Marlo noticed the three hostage boys in the doorway “Who are they?” she asked. “Demon cats or something?”
Milton vibrated like a toddler after too much apple juice.
“Boys,” Norm explained. “They were on the stagecoach, on the way to Sadia.”
Lyon shoved her way past Norm. Her eyes were hot blue flames aching to burn. “You totally cheated!” she screeched. “This won’t count!”
Bordeaux trembled by Amandi’s side. She wrapped her skinny arms around herself as she stared at the piles of torn paper and plaster with a traumatized expression on her face.
“How did you get the Grabbit to eat you?” she said with distress.
Marlo threw back her head and laughed. Flecks of the crumbling portrait she had stolen from the Grabbit’s warren flew from her mouth. It was like there was a parade inside her, celebrating her victory with joyful blasts of confetti.
Norm gawked at her friend with open admiration.
“But how did you know that Amandi would give the Hopeless Diamonds to—”
She leveled her gaze at Amandi hovering at the back of the office. Despite the girlish grin, she still resembled a Bulgarian wrestler with wildly fluctuating hormone levels.
Norm smiled.
“Ooh, you guys are good!”
Lyon pushed Norm out of her way and got in Marlo’s face.
“Fine, you and Uggs played us, but why go through all this trouble?” she said, waving at the huge, busted bunny piñata in the corner.
Marlo brushed dust off the front of her tacky sweatshirt, which only made its innate tackiness shine through.
“It’s easy, but I’ll speak slowly so you can follow along,” Marlo explained. “We knew it would be hard to get these heavy Hopeless wonders past security,” she said, patting her fanny pack with satisfaction. “We pretty much figured the only way to get them through undetected was by swallowing them, and since you and Bordeaux are to body fat what reality TV is to actual reality, you were the best candidates.”
“But why all the barney rubble of dressin’ as the big bunn?” Jordie asked, still a little angry yet grudgingly impressed.
“Well, Lyon here may be dumb, but she’s not stupid,” Marlo clarified. “We knew the only way to get her greedy mitts off those diamonds was to trick her into thinking she was delivering them straight to the Grabbit itself. And, boy, did I!”
Amandi stepped forward in two hulking stomps.
“We’d better get the Hopeless Diamonds to the Grabbit now,” the stocky girl said. “The real one.”
Amandi looked Marlo up and down.
“You’re kind of a mess … nothing personal,” she observed. “You might arouse suspicion.”
Marlo straightened her hair, causing a small avalanche of plaster dust to rain down onto her face and shoulders.
“I should take the diamonds down to the Grabbit,” Amandi continued.
Milton fidgeted in a spastic fit, trying to free himself from his bonds.
Marlo peered beyond Amandi’s beefy shoulder at Milton. “They seem uncomfortable,” she commented. “Especially that little one …”
“Nah, they love it,” Amandi replied.
She stepped in front of the boys.
“Whoever wants to be untied, raise their hand,” she asked.
The boys writhed and moaned.
“See,” Amandi said, turning to Marlo and puffing up menacingly. “Now hand over the diamonds, before it’s too—”
“What’s with the hoods?” Marlo persisted. She was fascinated by the bouncing boy in the middle. She stalked toward him, grabbed his canvas hood, and yanked.
Milton’s eyes protruded behind his spectacles, and his face shimmered with a sickly, clammy sheen. He was hyperventilating through the kerchief in his mouth.
“Milton!” yelped Marlo.
“Milquetoast,” murmured Amandi. She folded her thick arms against her ample a grandma is a mom with extra frosting sweatshirt and glared at Milton, her lip curling with amused malevolence.
Marlo yanked Milton’s gag out of his mouth.
“Marlo!” he yelped. “I …”
Marlo beamed, hugging her brother, who, with thick twine around his wrists, couldn’t hug back.
“What’s this?” she asked, noticing a small package tucked into the back of his pants.
“It’s nothing,” Milton gasped, hungrily breathing in air through his mouth. His eyes rested on Amandi. There was something about the girl that filled Milton’s stomach with molten dread. The wide-set, coal-black eyes and coarse features …
“Stop squirming,” Marlo scolded as she uncoiled the rough twine from her brother’s raw wrists. “Did you make it back up to the Surface? If so, how did you get back? I mean, if you escaped, then came back, then how …”
Milton smiled as his sister barraged him with questions that she had no intention of letting him answer.
Marlo’s nose curled.
“Let me guess,” she continued. “It involved a microwave loaded with Kernel Instapop’s gourmet popping corn exploding in your face.”
“Something like that.” Milton grinned. His sister managed to take the sting out of, again, dying in a food-related accident.
“I love family reunions as much as the next guy—uh, girl,” Amandi said, brushing blond bangs from her short, wide forehead, “but we don’t have time. The Grabbit needs those diamonds now, or else all this was just a big waste of time.”
The Fauster children stared at Amandi with wide, questioning eyes.
“I’m a teacher’s aide,” she said after registering the doubt in Milton’s and Marlo’s faces. “I can slip through security faster and—”
Just then, Amandi’s thumb and pinky rang.
The girls traded glances until finally settling on Amandi as she tried to ignore the ringtone emanating from her hand.
Marlo glared at her suspiciously.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” she asked.
“What?” Amandi replied with a quaver, her fuzzy lip twitching slightly. “Oh. This. No one ever … it must be a wrong number.”
“Only one way to find out,” Norm said flatly.
Amandi sighed. She stuck her thumb in her ear and talked into her pinky.
“Hello?” she answered under her breath, turning away toward the plate-glass wall.
“Damian?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb squawked from the other end of the phone. “Is that—”
“Wrong number,” Amandi hissed into her pinky.
A swarm of prickles traveled up Milton’s spine as his stomach sagged, like a leaky balloon filled with sour milk and battery acid. His ferret-heightened ears echoed with the wretched name, uttered by a wretched voice. Apparently, his link to Lucky—though now jagged and stuttery like a bad cell-phone connection—had survived the Transdimensional Power Grid.
“Damian!” Milton yelled. He grabbed Marlo and pulled her close. “And she … he … is talking to Bea ‘Elsa’ Bubb!”
“So that’s your game!” Marlo seethed.
Her face crinkled into a dusty white mask, like that of a mischievous baby ghost. Without warning, Marlo ran over to Damian and kicked him full force between the legs. The faux female doubled over in excruciating pain.
“And we’ve got your number, Damian,” Marlo sneered. “On speed dial.”
She walked back to Milton.
“C’mon, we’ve got to skedaddle.”
Lyon and Bordeaux blocked the door leading back to the SkyBridge. Between their scrawny shoulders, Marlo could see several demon guards stumbling off the Express Escalator and onto the SkyDeck.
“Looks like we’re headed off at the pass,” Marlo said. Lyon and Bordeaux looked smugly at one another.
Marlo gulped, then took Milton’s hand.
“Trust me,” she whispered into her brother’s ears.
If Milton had a nickel for every bad thing that happened after Marlo uttered the words “trust me,” he thought, he would have … well … a whole lot of nick
els.
But even a boy as bright as Milton couldn’t see a way out, so he’d have to trust that his reckless sister had spotted an exit that he had the good sense not to. He squeezed her hand.
Marlo turned, pulling Milton into position next to her. They faced the wreckage of the ersatz Grabbit, at the feet of which Damian was now writhing and moaning.
Marlo leaned into her brother’s ear.
“On the count of three, we run,” she whispered, squeezing her brother’s hand. “One …”
“Where?” Milton asked incredulously.
“… two …”
“Stop!” a demon guard roared as it burst into the office.
“… three!”
Marlo and Milton sprinted straight into the broken hull of the papier-mâché Grabbit, using it as a protective shell as they crashed through the plate-glass wall and tumbled down to the mall below.
36 · FALLiNG AFOUL
“AAAAAAAEEEEYYYYYAAAAHHHHH!!!” MILTON AND Marlo screamed as they clutched one another inside the free-falling bunny sculpture.
Milton watched the glitter of Mallvana swirl around him, as if someone had filled up a huge washing machine with every possible want and desire and set it on “Heavy Load: Extra Rinse.” What is this place? he mused. It made him feel anxious and excited, and he hated malls. The fact that his last mall outing had ended in a fiery eruption of molten marshmallow could also have fed this aversion. And—as the dazzling jeweled floor of Mallvana’s twelfth tier rushed to meet them—his latest trip to the mall didn’t bode much better.
The Fausters’ papier-mâché shell exploded into vaporized plaster and newspaper shreds as they hit the floor. They rolled out of the chaotic cloud, spinning and shrieking, while terrified shoppers gasped and stumbled back out of harm’s way.
Milton and Marlo slammed into the burnished copper railing. The siblings lay panting at the lip of Mallvana’s twelfth tier, hundreds of feet above the concourse.
Milton opened his eyes, looked down below, then nearly lost the last lunch he ever ate alive (a grilled-cheese sandwich with peperoncinos and a tapioca pudding cup). He rolled over and stared up at the breathtaking stained-crystal ceiling.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“You have died and gone to Mallvana,” Marlo explained.
She rose to her feet, leaned over the railing, and peered down at the mall below. Rivers of people flowed through the shopping Shangri-la, spilling down escalators like human water, heading for the concourse.
“We’ve got to boogie down,” Marlo muttered. She looked up at the SkyDeck Lyon, Bordeaux, and Damian peered down through the shattered glass wall.
“And do the hustle.” She gulped.
“I’m fine, by the way,” Milton mumbled. He stood up, shaky and dizzy, like a poster boy for inner-ear disorders. “Thanks for asking.”
Damian glared at them from above. He ripped off his blond wig, wiped off his smear of bright red lipstick, and then disappeared.
“Uh-oh,” Marlo said. “Something ugly this way comes. C’mon.”
Marlo ran to the escalator between Sole Salvation and Pearly Gate and Barrel. Milton followed, managing to run and sulk at the same time.
“You mean we’re not going to bungee jump without a bungee this time?”
Marlo weaved through the escalator, which was clogged with old women with tiny white wings poking through the backs of their off-white tracksuits and sweaters. Milton, trying to keep up, looked behind him and saw a burly, angry boy in a granny sweatshirt descending the escalator.
Milton swallowed hard. He joined his sister, who had just stumbled off the escalator.
“Damian’s coming,” Milton panted.
Marlo looked over beyond the Transcendental House of Pancakes at the next down escalator. It had a CLOSED FOR REPAIR. PLEASE USE THE STAIRS WAY OVER THERE sign blocking shoppers from entry. Next to it, throngs of old women—some dragging put-upon old men behind them who were paying for their earthly transgressions by being forced to shop with their wives for all eternity—spilled out of the up escalator into the Angel Food Court.
“Looks like we’ve got to take the hard way down,” she said. “But we’re used to swimming against the mainstream, aren’t we?”
She grabbed Milton’s arm and gave a tug. Is this my role in death as it was in life? Milton pondered as he was led to the up escalator. To be dragged behind my sister in a mall?
Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s yellow goat eyes widened in shock.
“We must have a bad connection,” she whispered into her No-Fee Hi-Fi Faux Phone, “because I thought I just heard you say that you were chasing Marlo and Milton Fauster. How is that possible? I would have been alerted the second he passed through the gates, unless …”
Her eyes darted across the Mallvana security cove—where she and several demons were staring at a bank of closed-circuit televisions—at Lilith, in the corner, on the phone as usual.
“… unless that skinny, manipulative whippet in a designer dress screwed up somehow.”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb grinned at the thought.
“Whatever,” Damian said. He stopped, huffing, in front of Hot Dog on a Scepter. A man in an impaled sausage costume greeted him.
“Hot diggity dog,” the man said wearily as he waved a sausage pierced by a jeweled staff. “Can I hook you up with an extra-large lanced link?”
Damian grabbed the man’s scepter and ran.
“Hey!” the man yelled, shuffling in hot-dog-costume-hobbled pursuit.
“What’s going on?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb asked.
“Just picking up a little present for my good friend Milton,” Damian said as he sliced through the crowd of senior citizens to the down escalator.
“Why are you wasting time when you should be bringing me my diamonds?” she hissed discreetly, turning away from the other demons in the cloistered cove. “I’ve got that emaciated she-devil on the ropes, and those diamonds could put her out of my misery and me right by Lucifer’s side—”
“Is there some trouble, Blubb?” Lilith asked as she sashayed across the security room.
Principal Bubb smiled as sweetly as someone with a face like an open wound can.
“No trouble,” she replied. “Though there soon may be for you …,” she whispered under her bad breath.
“Do try to keep on top of things while I receive Mammon,” Lilith gloated, her flawless, angular face cast in the glow of the flickering monitors.
“Can I go back to doing my job now?” Damian said. “You know, the one that helps you keep yours.”
“And no personal phone calls,” Lilith added as she left the room.
Bea “Elsa” Bubb gnashed her fangs together with a squeak.
“Fine,” she sighed into her pinky. “Point taken.”
Damian stomped down the escalator.
“That’s the idea,” he murmured, testing the keen tip of his stolen scepter on the rear of the unfortunate woman in front of him.
“Nice shirt,” an old woman said, pointing at Marlo’s sweatshirt. “Where did you ever—”
“Out of my way, Grandma,” Marlo grunted with a shove as she descended the ascending escalator.
Several steps behind, trudging against the flow of human traffic, Milton followed in her wake.
“Sorry,” he apologized to the flabbergasted biddies. Milton scowled at his sister.
“What if that really was our grandma?” he scolded.
Marlo looked back with curiosity at the clot of old women.
“Nah,” she said. “Grandma Fauster died in that stampede at the bingo hall. She’d be … . flatter.”
They hopped off the escalator and circled toward the next. Galloping near the banister overlooking the mall commons, Milton looked up while Marlo looked down.
“Maybe we … lost … him,” Milton wheezed.
“Not likely,” Marlo replied.
She scanned the floor below. Outside of Halo/ Good Buy was a sign: NO SAIL SALE: ALL CANOES, KAYAKS, R
OWBOATS, AND DINGHIES MUST GO!
Marlo smirked as she grabbed the velvet handrail of the next escalator.
“What are we even doing?” Milton groused. “We have those diamonds. We should use them to buy our way out of this place or something. Why are we giving them to some weird metal rabbit?”
“Grabbit,” Marlo corrected. “It said if I stole the Hopeless Diamonds for it, this whole place could be sent into some kind of chaos.”
“It’s hard to imagine this place as anything but chaotic,” Milton said desperately as he was buffeted about by countless shoulders and hips.
“It also promised me my own circle of Heck.”
Milton joined his sister on the mall floor. He straightened his glasses and looked at her incredulously.
“You can’t be serious,” he said. “First off, it would never do that. Second, why would you want to have your own circle? That’s like having your own mental hospital and graveyard wrapped up into one.”
“I always wanted to get into management,” she said with a grin. “I am, after all, a people person in the worst way. I can’t stand them.”
Milton’s jaw went slack as he stared at his sister.
“C’mon,” Marlo ordered, pulling his arm. “A little detour.”
She dragged Milton to Halo/Good Buy.
“One that might save us a lot of time in the long run.”
Milton looked at the no sail sale sign and felt his stomach sink into his shoes.
“Oh no …,” he murmured.
Marlo turned and gave her brother a look like a dark, frozen one-way street. Her fingers flexed at her sides, as if doing warm-up exercises for some Olympic thieving event, like the hundred-yard snatch.
“Why do I have the feeling that whatever it is you’re planning,” Milton said, “isn’t going to be exactly covert?”
37 · ROCKiNG THE BOAT
“WHAT AM I supposed to do?” Milton asked as he scanned the empty store with nervous sweeps of his eyes. “The coast looks clear.”
“Clear?” Marlo said. “Perhaps to the untrained eye, but mine—both of them, in fact—are highly trained. An empty store never makes for optimal lifting. On the plus side, though, I don’t see any guards. They must be running around doing the big bunny’s bidding.”
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Page 19