TWENTY-FOUR

Six hours later, Moa reopened Massha's Secret to great fanfare.

The rest of the team had done a terrific job cleaning the place up. A hastily deployed curtain took the place of the splintered dressing-room door. Where the decor had been too damaged to repair at such short notice, Cire had covered it with an illusion. Most of the displays could be resurrected and put to use. All that had lacked, up until one half hour ago, was something to put on them.

I stood behind the counter, ready, still smarting a little from my whirlwind visit back to Deva. In order to get merchandise with only a couple of hours' notice I had had to use that phrase that all Deveels love and no one with any sanity would use: price is no object. I spent half an hour on a brainstorming session with sleepy Deveel fashion designers. To cut the fee somewhat I negotiated partial credit with them, because within a few days all of them would be working for Deveel merchants waiting the remaining two days to break into our market. That wasn't important. The whole idea, I kept reminding myself, was to get what I needed, immediately, to save Chumley, to break the influence Rattila held over Massha, and to keep Skeeve from falling into his power.

I got what I wanted: within a mere five hours they produced twenty dozen garters, all of them very, very special. I figured for my purposes that number would be plenty.

As soon as I had the boxes in hand, I hopped back to The Mall. Parvattani's guards could hardly hold back the crowds already hanging around outside the shop. The avid shoppers oohed and aahed as we hung up the garters. I gave a quick rundown to the Djinnies.

"Mood detector, snack dispenser, MP3 player, poison nullifier, poison ring, love philter, steamer trunk." I stated, going down the rows and pointing to each of the items in turn. "Baby monitor, burglar alarm, perfume bottle, portable safe, memo reminder—and don't forget, when Cire slips you the word"—I stopped behind the counter and showed them a box underneath—"push these goods on whomever he's pointing at. Got that?"

They nodded. These two, Nita and Furina Djinnelli had been hired for the day from The Volcano. Rimbaldi had promised me his two nieces were the smartest salesclerks he had. I was counting on that. Chumley's life might depend upon it. I knew this was our last chance.

At ten on the dot, I nodded to Moa, who cut the ribbon. Accompanied by the reedy strains of The Mall's sale music, the shoppers poured in.

"Ooh! I didn't see these the other day!" an Imp woman cooed, falling all over a powder blue baby monitor garter. "Oh, this would come in so handy!"

"These are absolutely great!" a Klahd agreed. 'These are even better than the first shipments. Too bad they're going out of business!"

"Mine!" shrieked a Deveel.

"Mine!" a Gnome shrieked back, trying to haul a black lace love philter garter away from her. "Mine!"

"Mine!"

By eleven, Ore had tipped the wink to Nita and Furina about a dozen times. I was pretty sure there would be some overlap, since we never could be sure which were the real shoppers in the database, and which were the phonies, but by the end I was certain the ground had been thoroughly seeded.

Take that, you son of a rat, I thought. No one kidnaps one of my friends without suffering the consequences.

And, right on schedule, about half past eleven, Inspector Dota and his merry stiffs arrived.

"Shut this place down," he ordered Massha. "You don't have a right to hold a going-out-of-business sale, because you never were in business in the first place."

I pushed myself in front of him.

"Yeah, de jure we weren't in business, but de facto we should be able to hold a clearance sale, since you're denying us sales during the preprocessing time, and we can't wait around for our identification card to clear."

Dota glared at me.

"Cease all sales at once," he ordered the Djinnies, who were wrapping boxes furiously.

They looked at me. I glanced at Cire, who gave me a meaningful nod.

"Do it." I turned to the crowd of waiting shoppers. The Djinnies backed away from the counter. "Ladies and gentlemen and—whatever: due to circumstances beyond my control the sale is suspended. Any further transactions are illegal."

"Awwwwww!" A woeful cry arose from the audience.

"So, since we can't sell 'em," I began, every syllable making my teeth hurt, but I reminded myself, this was for Skeeve, for Massha, and for Chumley, "you can take whatever items you wish, free of charge."

"Yayyyyyy!"

The woe changed to cheers and whoops of joy. Shoppers began pulling everything they could reach off the displays and walls. The usual fistfights had started, mixed it up, then broken up hastily lest the combatants miss any chance to grab free swag. A group of shoppers got together and stormed the back room, pulling down crate after crate of goods. I felt a wrench as each of them marched out the door carrying merchandise I had paid for and for which I now had no means of recovering the cost.

In no time the store was stripped to the walls.

"You brought that on yourself," the inspector informed me. "I hope you feel satisfied."

I narrowed a baleful eye at him even though I did feel satisfied at that moment. "You've ruined our day. I'm no longer a merchant in this establishment, so I'm no longer under your jurisdiction, so you get your indigo butts out of my legally leased space, or I'm going to teach your bully boys a new place to hide their crossbows."

Inspector Dota gathered his dignity and departed. I slammed the door behind them.

"We are now officially out of business," I announced.

"How could the tax inspectors have gotten on to us so fast?" Massha asked, bemused.

I folded my arms and leaned against the wall, very satisfied.

"Because I called in the tip myself. We didn't need a whole lot of time, just enough to make sure our tracers went out with the right people."

"Aahz," Massha remarked. "You are a genius."

"Save the compliments for when we get Chumley back," I stated, slapping my hands together and rubbing them hard. "Now, let's give 'em a while, and start running down the traces."

"But of course, Aahz," Rimbaldi exclaimed exuberantly, when I took him aside in The Volcano for a private chat. The usual flock of Klahds were gathered, openmouthed, around a salesgirl doing a demonstration on the Gold Pocket Djeans, so no one was looking at us.

"The entire fleet of Djinnelli family carpets will be at your service, whenever you wish. Gustavo has offered weapons. Marco has offered any security arrangements you might need."

"Thanks," I breathed. "I don't know how far or how fast we'll have to move."

"They are yours, though you have to fly to the ends of the dimension, my friend! We are so sorry about the Troll."

I winced at the notion of running all over Flibber. I was already regretting that I had let so many tracers go out. But I was playing the odds. I was betting that experienced thieves like Rattila's would have captured a preponderance of the tagged goods. I hoped we would only have to chase one or two concentrated signals. At the moment The Mall was still full of small traces, scattered in every direction.

"No one saw anything unusual around here yesterday afternoon?" I asked.

"Oh, no," Rimbaldi insisted. "Business was very brisk. Several hundred purchases, two shipments, many rights— it was a good day."

I turned to go. "Just keep your eyes open, will you?"

"Of course," Rimbaldi asserted. "Your mission is our mission!"

Everyone knew what we were doing. Marco, a total convert to our cause, had spread the word privately among his relatives, and Eskina and Sibone had made sure that each and every one of their friends was on board with us.