“Like we were just telling the nice men from the insurance company,” Mrs. Gray gushed, “we have no idea how this could have happened! Right, honey?” Mrs. Gray then turned to her husband, who looked almost as happy as she did that they weren’t sure how their house had disappeared.
“No, sweetheart! I have no idea how this could have happened! In fact, we were at dinner when it did!” Mr. Gray was equally excited. I could practically see the exclamation marks bubbling from his lips.
“Wait, wait, back up,” I said. “What nice men from the insurance agency?” While the supes I was with probably had never dealt with human insurance companies, I knew damned well there was no way any agency could get someone out to Rockabill that quickly.
“The nice men! Who came right away! They were fast!” Mrs. Gray was practically singing her responses at this point.
“What did they look like, these agents?” Caleb asked.
“They were so kind! And so professional! And so kind!” Mrs. Gray went ahead and sang.
“They were weird,” Stuart said, his never-pleasant voice gone particularly petulant. “Despite what my mom says, they weren’t professional. They were weird.”
I elbowed Blondie. I knew if I asked a question, Stu would react badly, glamour or no glamour.
“Um, weird how?” the Original asked, taking the hint.
“The one dude was huge, first of all. Like circus-freak huge. And the second guy was creepy. And they didn’t help us at all. They just talked to my parents for like four seconds and then jumped into the hole and came out again like fifteen minutes later. They were fucking weird.”
“Lang-uage!” Mrs. Gray sang. Stuart rolled his eyes.
“Whatever, mom. Seriously, they weren’t right.” Stuart stopped talking, and then eyed my friends for a second, blinking as if he couldn’t quite focus his vision. “Kinda like you guys…”
“All right then,” Caleb said, hastily. “You three should head into town. Check yourself into a hotel.” He paused when I gave him a Look, realizing the B & B was the hotel. “Um, check yourself into those cabins Mr. Allen owns. Make your calls from there. Call your insurance agents… I know they were just here, but you’ll want to call them again.”
I smiled at the satyr’s kind use of his magic. I would have let the Grays sit, thinking their insurance claims were being processed. But I was a bitch and Caleb was just the sort of goat-man you wanted to bring home to mama.
The Grays shuffled away, Stuart less pleased about leaving but not wanting to let his parents wander off alone. Once they were gone, we all turned to the ginormous hole through which the very roof of the Grays’ house still peeped. I knew what was coming next.
So much spelunking… so little time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I dangled above Blondie while she made rude comments about my ass. Caleb and Iris were staying aboveground, well out of the way. If we tripped another Alfar booby trap, something that took us out like the other had Nell and Anyan, they were supposed to call Ryu.
So once again, I found myself descending into the earth, a position I wasn’t entirely comfortable with on a number of levels. Not least because of the one-woman peanut gallery below me.
“It’s like a gumdrop, but an ass,” the Original was saying. “I’ve always been more of a breast girl, but now I get it. You’re a woman and yet you offer all the comforts of a recliner.”
“Will you just help me down,” I chided, having had enough of Blondie’s flirtatious yammerings. I wasn’t sure if the Original was serious, but I did know most of the older supes were switch-hitters. Yet right now we needed to be applying our brains and our bodies to solving the mysteries cropping up around Rockabill, not seducing one another.
Not to mention, even my libido couldn’t rouse itself at the sight of my last real link to Jason, sunk into the earth.
“All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl, gumdrop ass and all,” Blondie muttered, helping me land beside her but insisting on pinching said ass at the same time. I meeped, pulling away.
“That hurt. And I’m not exactly in the mood for games,” I said, pointedly staring at where Jason’s former home leaned precariously next to us.
The sinkhole it had fallen into was enormous, big enough that there was room for Blondie and me to walk abreast of each other around the entire house. Meanwhile, the B