Because I know how much you like to gloat.

There is that. Let's just say that I'm making a little investment in the future, not your future, of course, but you get the idea.

And I did.

You're in contact with it, I realized. That's why it knows to hide . . . and you're helping it!

Nothing so formal, Gore, more like extending a few “professional courtesies” in the hopes of an amusing payoff down the line. Besides, I like seeing what I can slip past you when you're distracted.

“Hey, mojo man,” Diana said with a snap of her fingers. “Are you checking out on me here? If I can't do that, you can't do it either.”

She looks really good in that soaked white dress, doesn't she, Gore?

“No,” I answered her. “Just . . . thinking.” I looked her up and down. “You're really pretty, you know that?”

Diana blushed a little even as she frowned. “Is this really the time for this?” she asked.

“No,” I agreed. “It's not.” I dismissed the light I'd summoned and cast my blinded gaze about in the returned darkness. “But trying to ignore how much I wanted to say that has been distracting me, and I can't afford to be distracted any more.”

Perhaps she nodded in understanding, perhaps she didn't. I wouldn't have seen it either way, my focus was now fully where it belonged again . . . elsewhere.

“It'll need to head to the ocean to get down to the deeper areas where its big brothers are sleeping,” I murmured, only half aware I was speaking out loud at all. “This storm will make it easier for it do just that, turning the ground to a slush it can safely move through. All it has to do is head straight there, and there's not a damn thing we can do to stop it.”

I love the seaside this time of year, don't you, Gore?

“You don't sound too upset by this.” Diana's voice sounded as if it were coming from so far away that I barely heard it.

“I'm not,” I said with a grin. “Because that's not what it's going to do.”

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