The World Beneath (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 1) by Crane Robert J

Author:Crane, Robert J. [Crane, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Ostiagard Press
Published: 2017-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

18

London, the Strand; currently dawdling like creeps just outside the Tortilla restaurant.

Strangely wet creeps.

I ignored the latest glance fired our way, this from a lone young man exiting Tortilla. His steps slowed for just a moment as his eyes swept down.

Move along. Just move along.

“You wanna remember to use that next time,” he called, and pointed at the umbrella at my belt. Then he was off, smirking over his shoulder.

“Thanks for that,” I muttered.

“We look stupid,” said Carson. “Can’t we just go through?”

“It’s lunchtime,” I retorted. “You see all these people out here? I cut through now, we’ll be seen.”

“I thought everyone in London was wrapped up in their own thing,” Carson said.

“Yeah, and most of them are. But when you get three people stood awkwardly in the middle of the street like us, soaked from head to toe like they’ve just been splashing around in the fountains over there in Trafalgar Square,” I waved a hand to my right, “that tends not to hold true anymore.”

True enough, another passer-by, this one a middle-aged bespectacled man a long way into the process of balding, pointed at the spear-become-umbrella and said, “You know that thing’s more than for just looking pretty; it protects from showers too.” His overweight wife, hanging onto his arm, tittered.

“You’re a real gem,” I tossed after him. He ignored me, though.

“We can’t stand here forever,” Carson said.

“Look, let’s just wait for a big enough crowd to pass, and duck in then,” said Heidi. “There’s one coming now, see?”

Foot traffic was like vehicular traffic: it came in stops and starts. A handful of people would pass, all separated; then a crowd of some dozen or more, like a clot. True to Heidi’s word, one of these clots was coming our way. All of them in worlds of their own, they stumbled along, totally oblivious of the congealed mass of people they had been swallowed into.

We waited. I clutched my talisman tight, free hand at my side but ready to jerk up at a moment’s notice and open the gateway.

The blob overtook Heidi—

“Now!” she whispered.

Carson and Heidi huddled close. I sliced a line, praying that it was hidden between ourselves from the thirteen or fourteen people passing by, and that they obscured any white glow from making its way to the rest of the street.

The gateway opened—

“In,” I said, already stepping through.

“I’ll close,” Heidi started. I assumed she would have finished, ‘it when we’re through.’ But the words were lost as London swept away, and I passed through the familiar swirling lightshow.

I landed back on my feet in the library under the “LONDON” sign.

Carson followed. And lastly, bringing up the rear, was Heidi.

“Closed,” she said. “I assume unseen, too—whoa.”

“Don’t touch anything,” I said, all of a sudden a librarian. “Not until we’ve dried off.”

“You’ve got a bathroom here?” she asked.

“In the back. And towels. This way.”

I headed down the library’s central spine. Heidi and Carson fell in behind me. Although he’d seen it before, he took the place in

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