The Egyptian Building

Chapter 11

"We have to take him to the shop," said Alice.

"He hasn't slept at all. He should stay here and sleep." Elizabeth wanted a little more sleep herself. Dirk and Kevin and Alice had come pouring down the stairs, all showered and bright-eyed, to rattle around the kitchen making coffee and breakfast. The sight of them had put the finishing touch on Elizabeth's exhaustion.

"We can't leave him here, it's not safe. He doesn't even know how to use the telephone. He doesn't know who it's safe to open the door for. We've got free range Jehovah's Witnesses around here. If he goes out of the house and takes a walk around the neighborhood, he doesn't know where he should and shouldn't go," Alice said.

Thomas sat at the kitchen table, yawning over a cup of coffee and moving his head back and forth as each argued in turn.

"He'll just sleep," said Elizabeth. "He's not going to go out or use the phone, or anything."

"He can sleep in the bookstore. He can curl up in one of the chairs downstairs or in a corner of the storeroom," Alice said. "Besides, what if Titania and them come after him again?"

"They won't," said Elizabeth. "Miss Price said the binding energy from the portrait was what they really wanted. Besides, Joe says Carl has a concussion so they're hardly going to send him."

"Titania sent Trip when she wanted someone to mess up the house before," Alice said.

Ignoring them, Thomas stared out the window. "Is there supposed to be smoke coming out of the carriage house?"

"No!" the girls cried in unison. Alice grabbed the keys from the hook and they ran outside and across the yard. Sure enough, a light film of smoke was issuing from all around the door and through a broken pane of glass in one of the windows. Hands shaking, Alice fumbled with the keys. She fit one into the lock and yanked the door open.

A huge black cloud rolled out. The girls stood back away from the burnt-oil stench and waited for the air to clear. The Cadillac idled motionless in the carriage house. The engine was burning as much oil as ever, but sounded a little healthier than Elizabeth remembered. The whole car vibrated and the carriage house thrummed.

Alice stepped up on the back bumper and looked inside the mummy case. "Where's the mummy?"

"That tea was efficacious?" Thomas asked, peering into the carriage house. He had followed them out and was observing their panicked dithering. Strange Antics of Twenty-first Century Women, Elizabeth mentally captioned the picture that must be forming in his head.

Elizabeth hopped up on the back bumper and had a look herself. Except for a few scraps of decayed linen, the mummy case was empty. The mummy's mask rested beside it in the back seat and gazed serenely back at her. It was of some pale metal formed into the face of a smooth-featured girl. She wore a headdress decorated with lapis lazuli and a symbol of Isis on her forehead.

Alice jumped into the front seat and separated the ignition wires. The car shook a couple times and stopped running. "It can't have been running very long. There's, like, no gas in it." She stood up on the seat and scanned the dark interior of the carriage house. There was nowhere for the mummy to hide. The space not occupied by the car was full of yard implements and the carriage, which they had shoved back against the wall as far as it would go.

"Could it be in the carriage?" asked Thomas.

Alice slipped over the side of the car and squeezed around to the carriage door. She took hold of the handle and twisted. The door creaked open with less of a dust cloud than Elizabeth had grown to expect from all old items associated with the house.

Something reached out and yanked the door closed.

"Hey!" Alice cried.

"Alice, the mummy! Get away from there," Elizabeth called.

"It is the mummy!" Alice faced the others. Her face was white with shock. "That tea actually worked!"

"Get out of there. It might bite you!" shouted Thomas.

"What?" Alice laughed.

"It was in that book," Thomas said. "The same one with the tea in it. The mummy wakes up and bites people."

"That book is all made up," said Elizabeth. "They stole the tea thing from a movie which didn't say anything about biting."

"Fine, let the mummy bite you then. See if I care." Thomas folded his arms across his chest and glared at them.

Alice knocked on the carriage door a couple times and got no response. She jiggled the handle and tried to pull the door open but this time it was firmly held shut. When she turned her back to the door to report this to the others, the door squeaked open slightly and bumped against her back. Alice took off as if someone had lit a fire under her butt. She scrambled across the hood of the Cadillac, slithering over the windscreen and off the back, and making a neat leap over the mummy case in the process. She grabbed Elizabeth's arms and the sisters clung to each other and stared into the carriage house.

"We have to call Miss Price, she's the Egyptologist," said Alice.

"We're already late. She'll be double mad. Ha! She'll get extra mad at you because you're the one who messed with the mummy in the first place. She won't hardly notice me."

"I'll go call her," said Alice. "You keep an eye on the mummy and don't let it escape."

"I don't want to stay here, what if it does bite?"

"Close the door and lock it," said Thomas.

"Oh." Alice took hold of the door and slammed it shut. Elizabeth snapped the lock closed and they leaned against the door, heaving deep sighs of relief.

Thomas was shaking his head at them. "That's an excellent response to a crisis. I suppose the only reason why you haven't swooned is you're not trussed up in stays."

"Oh, shut up," they said. "We've never had to deal with a mummy before."

"You should have been better prepared when you started to go about raising it from the dead."

"Never mind that, how do we turn it off?" asked Elizabeth. "Does that book say anything about putting the mummy back to sleep?"

"I haven't finished it yet. But I thought you said—"

"It may be nonsense, but right now it's the only source of information we have." Elizabeth marched back to the house and the others followed her. Once inside, Alice did not exactly dive for the telephone.

"Aren't you going to call Miss Price?" Elizabeth asked.

"I thought maybe you could, since she'll be less mad at you," she said.

"Fine." Elizabeth picked up the telephone and Alice dictated Miss Price's home phone number. It rang a few times and then the answering machine picked up. "She's not there." Elizabeth hung up and then called the bookstore. There was no answer there either which was sort of a relief, because at least they were not officially late. Yet. "She's not at the bookstore. Does she have a cell phone?"

"No, she just uses other peoples'. We'll tell her about it when we get to the bookstore."

"So we're going to go off and leave the mummy unsupervised all day?"

"Bob's here," said Alice. "He's asleep maybe, but he is here. We can let him know when we leave that he should not unlock the carriage house door for any reason at all."

"I could stay and mind the mummy," said Thomas.

"No, you have to come with us." Alice glanced back out at the carriage house with a guilty expression on her face. "Let's get going. The mummy is all locked up anyway. There isn't much we can do with it."

They ran around the house, quickly getting the rest of the way ready for work. Thomas shoved The Curse of the Were-mummy's Jewels into his back pocket and tagged along. When he turned up at the door carrying his sword, they had to explain that people didn't go around armed with really large, visible weapons anymore. As they were putting on their coats, Bob woke up enough to grab the hem of Elizabeth's coat. She waved the others on and sat down beside him for a minute.

He said, "I'll be awake tonight. I can pick you up from the bookstore and we can go have dinner. What time do you get off?"

"Seven," said Elizabeth. "It's a date. Are you awake enough now to remember it?"

"Yes," said Bob. He proceeded to demonstrate great alertness.

Alice stuck her head back in the door and called, "Cut that out. We need to get going."

Reluctantly Elizabeth tore herself away from Bob and gave him a quick rundown on the mummy in the carriage house. Before he could ask any questions, she darted outside where they spent a few more minutes arguing about which vehicle to take. Alice thought they should take both vehicles in case she needed to make a quick getaway and Elizabeth would need her own transportation. Thomas refused to go anywhere near the truck and since Bob had conveniently offered to pick up Elizabeth, they all piled into Alice's little Honda. They put Thomas in the back and showed him how to use the seat belt. He was too distracted with looking around to offer much resistance, although he pulled at it in an abstracted manner. He asked a series of rapid-fire questions about the cars. How did they work? Does everybody have one? What do they use for fuel? Could they teach him how to drive one?

Elizabeth settled back in the front passenger seat and allowed Alice to take over question answering duty for a while. It seemed to calm her down and she maintained a steady stream of answers while they passed through downtown, where Thomas began asking questions about tall buildings.

"He never stops," Alice muttered to Elizabeth. "Do you think he's ever going to fall asleep?" She parked behind the bookstore. The space Miss Price normally occupied was empty. Alice unlocked the back door and they found the bookstore quiet and dark. Alice ran to the front and stopped suddenly. "It's still locked up. Miss Price isn't here."

"You're kidding, Miss I-unlocked-the-front-door-thirty-seconds-ago-and-you-weren't-here-so-you're-late Price?" Elizabeth tried the door of Miss Price's office and it was locked as well.

The girls pushed Thomas down into one of the soft reading chairs and ran through the opening procedures. Alice set up the cash register after unlocking Miss Price's office to get what she needed. Miss Price's uncle's papers were still undisturbed and the wards on the scroll were still there, but fainter. The light blinked on the store answering machine and Elizabeth pressed the button. There were a couple calls from customers asking about books in stock and why couldn't they get that information off the website. The last message was from a man. The voice was almost familiar and since he was asking for Aunt Glinda, she knew it was Alastair Price. He said, "I hear you've been asking everyone questions about me. Really, Aunt Glinda, ask me to my face. They say you seem to think that I've got something sinister planned. I can't tell you how disappointed I am that you would have that opinion of me." He went on in this vein for some time. Elizabeth finally pressed the stop button to cut off the whining.

Alice unlocked the front door and within a couple minutes the first customers trickled in. Thomas nodded over his mummy book in the chair. Occasionally he would look up at the customers or reach out and touch some of the books on the shelf. Elizabeth supposed that the slick, brightly colored cardboard spines were unlike anything he had ever seen, at least in the book area. And, oh joy, he stopped asking questions as soon as they got busy. Elizabeth ran up to the mail-order department to pack some orders and get back to the customers about their stock, but spent most of her time downstairs with Alice. By late morning, Thomas was deeply asleep in his chair and the girls were getting very worried about Miss Price.

"She never misses a day," said Alice. "She's never even late. She's always early. I tried calling her house a few more times. I'm really worried. I think something might have happened to her."

"Do you want to go over to her house and see if she's, I don't know, fallen over or something? Or if she's too sick to answer the phone?"

"Will you be okay here by yourself?"

"It's not that busy right now. If anything happens, I'll wake up Thomas and use him as a distraction for whoever's bothering me."

"Cool." Alice grabbed her coat and purse out of Miss Price's office and hurried out the back door. Elizabeth worked at the cash register until the UPS man showed up to unload a stack of boxes. At that point she had to wake up Thomas. She made him stand, or rather propped him up beside the register and told him to stall anyone who wanted to buy anything. After she signed for the books and make sure that all the boxes in the shipment were present, she had a stroke of genius and made Thomas carry them upstairs to the mail-order department.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you are big and strong."

She lifted the box from the top of a stack and dropped it into his arms.

"Oof."

She glanced around the shop and, seeing that none of the customers had that imminent purchase look, led Thomas up the stairs and showed him where to stack the boxes. He paused and looked around the stockroom before following her back downstairs for another load.

"Take your time," she told him. She went back to the cash register where a woman was waiting for her to ring up a coffee table book with photographs of cats. Thomas took her literally, lugging the boxes upstairs, one after the other, with longer and longer periods of time in the stockroom between trips.

The telephone rang. Elizabeth answered it. "Why Not? Bookstore. Our holiday hours—"

"It's me," said Alice. "I'm at Miss Price's. She's not here and the place has been ransacked. Her stuff is all over. They even tore up the sofa cushions. She's going to be so mad."

"Did you call the police?"

"Oh, yeah. First thing. I'm waiting for them right now. I called Joe too, but he's not on duty. He's mad now because I woke him up. He'll probably be here before the 'official' cops."

"Is her car there?" Elizabeth's heart pounded furiously.

"Yes! That's what freaks me out. She must have been kidnapped some time last night. There's no blood, so I don't think she's been hurt. Everything is too messed up so, you know, signs of a struggle, but was it her or was it the bad guys ripping stuff up? They threw her books on the floor too." Elizabeth heard the sounds of Alice stomping around. "Yeah, they threw her first edition of a Frances Hodgson Burnett on the floor and stepped on it. She's going to kill them. Maybe we can find her by looking for the mushroom cloud. Hey, Joe! Okay, I've got to go. I'll call you when I know more." Alice rang off.

Stunned, Elizabeth stood there with the handset pressed to her ear, listening to the line click and then the dial tone.

"Miss? Miss?" Another customer tapped on the counter to get her attention.

"What? Oh." She replaced the handset and mechanically performed the transaction while her mind raced. Miss Price had been going to call Alastair last night. If she found out what he was up to, then he might have come after her to stop her from stopping him. All she and Alice had to do was find Alastair. Or have Joe find Alastair, the more practical part of her brain pointed out as she reached for the telephone. Alice could probably find his contact information in Miss Price's address book.

The bell over the door rang and Dr. Alastair Price walked into the bookstore. He was not looking as dapper as he had at either the museum event or the Egyptian Building. He'd smoothed his hair and his clothing was in order, but he hadn't disguised the dark circles under his eyes—no, under one eye, Elizabeth noted, Miss Price must have landed a solid punch—or the parallel scratches on his cheek. He made straight for Elizabeth.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"It's my Aunt Glinda, she's missing. I was going to meet her for coffee this morning and she never turned up. She's very punctual, as I'm sure you know if you've worked for her any length of time. I called her house, but there's no answer."

"She isn't here," Elizabeth said coolly.

"Oh, yes. That was going to be my next, ah, question. I'm very afraid for her, she's quite fragile. She has a habit of getting on the wrong side of the wrong people. She has some project going on, which probably has something to do with her disappearance."

"Really?" Elizabeth goggled at the notion of Miss Price as fragile flower. She wanted to ask what had happened to his eye just to see what he'd come up with.

Price looked at her speculatively. "You look familiar. Yes, that's right. You were at the soirée at the Egyptian Building in the company of that unfortunate young resident."

"Bob isn't unfortunate."

Price gestured dismissively. "He's going to end up dispensing aspirin in a clinic in the Appalachians."

"Serotonin uptake inhibitors is more like it," Elizabeth said dryly. She waited for Dr. Price to get on with it.

"Well, as I was saying, I must see what Glinda was working on. Time is of the essence and if I know what she's up to then I'll know where to find her." Price began to fidget and make little choking gestures.

"And?"

"And you must let me into her office. I believe that's where she has her papers."

"She only has materials relating to the bookstore in there. I'm sure she has her extracurricular papers at her house."

"No, they aren't there."

"Oh really? Well, I couldn't possibly let you into her office without her permission. I think you should try her house first," Elizabeth said firmly. "Right now, in fact." She could call to warn Joe and Alice while Price was on the way. Except that he wouldn't go, since he had already searched her house, or had it done.

Price leaned across the counter and stuck his face up close to hers. The bruise under his eye much more apparent with his eyes bulging out like that. "Listen, young lady, you will let me into that office, or I'll let myself in."

"Why don't you leave your contact information and I'll get back to you. Or you must have some idea what you're looking for. If you tell me, I'll—"

Price smashed a fist on the counter and the glass starred beneath his hand. He raised his fist again.

"Is there some difficulty?" Thomas walked slowly across the floor, a look of calm inquiry on his face and a folding knife, now locked open, in his hand.

Price stepped back from the counter, hands held out, palms up. "Not at all. I was insisting that this young lady give me access to my aunt's office. She's missing and I'm searching for clues as to her whereabouts."

"She declined." Thomas advanced another step.

Price took a step backwards. "Be reasonable. The longer you people stonewall me, the more danger she's in."

"Who's threatening her?" asked Elizabeth.

"I suggest you take your leave now," said Thomas. He didn't have to make threats, he just walked towards Price with a calculating look in his eyes that made Elizabeth's blood run cold. His weight was forward on his toes and his shoulders were loose.

In contrast, Price's shoulders were knotted up around his ears. He backed away from Thomas until he ran up against the door and fumbled for the handle behind his back. "There's no need—" he began.

"I believe there is."

Price yanked the door open and slammed out of the store. He walked briskly away but cast dire looks back over his shoulder as he reached for a cell phone.

"Great, he's probably going to call the police and tell them you threatened him with a knife."

"He was threatening you. Oh, 'Nobody goes around armed,' she says. 'We don't need to.' Am I supposed stand by and allow him to threaten you? Is that what you call civilized nowadays?"

"He wasn't going to do anything, not here in public with all these witnesses. It's all over now, just an irate relative of the owner," Elizabeth called soothingly to a few customers who were peering over the bookcases with varying degrees of alarm and curiosity. To Thomas she hissed, "I was trying to get information out of him and you chased him away. And that knife was in my purse! What are you doing going through my purse?"

"You go around armed. This is very elegant, but not readily accessible enough to be useful."

"It's not a weapon. I use it for apples. Or to open boxes. No, not like that, let me show you how to close it." She took the knife, folded it, and put it in her pocket. She told him about Miss Price's disappearance and her suspicion of Alastair Price.

"You think he abducted Miss Price?" Thomas started for the door.

"Don't go after him. You'll only get into trouble." Elizabeth grabbed his arm. "We know where he works and we can easily find out where he lives. We'll find her."

A few customers dropped books on the display tables and slunk out the door.

In a lower voice, Elizabeth continued, "He probably has her at his house or in his lab. He's her nephew. I don't think he'd really hurt her. He wants something."

"Something in her office?"

"Maybe. Watch the register—never mind." Elizabeth saw the last remaining customer slip out the door. "I think the customers have the right idea. Let's lock up for the day." She ran up to the stockroom for her keys and while she was up there, grabbed a roll of packing tape so she could tape over the cracks Price had left in the counter.

When she came back down, Jennifer was pacing back and forth in the open area by the register. She wore a trim lawyerly suit, a billowing black overcoat which snapped behind her at each turn, and stiletto heels. Her dark hair was brushed smoothly back from her face. She looked like she was headed for court, except for the grimace, which might be appropriate for court, but was not all that professional. Even less professionally, she was growling bad words.

Thomas lounged against the counter and watched, mystified.

"Hi, Jennifer," Elizabeth said. She shoved her keys into a pigeonhole beneath the cash register. God knew, she had no desire to lock Jennifer in.

"Have you been doing anything to save Trip?"

"We've been busy," Elizabeth said. "We've had to rescue—"

"Yes, I can see." Jennifer pointed at Thomas. "Him. You know, Titania might have decided not to bother with Trip if you hadn't."

"Too bad." Elizabeth shrugged and started taping up the cracks in the counter. She tried not to press on the glass, lest chunks of it fall into the tarot display below. "Today is the solstice, you know. You could try being a little proactive and save Trip yourself. All you have to do is keep him away from Titania for the night."

"Easier said than done. I don't know what kind of hold she has over him."

"The mind control kind," Elizabeth said. She opened up the display case and tried to apply tape to the cracks from the underside. "Get your mother to help. Surely she knows how to manage Trip. Can't she insist that he come over and help with Christmas decorations or something?"

"We pay people to do that," Jennifer snapped. "Did you even find out where the sacrifice is to take place?"

"No. But if you stick close to your brother, who you say you really, really want to protect, you'll find out for yourself. You know what to do, just grab onto him and don't let go." Elizabeth rested her hands on the edge of the display and looked into Jennifer's eyes, which were sunken and empty of all but desperation. Not without sympathy, Elizabeth said, "You can do this. If you're not strong enough, get your mother's help. If you're more afraid of telling her what's going on than you are of Titania, then you've already decided to give him up. I can't help you. We have got other problems to deal with. Miss Price is missing and Thomas—"

"Is no longer cursed," Jennifer finished for her. "Which looks like one less problem to me. You could help if you wanted." She clenched her frail hands into pathetic knobby fists and brought one down on Elizabeth's tape repair. The entire top of the display case shattered and fell into the selection of tarot decks below. A cardboard stand of novelty gift books fell in after it.

"Out!" Elizabeth shouted and pointed toward the door. "Out now!"

Jennifer spun on her heel and flounced out the door, snarling, "You'll regret it! You'll wish you'd helped."

The phone rang.

"Now what?" Elizabeth shouted into the receiver.

"Ah, Elizabeth?" It was Bob's voice.

"Oh, Bob. I'm sorry. We just—there was—" Her voice trailed off.

"It's okay. But I've got kind of a strange question," Bob said. "There's this yodeling sound coming from the carriage house and I was just wondering … "

"It's probably the mummy. Remember? So don't unlock the door to the carriage house until we get back. And maybe keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get out. Miss Price might know what to do, so we have to rescue her."

"What happened to Miss Price?"

She told him and threw in some bonus suspicions of Alastair Price. "Do you think you could get into his lab to see if he's hiding her there?"

The sound of a head knocking against a wall came out of the receiver.

"Okay, he probably doesn't have her there. Too many people around. He'd have to have gagged her really well or else someone would hear …"

"I'm sure you're right. So I'll just—"

"On the other hand, he could have her sedated."

"Unlikely," said Bob.

"How so?"

The bell over the door chimed as Thomas stepped outside and looked up and down the street.

"Just—unlikely. I don't think even Price would be dumb enough to think he could do that and not get caught. Besides, Miss Price would kill him when she woke up. And she would rat him out and he'd end up in jail or lose his medical license."

"You don't think family feeling would prevent her from turning him in?" she asked.

"Do you?"

Elizabeth considered Miss Price. "No. But there might not be much left of him after she revenged herself. Thomas! Don't wander off." Through the window she saw Thomas walking away towards the next storefront. He couldn't hear her through the glass.

"How are things at the bookstore?"

"About what you'd expect. Although all the customers have run away, so there's not that much to do. I want to lock up and—I don't know—look for Miss Price, except that I haven't got my truck and Alice left us stranded here. I have to run grab Thomas before he gets too far."

"Keep me posted on what you do. I can come get you early."

"Thanks. I'll call. Bye." Elizabeth darted out the door and grabbed Thomas as he was walking into the shoe store. "Not there. Jeez. What do you think you're doing?"

"Are those shoes? They don't look like what you're wearing. And what is wrong with that girl's hair?"

"Come on." She dragged him back to the bookstore. "You can't wander off. The girl with the bad hair is Becky, she's one of—of our enemies."

"We have enemies now? And who was that skinny woman who broke the counter?"

"That was Jennifer. She's bad too. She wanted me to help protect her brother, our neighbor that we met last night when we brought you home? From, hah, the woman who you said was responsible for cursing you into the portrait. You got all that?"

Thomas rubbed his head. "Have I even been here a whole day?" He sat down on the chair beside the counter. "I was following Jennifer. I saw her go in next door and I wondered why. She was talking with Becky, did you say her name was?"

"Oh." Elizabeth's eyes became very round. "Why then? She said she didn't want her cohort to know that she'd asked for our help. So either she is angry and wants to have Becky sneeze on us, or she was playing us all along and is now giving Becky the sign to proceed with her master plan? Either way … She's going to set us up, I know it."

"What is that instrument that you talk to?" Thomas pointed to the telephone.

She delivered a brief précis on telephony and, sighing, sat down on the floor. She put her arms around her knees and looked at the smashed display case. One of the loose tarot decks had been disturbed and the face of the hanging man card was pressed against the glass.

"With whom were you speaking just now?"

"Bob, back at the house. He says the mummy is yodeling. Did you happen to find anything else in that mummy book?"

Thomas looked embarrassed. "No, I fell asleep. I'll go read more then, shall I?" He rubbed his face tiredly. The skin under his eyes was dark and his blue eyes were dull and rimmed with red.

"Heck, go sleep more. I'll lock up and try to call Alice. We should close the store for the day and take you home."

"Home?" He smiled sadly and gave her a hand up.

She rose awkwardly and when he took her elbow in his other hand to steady her, she quickly extricated herself without meeting his eyes. Elizabeth slipped past him and took her keys from the pigeonhole. After locking the front door and flipping the open sign around, she weighed the keys in her hand for a moment and then went to Miss Price's office.

Thomas went to the next room and dropped into the chair he'd been dozing in earlier. After wiggling around for a moment, he slid down onto the floor where he stretched out and pillowed his head on the seat cushion he dragged down with him.

Inside Miss Price's office, Elizabeth set the keys on the desk and proceeded to rifle through Miss Price's papers. She left the Egyptian Building papers alone, though she checked the wards on the scroll. They were faded enough that she dared touch them. A warm buzzing made her knuckles itch on the inside and she drew her hand back quickly. In the second drawer of the desk, she found a tangled mess of pencils, scissors, and rubber bands, and beneath that, a personal address book. At the head of the densely packed P section—there were a lot of Prices—she found an entry for Alastair Price, an address, home and work numbers, and email. She copied them onto a piece of scratch paper and shoved it into a pocket.

She went to call Alice. Her fingertips were just touching the handset when a rapping on the door distracted her. She looked up and saw Becky on the other side of the glass door. Becky stuck out her tongue and pointed at the latch.

"We're closed," Elizabeth called. She tapped out Miss Price's home number on the keypad. The next thing she heard was the sound of glass breaking.

Two large people whom she recognized from the attacks last Halloween, one had torn her sweatshirt, smashed in the door with sledgehammers. They stepped aside for Becky who ducked under the door handle and stepped through the now glass-free doorframe. Elizabeth barely had time to hit flash and 911 before one of the minions grabbed her shoulders and hauled her bodily across the broken counter. She clutched at the counter as she passed over it, but all she got for her trouble was another cut on her hand.

She shouted, "Thomas, run!" She had no idea where he could run to, since Becky and her friends blocked the only point of entry into the store that was not locked. The man who held her fetched her a clout across the side of her head and she stopped struggling for a moment to gasp while the stars cleared from her vision.

A seat cushion flew through the doorway and hit Becky in the face with minimal effect. Elizabeth struggled again. Someone's fist tapped her on the chin and this time all went black.