“What if he is? We still gotta go that way. It’s the only safe way to the food court.”
About to ask what definition of“safe” Kris was using, Diana jumped almost into the guard captain’s arms as a thick, purple tentacle slapped the glass beside her. “I didn’t do that!”
“Of course you didn’t.” Thedumbass was silent but clearly implied.“It’s the pet store.”
“Right. And that’s…?”
“Beats the fuck out of me, but it’s not a squid.”
“What happened to the puppies and kittens?”
“I’m guessing it ate them.”
“Of course it did.”
They reached the hall without further incident. Narrow and lit by every third bank of fluorescents in the dropped ceiling, it went back about thirty feet, ending in a cross corridor. Diana could just barely make out two signs on the back wall. The first read: Elevator to Rooftop Parking and included a red arrow pointing left. The second: Baby Change Room; arrow to the right. What the babies changed into was anyone’s guess. The closed door to the security office was about a third of the way up the hall, on the right. That far again was a small water fountain.
Noshunk kree. No advancing armies of darkness.
The only sound was the hum of the lights.
Like it would kill them to learn the words? Diana wondered as Kris began moving faster and she hurried to catch up.
Both walls were covered in crayon portraits that shifted. A great many of them seemed to be of a dark silhouette, horned and cloaked and possessing glowing red eyes. None of them were particularly good.
Although the eyes seem to be following Kris, Diana realized.Are following Kris, she amended as a pair of crimson orbs plopped out of a portrait and rolled almost to the mall elf’s heels. An emphatic poke turned Kris around as a pointing finger directed her gaze to the problem.
Kris rolled her own eyes and took a quick step back.
A sound like bubble wrap being popped.
A bit of waxy residue on the floor.
A quick glance at the rest of the portraits showed them all pointedly looking in different directions. Whatever dark power controlled them, it wasn’t strong enough to overcome basic self-preservation.
Passing the security office, Diana worked at remembering trig formulas and other useless bits of high school math rather than merely trying not to think about the old man opening the door. In this situation, getting caught up in the old“try not to think of a purple hippopotamus” problem could have disastrous results.
At the water fountain, Kris indicated she needed a boost.
Diana dropped to one knee, let Kris use the other as a step, and watched amazed as, standing on the edge of the fountain, she reached up and shoved one of the big ceiling tiles off the framework. Were the elves keeping supplies inside the dropped ceiling?
Kris braced her hands and smoothly boosted herself up and out of sight.
Okay, that’s not poss…Biting the thought off before Kris crashed through acoustic fibers and aluminum strapping that couldn’t possibly hold her weight, Diana sat in the fountain, drew her feet up next to her butt and, pushing against the side walls of the alcove, stood. Apparently, she was supposed to follow.No matter how imposs…She bit that thought off, too, and concentrated instead on doing the mother of all chin ups. Sneaker treads gouging at the wall, she managed to hook first one elbow behind a cross brace and then the other. A little involuntary grunting later, her upper body collapsed across the dusty inner side of the ceiling. Strong hands pulled her farther in and dropped the open tile back into place.
For no good reason, there was enough light to see a path worn through the dust. It headed off to the right on a strong diagonal. Southeast, Diana figured after a moment. Directly toward the food court. They were going to reach the food court by traveling inside a dropped ceiling—something it looked as though the elves did all the time.
Even though it couldn’t be d…
It could be done.
It had been done.
A lot.
Hold that thought, Diana told herself as she crawled after Kris.Don’t even consider thinking about how stu…
Fortunately, crawling after Kris provided its own distraction.
Her knees were raw and the lump on her forehead where she’d cracked it on a pipe was throbbing when the path stopped at the edge of a concrete block wall. Kris motioned for silence. Diana tried to ache more quietly.
Another tile was lifted carefully aside and, after a moment, Kris dropped down out of sight. Her head reappeared almost instantly and then one arm, beckoning Diana forward.
They weren’t in the food court.
They were standing on the sinks in the women’s washroom.
Together, they replaced the tile and one at a time, jumped down.
“This is the way you always go?” Diana asked quietly.
Kris nodded and pulled her bound dreads back with one hand, bending to drink from the taps.“Meat-minds have never caught on,” she said proudly when she finished drinking. “It’s like they can’t wrap their tiny fucking brains around the idea.”
That’s because acoustic tiles and aluminum strapping could barely hold the weight of a full-grown mouse and certainly couldn’t hold a couple of full-grown elves. Or even mostly grown elves. Definitely not an elf and a size twelve Keeper. People, or in this case, elves, who believed that a dropped ceiling provided a secret highway between distant destinations got their information from bad movies and worse television. The meat-minds, who watched neither, knew that no one could travel by way of dropped ceilings. No wonder they couldn’t wrap their tiny brains around the idea.
Believing seven impossible things before breakfast was pretty much standard operating procedure on the Otherside, but even in a place where reality depended on definition, some things were apparently too much.
Diana said none of this aloud. Had no intention of ever mentioning it.
The certainty of the mall elves that itcould be done because they’d seen a hundred heroes and an equal number of villains do it, had created the passage. She had no intention of messing with that certainty. Certainly not while they still needed it to get home.
Only the full toilet paper dispensers in every stall and the lack of graffiti scratched into the pale green paint suggested this wasn’t the actual women’s washroom in the actual mall—another indication of how close the segue was to completion.
Kris opened the door just wide enough for the two of them to slip through. Moving quietly from shadow to shadow, they peered out into the deserted food court.
Diana’s nose twitched at the smell of freshly brewed coffee. She must have made a noise because Kris grinned and murmured, “Starbucks.”
“You mean an Otherside corruption of Starbucks.”
“Is that what I said? I mean an actual Starbucks.”
“Man…” Diana shook her head in reluctant admiration. “Those guys are moving in everywhere.”
*
Claire yawned, rubbed her eyes, and realized that the lights had come back on in the department store. The fire had gone out. She checked her watch; the second hand was revolving at significantly better than normal speed. Time had become relative again. When she glanced up, the fire pit was gone and one of the mall elves, a dark-haired petite girl who looked capable of precision kneecapping, was sweeping up the ashes. Jo, Claire remembered after a moment.
“You done with us, Keeper?”
Daniel was lounging back against the few remaining cushions, one long, denim-clad leg draped over Bounce’s lap. The other boy had his eyes closed, a glistening line of drool running from the corner of his mouth and down the side of his chin. They hadn’t been able to tell her much; only that the food in the food court was a lot less weird than it had been and as the food got morenormal, the meat-minds patrolled more frequently.
“And at certain times of the day, there’s like a bazillion old people hanging around.”