"We should be dead," Max mused. "A solstice demon from a hell dimension should have arisen in Solsticeland approximately one half hour after we were incarcerated, and it should have promptly begun destroying, devouring, and demolishing everything within its range."
"Should?" I repeated. "Can we choose a different word, Max?"
The security guard seated at the desk near our cell was looking at Max intently by now. "What is this thing's range?"
"Initially?" Max said, "Midtown Manhattan, I would say."
"Initially?" the guard repeated, clearly unsettled.
Always pleased to lecture, Max strolled over to the corner of the cell closest to the guard and explained, "There are a wide variety of solstice demons, some of them very strong and voracious, some of them rather weak and fleeting. So I hate to theorize without more data-"
"No, you don't," Jeff said irritably.
"-and therefore I'm using a mid-range estimate. It's possible the demon would only have the strength to destroy this city block before it would lose its ability to hold back the light-"
"Hold back what light?"
"The sun," Max replied. "This genre of demon needs darkness to function. The greater the demon's strength, the longer they're able to keep this dimension-or, at least, a very localized portion of it-shrouded in darkness, and the longer the demon is therefore able to go on feeding and increasing its strength, thereby creating a cycle of-"
"Feeding?" the guard blurted. "Feeding on what?"
"Mostly on people," Max said. "But not exclusively."
"Holy crap!"
"So you can understand why we felt we must confront this demon last night and send it straight back to its hell dimension," said Max, "before it had time to wreak untold havoc on our world."
"Absolutely!"
"And given the intensified level of mystical activity last night here at Fenster's," Max continued, "I believe there is no question but that the danger is still imminent."
"Really?" I asked in dismay.
"Oh, yes." Max nodded emphatically.
"What do we do?" the guard cried.
"The most advisable first step," Max said sincerely, "would be to release the three of us, so that we can determine why the demon did not arise last night-the longest night of the year-and re-plot its trajectory for entry into this dimension."
"Release you?" The guard paused for a long moment, then laughed. "Let you go? Good one, buddy!" He seemed genuinely delighted. "You really had me going there! That was great! Hey, they didn't say you were a con. Just an arsonist, vandal, burglar, blah blah blah. I had no idea. Got any others? I loved that one! Really gave me chills!"
Max sighed and turned away from him. He said to me, lowering his voice to avoid engaging the guard's amusement again, "I think we need to narrow this down. Exactly what is being raised, why, and when?"
"I hate my life," Jeff moaned.
"Oh, please, Jeff," I said irritably. "Are you going to try to rationalize what happened to us last night? Pretend that someone accidentally animated-"
"No, I'm on board with the whole ‘demon rising and infiltrating Fenster's with evil forces' thing," he said. "And I will be seeing last night in my nightmares for years to come. I just don't see why this has to happen here."
"Here?" I repeated. "You mean Fenster's? Actually, I have a theory that Elsp-"
"No, I mean here in New York. Why now? Why when I'm here? I was living in LA for over three years. Why couldn't a solstice demon have struck New York then? Why did it have to wait for me to come back? Or why can't it go eat Los Angeles? After all, I'm done with that town. But, noooo, this thing waits to destroy New York until I'm back. And it does it right when I'm at the absolute nadir of my life, playing Diversity Santa in Solsticeland. I mean, Christ, could this year turn into any more of a nightmare for me?"
I stared at him for a long moment, not wondering why I had broken up with him, but why I had ever dated him in the first place. "You're right," I said at last. "This is all about you."
"We're going to prison," he said to me. "You know that, don't you?"
"Not necessarily," I said gloomily, gesturing to Max. "New York may be shrouded in eternal darkness and devoured by a demon from hell, instead. So cheer up, Jeff."
The guard opined, "Santa is right. I saw the damage in Solsticeland. Jesus, you guys went to town! There's gonna be a lot of charges for what you did. A lot."
I wasn't sure if staying at work after closing counted as "breaking and entering," but I thought it seemed very likely we would be charged with vandalism, arson, destruction of property, and perhaps attempted burglary. For starters.
I wasn't mentally ready to face criminal charges and a prison sentence, so I hadn't yet objected to being kept in limbo inside this cell with Max and Jeff.
Max's prognosis about the demon was a terrifying prospect, but since I sincerely doubted that anyone would free us to go deal with it, my thoughts mostly kept galloping toward being charged with various felonies and disgraced in front of Lopez. I felt sad when I thought of that. Also very queasy.
"You really won't take me to the bathroom?" I asked the guard.
"I took you twice already," he said. "Wait for the next shift."
We had been brought here immediately by the security guards who'd apprehended us last night in Solsticeland. They said they were going to call Mr. Fenster, and then we would be turned over to the authorities.
Jeff and I had spent all night pacing the cage and occasionally sniping at each other. Max was very anxious about the demon, I now realized, but he accepted the prospect of prison with relative equanimity. Probably because he didn't expect to live long enough to be tried and imprisoned if he wasn't freed to confront the demon soon.
Thoughts like this had kept me wide awake since being placed in this cell-as had the absence of any place to sleep. There were some chairs here, but no bed. The cell wasn't meant to hold people for long. It had been constructed to contain newly apprehended shoplifters until the police could pick them up. It was never intended to hold prisoners overnight.
This was also why we all had to keep asking to be escorted to the bathroom. The cell contained no facilities of that sort.
Max had attempted to use his mystical power to get us out of here, but all that had fizzled and flopped. He was depleted from last night's battle. I hadn't been in favor of staging a jailbreak, anyhow, which I thought would just make our problems worse . . . but now that I understood how imminent Max thought death by demon destruction was, I was rethinking that. However, I suspected he wasn't likely to regain sufficient strength for more mojo unless he could get some sleep. He didn't look a day over seventy, but 350 years do take their toll.
So here we sat. It was now dinner time of the following day, and we were still in this cell.
However, we had at least discovered a couple of hours ago why we were still here. There was a TV in the holding area, and the guards ran news programs most of the day. A couple of hours ago, the big local story of the day broke-and it wasn't that half of Solsticeland had been destroyed or that a demon had pierced the dimensional barrier.
Freddie Fenster had been arrested as the shooter in last night's hijacking.
No wonder the Fensters were a little too preoccupied to ask the cops to come pick us up! And given the scale of what had happened, apparently no one on duty here wanted to do an end run around the Fensters without knowing their exact wishes in this matter.
I had a dark moment of wondering if this meant that having us quietly executed was one of the possible choices. But then I realized the most likely scenario was that the Fensters wanted to control all the media spin about their company, so they didn't let anyone else make decisions in a messy situation.
It was a management strategy that didn't take into account the possibility of three employees destroying a substantial portion of the store on the same day that a member of the family was arrested for armed robbery. Moreover, surely the way the Fensters had handled the first couple of hijackings demonstrated that they'd be very wise to start leaving their decisions up to others.
Meanwhile, Freddie Fenster was not commenting, nor were any members of the family, nor was his lawyer. The police and the DA weren't saying much, either. In the absence of anything resembling facts or information, the media didn't waste its valuable time actually investigating this juicy case. Pundits just jumped straight into the fruitful practice of speculating, then stating each other's speculations as if they were facts. After about an hour of this, I had begged the guard to turn off the TV, threatening to have him charged with prisoner abuse if he didn't.
My elf suit was getting rank enough that I was about to start lobbying for a change of clothes when, to my astonishment, Elspeth Fenster entered the holding area and announced that she was letting us go.
* * *
"She let you go?" Lucky asked us incredulously. "Why?"
"She claims her father doesn't want the scandal of pressing charges against three unhappy employees who had a drunken bacchanalia inside the store," I said.
"I'm not even an employee," Max said. "But I certainly did not protest my liberation on that basis."