Chronicles Of The Keeper - The Long Hot Summoning Part 83

Squirming free, Sam jumped up onto the edge of a planter and looked from Claire to Diana. "So, we're stuck here?"

"Looks like!" Diana's lip curled. "Because Ms. I Always Have to Have My Own Way had to save Dean at the expense of everyone else!"

"I was not going to let him die!"

Less than an arm's length between them now. Voices raised and getting louder. The mall elves started studying the tiles, the light fixtures, the cat.

"Did you even once think of me?" Diana snarled.

Claire snorted. "Do you ever think of anything but yourself?"

Sam dropped back onto the floor.

"Oh, fine talk from someone who goes on and on about sacrifice to the greater good and who just condemned my... condemned Kris to save her boyfriend!"

The shrieks of pain sounded pretty much simultaneously. In the silence that followed, Sam returned to the planter.

Claire rubbed at the blood on her ankle, looked up to see Diana doing the same, realized the tears were not from the cat scratches and reached out. "Oh, Kitten, I'm sorry."

Things got a little damp and mushy for the next few minutes, embraces awkward because of the packs but determined.

"Well done," Arthur murmured by Sam's shoulder. "I had begun to think I should intervene."

"That would have worked, too," Sam admitted. "But you probably wouldn't have liked the result."

"Oh?"

"Common enemy."

"But you . . ."

"Are a cat."

"Right."

Caught up in the circle of Claire's arm, Diana sniffled and raised her head. "You haven't called me Kitten in years."

"You started hitting me when I did it."

"Oh, yeah."

"And then you filled my bed with b.u.t.terscotch pudding."

"Technically, I turned your sheets to pudding, but I can see why you stopped."

They separated slowly, wiped tears, and mirrored watery smiles.

"Rough day."

"Yeah."

"Diana, Kris . . ."

"I know. We'll save her. And I've figured out how to get us home."

"Diana, I'm not a teenager."

Diana straightened her pack straps, then bent down and scooped Sam off the floor. "Look, it's after hours, you're with a teenager and a cat, and we've got a mirror we definitely didn't pay for, it's covered."

Shunk kree, Shunk kree.

"That certainly sounds like it's covered," Claire admitted. She closed her good hand around the edge of Jack's frame. "Jack, are you sure?"

"I just want out of the mall. The guesthouse sounds fabulous and . . . h.e.l.lo! Fingerprints on my gla.s.s!"

"Sorry."

Shunk kree. Shunk kree.

Sam tucked his head up under Diana's chin. "What's taking him so long?"

They were alone on the lower concourse, Arthur and the elves back in the department store in an effort to minimize time distortions. Good-byes had been perfunctory at best.

"I'll be back with Kris as soon as I find her. Now go away, or this will never work!"

Claire thought she could smell the fire, could definitely hear the music. Actually, now that the mall was nothing more than a place on the Otherside, they could probably hear the music at the Girl Guide camp. The mall elves were great kids, but she could see why Jack didn't want to stay.

Shunk kree. Shunk kree.

The circle of light swept across the concourse.

Swept back.

His eyes widened as he stared at the two girls and the cat. Twenty-one years he'd been patrolling this darkness, finding the hidden ones, dragging them out to face the consequences. Girls. Boys. Young bodies. Lithe bodies. Hard bodies. All their possibilities caught and held.

They thought they were better than him. They laughed. Here, in the darkness, he made sure they stopped laughing.

Not the first time he'd caught two at once. Not even the first cat. The first pair with a cat. And a mirror? Caught himself, he stared at his reflection and almost saw something stare back.

"That was unpleasant." Although she hadn't actually touched the old man, Claire wiped her fingers against her thigh as they hurried toward the nearest exit, Jack riding the possibilities behind them.

"Yeah, lots of waxy build up in there. How much did you wipe?"

"His memory of us."

"And that whole 'geeks that hunt the night' tiling?"

"Couldn't touch it. It was tracked in too deep."