Page 35 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

It was less of an attack than a sit-down-and-behave move, such as a large dog might give the young, yappy member of the pack, but it was not well-received.

“Grab him!” I said to Pritkin, as my power had just gone AWOL again, and damn, that was getting old!

Pritkin did not grab him, maybe because there wasn’t time. Master vamps can move like the wind, which was why Alphonse completed the launch at Pinkie. And, this time, he was bopped all the way to the other side of the room, still screeching.

“Stop yelling!” I told him. I already had a headache.

And then Pinkie started mimicking him, or maybe he just thought that was what the gang was doing now; we were all yelling. Only he did it better than the rest of us. He did it better than everybody.

“What the fuck?” Alphonse shrieked, back on his feet and no happier, having just peeled himself off a wall.

“You said you knew we had them with us,” I reminded him, wincing.

“You—that’s your team?” he stared incredulously from the blob twins to me and back again. “The fuck?”

It was the only word he seemed to be able to remember right now, which . . . okay. They did require a minor mental rewiring, but still. I’d have been worried about their feelings, except that Pinkie was still shrieking happily.

“I told you not to sit down,” Pritkin reminded him dryly.

“But . . . but . . . demons,” Alphonse said. “They’re supposed to be—I don’t know—scary and shit!”

“Who just got thrown across the room?”

“I wasn’t ready! Cassie shifts us with no warning, and the next second, that . . . that . . . that . . . the fuck?”

“They’re scary!” I said, feeling vaguely outraged on the twins’ behalf. It wasn’t their fault that the corporeal form they’d gotten stuck with was less badass demon than . . . phlegm with eyeball stick.

“They’re hideous,” Alphonse said with feeling.

“They’re not so bad—”

“Hideous!”

“Stop saying that!”

Pritkin helped me back to my feet. Only judging by his expression, that wasn’t a good thing, as he preferred to yell at people standing up. But I noticed something before he could start whatever lecture I was about to get.

“What is that?” I crossed to the bed, where Pinkie was sitting proudly, if you could call that sitting, in front of a variety of . . . things. Lovely slimy things, but I had no idea what the hell. . .

I picked one up, which was dark pink silk with what looked like rubies of various shades encrusting it in pretty flower patterns. There were also tiny emerald leaves, perfectly formed, each exquisite enough to adorn a ring on Earth. And even tinier diamonds scattered here and there like dew drops on the flowers.

Under that was a translucent piece of lavender fluff with what looked like eighty layers. Seed pearls carved intricate patterns across the weave on top, while some much larger ones adorned a belt. The piece under that was a beautiful sea green with drifting fields of kelp along the bottom made of emerald, tourmaline, and peridot, with tiny citrine fish playing amongst the leaves. And under that was a blue so heavily encrusted with aquamarine, sapphire, and blue topaz that I could hardly see the material.

They were gowns, I realized, dozens and dozens of beautiful, exquisite gowns in every color of the rainbow. All were gorgeous, to the point of making a human designer weep with envy, and entirely unlike the rather plain outfit I’d been provided previously. I wondered why the dress gods had changed their minds. . .

And then I understood, and my eyes got big.

“Oh, shit. Oh, no.”

“I think that deserves more than an ‘oh, shit,’” Alphonse said. “What is that stench?”

“They always smell like that,” Pritkin snapped, following me over to see what we had to deal with this time—and giving me no chance to hide the terrible truth even if I’d had the power to do so. “What is it?” he demanded.

“Trouble,” I said, looking at the mass of purloined finery. Because I doubted that either of our delinquents had a wallet stashed somewhere, so I assumed they’d taken the opportunity while we were at dinner to raid the surrounding rooms. And they’d raided a lot.

Pritkin must have reached the same conclusion because he looked at the pile of loveliness spread out on the furs and then turned to glare at Pinkie and the Brain. Before going off in some language that my translator didn’t know, thank God. I already knew more demon curse words than was healthy.

“This is what we got?” Alphonse said, still staring at the twins. “This?”

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