Looking around. Now that I was tuned in to it, paid more attention to the blank-eyed shufflers, worrying that Skeeve could become one of them. A haggard female with long, graying black hair and a narrow face caught me regarding her with pity, and snapped, "What are you looking at, scale face?"
So not all of them had been mind-stripped. I stopped thinking that they were all alike and wondered how many of them were just moody.
"Sir!" a perky young female in a green uniform and cap accosted me, thrusting a pen and a clipboard in my face. "Would you care to apply for a Mall card? Unlimited credit, only thirty-five percent interest per annum. Just fill your name in here, put your birth date here, and your shoe size here, and sign!" She pushed the pen into my hand.
I shoved the clipboard aside and stuck the pen in her hat.
"Bug off."
"What about you, madame?" she asked, flying up to meet Massha. "For today only, all purchases will be eight percent off with your new card!"
"Eight?" Massha inquired, showing some interest.
"Just put your name here. And your favorite color. And your favorite season."
She reached for the pen.
"Massha!" I bellowed.
"Oops, no, thanks," my companion informed the Mall clerk.
The young woman showed no disappointment. She beamed brightly as she dropped back into the crowd. "Have a nice day," she wished us.
"Sorry, Aahz," Massha apologized. "But, eight percent!"
I frowned. "You could get twenty off in the Bazaar without having to fill out a form. Fifty off if you really bargain."
"It sounds silly when you put it in perspective." Massha blushed. "I just got caught up in the moment."
"Hi, Esky!" A horn player stopped blatting into his instrument and greeted our guide. The other members of the band surrounded her.
"I talk to them all," Eskina confided. "They are paid a minimal amount. Their original bargain was to include tips, but the management said no, so they don't practice."
"You mean they play like that on purpose?" Massha asked, horrified.
"It is their protest," Eskina shrugged. "Very few people ever notice."
"Eskina!" two female Tigrets cried, running up to her as we rounded the next corner. They were slender catlike females with striped skins and wide green eyes. Each of them was carrying eight or nine shopping bags.
"They are here every day," Eskina explained, as soon as the Tigrets had ducked into the next shop. "They are very wealthy."
"Sweetie!" A very large Bugbear at the door of a bed shop waved at her. "Got new stock. One I think you ought to try out!"
We all stared at her. Her cheeks pinked up. "He is very effusive, but there is nothing between us. He lets me sleep in the storeroom. I cannot afford to stay in the hotel."
I raised an eyebrow. Along the way we came across more friendly musicians, more charitable shop owners, and more of Eskina's friends. I wanted to ask them to keep a lookout for Skeeve, but Eskina kept telling me to save it for the Barista.
"Mmm, smell that!" Massha exclaimed in delight.
"Goo-oood!" Chumley agreed.
My sensitive nose had been picking up the aroma for several blocks. A burst of fragrant steam surrounded us from holes in the floor. I felt an inexorable force pulling me, and everyone around me, inward, toward the small, round, redwood-sided booth at the center of The Mall.
Hot white lights blazed in our faces. I threw up my hands, momentarily blinded. When my vision cleared, I realized that we were approaching moving spotlights, salamander-occupied mirrored cylinders being cranked in spiral patterns by a quartet of Imps in tight, frogged tunics and pillbox hats.
"What is that?" I asked, squinting into the glare.
"That is the Coffee House," Eskina informed us reverently. The others were impressed into awed silence, but I had a feeling I was walking into a familiar place.
As we approached, I noticed a sign high above the shack that said the coffee is the life. Bubbles of golden light welled up to the ceiling from the roof and cascaded down on the surroundings. Most of the crowd lurching forward held out their hands. Bubbles landed on their outstretched palms and burst into decorative china and pottery cups and mugs from which steam rose. Massha tentatively put out her hand. "Espresso!" she crowed, taking a sip from the tiny cup that appeared there.
The bubble that burst on Chumley's broad palm became a huge bowl filled with beige foam. His face split in a broad grin. "Latte."
"Hold out your hands," Eskina instructed me, demonstrating. The bubble that touched her tiny fingers melted into a plain china mug sloshing with dark brown liquid. "You shall receive that which you need most."
"Nah," I replied, peering forward in between the beams of light. I kept my fists balled tight at my sides. "Don't think so."
"Don't refuse the Barista's bounty," Eskina cautioned me, alarmed. "If you do, she might refuse to serve you. People would turn themselves inside out to avoid displeasing the Barista! How can you get started in the morning without the coffee?"
But I was on the scent.
"Only one person I've ever known brews coffee that smells that good," I muttered, striding toward the booth.
And I was right. When we neared the little building, a door in the side burst open, and a large blue-white blur zipped out of it and straight into my arms.
"Aahz, you old deveel!" crowed Sibone. The Cafiend's long, sinuous body wound her way around me, the end of her tail flicking side to side with delight. "My goodness, you're looking handsome."
"Suspicion confirmed." I grinned as I introduced her to my friends.
"You know the Barista?" Eskina asked, astonished and, at last, impressed.
"We're old friends," I announced, my arm around Sibone's waist, or where her waist would be if she wasn't a twelve-foot serpent with arms and living hair. "Chumley, Massha, this is Sibone. She's from Caf." Her hands, as flexible as her body, curled about my ears, tickling places that obviously she hadn't forgotten in all these years. I enjoyed the sensation, then snapped back to the realization that I had a mission. "Hey, we've got an audience," I protested.
"And when did that ever stop you?" Sibone purred. Her hair crawled around the back of my neck and caressed it. But she turned to my companions and threw her arms around them. "Come and let me give you love. Any friend of Aahz is a friend of mine."
"What are you doing here?" Sibone and I asked one another in unison.
"You first." I laughed.
"Oh"—Sibone sighed, fanning her pale cheeks with a twist of paper held in a coil of her tail—"too much pressure." She took a refreshing drink from one of the many cups standing on tiny shelves adorning the walls of the Coffee House, and curled up in her basketlike chair like a big white pearl in a ring. I kicked back with my feet crossed on a chaise longue with gold tassel fringe. Massha lounged easily in a contraption like a padded hammock. Chumley perched uneasily on an ottoman too small for his big Trollish posterior. Eskina huddled against a wall between the ever-filling coffee cups and stared at the Barista in deep awe.
Unlike its simple exterior, the interior of the small booth proved to be much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. A surreptitious glance at the map in my pocket showed no detail about the kiosk at the center of The Mall, but Sibone had clearly gone extradimensional for comfort. The room was an easy thirty feet in diameter. The air was filled with the rich, slightly oily aroma of fresh coffee, which brewed in dozens of gigantic urns that stood in arcs flanking the window and in the crystal decanter that stood on a pedestal in the center of the round, mahogany-tiled room. We could see blank-faced, hopeful customers staggering toward the building, their hands held out in supplication. One of Sibone's bubbles would usually do the trick, one sip of elixir restoring character and energy to the customers' faces. Another coin or two clanked magikally into the overflowing golden crock under the counter. Sibone supervised the process for a moment, then turned back to us.