Chapter One

There was little left to the ramshackle ruins. In the movies, fragments of one's past life fluttered in the debris, like photographs, shattered glass and a coffee mug with a snapped-off handle, but here in the cult's ashes, there was nothing, neither a thread of vestment, nor a single coffee ground, and the photos were blasted into tattered bygones. Berangere felt the crispness, color, and luster of her memories fade, as if they had been tethered to the world by the images trapped under glass.

When Loren grubbed under rubble, she found only worms, but no matter how Berangere discouraged her, she traipsed through the teetering wreckage, risking life and limb to feed her sentimentality with a single trinket of their time in The Mansion of the Shining Prince, which had no doubt only made them fast friends by fastening them in one place.

But it was Chiyo who picked at the ruins frantically, as if she had lost no mere memento, but a prize as precious as life, as if she expected to pry up a charred slat and find not worms and centipedes,

but their golden days, blackened by ashes and grayed by dust. Having hacked out Havala's embers, and wept on Berengere and Loren, clutching them in a shaking, sobbing embrace, her breathing was too ragged to answer Berangere, even as her eyes implored the other girls.

"If you tell us what you're looking for, we can help." When Chiyo flashed red-rimmed eyes, Berengere stepped back. "Don't forget we're on your side."

Chiyo's anger sagged, then slumped, as she dropped to her knees, thumped the ground, and wailed, a groan which might have swelled to her first word since her return to Earth, had it not bottomed out in the most heartrending moan Berengere had ever heard...and she had heard a subway full of doomed Havalans bellowing as their world ran out of rail.

As Chiyo clutched her hair, streaking it with plaster and ashes, her sorrowful moan tightened to sob-drenched words."You wouldn't' understand."

"Isn't that the truth," snorted Jezera.

"What's that supposed to mean," snapped Chiyo, her snuffling drying up instantly as her eyes narrowed in a scowl, the dwarven eye popping and clicking as if the lids had stripped a gear.

"They're nose-blind from living with you," chuckled Jezera, "but I can smell the secrets on you."

"As if." As Chiyo sniffled, the corners of her mouth worried up and down, as if she was about to release another torrent of tears.

"Maybe you don't know." Jezera leaned back on rubble, and propped her crossed legs on more rubble, lolling on the ruins like a luxurious couch. "I was privy to her majesty's plans until very recently. And there were offers made, at first quite stingy, as befitting a conquering tyrant, but ultimately quite generous, some might even say charitable, despite what Daiko brings to the table."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying gigantic talking trees, archers, foxes, turtles, and other wise beasts. Quite a deal for Suvani."

Chiyo's huff fumed to a roar, then she stomped toward the ogress, one fist balled in front of her face, and her lip stuck out, glistening with tears. "I don't know what you're implying, but Daiko would never ally with Suvani. Our annual tribute is all the help they get from us."

"Why waste my breath implying anything, when I've seen letters, agreements, writs, and contracts between my ex-Queen and your people?"

"Ex-Queen?" said Berangere. "Who do you serve now?"

"Well," harumphed Jezera, "that's a thorny question. I had accepted employment with Kiera..."

"With Kiera?" Berangere smiled for the first ime in days. Although this beast had broken her shoulder, there was little doubt they could do anything they wanted on Earth with an ogress at their backs.

"That is what I said. But she fell through a portal to gods know where, or more likely, to Stranger knows where...no, no, I'm lying, aren't I? You can't fault me, as I was brought up to be polite." She wrinkled her nose in a scornful sneer. "Kiere fell to only your girlfriend knows where."

"Me?" Loren's cheeks pinked, then splotched red, no doubt still hot and hopped up on the power she felt in punching Jezera with her shapeshifted, shadow-clad arm.

"None of us have ever been there, have we?"

"Neither have I!" shouted Loren.

"Then it called to you, like only home can, or at least home is what I scented on the cold air blasting in from that unhappy world. Not mine, of course, but yours, a shapeshifting world for a chameleon girl."

"Worlds don't have a smell," snorted Chiyo.

"Of course they do. Lands have distinctive smells, so why not worlds?"

"All right. What did it smell like?"

"Mirrors. Just like you."

"Don't listen to her," said Berangere. "She wants to get a rise out of you."

"I know." Loren's voice was maudlin and wistful. "Give me some credit, Bear. Now that I must tuck myself in, I must think for myself too."

"What are you saying, Loren? I'm still here to tuck you in." Even Berangere heard the weariness in her own voice. She would have to be more believable than that. Loren had always been a lot to handle, but now she was too much, and Berangere felt like she needed not only breathing room, but running space. Her friend's shadowy claw had bowled over an ogress, having already ripped a gash between Earth and two other worlds in one day.

When Loren's nose lifted like a hound's, flared, and snuffled, it raised the hackles of Berengere's spine, so that as shadow slithered in the corner of her eye, she could only take in another eyeful of this new, bestial Loren, whose nose and ears had thinned and tapered, whose slender fingers were topped with nails so sharp they glinted, and whose eyes now curved in like mirrors, the pupils fading to a pearly sheen that meshed with her whites, taking in Berangere's fearful look like a mirror, and showing her herself, clutching her shoulders with crossed arms, her fingers white-knuckled from the effort of holding in her terror of her old friend. It was a moment of profound and chilling lack of recognition.

Loren had not transformed, but vanished, and in her place, something else stood. If Loren was a werewolf, her condition might be curable, and more or less conceivable. But this was no curse, but what Loren had always been: an unknown power and potential for violence that overwhelmed Berengere moment to moment. Once she was the big sister, but now she felt very small beside Loren.

As if reading her mind, Loren barked a sharp laugh. "You have nothing to fear, Bear. Not from me, anyway."

Berengere's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

"We're not the only ones here."

"How do you know? Is that the fox...or something else?"

"Your friend is definitely something else, your highness." Jezera's jaunty and smarmy tone was just a hair short of being a taunt, but her eyes nailed in the mockery the rest of the way.

Berengere feigned looking around, then pointed to herself and arched her eyebrows. "Me?"

"No, your friend."

"I mean, are you "your highnessing" me?"

"You are a princess."

"Not on Earth, thank god."

"Unfortunately, once the princess worms in, you can't wiggle it out, and half the time, it slithers all the way to queen, eating any other heirs in the process. At least, such was Suvani's way."

"I'm hardly Suvani."

"I don't know." Jezera rubbed her chin. "You have the eyes for it. In fact, you'd make a passable Suvani."

"The eyes for it!"

"The way they slide around and judge, not only me, but your friend, all the while skirting around your monstrous shadow." Jezera dipped down in a slight bow. "I tip my hand to the greater monster."

"I'm hardly as large as you!"

"Have you seen your shadow?"

As Jezera's finger lazily stabbed toward Loren, Berengere's attention flicked that way, then riveted back, frozen. She had been trying not to see what the ogress took such a gleeful delight in pointing out--Loren's enormous, jagged shadow, tracing not a girl, but snarled dragon's teeth, set to snap and make a mouthful of them all.

"It's nothing." Loren's shining eyes sliced the dark ruins, hard as diamonds. "Just a trick of the light, Bear. Your mind is playing tricks on you, or rather, hers is."

"I know it's not real. Don't waste time bickering, Loren. And you--" Berengere spun on Jezera.

"Don't worry. I'd rather not waste a single moment myself. I'm much too hungry for that."

While Jezera's face was peaceable, the canines of her lower jaw protruded over her upper lip, making her look very much the philosophical cannibal, speculating as to which acquaintance was better eating.

"If..." Berengere fretted as she fumed, feeling more seething steam than well-read girl, and held up her finger, not just to emphasize the "if," but to draw out the moment, desperate not to lose Jezera's needful help on Earth, no less a dark, wicked world than Alsantia or Havala. "If..." She drew back her finger as if releasing the valve on the stalled moment. "If you are still working for Kiera, then you know her well enough to know her wishes. But if you are no longer in her employ, then please entertain my offer."

"Or you could just ask her." Jezera snorted.

"She's not here. Am I missing something?" asked Loren.

"Ask your friend. No, not her," Jezera laughed. "Your other friend."

All eyes turned toward Chiyo, who gripped the Albatron so tightly, and gazed into its blackened glass so intently, that she did not notice their attention for a long, thundering silence that felt like hours, though it was surely less than a minute. When she raised her eyes, she lowered the artifact to her waist,

her grip still white-knuckled, as if part of her was in the glass.

"Well?" said Loren.

"Well, what?"

"Is Kiera in there?"

Chiyo chuckled. "There's nothing in here but Albatron, Loren. When it worked, it worked like a television, or a camera. You do know there's nothing in a television?"

"Funny." Loren's diamond eyes flashed brighter. "Speaking of the obvious, I never really liked the 'let's laugh at Loren game.'"

Chiyo paled but smiled. "Even if I knew her face better, this busted mirror no longer reflects anyone."

"As much as I'd like to see Kiera right now, we'll check in later. We're forgetting something." Berangere turned to Loren. "There's someone here, isn't there?"

"So I smell," snickered Loren, "but this is all new to me, Bear. Scents have a past and a future now. As they linger, he might have been here yesterday, and as they creep, the wind might be blowing it in before he arrives."

"While my nose isn't that good," said Jezera, "it's better than a human's, and I know the feeling. Scent has a longer duration than the other senses, being not only longer lasting, but more monotonous,

without any new stimulation. You have to clash a cymbal to hear it, but we could come back tomorrow and still smell this guy's lingering cologne."

"You smell it too?" asked Berengere.

"That's what I said," growled Jezera. "Good leaders don't waste time making people repeat themselves, while a cologne-doused assassin strolls in to slaughter everyone." She snorted. "I may not have noticed had your pet monster not mentioned it."

"If he knew we're here, I would smell his fear and aggression." Loren sniffed around the kitchen rubble, flapping open busted cabinets to release crumbs, paint-flaking debris, and scurrying bugs,

then turned to the others. "But he's definitely a killer."

"How would you know?" Chiyo said.

"I smell blood on his hands. Fresh blood, and not his blood."

"Maybe he's a doctor?"

"Could be." Jezera relished her own mocking tone, and her eyes burned. "Is a doctor or a killer more likely to wander around a ruin smelling like blood?"

"Spread out," said Berangere. "Find him, if he's here."

Chiyo's head tilted, eyeing Berangere incredulously. "You still think you're a warrior? Come back to Earth, Bear. Even on Alsantia you were never my captain."

"You don't get to call her that!" Loren's shining eyes darkened midnight blue flickering with a lightning-like crackle.

"Fine. I won't call her captain." Chiyo's uneasy laugh sounded more like a sneeze.

"No," Loren growled. "You called her Bear! Don't act like you're me! You could never take my place!"

Berengere's nerves seized up all at once, as if her better instincts were yanking her away.

When she raised her shaking arm and reached for Loren, but it faltered an inch away and fell limply to her side. Clenching her traitorous arms to her chest, she scowled and took a step, then another, nestling to Loren with her whole body, her sweating skin tight with fear and quivering like a drum, so that each pulse thwacked hard head to toe, and each heartbeat recoiled on her ribs. To be honest with herself she must deceive Loren,for none who feared as she did had any business calling her object of fear a friend.

But if her heart had changed, her need was more desperate, for how could she want this altered Loren to know the truth? Whether the otherworldly power was inborn to Loren or possessed her, it fed not just her ego but paranoia.

"Get it together, Loren." Behind her easy smile, her teeth ground hard, and the arm that draped cozily across Loren's back, sheathed tense and unfeeling muscles, repelled by what they embraced, as if she clutched a bomb. "It's only Chiyo. Did you forget the killer?"

"How could I forget, when his smell is inescapable?" Shaking Berengere off, Loren melted in one shadowy pour from girl to fox. While her fur was still a fiery orange, and her paws white as snow,

she was now bigger than a motorcycle, more tiger than fox. She snarled to Jezera, loped over the crunching wreckage, then headed for the wreckage of the TV room.

"While I don't speak fox," said the ogress, "her intent seems clear enough. Take shelter, your highness."

"Any good hiding place could become a horrible crushing place if she sniffed me out and chose to pounce. And why should I listen to what you say?"

"Five minutes ago, I thought the same thing, and cared little whether you were crushed under a falling wall. Then you hired me."

"Wait...you took my offer?"

"It's on my list, you see."

"Your list?"

"I've worked for a queen, but never a princess, and never anyone so young. So I can cross off two things. Don't make me regret it, your highness." As Jezera ambled over the wreckage, it flattened under her heavy tread.

When a yelp pierced the dark, Jezera loped faster, and was obscured from view by leaning struts and walls, and the gleaming scaffolding Draden had begun to erect around the ruins.

This left only Berangere and Chiyo in the wrecked kitchen. Chiyo sat on the floor and propped her back on a scorched cabinet, and jagged, peeling paint came off on her ash-caked Ephremian armor.

Berengere sat beside her, leaned in, and looked over her shoulder in the blackened magic mirror.

While Chiyo's grip had been slack, as Berengere shared the view, she tightened her knuckles around the handles.

"What do you want?" Chiyo scowled.

"Just a peek."

"I wish I could give you a look. When the Albatron was in perfect working order, it let me scroll the past as easy as pie, and sometimes the future. But I've been through a lot since we last saw each other, and you can see what's become of it now."

"Why keep looking at it? It's not like it can change." When Chiyo darted a fierce look and her dwarven eye glinted, Berengere leaned back, but as a smirk lit Chiyo's face, she knew she was right. "You're keeping something from us."

"You're imagining things."

"Then let me see."

"Fine." When Berengere reached for the Albatorn, Chiyo gripped it all the harder, so that when she relaxed her grip, the handle shot out, prodding Berengere's ribs. "It's a pain to walk around with anyway."

Berengere had never held the Alabtron, not only because Isola and Lucien had hogged it,but because the prospect of infinite vision, let alone the doubled vision of seeing through its sight, was troubling, for the artifact's existence suggested the world was a book, subject not only to readers' opinions and authors' whims, but skimming and speed-reading. And this would mean that all the books Berangere had read were only footnotes cribbed on the vast scroll skimmed by the Albatron.

When it fell across her knees, she exhaled in discomfort and surprise. It was a surprising weight, at least fifteen pounds. Having been weighted down not only by armor but this ancient mirror, Chiyo was stronger than Berangere ever gave her credit for, having had little patience with the flighty, flirty girl who chose to befriend Conrad, of all people. As she reminisced, the edges of the blackened mirror flickered, but when her eyes darted to this charcoal-gray fringe, she saw only warped and bubbled glass. On flipping it over, its ancient script was too charred to read.

"Did you try cleaning it?"

"No, I'm stupid," sighed Chiyo. "Of course. Some of it even came off..." She held up her hands, revealing black specks flaking her palm and the underside of her forearms. "That's as good as it gets for now."

"What aren't you telling me?"

"Why would I hide anything from you, Bear?" Chiyo smirked. "Can I call you that?"

"Why would I care? I defended you to Loren not five minutes ago."

"You defended me?" Chiyo snorted. "Why don't I reemember that? And has it been five minutes already?" Chiyo tried to rise, but fell back to the cabinet with a clatter. "They should have been back by now."

"You forget how big this mansion is." Berengere rested the Albatron against the cabinets,

jumped up, and offered Chiyo her arm. When Chiyo clasped her hand, Berengere groaned, braced her knees, and pulled the armored girl to her feet.

"Whew," Berengere whistled from the effort, drew in a deep breath, then faced the dark wreckage. While she had been fine leaning on cabinets, letting her curiosity of this new Chiyo and the singed Albatron serve distract her from her chaotic feelings, she froze at the thought of stepping through the ruins, marking not only her past life, but the present mystery and a possible horror, its shadows concealing not only an unknown, red-handed killer, but the fearsome monsters they brought in, as well as the more ordinary, but no less morbid dread of discovering bodies in the brownstone rubble. "We should wait here."

Clasping her hand, Chiyo tugged Berengere around the rubble and the jagged, jutting walls.

Chiyo was only too happy to walk under the leaning, teetering heaps, and at every drizzle of dust, Berenagere yanked her back. While the walls never crashed, one did lurch another foot, and would have clipped Chiyo's forehead had Berengere not dragged her ahead.

The next time the shadows slagged down, Berengere was too gobsmacked to move, but the collapsing darkness was only Jezera, whose massive arm curled around them as the ogress backed to the shuddering wall. As she pressed against the stones, dust spattered like rain, crumbling more and more every second, until Berangere smacked at the ogress's hand.

"We're going..." The massive hand, its sweat a grimy paste stinking of onions, clamped to Berangere's shout, which now whistled angrily from her nose. When Jezera held a finger to her mouth, then gently pulled her hand away, Berengere hissed, "we'll be crushed by this wall!"

"No, we won't." Jezera drawled laconically, as if they had all the time in the world.

"It's falling down all around us!"

"Don't worry about it." Jezera sounded more peeved now, as if she wanted to fume back at Berengere.

"Why shouldn't I worry about it?"

"I've been holding it up since I backed into it." Jezera's cheeks reddened. "Not that the collapse was my fault, you understand. It was ready to go."

"Of course!" Chiyo's abject terror showed when her head wagged up and down frantically in a caricature of friendliness. While Berangere was by no means at ease around Jezera, and the ogress showed little interest in breaking the ice, she had been only too happy to break her shoulder, and push her around, one way or another, through three worlds, and in this way, Berangere had become inured to Jezera. Some things can never be stomached, and some tastes can never be acquired, but you may eventually relax your gag reflex for carrots or black olives so that you can put on a civil face before your terrors.

Now that they were back on Earth, however, Berengere wasn't having it. She would establish boundary lines between herself and the ogress. And she would do it now.

"Set me down."

"That was what I was about to do." Jezera grunted under the weight of the rapidly shifting and crumbling wall. "When I do set you down, back away fast as you can. In fact, run back to the kitchen."

"What about Loren?"

"What about her?" As the wall cracked, larger crumbs of stone crumbled about them, and Jezera began to look ruffled, a look rarely seen in the calmly violent and violently calm ogress.

"Where is she? Wasn't she with you?"

"No." Jezera huffed as she changed her grip on the crackling wall. "I never caught her, and thought she had circled back to you."

"Loren!" Berengere shouted, then sprinted into the dark ruins--not toward the kitchen, but in the direction they were heading, slogging through shifting heaps and piles of crumbled stone and shredded wood before hitting what was once the brown brick building wall and the alley door, which lay bent and crumpled, as if mangled by a truck. But in this burst doorway, shifting, subsiding wreckage had filled, and to push ahead, she had to tear at the jumbled pieces bare handed.

The wreckage piled to the top of the door frame, leaving only a few inches, and while fox-Loren might have squirmed through, why would she? What would she pursue at the cost of leaving behind Berangere? Bear's heart was tore by a pang of unimaginable loneliness at the thought of Loren slipping into the city. If her Loren was no more, her memory still lived. If her beloved Loren had irrevocably changed, Bear's love had not. As she would always love the memory of what Loren had been, she would come to love the monster she had become. If loving the monster was an unfaceable horror, she would embrace her friend blind, owing it to herself not to let the love die, to grow through the pain of her changing beloved.

When the rubble twisted behind her, she turned quickly, but saw only Chiyo, whose eyes flashed to her hands, then glared angrily. "Where is it?"

"Loren's a she, Chiyo, no matter what she's going through..." Realizing Chiyo had not meant that at all, Berangere stopped short. She had only betrayed the depths of her own bias against her best friend. How had her craven heart grown more monstrous than Loren? As her courage reared up and pinched this squirming, disgusting fear of her best friend, her self-respect shrivelled and slipped through the hole burned by love. Having soared like a comet, her heart now fell like a meteor. Knowing she had Loren's love made it all the worse, for being loved makes us feel twice our size, but in loving we feel whole and bright, and her darkened heart no longer knew if she loved Loren.

"Where's the Albatron? Where did you leave it?" Chiyo shouted.

"It's leaning on the back wall." This time the rubble crunched to her left, by the old stairwell,

not only the best place to hide in the brownstone, and the conduit of their antics and many midnight raids on the refrigerator, but a concrete cylinder, stretching from the foundation to the roof, to which Berangere had often fled during thunderstorms. As a toddler, she had felt the stairwell would outlast anything. Had it? Raising a finger to her lips, Berangere padded briskly to the stairwell. While Chiyo's plodding step reduced her armor's rattle to a tinkle, Berangere gritted her teeth at each tinkling step.

The first dart flicked off Chiyo's armor, and the next lodged in the armpit of Berangere's robes.

Bear ducked just as the third quivered in Chiyo's chin. Chiyo slumped instantly, her good eye rolling back, and her dwarven eye still agleam, staring stupidly at Berangere as if stubbornly clinging to light despite its unconscious host. When Chiyo's helmet clattered on the rubble, the golden eye clicked, whirred, then dimmed, its metal eyelid still fluttering even as her real eye closed.

"Jez....!!!" The fourth dart smacked into Berangere's temple, buzzing her head numb like a billion beestings before she slumped into the shadowy ruins, which seemed to gape up with jagged teeth, her last glimmer of awareness a shred of a singed photo of her and Loren, reading on the bed,

Oji bulked up mid-purr in her lap. Who took that photo, she drowsed noisily, her thoughts dissolving into the hum of the question as she curled around the tattered image, having frayed into fluff scattered from this old memory. "Viennnooo..." she slurred, then seeped into accumulating darkness.

Her sore chin, rattling teeth, and pounding skull awoke to the bizarre sight of her own swaying hands, which now pulled back to rub her eyes, blurred by the wet alley huge feet stomped and splashed.

Surely not her own feet? Why was she looking down at her backside, and when had her backside become so enormous? Sense only rushed in as a gigantic scabbard slapped the elephantine leg beneath her, and Chiyo's insensate head bounced beside her, across the broad, muscular back. The ogress had Berangere over one shoulder and Chiyo over the other.

"Put me down..." she moaned, then pounded Jezera's shoulderblade when the ogress showed no sign of slowing down, but on the contrary, started to build up steam, as if not a living monster, but a robot juggernaut whipped up by the Architects.

"Stop it," growled the ogress.

"Didn't you hear me?" Strength swelled the moan to a groan, then a growl of her own, and she shoved at the ogress's back, trying to worm free from the crook of the muscular arm.

"I heard you. You don't want me to do that, not with your girlfriend this way."

"Loren isn't with us?" When Berangere craned her neck frantically, ogre feet drummed to a stop, and Jezera set Berangere down carefully.

"That guy...you know the one, right?"

"What guy?"

"Don't make me describe him, princess. Having never seen him, I can only call him the smelly guy, or rather, the one Loren and I smelled--you do remember, don't you?"

"I remember now."

"He's no assassin, but a kidnapper...well, not that your girl-fox is a real kid, a real girl, or even a real fox, so we can't call her a fox-napper, either, but you get the point. He shot her with a dart, then took her away as fast as he could."

"How do you know? You never saw him."

"That's true. But I can smell him...and your girlfriend."

"Let's go." As Berangere trudged down the alley, the train of her princess gown--doubled velvet trimmed with silk, sleeves fringed with golden streamers, belt a broad blue ribbon, and hems stitched with Ephremian glyphs--dragged through puddles, becoming soaked, then sodden, in moments, when Jezera caught her hand and spun her around.

"If you mean it, take that off."

"What do you mean if I mean it?"

"If you really want to save your skulking shadow-monster, obviously..."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You're hardly an open book, princess, not like your friends, but having served many masters and fought alongside many of the worst and a few of the best, I'm better than most at reading people."

Even as Berangere glared, her anger ebbed into shame, puddling to her cold center, never having been stripped so neatly by words. Stripped wasn't even the word--Berangere felt flayed and deboned, as if she had become a meat snack picked apart by Jezera, then used to pick ogre teeth. Usually, Berangere was the one to make any observations. She saw now how cruel those observations could be, no matter how fair she pretended to be. Time was slipping away, though, and she couldn't spare a single moment more for thinking. The ogress was right about one thing, whatever else Berangere denied--she couldn't run all over Draden in this soggy dress. She doubted she would make it down the alley before accumulating water would suck her off her feet.

"Give me your sword."

As Jezera's head tipped back, her big barrel laugh shook the alley. "As if."

"Are you in my service, or not?"

"What do you mean to do? Summary execution or battlefield promotion?"

"Neither. I need the blade." She seized a fistful of damp, dusty dress.

Jezera's eyebrow arched. "You can't find the buttons?"

"We don't streak naked here!"

"I'll do it."

"No way. Give it here."

"You can't even lift this. Here." Seemingly from nowhere, Jezera produced what was a small dagger to an ogress--a nine inch blade topping a wooden handle--and held it out point first to Berangere, who backpedaled into the wet alley wall. Snorting back a laugh, the ogress flipped the giant knife and offered it by the handle.

Snatching it, Berangere hacked and tore at the train of her exquisite princess dress, making a savage skirt. When finished, she gave back the dagger reluctantly, having liked the way the smooth, cold wood soothed her shaking hand.

"Keep it. I have more where that came from. Literally." Peeling back a flap in her cuirass,

Jezera revealed a black sheath of a half-dozen wood-handled knives. "I picked these up on our way to the air galley." Her growl dipped to a muttering sigh. "I hope that Ephremian pixie is okay."

"Unnngg,,," Chiyo's dangling hand went to her head.

"Unless you would waste another five minutes in explanations and democratic discussion, we must go now," said Jezera.

When Berangere trotted down the alley, hiking up her arms and balling them into fists, the ogress began to lope alongside, and as it is hard to run in tandem with an ogre without feeling yourself chased, Berangere raced faster, fists pumping, heart pounding and lungs roaring.

Chiyo's bouncing head bit back her groans, chopping her exclamations down to sputtering,

and as they ran, Berangere guessed her groggy questions, hoping to save time.

"What..."

"Jezera is carrying you..."

"Where..."

"That guy Loren and Jezera smelled? He wasn't our assassin, but he did kidnap Loren."

"Why..."

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"Where..."

"I already told you!"

Pushing up from Jezera's back, Chiyo shouted, "where is the Albatron?"

Berangere glared back. Of course Chiyo wouldn't care about Loren. She only wanted that busted magic mirror. "Who cares? You said it doesn't work!"

"It does work!" Chiyo smacked Jezera's back in emphasis of her point.

"Though neither of you are more than a mouthful, if you keep pounding me in the same place,

it might leave a bruise," mulled Jezera. "And I'd rather you didn't. Besides, you needn't worry about your junky mirror."

"It's not junk!" Exasperated, Chiyo let go of Jezera's back and dangled there, her hair and hands swaying as the ogress ran.

"Whatever. I knew it was precious to you, so when I doubled back for you three, and found it leaning there, I took it. It's in my satchel."

"I didn't know you doubled back. He might be long gone by now."

"He will be if you keep talking. I've been straining the last few minutes to keep at his scent, and while it's getting harder, I've only just been able to manage it. Don't distract me."

"Shh," hissed Berangere.

"Don't shush me!" exclaimed Chiyo. "The Albatron works! We can use it to find Loren."

"Why should we be so smart," Jezera snorted, "when right now we want to be fast?"

Berangere's lungs began to blaze, and each arm was heavier than the Albatron, so that at each swing she wondered if she would have the energy to swing them back up, or if they would dangle at her side, throbbing with exhaustion. Her weary eyes sloshed left to look at Jezera. The ogress was by no means fresh, but her continued stomp seemed to shake the alley more than Jezera. "You said he's harder to track. If you lose the trail, it would take us longer."

"Shrimps," Jezera spat caustically, slowed to a walk, then stopped entirely, setting Chiyo down with such a hard crash that, for a moment, Berangere feared Chiyo might die from being swatted on the pavement. Chiyo spun around a half turn and clutched Berangere's hand before finally finding her footing.

"We're just kids, Jezera."

The ogress snapped open her satchel, a slim, wide sheathe strapped to her thigh, then slid out the Albatron. "My aunt liked to say if you're nerveless and brainless, you're a shrimp, and there's no hope for such a tidbit in the hungry faces of the savage doers of the world." She shoved back the Albatron, so that if Chiyo hadn't grabbed it, the opposing handle would have given her a fat lip.

"So the moral is when ogre kids disappoint, they're food?" At Chiyo's saucy tone, Berangere again feared for the other girl.

"You'd like to think all ogres are cannibals, wouldn't you?" Jezera grumbled, but did not deny it.

"Never mind." Chiyo said icily, then raised the Albatron in a white-knuckled grip. Instead of gazing in the blackened mirror, she closed her eyes. She grit her teeth, arched her back and shoulders,

and let go one handle, but before it could clatter to the ground, her dwarven eye clicked open and guided her shaking fingers to snap it up, all the while her real eye stayed clenched tight.

As Bear sidled beside her, the dwarven eye swiveled all the way left, sending a shiver up Berangere's spine, for Chiyo's head was still bent over the Albatron. The mechanical eye goggled Berangere, making her feel not only more looked at than she had ever been looked at, but more peripheral, more squeezed in the margins, even as the dwarven orb widened to an ugly ogle, then contracted to a glare, all the while Chiyo lifted neither her hunched head nor her living eye, but faced only the blackened Albatron and the rain-slick alley, as if in humble prayer.

"Stop it," said Chiyo.

"I only wanted to see."

"Seeing is all the eye can do, and as the eye doesn't like you, the eye won't take its eye off you. It's distracting. And it's not like you can see what I'm seeing."

"For that matter, none of us can," said Berangere. "We only guess or believe. Tell me."

"Well, it's strange. She's on a couch, but the window above changes. First traffic lights, then storefronts, then restaurant signs."

"A couch?" Berangere puzzled the changing city scene in the window. "Train or bus seats?"

"A ceiling light shines on a table strewn with papers and magazines. In a small, glass-doored refrigerator are a few cokes and chocolate milk boxes."

"What about Loren? Is she okay?"

"There's an angry red welt on her neck and a bruise on her cheek. Her chest heaves up and down, as if struggling with her deep sleep."

"Where's the guy?"

"I don't know." Chiyo's brow furrowed. "There's no one else at the table, but through another window, I see the head and shoulders of another person."

"What does he look like?"

"I only see his silhouette."

"It sounds like a coach," said Jerzera.

"A horse and buggy?" Chiyo snorted. "We have them in Draden, but only at Christmas."

"Yes, you flaunt your wealth just like Alsantians. Your people like to be driven around, like overgrown children that never grow up. When you let the horses rest, you call it a limo. Or call a cab."

"So we're looking for a limo."

"Too much work." Jezera smiled her most cutting grin. "We'll wait until they reach their destination, then go there."

"He might drive for hours," said Berangere. "All the way to New York City."

"Aren't you tired of running all over Draden? Wouldn't it be better to have the energy to rescue your friend when we get there?"

"What if he takes her to an airport?"

"Why? Your pet isn't royalty, like you are."

"While Earth has its own breed of monsters, a real monster is a priceless commodity here."

Jezera snickered. "What an odd thing to say, princess. Do you fear for her life, or that she might be a more popular monster than you?"

Berangere glowered at the ogress, but didn't have the words, for she was still struggling to find her feelings for her best friend.

"I'm already looking for Loren," said Chiyo. "And won't take another step without a plan."