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Long Hot SummoningTanya Huff
Tanya Huff



LONG HOT SUMMONING



The finest in Fantasy and Science Fiction

by TANYA HUFF from DAW Books:

THE SILVERED

THE ENCHANTMENT EMPORIUM

THE WILD WAYS

The Confederation Novels:

A CONFEDERATION OF VALOR

Valor’s Choice/The Better Part of Valor

THE HEART OF VALOR (#3)

VALOR’S TRIAL (#4)

THE TRUTH OF VALOR (#5)

SMOKE AND SHADOWS (#1)

SMOKE AND MIRRORS (#2)

SMOKE AND ASHES (#3)

BLOOD PRICE (#1)

BLOOD TRAIL (#2)

BLOOD LINES (#3)

BLOOD PACT (#4)

BLOOD DEBT (#5)

BLOOD BANK (#6)

The Keeper’s Chronicles:

SUMMON THE KEEPER (#1)

THE SECOND SUMMONING (#2)

LONG HOT SUMMONING (#3)

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, Volume 1:

Sing the Four Quarters/Fifth Quarter

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, Volume 2:

No Quarter/The Quartered Sea

WIZARD OF THE GROVE

Child of the Grove/The Last Wizard

OF DARKNESS, LIGHT, AND FIRE

Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light/The Fire’s Stone



TANYA HUFF

LONG HOT SUMMONING


The Keeper Chronicles #3







Copyright © 2003 by Tanya Huff.

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-101-65801-7

Cover art by Judy York.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1256.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.






































First Printing, May 2003

 DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES—MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A.

Back in the summer of 2001, I attended a convention in Toronto called TT15. Or possibly TT2001 . . . it used to be called Toronto Trek and that’s how I remember it. Anyway, after my reading, during the question and answer session, I talked about this book which I’d just started writing. I gave a brief synopsis of what it was about and mentioned that it didn’t, as yet, have a title. A woman in the back of the room called out, “What about LONG HOT SUMMONING?”

The perfect title.

I don’t know who you are, but if you’re reading this, this one’s for you!


Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen



ONE

THROWING HER BACKPACK OVER ONE SHOULDER, Diana raced out the front door and rocked to a halt at the sight of the orange tabby crossing the front lawn. Or more specifically, at the sight of what dangled from the cat’s mouth. With one of its disproportionately long arms barely attached and dragging on the grass, and something that looked like intestine wrapped around one bare ankle, the bogey was unquestionably dead. An eyeball bounced gently against its bloody forehead with every step. “Nice catch,” she noted, half her attention on the approaching bus. “Where did you find it?”

“Ood ’ile,” Sam told her proudly, his voice distorted by the body.

“You know you can’t eat it, right?”

Amber eyes narrowed, he let the bogey drop and fixed Diana with an incredulous glare. “Do I look like an idiot?”

“No, but you haven’t been a cat for very long…” Six months ago, he’d been an angel. Angels didn’t concern themselves with the small things that slipped through the possibilities. “…and you know how my mother feels about that whole puking on the white wool rug thing.”

“Once! I did it once!”

“Yeah, so did I, and she’s never let me forget it either.” With a scream of abused brake linings, the bus stopped more or less at the end of the driveway. “I don’t have time to bury it now, so try to leave it where Mom’s not going to trip over it.” Turning, she took two steps and turned again, pulled around by the weight of Sam’s regard. “Oh, right. Sorry. You are a mighty hunter. Your skill with tooth and claw is amazing. Fast. Deadly. I stand in awe.”

“Hey! Sarcasm.”

“Not sarcasm,” Diana protested hurriedly. There were any number of imaginative places the dead bogey could be left. “But I’ve got to go. Mr. Watson won’t wait forever.”

“I’m amazed Mr. Watson stops at all.”

“Yeah, well, need provides and all that. Remember, I’ll be home early,” she added, trotting backward up the path, “just in case there’s anything you don’t want me to catch you doing.”

A presented cat butt made his opinion of that fairly plain.

Mr. Watson looked more nervous than impatient. He nodded a silent reply to Diana’s cheerful good morning, closed the door practically on her heels, and jerked the bus into gear. Had Diana not already been reaching into the possibilities, she’d have landed on her ass as he burned rubber trying to outrun half-buried memories. Fully burying them would have messed with his ability to drive, so only the less likely edges had been fuzzed out, leaving him in a perpetual state of nearly remembering things he’d rather not. Which was actually a state fairly common among school bus drivers.

Diana tried not to resent his attitude, but it wasn’t easy. This semester alone she’d stopped a black pudding from devouring an eighth grader, saved Chrissy Selwick from a three-headed dog attracted to the aconite in the herbal body mist she’d been given for Christmas—might as well have had “eat me” tattooed on her forehead—and prevented a Gameboy™ from taking over the world. Handheld computer games were more competitive than most people thought.

She’d also stopped Nick Packwood from hanging a second grader out the window by his heels, but since she still wasn’t entirely certain the kid hadn’t deserved it, she usually left that particular incident off her “reasons Mr. Watson should thank his gods I’m on the bus” list.

Making her way back through the rugrats, Diana noticed without surprise that the last six rows—the rows reserved for the high school students on the route—were nearly empty. On this, the last day of the high school year, only two freshmen had been unable to find alternative transportation.

“My brother was going to give me a ride,” said the first as she passed. “But he had to go to work really early.”

“Yeah. I was going to ride my bike, but I had, like, an asthma attack,” the other explained, holding up his inhaler for corroboration.

Diana ignored them both. First, because a senior acknowledging freshmen would open up all sorts of possibilities she had no desire to deal with. Second, as the youngest, and therefore most powerful Keeper, as one of the Lineage who maintained the mystical balance of the world, as someone who had helped close a hole to Hell and faced down demons, she didn’t need to justify her reasons for taking the bus.

Settling into her regular seat, she thanked any gods who might be listening that this would be the last day she’d ever be at the mercy of public education.

*   *   *

Frowning, Diana crossed the main hall toward the stairs, trying to get a fix on the faint wrongness she could feel. It wasn’t a full-out accident site; no holes had been opened into the lower ends of the possibilities allowing evil to lap up against closed doors leading to empty classrooms, but something was out of place and, as long as she was in the building, finding it and fixing it was in the job description. Actually, it pretty much was the job description.

As far as Diana was concerned, all high schools needed Keepers. Nothing poked holes in the fabric of reality faster than a few thousand hormonally challenged teenagers all crammed into one ugly cinder-block building. Unattended, that was exactly the sort of situation likely to create the kind of person who developed an operating system that crashed every time someone attempted to download an Amanda Tapping screen saver.

The sudden appearance of a guidance counselor actually emerging from his office and heading straight for her nearly sent Diana running toward the nearest washroom. She didn’t want her last day ruined by yet another pointless confrontation. Fortunately, she realized he felt the same way before her feet started moving. Fuck it. What’s the point? flashed into the thought balloon over his head and he slid past without meeting her gaze.

The thought balloons had appeared back in grade nine when, after half an hour of platitudes, she’d wondered just what exactly he was thinking. An unexpected puberty-propelled power surge had anchored the balloons so firmly she’d never been able to get rid of them and she’d spent the last four years finding out rather more than she wanted to about the fantasy lives of middle-aged men.

Pamela Anderson.

And hockey.

Occasionally, Pamela Anderson playing hockey.

Some of the visuals were admittedly interesting.

The wrongness led her up the stairs, through the first cafeteria and into the second—weirdly, the hangout of both the jocks and the music geeks—empty now except for a group of girls who’d laid claim to the far corner by the northwest windows. A flash of aubergine light pulled her toward them. The senior girls’ basketball team, Diana realized as she drew closer. Probably hanging around in order to remain the senior girls’ basketball team. Over two thirds of them were graduating, so once they stepped out the door, they’d be a team no longer.

“…so I said to him, I’m not putting that in my mouth.” Tall, blonde, ponytail—Diana didn’t know her name. “First of all, I don’t know where it’s been and secondly, this lipstick cost twenty-one dollars.”

“And what did he say?” asked one of her listeners.

“Oh, you know guys. He took it so personally. All like, ‘you would if you loved me.’”

“So what did you say?”

“That I loved my lipstick more.”

In the midst of the laughter and catcalls that followed her matter-of-fact pronouncement, Blonde Ponytail looked up and spotted Diana.

“Did you want something?” she asked icily.

“Uh, yeah.” Diana leaned a little closer; trying to get a better look at the heavy bangle Blonde Ponytail wore around her left wrist. “Please tell me where you got your bracelet.”

“This? At Erlking’s Emporium in the Gardener’s Village Mall. I got it last weekend when I was visiting my father in Kingston.”

Great.

Kingston.

Where there used to be a hole to Hell.

Oh, sure. It could be coincidence.

“It’s silver, you know.”

Well, it was silver colored; the broad band embossed with large flowers each centered with a demon’s eye topaz. It was quite possibly the ugliest piece of jewelry Diana had ever seen. “No, it isn’t. It only looks like silver.”

“What? You mean that troll lied to me?”

Troll.

With any luck, that was a colorful exaggeration rather than the mystical version of a Freudian slip.

Diana didn’t feel particularly lucky. Stretching out a finger, she lightly touched the edge of one metallic petal.

A much larger flash of aubergine light.

A moment later, Diana found herself pressed face first into one of the cafeteria’s orange plastic chairs discovering far more than she wanted to about the olfactory signature of the last person sitting in it. Then she realized she was actually under the chair and heaved it to one side.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just a little bruised.” Accepting the offered hand, she pulled herself to her feet. “Static electricity,” she explained, trailing power through the basketball team. “I must have completed some kind of circuit.”

Several heads, probably the ones who hadn’t passed physics, nodded sagely.

The insistent trill of a cell phone broke the tableau.

“Mine,” Diana admitted, digging her backpack out from under the table. Eyes widened as she unzipped an outside pocket. After the unfortunate 1-800-TEACHME incident back in the spring of 2001, students were not permitted to use their cell phones while on school property. Oh, yeah, I’m a rebel, she thought flipping it open, then added aloud, “It’s my mother.”

When the team seemed inclined to linger, she threw a little power into, “Everything’s cool. You can go now.”

“Diana? What just happened?”

“You felt that at home?” She headed back toward the other cafeteria as the girls reclaimed their table, Blonde Ponytail muttering, “What a piece of cheap junk; I’m going to wring that troll’s neck.”

“Felt it? Yes, I’d say we felt it. Sam’s hanging from the top of the living-room curtains and the coffeepot’s bringing in radio broadcasts from 1520—apparently Martin Luther was just excommunicated. I missed part of Suleiman the Magnificent’s birth announcement as your father called to say he’d felt it in the next county. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I touched a piece of jewelry from the Otherside and there was a bit of a reaction. Don’t worry, I covered everything up, and the jewelry’s been totally nullified.”

“Where…?”

“Was the jewelry?” Diana interrupted. “Around the wrist of a fellow student. How did she lay her hands on a bracelet—and an incredibly ugly bracelet, I might add—that came from the Otherside? She bought it in a store called Erlking’s Emporium. Just where exactly is Erlking’s Emporium? Kingston.”

“Oh, Hell.”

“Probably.” Leaving the cafeteria, she headed for the main stairs and the front doors. “I figure I just blew a crack through their shielding and that Claire ought to be getting the Summons any minute.”

“Claire’s not in Kingston right now; she’s answering a Summons in Marmora.”

“Well, if it’s important, I’m sure the id…powers-that-be will give it to someone else.”

“You’re not getting anything?”

“Nope, nothing.” There was no one in the main hall. Another fifteen meters and she’d be out the doors and home free.

“Good. And while I have you, I thought we’d agreed you weren’t going to wear that T-shirt to school?”

“Sorry, Mom; the school has a ‘no cell phone’ rule. Gotta go.” Flipping the phone closed, Diana paused in front of her reflection in the glass of the trophy case. The writing across her chest—red on black—said, My sister’s boy toy went to Hell and all I got was a lousy T-shirt. She seemed to be the only one in the family who found it funny.

“Ms. Hansen.”

Phone still in her hand, Diana spun around and smiled up at the vice-principal. “It was my mother, Ms. Neal. I had to take the call.”

“Yes, I’m sure. But that’s not what I wanted to speak with you about. You’re an intelligent young woman, Diana, and while your years here have not been without…incident…”

The pause nearly collapsed under the memory of the whole football team thing. Some changes lingered, even in the minds of the most prosaic Bystander.

“Yes, well, your marks are good,” the vice-principal continued after a long moment, “in spite of your frequent absences, and I can’t help but feel it’s a real shame that you’ve decided not to go on to college or university.”

Diana shuddered. More time spent under academic authority? So not going to happen. “I’m afraid I’m just not the higher education type, Ms. Neal.” Sliding sideways, she moved a little closer to the door.

“Job prospects…”

“I have a job. Family business. Pays well, chance to travel, making the world a better place and all that.” Also demons, dangers, and the possibility of dying young but it still beat pretty much any other profession as far as Diana was concerned. Well, maybe not sitcom star or Hollywood script doctor but everything else. “You might say it’s the kind of job I was born to do,” she added reassuringly.

From the sudden contentment on Ms. Neal’s face, a little too reassuringly.

“It’s nice to know that at least one of my students will be leaving the school for a bright and beautiful future,” she sighed. “I’ll never forget you, Diana.”

Diana smiled. “Actually, you’ll forget me the moment I step out the door.”

“I don’t think…”

And then the threshold was between them.

Ms. Neal’s brow furrowed. She stared at Diana for a long moment, shook her head, and walked away.

Although not by nature a bouncy person, Diana almost skipped down the steps of the school. It was two thirty on Thursday, June the twenty-third, and she was finally free to be what she’d been intended to be from birth. Crossing the threshold for that last time had moved her from reserve to active Keeper status.

At two thirty-one, the Summons hit.

Both hands clamped to her temples, she tried to uncross her eyes. “Okay. I probably should have expected that.”

“Mom? You home?”

“She’s at the Pough house,” Sam told her, coming out of the living room. “There was some kind of emergency involving ravens and bad poetry. She said…” He paused, stared at Diana for a moment, then rubbed up against her shins. “We’ve got a Summons!”

“We do.” She told him about the bracelet as they pounded upstairs.

“Kingston?” Sam jumped up on the end of the bed. “Shouldn’t it be Claire’s Summons, then?”

“No. It’s mine.”

“Yeah, but…you know…it’s just…”

“Austin.” Diana dumped assorted end-of-year crap out of her backpack and shoved in her laptop, a pair of clean jeans, socks, underwear, and her hiking boots. There were places Otherside where even heavy rubber sandals wouldn’t be enough. Actually, there were places where hazmat suits wouldn’t be enough, but she planned on staying away from the Girl Guide camp. “You’re afraid to go onto his territory.”

“I am not afraid. But he doesn’t like me.”

Zippered sweatshirt. Pajama bottoms. Tank tops. “He’s old. He doesn’t like anyone except Claire.”

“He likes you,” Sam protested following her into the bathroom.

“He tolerates me because I can operate a can opener.” Shampoo. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Soap. Towel. “Don’t worry. We’ll be in and out before Claire and Austin even know we’re there.”

Eyeing the toilet suspiciously—who knew porcelain could be so slippery—Sam jumped up onto the edge of the sink. “You know, a hole big enough to pass physical objects through might be harder to close than you think.”

Diana snorted, threw in a couple of rolls of toilet paper just in case, and headed for the kitchen where she packed a box of crackers, a jar of peanut butter, a nearly full bag of chocolate chip cookies, and six tins of cat food.

“Less chicken, more fish,” Sam told her.

“Fish gives you cat food breath.”

He looked up from licking his butt. “And that’s a problem because…?”

“Good point.” She made the change, pulled the small litter box and a bag of litter out of the broom closet and packed them as well. “I think that’s everything. Now I just need to leave a note for the ’rents.”

“Make sure they can see it.” A few moments later, his pupils closed down to vertical slits, Sam stared up at the brilliant letters chasing themselves around the refrigerator door. “That seems a little much.”

“Well, they’ll be able to see it.”

“Yeah; from orbit.”

“Some cats are never happy.” About to pick up the pack, she paused. “You want to get in now? Our first ride’ll meet us at the end of the driveway.”

“Might as well.” He flowed in through the open zipper, and the green nylon sides bulged as he made himself comfortable. “Hey…” Folded space distorted his voice. “What’s with the rubber tree and the hat stand?”

“They’re holding open the possibilities.” Zipping up all but the top six inches, Diana swung the pack over her shoulders and headed for the road.

Their first ride took them into Lucan.

Their second, to London.

In London, they got a lift from a trucker carrying steel pipe to Montreal. Diana spent the trip strengthening the cables that held the pipes to the flatbed—a little accident prevention—and Sam horked up a hairball on the artificial lamb’s wool seat cover. Which was how they found themselves standing by the side of the road in Napanee, a small town forty minutes east of Kingston.

At Sam’s insistence, they stopped for supper at Mom’s Restaurant…

“No, that’s not a cat in my backpack. It’s an orange sweater that just happens to enjoy tuna.”

…where they met someone willing to take them the rest of the way.

*   *   *

Her back to the West Gardener’s Mall parking lot, Diana waved as the metallic green Honda merged into Highway Two traffic. “That was fun. I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘It’s Raining Men’ sung with so much enthusiasm.”

“My ears hurt,” Sam muttered, jumping out onto the grass.

“I suppose you’d rather have angelic choirs?”

“Are you nuts? All those trumpets—it’s like John Philip Sousa does choral music.” Carefully aligning his back end, he sprayed the base of a streetlight. “It’s all praise God and pass the oom pah pah.”

“I’m not even sure I know what that means, but just on principle, please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Okay, I’m kidding.”

She turned to face the mall. “Now say it like you mea…” And froze. “Oy, mama. That’s not good.”

The circles of light that overlapped throughout the parking lot had all been touched with red, creating a sinister—although faintly clichéd—effect. At just past nine, with the mall officially closed, the acres of crimson-tinted asphalt were empty of everything but half a dozen…

“Minivans. It’s worse than I thought.”

*   *   *

He had stood at this door, at this time, every Friday night for the last twenty-one years. There had been other doors in the long years before, but there would be no other doors after. He would make his last stand here. The door was open only to allow late shoppers to exit; he, a human lock, protected the mall from those who would enter after hours.

He watched the girl stride toward him. His lips curled at the sight of bare legs between sandals and shorts. His eyes narrowed in disgust at the way her breasts moved under her T-shirt. He snorted at her backpack and her youth.

Were it up to him, he’d never let her kind into the mall. He knew what they got up to. Talking. Laughing. Standing in groups. Standing in pairs. Pairs tucked away in Bozo’s School Bus using lips and hands.

He stiffened as she stopped barely an arm’s length away.

“The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

Pink lips parted. “Please move out of my way.”

Twenty-one years at this door. “The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

Dark brows rose and dark eyes tried to meet his, but he stared at the drop of sweat running down her throat to pool against her collarbone and refused to be drawn in.

“Okay, fine. We’ll just have to do this the hard way.”

“The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

“Yeah, gramps, I got it the first time.”

His eyes burned and he blinked, only a single blink, but when his vision cleared, the girl was gone.

*   *   *

Good. It was good that she was gone. Gone with her shorts and her breasts and all her infinite possibilities.

Diana stopped just the other side of Bozo’s School Bus, set her backpack down on the yellow plastic kiddie ride, and waited while Sam climbed out.

“That was creepy,” he muttered, licking at a bit of ruffled fur.

“Very. And aren’t people that old supposed to be retired or something?”

“Or something,” the cat agreed. “Hey.” Front paws on the Plexiglas window, Sam peered into the bus. “This thing has seat belts. They don’t take it out of the building, do they?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then why seat belts?”

“I have no idea. But you know what’s really whacked? My bus—the one I rode down potholed dirt roads at a hundred and twenty klicks every morning and afternoon with a whole lot of very small bouncy children—no belts.” Swinging her pack back onto her shoulders, she headed for the main concourse. “Stay close and no one will see you.”

Sam fell into step by her right ankle. “Considering what that thing smelled like, I can think of one reason for seat belts. This place is huge. How are we going to find the Erlking Emporium?”

“Easy. We find the you-are-here sign. It’s probably at the end of this side hall.”

It wasn’t.

Although the side hall and one of the huge anchor stores spilled out into the main concourse at the same place, there was nothing to help mall patrons find their way through the two-story maze of stores they now faced.

“Maybe someone from the Otherside took it,” Sam offered when it became clear they were directionally on their own.

“It’s possible.” Motioning for Sam to be quiet, Diana froze as a final shopper slipped through the partially barricaded Kitchen Shop storefront, clutching a cheap manual can opener and trailing the ill wishes of the teenage clerk like black smoke behind her as she hurried down the side hall. “She feels like the last one in here. We’d better get moving before that creepy old security guard heads this way.”

Sam butted his head reassuringly against her leg. “You can take him.”

“Well, yeah. But I’d rather not. Come on. Blonde Ponytail said…”

“Who?”

“The jock with the bracelet. I never got her name. She said the store was on the lower level, so let’s find some stairs.”

Behind reinforced glass or steel bars, the stores themselves were places of shadow.

Unless the bracelet was the only piece of the Otherside they were selling, Diana should have been able to sense the Emporium, her Summons directing her like a child’s game of Warm and Cool where the parts of “Warm” and “Cool” were played by “I Can Live With the Headache if I Have to” and “Shoot Me Now.” Unfortunately, the Summons was unable to poke through the interference from the back rooms where a hundred part-time teenagers counted up a hundred cash drawers and ninety-seven of them came up short. By the time the cash had to be counted for the third time, the emanation of frustrated pissiness was so strong Diana couldn’t have sensed a trio of bears if they were sneaking up beside her.

“Hey, Rodney River has orange polyester bellbottoms on sale for $29.99.”

“Is that good?” Sam wondered.

Diana shuddered. “I can’t see how.” Pleased to see that the escalators had already been turned off—cat on escalator equaled accident waiting to happen—she led the way to the stairs.

Only the emergency lights were lit on the lower level, and the footprint of the mall seemed to have subtly changed.

“There’s too many corners down here. And if I can smell the food court, why can’t we find it?”

“I don’t…Someone’s coming.” Scooping up the cat, Diana backed into a triangular shadow and wrapped the possibilities around them both half a heartbeat before a flashlight beam swept by.

“I know you’re here.” One shoe dragging shunk kree against the fake slate tiles, the elderly security guard emerged from a side hall. Massive black flashlight held out in front of him, he walked bent forward, his head moving constantly from side to side on a neck accordion-pleated with wrinkles.

Diana would have said the motion looked snakelike except that she rather liked snakes.

Shunk kree. Shunk kree. “I will find you; never doubt it. I know you’ve hidden your lithe bodies away in the shadows.”

Sam twisted in Diana’s arms until he could stare up at her. His expression saying as clearly as if he’d spoken, “Lithe?” She shrugged.

“Long, loose limbs stacked unseen against the wall.” Shunk kree.

Who was he looking for? It couldn’t be her and Sam—he thought they were gone.

The flashlight beam flicked up, caught the pale face of a store mannequin, and stopped moving.

“Can’t run now, can you?” He shuffled past so close to her hiding place that Diana could almost count the dark gray hairs growing from his ear. “Can’t run with your muscles moving inside the soft skin.”

Diana gave him a count of twenty, then prepared to slip out and away. She had a foot actually in the air when cool fingers wrapped around her upper arm and held her in place.

Shunk. The security guard pivoted on one heel, turning suddenly to face back the way he’d come, flashlight beam exposing circles of the lower concourse. “Not too smart for me with your young brains,” he muttered, turning again and shunk kreeing his way toward the mannequin.

The cool fingers were gone as though they’d never existed. Since Diana was certain she and Sam had been alone in their sanctuary, the logical response seemed to be that they never had. That they’d been a construct of self-preservation. Her own highly developed subconscious holding her back from discovery. On the other hand, logic had very little to do with possibility, so Diana murmured a quiet thanks to the fingers as she left the shadow.

Cat in her arms, staying close to the storefronts, she raced down the concourse toward a side hall they hadn’t tried, at least half her attention listening for the shunk kree following behind her. After weaving through a locked-down display of hot tubs, she sagged against a pillar, adding its bulk to the space she’d already put between them and the old man.

“Okay,” she whispered into the top of Sam’s head. “I am officially squicked out. Where did they find that guy? He’s like every creepy, clichéd old man rolled into one wrinkly package and wrapped in a security guard’s uniform. I mean, I know he’s just a Bystander and I handled him at the door, but still…”

“Still what?”

“You know, still.”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked,” Sam pointed out, squirming to be let down. “And by the way, we’ve found the food court.”

Only six of the seven food kiosks were currently occupied. Directly across from them, a poster on plywood announced the future site of a Darby’s Deli. At some point, a local artist had used a black marker to make a few additions to the poster’s picture of Darby Dill, creating a remarkably well hung condiment. Tearing her gaze away from the anatomically correct pickle, Diana spotted yet another hall on the far side of the food court, the rectangular opening tucked into the corner between Consumer’s Drug Mart and a sporting goods store.

“It’s got to be down there.”

“Why?”

“Because it isn’t anywhere…What are you eating?”

Sam swallowed. “Nothing.”

As they entered the hall, the tile turned to a rough concrete floor. The bench and its flanking planters of plastic trees, although outwardly no different from other benches and other trees, had a temporary look. Only three stores long, the hall ended in a gray plywood wall stenciled with a large sign that read, “Construction Site: No Entry.” The last store before the wall was the Emporium.

Tucked into another convenient shadow, Diana studied the storefront through narrowed eyes. “I can’t sense a power signature, so I’m guessing the power surge only went one way.”

“If they’d known you were coming, they’d have baked a cake?”

She stared down at the cat. “Something like that, yeah. Who…?”

“Your father.”

“Well, do me a favor and don’t pick up any more of his speech patterns because that would be too weird.”

“Why?”

“Sam, you sleep on my bed. Just don’t, okay?”

He shrugged, clearly humoring her. “Okay.”

Diana turned her attention back to the store. “They’re not being very subtle, are they? If any of the Lineage had ever window-shopped their way down here, the name alone would have given the whole thing away.”

“The Lineage is big into window shopping?”

“Not my point.”

“Okay. But I think Erlking Emporium has a marketable ring to it.”

“Marketable? First of all, you’re a cat; marketable for you involves a higher percentage of beef byproducts. Second; do you even know what an Erlking is?”

Sam shot her an insulted amber glare, the tip of his tail flicking back and forth in short, choppy arcs. “According to German legend, it’s a malevolent goblin who lures people, especially children, to their destruction.”

Which it was. “Sorry. I keep forgetting about that whole used-to-be-an-angel had-higher-knowledge thing.”

“Yeah, you do. But I learned that off a PBS special on mythology.”

“While I was where?”

“Cleaning the splattered remains of a history essay off your bedroom walls.”

“Right.” A lapse in concentration and the Riel Rebellion had spilled out of her closet. It had taken her the entire weekend to clean up the mess, and most of it had turned out to be nonrecyclable. “I think I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”

The purely physical lock on the door took only a trickle of power to open.

Sam radiated disapproval as he slipped through into the store. “Breaking and entering.”

“Technically, only entering.” Locking the door behind them, Diana tried not to sneeze at the overpowering odor of gardenia coming off the display of candles immediately to her left. A quick glance showed that the gardenia had easily overpowered vanilla, cinnamon, bayberry, lilac, belladonna, monkshood, pholiotina, and yohimbe. Unless the Colonial Candle Company was branching out into herbal hallucinogens, at least half the display had clearly been brought over from the Otherside.

Not just the bracelet, then.

Rubbing her nose, she moved cautiously into the store, skirting a locked glass cabinet filled with crystal balls, and ending up nearly treading on Sam’s tail as, hissing, he backed away from…Diana bent over to take a closer look and had no better idea what animal the pile of stuffed creatures was supposed to represent. In spite of neon fur, they looked remarkably lifelike—given a loose enough definition of both life and like.

“I was just startled,” Sam muttered, vigorously washing a front paw.

“If I was closer to the ground, they’d have startled me, too.”

“I wasn’t afraid.”

“I know.” She stroked down the raised hair along his back as she straightened. “I think we can safely say the hole’s not out here. Let’s check out the storeroom.”

“It’s not back there either.”

Not Sam. Not unless Sam’s voice had deepened, aged, and moved up near the ceiling.

Diana dropped down behind a rack of resin frogs dressed in historical military uniforms and began to gather power.

“Think about it for a minute, Keeper; if I wasn’t on your side, I’d have already sounded the alarm. Why don’t you drop the fireworks and come over here so we can talk.”

He—whoever he was—had a point. Diana stood, slowly, and looked around. The shadows made it difficult to tell for certain, but she’d have been willing to bet actual cash money that she and Sam were alone in the store. “Where are you?”

“Up in the corner.”

The only thing she could see in the corner was the convex circle of a security mirror. Just as she was realizing the reflection seemed a little off, a familiar pair of blue-on-blue eyes appeared. “You’ve got to be kidding me. They’re using a magic mirror for security?”

“Ain’t life a bitch,” the mirror agreed. “Got pulled out of a well-deserved retirement—quiet hall, nice view out an oriel window—and got stuffed up here by Gaston the Wondertroll.”

“So there’s a real troll?”

“Large as life, and twice as ugly. Actually, larger than life if we’re reflecting accurately.”

“Great.”

“I wouldn’t worry about him, kid; he’s just the front man.” Faint blue frown lines. “Front troll. Those actually running this segue are keeping their heads tucked well down until it’s too late for your lot to stop it.”

Good thing she’d touched that bracelet, then. The energy discharged had been enough to crack the shielding and send the Summons. No touching, no Summons, no chance to stop the…“Wait a minute. Did you say, segue?”

“I did.”

“Okay. This is one of those times when I really wish I could swear.” She took three quick steps away from the mirror. Three quick steps back. “I should have known there was more to this than a cheesy gift shop selling…” A glance down. “…fake fairies on sticks.”

“Look again.”

Under the lacquer and the glitter…

“Eww.”

“Duck!”

“Where?” Diana didn’t even want to think about what these guys could do to a duck. A sudden circle of light hit the back wall of the store and she dropped to the ground. Oh. Duck.

The emporium’s door rattled as someone shook it, testing the lock.

Now who could that be? Two guesses and the first one doesn’t count. Flat against the carpet to keep the curve of her backpack behind cover, she tried not to think about the dark stain just off the end of her nose.

“Think you can get away with anything. Young bodies, supple, lissome.”

Adding that to lithe and limber, there seemed to be a thesaurus specifically for dirty old men.

“You can’t hide forever.” The circle of light swept across the store and disappeared. Through the glass came a muffled shunk kree, shunk kree as the security guard moved away.

Remembering the warning delivered by imaginary fingers, Diana hissed, “Sam, stay down,” a heartbeat before the light flashed back through the window. She counted a slow ten after that light disappeared before she stood. “Sam?”

He crawled out from behind a box of glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty and shook his fur back into place. “Don’t worry about me. I’m way faster than a geriatric rent-a-cop.”

“Good. So.” Arms folded, she stared up at the mirror. “Let’s cut to the chase before we’re interrupted again.”

“Fine with me, Keeper. Here’s the deal: I give you what help I can; in return, you get me out of here when you shut this place down.”

“Agreed.”

“And you recognize that when the shit hits the fan, I’m breakable and more than just a little exposed.”

She nodded. “We’ll be careful.”

“We? That would be you and the cat?”

“Us, too.” Diana took one last look around the store and decided she really didn’t need to know just what exactly the weights on the wind chimes were made of. “I think we’re going to need a little help.”



TWO

DROPPING HIS SPRAY BOTTLE of window cleaner onto the old-fashioned wooden counter, Dean McIssac crossed the small office and caught the phone on the second ring. “Elysian Fields Guest House.” A small frown of concentration appeared as he flipped open the reservation book, a leather-bound tome with the phases of the moon prominently displayed by each date. “Yes, sir, we still have rooms available for next Wednesday. We can certainly accommodate you and your mother. Sorry? Oh. Your mummy. No, that’s fine; many of our guests arrive after dark. We’ll hold the rooms until midnight. A dehumidifier? That can be arranged, I understand how mold and mildew could be a problem. No, unfortunately, I can’t guarantee the Keeper will be here, but I’m sure you’ll find our…” His cheeks flushed. “Thank you, sir. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

“Flushed is a good look on you.”

“Claire!” The receiver fell the last six inches into the cradle as Dean flag-jumped the counter and gathered the smiling Keeper into his arms.

“You made good time,” he murmured when they finally came up for air.

“I had a good reason.”

“One that I should know about?”

Dark brown eyes gleamed suggestively up at him. “Definitely.”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders and he began to pull her close again.

“Hel-lo! Crushing the cat here!”

Dean released his hold like he had springs in his fingers, and Claire leaped back, exposing the indignant, black-and-white cat cradled between them. “I’m sorry, Austin. I just got excited about being home.”

“Oh, yeah,” he muttered as she set him carefully on the counter. “It’s home that gets you excited. Tell us another one. No, wait…” He turned and glared at her from a single emerald eye. “…don’t.”

“Okay.” Her hands free, she slid them up the sculpted muscle of Dean’s torso and around the back of his neck, fingers entwined in thick hair. “I can’t resist a man in a pink T-shirt.”

He shifted his grip to her waist, thumbs working against the damp line of flesh between cropped tank and skirt. “Someone buried a red catnip square in the laundry basket.”

“That’s right. Blame the cat. The starving cat!” Austin snapped after a moment when it became quite clear he’d been forgotten again. “The old starving cat who just spent three hours in a car listening to sappy tales of dear, departed Muffy—who probably threw herself in front of that truck in an effort to escape the schmaltz with what was left of her dignity. The old starving cat who’s going to give you a count of three before he starts making pointed comments about your technique!”

“Austin, there’s a package of calf liver in the fridge.” Dean slid his hands down to the backs of Claire’s thighs and lifted her up onto the counter, hiking her skirt up over her knees. “It’s after being yours if you’ll disappear for ten minutes.”

“Fifteen,” Claire growled, licking at the sweat beading Dean’s throat. She kicked off her sandals, crossed her ankles behind him, and dragged him closer.

“You guys do know this is a hotel, right? Like, get a room!”

Forehead to forehead, Dean stared deep into Claire’s eyes. “You didn’t lock the door?”

“Apparently not.”

Lip curled in disgust, Diana closed the front door, pointedly locked it, and strode across the lobby toward the long hall that led to the back of the guesthouse. “We’ve got a bit of shopping-mall-takes-over-the-world situation here, but you guys go right ahead and continue with that whole blatant heterosexuality thing; there’s probably time. I’ll just make myself a sandwich and feed the cats. Coming, Austin?”

“Finally,” he snorted, jumping carefully down off the counter, “someone who has their priorities straight!”

“Are they always like that?” Sam wondered as the older cat fell into step beside him.

“Are you kidding? They’ve only been apart for three days—you should see them after a week. Spontaneous combustion.”

Sam frowned. “Wouldn’t that kill them?”

“You’d think.”

As the footsteps of the two cats and her sister faded toward the kitchen, Claire sighed. “Well, I’m no longer in the mood. You?”

“Not so much. That was after ending things for me.” He lifted her down off the counter and steadied her while she slipped her sandals back on. “Just so I’m clear on this; strangling your sister is not an option, then?”

“If you want to strangle my sister,” Claire told him as they left the lobby, “you’ll have to wait in line.”

“I hope you guys postponed instead of finishing,” Diana snorted as they entered the kitchen, “because if that was it, Claire should file a complaint. I mean it’s not like I’m an expert on these things,” she continued, assaulting a leftover roast with the carving knife, “but someone’s getting left a little short. No offense.” She grinned up at Dean.

“And yet, I’m offended anyway.” Grasping her wrist with one hand, he confiscated the knife with the other and jerked his head toward the dining room table. “You sit. I’ll do this.”

“I don’t know, Dean. I like my sandwiches made slowly and with care.”

“And you might want to reconsider further commentary,” Claire interjected from the dining room, “since he’s eight inches taller than you and holding a knife.”

“Please,” Diana scoffed, grabbing a bottle of juice from the fridge and coming around the counter that separated the two rooms, “Dean’s a pussycat.”

“Now, I’m offended,” Austin muttered.

Sam looked up from his cat food and frowned. “I thought you liked him.”

“Yeah. So?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not supposed to,” Claire told the younger cat comfortingly. “Let it go and move on.” Pulling out one of the antique table’s dozen chairs, she folded a leg up onto the red velvet seat and sat, indicating that Diana should do the same.

Diana didn’t so much sit as gang up with gravity to assault the furniture.

Claire winced as the chair protested, but hundred-year-old joints and wood glue held. “You said something about a shopping mall taking over the world?”

“I’m amazed you heard me.”

“You have a talent for attracting attention. I assume this concerns your first Summons as an active Keeper?”

“Got it in one.” Smiling her thanks at Dean for the sandwich, she waited until he sat down and pulled his seat up close behind Claire’s before she continued. “It all started this afternoon on what was, thank God, my very last day of school…”

When the story arrived at the mall, Claire interrupted.

“You should have called me.”

“Chill, uberKeeper. You weren’t in Kingston, and until I actually got to the Emporium, all I had was a piece of ugly jewelry. I’d have been further ahead closing down the Home Shopping Network. Unfortunately, once at the Emporium, I discovered we’re talking about a little more than a mere accident site—according to the magic mirror they’re using for security…”

“Magic mirror?” Dean leaned forward, one hand on Claire’s shoulder. “Like in the fairy tales?”

“Just like. Well, not exactly like,” Diana amended after chewing and swallowing the last mouthful of sandwich. “He’s a little pissed about being yanked out of retirement by Gaston the Wondertroll and is willing to do what he can to close the whole thing down.”

“Troll?”

She nodded. “They’re not just under bridges anymore.”

“According to the magic mirror,” Claire prompted, poking her sister with a Tahiti Sands-tipped finger.

“Ow.”

“Diana…”

“Okay, fine. According the mirror, whose name is Jack, it’s a segue.”

“A segue?” When Diana nodded, her expression making it clear she wasn’t kidding around, the older Keeper ran a hand up through her hair. “I have a sudden need for profanity.”

“Yeah. That was my reaction. That mall’s got to cover at least four acres. Maybe as much as six.”

“Segue?” Dean asked, dragging his chair around far enough to see Claire’s face.

“A metaphysical overlap intended to displace reality.”

He switched his attention to Diana.

She scratched thoughtfully at her left elbow and tried to come up with an explanation he could understand. “You know how the Otherside is neither here nor there? That everyone—good guys, bad guys, the Swiss—can all get in but can only get back out into their own reality, the one they left from? Well, in a segue, someone, or something, matches up a piece of the Otherside to this reality and blends them together until enough of the copy occupies the space of the original whereupon the copy takes over. That puts a piece of the Otherside inside this reality so that anyone can enter it from their reality and exit here. The Erlking Emporium is anchoring the biggest segue I’ve ever heard of.”

“The biggest?”

“Well, you can’t count Las Vegas, that’s a metaphysical heritage site. All that bad taste in one place put a real strain on reality.”

It took Dean about half a heartbeat to decide that was one of those comments he didn’t need to understand. “But how did the segue in the mall get so big without you guys noticing?”

“Hell,” Austin answered before either Keeper could. He put his front paws up on Claire’s knee and she lifted him onto her lap. “They hid a smaller bad inside the noise of the biggest bad. They probably set the anchor last fall while we were closing the hole and after that, it was just a matter of keeping things moving ahead, slow and steady.”

“And they are?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Oh, wait. No it isn’t.” He paused and licked at the quarter-sized bit of black fur on his front leg. “For simplicity’s sake, let’s just call them the bad guys.”

“But the Otherside isn’t necessarily bad.”

“Doesn’t matter; with a segue anything can cross over. Bad, good…”

“Hey!” Sam protested, coming out of the kitchen. “This world could use a little more good in it. I ought to know.”

Austin sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Light. Angel. Cat. Yadda. We all know the story and you’re missing the point. A little good is fine. A lot of good isn’t.”

“Keepers maintain the balance, Sam. A functional segue could tip it in either direction, and if they’re using trolls, well, I’m guessing we’re not heading for hugs and cheesecake.” Claire rubbed her thumb gently over the velvet fur between Austin’s ears. “Shutting them down is a tricky business,” she added thoughtfully. “It can’t be done from this side; I’ll have to cross over and go to the source.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “You’ll have to? Try we’ll have to. If I can’t close something this big on my own, you certainly can’t—Basic Folklore 101, the younger sibling is always more powerful. I have the power, you have the experience. United we stand, divided we fall, yadda yadda. So I suggest you get over yourself, drop the whole I’m-the-only-one-who-can-save-the-world crap, and recognize that we’ve got trouble.”

“Right here in River City,” Sam added.

“Show tunes?” Austin glared down at the orange cat. “You have got to be kidding.”

“I have three words for you, Austin.” Diana leaned a little closer to Claire’s lap and flicked up a finger for each word. “Andrew Lloyd Webber. But that’s so not what we’re talking about. We need to get back into that mall and close that segue. It’s going to take some time, so I suggest we start tonight.”

“Ignoring your less than flattering opinion of my character,” Claire muttered darkly, “I agree.”

“I don’t.”

“Listen much, Dean? Segue bad. Keepers good. And I don’t know where I was going with that, but the sooner we get the sucker closed down the better.”

“Not arguing,” Dean told the young Keeper calmly. “You said it’s going to take some time—that means you’ll be there for a while?”

Diana shrugged. “Yeah, but…”

“So you can’t just rush in all unprepared.”

“I guess not.”

“You’ll have to pack.”

Claire twisted around until she could see his face. “We have everything here…”

“It’ll still take time.” He glanced over at the old school clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen. “It’s past eleven now. It’ll be close to midnight when you’re ready to leave. By the time you get to the mall, you’ve both already been up for what—sixteen, seventeen hours? You’ll be facing whoever created this thing when you’re tired. You won’t be thinking as quickly or as clearly. The bad guys could win before you even get started and then where’s the world? Up sh…the creek without a paddle.” Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly, holding Claire’s gaze with his, lacing the fingers of his right hand through the fingers of her left. “You’ve got to weigh the delay against going in tired and unprepared. You should sleep tonight and go in tomorrow morning.”

Diana opened her mouth to deliver a blistering reply, and snapped it shut again as Austin said, “He’s right.”

“He’s a Bystander!” ...




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