Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

stone to the Star of Artemis that Nereus was talking about.”
    Justice reacted as though she‟d shot an electric current through him. “What? The Star of Artemis? Nereus? Tell me everything, and I will give you every gem you could possibly want in a dozen lifetimes.”
    Okay, that did it. Again with the buying her off with gems. She knelt down and very carefully placed the sapphire on the floor next to the other gems. Then she stood up and folded her arms across her ever-more-loudly growling stomach, lifted her chin, and put pure defiance into her stare. “I don‟t want your stupid gems. What I want is a pizza. Or a plate piled high with pancakes, dripping butter and hot, sticky syrup. I‟m not sure what you think you mean by telling me my salary is no longer important to me, but guess what? I‟m trying not to be offended. I‟m going to pretend I don‟t even care about any of this right now. All I want is to get out of here and find something to eat.”
    Almost before she finished her sentence, he leapt across the space between them and clasped her wrists in his hands. A wild excitement burned in his eyes and he smiled down at her. “Say it again. Say it again, just like that. Except add more descriptive terminology.”
    “What are you talking about? I don‟t want your hard, blue, shiny gemstones.”
    He shouted out a laugh. “No, Keely. My beautiful, brilliant Keely. The pancakes. Describe the pancakes again. With butter and syrup and the smell and the sight and the taste.”
    She sighed, shaking her head. “You‟ve gone over the deep end, haven‟t you? It‟s sad, too, after everything you‟ve gone through in your life, that the simple description of pancakes was the final straw.”
    He laughed again, then leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “No, I‟m not insane.
    Breakfast food has not driven me over the deep end, as you call it. I‟m discovering the scope of my Nereid powers, and I think I found one that‟s related to the transport power that brought us here. I‟m as hungry as you are, Keely, and when you described the pancakes, I could almost smell them.”
    He released her wrists and stood back, just a half step. “Describe them again, please. I think, somehow, I can bring us to the pancakes.”
    Keely raised an eyebrow, thinking that there were a few things wrong with the plan. “Okay, not to be a naysayer, but there are just a couple of teensy little issues I‟d like to bring up before I start waxing lyrical over Mrs. Butterworth. First, what pancakes? Where? What if we show up in the middle of breakfast at San Quentin?”
    “That would be a problem?”
    “I‟m guessing you didn‟t see Walk the Line . Prison, Justice.
    San Quentin or some other prison, or maybe in the middle of a shape-shifter breakfast party.”
    She paused. “Do shape-shifters even eat pancakes?”
    “I don‟t know,” he said dryly. “What I do know is that anywhere that is not a cavern deep underground, blocked off by a cave-in, would more than likely be an improvement over our current circumstances.”
    “Point taken.”
    “Hold my hand,” he commanded.
    She clasped her fingers in his and closed her eyes. Speaking of crazy, she must be right there next to him in the padded cell to go along with this. “What the hell. Fat, fluffy pancakes, with steam rising into the air from the top of the stack. Butter—real butter, not the margarine stuff—melting down the sides. Maple syrup fresh from Canada pooling on the pancakes and running over the edge of the plate—”
    His shout interrupted her, but she didn‟t feel any of the temporal displacement that had accompanied their journey into the cavern. Her eyes snapped open, only to find that nothing had changed. Still in the cavern. Still no way out.
    He hadn‟t transported them to the pancakes, no matter that her imagination was providing that rich, buttery maple smell. Her shoulders slumped for an instant, but then she tried to be upbeat for Justice. “It was only the first try. We can try again,” she said, injecting a little optimism into her voice.
    But he wasn‟t paying a bit of attention to her. He was staring at the ground. She looked down and started laughing.
    A flowered tablecloth lay, spread out perfectly, on the floor next to them. Platters of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and sausage covered every inch. An opened newspaper lay next to an empty plate, neatly folded to the financial pages, and a pair of eyeglasses rested on top of