“Different archetype, so let’s hope not.”

“I’m starving.”

“Hardly surprising, we missed lunch and it’s past time for supper. Come on, our packs are by the fire.”

“My pouch? The wand?”

“I put them away. You won’t be using the wand again, of course, but I thought it was safer in your pack than out where one of the kids might get to it.”

Diana didn’t see why if it would have little effect on a Bystander, but since her pack was still the best place for it, she didn’t argue. Nor did she argue about thatof course. It was an older sister thing and could safely be ignored. As things stood right now, she had no intention of using the wand again but, as her grade twelve sociology teacher used to say, change is the only constant. And the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. Dean had probably given them a polish on his way by.

The fire burned in a circular pit in the open area just inside the doors. There’d been no pit or even a sign of one earlier, but consistency frequently took a beating on the Otherside. They appeared to be burning charcoal briquettes, fake fireplace logs, and remaindered novelizations ofEverybody Loves Raymond. Apparently, everybody didn’t.

The party clothes Claire had mentioned seemed heavy on the high-heeled boots, leather, and lingerie. Had she ever thought about it, Diana would have said that a run of the mill, middle-class shopping mall wasn’t likely to carry PVC corsets—and she’d have been wrong. Gilded by the light from the leaping flames, it looked like the elves were about to break into a coed version of “Lady Marmalade.”

Arthur sat on the only chair in the circle of cushions. Although missing legs put it low enough to the ground that he had to cross his own legs in front of him, it still put him head and shoulders above everyone else. The fire reflected off his silver circlet and off the hilt of the sword thrusting up over his shoulder. He was gnawing on a drumstick and looking suitably barbaric until Diana noticed the red-and-white-striped bucket at his feet. The elves had apparently dared the food court.

A quick search spotted Sam perched on the lap of the tall, slender girl that Kris had signaled during their original walk down the concourse.

“He’s telling Kith everything that’s happened onBuffy since she crossed over,” Kris said suddenly by Diana’s shoulder. Diana tried not to shiver at the warm breath laving her neck. “Your cat watches too much TV.”

“Tell me about it. He hogs the remote, too.”

Sam’s ears flicked back at the sound of her voice, and an orange blur launched itself into the air. The background noise grew richer with the sound of Kith swearing in at least two languages as Diana’s arms filled with cat.

“You made me worry!” Amber eyes glared accusations at her.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t do it again!”

“Okay.”

“Now put me down!”

“Sure.” She kissed him behind one ear and stroked two fingers back over his head as she set him on the floor. Spinning around, he gave the side of her palm a couple of quick licks and then bit down—not quite drawing blood.

The moment his mouth was empty, he glared up at her.“I meant it when I said don’t do it again.”

“I know.”

He butted against her leg, hard enough to leave the imprint of his head as a purple-and-green bruise. Tail straight up in the air, a fuzzy orange exclamation mark, he stalked back around the fire.

“He’s gonna have to make with the apologizing. Kith loves her leather pants.”

“Cats don’t apologize,” Claire said, from Diana’s other side, her voice the voice of experience. “He’ll convince her the whole thing was her fault.”

“Yeah, but he…”

Diana cut the protest short.“It doesn’t matter.”

“If you say so.” Kris’ fingers were warm in the crook of her elbow. “Come on, himself wants to thank you.”

“What for?”

“Duh. Saving his ass and nearly killing yourself doing it.” Her grip tightened. “I’m with the cat on that bit. Don’t do it again!”

“Look, if another situation comes up…” The dark glare from the guard captain was very nearly more heated than Sam’s.Ohmygod, she cares! Nearly breathless, Diana maintained just enough self-control to shove her free hand into her pocket and cross her fingers.“Okay. Not doing it again.”

“Good. Because I’ll kick your ass if you do.”

Arthur tossed a bone onto the fire as they approached and rose fluidly up onto his feet, wiping greasy fingers on his jeans.

Immortal King. Teenage boy. Mixed messages, Diana sighed silently,that’s what’s wrong with the world. And while they weren’t strictly in the world, it was a universal kind of observation. Well, maybe not the Immortal King, teenage boy part but the rest of it.

A hush fell over the assembled mall elves. Arthur touched his right fist to his chest and inclined his head in a regal salute.“My heart rejoices to see you well again, Keeper. I thank you for your timely intervention. I very much regret you were injured for my sake.”

His words carried the weight of ritual. Diana felt her cheeks begin to heat and sternly told herself to get a grip. Keepers didn’t do liege lord stuff—totally independent contractors.She didn’t do liege lord stuff. The blood rising into her cheeks ignored her. Nothing to do but blame the color on the fire and make the best of things. “Hey, no big.” Her shrug was as nonchalant as the circumstances and the lingering effects of her headache allowed. “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”

“Then I thank you for your willingness to do the job.” His gesture included Claire in his gratitude. “We all thank you.”

On cue, the elves began to whoop, then one of them flipped on a boom box and the first track off The Melvin’sHostile Ambient Takeover ripped through the remaining silent spaces.

“Oh, yeah, that’s appealing. If they really wanted to thank us, they could find something that sounded like music,” Claire muttered.

Diana snorted.“Too old to appreciate the good stuff?”

“I’ll let you know when I hear some.”

“People who only listen to the CBC have no grounds for criticism.”

“I’m sure you’re both hungry,” Arthur interjected smoothly, his voice sliding through the ambient noise. One hand indicated the bucket of chicken. “I’d be honored if you’d join me.”

“We’d be pleased to eat with you,” Claire said while Diana swallowed an inconvenient mouthful of saliva cased by the rising scent of eleven different herbs and spices deep fried to an extra crispy goodness. “But as we mentioned before, we can only eat the food we brought with us.”

“I understand.” He sank down into his chair—a gold brocade wingback; the legs having very likely gone to fuel an earlier fire—and waved the two Keepers into the space on his right, empty but for two cushions, their packs, and a saucer.

“Sam couldn’t wait.” Claire kicked off her sandals, crossed her ankles, and descended gracefully. “I fed him while you were out.”

Diana dropped and sprawled, one hand digging in her pack for food before her butt hit the cushion.“I figured. I also figured a full stomach was the only thing keeping his fuzzy head out of the chicken.”

“It’s not actually chicken.” Both Keepers turned to stare at the cat. Backlit by the fire, his fur looked more red than orange. “I’m not even sure it’s some kind of bird.”

As one, the Keepers turned to stare at Arthur who shrugged and pulled out a wing that was just a little too large and folded one too many times.“Ittastes like chicken.”

“What doesn’t?” Diana muttered, biting into her tuna salad sandwich. Chewed. Swallowed. Scraped her tongue against her teeth. “Oops. My bad.”

Claire flicked a coral-colored fingernail through her chicken-flavored carrot sticks and sighed.“Try to be more careful.” She offered one to Sam who turned up his nose at it.

“I don’t care what it tastes like,” he sneered, “it’s still a carrot.”

On the other side of the fire, bodies leaped and twirled, flames burnishing hair, and skin, and jewelry. The moreelfin the dancer, the wilder the dance although even Jo, whose ears had barely begun to point, moved with both grace and abandon to the pounding music. It wasn’t the kind of dancing Diana was used to, that was for sure.

“Your face wears an interesting expression. What are you thinking?”

Her attention drawn back across the fire, Diana glanced up to find both Arthur and Kris watching her. The guard captain had settled a little forward of the Immortal King’s left hand in order to see around the edge of his chair. “Interesting?” she asked, trying to figure it out from the inside. There were, after all, a limited number of ways two eyes, a nose, and a mouth could combine.

“Speculative.”

“Okay.” It seemed to have something to do with eyebrows. “I was just thinking how much these guys would have livened up one of my high school dances. You know, the kind where the DJ’s playing a dance mix from whenhe was in school so the music’s all at least three years old and almost no one’s dancing and the jocks stand with the jocks and the geeks stand with the geeks and someone always shows up drunk and pukes in the hall and half the kids who think they’re taking ecstasy are really taking baby aspirin and actually…” She frowned. “…so are the other half because that’s why the ’rents force me to attend these things in the first place and the one guy who’s out on the dance floor grooving to the beat is being made fun of by the other guys. The air is heavy with angst and hormones and there’s enough hair sprayin the girl’s can to open a new hole in the ozone layer.”

“It sounds…”

“Like major suckage,” Kris supplied when Arthur seemed stuck for a word.

He nodded.“Indeed. And you think my people could help?”

Diana took another look. Feet planted, Will undulated hips and arms and scarlet braid in time to the music.“They sure couldn’t hurt.”

“But in your world, my people would have no reason to dance.”

Street kids, CSA kids…

“Sure they would.” She answered Arthur, but her eyes locked on Kris. “Dance to escape. Dance to forget. Dance to lose yourself in the way your body works; it’s the one thing in your life a bunch of overworked bureaucrats can’t control.”

Kris made a sound somewhere between a snort and a sigh. Not exactly agreeing but not dismissing the observation out of hand.

Arthur glanced from one to the other and then back at the dancers, nodding thoughtfully.“Here, they dance to celebrate their victory over the dark forces.”

“It’s only a temporary victory,” Claire reminded him grimly. “The dark forces will be back and they won’t stop until you’re all destroyed.”

“Way to be a downer,” Diana grunted, fishing a nectarine from her pack.

“Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away,” the older Keeper insisted.

“Jeez, Claire. Hair shirt much? They’re not ignoring the problem, they’re recharging so they can continue to fight.”

“Well, we don’t have that luxury. We have to deal with this segue and in order to do that, we have to know what’s happening at the other end of the mall.”

“And in order to dothat, we’ll need their help. The food court’s at the other end of the mall,” Diana continued before Claire could voice one of her usual “Keepers do it alone, yadda yadda” protests, “so they obviously know a way to get in and out again.” She wiped nectarine juice off her chin and glanced at Kris, who nodded.

“We do.”

Her gaze shifted from Kris to the King.“So we need to set up some kind of a recon mission. I suggest that Kris and I wander down for a quick look. She takes care of the navigating and any necessary bad-ass whupping, and I handle the metaphysical stuff.”

Sapphire eyes narrowed in confusion as Arthur leaned forward, arms braced across his thighs.“Bad-ass whupping?”

“She means, sire, that I can smack any meat-minds we run across,” Kris explained, grinning broadly. “But don’t ask me why she’s talking like that.”

“Don’t ask me either,” Diana muttered weakly. She could only assume that the thought of spending time alone with Kris skulking through a dark mall had cut the circuit between her brain and her mouth. Claire was looking less than pleased with the suggestion and Sam…Sam was buried so deep in her backpack that only his butt and his tail showed. Grateful for the distraction, Diana tossed the nectarine pit into the fire, turned, and hauled him clear.

“Hey! I was just checking to see if you packed my hairball medicine!”

“You don’t have hairball medicine.” She pulled out a second tuna sandwich. The wrapping had been holed and a fair bit of the tuna excavated. “You have your own food!”

“Yeah? So?” He licked down a bit of ruffled fur. “You going to eat that? I mean, since it’s kind of covered in cat spit…”

Diana sighed and handed over the sandwich.

“You shouldn’t let him get away with that kind of behavior.”

As Sam retreated to the edge of the firelight, she turned a pointed look on her sister.“Like you’re the expert. Austin totally runs your life.”

“Austin and I have an understanding.”

“Yeah, that he runs your life.”

“A reconnaissance mission has merit,” Arthur announced suddenly. From his tone, Diana assumed he’d done some thinking about it while she’d been dealing with Sam. “But are either of you well enough to go? Both of you were injured in the recent battle; perhaps two of my scouts…”

“No.” Claire was using her don’t-even-bother-arguing-with-me voice. “It has to be one of us. Your people can’t see what we need to know.”

“And I’m fine,” Diana broke in. “Headache’s mostly gone, I had a nice nap, I have two working arms…it has to be me.”

Claire nodded agreement.“You’re right.”

“And Claire obviously got hit on the head and we never noticed.”

Arthur turned an anxious expression on the older Keeper, but she waved him off.“Diana’s just trying to be funny.”

“Now is not the time.”

Apparently a sense of humor was not a requirement to be an Immortal King.“Sorry.” The apology slipped out before Diana remembered that Keepers never apologized.

Still suitably serious, Arthur nodded.“Then, as you request, Kris will accompany you. She has been into enemy territory many times and is therefore your best chance to not only get in but get out again.”

“Out again, that’s the tricky part,” Kris muttered.

“When should this…” He stumbled a bit over the shortened word. “…recon mission take place?”

Claire held out her good arm. The hands of her watch continued to spin wildly.“As soon as possible.”

Kris rose fluidly to her feet.“I’m good.” She raked a critical gaze over Diana’s clothes as the younger Keeper stood. “You’ll have to change. Dark colors, nothing to catch the light.”

“I brought jeans.”

She gestured back into the store, her rings glittering in the firelight.“We’ll find you something better.”

*

“You should have been there last night, Austin, those guys kicked tall ass!” Dean stepped back from hanging a signed picture of the team on the wall of the office and turned to grin at the cat. “You missed a great game.”

“I also missed being smuggled into the arena in a gym bag,” Austin muttered without lifting his head from his front paws. “Pass.”

Before Dean could answer, the phone rang.

“If it’s three bears,” the cat announced as Dean’s hand closed around the receiver, “tell them we’re full. That one only ever ends well for the bears.”

*

Black leggings, black tank, black zip-up sweatshirt, black socks, black canvas fanny pack, black leather driving gloves—Diana wore her own hightops and drew the line at using a black lipstick as camouflage paint. The line stayed drawn for about fifteen seconds.

“So you’re not as pale as your sister…” Finished wrapping the last of her dreadlocks up into one long tail, Kris reached for the tube. “…you’ll still show up in the shadows.”

“I’m a Keeper…”

“And I know what I’m doing. Hold still.”

*

“I’m sorry, Sam, but you can’t come.”

His eyes narrowed, flaying Diana with amber scythes.“You’re ditching me so you can bealone with your newfriend, aren’t you?”

“No!” She dropped to one knee and beckoned him closer. “Look, I’m really worried about Claire. She’s not used to being without Austin. I mean, one of those meat-minds actually hit her with his little concrete bag thing. How weird is that? Claire never gets hurt. I’m afraid of what mighthappen to her if there’s no cat around at all.”

Sam snorted.“What a load of crap.”

“Fine; I need someone here who can remind Claire that she’s not always right, that this was my Summoning. I’d rather you were with me, but I don’t want her screwing things up from this end.”

He thought about it for a moment.“Okay, that one I’ll buy. Be careful.”

“You, too. Remember, she gets cranky when she’s crossed.”

“Please, if Austin can handle her, how hard can it be?”

*

They took the first set of stairs down to the lower level, past a pair of elves standing guard who might have been fifteen in the outside world but here were becoming ageless.

“It’s sort of neutral territory between these stairs and the next ones,” Kris murmured as they descended toward the lower concourse. “The meat-minds never go much farther than the stairs they chased you and your sister up, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some nasty shit hanging around. There’re a few storefronts you don’t want to get too close to.”

“In a way that’s a good thing.”

“Yeah? I doubt you’ll think that when the pieces start rolling out of the Body Shop.”

Pieces. Body Shop. Evil was remarkably literal-minded at times.

“You smell something like a seaweed emulsion,” Kris continued, “you haul ass. You hear me?”

“What’s a seaweed emulsion smell like?”

“Dead fish and seagull shit.”

“Okay.” Diana took a vigorous sniff but could only smell the perfume/plastic mix of the lipstick smeared all over her face. And maybe, just maybe something warm and spicy and slightly intoxicating rising off Kris which she was going to work very hard at not thinking about until they were safelyback in King Arthur’s Court.

King Arthur’s Court. A legless armchair at a metaphorical fire. Somehow, and she had no idea how, that wasn’t as lame as it should have been.

Two more steps.“Looking at the bright side, continuing weirdness means there’s still some time before the segue. The more normal this place is, the closer the bad guys are to success.”

“Yeah, well, if it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna worry about what’s going downbefore the muzak starts play…Fuck.” She spat the profanity between clenched teeth.

“What?”

They were standing at the west end of the lower concourse. Behind them, what should have been another entrance to the department store the elves had claimed was, instead, a solid wall of glass. Diana could barely make out the barricade beyond it. To their right, a Mr. Jockstrap. Sporting goods. She tried to remember if the original mall held a store by that name but couldn’t. In a world with Condom Shack franchises, she supposed it was possible. The lights were low, the only sound the bass beat of a fast hip-hop track pulsing down from the upper level. Nothing looked particularly dangerous.

“It’s night.”

“Okay.”

“He’s here at night.”

“Who?”

“Some old security dude.”

Diana felt a chill run down her spine and really hoped it was a gust from the air-conditioning.“Walks with a limp? Kind of weaves his head from side to side like a snapping turtle? Mutters things like lithe and lissome?”

“I never seen a snapping turtle, but that sounds like the guy.”

“But he’s not in this mall, he’s in the other mall. The real mall.”

“Yeah? Well, he gets around. Don’t let him catch you in his flashlight beam. He nails you with that and you’re gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone.” Kris rolled her eyes impatiently. “Speak English much? Gone. Not here. Now come on, we got some distance to cover.”

They stayed to the darker shadows of the kiosks and the potted trees; Kris leading, Diana half a pace behind doing her best to mimic the other girl’s economical movements. Their path led down the center of the concourse until they neared the second set of stairs when Kris began to veer left. She tucked into the rectangular shadow of the last storefront before a side corridor and motioned for Diana to join her.

“Shoe stores are safe,” she whispered in answer to Diana’s silent question, her mouth close to the Keeper’s ear. “What’s gonna come out? They watch these stairs,” she continued, softening her esses. “It’s why we couldn’t use them. We have to get to that hall up there. Where the sign for the security office is.”

The sign was across the side corridor and four storefronts farther east.

“We used to come down through the store at the end there…” A quick jerk of Kris’ head, the motion felt rather than seen they were so close together, indicated the corridor. “…another big one, like ours, but lately it’s been locked at night. Good thing we didn’t fuckin’ risk it.”

“Because it’s night.”

The elfin captain patted Diana lightly on one cheek.“Can’t put nothing past you Keepers.”

Diana felt her face heat up under its mask of lipstick. The store locked at night could only mean reality had found another foothold, but she decided not to mention that at the risk of being thought obvious as well as dense. She watched as Kris dropped to her belly and inched forward toward the corridor along the angle of floor and wall. Was she supposed to follow?

Apparently not.

Just as she began to seriously consider dropping to her knees, Kris began to back up. Feet under her, into a crouch, standing…warm breath against Diana’s ear. She clenched her hands to keep from shivering.

“It’s clear. Move fast, don’t make any noise, and try to look as little like a person as you can.”

“What?”

“If they see you, you want to leave some doubt about what they’re seeing.”

That made sense. Although“look as little like a person as you can” didn’t. Not in any useful sort of a way.

“All right. Let’s…”

shunk kree, shunk kree

Kris slammed back against her as a line of light split the concourse.

He was coming from the west. From the same direction they had. He’d been behind them the whole time.

shunk kree, shunk kree

Unable to use the possibilities, even in the minimal way she had in the original mall, Diana was left feeling like she imagined Bystanders must feel all the time. Helpless. Angry. Vaguely pathetic. How did they manage? Kris’ back pressed hard against her, warm and comfortingly solid. It helped. The cold glass and dark store behind her didn’t.

Shoe store, she reminded herself as the light swept through the shadows under the stairs.What could possibly come out of a shoe store.

Actually, she could think of a few things.

None of them good.

All of them thelast thing she should be thinking about right now.

shunk kree, shunk kree

She was listening so hard to the sound of the security guard shuffling down the concourse that she didn’t hear the music start inside the shoe store. By the time she noticed, it had already reached the chorus.

These boots are made for walking…

And over the faint, tinny music, another sound. Heels. Rhythmically hitting cheap carpet.

Diana winced.That can’t possibly be good.

SIX

[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]

CLAIRE WATCHED DIANA follow Kris past the guard and almost instantly disappear into the shadows of the concourse. She should have been visible longer, even dressed like a department store ninja, but this was the Otherside and the usual rules of perspective and perception didn’t always apply. Their farewells had been short…

“Remember you’re only gathering information.”

“My Summons, Claire.”

“Just be careful!”

“Well, duh.”

…and now all she could do was wait. And gather what information she could from talking to Arthur’s scouts. And help secure this end of the mall against another attack. And find an exit that could show her what was happening outside because there might be something there she could use. And checkthe lock Diana had set during the battle. And lock any of the other storefronts the elves didn’t actually use; the damage had sounded extensive, but the travel agency could be up and running again at any time.

But mostly, wait.

For her little sister to return safely from enemy territory.

Claire envied the other Keepers—all the other Keepers—who had no siblings and would never know how it felt allowing the person who’d taken their first steps with chubby fingers wrapped around yours to walk blithely into danger when every instinct screamed,“Stay here where it’s safe. I’ll do it,” no matter who logic declared was the better choice for the job.

If something happened?

She had a brief, horrid vision of explaining the situation to their parents. Infinitely worse than trying to explain how she’d only turned her head for an instant and two-year-old Diana had eaten the entire tube of yellow poster paint.

And vomited it up on the white wool rug.

So nothingwould happen. Nothing bad. This was the Otherside; all she had to do was hold tight to that belief.

Holding tight, she returned to the fire and sank down on her cushion beside Arthur’s empty chair. First, she’d talk to the elves who’d raided the food court earlier in the evening. They’d have the most recent information about that end of the mall. Arthur would know who they were.

As though her thoughts had called him, he appeared, walking around the fire with the loose-limbed self-confidence of a young man who’d never been called geek, who’d never had a girl turn him down for a date, who was captain of both the football team and the debating club…Claire shook her head and rewound the thought. He was walking with the confidence of a young man wearing a huge, mythical sword strapped to his back. A huge, mythical sword he knew how to use.

“I have sent word to Bounce and Daniel that you wish to speak to them.” Arthur sank into his chair and flipped his hair back off his face. “They’ll be here shortly.”

“Are they out scavenging again?”

“No. They’re taking advantage of the darkness to…” He finished the sentence with an incomprehensible gesture.

“To?” Was he blushing? He was. The Immortal King had turned an uncomfortable looking shade of deep crimson. Suddenly, Claire got it. “Oh. To…” She repeated the gesture. “They’re being safe, right? I mean, these kids didn’t come from the best of backgrounds and you have no idea of what I’m talking about, do you?”