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shook her head.
    For a moment I thought Aahz was going to wad the thing up and toss it away, but then he folded it and put it back in his jacket.
    Suddenly, in the window of the building closest to us, a creature appeared.
    “We have company,” I said softly.
    Tananda and Aahz both looked up as another creature appeared in the window beside the first one.
    I glanced around. Every window of every building now had someone standing in it. And every one of them looked exactly alike. Gray suit, gray hair, gray face, two arms. They were all the same shape and same height.
    And when one of them moved, every other creature I could see moved the same way.
    “This is creeping me out,” Tananda said.
    The next instant the dust smashed into my face.
    “Warning next time,” Aahz said.
    “This is Vortex #4,” she shouted over the wind. “We’re hopping again before the bunnies find us.”
    For an instant there was no dust, then it hit again.
    I knew this had to be Vortex #1. I mean, with the dust and all, what else could it be?
    Then we were back in the tent with the Shifter. And right at that moment what I really wanted to do more than anything else was just walk out of the tent and forget this entire thing.
    “Vortex #6 please,” Tananda said to the Shifter, who had lost his couch shape and now looked more like a cross between a cat and a table.
    “Twenty-five percent.”
    Aahz ground his teeth, the sound filling the tent.
    “You’re making my friend angry by repeating that,” I said.
    Then I realized I had spoken my mind. Tananda hadn’t sealed my lips for this visit. Aahz glared at me and I shrugged.
    “It is a bargain at twice the price,” the Shifter said.
    I was about to tell him that dealing with a Deveel was a bargain as well, but Tananda put her hand over my mouth and spoke to the Shifter. “Vortex #6 please. We have agreed to twenty-five percent total to this point.”
    The Shifter nodded, which looked a lot like a table lifting its leg, and then we were back in the dust storm.
    It seemed like the same dust, and was as hard to walk in as the last two Vortex dimensions. But as we got near the old cabin, I noticed a very large and very important difference.
    This time there was a light in the window.
    Someone was home.

THE YELLOW LIGHT coming from the cabin window was like a warning sign. We all stopped about twenty paces short of the door and stared through the blowing dust at the light. I know I was annoyed. After using the cabin in two other dimensions, I was starting to feel like it was an extension of home.
    How dare anyone actually live in it?
    “Now what do we do?” I shouted to Aahz over the sound of the storm whipping around us.
    “Anything else close by?” Aahz asked Tananda.
    His green scales on his face were plastered in dust. I knew for a fact he hated being dirty, and after giving away so much of an as-yet-unfound fortune to a travel guide, or agent, or whatever he had called the Shifter, the dust and wind couldn’t be helping his mood any.
    Tananda shook her head.
    “No dust bunnies and nothing else I know of. The Shifter only put directions to this place in my mind on the first hop.”
    “So we knock,” I said over the wind.
    Tananda and Aahz seemed to have no other idea, so I slogged through the deep dust to the door and rapped on it.
    Tananda moved over to my left and Aahz stayed five steps away in the background, his face covered. If I had to, I would disguise him quickly. His green scales and looks tended to frighten a lot of people.
    The door opened suddenly and I found myself facing a girl. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, dark pants, and had her hair pulled back off her face. She had a smile that lit up her deep brown eyes and warmed every nerve in my body. I figured her to be about my age. Her face brightened when she saw me.
    “You must be Skeeve,” she said. “Come on in. My dad said you’d be along eventually.”
    I stood in the dust, staring at her. In all my life I