“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.”