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.
"Everyone in Caf is frenetic, no problem
there. It's always crazy, but a few years ago someone in the government decided that anything that feels as good as coffee must be regulated to the bitter dregs. We need coffee to live, so this was very unfair legislation. I was running a multiregion-distribution business of gourmet goods—only the best, of course."
"Of course," I agreed.
"I oversaw picking and processing personally. It was wonderful. I had a slate of faithful customers, and all of them began to get questionnaires from government regulators. Now, you're like me, you don't like snoops. I started asking questions back. They didn't like the fact that some of my blends are made with beans that come from other dimensions. But you know that Caf explorers seeded those plantations thousands of years ago. Those trees are ours. If you like, I was only importing sunlight and water. But the pests did not see it that way. They started to demand that I justify my extradimensional purchases. And then when they asked for full lists of all my customers, and all of their customers, I realized that someone was getting too hyper."
I nodded. A being like her whose blood is mostly caffeine would know how bad that was. She uncurled her long hands in a gesture of helplessness.
"So I have returned to my roots. I have one outlet, here, which I run myself. It is supplied by one farm, which I own myself. I give the gift of life to all those who come to me. I am appreciated."
"Why here?" I asked. "Why not somewhere like Perv, where you'd be a star?"
Sibone patted my leg with one of her tentacle-like hands. "Perv is too focused on the pursuit of the moment. I wanted to go somewhere I was really needed. Here there was a center with nothing to fill it, where people were looking for direction. I provide them with the strength to do what they choose. In the end it is only people that matter."
"Now, that sounds like the old metaphysical Sibone I used to know," I exclaimed. I reached for a hefty brown mug hanging on the wall. Pervects like their coffee like they like their beer, at optimum temperature and in sufficient quantity to drown their tonsils.
"But what about you? I had last heard you were acting as a balance in a lawless place."
I narrowed an eye. That wasn't the way the Merchants' Association would like to have the Bazaar described, but it pretty much explained M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s job.
"Temporarily retired," I stated shortly, hoping that would do. However much I trusted Sibone to understand all that had happened to me recently, I wasn't going to go into any of it in front of Eskina. "I'm here to help out a friend. Someone in The Mall's been masquerading as him, ripping him and a bunch of merchants off, but Eskina here thinks there's a more sinister purpose."
Eskina launched into her story, aided by the picture of Skeeve I was carrying. About five cups of coffee later she sputtered to an end. Sibone patted her on the back.
"So your good friend is being drained by this evil creature Eskina is seeking," Sibone summed up neatly.
"So she says," I replied. I still wasn't completely convinced. "It explains the mechanism as well as anything else. I'm willing to have help chasing down the SOB."
"Help? You?" Sibone asked, astonished. "Why don't you just reach out and grab him, trounce his sorry behind, and spit on the remains?"
I scowled. "It's not so easy. I've lost my powers."
Sibone put out a sympathetic hand. "I'm very sorry. Oh, but then I have to warn you: Cire is running around here."
"Cire!" I exclaimed. A fellow wizard and a friend, but he had a sense of humor you might call playful if you weren't the brunt of it.
"Yes. He just came off a very lucrative contract, has money to burn. He thought he would blow it at The Mall and spend his afternoons drinking my coffee."
I leered at her. "Well, that's half a good reason to hang out here."
Sibone tapped me playfully. "You! Well, let me see if I can help you." She shook her head at me, then stared off into space over our heads. Cafiends never closed their eyes. Close as I'd been to Sibone, I still wasn't sure if it was because they had no eyelids or from living on a steady diet of coffee. "I see all, in the course of the day: the lonely ones who come here, the unready, the sleepy, the unaware, and those who just need a good jolt of joe. I do not believe I have ever seen this face." She tapped Skeeve's portrait.
"We'll have to get ahold of the other people who've reported having their credit cards ripped off," I suggested. "Parvattani can do that for us. Where do you suppose he is?"
"Oh, that one?" Sibone asked, an annoyed look on her face. "He has been waiting outside the booth for half an hour."
EIGHT
The Mall guard captain had a fixed look of distaste on his face when Chumley brought him inside.
"Sorry, pal," I offered sheepishly. "I forgot you didn't know where we were."
"Oh, I knew where you had gone," Parvattani corrected me, holding up a small orb like a miniature crystal ball. "We have eyes all over this facility. I could not enter this building."
"And why should you just be able to sashay in and out?" Sibone demanded. "This is not a police state, however you believe it should be?"
"Now, see here, madame, we are the security of this Mall, and as such ought to have access in the event..."
Uh-oh. Two of my allies shared some past history, and it sounded like it wasn't resolved yet. I flung up my hands.
"Hold it!" I shouted, over the growing argument. "We're all working together!"
"You are right," Sibone admitted. "Forgive my lack of manners, Captain. Would you like some coffee?" "Not while on duty," Par emitted shortly. I could tell he was still smarting for having to stand outside like a sentry.
Massha came to the rescue. She floated up from her cushy hammock and alighted beside Par, cuddling close and insinuating her arm into his.
"Hey, big guy, don't be upset! We couldn't let the grass grow under our feet. We were just following up a lead or two. You understand that. Your boss hired us for our expertise. We're just using it."
"Yes, of course, but I wanted to observe—" Parvattani shot a yearning look at me, and I realized what we were dealing with was a bad case of hero worship. I ignored the twinge of nostalgia that awoke in me.
"Well, you can observe now," Massha promised, with a tight hug that nearly pulled the guard captain off his feet. "And we're counting on your help. You were going to cut off the fake Skeeve's credit line. How did you do that?"
Par responded instantly to a call to show off his competence. He held up the little globe.
"With this," he explained. "All of my guards have one. If you cannot find me, you can stop any one of them and have them contact me. With it I can speak to one or all of the security force. It is also hooked into the eyes all over The Mall. If the eye of a statue or a painting look-a like it follows you, it's probably one of ours. I can also talk to the shop owners who are on-a the system. Not everyone can afford a globe."
"Ah, but everybody knows somebody who's got one," Eskina put in.
"Yes," Parvattani snapped tersely, not liking his thunder stolen. "So word will get around. I have issued a bulletin not to permit 'Skeeve' to make a purchase anyplace, not-a even a newspaper or a doughnut. They are also requested to summon the guard if he comes into their shops. I cannot ask them to apprehend him; that is our job, not theirs. Now we will be notified directly if anyone sees the Skeeve."
"Good enough." I sighed. "Pretty soon the thief will have to abandon the disguise." "So, if you'll just wait a minute," the Djinnie salesclerk suggested, with a perky smile at the tall, thin Klahd, "I'll run in the back and see why your receipt hasn't materialized yet."
Wassup knew he wasn't the brightest candle on the mantelpiece, but he knew the signs of a clerk about to call a security guard.
"I'll just wait out in the hall," he offered, edging swiftly backward, away from the counter. He shot a final, regretful glance at the crystal chandelier. Too bad. It would have been really pretty hanging in the Rat Hole.
"Oh, no, sir, it'll just be a moment!" The Djinnie fluttered after him, trying vainly to catch his hand, t
he one holding the Skeeve credit card. Once Wassup was over the threshold she had to abandon the chase. Those were the rules, written and unwritten. He hadn't taken the merchandise with him, and he was outside the store, so he was no longer the clerk's problem. He strode away as fast as his long shanks would carry him. Being a Klahd was like trying to balance a bag of groceries on stilts. Mall-rats were much more aerodynamic in shape, being low to the ground, but he had to admit this body had a pretty decent turn of speed.
"What's wrong?" a low voice hailed him.
Wassup's ears perked up. "Hey, Oive," he chirped. Mall-rats recognized one another no matter what faces they were wearing. His fellow thief had on a teenage Dragonet body, a power shopper she particularly liked impersonating. Her arms were full of bags. "Man, I am bummed. That was the fifth place in a row where they tried to bust me for being this guy."
"Bummer," Oive agreed. "Hey, want some of this stuff?"
"What have you got?" Wassup asked.
"I dunno. I just look at the price tags. Let's see: high- heeled boots, a power saw, an enameled altar set, and a commemorative plate for the Diamond Jubilee of King Horace of Mindlesburonia."
"Where's that?" Wassup asked.
"Never heard of it. But it's pretty."
"Good stuff, man," Wassup praised her. Oive preened.
"And it only took me an hour! Hey, there's Garn."
"Word up," Wassup hailed him, or rather her, since Garn was in the shape of a young and attractive Flibberite Mall employee.
"Hail to thee," Garn replied.
"Where'd you get the cool phrase?" Oive demanded, admiringly.
"Like, there was this guy, you know, actually reading out loud to an audience?" Garn related, his eyes wide with disbelief. "I mean, words off a page! They sounded neat, like music without a tune."
"How come you went into a bookstore, man?" Wassup asked, curiously.
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