“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.