Read 5 - Together To Join for Free Online

set at specified intervals to get his bearings. Good thing she liked skylights and it was still day because he didn’t know where the light switch might be. Amazing. He knew women were capricious and liked to shop, but this was ridiculous. Surely she hadn’t worn all these. And then he reminded himself. She was ancient. She’d had centuries to shop. And this was the result.
    He reached a door that opened without one hint of squeak to another surprise. The woman also collected men’s clothing. Ensembles of every description filled the new space. Suits. Slacks. Sport coats. Fat ties that went out in the ‘80’s. Thin ties from the ‘50’s. Filly white cravats that had been in fashion sometime in the nineteenth century. Maybe earlier. He couldn’t guess and didn’t waste time on it. It was enough that he had something to wear. He shoved a t-shirt on. It appeared to match the wide-legged white slacks making up a yachting outfit. Garrick moved on, looking for pants, and found Jodhpurs for horseback riding. He’d be damned before he’d wear them. Or the knee breeches that followed next. As for the velvet jackets? He wouldn’t be caught dead in them. Which was what he’d be if she caught him.
    There was a stack of denims at one corner and he grabbed a pair, donning and zipping them without even questioning why they fit. He didn’t care. He had an opening to find, a mountain to scale, and another homing beacon to rig up. He’d worry about her wardrobes later. The men’s department changed to rows of outer attire: coats, cloaks, hats, and what looked like powdered wigs. Garrick grabbed a jacket, and then turned another corner to see socks followed by hundred of shoes, in graduating shelves, all in perfect condition. He was grinning as he shoved his feet into hikers and laced them with studious efficiency. Now he could really cover some ground.
    Another door led him back into a hall, exactly like the previous one. For all he knew, he’d come full-circle, but there was one difference. One side of the hall was noticeably colder than the other. Chill raised goose bumps on his back and shoulders as he slid along it. Now he knew for damn sure he wasn’t in a bayou. These temperatures belonged to a higher elevation. A lot higher.
    He reached an outside door, recognizable by the arched entry and deeply-set recess. Even if it resembled a cathedral, this castle wasn’t denigrating the name. It had thick stone walls. Fifteen feet at the least, if the portal was accurate. Garrick lifted the bolt, easing it with a slight groan of resistance that was audible enough to worry. He didn’t know how well she heard, and he was too close to success. He could feel it ramping up his heart-rate and charging his system. He slid around the opening and faced another will-sapping surprise.
    The castle fronted a wall of rock, laced with a myriad of copper tubing, and all of it vaguely lit by really ancient-looking light fixtures. There was barely enough room for him to squeeze between the castle walls and the rock that surrounded it. Literally. Garrick was three-fourths of the way around the structure before he admitted it. The castle wasn’t on any mountain. It was encased within one, taking up what might have been a cave at first, but was now a dense shell of solid stone. Buttresses that should have been flying out from the gallery wall, rooting the structure to the ground, were carved right from the rock sides, and once he climbed one, he got another surprise. That wasn’t any sky he’d glimpsed. It was fake; incandescently lit with what looked like fluorescent tubing, honeycombing the rooftop. There wasn’t one vestige of a stalactite, which meant this hadn’t started as a cave, and that meant he couldn’t even find an entrance to use. And he was sweaty and getting annoyed, and tired of failing.
    There was a walkway constructed along the roof edge and he dropped onto it, following it down a set of stairs that ended at another access