Three

''Are you sure this building is safe?'' asked Izzy, glancing furtively at the ceiling and wincing the thuds originating from it.

She had scuttled down from the top of the bar to help her brother, but having ascertained his only infermities were alcohol-related, Izzy sniffed the air and looked around her. ''No...'', she pondered, ''there's definately something very strange about this place''

She hadn't noticed Lance and Lucifer entering, but now she saw them by the door.

She hurried across the floor, nimbly dodging feet and broken glass. When she reached the white-haired one with the cane she looked upwards, cleared her throat and shouted, as politely as she could, ''EXCUSE ME, SIR, DO YOU, uh, KNOW THIS PLACE WELL?!''

"I'm afraid not," Lucifer replied with a smile and a tip of his head. He'd stopped being surprised at the beings that spoke to him a long time ago. "Whilst I'm familiar with the area, I haven't been here for a few thousand years. Things tend to change a lot in that time."

"Don't go giving away your age or anything, Lu," Lance muttered.

"I won't admit to a day over twenty-thousand," Lucifer replied with another of his bland smiles. "Just like you're supposed to be not a day over eleven thousand."

"Either way, you're still too old for me," Lance replied, making his way over to the knocked out Amber and picking her up gently. He began trying to coax her back to consciousness, inwardly wondering just why the hell he was doing so.

Carnil turned around, sensing impending doom.

"Hey you! Hey you! HEY YOU! Unhand that creature of darkest hell!"

Carnil stalked over, bottle of strawberry creme liqueur in hand. "You do not want her awake!"

He held the bottle over the she-creature's mouth. "In fact, let's give her a wee bit more, just to be safe."

Huh? Alcohol poisoining?

"She is not a creature of darkest Hell," Lance grunted, "THAT is a creature of darkest Hell," he said, nodding his head towards Lucifer.

Lucifer inclined his head politely at Carnil.

"This," Lance continued, "is just a teenage girl that somehow manages to follow me around. Although I wonder how she manages it sometimes, I don't think she's inherently evil."

He paused.

"Maybe," he added, just to be safe.

"Semantics, semantics," Carnil dismissed with and airy wave of the hand.

He turned to the introduced creature of darkest hell. "Hiya!" He waved.

Carnil turned back to the other winged guy. "So, if you're not sure about her evilness, are you quite willing to revive her knowing that she'll only squeel and cling to your leg in an annoying manner?"

The roof creaked ominously before a small portion of it collapsed, and among debris such as old wine barrels, crates, broken chandoliers, crowbars and other stuff down fell a jester with a long silver braid and puzzled look on his face.

From the middle of the noise of falling objects hitting the floor and the heavy cloud of dust, a solitary "Oof!" could be heard. Conversationally, something replied with a jingle.

When the dust cleared, a dashing jester with an embarrassed toothy grin plastered to his face stood extermely still. Only his eyes moved.

Oh no! Not more dust!

Micah sneezed.

Jaina was stunned. In this environment, oddly reminiscent of an establishment she had once been strongarmed into running, being stunned could have been due to any number of falling timbers. This was not the case. No, Jaina's eyes had gone googly not from pain, but for admiration of something pure and spiritual.

Sort of.

Picking up her guts, she sauntered over to Lance, Lucifer, and Izzy. "Lance! Thought I'd heard you before. You must introduce to me your friend! He's positively dazzling."

She turned to Lucifer, placing both hands on Luce's bicep. "I'm Jaina, Lance's friend. And you needn't speak your name; it's obvious to me that you're a creature of light... and love?" she finished with a slight sexy pout.

Somewhere in the rafters, an American female voice faintly muttered something like "blasted slut, thinking she's Pasht," but that might have the breeze winding through the roof.

In the confusion caused by falling rafters and such, Carnil surreptitiously poured a few more mouthfulls of creme liqueur into the girl's mouth.

He whistled innocently.

Lucifer's eyebrows lifted slightly, but he gave no other indication of anything other than bland indifference.

"Jaina, get the hell away from him if you value your sanity," Lance griped from the sidelines. He was ignored.

"I'm most pleased to meet you, Ms Jaina," Lucifer said in his smooth tenor. He tilted forward at his hips slightly in a makeshift bow, which he somehow still managed to pull off despite the fact there was a woman attached to his arm.

A gloved hand shifted from the top of the cane to rest over Jaina's knuckles, and the pale man smiled smile number forty-six (show top teeth only, lower eyelids and have a single sparkle in the air). "It's always a pleasure to meet Lance's acquaintances, even more so when they are as beautiful as you."

"Bastard," Lance muttered from the sidelines again, before blinking down at Amber and up at Carnil. "DO YOU WANT TO KILL THE POOR GIRL!?"

Carnil blinked innocently. He pulled it off rather badly, though, so he looked a strange mixture of confusion and constipation instead.

"Aww, but a little alcohol never hurt anyone." He looked at the girl. "Mind you, I've never seen anyone with that bad a constitution. Usually they turn red and giggle like mad before passing out." Carnil paused, than added rather enviously. "What a cheap drunk."

Sebastian was glad to notice that not a whole lot of people paid attention. Good. That meant he could safely move the bloody drawer off his foot. He tossed the hat to the side, ignoring it's dejected jingle as he tried to get himself out of the debris.

Seriously. He needed hazard pay.

Disguised-Suitov mooched closer to the cap-and-bells brigand. "You injured?" the lanky geekteen impersonator asked, wondering if he should warn of the bishophile or just let the amusement make itself.

Baskerville leaned over to examine the prone Amber. "Yes!" he threw over his shoulder in answer to Lance. "Good idea. Let's."

Then another thought found its way through his gelled hair and he raised his voice. "You lot can either pay for drinks or you can help sand down some of these tables. Though they need to be got outside first."

A few people eyed the front door, still virtually blocked by the really very big and sturdy wooden beam, under which they'd had to clamber to get in.

"There's a back way; I'll go round an' unseal it," Basky added. "Don't think we should be staying in here anyway, with the dust and falling timber and whatnot."

He hoisted Micah onto the sill of the one unboarded window, where there was rather more fresh air.

Messier Foxy twitched and almost dropped the drawer on his foot again. He turned, scratching the back of his head with the sceptre as a luminous smile plastered itself on the king of fools' face. "I? Of, no, good fellow! How nice of you to ask, though."

A pause. The silvermaned one eyed the disguised Suitov with the eye of an expert. (The other eye was busy staring the disguised one in the eye.) There was something... fishy about this one, but he didn't pay attention to his instincts. He paid attention to the surroundings instead. "Oh. You wouldn't, perchance, happen to know where it is I crashed?"

And, as an afterthought following a glance at the rafter... "You don't own this place, do you?" Sebastian asked hopefully.

Shawna approached the dilapidated building carefully and looked at it with great skeptisism. This was supposed to be an inn? "I think I'll just stay out here." She said to herself and listened to the voices within.

"Hello?"

"In a manner of speaking," spake he in the C:\DOS\RUN disguise. "Unless you're thinking of lawsuits; in which case, take it up with my colleague in the leather."

The word lawsuit made him grin a bit strangely.

"Nononono, no... simply, that is... you will be pleased to know your attic is free of fruitbats," Sebastian said with a positively shining smile and, before the odd one could figure out what that meant, he picked up his, err, hat. With the sceptre.

Jingle.

"Now, as I was saying... what is this absolutely smashing inn?"

"Beats me." He relaxed into an asymmetrical grin.

"I think that buying the place makes me the batty one. As you can tell, we're far from ready to open, but there's something awry with the land beneath us." A sneaker tapped on the rippled floorboards. "People are drawn here for no apparent reason."

Baskerville cocked an ear at Micah's window. He'd thought he heard voices.

The building was an absolute shambles. Literally. One finely tweezed eyebrow arched delicately. One finely handcrafted riding crop tapped thoughtfully against a leather-clad thigh. One stiletto boot stepped over a pile of debris as she approached the door.

The Countess Iseea Setuvnicebunz pushed open the door as far as she could and stuck her head in.

"Oh, Lance!" Jaina tittered. "You're being ridiculous. I think if you insist on acting like that, you should go bother your little stalker-girl instead of the happy hookup here." That said, she pointedly wiggled in between Lance and Lucifer, face turned to the latter (and glowing slightly as well).

Lucifer's ability to bow without disengaging Jaina's hands impressed her greatly. Oh yes. She lit up like a Christmas tree, albeit one a bit out of season and shaped like a ditzy redhead.

Meanwhile, a calico kitten walked up to Izzy and stared at him in open confusion. The feline made no move to attack or physically play with the lizard; she just gawked. The tilt of her head and position of her ears clearly stated, to anyone versed in feline body language, "Huh?"