“What rules?” Landon’s temper flared. “As far as I can tell, this world has no rules.”
“It doesn’t have much logic,” Thistle corrected, “but as for rules … it has rules. For example, in this world Bay is married to a mobster, but she’s having an affair with you. You’re an undercover cop working to bring down Bay’s husband. How do you think that’s going to end?”
“With me winning,” Landon answered without hesitation. “If he pinches her butt again, I’ll pinch his head off his neck.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Thistle waved off Landon’s threat and focused on me. “She’s going to use every soap trope in her arsenal. You spent more time with her watching soaps as a kid than I did. What were her favorites?”
Oh, well, that was an interesting question. “I don’t know. She liked the wacky ones.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Landon muttered, rolling his eyes to the sky.
“Which wacky ones?” Thistle pressed.
“I don’t remember. There was one about an alien.”
“An alien?” Landon was beside himself. “Why would a soap opera have aliens?”
“Dude, you need to stop saying ‘soap opera’ that way,” Clove snapped. “The longer you’re derogatory about the genre, the more likely Aunt Tillie is to punish you beyond belief in this world. It will be much worse than Bay getting her butt pinched.”
“She’s right,” I added. “You don’t understand soap operas. I’m not sure we do … at least not like Aunt Tillie. She’s going to throw everything she’s got at us. We need to be ready.”
Landon pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Fine. You know more about what we’re going to face. What’s up first?”
“The thing.”
“What thing?”
“Whatever thing Michael wants us to find,” I replied. “We have to figure out what it is. It’s very clearly part of the story.”
“I don’t really care about Michael’s thing,” Landon shot back.
“I thought he was handsome,” Clove announced, offering up a mischievous smile. “What is it with those dimples? What kind of mobster has dimples like that?”
“He’s not a real mobster,” Landon argued. “I mean … how does he make his money? He doesn’t run drugs or move stolen merchandise. He doesn’t organize prostitution rings and employ pimps. How does he make his money?”
“You don’t understand,” I challenged. “In this world he’s supposed to be a bad guy, but you root for him anyway. You’re not supposed to know what terrible things he does, because that makes rooting for him more difficult. It happens all the time on soaps.”
“Whatever.” Landon crossed his arms over his chest and stared across the empty highway. There was absolutely no vehicle traffic, and it looked to be something of a condensed area. The mega-mansion was practically on top of the highway, which wasn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing. I couldn’t think too much about that, because I had other things to worry about.
“Okay, what kind of thing could a mobster want?” Clove adopted a pragmatic tone. “Maybe it has something to do with whatever business he really does. We should’ve hung around long enough to figure out what that was.”
“Please, if Michael pinched Bay’s butt one more time Landon was going to kill him, and then we would’ve found out what kind of jails they have in soap opera world,” Sam countered. “I think we’re better off figuring this out on our own.”
“But what could it be?” Clove rubbed her forehead. “I just … I can’t think what a soap opera mobster would possibly want us to retrieve.”
“It’s not about what he wants us to find,” Thistle corrected. “It’s about what Aunt Tillie wants us to find.”
“Why do you say that?” Marcus asked. “Why would it be about what Aunt Tillie wants?”
“Because she plays his mother in this reality, although her age means she should really be his grandmother, but we’ll let that slide,” Thistle replied. “These curses are always about Aunt Tillie. They’re about what she wants and propping up her ego.
“We shouldn’t be thinking about what Michael wants,” she continued. “We should be thinking about what Aunt Tillie wants. She’ll simply bend the storyline to fit her needs.”
“That’s smart thinking.” I scratched the back of my neck. “The little preview clip said Aunt Tillie had her fingers in a lot of pies, but her ultimate goal was to freeze the world so she could bring forth a group of mutant snow sharks. So, what item – or rather, items – would Aunt Tillie need to freeze the world?”
“A death ray?” Landon was feeling snarky. “Don’t you use a death ray to freeze the world?”
“No, you use diamonds,” Sam answered, taking everyone by surprise with his certainty. “Every time I’ve ever seen anyone build a freezing ray in books, movies or television, they’ve used diamonds. They used diamonds in the Batman comics and movies for Mr. Freeze. They used diamonds in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That’s always the answer in everything I’ve ever seen.”
“Diamonds, huh?” I racked my brain. “Okay, that’s a place to start. Where would someone in a soap world keep diamonds?”
“How about in the lost city of Zeton?” Landon asked.
I knit my eyebrows. “Zeton? Where is Zeton?”
Landon pointed across the way to where a large billboard sat next to an over-sized door, which was cut into the wall of what could only be described as a really lame mountain. Clove read the billboard out loud.
“Welcome to the lost city of Zeton. We make the future look like the past. Get away from it all and embrace a whole new set of problems. And, oh, we have diamonds here.”
“Well, that’s a subtle billboard,” Thistle said, making a face. “It’s as if she drew us a map.”
“Soaps are never subtle,” I pointed out. “She did draw us a map. She clearly wants us to go to Zeton next.”
Landon let loose a dramatic sigh. “I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but why would a soap opera have a lost city under a mountain? That’s science fiction.”
“I keep telling you that what you believe about soap operas isn’t true,” I argued. “They’re much more complex than you’re giving them credit for. Now, I won’t pretend they always make sense or you don’t have to swallow your disbelief to get into them, but they’re more than just people kissing during music montages.
“Soaps sometimes handle big stories, like AIDS and rape,” I continued. “They do absurd things. You need to prepare yourself, because I have a feeling we’ll be dealing with a lot of crazy scenarios.”
“My life has been a crazy scenario since I met you,” Landon grumbled.
I knew he didn’t mean the comment as a jab, but I took it that way all the same. “I know I should probably apologize for this happening to us yet again, but … I’m not going to do it. I’m not sorry you’re stuck here with me. I would hate to do this one alone.”
Landon’s expression softened. “I’m not sorry I’m stuck here with you either. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” He pulled me forward and gave me a quick hug, pressing a kiss to my forehead before releasing me. “We’ll get through this. We always do.”
I offered a wan smile. “We always do.”
“So, let’s get moving.” Landon extended his hand. “The lost city of Zeton awaits. Oh, and by the way, I know I’ve threatened it before but I’m totally going to kill Aunt Tillie when I get my hands on her.”
“I’m so going to help you,” Thistle growled. “That old lady won’t know what’s hit her when we get out of here. And, by the way, it’s going to be my fist hitting her. She’d better start running now.”
“HUH.”
The door to Zeton was large and ridiculous. It looked like the door to a Lord of the Rings set, which was rather fitting because we were walking into a mountain. Er, well, kind of.