"We can wait until the next Skeeve sighting," Chumley suggested, as I stomped out of the Will Call office.
I didn't know where I was going, but if I had stayed there, I would have started breaking heads, and none of the heads I wanted to break were there.
"What do we do now?" Cire asked, glumly. "Our trap is gone, and so is our subject."
"I don't know. I have to think," I replied, moodily.
I was torqued by the invasion of the tax agents and the disappearance of the mall-rat, but what really irked me was the expressions of deep and sincere sympathy on the faces of the merchants. Our humiliation had become com- mon knowledge. I figured the shoppers who'd been in Massha's Secret when the explosion came had spread the word about the riot. The merchants almost certainly thought we were complete screwups. So much for M.Y.T.H., Inc's reputation.
A plump female Djinnie came sailing out of a shoe boutique and whisked around us in circles.
"Oh, you lovely people," she gushed. "Marco told us all about what happened! He told all of us, and we have told everyone else in The Mall!"
"Yeah, yeah," I grunted, with an embarrassed wave, hoping to stave off the recitation. I didn't want to live through it again.
But the Djinnie and I weren't on the same page.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she beamed, zooming in to kiss me soundly on the lips. She seized Chumley and Cire and planted one on them, too. "We are all now checking for discrepancies in our expenditures! You may have saved many of us from that horrid Rattila!" She hugged Massha and picked Eskina right off the floor. "You are wonderful!"
"Yeah," I agreed, realizing now what she was talking about. I should have guessed. The Djinnie would be a lot more interested in not getting ripped off than in our tax shutdown. I straightened up a little. "We are."
"Come, choose anything from my shop," she invited, guiding us toward the shoe displays. "Each of you. Please."
"We were just trying to do a job," I argued. "But I noticed how my companions perked up at the Djinnie's gratitude. "Well—okay."
Not that I needed shoes, of course, but the proprietor, name of Tarkeni, had snappy accessories, including belts and personal-grooming kits, one of which was made of scaly leather not unlike my own fetching skin, except in bronze. I found myself turning it over in my hands a dozen times until Tarkeni stuffed it in a bag and pronounced it mine.
"It is the least we can do!" she exclaimed. By the time we left the shop all five of us had more of a spring in our steps.
"You see, big guy?" Massha declared with a wink. "Retail therapy definitely helps."
"This is the life, huh?" Cire asked, admiring his new shoes.
Flippers like his were hard to fit, and the boots the Djinnie had pressed on him must have been worth dozens of gold pieces.
"Rather!" Chumley agreed, enjoying his new ParchmentMan automatic book scroll.
Other grateful merchants were eager to help us recover from our run of bad luck. I hardly had time to think about the Skeeve impostors or our own humiliation as we were dragged out of the corridors every hundred paces by another shopkeeper or booth owner.
"You are good people," a Gourami remarked, kissing us all as she urged us to try on the glass finger and toe rings she sold.
"My mother would want you to have this," a teenage Whelf insisted, pressing a bag of candles on us.
I even found myself wandering around a furniture store with the Djinni owner hovering at my heels promising a deep discount on anything in the store.
"Or anything you choose to order," he added, hospitably, smiles wreathing his broad blue face.
I browsed a selection of recliners to take the place of my burned-out armchair, thinking what pleasure I'd get out of handing Woofle the receipt and insisting he pay the balance.
Thanks to one of Massha's gadgets, what parcels and boxes Chumley couldn't haul floated along behind us on our way back to the hotel.
"If we don't get the alarm to chase a Skeeve-clone, I'm going to take a nap," I informed the others.
Massha cupped a huge yawn behind her broad hand. "Good idea, Short and Scaly," she responded.
"There you are!"Rimbaldi Djinnelli came flying toward us through the crowd. He seized Massha's hands. "I love you even more today than before, you beautiful lady! Come to my shop!" He herded us all along with him. "You must all see the outfit that my wife has designed for this so generously made lady, whose body matches her heart. It will fill you all with delight!"
I caught sight of a familiar quartet of purple eyes on the other side of the hall near an art gallery.
"Hey, is that Chloridia?" I asked, pulling the gang to a halt. "Let me catch up with her."
"Of course!" Rimbaldi boomed. "You shall bring her along, too."
But by the time I turned around again, she'd disappeared into the crowd. I was relieved to see her back in The Mall again. We would cross paths again sooner or later.
TWENTY-ONE
As we entered The Volcano, Jack Frost, elemental building engineer, glanced up from a conversation with one of the Djinnelli cousins to tip us a friendly wave. The store was steaming hot, as was the discussion.
"I fixed this spell yesterday," Jack insisted, his cheeks and nose more than usually pink.
He threw up his hands, and the familiar white cones of cold came radiating out of his fingertips.
"But you feel how it is now?" demanded the Djinn, his face blue with outrage. "It is too hot again! Your spell failed."
"I don't get it," Jack admitted. "It really should not be this hot in here. It's not natural. Hey, Aahz!" He nudged me as we passed. "Sorry about the shop. It was a really nice place."
"Well," I tossed off noncommittally, "easy come, easy go. It is pretty warm in here. Anything wrong?"
"This whole place, she is over a live volcano," the Djinn exclaimed, giving us a distracted nod of greeting. "Of course sometimes it gets too hot! You are failing at your task, and do you know what I say to that?"
Jack blew a cloud of white condensation. 'The elemental under that volcano's a friend of mine. He keeps it down to normal most of the time. Moa and I have already worked out when he can have the next eruption, and it's not for eight years! So, don't tell me I'm not keeping on top of this!"
"Then, tell me why it is always my customers fainting from the atmosphere?" the Djinn demanded.
Jack shrugged in exasperation. "I dunno. Maybe it's your prices. Look, let's keep a cool head over this. Your floor is solid, right?" He stamped on the glowing orange floor. "There isn't a good reason more heat's venting up through here."
A bleebling sound interrupted their argument. He pulled a snow globe out of his pocket, and his sandy brows went up.
"Oops! Gotta skate! Fire in the corn-dog shop. See you all later! Take it easy, Aahz!"
"Later, Jack," I called, as the elemental froze the floor before his feet and whisked gracefully out into the corridor.
"This way, this way!" Rimbaldi urged, his arm still firmly around Massha. "My wife has been racking her brains for the very best design that would suit you, and she has done it! Every stitch, painstakingly made by fairy hands, every silk thread spun by the very most expert spiders! Our gift to you!"
"A gift?" Massha asked. "You really shouldn't have."
"But I must, dear lady. In, in!"
At Rimbaldi's urging, Massha went into one of the larger dressing rooms with two of the Djinnies.
"Watch it, honey," her voice came through the thin walls. "No, that's me! I can't—oh, oh, boy! Yes, that does do something for old Massha!"