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.