"Don't pick up hitchhikers!"

D. ADAMS

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 Tanda. 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. Tanda 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. Tanda and Aahz seemed to have no other idea, so I slogged through the deep dust to the door and rapped on it.

Tanda 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 had never been so surprised at anything anyone said.

She knew my name.

She had been expecting me.

God knew how many dimensions from home and in the middle of a raging dust storm, she had been expecting me!

My first thought was to back slowly away before turning and running into the storm. But my legs remained frozen in place, my mind too stunned to even try to reason out anything.

"Come on," the girl said. "It's windy out there!"

Nothing on me was moving.

Tanda finally pushed me forward and the girl stepped back, holding the door for all of us to go inside.

If I hadn't known this was the same cabin as we had seen in the other dimensions, I would have never have recognized it. Now it had a wooden floor, the cracks in the walls were all filled, and it was warm and comfortable.

There was a table with a bowl of fruit on it, four chairs, and kitchen counter with cabinets on one side of the room. A fire was burning in a baking stove, keeping the cabin comfortable. A bed was against the far wall, with a beautiful blue and gold quilt neatly covering it and a pillow.

The young lady didn't seem to be at all surprised to see Aahz, which worried me even more. Pervects tended to scare people, either by their looks or their reputations.

I finally managed to find the words I needed to ask.

"How do you know me?"

"She knows you?" Aahz asked.

Clearly he had been too far out in the dust storm to hear her over the blowing wind.

The girl laughed and I got even more afraid of her. The laugh was perfect, sort of gentle, yet free and high, like a soft breeze on a summer's afternoon. The exact laugh I would expect from a young lady as beautiful as she was, yet never got, at least from the few I had met.

"I doesn't really know him," she said, again laughing. "At least not in the traditional sense, or any other sense for that matter. Although I must say, I wouldn't mind, if you know what I mean."

I had no idea what she meant. I wanted to ask just how many senses of 'know' there were, but figured I'd wait to do that later.

Aahz snorted and Tanda laughed.

She went on. "My father said I should expect a young, good-looking man named Skeeve to come here. I just assumed you were Skeeve, since you are the first person to visit this place in the two weeks I've been here."

I think I was staring at her, stunned. At least that was how it felt. I didn't know her and I had no idea who her father might be.

She smiled at me and then turned to Tananda.

"You must be the one Skeeve was traveling with before," she said. "Don't worry. I've taken care of the dust bunnies. You know, don't you, that they're completely invisible to guys."

Then she glanced at Aahz and frowned slightly.

"But I don't know you and your connection to this, big guy"

I was so shocked, I couldn't say anything. She had called Aahz 'big guy,' and knew I had traveled with Tanda.

No one said anything.

Clearly Tanda and Aahz were shocked as well. From what Tanda had said, we were a lot of dimensions away from our homes. Yet in the middle of a dust storm, in a strange dimension, we had found someone waiting for us. Someone who knew my name.

"Cat's got your tongues, I see," she said, laughing. She turned around and motioned that we should sit down at the table. "I bet you're getting hungry by now, after all the dimension-hopping you've been doing."

I wanted to ask why she thought a cat had my tongue, and how she knew what we had been doing, then decided against asking that, in exchange for what I thought was a better question.

"Are you a Shifter?"

Again she laughed, the wonderful sound filling the cabin and blending in with the faint crackling of the fire in the oven.

"Not hardly. But my father said you might be getting a little tired of their costs by now. How much of the treasure have you given away so far? Thirty-five percent? Forty percent?"

"Only twenty-five percent," I said.

Then it dawned on me that she knew about the treasure as well. And that we had been negotiating with the Shifters. How much did she know, and how did she know it?

Aahz gave me a stern look and I shrugged. He always thought I talked too much, and clearly this was one of those times he just might be right.

"Wow, you must be a great negotiator," she said, smiling at me.

"Not hardly," Tanda said, moving over and sitting down at the table.

Aahz and I did the same.

"So you know our friend Skeeve here," Tanda said. "Could you please tell us what your name is, and how you know him?"

The girl smiled at me, holding my gaze in her beautiful brown eyes.

"My name is Glenda. My father sold Skeeve the map you are using to search for the golden cow."

Glenda turned back to the counter and opened a cabinet that contained what looked to be a freshly baked loaf of bread.

Tanda glared and me and I just shrugged. I had told her and Aahz everything that had happened when I bought the map. This young lady had been nowhere around That much I was sure of. I would have remembered seeing her.

Now I was even more confused. Why had the guy who sold me the map sent his daughter here to meet us? For what reason?

"So the map was a scam after all," Aahz said, scowling at her, "and you've been waiting here to collect something from us. Is that it?"

Glenda laughed and smiled at Aahz. "The cynic of the group, I see."

Then she smiled at me again.

I smiled right back at her.

"He does tend to look at what could go wrong a lot."

"He would make a great lawyer," she said.

I wanted to ask what a lawyer was, but just nodded instead.

She turned to look directly at Aahz.

"No, I assure you that, as far as I know, or anyone knows, the map is real."

"So what are you doing here, then?" Tanda asked.