I even spotted Imara amidst the crowd, looking seriously sheepish as she came toward the house.
I nudged Cat, pointed. "All's well that ends well."
68
Cat started forward. I caught her arm. "There's still no reason to let those guys know about you." Many were the sort who didn't mind erasing mistakes.
In the back of my aching head I wondered if I had any chance to survive this thing.
Fourteen fluttered down to perch on a rail post. The Goddamn Parrot flapped around above the god mob. It looked like he was following Imara, but that made no sense till Cat, staring, said, "That's not my mother." She eased back behind me.
Get inside fast, Garrett.
I whirled and dove. Fourteen hit me in the back in his own sudden desire to be anywhere but out there. Cat and I rolled around in a tangle of limbs. Thunder barked, drowned out imaginative remarks by the Goddamn Parrot. Lightning struck the remains of hinges and locks in and around the remnants of my door. Splinters flew. Wood smoke filled the entryway. I separated myself from Cat, cursing. Good doors are expensive. As Cat rose, I swatted her behind to get her moving. I could make no tracks with her in my way.
The very air reddened with rage as Magodor realized she had been caught flat-footed. I yelled, "No!" for whatever good it might do. Even as I tried to keep from drizzling down my leg in terror, one screwball part of my mind wondered if I could sue some Dream Quarter temple for damages. Your mind goes weird places under stress.
A blow hit like an earthquake, banged me off the wall, spun me around, dropped me to my knees. I clung to the bones of my doorframe with one hand. It felt like all the air was being sucked out of the house.
Uh... Well. Maybe all the air was being sucked out of TunFaire.
There was a hole in the air out there, halfway between my place and the Cardonlos homestead. The hole was fifteen feet across. It gave you a tourist's-eye view of that huge black city on the other side, along with a gang of characters distinguished mainly by festoons of tentacles. They galumphed in mad circles while what had to be a raging hot wind blasted across their treacle lake, blowing harder than any hurricane. All sorts of trash and loose whatever was whipping through that hole.
The big boys got busy doing a little trash duty. A few unfortunates suddenly found themselves deported to the old country. Despite the howl of the wind, I heard Mrs. Cardonlos' bellow of rage when part of her roof pulled away and ran off to visit another world. She was far too damned solid to go there herself.
She would become impossible now.
Look on the bright side, Garrett. The Goddamn Parrot was outside when the big guys opened that interdimensional oubliette. That damned talking chicken had to be over there where they deserved him.
Gah! He might take over and do a better job breaking through next time.
"Gather up all the ratmen," I muttered to the wind. "Get all the human rights nutcases. Sweep this burg clean while you're at it."
A nice sentiment, perhaps, but all the gods were involved in this. That meant everybody's gods, including the gods of the ratmen and the nuts. Nobody's prayers were going to get answered today.
The hole to the other realm shrank. In moments it was a point, then it ceased to be.
The street was now almost the same as before my dive. Every god and goddess and weird supernatural critter was right where it was before, excepting Imara who was Adeth, nearly the most perfect redhead of all time.
I could shed a tear.
Almost.
All of a sudden one fine-looking woman was standing in my doorway, right shoulder leaning against the frame. She looked like she had done a lot of research on arc and proportion. Definitely legs that went all the way to the ground and ample amplitude in the curves and softnesses departments. Somebody must have been peeking over Star's shoulder when she was doing her design layouts.
"It over?" I gasped.
"Wrapped, Garrett. It's time."
"Uh... " I said. "Like... " She was for sure no Destroyer now. "I'm not feeling real suicidal right now, Maggie."
Her smile was deadly. My spine turned to gelatin. "No risk, Garrett. Except you might not want to come up for air." Her eyes were as hypnotic as those of the snake that supposedly entrances a rat.
Help! Eleanor! Save me! But I didn't want to be saved. Not really.
One divine arm went around my neck. Then another. Then a hand trailed down each of my sides, toward my belt buckle. Interesting, those extra...
69
"Excuse me."
The voice came from behind the new, improved, impossibly sensual Magodor. She glanced back, displeased. Can't honestly say I was thrilled, either.
I said, "Go away."
I could see parts of the street. There were no gods out there now. There was no strangeness at all. Just silence. My part of TunFaire was five minutes short of being back to the way things always had been.
"I cannot. I remain the Board agent assigned to you. And you remain the key to the untenanted temple on the Street of the Gods."
"You sonofabitch. Godsdamned bureaucrat. Where the hell were you when my ass was in a sling?"
I caught a whiff of weed. Fourteen drifted up in a cloud, an all-time smouldering banger in his mouth. His eyelids drooped. He was happy. "You tell 'im, Chief."
I guess my complaint was the last straw. Strait went off on all the grief I had caused him. I was amazed. You don't often hear that much whining outside Royal offices, where some functionary always represents being asked to do his job.
"Go away, Strait."
Open the temple, Garrett. It is the last act necessary in this divine comedy.
Maggie, snarling, leaned forward. Her lips touched my left ear. "Later, Garrett," she whispered. Sudden pain. Blood trickled down my neck. A needle tooth had pierced my earlobe.
Then Magodor was gone.
Maybe Eleanor was on the job after all.
Magodor never came back. Thank you very much. Because I had a bone to pick with Miss Nastiness, and not the one you think.
All those clever hands at the last minute had made a certain very useful piece of cord vanish. A piece of cord I'd had in mind trimming some in the middle of a loop before I gave it up... Damn my habit of vacillating.
Spilled milk, Garrett.
Maggie never came back. She left me with some powerful curiosities, but I never went over to the temple where she set up as boss yahoo of the combined and restructured and now intensely feminist Shayir/Godoroth cult. Whenever I was tempted, I had only to touch my scarred earlobe, my thumping carotid artery, and I had little trouble resisting. If I still felt the tug, somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Nog is inescapable and I recalled who all else might be there waiting for me.
No pack of earth mothers, that bunch.
I was too busy to commit suicide, anyway.
The very next time there was a shakeout in the Dream Quarter, Maggie's gang headed west ten places. They had managed to turn the near destruction of TunFaire into a public relations coup.
The really bad, horrible, awful part of the whole ordeal, more a cause for despair than any interdimensional hole with a starving tentacle factory stuck in it, came when a nasty little neighbor brat pounded on the drunken, leaning remains of my door and hollered, "Mr. Garrett?"
"What?" demanded the drunken, leaning remains of me.
"Mrs. Cardonlos told me bring this back to you." He handed me a bedraggled, frosty, half-drowned parrot. At the exact moment that Morley Dotes chose to arrive, having hustled over to see if I was all right.