out.
“Given,” Hjalmar said. “But they’re going to want to keep Janea out of play, stuck over here. So when we find her, they may try to prevent her from leaving.”
“Or there may be a deeper reason she’s here,” Sharice said. “Synchronicity.”
“Either way, they’re going to try to stop her from winning, for values of winning,” Hjalmar pointed out. “So…”
“You just want to weapon up,” Sharice said. “Admit it.”
“I’m Asatru,” Hjalmar snapped. “Being without a weapon is the closest thing we have to sin!”
“What do you want?” Sharice asked.
“I want to cruise the Dealers Room and the Exhibitors Hall. If this is a true metaphor of Dragon*Con, everything I need is going to be in one of those two places. Every major sharp-pointy-thing dealer comes to Dragon*Con. The problem is…”
“Money,” Sharice said. “Power. You’ll have to trade power for sharp, pointy things.”
“And I don’t think I have enough,” Hjalmar said. “I mean, to an Asatru there is no such thing as too much sharp, pointy weaponry. But I specifically don’t have enough money to buy what I consider a minimum if there’s any possibility of us getting busy over here. So, is the cleric willing to cough up some cash to armor up your fighter?” he added with a grin.
“Only if he avoids gaming metaphors,” Sharice said. “How much do you need?”
“Around or over five hundred,” Hjalmar said. “But if I use it all, I’m flat. I don’t think that is wise here.”
“Agreed,” Sharice said. “Okay, I’ll get Drakon to take over the stakeout and meet you in the Exhibitors Hall. The better weapons vendors were there. We should be able to leave it in our rooms and pick it up when we come back.”
“Works.”
“By the way, when we shut down the stakeout, meet me in the bar in the Hyatt.”
“Shouldn’t we have started in the tavern? I mean it’s meet up in the tavern, listen to rumors, buy equipment…We’re doing this all backwards!”
“Do you want your sharp, pointy things or not?”
“Shutting up now.”
CHAPTER THREE
The kimono was, indeed, short.
“The nice thing about a kimono is that, well, one size doesn’t fit all but it does fit most,” Anita said, holding the yellow silk robe up to Doris’s back. “This one is going to be tight, I’ll admit. But that’s all to the good. Tight will definitely be noticed.”
They were in Bran’s room, but he’d made himself scarce after showing Anita where the kimono was. He was unquestionably busy, but Doris was pretty sure it was to keep her from being freaked out.
“You’re going to need makeup, though, and hairpins,” Anita continued. “And slippers. Makeup we’ll need to scrounge. Ditto the hairpins, although if I can get some bobby pins, we can fix them up nicely. Actually, if we can get a couple of lacquered chopsticks, that might be enough…Try it on.”
“Uhmmm…” Doris said uncomfortably.
“Go in the bathroom if it makes you feel any better,” Anita said, shaking her head. “You’re seriously going to have to work on your attitude if you’re planning on winning Dawn.”
“I will,” Doris said. “But right now I’ll try it on in the bathroom.”
She came back out, tugging at the bottom, then at the top, then at the bottom again.
“Short, all right, but legal,” Anita said. “Barely. Those are much better legs than I expected. Do you dance?”
“Yes,” Doris said. “I love dancing.”
“There may be hope,” Anita said. “Right, kimono fits, barely, which is the best way. Now for the appliances. We need to scrounge…which here means by cell phone. Do you know anybody at the con at all that you can borrow stuff from?”
“Just Folsom,” Doris said.
“He’s not going to have makeup, trust me.”
“And…Mandy. She’s one of his friends.”
“Mandy will have makeup. Right…”
“Quite a change, I like it,” Mandy said, as Anita let her in the room. “I brought what I could scrounge up. You want to go full geisha?”
While Anita had been running down makeup and “appliances,” Doris had been working on slippers. Bran had a very old but sturdy sewing machine. By taking several layers of cloth and, yes, hot-gluing them together, she got a sole for the slippers strong enough to last at least the evening. The uppers were easy enough to sew, then she attached them to the sole with more hot glue. They probably wouldn’t last more than a day, but that was all she needed.
By the time she was finished with the slippers, Anita, Mandy and her daughter Traxa had fixed up a set of bobby pins into “jeweled pins” by gluing-superglue this time-plastic “gems” onto the ends.
“Now for the mask,” Anita said, pulling a cheap mask out of a bin.
“That’s not going to go with the outfit,” Mandy pointed out.
“Absolutely not,” Anita said. “Give me that hot-glue gun and the dragon brooch.”
Traxa was wearing a metal dragon brooch that was about six inches long. Anita first, gently and over some protest, heated it up then laid it into a styrofoam form that looked as if it had once been used as packing material. The brooch left a nearly perfect impression of the dragon, which she touched up with the tip of the hot-glue gun. When it was done, she filled the mold with more hot glue.
“And now we wait a few minutes for it to cool,” Anita said. “Okay, we’ve got pins, the kimono…Anything else?”
“I think I should wear this,” Doris said, digging into the bottom of her pack and pulling out the metal pin of the woman in the chariot.
“Interesting,” Anita said, examining the pin. “Nice craftsmanship. Doesn’t really go with the outfit, but if we use it to pin up your hair it will be less noticeable. Okay, hot glue’s done enough.”
She removed the still-warm form and held it up.
“Voila, one dragon mask.”
“I don’t get it,” Traxa said.
Traxa was a taller, teenage version of her mother, wearing a black bodice, black leather wings and demon horns. Doris had already determined that the outfit matched the personality. “Friendly as a prickly pear” were the words that came to mind.
Anita laid more glue onto the paper mask then pressed the dragon onto it.
“Now to form it,” she said. “Put it on.”
The glue was still warm, hot even, but Doris dutifully put it on.
“We gently form it to the face,” Anita said, pressing down carefully on the still-malleable glue, “and we now have a form-fitted dragon mask to go with the kimono.”
“A hot-glue dragon mask,” Traxa said, shrugging. “It’s ugly.”
“And we take it off,” Anita said, sharply, “and put it on a dummy. Then we spray glue it,” she continued, spraying the mask and, incidentally, the dummy, “then we cover it in gold glitter.”
When complete, the mask was a gorgeous replica of a golden dragon that fit Doris’s face as if made for it. Which it was.
“Total cost? Maybe three dollars,” Anita said. “And it’s pretty much the same thing a Hollywood costumer would make for a TV show. They might use foam latex instead of hot glue but the principle is the same, and the
