Chapter 3

The devil was definitely wearing Prada. Or maybe it was Gucci. Frankly, Sheila just didn't care.

"My goodness, this is going to add five pounds to my thighs!" Michelle whined about the chili-cheese dog she'd bit into. "Ugh. What do you people see in these things? How can you eat this? And this cotton candy? Pure sugar! I'm going to have to do an extra four hours with my personal trainer just to work this off. At least your brother had the decency to get me a diet Coke!" Or so she thought. Rob had lied about that - he got the regular beverage and cheerfully told her it was diet when she asked.

Some time ago, Presto had made up a lame excuse and mercifully dragged Eric away from Michelle. That left only Sheila and Diana to deal with the arrogant heiress, since Rob and Terri had gone to the parking lot to stuff the Pink Panther and Diana's elephant in their car. And the best way Sheila could see to deal with the peevish socialite, at least for the short term, was to basically tune her out as she complained.

"Hey, guys! We're back!" came Terri's voice at long last, like a welcome angel singing above Michelle's near-demonic blathering. Both Diana and Sheila breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

"Ready to go on the Zipper?" Rob asked Michelle, somehow managing to keep the wicked anticipation out of his voice. "Just finish up your Coke and we can go!" Patting his pockets as their uninvited guest muttered something about not liking to be rushed, Rob came to an annoying realization. "D'oh! Man, I forgot to buy more tickets!" He slapped his forehead and glanced at Terri, who was also searching her pockets and coming to the same conclusion. "Sis, you got some we can borrow?"

As Sheila was very much looking forward to letting the unsuspecting debutante ride the most insane ride in the park, she immediately dug into her fanny-pack for the string of tickets she knew she had. "I'm sure I do," she said, rummaging around a bit. They were probably at the bottom, so she dug a few items out to get to them: Lipstick, comb, keys ...

"What is THAT?" Michelle gasped in awe, swiping Sheila's keyring from the picnic table where she had momentarily set it. "Where did you get something like this?"

Sheila's head whipped around so fast that the bones in her neck could be heard clicking together. "It's nothing!" she insisted hurriedly, blanching as she reached to take her keys back. But Michelle deftly dodged her desperate grasp.

"It's just a fake," Diana had said too quickly, at almost the same moment, also lunging for the keys.

"Not on your life is this a fake!" Michelle countered, retaining her grip on the keys and nearly drooling as she examined the keyring. "If there's one thing I know, it's quality gemstones! This is no cubic zirconium counterfeit!"

What 'it' was that had so captivated Michelle was not the keys themselves, but the fob the ring was attached to. About the size and shape of a large egg, it was a beautiful, intricately faceted blue-white diamond, clearly priceless, glittering brightly in the afternoon sun as Michelle turned it over and over in her awestruck hands. The narrower end was set in a golden base; to this was attached the keyring. A 'smoke trail,' a band of darker, hazy blue within the pale blue of the diamond, captured Michelle's attention. Such a rare 'imperfection' would only make such a diamond that much more valuable. It was gorgeous, and almost surrealistically out of place here on a simple ring of house keys.

"That's ridiculous! Look, my husband has a decent job," Sheila snapped as Diana succeeded in her second attempt at snatching the keyring away from Michelle, "but do you honestly think he could have afforded to buy me a real diamond that size?"

"It's part of a joke," Diana tried to explain, falling back on a line they'd used to rationalize the existence of the gemstone once or twice before. Her casualness was belied, though, by the death-grip she had on the fob as she tried to shield it from that pair of prying eyes. "Things were kind of tight when they first got married. Hank kept promising to buy her the biggest diamond ring she'd ever seen. When he finally got her a ring," she continued to lie, pointing at the tasteful, jeweled band of Khadisian design on her friend's finger, "he got this thingy too, and wrapped it up and gave it to her first."

While Diana handed the keys back to her friend, Michelle's greedy eyes followed the fob all the way. "I don't know, that looks very real to me! I should like to take that to a fine jeweler and get his opinion."

"Oh, don't be silly!" Terri laughed. Sheila hoped that Michelle wouldn't notice the slight strain behind it as she, too, joined in the lie. "Who would be crazy enough to use a real diamond like that for a keychain? It probably looks so real because of all the sunlight hitting it. I don't think they even make diamonds that big. Now are you going to come ride the Zipper with us or what?"

"Well ..." the socialite hedged, her eyes darting back and forth between them. Sheila could tell that she knew stone was real, and the way they were acting only confirmed it. She guessed that to the heiress's mind, only possible answer was that it was stolen – someone as low class as herself should never, by rights, possess such a gemstone.

Apparently, Michelle was just shrewd enough to realize that insisting on seeing it now would only make these people even more reluctant to show it to her again. So for the moment she suddenly smiled in total agreement. "I suppose you could be right," she nodded, her bad acting making it obvious she was only pretending to let the subject drop. "Now, about this wonderful little ride you seem to enjoy so much?"

Sheila hurriedly stuffed the keyring back into her fanny pack and instead drew out the tickets she'd been searching for, handing them to her brother with an imperceptibly trembling hand.

As Rob and Terri firmly led Michelle away, Sheila breathed a shaken sigh and let Diana give her a comforting hug as she covered her eyes and berated herself. That was too close. She'd carried that gem for so long now, that she sometimes forgot what it must look like to people who had never seen it before. It would be so much safer if she could just lock it up in a strongbox and bury it twenty feet under the ground. But Rahmoud had given it to her for a reason, and had made her promise to always keep it safely within easy reach. Once they'd returned to Earth, her keyring was the best place she could think of to keep it where it would always stay close.

"Sheila? You okay?"

Sheila tried to smile at the sound of her husband's voice as he chased their boundlessly energetic daughter towards the picnic table. On their way back from the Saucers ride, Caitlin had won another bag of cotton candy at the Fishing booth, and was already in the first stages of launching into a major sugar high.

"I ... I guess so," Sheila explained, leaning into Hank's strong arm as he slid it around her shoulder while he sat. "It's just that Michelle person, she saw my keyring."

"Oh," Hank said quietly after a moment, registering the concern on both Sheila's and Diana's faces. He knew as well as they that letting it fall into unsuspecting hands could easily be far worse than openly telling the world about the Realm. "Did she ask about it?"

"Yeah," Diana admitted, a little too embarrassed at their nearly costly slip to actually meet his eyes as she spoke. "She got a real good look at it, too. We told her it was a fake, but I don't think she believed us. Thanks for sharing, sweetie," she added when Caitlin generously offered her a sticky blob of half-melted cotton candy.

"Hm, well," Hank drawled slowly, a half-smile creeping onto his features. "At least she didn't take it from you or anything, right? I know you're rattled, but it looks like no harm done, right? I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure it's going to be the last thing on her mind by the time Rob and Terri are done with her."

The joke made the two women laugh. "And if worse comes to worst and we can't ditch her after this," Hank added with a sly grin, "we can always tell Eric. I get the funny feeling that he's itching for an excuse to put her on a hit list!"

"You think so?" Diana laughed. "You know what I think? I think he's just dying to hear what Terri has to say. Did you see the smug grin on that girl's face when Eric introduced Michelle? She knows something."

"Of course she does," Hank agreed. "Terri just wouldn't be Terri if she didn't!" Glancing around the midway for a moment, he then asked, "Speaking of Eric, where'd he get off to?"

"Presto kidnapped him," Sheila explained. "He made up something about trying to find the men's room to get Eric away from Michelle, but really they've just been over there at the ring toss, waiting for her to get dragged off to the rides. See?" She pointed down the midway, where Presto noticed the gesture and waved back.

"That doesn't look like the men's room," Hank agreed, "but that's not a bad idea. Remind me to lay off that really delicious strawberry lemonade for the rest of the afternoon, okay? Let's just say that was a pretty badly-timed ride on the Spinning Saucers after three 20 ounce cups of it." Getting up from the bench again, he kissed Sheila on the temple and watched as Caitlin climbed under the bench, out the other side, and up on top of the table in less than five seconds to sit cross-legged and dive into the remainder of her cotton candy. "I'll get us some more tickets while I'm up. So it's your turn to watch the Living Whirlwind. And I'll be right back, because I sure don't want to miss hearing how much Michelle enjoyed her first amusement park ride!"

O.O.O

Once Miss VanWey was gone, Presto, who had seen Diana's signal, informed Eric that the coast was clear. Waving at Hank as he went off in search of the restrooms, they sat down at the table with a giant helping of nachos and cheese to share between them.

"Ugh," Eric commented with a nod in the general direction of the line for the Zipper. "Can you believe I was ever like her?"

A snappy comeback was not forthcoming, despite the fact that Eric had purposely left his comment wide open for one. They had noticed that the two women were distraught about something, but Eric had assumed that would happen to anyone who spent more than thirty seconds with his annoying 'wanna-be fiancee.' He therefore felt honor-bound to try lightening the mood. The two guys glanced at each other uncertainly when his noble attempt failed miserably.

"Um," Presto ventured, taking the direct approach, "I was too far away to hear you guys, but from where I was, it kinda looked to me like you guys had a fight over something. Anything bad happen?"

Sheila sighed and confirmed what Presto had thought he'd seen; in her single-mindedness to get rid of the annoying debutante, she'd and absently flashed the gemstone and Michelle had pounced.

At first the guys were as concerned as the ladies, knowing that Michelle would dog them with endless questions until she was satisfied. Unfortunately, Eric informed them that she was sharp enough, when it came to gems and jewels, to see through any claims that it was a fake. It left them wondering just what they could possibly say to explain it, but Eric was, rather amusingly, prevented from fully concentrating on their problem. Caitlin had climbed in his lap, and every time he opened his mouth to speak, she obligingly stuffed it with a wad of cotton candy.

They ultimately came to the realization that after today, Michelle's and Sheila's paths would probably never cross again. Those two traveled in different social circles and probably always would. So, if that held true, what was there to worry about? So long as they kept insisting the gem was a fake, and kept Sheila and Michelle apart for the rest of the day, it would never be more than a supreme annoyance. Would the socialite's eyes ever fall on the gem again? Not unless she was willing to stoop to pickpocketing while being crafty enough to keep a former Thief from catching her in the act. Michelle could, and likely would, ask all she wanted for the rest of her life, but she would probably never hold the 'proof' in her hands again.

Soon, the lightening topic had turned to how Eric could possibly go about cutting that example of Human Static Cling out of his life completely, which seemed to be the ultimate way of solving a lot of problems all at once. Caitlin was nearby, gleefully climbing all over a brightly painted, purple hippopotamus statue when Hank finally returned.

"I'm back," he said with a grin, taking his daughter's sticky, sugar-encrusted hand. "And you know what? I think I'm going to take Caitlin on the Dungeons and Dragons ride after all."

Surprised, Sheila stared over her sunglasses at him. "Really? What brought this on?"

Hank shrugged as Caitlin jumped up and down excitedly, squealing to go on the one ride that no one had taken her on yet, but which everyone had kept asking her about all day long. "Well, just now, I was looking at it, and I kept thinking to myself, why have I been putting it off all day? I mean, come on, what is there to be afraid of, really?" He gestured at the ride as another car loaded with passengers screeched safely to a stop. "See? Besides, Caitlin really wants to go."

"Well, I guess you can go if you want to," Sheila answered with a disbelieving shake of her head, "but I haven't got the nerve." Honestly, they all agreed that Hank was intellectually right, the portal that had taken them the first time they rode the roller coaster was probably a one-in-a-gazillion fluke. But still, once bitten, twice shy, as the saying went.

"None of you want to come?" he asked, looking from one face to the next around the picnic table.

"You're a braver man than me," Presto said, holding up his hands. "And Caitlin's braver than me, too, if that's the case. No, thanks."

"'Sides, don't you want to hear how Michelle liked the Zipper?" Eric added, malicious delight spreading across his features. As much as he couldn't stand that girl, he actually wanted to be here when she returned from that ride, just to see how she looked. Yes, he was absolutely hoping for some vivid stories when they got back, stories which he could savor for weeks.

Hank frowned slightly. "I don't think we should be that long," he said with a shrug. Then, with a self-deprecating smile, he added, "We might as well go now before my nerve fails me. It took me a while to work up to this, you know."

"Yeah! Yeah!" Caitlin giggled happily. "I wanna go on the scary ride! I wanna go!"

"See?" Hank laughed with a smile. "How can I deny that? Come on, Caitlin, let's go."

As Hank led his daughter towards the one ride that they'd been avoiding all day, Sheila turned back to the others with a lopsided grin. "We'd better ask those guys what they put in their strawberry lemonade," she said in mild wonder. "Whatever it is, it went straight to his head."

O.O.O

"Did you see her face?!" Terri howled uncontrollably as she and Rob fled from the Zipper. "I'd pay a million dollars to see that again!"

The two of them had kept up their pretense of being excited to ride the Zipper, bolstering Michelle's thin enthusiasm the entire time, right up to the moment when it was their turn to enter the ride's cage. They had gestured Michelle in first, and as she sat down and was strapped firmly in place by a lap belt and a harness, they suddenly told the operator that they were just standing in line to keep her company and didn't intend to join her. She'd called them all sorts of unpleasant names as they ditched her, running from the line and laughing hysterically as the kids behind them shrugged and took their seats. Even Rob wasn't brave enough to ride the Zipper.

Right now, as the pair of them laughed and guessed how long it would be before she barfed, the prim and proper Michelle VanWey was strapped in a steel mesh cage, being repeatedly flung hundreds of feet into the air and experiencing far more powerful G-forces than her father's Rolls Royce could ever simulate.

"Man, I wish Eric could have seen it!" Rob gasped, holding his aching ribs as he tried to speak around his laughter. "That would have made his day! But now that we've ditched her, you promised to tell me what you saw! You know something, I could tell by that big smirk on your face when you met her!"

"She will get everything in this life that she deserves," Terri intoned seriously, folding her hands and rolling her eyes heavenward. "And it will be through no one's fault but her own."

"Terrrrrrrrr-ri!" Rob whined.

"Okay, okay," she laughed, dropping the Dungeon Master act. Inexplicably, despite what their diminutive guide had told the young Barbarian, Terri had retained her power of prophetic dreaming even after she had returned from the Realm, but she felt she should keep it every bit as much a secret as the Realm itself. It was only with Rob and his friends that she felt safe in reveling in her ability. "It was a dream I had."

"Okay, even I knew you were going to say that," Rob teased. "Now get to the juicy part."

"You're going to love this," Terri grinned back. "I didn't actually remember having this dream until I saw her, then it all came back to me. Or maybe I dreamed it right then, when I was wide awake. I dunno."

"Neat, but ..?" Rob prompted again.

"Okay, fine, Mr. Ants-In-Your-Pants," Terri teased. "She's going to get caught in a really embarrassing scandal. I remembered reading a newspaper, or wait no, I think maybe it was some trashy newsstand tabloid ..." Terri paused for a moment and the two of them looked up at the Zipper as it swung toward its apex. From inside the cage emanated a shrill, terrified scream that could only belong to Michelle.

"Anyway," she continued after they'd shared a good snicker at Michelle's expense. Purposely drawing her words out long enough to really make Rob suffer in gleeful anticipation as he hung on every syllable, she explained, "Little Miss Prissy there ... is going to get photographed ... in some illegal night club ... stoned off her rocker ... doing a bump-and-grind dance ... with two! Male! Strippers!"

Rob's jaw dropped. Then he absolutely howled as Terri exploded into fits of smugly delighted laughter. What an embarrassment! It was too perfect! That article in Terri's vision would be one for the old scrapbook, all right. "When?" he asked through mirthful tears. "Eric's gonna want to buy a dozen prints and frame them all!"

"That's a toughie." Terri frowned, thinking back over all the details of her dream. When she focused on the article she envisioned in the paper, she "zoomed in" on the image until she could almost read the folio line at the top. "J U ... I think the date on the article is either June or July, so probably in two or three months." She grinned as she tried to describe the photo she had seen in her dream. "I'm starting to remember it a little better now. The two guys in the picture were like totally in the buff," she laughed, her face turning red even as she giggled hysterically. "I can remember that they had to, or that they're going to have to bleep out their, um, you-know-whats in the photo. And I remember ... I ..."

Rob stopped laughing instantly, his merriment replaced by alarm as years of finely-tuned warning instincts kicked in.

Terri's voice had trailed off strangely, her eyes growing wide, almost to the point of horrified. There was something else she was seeing. Something bad.

"Terri? What's wrong?"

"I remember ..." she tried again. Her face rapidly losing its color, she started shaking visibly, while her eyes darted back and forth as if she was watching a movie that only she could see as the scenes unfolded before her.

"What?! What do you remember?" Rob demanded, looking around frantically for some sort of imminent danger as he instinctively reached into his pocket for a folding knife that was nearly identical to the one that his brother-in-law always carried.

"I ...oh, my God!" Terri shrieked, and took off running towards the midway as fast as her legs would allow.

O.O.O

The others nearly jumped out of their skins when Terri came screeching to a halt at the picnic table, a clearly distressed and totally perplexed Rob hot on her heels. Now what? It was stressful enough as it was, being here in the amusement park, looking at that ride, without one or another of them running and screaming and launching into a panic about something every so often.

"Guys! Guys!" Terri gasped, panting for breath and heedless of the stares she was drawing from passers-by.

"Terri! Calm down!" Diana exclaimed, grabbing the girl by the shoulders and hoping she wouldn't pass out. Like a coach dealing with an overexerted athlete, she instructed firmly, "Just breathe! Easy now! Bend over and put your hands on your knees if you feel dizzy, then tell us what happened."

At the same time, Sheila demanded, "Rob, what's wrong with her?" But Rob could only shrug in reply.

"Did you guys accidentally kill Michelle?" Eric asked hopefully, then glared at Presto when he received a kick to the shin under the table.

"Guys!" Terri panted, desperate to catch her breath. "Whatever you do, don't let Caitlin out of your sight for the rest of the day! Keep a close eye on her!"

"Calm down, she's with Hank," Diana said uneasily, feeling an icicle of panic stab through her chest and willing it down until Terri could explain herself. "Why? Did you have a dream or something? What did you see?"

"I saw ... I remember ..." Terri stammered. "I dreamed about a big dark room, and Caitlin was locked in it, and she was lost and scared and nobody was there with her!"

"You dreamed WHAT?" Sheila shrieked.

So distraught that she was stumbling over her own words, Terri wiped the tears from her eyes and forced herself to keep speaking as the others clearly grew as alarmed as she was. "Where is she? I mean, where is she right now? Why isn't she here where we can watch her?"

"She's ... Diana just said Hank's with her," Presto tried to assure everyone. "Right? He took her on the ride a few minutes ago ..."

"Who did I take where?"

Six hearts nearly leapt out of their chests at the sound of the confused voice approaching them. Hank was standing there, looking bewildered and slightly alarmed that he'd walked into the middle of some unknown crisis.

And he was alone.

"Where's Caitlin?" he asked, then blinked in confusion. Sheila and Eric had both demanded of him that same question at the same instant.

"What do you mean, where's Caitlin?" Hank demanded, looking around rapidly, but his little girl was nowhere to be seen. "I left her with you!"

"But you came back and got her!" Diana insisted. "We all saw you!" There were a few confused agreements from the others, who knew they hadn't imagined it and couldn't understand why Hank would deny it now.

"I don't know what you're talking about! I hit the restroom then stopped to buy us some more tickets and just got back now!" Hank insisted. He couldn't know what Terri had seen, it was clear from the way everyone was acting that something had happened to his precious little daughter. "I didn't come get her, I was in line at the ticket booth all this time!"

"But- but you did!" Sheila stammered, her stomach lurching in terror as she got out of her seat, looking frantically around the grounds. "You said you were going to take her on the Dungeons and Dragons ride!"

"No, I didn't, I w- the Dungeons and Dragons ride?" It took about two seconds for everything to fall into place in Hank's mind as he spun around to stare at the dreaded roller coaster. "Oh, SHIT!" he shouted, and sprinted in a mad panic towards the ride without another word.

"What's going on?" Sheila shrieked after him, the fear choking her voice as she called out frantically for her little girl, "CAITLIN! CAITLIN, WHERE ARE YOU!"

The others were on their feet now too, also calling desperately for the missing child. "I'm going to go get Security!" Presto offered.

"Forget Security, we need the cops!" Eric said as he whipped out his iPhone. "I'm calling 911! If she's been kidnapped-"

"We need to get over to the coaster, now!" Diana told them both, trying to keep her own head clear while grabbing Sheila's arm to keep the smaller woman from slipping into hysterics. "Whatever it is, that damned ride has something to do with it! So let's-"

"Oh, no, no, NO!" Terri suddenly shrieked, drawing even more stares from the already curious and gawking crowd.

O.O.O

Desperate to find any clue that might tell them what was going on, the Dreamer had shut out everything else and drawn herself completely into her mind, frantically reaching for the vision of that dark and terrifying room before it faded from her memory. She'd easily found the image in her mind, but where was it located in reality? It had to be a real place, she knew that much, and even with as little information as she had, she should be able to find it!

Clutching her temples as everyone else had leaped into action, she tried something that she had never done before and only suspected she could do, but was now desperate enough to attempt: instead of "zooming in" like she had done to read the fine detail of the newspaper in her other vision, this time she decreased her mental magnification until she could step back to see larger and larger pieces of the picture. Almost as if she were a ghostly specter floating in the dream-room, she had drawn back from it, out of it, the room falling away beneath her as she passed ethereally backwards through a stone wall and up through the stone ceiling, which became the floor of the next room her dream-mind entered. Vaguely she noted dim candles on the wall of a murky hallway as she searched, but kept pushing herself backwards, expanding her field of vision, until she could find something, anything, to tell her where she was.

Suddenly she had gone far enough, finding her dream-self outside, looking down on a craggy stone fortress, roughly built into the side of a sheer cliff. And that was when she had screamed.

Oh, no. Not there. Not that fortress. Not HIS fortress!

"That wasn't Hank that took her to the ride!" Terri cried out in a panic, the image fleeing from her mind in her sudden horror. Her knees shook and gave out, and she would have collapsed in a heap had it not been for Rob's quick arms keeping her from hitting the ground. "That was Venger!"