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His eyes burned and he blinked, only a single blink, but when his vision cleared, the girl was gone.

*

Good. It was good that she was gone. Gone with her shorts and her breasts and all her infinite possibilities.

Diana stopped just the other side of Bozo’s School Bus, set her backpack down on the yellow plastic kiddie ride, and waited while Sam climbed out.

“That was creepy,” he muttered, licking at a bit of ruffled fur.

“Very. And aren’t people that old supposed to be retired or something?”

“Or something,” the cat agreed. “Hey.” Front paws on the Plexiglas window, Sam peered into the bus. “This thing has seat belts. They don’t take it out of the building, do they?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then why seat belts?”

“I have no idea. But you know what’s really whacked? My bus—the one I rode down potholed dirt roads at a hundred and twenty klicks every morning and afternoon with a whole lot of very small bouncy children—no belts.” Swinging her pack back onto her shoulders, she headed for the main concourse. “Stay close and no one will see you.”

Sam fell into step by her right ankle.“Considering what that thing smelled like, I can think of one reason for seat belts. This place is huge. How are we going to find the Erlking Emporium?”

“Easy. We find the you-are-here sign. It’s probably at the end of this side hall.”

It wasn’t.

Although the side hall and one of the huge anchor stores spilled out into the main concourse at the same place, there was nothing to help mall patrons find their way through the two-story maze of stores they now faced.

“Maybe someone from the Otherside took it,” Sam offered when it became clear they were directionally on their own.

“It’s possible.” Motioning for Sam to be quiet, Diana froze as a final shopper slipped through the partially barricaded Kitchen Shop storefront, clutching a cheap manual can opener and trailing the ill wishes of the teenage clerk like black smoke behind her as she hurried down the side hall. “She feels like the last one in here. We’d better get moving before that creepy old security guard heads this way.”

Sam butted his head reassuringly against her leg.“You can take him.”

“Well, yeah. But I’d rather not. Come on. Blonde Ponytail said…”

“Who?”

“The jock with the bracelet. I never got her name. She said the store was on the lower level, so let’s find some stairs.”

Behind reinforced glass or steel bars, the stores themselves were places of shadow.

Unless the bracelet was the only piece of the Otherside they were selling, Diana should have been able to sense the Emporium, her Summons directing her like a child’s game of Warm and Cool where the parts of “Warm” and “Cool” were played by “I Can Live With the Headache if I Have to” and “Shoot Me Now.” Unfortunately, the Summons was unable to poke through the interference from the back rooms where a hundred part-time teenagers counted up a hundred cash drawers and ninety-seven of them came up short. By the time the cash had to be counted for the third time, the emanation of frustrated pissiness was so strong Diana couldn’t have sensed a trio of bears if they were sneaking up beside her.

“Hey, Rodney River has orange polyester bellbottoms on sale for $29.99.”

“Is that good?” Sam wondered.

Diana shuddered.“I can’t see how.” Pleased to see that the escalators had already been turned off—cat on escalator equaled accident waiting to happen—she led the way to the stairs.

Only the emergency lights were lit on the lower level, and the footprint of the mall seemed to have subtly changed.

“There’s too many corners down here. And if I can smell the food court, why can’t we find it?”

“I don’t…Someone’s coming.” Scooping up the cat, Diana backed into a triangular shadow and wrapped the possibilities around them both half a heartbeat before a flashlight beam swept by.

“I know you’re here.” One shoe draggingshunk kree against the fake slate tiles, the elderly security guard emerged from a side hall. Massive black flashlight held out in front of him, he walked bent forward, his head moving constantly from side to side on a neck accordion-pleated with wrinkles.

Diana would have said the motion looked snakelike except that she rather liked snakes.

Shunk kree. Shunk kree.“I will find you; never doubt it. I know you’ve hidden your lithe bodies away in the shadows.”

Sam twisted in Diana’s arms until he could stare up at her. His expression saying as clearly as if he’d spoken, “Lithe?” She shrugged.

“Long, loose limbs stacked unseen against the wall.”Shunk kree.

Who was he looking for? It couldn’t be her and Sam—he thoughtthey were gone.

The flashlight beam flicked up, caught the pale face of a store mannequin, and stopped moving.

“Can’t run now, can you?” He shuffled past so close to her hiding place that Diana could almost count the dark gray hairs growing from his ear. “Can’t run with your muscles moving inside the soft skin.”