Chronicles Of The Keeper - The Long Hot Summoning Part 37

Sunlight streamed down through the skylight into the food court, bright enough to wash away the light spilling from the bulbs over each table. Bright enough to wash away the shadows.

Kris frowned. "There's never been sunlight before."

"It's probably coming through from the real world. This end of the mall's almost totally matched up. We haven't got much time."

"Is this the sort of stuff you and your sister need to know?"

"No. This is the sort of stuff we pretty much already knew. We have to go deeper in. We need to see who more than what." Diana dunked her face into a filled sink, trying to rinse away the soap she'd used to remove the lipstick camouflage. Man, that stuff could remove freckles! When she surfaced, Kris was waiting with a paper towel. "Thanks." The towel was only marginally less destructive than the soap, and they were both an exact match for supplies in women's washrooms worldwide. Diana made a mental note to check the supplier when they got home. This could be a foothold situation that the Lineage had missed for years. And the toilet paper was definitely h.e.l.lish.

"So," Kris grunted, leaning against a stall and watching Diana in the mirror, "what now?"

"Now, unless we open the door and there's a power-of-darkness coffee klatch happening close enough for us to eavesdrop on, we need to get to the Emporium. It's as close to the anchor as we've ever come." She tossed the damp paper in the waste-basket and turned to face a skeptical mall elf.

"It's where you two came through. They'll be guarding it."

"You've taken me as far as we agreed. You don't have to go on."

"Like I'm supposed to go back to the other wizard and tell her I ditched her kid sister just when things got tough? f.u.c.k you."

"Okay. I mean, you're right," Diana corrected herself hurriedly, hoping the flush she could feel would be taken as the result of strenuous exfoliation. "Then if it's just meat-minds on guard, we'll go around them. If it's something else, then that could tell us what I need to know. I wish I'd been able to get a look under that dark elf's helm."

"Before you slagged him?"

"Not much point after." She glanced toward the washroom door. "There's not going to be a lot of cover out there."

"No s.h.i.+t. You'd think they'd leave all that suns.h.i.+ne for the end. Doesn't evil usually prefer darkness and all?"

"Common mistake. Evil doesn't care. The thing you've got to remember about evil," she murmured, falling into step just behind the other girl's left shoulder as they headed for the door, "is that it's an un-apologetic opportunist. It'll move in wherever there's an opening."

The smell of fresh coffee wafted up the short hall.

The black clothes made them stand out against the pale green tiles like . . .

. . . like licorice in mints, like cow patties in the gra.s.s, like Goths in a flower shop, like the wipeout from the wand caused permanent brain damage. What's up with a.n.a.logies R Us?

Diana forced herself to pay attention just as Kris said, "I don't see anyone . . . anything. Let's go."

They turned left, away from the food court, staying close to the lockers and then ducking low to cross the open front of the sporting goods store. Diana thought she saw a rack of torture implements as they pa.s.sed, which was actually encouraging because she was fairly certain such stores didn't usually stock thumb screws in with their free weights in the real world. Although it certainly explained that whole no pain, no gain thing. Vaguely human shapes moved around in the big drugstore across the hall and she could only hope they were part of a darkside patrol. Customers, even faint images of customers, would be bad. Not that a darkside patrol would be exactly good. . . .

Kris' grip on her arm dragged her attention back to their more immediate concern, the length of corridor they had to cover unseen in order to get to the Emporium. The two planters and four benches provided the only cover. But, on the bright side, the corridor was empty except for those two planters and four benches.

Nothing ventured . . . Diana shrugged free, dashed forward, dropped as she pa.s.sed the first planter, slid the last five feet to the bench, and rolled under it at the last instant.

"What do you think you're doing," Kris growled into her ear a moment later.

Diana turned and tried not to think about the confined conditions pressing them cheek to cheek. "I was thinking that the Emporium wasn't going to get any closer and the longer we waited the more risk of someone coming through the food court and spotting us." So not the time to say something like "You smell incredible."

"Next time, warn a person!"

"I thought you might protest . . ."

"Yeah. Good call."

"... and we didn't have time."

The lights were off in the travel agency and a handwritten sign taped to the cracked window said only, "Closed for Renovations." A poster advertising London at $549, Berlin at $629, and Gehenna at $666 was the only other visible indication that the store had ever been used. Either she'd really done some serious damage when she smacked the travelers back or they were too close to segue for any more tours to be booked. The Tailer of Gloucester still had bits off animal b.u.t.ts hanging in the window, so hopefully it was the former not the later.

Hopefully and animal bits; not the sort of things that usually showed up in the same thought.

"Next bench," she murmured against Kris' skin. "You've got to go first."

Kris' reply was essentially unintelligible although the sarcasm came through loud and clear. Out from under the bench, she pushed herself up into a sprinter's start, and disappeared from Diana's line of sight.

Diana followed half a heartbeat behind, put a little too much push on the final slide, and would have gone right past the bench had strong hands not grabbed a double handful of clothes and yanked her sideways. Her face impacted at the join of shoulder and neck, her nose connecting painfully with Kris' collarbone.

"Is this the place?"

Blinking away tears, she lifted her head as far as the bench allowed. In the short time since they'd crossed over, the Emporium had come to look almost identical to the store in the original mall. "This is it."

The corridor was still empty. But then, why wouldn't it be? Why would the darkness bother running patrols this deep inside their own territory? They were a lot safer here than they'd been out in the lower concourse.

"I'm going to take a closer look."

"We're going inside?"

"We have to. We haven't actually learned anything yet."

"I've learned that you got no sense of self-preservation. I'm not going in there."

"Good. You keep watch." She was out from under the bench on her hands and knees before Kris could stop her, then quickly crawled across to the window for a careful glance inside. The window display was pretty much as she remembered it and so was the stock beyond. In the back corner . . . She shuffled forward just far enough to get a better angle. In spite of other changes, the mirror remained the Otherside edition, thick silvered gla.s.s in an antique wooden frame. She couldn't see any indication of Jack but figured he was probably watching the other store.

Dropping back below the window ledge, Diana crawled to the edge of the open door and, lying down, peered around the corner. No troll. Not even the shadowy suggestion of customers. Better still, no wards keeping people from entering, although the exit wards were still in place and would need to be dealt with later.

She flashed a quick thumbs-up back at Kris, who did not look happy, and slipped over the threshold into the store. The fairies on a stick had been marked down and the frogs in military uniforms had been joined by newts in science fiction costumes.

Who buys this stuff? she wondered crawling toward the back. The newts were a little weirder than even she could cope with. Skirting the rubber snakes, she sat back on her heels and peered up at the mirror. "Pssst, Jack!"

The blue-on-blue eyes appeared almost instantly. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been?"

"At the other end of the mall."

"Doing what?"

"Getting caught in time distortions and fighting off a pack of traveling meat-minds. It's not like I forgot you or anything; this is the first time I've been able to get back."

"They know you're here."

"Here, here? Like here and now? Or just in the mall here?"