Mindgasm - A Bad Boy Romance With A Twist (Mind Games Book 3) by Gabi Moore (22)

“How did you know they would try that?” Lilly asked him after they left.

“Like I said, we’re in their domain and they like to get the better of any trade. We would have traded the map for a ghoul and they would run off. Whatever is in the map is so valuable they’ll risk the pain of the noise to get it. Let’s see what they do the next time.”

This time when they brought the figure of Emily through the doors, she was ungagged. She saw Dion and Lilly and began to blubber in tears.

“Who am I?” he asked her.

“Dion! Now get me out of here!”

“And the girl with me?”

“It’s Lilly, for God’s sake Dion get me out of this horrible place!”

Dion had Lilly walk over to the ghouls holding Emily and take her while she rested one hand on the pull chain. The moment Emily was back in their hands, he tossed them the map. The ghouls looked at it to make sure it was the right one and retreated back into the doors.

Lilly finished untying Emily who embraced her and began to cry. When she finished crying, he pulled the chain on the floor polisher and it started up again. She yelled but remained in human form. Dion killed the motor.

“I had to be sure,” he explained to her. “They tried to give us a fake Emily once, they might do it again.”

The trip back to the surface took place quick. With the light of the headlamp, Lilly was able to guide them back to the main level of the mall. Soon they were on the corridor side of the door they had entered.

“Where will it take us this time?” Lilly said to them.

“Only one way to find out,” Dion said and pushed the door open.

They found themselves next to the pharmacy where the ghouls had tried to keep them from reaching. Dion stood there with the floor polisher in one hand and looked down the hallway. From what he could tell by the wall clock, they’d only been underground for a few hours.

“That’s a relief,” he said.

“A relief we’re out?” Emily asked. “I never want to go back down there again. I could hear those things shuffling all over that place. It was horrible!”

“No, it’s good we were only down there a few hours,” he told her. “Sometimes you can come up from the elemental underworld and discover years have passed.”

“Rip Van Winkle,” Lilly said.

“Exactly. If we had gone through those doors to the subbasement, years might have passed when we returned to the surface. The same rules don’t apply down there when it comes to time passage.”

“You just don’t know when to quit, do you?” It was Officer Karanzen and six of his guards. “I had a complaint and it appears you’ve gone and stolen a floor polisher. Really Dion, why do you force me to do this?”

“Force you to do what?”

“Force me to take all of you down to my office; you’ll have to come with me now.”

Dion, Lilly and Emily were marched down the concourse with Karanzen and his minions surrounding them. No one wanted to look in their direction because when the security chief had someone, it usually meant they were on their way out.

The office of Officer Karanzen was located in an out-of-the-way section of the mall. It had a few rooms which could be locked from the outside, equipped with closed circuit cameras inside them. This was the equivalent of “cells” that a police station might have, although the mall guards had no power to make arrests like the law enforcement officers. They could make citizen’s arrests, but so could anyone else. The rooms were for special cases, people caught stealing, trying to peep inside women’s’ bathrooms and the like. Minors were held in the main office while one of the guards made a report and called their guardians.

However, all three of them - Emily, Dion and Lilly - were eighteen. They were legally adults, although still in high school. This created a bit of a problem for security. Technically, they needed to press charges or release them. Karanzen didn’t want to go to any trouble, which might get the legal affairs people involved, so he opted for another option: taking them all into his office.

He sat the three of them across from his desk while closing the door to the rest of the security office. While they sat in their chairs, he pretended to look at some report and shuffled more papers. The whole ruse was supposed to make them think he was busy doing something else and create uncertainty and fear in their minds. Dion was aware of what he did and didn’t care.

“Stealing a floor polisher,” he said to Dion. “I would’ve thought you were the type to find something a little more elaborate. Come on, at least a rack of clothes. What did you do? Have the girls distract the maintenance department?”

“We were given the polisher,” Lilly said to him.

“Really?” Karanzen returned to her. “For what? Did you plan to clean up somewhere? You don’t appear to be the charwoman type.”

“Can we just bring this nonsense to an end, Officer?” Dion said. “We all know what happened and how we had to rescue our friend. Do you really want us to go back home and tell Emily’s family how a bunch of cleaners kidnapped her and hauled her down to the subbasement? Do you want her story on the evening news?”

Karanzen sat behind his desk and glared at Dion. He picked up a pencil and tossed it at the wall. The girls jumped up as it collided.

“I look like a fool to you, son?” he yelled. “There was no kidnapping and I would just like to see you prove it.”

“I don’t have to, Officer. All we need to do is go home, tell Emily’s parents our story and the news reporters will be all over this place. Won’t that look good on TV. We both know the reason this mall was built is over the location. It’s relatively quiet, the location is good and it’s at a gateway between different parts of the universe.”

Karanzen’s face went red. Emily was afraid he’d lunge at Dion, but he stayed in place.

“It’s your job, isn’t it, Officer?” Dion said to him. “You guard the abyss which is in the center of the mall. The management knows it and wanted the mall built for reasons of their own. They seem to think people shouldn’t know what is in the middle. Well, I do. I know my parents are being held there. I want them out, but I have to visit the elemental grandmasters before I can get them out of here.”

“I want all of you out of here!” Karanzen said bringing down his fist on the table. “You have caused enough trouble for me today. I don’t need some smart-mouth kids coming inside my territory messing things up. Now get out of here before I change my mind and call the police!”

They all stood up and walked out the door.

“You stay put!” Karanzen yelled at Dion as he reached the door. “The other two can go, but I want to talk to you.”

Dion walked back inside and shut the door behind him. He returned to the chair where he’d sat.

Officer Karanzen sat back on his chair and glared at Dion. Then he began to change. His form broke up into a large cloud with eyes and teeth floating in it. Within seconds, the cloud had filled the other side of the desk and Dion could see numerous insects and flies swarming inside it. The cloud merged into a pair of eyes, which stared down at him and focused.

Dion had expected something like this. Karanzen was showing him his latest form, or as much as he could on this plane. The cloud of insects continued to buzz with all manner of wasps and bees. He saw it was made up of things that stung and bite. This was how Karanzen scared the stuffing out of troublesome kids he’d picked up inside the mall. One look at what was behind the surface of him and no one was ever the same again. Dion doubted the officer had done this too many times, but it was effective. However, Dion was aware of his true form and knew he couldn’t hurt him physically without bring down the wrath of the mall managers.

The cloud began to coalesce again and soon Karanzen was back to his human form. He sat back on his hands and smiled as Dion, assured he had put a bad scare into the young man.

“So you show me your true self?” Dion said to him. “What am I, some kid with a dog-eared copy of The Egyptian Book of the Dead? Seriously, officer, I would expect better from you. Can I go now?”

“Out of here!” he screamed. “Get out of my office now!”

“No problem, Officer. And don’t worry, your little secret is safe with me.” He shut the door behind him and heard books flying across the room, hitting the walls.

“I think we need to go outside,” Dion said to Lilly and Emily as they left the security offices.

“What happened in there?” Emily asked. “I can’t believe they are going to let those monsters go.”

“They will discipline the cleaners,” Dion said to her. “Don’t worry about that. He’s more afraid of you talking than anything else. The cleaners weren’t ever supposed to do what they did.”

Outside the mall they found a fountain, sat on a bench next to it and watched the water spray. It was a few minutes before Dion said anything.

“Whoever built this mall wants its location quiet,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the ghouls get fired over this. There are plenty of other earth elementals they can bring in here to do the job of taking care of this place. I’m sure there are plenty of gnomes and trolls who would be glad to move in and do the job.”

“Why do you think they wanted to trade the map?” Lilly asked. She had the pack to one side of the ground and her foot was resting on it.”

“They realized what they did after Emily was grabbed. They needed something to use to justify it and the map was the only thing they knew about. One of them figured out what it was after they ditched it. They found out we had it when we went down to the subbasement. They decided to make a trade, but tried to use a changeling instead of the real Emily.”

“I could still be down there,” she said, her body shivering. “You have no idea how scary it was down there. I never want to go anywhere near that mall again. I’m not sure if I’ll ever want to go around any mall in the future.”

“This one is different,” Dion told her. “It’s built to be the junction of several planes. I don’t know exactly why it was built here, but my parents suspected the reason.”

“You haven’t talked much about them,” Emily said. “Did they have the same powers as you do?”

“Don’t think of it as powers,” Dion told her. “Think of it as talent. Dad had Air and Fire; mother had Earth and Water. I think I might be the first in generations to have all four elements with the possibility of gaining the fifth.”

“Will we be able to get back inside?” Lilly asked him.

“Officer Karanzen didn’t threaten to keep us out, so I guess the answer is yes. We’ll still be watched. He tried to scare me inside his office, but he found out I don’t scare easy.”

“I’m scared enough,” Emily finally spoke up. “I’m going home. Lilly, you can stay here with him, but I want to get out of here. Call me later and let me know how everything turned out.”

Emily grabbed her purse and waltzed down the parking lot. In a few minutes, they saw her driving away in her car.

“Can’t say I blame her,” Lilly said. “After being kidnapped by ghouls and hauled underground. I don’t think they did anything to her, but still….”

“They didn’t because they wanted to use her as a bargaining chip. Other people captured by them weren’t so lucky. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to bring them here, but in retrospective, it was a dumb plan.”

They strolled across the outside of the parking lot and stopped to look at the new theater, which was placed outside the mall a few months ago. This theater had two whole screens and sported a big marquee out front with the name of two popular films. One had something to do with sharks that ate people and the other the exploits of an ambulance crew in Hollywood. Lilly didn’t think either of them looked interesting.

“You ever go to the movies?” she asked Dion, her hand slipping casually into his. Lilly felt herself grown attracted to the strange man and really wanted to help him find his parents. She didn’t really know what she was doing right now, but wanted to see it through. It was almost like being inside a made-for-TV movie. At any minute, she expected there to be a commercial break.

“Not too often,” he said, securing her hand in his. “But I never liked the smell of popcorn. Mom and dad took me a few times when I was smaller. Since they disappeared and I moved in with my aunt and uncle, I don’t get out that much. I spend most of my free time in the libraries, trying to find out who is behind the mall and what secrets it might hold.”

Lilly turned and looked back at the mall. “You really wouldn’t think it could be such a mysterious place. Looks like any other mall from the outside. But according to you, it’s the home to all kinds of elementals.”

“One of the reasons it was built was to lure and trap them,” he explained. “They might fire the ghouls from their jobs as cleaners, but they’ll still be there, just doing some work where they don’t have contact with the humans. Whoever built the mall wants the different elementals to stay put. I don’t know what they’re planning, but I’m sure they need all the power the elementals possess to make it happen.”

“What else can you do with fire elementals?” she asked him. “I like the demonstration you did this afternoon. Can you do another?”

“I guess. Hand me the lantern,” he told her.

Lilly picked it out of her bag and passed it to him. Dion took the lantern in his hand and activated the ignition switch. Soon, a small flame was burning inside the lantern. He watched it, touched the lens of the lamp with one hand, and carefully unscrewed it. As the sun’s rays began to hide behind the trees, which lined the parking lot, trees that were very new and supplied by a local nursery, he removed the lens and sat it on the ground.

Lilly watched with fascination.

The flame inside the lantern was burning a bright blue color. Dion turned down the regulator on the lamp and let it burn intensely hot, so hot Lilly could feel the heat from where she sat. He reached inside the lamp and placed his finger on the flame.

Lilly jumped back in fear. But he wasn’t injured in the least bit. Dion withdrew his hand and held it up to Lilly for her to examine.

On the end of his index finger, a blue flame danced up and down his hand. The flame moved with its own intelligence and seemed to have a will of its own. She watched the flame form into the shape of a man and, as Dion turned it over, the flame danced around in a circle in his palm. The flame began to dance faster and faster, soon it was a large flame, which appeared to engulf his entire hand.

“How do you do that without getting burnt?” Lilly asked him.

“It trusts me,” Dion said. “And I trust in it.”

Dion placed the fire elemental on the ground and let it dance over the green grass. Nothing was burnt beneath it, but the flame grew larger still. Lilly sat there in wonder as it increased in size, larger than she could possibly imagine. The flame took on the form of a lizard and walked around the ground beneath them, exploring its world. She turned and looked at Dion.

He made a few passes in the air and mumbled some words that didn’t appear to be in English, and the fire elemental stopped its motion. As Dion spread out his hands, the fire creature began to shrink in size. Soon it was down to the size of a small flame. Dion reached over to pick it up. The flame jumped into his palm and he took it back over to the lantern, where he returned it. The flame burned a brilliant blue again; he reattached the lens to the lantern, then reached down and turned it off.

The flame was gone.

“That is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen,” Lilly said.

She looked up at his brown eyes and kind face. Lilly felt something stir inside her. Where had this man been all her life? She was sick and tired of boys who would try to tell her anything to get what they wanted from her. She’d never fallen for their idiotic claims. She had one guy who took her to the drive-in telling her he was in love with her. “No,” she had told him, “you are in love with it.” She’d left the car and phoned her parents at the concession stand who picked her up an hour later.

“You told me you inherited most of your ability from your family,” she said to Dion as they walked outside the mall hand-in-hand. “How does that work?”

“My paternal grandparents were Auriel and Raphela Bach,” he explained to her. “Grandfather had the ability to work with the earth element, and grandmother the air element. On my mother’s side of the family, my grandparents were Gabe and Michael Briluth. Grandfather Briluth had the power of water and grandmother the power of fire.”

“When my father was born,” he continued, “he inherited the power of earth and air. When my mother was born, she inherited the ability to work fire and water elementals. And I inherited all four abilities.”

The mall was built on what had been a farmer’s field, so there was no need to chop down very many trees. The landscapers arrived one day unseen and set up their plans as the heavy machinery worked to dig the foundation. It was a big event when it happened and the town had no special ground breaking ceremony. When the shovel was symbolically pushed into the ground from the builder, it became so hot the he dropped it. This should have been the first warning something wasn’t quite right with the mall. No one thought much about it and the construction continued on as planned.

The first section to be built was the large clock in the center of the mall. The clock tower rose above the level over everything. It was seen all over the landscape. It was the first thing anyone noticed as they approached. The tower housed the administration offices of the mall, but, oddly enough, there didn’t seem to be any way inside it. The architect explained to the building codes inspector later that the doors would be installed at a future date. A few envelopes with enormous sums of money had allowed the plans to be approved.

The night watch on the site quit after the first week. He claimed there were weird ‘things’ that roamed it at night and he wanted out. After the building crews noted the construction materials were never bothered, they quit looking for night watchmen. Unknown to them, a few trucks had appeared one night carrying thieves who wanted the building supplies. They never returned. No one ever went to steal from the building location again.

The mall had a series of boxes buried all over the site, but few people knew about them. Every month, for a period of four, someone would make an appearance in the early morning hours, just before the workers arrived, dig a deep hole in the ground and plant a box. They would make sure the previous boxes were not disturbed and continued on their way. Each box continued something, which fixed that part of the mall to an element. Since they would be covered by tons of dirt and concrete, there was little concern the boxes would be disturbed.

“My grandparents on my father’s side of the family came over from the old country almost a hundred years ago,” Dion continued. “My father came along late in life. They were in their fifties when he was born and he was the only child. They told me there were all kinds of innuendo as to who his parents really were, but he was just late coming along. A change of life baby, if you will. They felt he might inherit one of their abilities, but it turned out he had both. When he was just a baby, they had him out in the stroller and a gust of breeze would blow every time he wanted the bottle. When he got older, he would play in the sand box and cause sand castles to rise out of the ground. Scared the crap out of the neighborhood kids, he once told me.”

Lilly looked up at him with attentive eyes.

“We’ve been element workers in our family for generations. No one knows where the talent originates. But we have it. Hundreds of years ago, people would come to us for help. To get a wind to send a ship out to sea, bring the rain down, start a fire, or just make the soil churn so that it would be fertile. Every now and then, one of us inherits the power of several elements… but it’s rare. So far, I’m the only one who has inherited all four elements. And I don’t know of any of us who has the ability to work the fifth element.”

Dion stopped and turned towards Lilly.

“I was taught from an early age to keep quiet about my abilities. The last thing my parents wanted was to see me in a scientific lab or prison camp. It’s not easy holding it back. My dad talked about the time some bully pushed him on the playground at school and he almost had the earth swallow him up. The kid was up to his neck and going down when dad forced him to apologize. The school claimed it was a sinkhole and filled it in, but dad and the other kids knew better. He was never bothered again.”

“My mother almost burnt down the house when she was a toddler. She found out the elementals were fun to play with and made a whole bunch of fire spirits dance. By the time her dad unleashed a rainstorm inside the house, the kitchen table was on fire. She was like my dad, a double elemental worker. When she became old enough to date, one of her boyfriends tried to get a little too familiar with her and found himself under a rainstorm for two hours. He couldn’t understand why only he was under the cloud that drenched him and no one else.”

“My maternal grandparents also came here from the old country in the Balkan Mountains. There are entire villages of elemental workers over there, or at least there were before the wars broke out. We’re scattered all over the world now and I think it’s better that way. It helps us survive and we don’t have to worry about bothering each other. You have too many elemental workers in a given area they can start getting on each other’s nerves. It’s a miracle we marry each other, but it works out better that way, I’m told. I don’t know much about my great-grandparents, but I’m told only the husband in each union was an elemental worker. It’s the way it normally happens.”

“A lot of time the wife or husband doesn’t know their bride or groom is an elemental worker, but they find out later. It’s a nice talent to have around the house and we learn how to make it work for the other. I’ve met a few families where the wife was an elemental worker and it doesn’t cause any issues. My other aunt and uncle, for instance. My other aunt is my mother’s sister and is a fire worker. She uses her ability to keep the house warm if the furnace isn’t working. I wish you could use the ability nonstop, but it tends to wear you out.”

“My parents taught me how to control the elementals when I was very young. You start with small abilities, such as what you just saw with the fire elemental. Only an Elemental Grandmaster can confer you full abilities and they have to see proof you know what you are doing. It’s why I need to find the Elemental Grandmasters here in the mall. Only they can give me the permission to use my abilities. Until then, they’re only good for small tricks… like knocking over cards.”

“How did you parents meet?” Lilly asked him.

“They were introduced by each other’s family. Where they come from in the old country, arranged marriages are common. Since double elemental workers are so rare, the elders decided they should marry to see if a full elemental worker could be produced. I know it sounds like I was the product of a breeding program, but my parents have always loved each other. When they found out I had all four abilities, there was a flurry of interest in the community of elemental workers. They hadn’t had someone with my talents in hundreds of years. They’ve seldom had a person who could work the fifth element and I think the elders hope I’ll be the one.”

“You keep talking about this fifth element,” Lilly said. “Tell me more about it.”

“It’s the aether, the force which binds it all together. It’s the root of the power of fire. You can do all kinds of transformations with it if you have the ability. From what I understand, there have only been a few of us who can work this element. You need to have the ability to work all four before the fifth can even be attempted. It’s why they have such interest in me. If I can work that element, it will be a huge break-through.”

They walked a little further, hand in hand, and watched the sun set some more.

Lilly couldn’t believe she had spent the entire day with Dion; her parents would want some kind of accounting when she returned. However, for the time being, she didn’t really care. The important thing was that they were together and he’d revealed his abilities to her. Lilly had always known the world was full of magic, but she didn’t have any way to prove it. Now she did. And his hand felt good around hers.

“We need to figure out a way back in there,” Dion said. “It will close soon and I have to reach the Earth Element Grandmaster. We were so close several times, but it doesn’t count unless I reach her and she bestows the ability on me to use the earth element. If she doesn’t, I’ll never be able to do more than party tricks.”

“So all these incantations and spells really do work?” she asked. “I saw you make some passes in the air when the fire elemental appeared.”

“Look,” Dion said, his face growing serious, “this isn’t something from a Hollywood movie. All that nonsense you see on TV, forget it. These are very powerful forces I can manipulate and I only do it because I have their trust. Try to use an earth elemental to find a buried treasure and you’ll have a mine collapse on you. Walking on water can be accomplished, but it’s no parlor trick. You have no idea the level of concentration it takes me to do the simplest of things. So just forget what you might have heard about flying broomsticks.”

“I’m sorry,” Lilly said, looking apolitically at the ground.

“No need to apologize,” he said, “it’s one of the reasons we don’t let just anyone know about our abilities. I’m aware of all kinds of elementals. Most people aren’t. And it’s good that the average person doesn’t know about the air elemental flying through his house or the fire one dancing in her fireplace. If they could see what I do, they might go crazy. You ever wonder why insane people go around talking to things that aren’t there? It’s because they can see them and you can’t. Believe me; most people are better off not seeing them.”

“My father knew a man who realized one day dad was an elemental worker. He wanted to use it for profit, which is something strictly forbidden. When he found out dad wouldn’t help him, he decided to learn on his own. He went to some disreputable place that offered to teach him the basics for a large fee. The guy’s car caught on fire with him inside while he was on his way to close some stockbroker deal. The police never did find out what caused the fire and there were people who thought it was some kind of mobster hit. I think the elementals found out what he was up to and struck back. They can overact in a hurry if you don’t treat them right. The last thing you want is a creature made out of fire angry at you.”

“So what do you plan to do with all this ability when you have it bestowed on you? You can’t make money with it, what good can it do you?”

“I can help people,” he said. “Especially if I can grandmaster the aether. There are all kinds of things I can do for people who need help and they never have to know their benefactor.”

“But enough about me,” Dion told her. “I don’t know a lot about you. So where are you planning to go after leaving this town? I thought I heard you say something about college?”

“International studies,” she said. “I’d like to be a diplomat, or the wife of one. I think that would allow me to travel the world and see places. I’ve always dreamed of attending parties with the rich and famous.”

Dion looked at her for a few seconds and returned his gaze to the mall. “I don’t think that is a sure thing. What happens if you spend all that money on college and can’t get a job afterwards?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Lilly replied with assuredness. “I mean, there is a test you can take that will get you a government job if you graduate high enough in your class.”

“I wouldn’t count on that test being around forever. Something tells me it’s going to go up on the chopping block someday.”

“Not all of us can do what you do,” she snapped back. “Or is it possible to learn these things on your own without having your car burst into fire?”

“You can,” he said calmly. “But it takes a lifetime of study. I’ve only been able to do what you saw because my parents made sure I knew how at an early age. I tell you, these elementals can be dangerous. They don’t reason the same way humans do. Look at those ghouls, they may pass for human, but they’re far from it. Anyway, I have to figure out a way inside that mall without confronting Officer Karanzen. I could just waltz inside there, but he might have some of his minions on the watch for me. I don’t need any further trouble from him.”

“Why does he have it in for you so much?” Lilly asked. “It wasn’t you that kidnapped Emily.”

“I’m an unknown factor to him. I caused some disruption inside the mall by being there and he didn’t understand why. He worries that I might upset the delicate balance inside the mall between all the elements and he would be out of a job. So, by his reasoning, the best thing he can do is keep me out. But I have to get back inside if I am to reach the Earth Element Grandmaster and acquire my full powers.”

The sun was blotted out by a band of clouds as they passed overhead. Lilly looked up and noticed them, realizing that the clouds were nowhere else, just over them to block the rays of the sun. It became chilly; she felt the air drop a perceptible level of degrees and hugged her sides as a slight wind began to blow from the north. Something changed and she knew it had to do with Dion. Since meeting him earlier in the day, she was ready for any strange occurrence.

He seemed to attract eeriness to him.

She felt odd, but not in a way she’d felt before. Something was stirring in the air and it had to do with the intersection of Dion and the mall. There was a feeling of two sources of energy struggling to find a common way to talk. Yet, it was not a dangerous sensation; she felt the power in the air was simply the forces trying to communicate. It was two different languages in an attempt to find a common way to speak. Whatever the mall contained was struggling to contact Dion. She watched him turn his eyes in the direction of the mall and cock one ear as if he wanted to hear something.

Lilly looked up, but the clouds were not storm clouds overhead. Nerveless, they could turn that way in a second. She realized the elements had them both under close observation. They wanted to know what Dion’s intention was and how she figured into the picture. Lilly felt electricity spark into her soul. There was something gathering in the air and she didn’t know what it was.

An elderly couple began to walk up to them from a distance. Lilly thought they were just another pair of old retired people who wanted to go the same direction as them. However, they were very intent on reaching them. She watched them slowly walk up the path to the fountain where they stood. They didn’t walk so much as glide across the pavement. They wore clothes that were out of style twenty years ago. Finally, they reached Dion and Lilly. They stood facing them.

Then Lilly noticed something else: they didn’t breathe. There was no rise and fall of their chests, nor did they make the sounds of breathing.

“Grandfather?” Dion said. “Grandmother? What are you doing here?”

“We’ve come to help, Dion,” the old woman said to him. “You are in great danger if you don’t go back in the mall and find the elemental grandmasters. Your parents were captured by the mall builders. They are held in the tower. To get them out you must obtain full elemental powers and only the Elemental Grandmasters can grant those to you. We can help you out, but we are not allowed to come back very often. We are here to let you know it is important you return to the mall immediately.”

“They fear you, Dion,” said the old man, “because you may be the one who can work the fifth element. We’ve never seen anyone do it before this time. If you develop the ability, The Tower will no longer with have dominion over the aether. And they want to keep that power very much. They know you have tracked your parents here and plan to free them. Now you must return to the mall.”

“But grandfather, grandmother,” he said. “This is too much for me. Isn’t there someone else who can learn the use of the fifth element? I just want my parents back.”

“No one is safe so long as The Tower controls the aether,” the old woman said. “Please, hurry as the sun is going down and you haven’t much time. The mall will close in a few hours.”

The old man and woman turned and walked back the way they had come. Lilly watched them depart. The cloud moved away from the sun and the fading light returned to warm her and Dion. Soon the old couple was no longer there and the mysterious sensation she had felt was gone.

“My father’s parents,” he said. “I never got to know them very well. They passed over when I was very young.”

A chill went through Lilly. “We just saw ghosts?” she asked.

“Call them what you will, all I know is they were allowed to return to help me, and for that I am grateful.”

He turned and looked at the mall. “Guess I have no choice. We need to get back inside. But first I want to show you some things.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Chapter 9

“You can learn the basics about manipulating elements in a few minutes,” Dion explained. “If something happens to me, you might need to summon one or two. So let me show you how to work an elemental on a very small scale.”

Dion sat down on a bench with Lilly and showed her how to attract the attention of an earth elemental with the right words and signs. Initially, it wasn’t much good and she failed to cause a plant to sprout. Deciding the best way to do it was to show her how to attract the attention of a basic earth elemental, Dion soon had her create a little homunculus on the ground that walked for a few paces before falling apart.

Lilly broke out in a big smile and looked up at Dion.

“It’s a beginning,” he said. “I need to show you more, but I don’t have time. Just be careful with what I’ve demonstrated. These things can get out of hand if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

They stood up from the bench and began walking back to the mall. Most of the traffic from it was from the opposite direction. It was toward the end of the day and the shoppers were headed home. Plenty of women and men with clean shopping bags and fresh purchases. It was amazing to see the endless display of consumers.

Dion stopped and stood outside the mall looking at the glass entrance doors. “I really don’t want to go back in there,” he told Lilly.

“Why not?”

“I’m not certain of myself. This is a lot for one person to do. I should have help from the elders, but they haven’t offered any. I need some kind of backup plan before I go inside that place.”

He put one hand on the wall and rested. Lilly stood behind him with one hand on his back. She could feel his lean muscles under the shirt he wore and took in the sensation of the touch. She wished there was some way she could give him comfort, some way she could make him find his parents without the need to go inside and seek them out. But she had no way to do it unless she too was an elemental worker. Right now, she only knew what he’d taught her. Perhaps later, he could show her more…

“Have you ever faced something so horrible in your life?” he asked Lilly. “Have you ever been in a situation where any decision you made could turn out bad? I worry I’m approaching this whole thing wrong and I need guidance. But the only guidance I get is from my dead grandparents and they don’t seem to stick around very long.”

“At least I can smoke outside,” they heard the voice of Edward sound behind them. “No one seems to mind pipes so far. This tobacco is beastly; I need to get a better variety.”

They turned to see the funny little Englishman in a tailored business suit, with a pipe in one hand. He inhaled the fumes one final time and placed it back in his pocket. “They say it will be the death of me, you know,” Edward announced to them. “Tobacco. Can’t understand why. I thought it was invented by the natives in this country and they seemed to be a healthy people.”

“You have a way of appearing at the most charming times,” Dion said. “Did you know that that floor polisher almost had me arrested for theft?”

“But it worked, didn’t it? The ghouls couldn’t stand the noise created by it. They are sensitive to light and noise. I almost gave you a camera with a flash to take down there, but I felt it would be better to let you have the floor polisher since the operation of it was simple. By the time you solved the method of using a flash on a camera, it would have been too late.”

“It did work to keep the ghouls at bay,” Lilly agreed. “And the ghouls had mirrorshades.”

“So now have you shown up to give me some wisdom?” Dion asked.

“I can’t dispense what I lack,” Edward laughed.

“Then what ever shall I do?” Dion asked with a fake southern accent.

“Both of you are talking in circles,” Lilly said. “Edward, why can’t you just get to the point?”

“Because it would be too easy. And the longer I drag this encounter out, the longer I get to wear this suit and smoke my pipe. It’s the little things you miss once you’ve passed over. So many things…”

“You have never told us why you are involved,” Dion snapped to him. “Why didn’t they send Isaac Newton or Julius Cesar to help out?”

“Well, Mr. Newton would spend the entire time tracing out sun patterns. And what good is Julius Cesar without an army? I’m sorry, you are stuck with me. I made many mistakes the first time around. This is their way of giving me a chance to fix what I broke.”

“We’re going to walk through those doors and Officer Karanzen and his good squad will be waiting for us,” Dion made clear. “What do I do when that happens? I need to get to the Earth Element Grandmaster and have her blessing. I can’t approach the next element grandmaster until I have done it.”

“You must be ready to let him know there are people with your best interests in mind. Don’t worry, the moment he tries to give you some trouble, I’m sure he’ll see the logic of backing away from you. It’s not Karanzen you have to worry about; it’s the earth elementals who don’t want you obtaining full power. The ghouls in particular. They are furious you’ve made them look bad to the mall owners and will do everything they can to keep you from reaching the elemental grandmaster.”

“Are they going to pull that cleaning crew stunt again?” Lilly asked. “Because I don’t want to deal with it again. Our friend Emily will never come back to this mall and I think she may be scared for life.”

“They’ll try something else this time and they may be very direct how they do it. I would watch out because you have no idea where they will strike. And, rest assured, the security guards will be nowhere to be found if you need their help.”

Dion looked at the doors and took Lilly by the hand. “Okay,” he said to them both. “I can do this. It looks like I’m the only one who can get my parents back, and prevent even worse things from happening.”

Edward raised a hand. “You can’t even conceive what you are up against. I would tell you more, but they only let me share so much information. But I’m sure you’ll come through, dear boy. In fact, you must…”.

Edward pulled out his pocket watch again and looked at it. “Oh, lovely, time is up. You two take care and I will see you again.”

Then he vanished.

Dion and Lilly walked through the glass doors into the entrance to the mall again. Once again they walked down the corridor lined with shops on each side and slowly approached their destination.

For a few minutes, they thought it might be possible to go upstairs and find the pharmacy where the elemental grandmaster had her shop. Dion and Lilly strolled into the main concourse and saw nothing. There were no security guards, no ghouls, nothing that appeared out of the ordinary. Just a bunch of shoppers finishing their activities for the day. Mothers pushing children in strollers. Groups of kids walking down the main hall, looking in the windows of stores, and men in front of a TV display who drooled over the big game on the latest twenty-five inch console.

It was the picture of domestic tranquility.

They walked toward the escalator with every intention to take it to the second floor where the pharmacy was located.

Lilly had never liked escalators and was happy using the stairs. She’d heard a story about a kid who got his foot caught in one and the ambulance company had to be called out to free him. From that day on, she’d avoided them. As a young kid, she froze when trying to go down one and had to have someone help her get on the track. There was something unnerving about escalators that worried her. It was as if by climbing on one you placed your future in the hands of an inhuman machine. It wasn’t something she wanted to do and couldn’t understand why anyone would do it. She felt the same way about elevators, although for some reason they didn’t bother her quite as much.

Just as they walked up to the escalator, two of Karanzen’s guards blocked their path. Dion and Lilly turned to the other sides only to see them blocked by his men as well. They turned to walk back when they found Officer Karanzen approaching with two more.

“Just couldn’t take my warning could you?” he said to them. “I thought I made it clear you weren’t supposed to be back in the mall.”

“What have I done to be banned from it?” Dion asked. “You never did spell out any charges.”

“First of all,” Karanzen snarled. “There is the matter of the floor polisher you took without authorization. Then there are the other items, which have mysteriously disappeared while you’ve been in the mall. I won’t get into the disruption of you being here creates. I don’t need it and I don’t want it in my mall.”

“You keep saying ‘my mall’,” a voice said to their right. “You seem to think this mall is your property.”

It was Dion’s grandparents.

They had, once again, appeared from nowhere and were right next to Officer Karanzen. The look of shock on his face told Dion all he needed. Even the security guards backed up a bit. His grandfather and grandmother had a presence that made it not wise to cross them. Lilly had felt it a bit when they’d appeared outside the mall, but now it was on full display.

“Major Auriel Bach?” Karanzen said to him. “I know you. What are you doing here? I thought you were--”

“Gone very far away?” Dion’s grandfather said. “Gone further than you could ever fathom? I’m the young man’s grandfather and I understand you have some issue with him.”

“He’s causing a problem in the mall. I’m hired to make sure the mall remains safe. I don’t need anyone here who causes problems.”

“Problems?” Dion’s grandfather said. “The way you handled the problems at the Chosin Reservoir? You’re lucky I let you keep your command after that happened.”

The faces of Dion’s grandfather and Karanzen faded into a cloud as Dion saw the security chief in a distant land in a military uniform. A soldier was leaning on a tank in a snow-covered landscape as he poured over a map. Karanzen was on a radio in a desperate attempt to communicate with someone.

“I said we’re lost!” Karanzen yelled into the apparatus. “Can you give me the coordinates we’re supposed to have? I have five men with a tank and me. We need to get back to the main column. Look, I know Chinese troops are in these hills. They’d love to find someone like us who don’t know where they are. Hello? Hello?”

He slammed the radio telephone receiver down on the tank’s side and swore. Karanzen, wearing a captain’s uniform, looked at the hills around him. It was getting dark. On top of the tank, an enlisted man held a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon.

“Can’t see a thing, sir,” he told him. “No movement anywhere. If there are Chinese Army in these hills they are doing the best job of concealment anyone could….”

The man with binoculars fell away from the tank as the air filled with bullets. The bounced off the tank and kicked up dirt from the ground. Karanzen dropped the radio and ran behind the tank, as he tried to take cover from the rifle fire. Two other men were with him.

“Can you see how many?” he asked the man to his right. They were strapping on their helmets as fast as they could. At least one of them carried a carbine.

“Could be four, could be five,” the man said. “Hard to tell and they’re shooting out of the sun to make it difficult to spot. For all we know it could be the entire Red Chinese Army out there.”

Then the fog faded again and Dion saw his grandfather facing Officer Karanzen. But the security chief had lost his composure. No longer was he the fearsome defender of the mall but a man who’d just had a secret he fought to suppress revealed to people. Dion looked around and wondered how many of them had the same vision he’d just seen. Lilly looked at him with confusion, which meant she’d seen it too. The rest of the guards just stood there, as if nothing had changed. But the tension between Dion’s grandparents and the rough security officer was now finished.

“So long as he doesn’t cause any more trouble,” Karanzen said to Dion’s grandfather and walked off. He stopped three steps away and turned to his security guards.

Dion’s grandparents turned and walked back the way they came. Soon, they were gone, vanished as they had done before.

“Be sure to keep an eye on him. I don’t want those two out of your sight.” Karanzen moved away toward the rear of the mall in the direction of his office. Whatever had transpired between him and Dion’s grandfather left a powerful impression.

The other security guards began to move away and head toward their posts. All except for the ones who were stationed in this part of the mall. They walked back and kept their gaze on Dion and Lilly.

“We need to find someplace to get away from them,” Dion said to Lilly. “Is there some restaurant or store we can duck into for the time being?”

“I’m not sure what is around this part of the mall. There are a few places I can think of, but not many. Wait, what’s that?”

A small store with a modest front proclaimed itself to be “The Time Shop”. A large watch swung from the bracket over it and another sign talked about daily specials. At first, she thought it was a restaurant, but then Lilly thought it might be a place that sold watches. It didn’t look too big from the outside and she speculated it might only be a thousand square feet on the inside. Nerveless, it looked to be a good way to get out from the watchful eyes of Karanzen’s men.

“Let’s go here,” she said, pointing to the store. “They won’t follow us inside and they can’t wait outside forever. Eventually, they’ll have to move elsewhere.”

“Yes, at least it will give us a chance to plan on what to do next,” Dion said and followed her into the store. They pushed the door open and went inside.

A lady behind the counter greeted them the moment they were beyond the door. “Hello,” she said, “thank you for coming into The Time Shop. Did you have a year in mind?”

“A year?” Dion said and turned to look at the inside of the store. As far as he could see, there was only the one counter and another glass door on the other side. Nothing was on display at the counter and all he could see was the lady, who appeared to be in her thirties, a cash register and the glass top. There were no calendars, small items for sale, or anything else.

“I’d like to know the future,” he joked to her.

“That is a little bit expensive. We can’t send you directly to your future as our insurance won’t cover it. I can send you to another future if that’s what you want.”

Dion looked at Lilly and shrugged. “Did you have any one in mind, Lilly?”

“Haha, thirty years sounds good to me,” she said. “Exactly what do you sell here?”

“Time,” the lady told her. “Most people want the past, but some need to know the future. How much money did you want to spend?’

Dion laid some bills on the counter. She looked at them and shook her head. “I can’t give you much for that little amount. Is thirty minutes fine?”

“Sure,” Dion said, still uncertain what they’d been told and agreed to today.

“Please sign these forms,” the lady behind the counter said and handed both of them clipboards with papers on them. They looked at the forms and found them to be in a foreign writing neither one could read. Dion hesitated to get the seer stone out of his pocket. It had to rest on top of the document for it to work the first time. But to bring it out would reveal that he had one.

“How can I sign something I can’t read?” Lilly asked her.

“Look, do you want the thirty minutes or not? I have someone buzzing to come back. Make up your mind because there are paying customers we have to take care of first. I don’t have time for this.”

Lilly and Dion quickly signed the papers and handed them back to the worked up lady.

“Portal is good for thirty minutes,” she informed them. “You have that much time on the other side and then you have to come back. Don’t miss your portal time because if you do it’s not our fault if you’re stuck where I send you. There is a penalty on people who miss their portal time and neither of you two looks like the kind who can rack up a lot of temporal debt. I’m just giving you a fair warning.”

“Okay,” Dion said. “Now what?”

“What you came in here for.” The lady sighed. “I wish they’d find me a better post. This year doesn’t cut it.”

She reached down under the counter and clicked a switch. The glass door on the other side opened to reveal a man walking into the room with a briefcase. He was dressed in loud clothes. He let out a huge sigh and turned to the woman.

“That was a little bit longer than I wanted to be there,” he told her. “Next time I’ll pick someplace familiar for the trip.”

“Just schedule it in advance if you want to go more than five hundred years in either direction,” she said. “Now please step aside, sir, as I have more people who need to use the door.”

She turned to Dion and Lilly.

“Your turn,” the woman announced. “Remember, you only have thirty minutes so don’t wander too far. Time is of the essence.”

Chapter 10

Dion and Lilly walked through the door and heard it shut behind them. Dion turned around to look at the door and discovered it had turned to a wooden one on the other side. While he tried to figure out where they were, Lilly stepped forward and glanced over their new surroundings.

They were no longer in the mall. If this was the mall, it resembled nothing like one she’d ever seen before. She turned and saw a small double-paned window with sunlight streaming through it. The smell of bleach came from a bathroom to one side. The small room they were in was tastefully decorated in used furniture with pastel paintings on the walls. The only thing odd about their surroundings was the door, which they’d used to enter the room. Over the top of it, the words “Supplies” was written.

Lilly smelled the intense scent of coffee through the air. This had to be some kind of eating establishment, but she had no idea what kind.

She and Dion walked down the hall connecting the room to the front of the place and found another counter. Over the counter was a menu of sorts in chalk on a blackboard about all the different kinds of coffee you could purchase. The prices seemed outrageous to her, but it could be that the coffees were rare and not found in many restaurants.

What kind of place was this?

Dion walked up to the counter and looked at the woman behind it. She didn’t resemble the lady on the other side the least bit... This woman had glasses, was dark in complexion and had her hair tied in rows across her head.

“You two are from The Time Shop,” the lady said to them. “Aren’t you?”

“We were just in there a few minutes ago,” Lilly said. “I don’t know how we ended up here.”

“I can always tell. It doesn’t matter which direction they come, always something that gives them away. How long are you here for?”

“We paid for thirty minutes,” Dion told her.

“Then you better stay close. That door you came through will only take you back a half hour after you came. Any other time and it takes you to the closet. I had it installed a few months ago when someone contacted me from the corporation. They pay me enough to keep it so that it cancels out my utility bill.”

“So what kind of place is this?” Lilly asked.

“It’s a coffee shop in Chicago.”

“Chicago?” Dion said. “But we were in Ohio!”

“The way it works is the door takes you somewhere other than where you are going to be or where you have been. I guess you’ll never be around Chicago for any length of time or you wouldn’t be here now. Did she ask you how many years you were paying her for?”

“I told her thirty,” Lilly said, “but really, I had no idea…”

“I keep telling those people they should make it clear what people are buying,” the lady behind the new counter grumbled. “Too many people end up here clueless, and it’s not my job to straighten them out. How much money do you have left?”

Dion opened his wallet and showed her the bills.

“The problem is the date on the currency,” she told him. “I can’t use the cash because my bank would contact the FBI about counterfeit bills. I don’t need those kinds of complaints. So do you drink coffee?”

“Here,” the woman said before they could give their answer, sliding them two cups. “These are on the house. Milk and sugar is behind you. I recommend staying inside this place, as you don’t want to be trapped outside when the door activates.

“Looks like we have another fifteen minutes,” Dion said as he looked at his watch. “Anything we need to know about where we are?”

“Other than the fact that you’re in Chicago? Not really. We’re near the university, and no, they still don’t have a football team. So I get to avoid the booze-happy crowds that come with them. I’m slow today because it’s between terms, but the traffic should pick up next month.”

“You take any cream in yours?” Lilly asked Dion as she poured milk into her coffee.

“I like mine black, thank you,” he said.

They went and sat down at a table.

“Next time I walk into a store I don’t know,” he said to Lilly, “I will ask exactly what I’m paying money to have done or buy.”

“Look on the bright side. It got us away from Karanzen’s goons for a while. I think you spent your money well.”

“But it means less time to find the Elemental Grandmaster when we return.” Dion reached into his blue jean jacket and pulled a piece of paper out of one of the pockets. “I’ve been looking for this a long time.”

“What do you have there?” she asked.

“Nothing much, just what I have to tell the Grandmaster when I find her. She will know I’m genuine by what I say to her.”

“I’d think you could make something happen and that would convince her.”

“Doesn’t always work that way. All kinds of people can show her little tricks and try to deceive her into thinking they are elemental workers. If she grants full power on anyone who doesn’t deserve it, imagine the kind of ruckus it could cause. No, she has to know I’m someone who has spent years working toward the day when I can finally present myself to her.”

Dion and Lilly chatted a bit longer, until he looked at his watch again. “Time to go.”

They returned their mugs to the counter and thanked the woman. “No problem,” she said. “At least you speak standard English. You would be surprised at the kind of people who come through the door. No one has ever shown the least sign of violence; I think the corporation has a way to screen them out.”

Dion and Lilly walked to the door and waited a few minutes. Finally, Dion looked at his watch and announced it was time. He reached down and opened the door.

And discovered a closet on the other side.

“You think something might have gone wrong?” Lilly asked him. “I’m sure this is the door we used when we came in here.”

Dion shut the door. “I might be off a little bit with my watch. I set it this morning, but it has a tendency to run a little slow.” He reached over, grabbed the door handle again, and opened it. This time the room they had first used was visible on the other side. The same woman stared at them from the counter.

“Hurry up,” she told them. “You’re not the only people who want to use that door.”

They walked on through and shut it behind them.

“Nice trip?” the first lady behind the counter said. “Did you get to see what you wanted on the other side?”

“As much as we could in thirty minutes,” Lilly told her. “Coffee was expensive in Chicago.”

“Oh, that place,” she said. “Well, next time spend more money and you’ll get to spend more time when you go. I’m sorry, but, as I said, our insurance company makes it expensive to send people in that direction. And don’t even ask for dinosaurs because they won’t cover it.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dion said as they headed toward the exit of store.

The two security guards were still outside. One was circling around, the other sat on at a table directly across from them. It was obvious they wouldn’t allow them to travel anywhere unobserved.

“How much time do we have?” Lilly asked him. “This place will be closing soon.”

“Well, we spent about….” He looked at his wristwatch. “Oh, that’s funny.”

“Define ‘funny’.” Lilly said. “I don’t find much of what has taken place today very funny.”

“According to my watch we were only inside that store a few minutes. I thought we spent a good half hour and then some inside there because we went to that other place. But my watch might not be working very well.”

“Let’s check out the clock in the tower,” Lilly said, “you can see it through the skylights.”

They looked up and saw that it matched the time on Dion’s watch.

“Guess time has a different meaning inside that place,” he said.

“The places we discover in this mall continue to amaze me. We just left a store where you can buy time and have to find a pharmacy where the pharmacist is a grandmaster of the earth element.”

“I’m sure there are plenty more to be discovered,” Dion said.

They continued on their way until they reached the escalator, which Dion wanted to use to get to the second floor of the mall.

“Do we really have to take this?” Lilly asked him. “These things give me butterflies in my stomach. Is there a stair case we can use someplace?”

Dion scanned the mall until he saw a staircase at one end of the concourse. “There, we can take that one.” This seemed like a real good idea when the two security guards who’d followed them were busy in their direction.

Dion cut through the thinning crowd with Lilly and headed toward the stairs. The security guards kept pace with them, always making sure they were within some kind of visual range. He didn’t care. As Dion had no intention of causing trouble, he didn’t care what they would do if they caught up with him. The encounter Officer Karanzen had with his grandfather was enough to put him at bay for the time being. Right now, the important thing was to get to the pharmacy upstairs. They only had so much time to do it and find the Grandmaster.

They whisked up the stairs upon reaching them and turned to watch the one security guard still in pursuit keep up with them. Dion and Lilly managed to reach the top of the stairs with no incidents and continued down the upstairs concourse in the direction of the pharmacy. Dion glanced back to notice the lone security guard following at an acceptable distance. He recognized this one: it was Bayer. Naturally, the bow hunter would be the one to give pursuit. No doubt, he felt he was tracking them through a forest of some kind.

They turned the corner to head down the section of the mall to the location of the pharmacy. There were few people in this part, but it might have something to do with the lateness of the day. The mall was emptying out as the shopping day came to a close. Soon, the PA system would announce the mall closing and everyone would have to make their final purchases and leave. Including Dion and Lilly.

The bull was positioned directly in front of the pharmacy. It was large and sat on a metal stand. It was made of black plastic and offered anyone a chance to ride it for a small coin fee dropped into a slot. It was made to look dangerous and had a red mouth with blazing eyes. On its back sat the saddle anyone could try to ride. If they were so foolish.

Dion was surprised; it actually appeared to be some kind of mechanical contraption someone would place inside a mall. He’d seen all sorts of trains and toy rides kids could use in the children’s’ area; why shouldn’t someone try to install one for adults? It might be in front of a pharmacy and would, no doubt, hurt their business, but Dion doubted it was meant to be there very long. The whole reason for this mechanical bull was to keep him from accessing the pharmacy.

“That wasn’t here before,” Lilly said. “What the heck is that thing? A mechanical bull for adults? Who in their right mind would want to ride something like that?”

“I don’t think that bull is a ride,” Dion said. “There is something not right about this thing being placed in front of my destination.”

Lilly turned her head, looked at the bull several times from different angles and walked towards it. It still appeared to be made from plastic with some metal parts. Whoever created the bull did so with an adult in mind as it was too large for a child to ride. Next to the bull, on the platform it was mounted, was a box. The box had a coin slot in it with the sign “Twenty five cents to ride” on it. Lilly walked over to it and looked at the writing below the coin box.

“It’s made by some company called Echo Hills Princess,” she called to Dion. “I’ve never heard of them before, but there are plenty of companies I don’t know about. Do they sound familiar to you?”

“No, but I think you should get away from that thing. I just don’t like it. Strikes me as awfully suspicious being here.”

“The instructions say that one quarter gives you a ride,” she called out to Dion again. “They don’t say how long you get. I wonder what it does?”

“Lilly, really, I would get away from it.”

“Only one way to find out,” she said and opened her purse. Inside she found a quarter and dropped it in the slot. She stood back and looked at the bull. “Guess we’ll find out what it does.”

“I don’t think that was very smart, Lilly.”

She stood and watched the bull. It began to move. Slow at first, it picked up speed and rocked back and forth on the metal stand where it was mounted. To her it seemed obvious: the bull was designed to be a rocking horse for adults. All it did was satisfy someone’s inner cowboy for bull riding. It wouldn’t toss the rider up in the air as a real bull might, but it could give them the sensation of riding one, no matter how safe it seemed.

Lilly had watched bull riding on TV. She knew this contraption in no way simulated the dangerous sport. In bull riding competitions, a rider had to stay on a bucking full-grown bull for at least eight seconds. This device merely rocked back and forth. An elderly man could sit on it with no worries. It was clearly another attempt to make money off people’s desire to experience something dangerous in a safe environment.

After a few minutes, the bull quit rocking. Lilly turned back to Dion and held out her hands.

“See? Just a cheap mechanical contraption. Somebody put it here tonight, tomorrow, it will be downstairs where it will attract more traffic. Nothing to worry about.”

Suddenly, the bull climbed off the metal platform and stared at both Dion and Lilly.

The security guard who’d watched them from the distance had a smile on his face when the bull first began rocking. Now he was stunned. Among the many things he’d came to expect while being a security guard under Officer Karanzen, watching a mechanical bull come to life was not one of them.

The bull made a creaking sound when it climbed down from the platform. Lilly backed up to Dion and stood next to him. This was not something she would have expected to happen. She felt her flesh creep as the plastic bull lowered its head and stared at them. It didn’t blow the breath it lacked from its nostrils, which were painted on anyway, but the threat of violence was there just the same.

No one else was in this particular section of the mall. It was close to closing time and most of the shoppers were gone. This meant the bull had them to itself.

“I don’t believe this,” Lilly said to Dion. “Mechanical bulls just don’t walk on their own.”

“This one does. And it appears to be doing a very good job of it.”

Their only recourse was to back up. They slowly moved backwards, but the bull matched pace with them. The security guard stayed immobile where he stood at the entrance to this section of the mall. He reached for his belt radio, but found it missing. He backed up further to make sure no one else would come down this passage. Protecting shoppers from an animated plastic bull was not something in his job description.

“How does this thing work?” Lilly asked Dion. “Is it some kind of robot that was built just to come after you?”

“It’s another elemental,” he told her. “The ghouls weren’t successful, so whoever wants to keep me from the Earth Grandmaster’s pharmacy is desperate. They’ve found one of these things and brought it here. They must really want me to stay away if they’re willing to blow their cover by using one of this magnitude.”

“What do we do?” Lilly said to Dion. “I don’t think we can outrun it, can we? Do you know any place we can find a red tablecloth?”

“I don’t think that will work against this one,” he told her. “It has other attractors. I’m not sure what they are and we don’t have time to look them up.”

The bull squeaked as the plastic hooves raked across the floor. It moved in a poor simulation of a real bull, as its legs and hooves were but mere copies of the original. The bull began to walk in a pattern and Dion realized it wanted to keep them away from the rest of the mall. If it could keep them in the hall where they were right now, it could prevent their escape.

Dion grabbed Lilly and pulled her with him behind a table next to the Baron Sam’s New Orleans restaurant. It was his hope that the table might be used against whatever it was that animated the plastic bull, but he had no idea if this idea would work.

He positioned the table between them and the bull. The bull didn’t appear to be made from anything too substantial, but Dion worried that if it could be animated, it could do all kinds of damage. Worse, there was very little in the way of elementals he could work to counter whatever made the bull move. Other than a gust of wind, which would only annoy the thing, he could do very little.

Whoever had placed the bull in its location knew exactly what they were doing. They’d calculated Lilly’s curiosity to activate it by placing a coin in the slot. By her doing so, Lilly had keyed the bull to her and him as well. He knew the ultimate plan was to take them both out by any means necessary, but all they really had to do was keep him away from the pharmacy. His adversary had calculated if Dion could be kept away from the Elemental Grandmasters, he might lose heart and cease his quest. Did he not hesitate to go into the building until his grandparents and Edward appeared? The bull was an act of desperation by whoever wanted to keep him from gaining full power. And they were on the brink of success.

Out of the restaurant, a local woman walked into the hallway, just behind Dion and Lilly. She stopped when she saw the bull on the ground. In her world, plastic bulls simply did not become animated and move on their own. This had to be some kind of sales stunt. When she left the restaurant, the bull was not in motion and she turned to see the two young people staring at it from behind the table.

“What’s going on?” she asked them. “I need to get to the hospital; my shift starts in an hour. Is this some kind of new toy they’re trying to sell down at Children’s Outlet?”

“Don’t move and stay with us,” Dion told her. “Is there anyone in the restaurant when you left?”

“No, the baron was in the back working in the kitchen and I left the money on the table.”

In that moment she noticed the bull move. The plastic head of the creature turned and looked at the woman who had just left the restaurant. Its painted red eyes seemed to focus on what she had about her neck. The woman, who was in her forties, portly and who possessed a fancy wedding band, turned to look back at the plastic bull.

“Isn’t that amazing,” she said to Dion. “They must have all kinds of electric motors inside that thing to get it to move like that. My brother-in-law works on motors like that down at the plant near Kelltering.”

She had referenced an automotive factory, which employed thousands of people near a suburb of Scipio.

The creature had focused its attention on what the woman wore about her shoulders: a black necklace. Dion looked at it too and realized the necklace might be onyx, one of the blackest minerals that could be found.

“Is that an onyx necklace you’re wearing?” he asked her.

“Yes, my husband gave it to me as a present last month. I really don’t like it and have thought about taking it back to the place he bought it from and exchange it. I’ve only had it a week. I came here because I planned on taking it back, but I was distracted by the makeup department and you can’t imagine how much money I spend th--”

“I’ll buy it from you,” Dion blurted out.

“Seriously?” she said in disbelief, “You like it that much?”

“A hundred dollars,” he said, peeling out another roll from one of his other pockets in his jean jacket. “Here, count it yourself.” He handed her the money, as she looked it over.

“Well, if you insist. I don’t like it much and could use the cash. I’ll make up some story. I knew this day would work out better than the last.”

The woman took the necklace off and handed it to him. Dion handed her the cash roll and she walked away with a smile on her face.

“Where did you get that kind of money?” Lilly asked him.

“I keep a spare roll on me for emergencies,” he said. “This qualified.”

The plastic bull was still frozen with its gaze fixed on the onyx necklace Dion had in his hand. Dion waved it from one side to the next, the bull turning its head each time to follow the motion of the necklace.

“We have our red tablecloth,” he told Lilly. “Onyx is a mineral very much loved by the earth elementals. Whatever elemental used to make the bull move, it will never overcome its desire for the mineral. That lady wandering by with the necklace was just what we needed.”

“How do we use it?”

“I want you to start walking to the pharmacy. I’m going to lure the bull away with the necklace. It will follow me. Once I can find a place to isolate it, I’ll find some way to bind it in place with the necklace.”

“But what about you? Dion, I’m not going to leave you alone with that… thing. I can help you take it to wherever you need it to go.”

“Okay, fine, but do as I say. Walk back behind me and call out if you see any place that sells tableware in the main concourse.”

Lilly began to move backwards, but the animated bull had no interest in her. Its gaze was fixed to the necklace and it began to creep in the direction of it. Dion backed up with her and the huge plastic animal followed. So far, no one had noticed it other than themselves and the lady from the restaurant.

However, that was all about to change.

They continued to back out of the hallway and the plastic bull follow them. At first, no one noticed the bull as the section lacked shoppers. It was still very late in the day and the mall was within an hour of closing. The black, plastic bull continued its creaking as it walked to keep pace with them, the creature still intrigued by the sight of the onyx stones Dion wiggled in his hand. The necklace hypnotized it as they moved back. Dion did not know whether or not the person who had unleashed the elemental on the mechanical bull had given it the order to do them harm or just keep them away from the pharmacy. It didn’t matter because now they were in a very bad situation.

The door to the pharmacy opened again and the owner, Athena West, the Earth Elemental Grandmaster, stepped out and looked at the bull moving at the two in front of her. She realized what was taking place and stopped. She also knew she could bind the elemental inside the bull, but it was focused on Dion and Lilly as they led it away.

“Do you want me to handle this?” she said to Dion.

“No,” he told her, “I have everything under control. So long as it focuses on the stones in this necklace, it’s harmless.”

“I understand what you are doing,” she yelled back at them, “but what are you going to do with it now that you have it?”

“I’m working on that,” Dion yelled back at her.

“Maybe we should let her take care of this thing,” Lilly said to Dion. “If she’s the Earth Element Grandmaster, couldn’t she just shut it down?”

“I’m sure she could take care of it in minutes, but if I let her do it, how will it make me look as a candidate for the full powers of the earth element? This is one way to show her I’m worthy. If I can bind this thing where it won’t be able to move, then I’ll have all the proof I need to show her I’ve mastered the final part of the training. So maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.”

“You still haven’t stopped it from moving,” Lilly reminded him. “What happens if you lose control of it? There are all sorts of people in this place who could be in danger. Lord, you might cause a panic if they see it move and realize what is happening.”

“If something goes wrong, I’ll let her take it over. Until then, just let me do what I can. Have you found a tableware place yet?”

Lilly looked to one side and saw a store, which featured all kinds of plates, dishes and cooking utensils. It was called “Fazi’s” and was part of a national chain. It was also on the corner of the hall that merged to the main concourse. Only a few people had stopped to watch them lead the life-size plastic bull back to towards the concourse.

“I’ve found one,” she told him. “It’s right behind us.”

Dion turned his head to see the sign for the store directly behind him. “Thanks, just what I was looking for.”

He continued his movement backwards, but angled himself toward the entrance to the store. Dion turned around to look at the doors while continuing to hold the necklace of onyx stones in front of the advancing plastic bull. One slip-up and the creature would be capable of just about anything.

An uncontrolled elemental, especially one imprisoned in an artificial shell, would do almost anything to get back to its original state. The worst thing was that he didn’t know what kind of elemental was imprisoned inside the mechanical bull causing it to move. He suspected it was an earth elemental, but there was no easy way to be sure. The onyx stones would normally indicate he dealt with an earth one, but there were exceptions to every rule.

Lilly dashed behind him, went to the glass doors of the store, and threw them open. She went inside and looked around. There were no customers in the store at the late hour, but there were two employees taking inventory and the manager standing behind the cash register.

“Is something wrong?” the manager, a lady in her twenties said to Lilly as she looked up from the newspaper on the counter. “Can I help you with anything?”

“My friend is about to come inside here in a few minutes she said. “He’s bringing a large robotic toy with him. I just wanted you to know so you wouldn’t be frightened.”

Dion coaxed the moving plastic bull into the store as he held the onyx stones in front of it. This had to be an earth elemental inside it; nothing else would be so charmed by the necklace. As the bull came closer, he would back up more, causing it to move again. Soon he was through the doors Lilly held open to the shop and the black plastic bull followed him. He moved backwards and was into the store itself as the large creature came after him.

“What is that thing?" the store manager said to Dion as the bull entered the store. She was visibly frightened behind the counter and her employees stopped what they were doing to stare in fascination at what was in front of them.

“Big toy,” he told her, “yes, that is what it is, a big robotic toy. I had to lead it somewhere, sorry about that, but shouldn’t be long now.”

The doors swung shut as Lilly released them and they were inside the shop which sold china with a big plastic bull. Luring it into the location was important, but securing it inside was more important.

The bull stepped up to the first counter and stopped. It was surrounded by breakable objects. Plates made of porcelain. Bowls made of ceramic. Covered dishes made of glass. It couldn’t move forward without the risk of cracking, breaking or destroying one of the fine pieces of tableware in front of it. This was the moment Dion had waited for. He now had the bull just where he wanted it and he knew for sure the elemental used to animate the bull was an earth one.

Dion carefully moved up to the plastic bull and held the necklace of onyx stones high in its face. The bull moved its painted eyes to the stones and was transfixed by them. It was unable to move at all, as it was surrounded by the chinaware and held in place by the onyx. There was one final thing left for Dion to accomplish.

While the others in the shop looked at him, he took the necklace and dropped it around the neck of the plastic bull. This alone would bind the elemental into the form where it was imprisoned. But Dion did not want the elemental to be trapped inside the bull. It could always free itself at a later date, but an imprisoned elemental tended to be furious when it was unleashed. Landslides and forest fires were caused by them. He had to let the elemental out slowly where it would not do damage and leave the mall. This was a powerful one; it had to be if it had been used to make the bull walk.

Dion made a few passes on the head of the bull, said the right words and gently touched the nose of it. He felt his strength surge through him as he connected with the elemental who still wanted freedom, even if it was enthralled by the pretty stones. Dion found the force used to contain the elemental and applied the right counter to it. It wasn’t so strong that it was beyond him, but whoever did it knew what they were doing when the elemental was contained. It was a simple matter of taking down the barrier and let the elemental out slowly.

He saw the floor vibrate as the earth elemental moved from the mechanical bull to the ground. There was a slight tremor as it found its way to the soft dirt of the earth. Soon it was gone, home to its natural source. Hopefully, it would continue to return to wherever it had originated.

It was gone.

The plastic, animated bull, had returned to its original form as an adult toy, something people could use to play cowboy upon it. Dion lifted his hand and took the onyx necklace from it. The threat of a raging bull in a china shop was over.

“That thing moved in here,” the manager said. “Is it safe? I mean we have a lot of things which it could break.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem any longer,” Dion told her. “I think its battery is dead. You can leave it here for the night or let maintenance take it out in the morning. Doesn’t make any difference.”

“Were you working with it?” she asked him as he took Lilly by the hand and went to the door.

“Not really. I saw it moving around and tried to get it into someplace safe. Your store seemed like the best bet. Sorry if I caused you any trouble.”

“Well,” the manager said and looked at the plastic bull in her shop. “It might have some advertising value. I’ll have to call the home office and find out.”

“Phew, that was close,” Lilly said to Dion as they left. “For a few minutes I thought you’d have to call that lady in and stop this thing from moving.”

“I wasn’t too confident I could stop it myself,” he said.

“Do you think my putting the quarter in is what set it off?”

“Maybe. If you hadn’t put the quarter in, whoever sat it in place would have found another way to activate it. Someone really wanted to keep me away from the Grandmaster.”

They continued walking until they reached the front of the pharmacy. The door was closed and the store only had another fifteen minutes to be open.

Dion looked at the window and saw the colored containers of water in the window. It seemed like every pharmacy had those. He was once told it had to do with a special promotion drug companies used to run. Maybe it was true, but he wondered if those containers didn’t represent something from the past long forgotten. ‘Show Globes’ he’d heard them called.

“Well,” he said to Lilly. “Here we are. All this trouble just to get to the door of a pharmacy.”

“I expect someone to try and stop us right now,” she said. “Let’s just go inside before anything else happens.” Lilly pulled the door open and they stepped into the pharmacy.

Chapter 11

Inside was a typical cheery pharmacy. There was the counter near the door and rows for medicines along the walls and inside the store. In the back, they could see the dispensing area. But no one was inside it. It was still late in the day and most of the customers had gone home.

But not the pharmacist. She was waiting for them by the entrance.

“Glad to see you dealt with that thing,” she said. “Taking the bull into a china shop where it would freeze over all the things it didn’t want to break. Brilliant. I hadn’t even considered the possibility. I guess you must be Dion?”

“Yes,” he told her. “I’ve been trying to see you all day. As you may have noticed, there were people who wanted to stop me along the way. At least they finally gave up.”

“They will never give up,” Athena corrected him. “Till the day you pass into the next world they will hound you, pursue you or try to get you to work for them. You can never rest easy so long as you live. If you remain a mere worker, they may ignore you, as they will ignore her.” She gestured to Lilly. “As they will ignore her. I know you’ve taught her some of the basics. There are few who know them, but they don’t know much so they’re no threat to anyone. Do you still want to become an elemental master? Because your normal life ends today if you do become one.”

“I’ve never had a normal life,” he said. “And yes, I still want what I have worked toward all these years.”

“Fair enough,” the pharmacist said. “The store is empty save me. I sent everyone home when I realized what was taking place outside. I even sent my customers away to other pharmacies for the evening because I told them we would be closing early. So we will be alone inside. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I am sure.”

“Good. I only have to ask twice.” She turned to Lilly. “You will have to leave, child.”

“Why? I’ve come so far… and I don’t get to see him anointed?”

“It’s not for someone to see who isn’t part of it. Perhaps one day you will be part of this, but today is not that day. Now please go outside.”

Lilly stepped out the door and closed it behind her. She heard the lock turn in the door. As if she needed any further humiliation. She sat down at the nearest table in the hall and waited. What could be taking place in there that would take so long? Nothing strange seemed to be happening. She saw no flashes of light behind the glass. Nor did she see any clouds of smoke roll under the door. Wasn’t there supposed to be the chanting of monks and angelic voices coming from the inside? But the pharmacy was still and quiet. The light was out even though the “closed” sign was in the window.

“There is a very good reason he has to be alone in there with her,” a voice said to Lilly from across the table.

It was Edward. Again. This time he wore a pair of jeans with a popular band t-shirt, and a pair of leather high-tip basketball sneakers to complete his ensemble.

“You again,” she mumbled. “Where were you when the bull attacked us? That thing could have killed us both.”

“I thought I made it clear. I’m not allowed to interfere. I can give advice and point you in the right direction, but that is the extent of it. Even Dion’s grandfather was allowed to intervene when Karanzen tried to block you the last time. I can’t do that. You should know the officer will be wary the next time he encounters you. No matter what he has become over the years, Dion’s grandfather scared him badly. He knew things the officer would like forget.”

“You could have warned us about the bull.”

“Too much interference, like I said. And the Earth Element Grandmaster was there to take it down if it did get out of control.” He leaned over and looked at the tableware shop. The doors were still open and the plastic bull was still inside. The manager and employees had a tape measure and were marking lengths. “Maybe they will be able to use it. I’m sure she’ll spend the rest of her life trying to figure out how it walked into the store under its own power.”

Lilly glanced over at the front of the pharmacy, still closed, and noticed the metal platform with the coin box was gone from the front. This had been the same platform the bull was mounted upon when she first saw it.

“What happened to the platform?” she said to him. “It was there when the bull appeared.”

“Doesn’t serve a purpose anymore,” he told her. “The ghouls probably took it away trying to get back in the good graces with the mall management. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the ones who placed it there. They have all kinds of ways to get around the mall you don’t know about. But not to worry, they won’t interfere with you a third time unless they’re ordered to do it. And I don’t think that will happen because their usefulness it limited.”

“Edward!” another voice cried out.

They looked up to see Baron Sam approach with his chef’s uniform over one arm. He wore a casual set of clothes, but had his top hat in the other hand. “It has been a long time! What brings you to this part of the world?”

“I have had the dubious honor to be assigned to this beautiful young lass,” he explained to the baron. “And her equally handsome lad. They have the questionable asset of my help when they need it, even if it is seldom appreciated.”

The baron let loose a laugh, which echoed through the hall. “Trust me, young lady,” he said to her, “he means well and is quite harmless. I see he’s learned to dress better this time.”

“This outfit wasn’t my idea,” Edward said. “It was their mild suggestion I try and fit in better when I make an appearance. I looked in on what a person of my age and experience is supposed to wear and the shock was more than I could stand. This is the best compromise I could come up with.”

“It looks good on you,” he said. “Well, I must be off, much to do tonight, many celebrations to attend. I have business down south and may not be back for a few weeks. No matter, the staff can manage the restaurant well enough in my absence.”

He walked down the hall singing a tune that sounded vaguely French to Lilly.

The light went out in the pharmacy across the hall and the door to it unlocked. Lilly watched as it the glass door opened and Athena West emerged.

Where was Dion? Lilly wanted to know. Had something gone wrong? After what they had endured, she was afraid for him. It was bad enough she wasn’t allowed to see what took place on the inside. They had gone through so much today, and now she had to worry that something had gone wrong with the process by which he would acquire full earth elemental powers.

However, right behind the pharmacist walked Dion. He looked fine, although a little bit tired. She expected it after what they had endured today. He looked at her and smiled, and then Lilly knew everything was fine.

Dion hugged the pharmacist who turned and locked the door behind them. She waved at Lilly and continued down her way to the exit; soon she was gone. Dion walked over to the table where Lilly sat with Edward and seated himself.

“I see we’ve been granted full earth elemental power,” Edward said to him. “I can feel it just from where I sit.”

“Were you scared?” Lilly asked Dion.

“Not in the least. It was more of a final examination than anything else.”

“So what happened?” Lilly asked.

“I’m not allowed to tell, and if I did say anything, Edward here would report me.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, my lad,” Edward laughed. “The secret chiefs have many ways of discovering who keeps quiet and who does not. Fourth power of the sphinx was silence, remember.” Edward noticed the frown on Lilly’s face. “If he expects to obtain the other elemental powers, he must remain quiet about what took place. Should he reveal anything important, they won’t allow him to have more. It’s always been that way. It’s why I was never a candidate. I tended to write and publish everything.”

“She also told me my parents are held in the center of this mall,” Dion told them. “That has nothing to do with anything initiatory. I don’t think such information revealed will be held against me.”

“Nor should it be,” Edward told them. “Oh well, my time is short, as the ghost said.” He pulled out the round watch on a chain from his pocket. “Just about time for me to go. I have to deduct it from the total time allowed, but I wanted to be here to see him get his first degree, such as it is. I must be off.” And, as before, he vanished.

“I wasn’t surprised to see our Greek Chorus waiting for me,” Dion told Lilly as they looked at the empty chair recently occupied by Edward. “I did a double take over his choice of clothes. It really doesn’t suit him.”

“That outfit didn’t suit anyone,” Lilly made clear.

“So what can you do with the earth elementals now that you have full power over them?” Lilly asked Dion. “Maybe you can make those ghouls apologize to Emily for kidnapping her.”

“I think Emily doesn’t want to be around those ghouls ever again. So long as I am in the vicinity, she won’t have to worry about them. They know by now that I’ll bind them underground if they ever try something like that again. But I doubt it will happen as they were put up to the deed by the mall management.”

“You learned this from the pharmacist?”

“It’s obvious. Can’t you see it? Whoever runs this mall doesn’t want me to obtain full elemental abilities. They are doing what they can to throw up walls and prevent it. As long as I’m here with just a few abilities, I’m not a threat. If I obtain full elemental powers, I could be a credible threat to whatever they are trying to do with this mall. What they really worry about is what happens if I can work the fifth element.”

“Why?”

“Because then they will have no power over me at all. And I will have authority over them, which is something they can’t bear to contemplate. So they will stop at nothing to keep me from my quest. It’s why all the Elemental Grandmasters are in this mall. They enticed them here so they could be kept under watch. The management built this mall as a fortress to keep me from reaching out to them all. They couldn’t just lock them up, so they built a secure facility where they could monitor any entrance to and from them. Now they are really worried because if I can reach one Elemental Grandmaster, I can reach all four. And with all four elemental abilities, maybe I’ll be able to get the fifth and then they’ll be obedient to me.”

“They built this entire mall to stop you from finding them? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper just to find a way to take you out years ago?”

“There is a limit to what they can do. Work any kind of violence on an elemental worker and the rest find out about it. Then they would have every elemental worker turn against them and hunt them down. They wouldn’t last long with every elemental turned against them. So they decided to secure the Elemental Grandmasters here by guile in hopes they could keep them away from me until their plans were realized.”

“What kind of plans do they have?”

“I don’t know. But it can’t be good if they are willing to spend so much money and energy to build this mall to keep me out of it. I think whatever they are doing is coming to a head because why else would they go to these lengths to keep me out of the mall?”

“I think that is a good enough reason to leave,” Lilly said.

As they walked out of the mall, Lilly and Dion noticed the few cars remaining in the parking lot. It was after nine in the evening and everyone who worked there was almost gone. The night was full of stars, as it was a dark night without a moon.

Lilly put her hand in Dion’s as they went outside and stopped to look at the countryside. It was still a rural area with plenty of room for new developments. The interstate was visible in the distance and it was lit with the headlights of cars going back and forth between the major cities it connected. The cool night air had settled in over the ground as well.

“Do you need a ride?” Lilly asked him.

“No… my car is that old van over there. I use it a lot to get around. Sometimes I even sleep in it. My aunt and uncle are pretty busy. They don’t have any other children at home and I think having me move in was pretty disruptive. I’ve tried not to bother them too much.”

“You mean that van?” she said and pointed to a lone car in the distance.

“Yep, that’s it. It was an old delivery van and it holds up very well. I have to do maintenance on it from time to time, but you expect these things after a while. Not hard to do if you can find a place on the side of the road to pull over and don’t leave a mess. I keep all the tools I need in the back.”

As they walked closer, Lilly suddenly noticed heads popping out around the other side of the van. Someone was staring at them from behind it. This didn’t look good, as the pharmacist had warned Dion in front of her that all manner of forces would be against Dion after he’d attained elemental mastery. Could this be some elemental trying to strike back already?

They heard a conflagration of voices behind the van and a tire began to roll away from it. Dion stopped and his eyes narrowed. “Dammit,” he said, “I just had a new tire put on that van. That’s the one I paid for last week!”

A very human figure ran after the tire and caught it. As soon as he did, a white sedan car shot out from behind the van racing at him. The car stopped and the thief threw the tire in the backseat. He jumped into the back of the car, slammed the door, and it sped away.

This last adversary was very human indeed. The tire thieves were in the process of finishing their job when Dion and Lilly made their appearance.

“That tire cost me all the money I had,” he said. “I had to use my emergency money to get the onyx necklace. I don’t even have the cash to buy gas for tomorrow.”

Lilly could see Dion fight to control his anger, but it was boiling up inside him. It was one thing for elementals to have a run at him; they resented his ability and looked upon Dion as competition. But for fellow humans to steal something so trivial, yet so important to him, was beyond understanding. They didn’t care about his situation one bit. She watched his face go rock hard as the car sped away toward the exit.

It never made it out of the parking lot.

As the car shot out toward the ramp to the highway, the ground in front of it rose up and blocked it. The car slammed on its brakes and spun out of control, barely missing the combination of asphalt and earth, which began to rumble up around it. The car stopped and they could hear yelling on the inside of it. The thieves gunned the engine and aimed for the grass berm next to the exit lane. However, as they approached it, the ground next to the wall, which had risen out of the ground, collapsed, leaving a vast pit before them.

Once again, the car spun off in another direction and stopped. This time the driver started to inch the car forward and the ground opened up directly in front of it. Fire erupted from the pit below it and the car began to move backwards.

Everywhere the car tried to go, the earth rose up or dropped in front of it until it had no choice but it move back in the direction of the van. The white sedan slowly rumbled back toward it. When the sedan reached the old van, the car came to a full stop.

Lilly looked up at Dion and saw the rage in his eyes. He fought the desire inside him. He had to keep from destroying the van and everyone inside it. This was the wrath of an operational earth element master. Dion stood perfectly still and focused on the sedan.

The back door of the sedan opened and the thief emerged. In his hands was the tire and he shook with fear. Lilly was worried the thieves were armed, but Dion’s power trumped any weapon they could possibly carry in that car.

“Put it back the way it was!” He ordered the thief.

The tire thief, knees knocking together, stepped toward the van. He appeared to have second thoughts until the fire pit surrounding the car spread closer. Then he continued on behind the van. The sound of him replacing the tire could be heard from their side of it. After fifteen tense minutes, the thief emerged with the tire jack in one hand. He stood in front of Dion with the jack as if seeking instruction.

“Place it down on the ground and get back in the car!” Dion ordered the thief.

As instructed, the man placed it on the ground and slowly climbed into the car, shutting the door behind him. The car continued to idle in place.

The earthen mound in front of the exit retracted and became level with the ground. The fire inside the pits extinguished and the ground rose back up to become smooth once again. It was almost impossible in the dark to tell anything had taken place. Then ground became quiet and the rumbling, which had accompanied the movement of the earth, was gone.

The white sedan moved at a snail’s pace across the parking lot and began to pick up speed as it left the exit lane. By the time it was on the entrance ramp to the interstate, Dion estimated the car’s speed had hit in excess of ninety miles an hour. It vanished into the night, a white streak down the blacktop.

“I hope they have a good story ready if they encounter the Highway Patrol,” Dion said as he turned back to Lilly. “Are you parked on the other side of the mall? Come with me, I can give you a ride over there now that my van has all four tires.”

Lilly walked to the van with him.

Dion reached down and picked up the jack, which he tossed in the back of the van as he opened the door. The driver’s door was unlocked, as the thieves had used a coat hanger (left inside) to pull open the lock and ruffle through the inside. They didn’t find much beside the jack, but the tire was their intent anyway. He unlocked the passenger door for Lilly and helped her inside.

She didn’t know what to say. The day had begun with her watching him do small tricks with a pool of water and ended with Dion causing the earth to move around a speeding car. If ever she needed physical proof of his abilities, this was it. She quietly sat down in her seat and waited for him to start the van.

Nevertheless, it wouldn’t start. Dion swore and looked at the gas gauge in the van. “Idiots siphoned off my gas too. If I had known, I would have made them fill my tank. Looks like I’ll need a ride from you tonight.”

They walked across the huge parking lot under the stars. The arc lamps illuminated it, but not all of them were on tonight.

Lilly realized she was very much in love with Dion, but lacked the words to tell him. All she could think about was going on the next adventure with him. Be close to him. Didn’t he say he had to obtain three more elemental powers before he could work the fifth one? She wanted to be with him every step of the way.

“So what about your van?” she asked him on the drive back. “It’s going to be left out there all night? Aren’t you worried someone might try that again?”

“I left an elemental guarding it,” he said. “Anyone tries to mess with my van tonight will encounter an eight foot giant standing next to them. It’s just a golem and doesn’t have any violent tendencies, but he will be able to scare the pants off most people. It should suffice. When I get home, I’ll have my uncle and aunt call a tow service and we’ll meet them out there when they arrive. Alternatively, maybe I’ll just borrow a gas can and go out there myself. No reason to make this more involved than it has to be.”

“I’d like to meet them,” Lilly said. “You aunt and uncle, that is.”

“You will. They should still be up.”

Dion directed her to one of the many subdivisions, which lined the area, and they were soon in the driveway of his aunt and uncle’s house.

It was another modes split-level house, a style popular in recent years which had replace the ranch style castles which sprang up everywhere until ten years ago when people became tired of the same basic dwelling.

New developers began to build new models and soon houses were taking on the characteristics of their owners. Some houses were in a perpetual state of construction and addition, as the owner would always find some new project to initiate before concluding an existing one. Some houses had yards free of any traces of crabgrass while others had entire gardens growing out front. It was before the zoning laws standardized the way everything could be built. Most of them had their own water system and pumped it from the underground water table. This was all about to change with the coming of progress and shopping centers. Even cable TV had yet to reach this area and most houses were adorned with a virtual forest of antennas of all shapes, sizes and rotational controls.

Dion’s uncle met him at the door.

Lilly was surprised at how much he resembled his nephew. He graciously invited her inside and told them both to sit on the couch while he went to fetch his wife.

“I’ll get some coffee brewing,” he said. “You two look as if you could use some.”

“Do you think they’ll believe what we have to tell them?” Lilly asked Dion.

“They’re family,” he reminded her. “My uncle is the element worker and his wife understands.”

“Oh, honey,” Lilly heard a very feminine voice cry out and she looked up to see a tall woman with long red hair enter the room, “Are you okay? Your uncle told me you had a bad time at the mall today. Is everything alright?”

“I’m fine Aunt Taliea,” he told her. “At least I met the Earth Grandmaster today. You should see what I can do now.”

He turned to Lilly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce you to them. This is my Aunt Taliea and her husband, my father’s brother, Uncle Rich.”

They all hugged, shook hands and sat back down again. Dion and Lilly stayed on the couch while his aunt and uncle sat across from them in chairs. It was an ordinary house, so far as Lilly could tell; the only difference was that there was no TV in the living room. She hadn’t even heard one when she entered the house.

First, Lilly phoned her parents to let them know where she was. She was careful to give them the phone number where she could be reached. Her mother was a little perturbed she had gone somewhere without checking with her first, but Lilly casually reminded her she was eighteen and should be trusted to make her own decisions. Her mother made her promise to be home by midnight.

“She acts like I’m still in the sixth grade,” Lilly said after hanging up the phone.

Dion spent an hour or more telling them what had happened during the day. His aunt put her hand to her mouth several times when they talked about the ghouls and the animated plastic bull, but she stayed silent through most of the story. When they had finished the story, his aunt and uncle stayed quiet for a while.

“Well,” his uncle finally spoke. “I’m glad you got your full earth elemental abilities. You are an earth elemental master now. Just be careful with what you can do. I’ve known Athena West a long time and I’m sure she wouldn’t have bestowed them on you unless she felt you were worthy.”

“What do you plan on doing next?” his aunt asked him.

Lilly could see the concern in her face.

“I have to go back there tomorrow,” he told her.

“Go back? After what happened today?”

“I need to see the next elemental grandmaster. The one who is the grandmaster of the air elementals.”

“But why?” his aunt cried out. “Isn’t having the ability of one enough. Your Uncle Rich is an air worker and he’s never felt the need to try and obtain grandmaster status.”

“I know, but I have to do this. I need all four of the elemental master abilities.”

“All four?” his uncle said. “Why?”

“Because I will need them in order to obtain the fifth elemental mastership. And I want that because I learned today what I always suspected; my parents are being held captive inside that place. It’s up to me to get them out. I can only do that if I have all of the elemental powers… including the fifth one.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of someone working the fifth element in hundreds of years,” his uncle said. “It’s the most dangerous one there is. Can’t you find another way to get them out?”

“No, the builders are in the middle of the mall in that clock tower. I think they’ve imprisoned my parents in there. They kidnapped them in hopes it would stop me from acquiring all the elemental powers. Well, they’ve given me a reason to obtain them all.”

His aunt and uncle were quiet. They realized Dion had determined his path and there was nothing they could do to prevent it.

“One more thing,” Dion said to them.

“What?” his uncle asked.

“I need to borrow the gas can. Lilly is going to run me back to the van with it after we stop at the gas station before it closes. The thieves who tried to steal my tire also drained my gas before they left. I didn’t learn about it until we tried to start the van.”

His uncle smiled.

“Well, that went pretty well,” Lilly told Dion as she drove him back to the mall. They’d managed to find one gas station still open in time to fill up the gas can. “But really, I don’t see why you bother with a van.”

“Why?” he asked her as they pulled up to a red light.

“Anyone who can summon the power of the earth should be able to travel anywhere he wants and do what he wants. I can’t imagine what you’ll be able to do when you get those other abilities.”

“Just you wait and see,” he told her. Then Dion leaned over the seat, kissed Lilly on the lips, and held it.

The light turned green, but the car didn’t move until another car pulled up behind them and honked them forward.

It wasn’t long before they reached their destination. Lilly got out of her car and helped Dion pour the gas in the van, then returned the can to the trunk of her car.

“It’s late,” Dion told her as he wrapped his arms around her. “You need to go home.”

“What time should I be here tomorrow?” Lilly asked.

“Let’s get here nice and early at nine in the morning.”

They kissed one final time.

Soon, each was on their way home, with plans in the making for the next Elemental Grandmaster.

“Jupiter Hitch?” Lilly asked Dion. “His name is Jupiter Hitch?”

“That’s what I’m told,” Dion said as they pulled up in front of the mall in his van. The tank was now full after he’d gone out the previous evening with his uncle and filled it.

His aunt and uncle were still opposed to Dion’s return to the mall. After learning about his experience the previous day with the ghouls, the security officer who wasn’t human, and the revelation that his parents were imprisoned inside the mall, they pleaded with Dion to stay put. If it were that dangerous, why would he return alone?

But as Dion made clear, there was no other person who could free them. The mall builders created the shopping center over the abyss and it was obvious that they feared his abilities. The only way to keep Dion at bay was to hold his parents captive. Or so they thought. Instead, it had the opposite effect. He was more determined now than ever to free them.

The mall rose from the field as if it was constructed as a fortress on a plain to guard the approach to a city. Although the lands around it were flat, it was also possible to imagine the interstate next to it a great river. The cars racing down it resembled fish in the river.

It was early, but the sun was already in the sky, drying the morning dew without leaving too much of an imprint in the soil. If you were still enough, it was possible to see the rabbits in the grass, munching on whatever they could find. Not too far away, from where the mall was built was a quiet stream, which wound its way to the Miami River in silence. It would appear from concrete pipes and vanish into them over and over again. The hand of humanity made itself known felt by the sounds of concrete trucks bouncing to the latest subdivision under construction.

Dion parked the van close to the entrance of the second part of the mall, the part that corresponded to the element of air. Now that the powers of the earth elementals were bestowed on him, he needed to obtain the other three. Only when he had all of them could he hope to master the fifth element, which ruled in the center of the mall. He had no hope of freeing his parents until he had the power of it under control. As Dion was once told, no element worker had mastered this fifth element in hundreds of years; his difficulty could not be understated.

Dion stepped out of the van and leaned back on the metal of its side. He looked at the mall and closed his eyes. It was there, the power of the element of air in the section he faced. He could feel it in the sky and around the entrance. He could see the small air gusts and wind elementals frisk around the mall and make patterns over the ground. They didn’t have much form, but these did not concern him. They were useful if you need to summon up a breeze for a kite or to push a sailboat, but not for much more. The stronger ones where higher up in the atmosphere. They were not easy to manipulate. Work with them the wrong way and you could get a lightning bolt sent down on top of your car. One had to be very careful with the elementals of the upper atmosphere.

“Do you feel anything?” Lilly said as she noticed Dion’s expression. He seemed quiet and relaxed.

“Just the sylphs who are already outside.”

“What?” Dion’s terminology drove her a little mad sometimes. This was only the second day she was with him, but the adventures they’d experienced together the day before were enough for two lifetimes.

“Sylphs,” he told her. “Air elementals. Some people call them fairies. But they’re a lot different from what you’ll find in literature. No, they don’t go around with sugarplums and they don’t have wings. They don’t have much material form at all. I see them a lot around fast air currents and in air ducts. It’s how I did the falling card trick with the police detective. I found one and cut a deal with it to knock over some stacked cards in return for allowing it to leave the building. They’re pretty easy to please. At least the smaller ones which are close to the earth. I don’t know a lot about the ones who live in thunderclouds, but they seem to be quite dangerous.

There’ll be more elementals inside and I have no idea what form they will take. The ghouls can’t bother us again as I have dominion over them. I can use them if I need to, but I don’t want to get dependent on them, it won’t look good to the other Elemental Grandmasters.”

“Do these new elementals inside the mall have any special forms? Or do they all float around the skylight?”

“We’ll know them when we run into them There is no way the mall builders will allow me to run around inside without some kind of opposition. We didn’t realize the cleaners where ghouls until we got close to them. I suspect it will be the same way with any other kind of elemental we run into today.”

Dion wore the same jeans jacket he had on the previous day. It matched the flared pants he wore too. Although he didn’t have any kind of logo on the back of his jacket, no one would’ve mistaken him for a mechanic or someone who worked with machine tools. Dion was refined, but not as obnoxious as the officers’ kids from the local air base. They let everyone know that their families shopped at the commissary and had access to all kinds of things civilians didn’t. Lately, a completely new class had moved into town: the university brat. With the rise of the state colleges built around the Midwest, academics from the coasts were flocking to the hinterland in search of work in their fields.

“So, what do you know about this Jupiter Hitch?” Lilly asked.

“According to Ms. West, he’s the Grandmaster of the Air Element. He’s the one I’ll need to meet if I’m to be granted all the powers which come with the second element.”

Athena West was a pharmacist who ran the Alchemist Shop inside the mall. She was also the Grandmaster of the Earth Element. It was she who’d given Dion his power over the earth elementals the day before. The entire day was spent in an attempt to reach her. The builders of the mall were intent to keep Dion away from her store. The ghouls, who were employed as cleaners, did everything possible to block him from reaching his destination. They’d even kidnapped their friend Emily and taken her away. It took an underground trip to the subbasement where the ghouls lived to free Emily. Lilly doubted her friend would ever come anywhere near the mall again.

Lilly was smartly dressed that day in platform shoes which added a few inches to her height. She didn’t want the real high ones that gave her an extra six inches, as they were difficult to walk in around the mall. Her blouse showed enough shoulder, but not too much. It was hidden beneath the jacket she wore over it. No reason to go on a hunt for an element grandmaster and appear to be a slob. She doubted at college it would be easy to keep up appearances when she started in the fall.

“Where do we find this one?” she asked Dion.

“He owns a hobby shop. It’s on the first floor of the mall, so we don’t have to deal with the escalators this time. Pretty nice place from what I can remember. Miniature airplanes, model rockets and toy trains. There was a hobby shop near me when I was growing up in California. I still remember buying those tiny bottles of paint to decorate model airplanes.”

Lilly never had much interest in model airplanes or rockets when she was younger. It was just not on her radar. But if it helped Dion locate his grandmaster, she was willing to help him. By now, she trusted him and his abilities.

“You think he moved here to the mall when it opened?” she asked him. “I heard something about it at the time.”

“I talked to Uncle Rich about it last night. The mall went out of their way to get him to move inside it. They claimed the reason was because they didn’t want bad relations with the local businessmen, but I think there was much more. They especially wanted him inside the mall because he’s an elemental grandmaster. They went to a lot of trouble to get them to move inside and reorganized their shops. Ms. West’s pharmacy was somewhere down in Scipio. They did the same to all of them: made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Now the mall builders have all the elemental grandmasters under one roof, where they can keep them all in sight.”

Jupiter Hitch was an older man who opened the hobby store after he retired as an engineer from the local air base. He’d worked as a civilian contractor for the United States Air Force after he graduated college in 1940 with a degree in engineering from a prestigious technical college. World War II kicked off almost a year later and his skills were instantly in demand. He spent the war in uniform and cashiered out to a growing aeronautical industry. In 1946, he found himself working for a reclusive millionaire turning out experimental aircraft. When his designs had a high success rate, he was promoted to the head of the department. Hitch quit when his employer refused to listen to his concerns about a high altitude aircraft they were trying to test. When an entire crew was killed in an experimental design, he quit and moved east to work for the government.

Hitch became the elemental grandmaster in the middle of the Second World War after the other elemental workers decided he possessed extraordinary abilities with the air elementals. He provided information that allowed American bombers to avoid storms on the way back from missions over Germany. No one in the American government knew where he came by his information, but it saved thousands of lives.

He used his air elemental insider information to build better planes in the years after the war. The sylphs could tell him instantly if a particular airfoil design had the ability to work. The air elementals of the higher atmosphere would let him know about conditions in their part of the clouds. In return, he let them know when any kind of testing might happen in the elementals’ part of the sky. During the nuclear tests, this information was crucial to the elementals. He was also instrumental in bring the nuclear atmospheric tests to a halt. His reasons were humanitarian, but he also understood how furious the atomic explosions made the elementals.

All the years he worked for the air base, Hitch experimented on small model aircraft. He became a legend among the tiny aircraft builders, people who flew small model planes with miniature gas engines. Due to the air base and its need for skilled technical people, there was a large local community of model aircraft and rocket enthusiasts. On any given Sunday, he was down at the city flying circles or launching another model rocket into the air. Hitch never married so he had plenty of time to devote to his hobbies.

When he retired, he opened up a hobby store, which allowed him to pursue what he really enjoyed: building the latest and best model aircraft he could find. It also allowed him a cheap way to buy parts. After he hired some people who knew about the business and sales side, it allowed him to do what he wanted all day long. The hobby store was quite profitable and allowed him to interact with other hobbyists. In time, his store, Hobby Visions, became a popular source of tools and material. Hitch would also put out a catalogue that became known all over the world.

“Good morning,” a voice said to their left and they turned to see Edward again. This time he wore a USAF uniform. The rank said “Major” on the nametag.

“You can get in trouble walking around impersonating an officer,” Dion said to the little man.

“It’s the least of my concerns. I’m more concerned with your current situation.”

Edward was a strange little Englishman who popped in for brief moments to offer advice it seemed. They could never get a straight story out of him as to his origins. He claimed he was allowed to give them guidance on their adventures, but not to do anything else. Edward was corporal for only five minutes at a time, but he was vague as to how long he was allowed to appear. The only thing consistent so far was that he showed up in a different outfit each time. The last time he’d appeared, Edward wore a concert t-shirt, jeans and a pair of suede leather shoes. As far as clothing went, this was a vast improvement.

Edward pulled out a cigar, clipped off the end with a pair of tiny scissors, and lit it. He took a long inhale, much to the disgust of Dion and Lilly. “Ah, one of the few pleasures I am still permitted. Just don’t say a word if anyone asks you what I’ve done, please.”

“Anything special we need to know about what is on the other side of the glass doors?” Lilly asked. “Are you going to call in an air strike?”

“It wouldn’t do many any good if I had the authority. They could drop blockbusters all over that structure and the builders would find another way to create a new one. They are that powerful.”

“So, does this explain the Air Force uniform?” Dion asked him. “It looks a lot better on you than the last outfit.”

“While thank you. No, I get a brief opportunity to make a request before they send me back. I’ve spent my time on the other side looking into what is considered proper attire these days. Beastly, I tell you, just dreadful. This was the best outfit I could find on a short notice. What I came here to let you know, is that the builders of the mall are furious you walked out of it with your earth elemental power yesterday. They have threatened to replace all of the ghouls, although what good it would do is beyond me. Any other earth elementals they can bring inside will automatically be under your authority. The chemist is leaving and has told the management she will end her lease next month.”

“Chemist?” Dion asked.

“Oh, dear, that is right; you call them pharmacists in this country. Anyway, she feels it is time for her to move on to set up shop somewhere else. I’m guessing her work is finished in the mall. This might be another reason all the Element Grandmasters were so willing to relocate to the mall. They knew you would find it easier to locate them if they were in the same area. She spoke highly of you, my lad, so keep up the good work.”

“You went ahead and talked to her?” Dion asked. “How did you manage to do that?”

“I have my ways. They wanted me to do a follow up, so I had tea with her yesterday after the mall closed. We spent a good hour together. I want you to know that she gave you the highest recommendation ever for a new Master of the Earth Element.”

Dion thought for a few moments. He was pleased she would think so well of him, but did it really make a difference? So long as his parents were imprisoned inside the inner part of the mall, he had to find a way to get them out. If the other Elemental Grandmasters thought well of him, well then maybe it would all work out in the end. But until he had all five powers, no single one of them would do him any good.

He thought back to his early years and remembered his father showing him how to make small creatures out of clay. They didn’t last very long and soon crumbled back to the soil, but it was fun. He remembered luring the wind elementals to push sailboats along when the air was calm. At an early age, he would play with the air elementals in the backyard of the house. He liked to watch the sylphs of the lower air fly around the trees. They could tell you if company was headed down the road or when the big storms were on the horizon. The air elementals didn’t interact much with humans.

He remembered several talks he had with his parents about what he could and could not say in front of the “English”. “The English” were the elemental workers’ term for those who couldn’t manipulate elements. No one seemed to know where the term originated; it was just something they used among themselves. The elemental workers even had certain signs and terms to use whenever they were afraid an outsider was listening in on the conversation. He remembered the first time his father told his mother there were too many “spirits in the night” at a restaurant. This was a coded term they used. It meant there were people listening in on the conversation who shouldn’t hear what was being said.

“And it’s just about time for me to go,” Edward said as he looked at his wristwatch. “I prefer a pocket watch, but this Rolex is smashing. I hope they let me use it the next time.”

Once again, he was gone without so much as a flash.

“I can’t get used to him popping in and out like that,” Lilly said to Dion. She turned and looked at the entrance to the mall. Nothing at the front to stop them.

“Did you know there’s a town in Ohio called Revenge?” Dion said.

“You’re kidding? Why would a town have a name like that?”

“Nobody really knows. I ran across it in the library. The best theory is that there was a competition between two men over who would get to name the town. The loser of the competition was to get the chance to name it. What the town officials didn’t tell him was that the award of naming the town went to the man who lost the competition. So, as the story runs, as his retaliation on everyone for losing, he named the town ‘Revenge’. At least that is the story I was told.”

It wasn’t yet ten in the morning so the mall was still closed to everyone but the employees. Dion watched the security guards come to the glass doors and let the workers in. Every time they opened the door to let someone inside, the guards would make a point of glaring at Lilly and himself. There was no love between Officer Karanzen, who was in charge of the security guards, and Dion. They’d spent the previous day avoiding Karanzen and his goons while they hunted for Emily after she was kidnapped by the ghoul cleaners. It was only after the appearance of Dion’s grandfather, who was Karanzen’s commanding officer in the Korean War, that the overbearing security chief left them alone.

“I was surprised your grandfather was here yesterday,” Lilly said. “Do you think he’ll be back today?”

“No. It takes a lot to bring him and grandmother back. He has some of the same restrictions Edward has, just not as severe. I don’t think we’ll see much of them. By the way, did your parents seem concerned about last night? It was late when I took you home.”

“My mother and father understand I’m a big girl,” Lilly laughed. “After my sister married and moved out, they eased up a lot. I told them the truth: we had to go get gas for your van after it ran out.”

She avoided telling them the gas was stolen by thieves who were after a tire on his van. She didn’t tell them how Dion caused the ground to open up around the getaway car until they returned the tire. Had he known that the same thieves had also siphoned off the gas in his van, he would’ve made them fill it up. Luckily for the thief, they didn’t learn the tank was empty until they tried to start the van.

There was a small crowd of shoppers in front of the glass doors ready for them to open. Likewise, the best parking places were taken by people who arrived early. Dion and Lilly were standing toward the back of the lot as they expected to be there most of the day. The builder of the mall had thrown all forms of hurdles in front of Dion to keep him from reaching the Earth Elemental Grandmaster yesterday, and he had every expectation they would do it again.

They noticed Emily’s car the moment she pulled into the lot. Even Dion was surprised she knew where to find them. He sat there and watched her little green Ford pull into the entrance and drive right up to them. After her experiences the day before, he was stunned she would return after having vowed never to come anywhere near the mall again.

Chapter 2

“I didn’t expect to see you here again,” Lilly said to Emily as she got out of the car. “I thought you never wanted to see this place again.”

“I don’t,” she said, her hair combed down and not the mess it was the day before. “But I’m not leaving you two here alone to do whatever task Dion has to do. We’ve known each other for years and I don’t want to lose friendship over a haunted mall.”

Emily had grown up with Lilly. They attended school together most of their lives. As their last names were similar, they were in the same homerooms all the way through junior and high school.

“Besides,” Emily continued, “I’ve got some help today. I want you to meet Sean. Come on out, Sean.”

The passenger side door of her car opened and another high schooler stepped out. He was the same age as the rest of them, eighteen, but that was the only thing Sean had in common with the rest of the group. He wore thick glasses, which were smeared with grease. This made it difficult for them to see what his eyes looked like. His face was scared by skin infections, and his clothes might’ve been new ten years ago.

“Always good to get some help,” Dion told the newcomer. “Did Emily fill you in on what we’re up against here?

“She gave me some idea. According to her, the place is infested by ghosts, zombies and werewolves.”

“No ghosts,” Dion corrected him. “They won’t come anywhere near here unless it’s to shop. I don’t know about werewolves because I haven’t seen any of them. The map I had of the mall listed a hidden restaurant that caters to them, so they might be here. However, you wouldn’t know it unless it was a full moon.”

Sean looked at him for a few seconds. “That is awesome! What about the zombies?”

“You haven’t met the security guards.”

Sean didn’t have a girlfriend. In Sean’s mind, this made him less than human. At eighteen, Sean lacked many of the basic social skills which would have allowed him to have the relationships that might have alleviated his loneliness. But Sean was an introvert, someone who didn’t have the kind of social connections he needed to get along with people. He found relief from his ultrarelgious mother and suffering father at an early age in books. In books, there were neat endings and people lived happily ever after. Evil was destroyed and good triumphant. As he got older, Sean realized the world around him didn’t match the one he read about, but he still went to the same sources for guidance: books.

He had grown up in a small ranch-style house in town. His father, a mechanic at one of the auto plants, worked long hours and took all the overtime he could so his family had a decent place to live. He never understood his son or the fascination the boy had for fantasy literature and monster movies on television. As far as he could see it, it was a waste of time. Now, football and team sports, this he understood. Sean’s dad enjoyed watching the big game when he came home. However, he couldn’t even coax his son to toss a baseball. The one time he tried, Sean had bloodied his noose when he missed the ball and never tried again.

Sean’s mother was absolutely sure something was wrong with him. This was the time of the many “How To” books on child rearing. Whenever she’d hear something on one of the morning radio talk shows, she would meet Sean at the door when he returned from school with a cold stare. Sean endured a lot from her, but the worst was when she forced him to read a book about a teenage psychopath. He had nightmares for months over that one. It was almost as bad as the morning ritual he experienced where his mother read the latest advice column from the newspaper outload. Later, when he learned to read, Sean would find the columns himself when she tossed away the paper. He discovered his mother only read aloud the columns that agreed with her.

School wasn’t much of a relief from what he endured at home. In neither place was he deprived of any material needs, but, as a certain book said, people do not survive on bread alone. His school system was over-loaded and understaffed, a victim of the massive enrollment increase, which came with the bloom of the suburbs. The teachers didn’t know how to handle the hormones exploding in teenagers, packed forty to a classroom. The school administrator was stuck with a township that didn’t want to pay much for their children’s education. And the school buildings were repurposed every year from elementary to junior to high school and back again. It was not a shining moment in the education field.

Sean soon discovered when he entered high school that you only counted if you were a jock, genius or a troublemaker. If you didn’t fall into one of these categories, you were one of the teaming masses of students who ran from one class to another when the bell rang, which it did seven times a day. He learned to keep his mouth shut and avoid any stare at the toughs, who didn’t need a provocation to punch you. What if the teacher saw them? So what? They were sent down the office several times a week anyway. Their parents were beyond concern by this stage.

What he could not understand was why these bad boys were so popular with the girls. Every single one of them strutted around the hall as if he owned it. All he had to do was glance at one of the girls and she would swoon. This wasn’t always the case, but it happened enough for Sean to understand the basic inequality in the human race. Worse, it seemed the nicer you were to one of the hot girls, the nastier she was to you.

This is what drew him to the literary journal at the school and the crowd which surrounded it. It allowed him to indulge in his love for books and play at being a writer. Best of all, there were some girls involved who would give him the time of day. It was at the school’s journal where he met Lilly and Emily. They seemed to merely tolerate him, but it was more time than any of the other girls in school would give him. It was also fun to see his name on the masthead. Needless to say, his mother considered it a waste of time and belittled him for never making the honor roll.

Emily he adored.

She realized after a few months of his attention she could get Sean to do anything she wanted, just so long as she paid him some compliments. She thrived on the attention too, although the relationship was always determined by her. Sean tried to raise the “girlfriend” topic at one point, but she put a stop to it. Emily wasn’t ready for any kind of relationship after she saw what the broken one had done to her father.

But Sean longed to tell Emily how he really felt about her. He would write stories where she was the maiden and he the knight. Then he would ball them up and throw them into the trash. He would instantly fish them out of the trash and tear the stories into shreds before flushing them down the toilet. His mother had found one of his stories in the trash one morning and read it aloud to the family as an example of why “There had to be something wrong with him”. Sean knew he would remember that slight until the day he died.

So he was thrilled when Emily called him from her father’s house with a secret mission. This would allow him to show her that he was worthy of her attention. It would permit him to enter into the adult world, which in both of their cases was due to take place when they left for college. She wouldn’t tell him what it was about and they agreed to meet early in the day before the mall opened at one of the local breakfast places near where they lived.

Sean was transfixed after she finished with her story as to what occurred the day before at the mall. He felt one of his high fantasy novels come to life as she sat there and told him what happened over a coffee. He didn’t know what to do. It all seemed so surreal.

What he didn’t want to do was tell his family. His dad would roll his eyes and go back to watching TV; his mom would wail and get the pastor on the phone, if he was lucky. They might take him to a shrink if he even let on about this story. In no way would he allow any of them to know. At least his sisters were left alone. They seldom found reason to stay around the house.

“So, how do you want me to help you?” he said from across the table. Sean picked a small booth toward the back where they would less likely be noticed. He didn’t need the sneers from the jocks who found reason to come inside from time to time.

“Just come out there with me today as back-up,” she told him. “I need you to run cover for me. It’s all I’m asking.” Emily slid one hand over his.

When she did that, Sean made up his mind he would do anything for her. He was gone to the world, madly in love with the girl who faced him, even if he couldn’t tell anyone.

“So he knows it all,” Emily told Dion and Lilly. “I told him every detail what happened yesterday. Sean is here to help too. Why don’t you let him?”

“Do you have any idea what we’re up against?” Dion asked Sean. “You have any idea at all what could be on the other side of those doors?”

“I’ve talked with Emily,” he said. Dion noticed Emily gave Sean’s hand a little tug with hers.

“I see. Well, let’s get moving. Just watch me and listen to anything I have to tell you. It might appear to be a normal mall on the outside, but the place is the entrance to hell.”

As with the other entrance, there was as small water fountain outside the entrance to the “Air” section of the mall. Dion stopped and watched the water play out. He wondered what he could do to make the dangers of the mall real to Sean, but his full power extended only over the earth element.

And then he saw the bull again.

The plastic bull, which came to life the previous day and tried to stop them from reaching the Grandmaster of the Earth Element, was on a cart. The cart was sitting on the curb next to the fountain, although the plastic bull was tied down to it. Next to it was a uniformed maintenance man who was in the process of finishing his morning cigarette. Dion stopped to look at the bull on the cart.

“They’re taking it out?” he asked the man.

The worker finished his cigarette and tossed the butt on the ground. At least there had been a rain the night before, so there were no worries about the ground catching fire.

“Not working?” Dion asked again.

“Somebody said it came loose and slid off the mount upstairs. I don’t see how it happened, but it was in the cooking store when we had to move it out. The company is replacing it. Can you believe that? This damn mechanical bull came loose and slid all the way into the store.”

“I’d have to see that happen to believe it,” Dion told him.

In fact, he had, but now it was just another cheap ride for the curious.

“Yeah, I find it hard to believe too,” the man said.

Dion felt the earth elementals moving beneath them. These were the basic ones; he could do a lot more with them now though. They weren’t too complicated and could be easy to work with. He found two playing in the soil beneath the plastic bull and connected with them. Would they be willing to help him in return for something they might need? Yes, but what did he need? Dion told him and they were delighted to help.

“It that strap very tight?” Dion asked.

“Tight as it needs to be. I don’t think there’s much trouble with it. Statue doesn’t weight that much, in spite of how it looks. I don’t foresee it bucking out of the truck.”

“I wouldn’t’ be so sure about that,” Dion told him just as the plastic strap around the middle of the bull snapped.

The maintenance man turned and looked at the bull behind him. He dropped the second cigarette, which he was on the point of lighting, and starred as the bull stepped off the cart. It walked straight up to him. It turned its head, looked around and noticed the green grass on the ground. As the rest of the group looked on in wonder, the plastic bull walked over the grass and began to gnaw on the ground.

“But, it’s fake!’ is all the man could sputter out.

“Are you sure about that?” Dion said to him. “I don’t recall too many fake bulls which eat grass.”

The man walked over to the bull and starred at it a bit longer. He could see the painted nose snort and the artificial eyes look at the ground. The bull was black in color and wasn’t transparent; although it had a shine on it from the way the sunlight struck it. The bull continued to munch on the grass.

“It’s some kind of machine,” the man concluded. “Has to be. Now I see why people thought it had walked into the china shop. Can you imagine that? A plastic bull inside a china shop.”

The bull reared back up. It reassumed the position it had before the it animated. The earth elementals thanked Dion in a voice only he could hear. They left the bull statue, traveling back into the ground. The bull turned back into what it was before the elementals entered it: a metal and plastic statue designed for the entertainment industry.

“I think your bull is back to normal,” Dion told the man as it froze back into position. “You need some help getting it back on the cart?”

The man walked over to the bull statue and pushed it. It wobbled, but showed no signs of moving again. He looked at it all over until he decided it wasn’t going to walk away. With one hand, he lifted it up. The front section bucked up into the air.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “I watched this thing walk off the cart by itself and eat the grass. There are even grass stains on the mouth. How did it happen? I can’t feel any heavy gears inside it.”

“Who knows? Maybe they’ve put something inside the bull you don’t know about.”

“Now I have to be concerned about it climbing of the cart,” the maintenance man grumbled.

“I don’t think you have to worry,” Dion smirked as he and his friends headed in the direction of the mall entrance.

Chapter 3

If a true believer needed to be created, it was found in the form of Sean.

Lilly and Emily had watched all kinds of miracles the day before and didn’t have the least trouble with a plastic bull, which walked on its own. Sean, on the other hand, had spent his formative years listening to his mother babble on about demons, spirits and the end of the world.

He was forced to attend church meeting where elderly pastors screamed damnation on the sinful world of rock music. He watched respected women of the choir divorce and re-marry. By the time he was fifteen, Sean decided it was all a pile of nonsense and there was no magic in the world. It was all protons, electrons, smoke and mirrors. But a walking plastic bull had made a believer out of him in seconds.

They continued to the mall entrance. It was now unlocked and the crowds which had waited outside were on their way inside.

There was always a sense of excitement by these shoppers as they worked their way into the mall to greet the new shopping day. It resembled a tribe of hunters who had spotted their prey and were intent on closing in as soon as they could. They would form groups of hunting parties to swarm across the grounds of the mall in search of the best sources of game. They pursued their quarry based on tracks marked by sales flyers and images on the wall, which told them of the daily specials. When they were ready to pounce, the hunters approached with shopping carts in front of them, ready to acquire the target.

The four were soon inside the mall, walking through one of the corridors, which connected with the main concourse. Benches and planters ran through the middle of the corridor and smaller shops lined the sides. These were small stores that seldom had more than a thousand square feet on the inside with one or two windows. It was the start of the workday and the window cleaners were busy at work with their squeegees.

Dion noted the window cleaners were human and with a local company that used a seahorse as its logo. He hadn’t seen a ghoul cleaner yet and didn’t think he would. The ghouls wouldn’t touch him since he had full earth elemental power. However, officer Karanzen and his officers were a different story.

And just as Dion stepped into the main concourse, he encountered his nemesis. Karanzen, in his uniform, stood and blocked Dion’s way into the mall. On either side were two of Karanzen’s security guards.

Dion stopped and looked at him directly in the face. “And good morning to you, Officer Karanzen,” he said to the shaven-headed former army officer. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“You can watch yourself in this mall. I don’t want a repeat of yesterday. Do I make myself clear?”

“You do, Officer. Now if you will please move aside? I have an appointment I need to keep.” He stepped around the head of mall security and led his friends to the rest of the mall.”

“That’s right, you little snipe,” Karanzen mumbled to himself, not caring if his guards heard or not. “Just continue on your happy way. We’ll see how far you get this time.”

“Who was that?” Sean asked Dion as they continued on their way. “The guy didn’t seem to like you at all.”

“The feeling is mutual. We had a confrontation the last time I was here.”

“More like multiple confrontations,” Lilly added. She made sure to be at his side in case Dion needed anything.

“He won’t be of much trouble today,” Dion continued. “Unless we do something stupid. And I don’t intend to do anything stupid. We’ll see what happens.”

The mall was busy already. The shoppers heard the news on TV, radio and in the local papers about the big spring sales that drove them to the mall. Already the lot filled with cars, which brought even more shoppers out to sample the wares from all over the world. There was even one store which specialized in imports from the vast reaches of the planet and beyond. Eager faces of energetic aspirants to the wealth of the world could be seen as they walked between stores and feasted their eyes upon the treasures that lay inside. The bonus checks arrived last week from many of the large companies where the families drew their income.

“We lost the map of the mall when we had to trade it for Emily,” Lilly pointed out. It was the only way they could get her back from the ghouls without violence the previous day. “It’s not going to be easy to find our way around.”

“Why should it be hard?” Sean asked them. “There is a directory on the other side we can use. If not, I’m sure one of the kiosk ladies has a map.”

“Different kind of map,” Emily said. “Dion got this from a special store. It shows places the other maps don’t.”

“Why would that make a difference?”

“The map we had showed the passages the ghouls used to get around the mall. You’ll never find them on any other map. Plus, many of these stores, which are closed to the general public, have a very particular clientele base. You won’t see them anywhere else.”

“Like what?”

“Like a store which sells pollution control equipment for water sprites. They still have to live in that mess and want to keep their part clean.”

Dion went on to tell him about the cafeteria for vampires and the anti-surveillance store for ghosts. It seemed the specters were fed up with paranormal investigators who wouldn’t leave them alone. They invested heavily in auto-intrusion technology to have a decent afterlife.

“They’re pushing for a lot of the counter-surveillance equipment on the market. The specter detectors still don’t understand why they were able to get voice recordings in graveyards up to three years ago, but can’t get a thing anymore. The ghosts found ways to jam their devices. They buy new equipment every chance they get.”

Soon they reached the waterfall, which marked the center of this section of the mall. It was built to serve as a wishing well and combination fountain with a goldfish-reflecting pond. Like many of the other aquatic attractions in the mall, it had a ledge where people could sit and relax. It was early in the day and the only shoppers relaxing where young mothers who’d brought their children.

“I could walk to the other side of the mall,” Dion said. “It’s a haul to get over there. Besides, the hobby shop we need to find shouldn’t be so hard to locate.”

As they sat there, a small balloon floated down from the skylight to them. No one saw who released it and all four of them were surprised by the sudden appearance of the balloon. I was red in color and had a small piece of paper attached to it. When the balloon descended in front of them, Lilly grabbed the paper on it.

“It’s a letter,” she said as she looked at the paper. “It’s addressed to you, Dion.” She detached the letter from the balloon and handed it to Dion, and she gave the balloon to Sean.

Dion slowly opened the letter while Sean tried to figure out what to do with the balloon. Sean turned to Emily. “Is there any reason we need to keep this thing?” he asked her.

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Good,” he said and popped the balloon. Several women near the waterfall turned and glared at him. Dion continued to read the letter.

“You didn’t have to make so much noise,” Emily snapped at him.

“Sorry.” It was a problem he’d always had, not knowing when something was appropriated to do or not. Somehow, Sean just never knew the social cues that guided most people through life.

“So, what is in the letter?” Lilly asked Dion.

“It was from my parents.” Dion folded it up and placed it in his pocket. The rest of the group became quiet.

“So what did it say?” Emily asked. “Can you tell us?”

“It said that they’re proud of what I’ve done and want me to continue with the quest. They look forward to being with me again. They’re all right, but still imprisoned at the center of the mall in the clock tower. The managed to get the one letter out, but they don’t think they’ll be able to do it again. They told me I need to have all five elemental powers to free them.”

“Pretty much what you already knew,” Lilly said.

“Five elements?” Sean spoke again. “I thought there were only four.”

“The fifth is the source of the other ones,” Dion explained. “It has to do with the abyss; I’m just not sure how.”

“Well,” Lilly said, “if you can find the hobby store where the Air Elemental Grandmaster is located. You can at least have that part of the quest finished.”

“It’s never as easy as that. You saw what happened yesterday. The mall builders had the ghouls kidnap Emily just to keep me away.”

“I thought the kidnapping was the ghouls’ idea,” Lilly said. She shuddered as the memories of the trip to the subbasement came back to her.

“They put them up to it,” Dion said. “We need to see Mr. Jehuti.”

“Other side of the mall,” Lilly said. “Besides, we lost the map he gave us the first time, what makes you think he and his wife will want to give us another copy? Assuming he has another to give us.”

“Did someone let a bird in here?” Sean asked.

They all turned to see where he pointed.

Indeed, it was bird. But a large one and it was in the pool of water where the waterfall emptied. The bird had long legs and a large beak. It resembled a flamingo, but it was not so colorful. The bird walked in the water toward them with a scroll in its mouth. It avoided all of them except Dion, whom it hopped up to and presented the scroll.

“I think it wants to give it to you,” Lilly said.

Dion reached over and took the scroll from the bird’s mouth. Seconds later, it was airborne. They watched it soar into the heights of the mall until it found an opening in the skylight. The bird swooped out of the mall and was last seen as a dot through the skylight.

The sounds began to fade in the mall as Dion picked up the scroll and unrolled it. None of the others noticed as they gathered around to look at it. Only Lilly remarked that it was made of papyrus, as the map yesterday was also constructed. The air became very warm inside the space where they stood looking at the scroll.

It consisted of one figure, which was a jumble of Egyptian symbols surrounded by an oval. The symbols were painted on the papyrus in very bright colors. This was no tourist replica, but an actual Egyptian document from the Old Kingdom. What it was doing inside the mall had yet to be explained. It made no sense to any of them.

Dion looked up from the scroll and discovered he was no longer in the mall. Once again, he was in the Egyptian desert of three thousand years ago. Once again, he was dressed in the simple robes of a court official from that time period. He looked across the sunbaked land and saw a woman approach him in a backless dress with her long hair tied back in a headband, which had an ostrich feather stuck in it. She held a set of balances in one hand. It was Mr. Jehuti’s wife, but she was without her husband.

Dion looked to his sides and saw his friends with him, similarly dressed. This had happened the last time he’d been in Mr. Jehuti’s store. The older man said he needed to hold a conference with Dion and Lilly. Seconds later, they were transmitted to the same scenario in the ancient Egyptian desert. This was where he was first handed the secret map to the mall.

“I see you’re alone,” Dion said to Mrs. Jehuti. Once again she walked across the sands with the aid of a staff. Dion noticed this time there was a rose carved into the head of it.

“My husband has to take inventory today. We learned of your forfeiture of the map last night.”

Sean was at a loss to figure out what was happening. One minute they were in a suburban shopping mall, now they were in the Land of the Pharaohs. He glanced across the burning sands and saw a pyramid under construction. In front of it, two men looked over a set of plans as a work team hauled a stone, which had to have weighed several tons. Other work teams were busy moving stones into place as stonecutters walked around with tools to check the fitting.

Lilly knew where she was and stayed close to Dion. Emily hadn’t been here before and turned to watch a boat sail down the river in front of them. She was perplexed by what had taken place. It didn’t bother her, as yesterday was as bad as she ever wanted to experience, but today the sun was high in the sky and it was hot. She looked down at her skirt and found a pair of leather sandals on her feet. They were tooled to resemble lotus heads where the tops joined the ankle straps.

“Here is the map,” Mrs. Jehuti told him as she produced it from a pouch on her belt. “Try and not trade it this time.”

Dion took it from her and looked at it. This time the passageways and stores were marked in English. The last time it was in an ancient language he couldn’t read without the aid of a seer stone.

“It’s changed again,” he said.

“The map stays in whatever language the last person used it. At least that is how it is supposed to work. I understand its close proximity to the ghouls might have changed things.”

“How did you get it back?” he asked her.

“The ghouls brought it to us. They knew it would be of no use to them after you obtained your full earth elemental powers and wanted us to put in a good word for them. They’re worried the mall builders will kick them out.”

“After what they did to me,” Emily snapped, “I hope they end up eating dirt.”

“The ghouls try to survive as best they can,” Mrs. Jehuti said firmly. “They don’t have a lot of experience dealing with humans so it causes them to make some stupid mistakes. Even after years of living in the shadows of humanity, they still have to scurry out of the sunlight. You need to see things from their perspective, as disgusting they might be to you.”

“They didn’t look at it from my prospective when they grabbed me and I was hauled down to that subbasement.”

“Again, they have this tendency to make idiotic decisions. Anyway, this is a peace offering to Dion.”

“I was told by Edward that the air elementals in this part of the mall can be very deceptive,” Dion said to Mrs. Jehuti. “What do I need to worry about?”

“They will use your baser instincts to lure you away. You are dealing with very sophisticated sylphs. These are not the ones that fly in an out of the windows on such a summer’s day. However, they are not as dangerous as the ones that fly in the upper storm clouds. You don’t have to worry about electrocution by them. The ones in the upper clouds seldom come down to earth, so it’s not much of an issue anyway.”

“How will I know what to look for?”

“I don’t have to tell you, they will be obvious when you see them. Remember, this part of the mall is governed by the element of air. There are many ways to control it, but you have the greatest ability of anyone I’ve ever seen. Use your powers carefully. I don’t think you’ll be able to get very close to the Grandmaster right away, so plan accordingly. I see you have some extra friends along for this adventure, do they know what to expect?”

Dion turned to Sean and Emily.

“I was on the receiving end the last time,” Emily told her. “I don’t want to deal with that one again.”

“This is my first time out,” Sean said. “But I’ve already seen enough to keep me here for the trip.”

“Keep in mind,” Dion said, “it will only get worse as we go closer to the hobby shop. The air elementals don’t want me to have authority over them and will do what they can to stop me from reaching my goal. They even set that plastic bull against me the last time. I was able to lead it into a kitchen store and bind it long enough to release the earth elemental they’d put inside it. I have no idea what they will try and do this time.”

Lilly looked up at the sky. The huge beetle was pushing along the sun, the same as it had done the day before.

There was a commotion and they all turned to find the source of the noise. When they couldn’t find it, Mrs. Jehuti pointed down at the ground. The looked downward to see a horde of small figures running across the sand. It was impossible to hear what they had say, but each of them carried some kind of farm implement and hurried on their way to a destination. After a few minutes, the tiny mob disappeared from sight.

“Ushabti’s,” Mrs. Jehuti explained. “On their way to some noble’s tomb construction.”

Sean looked up and watched a small boat sail across the sky. It contained several men riding in it and as strange half-human, half-animal creature at the prow. It seemed to follow the beetle, pursuing the sun directly behind it.

Emily wondered what she was doing in this place. She decided yesterday to come to the mall. She’d talked to Lilly the evening before to make sure her friend was all right. All Lilly wanted to talk about was Dion, how amazing he was and all the things he had done. To hear her talk, Dion was close to a rock star in looks and a miracle worked in ability. Emily had seen him stare down those ghoul cleaners, but she still couldn’t believe all the things Lilly told her about the mall, what it represented and the quest Dion was on today. There had to be a reason for everything, which happened that day. She wasn’t about to believe he could manipulate the elements. Real life wasn’t a comic book the kids read. There were no masked avengers who changed into men with superpowers. At least not as far as she knew.

But here she was, in the land of Egypt. The sun was pushed across the sky by a bug and a boat made out of reeds was following it behind. Worse, she’d just watched a herd of gremlins run across the sand on their way to a what? A noble’s tomb construction? Either she was insane, in a dream, or this place was real. The first two were bad enough, but the third made it worse for everyone. If the world did respond to the power of the four elements, why should she plan on attending college or finding a decent man to settle down with? Her dad had no luck on marriage, but she was determined to find someone to spend her life with. No way did she want to end up like her “disco divorcee” mother who had a different man over at her place every week.

She blinked and the landscape changed again.

Now she could see herself in the future. She wasn’t in the scene, but an impartial observer. Emily saw herself working at a cheap diner on the late shift. She had to get home in time to pick her daughter up from her mother’s. Her feet were hurt and she hated the uniform she was forced to wear to get some decent tip money. When was that no-account ex-husband going to send in his child support check? The idiot didn’t even spend time with his daughter.

She needed to find another job. This one didn’t bring in anywhere near the money she needed and the bills were starting to pile up. It was barely enough to afford a cheap apartment in a seedy part of town. How had things ended up this way?

Emily blinked again and she was back in the desert with her friends. Mrs. Jehuti stared at her from across the sands.

“You should focus on where you are now,” she told Emily. “You don’t need to look at the endless possibilities which lay before you. It was something which might happen, but that is not guaranteed.”

“I’ll keep that all in mind. So what I just experienced doesn’t have to take place?”

“No, but it will if you continue on your present course.”

The rest of the group looked in confusion at Mrs. Jehuti and Emily. The two of them experienced something, which wasn’t privileged to be shared between the others. They knew the place they stood was outside the circles of time, but none of them realized how different it all was.

“Thank my lucky stars,” Emily said. “I was ready to walk off a bridge rather than face that future. How do I prevent it?”

“It’s up to you. I can’t tell you what to do; you have to make that decision on your own. I think you already know what steps to take.”

Emily had an on-again off-again relationship with one of the starters on the high school football team. It was fine for a while, but Teddy, as she liked to call him, could be demanding. She needed to bring it to an end. Or should she take it to the next level? She didn’t see enough to know whom the man was that left her in that state.