“He’s a Bystander. Wait.” She raised a hand cutting off Lance and Claire together. “I don’t care why he’s here, but as he obviously can’t stay, we’ve got even more reason to leave immediately. He’s got to go back, Dean’s in danger, Kris is inHell—three strikes, let’s motor!”
Without the time to count to ten, Claire counted to three.“Believe me, Diana, Iwant to, but the injured elves are our responsibility.”
“No, they aren’t.” Diana nodded toward the Immortal King. “They’re his responsibility. We did our bit. The hole’s closed. The segue’s been disrupted, and without an anchor the two malls will continue to drift farther and farther apart. Street kids looking for a place to belong will have to look somewhere else—not necessarily a good thing but a thing.Our work here is done.”
Claire sighed, cradling her left hand in her right. The pain in her broken finger—which was now hurting up her arm, across her shoulders and into her right ear for reasons she wasn’t entirely clear on—made it difficult to concentrate, but Arthurwas alive, Hellhad been defeated, and the worldhad been saved from a shopping mall where midnight madness sales meant exactly that. However, while Diana had a point, she’d missed one as well. “Diana, Kris…”
“Now, Claire! Or are you tired of Dean already?”
Even the ambient noise of bells in elvish hair quieted. Lance opened his mouth. Arthur shook his head. He closed it again.
There were also a number of things Keepers didn’t say to other Keepers. Claire made a mental note to say most of them to her younger sister at a later time. “I’m going to allow for the stress you’re under,” she said quietly. “Pick a door.” Any door would take them back to the access corridor in the actual mall. The point of departure remained the point of return regardless. “Let’s go home.”
“Fine!” Pivoting on one heel, shifting Sam’s weight against her hip, ignoring the little voice that told her she’d gone too far, Diana scanned the lower concourse stores. “There, that kid’s store, the Rainbow Wardrobe. Nothing bad should come out of it.”
“How responsible of you.”
“Don’t patronize me!”
“Fine.” Claire turned toward Arthur. “The mall is no longer a segue, so we can come and go the same way we can from any other place on the Otherside. I’ll be back to check on things.”
The Immortal King glanced at Diana, his blue eyes sympathetic, then turned his gaze back to her. Less sympathy, more understanding, Claire noticed.“When?”
Her watch appeared to be keeping time to a rhumba beat.“Unfortunately, I have no idea.”
“Claire! Now, or I’m going without you!”
Under no circumstances was Claire allowing Diana back into the world unsupervised. Even standing right beside her, it would be hard enough to keep her from making a foolish attempt to rescue Kris the moment she could manipulate the possibilities—on the other side of reality, it would be impossible. Claire picked up her pack, wrapped her good hand around Lance’s arm, and hurried to join Diana at the store.
When the door flew open on its own, they stepped back together. Jumped back together. Fortunately, Lance was in hiking boots.
A sound spilled out first—like a terrified chicken being chased by a snake.
Dropping her grip on Lance, Claire shoved her hand into her belt pouch. She hadn’t closed the zipper after the throne room and for one, heart-stopping moment she thought it was empty. Then her fingers closed around a peppercorn. Enough? It had to be. Releasing the contained possibilities, she yelled, “Everyone close your eyes!” as something squawked and exploded out intothe lower concourse.
A moment.
Two.
Cats hunted by sound.“Sam?”
“I don’t hear it.”
“I can’t open my eyes!”
She signed and opened hers.“Yes, you can, Lance.”
“Oh, this is just great…” Diana would have thrown up her hands had she been willing to put Sam down. “…Hell’s gone, and this place makes even less sense. I don’t see the connection between a basilisk and a children’s st…”
“So you’re saying that while your body stayed in the room, your ka moved around sipping off bits of Dean’s life and spying on us?”
Austin’s voice ghosted out the open door.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I knew everything you had planned from the instant you planned it.”
“Meryat!”
Claire and Diana together grabbed Lance as he surged forward.
“Wardrobe-to-wardrobe connection?” Diana asked, brow furrowed, curiosity momentarily flattening the peaks of other emotions.
“Seems like.”
“I think that fulfills my part in this foolishness, cat. I have explained, I have gloated, now I will have what I want.”
The sound of a struggle.
“A valiant attempt, Dean. But you are mine.”
“I don’t think so, bitch!”
Diana’s eyes widened as her head snapped around toward her sister. “Claire!”
“Lance…” Claire yanked him free of Diana’s grip, her fingers dimpling his arm. Yanked him around to face her. “…can you stop Meryat?”
He pulled a roll of ancient linen out of his right front pocket with his free hand.“Yes!”
“Then go!”
Diana grabbed too late as Lance raced for the storefront, so she grabbed her sister’s shoulder instead. “Claire, that isn’t where he came in. There’s no way to be sure he’ll come out in your bedroom! Not without…” Her voice trailed off at the look on Claire’s face.
Claire reached into the possibilities and set Lance’s feet on a single path.
Rules broke.
*
Dean’s hair had begun to gray.
Since it seemed to be his only remaining option, Austin launched himself from the top of the wardrobe, screaming a challenge.
Meryat swatted him aside. Lost a little flesh tone in the use of power but quickly gained it back as Dean seemed to shrink in on himself.
“Hold hard, you ancient and perfidious evil!”
Her attention lifted off Dean.“What?”
Austin muzzily wondered much the same from where he sprawled against the headboard. Whenhe was a kitten, perfidious and evil meant the same thing.
Bounding out of the wardrobe, Lance twirled a line of linen across the room.
Meryat stared at him in disbelief for a heartbeat, then laughed and raised a hand.“Foolish b…OW!”
As the linen looped around her neck, Dean slid off the edge of the bed. It had taken everything he had left to overcome the years of training that Meryat had called his tragic flaw but, in the end, he’d managed a solid kick in the ankle. Now his back hurt, he had an intense craving for prune juice, and he couldn’t actually hear what Lance was shouting. Wasn’t entirely sure it was English.That’s the trouble with kids today, talk a language all their own. It’s all the fault of that MT…Whoa. Suddenly, he felt a lot better.
Meryat wasn’t looking too good.
A finger dropped off and shattered to dust against the floor.
Lance wrapped another loop of linen around her body and kept shouting.
Another finger fell. The rest of her followed about seven syllables later.
Dean covered his mouth and nose as a fine particulate rose and settled.
“Dr. Rebik!”
The archaeologist now looked only five or six years older than his driver’s license picture. Which wasn’t exactly good, but he inarguably looked better than he had been.
“Lance!”
In turn, Lance no longer looked like he’d taken too many hits from a croc.
Although he still looked Australian.
As the professor and his grad student caught up, Dean stood and leaned over the bed.“You all right?”
Austin checked extremities, sneered in the general direction of the reunion, and reluctantly admitted he was fine.
“Good. I’ll be after getting the vacuum, then.”
[Êàðòèíêà: img_5]
The sheer enormity of what her sister—her older, responsible sister—had done shouldered its way past loss and grief. Diana felt as though she was thinking clearly for the first time since Kris’ sacrifice. And Claireso didn’t want to know what she was thinking. She’d been hurt before, upset, now she was angry. “I can’tbelieve you did that!”