The Second Summoning

by Tanya Huff

  As the silence from the other end of the line continued, she laid the phone down on the bed beside Austin who cocked his head so that his mouth was at the microphone and one ear pointed at the speaker.

  “Dean, you still there?”

  That wasn’t Claire. Where had Claire gone?

  “Claire?”

  Austin’s tail tip flicked back and forth. “She’s here, but right now, we need some answers. Do you love her?”

  Dean sighed in relief. That, he didn’t have to think about. “Yes.”

  “Do you want to be with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Write down these directions.”

  He shook his head to clear some of the adrenaline buzz and grabbed a pen off the end table beside the sofa bed. Paper. He had no paper. Pulling the fabric tight over his leg, he wrote the directions on the sheet, repeated them, and hung up.

  “Well?” Claire demanded as Austin lifted his head. “What did he say?”

  “He said yes. Hang this up, would you. If you’re thinking of what to get me for Christmas, I’m fairly certain I could manage one of those large-buttoned phones they have for seniors.”

  “Austin.”

  “Just think of the time you’d save if I could order my own food.”

  “Austin!”

  “What?”

  Claire managed to avoid throttling him but only just. “He said yes, and?”

  “And I expect he’s folding his underwear into his hockey bag even as we speak.”

  “He folds his underwear?” Diana snickered.

  “He folds everything,” Austin told her, fastidiously smoothing a bit of rumpled fur.

  “Austin…” Claire ground the cat’s name out through clenched teeth. “…what does Dean’s underwear have to do with anything? And you…” She turned a warning glare on her sister. “…can just shut up and let him answer the question.”

  “It has to do with packing.” When she continued to glower, Austin sighed. “Packing to come here. And you’re welcome,” he gasped as jubilant Claire scooped him up into her arms. “But I’m old, and you just drove a rib through my spleen.”

  “Do cats have a spleen?”

  “I think you’re missing the point.”

  “Sorry.” She set him back on the bed and, suddenly conscious of her sister’s smug expression, stiffened. “What?”

  “Don’t you have appreciation to show to someone else? Someone who, oh, made the initial contact?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And I would have told him without your help.”

  “Oh, sure. And Babe would’ve been nominated for that best picture Oscar without my help.”

  “Diana!”

  “I was a lot younger then! And it’s not like it won…”

  It was not possible to drive from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Kingston, Ontario, in seventeen hours. For reasons unknown to mortal man—although most mortal women were aware of them as they involved asking for directions when trying to get out of Montreal—the trip from east to west took eighteen hours. Dean actually had to drive past Kingston through Toronto, to London, then north to Lucan. The whole trip took him twenty-three hours. He saw one police car parked at a doughnut shop. He saw no moose.

  FOUR

  “THAT’S HIS TRUCK. He’s here!”

  “Claire…can’t breathe…”

  “Sorry.” She loosened her grip on the cat, who squirmed out of her arms and stalked to the other end of the couch, tail lashing from side to side. Brushing drifts of cat hair off her sweater, she murmured, “I can’t believe how nervous I am.”

  “I can’t believe how nerdy you are,” Diana sighed. “You love him, he loves you, yadda, yadda, yadda. Now haul ass out there and let him know he’s at the right house.”

  “Keepers don’t…”

  “What? Make spectacles of themselves with Bystanders in public?” Diana’s mimicry of her sister was cuttingly accurate. “If you wait until he comes up to the house, you’ll have to invite him in. If he comes in here, he’ll have to make nice with Mom and Dad. If, on the other hand, you meet out there, you can take him directly to your place and make nicer with each other. Your choice.”

  Eyes locked on the figure getting out of the truck, Claire hesitated…

  “You know Dad’ll want to show him the photo album.”

  …and decided.

  “Now haul ass out there and let him know he’s at the right house?” Austin snorted as he walked over to stand beside Diana at the open door. “I never knew you were such a romantic.”

  Fireworks! Claire thought with the small part of her brain still functioning. Then she realized it was just the Christmas lights on the front of the house reflecting in Dean’s glasses. He tasted like coffee and toothpaste. Or coffee-flavored toothpaste.

  After a moment, she pulled her mouth far enough away from his to sigh, “You’re here.”

  He smiled down at her, finding it just a little difficult to focus. “I’m here.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “I’m glad you called.”

  “I can’t hear them.”

  “Lucky you,” Austin muttered, moving away from the open door. “If I have to hear any more, I’m going to hork up a hairball. That dialogue is so banal she should have run into his arms in slow motion.”

  “There’s a foot of snow on the path,” Diana reminded him. She took another look. “Or rather there was.” The snow beneath Dean’s work boots and Claire’s running shoes had melted and the cleared area was spreading fast. Peering through fog created by the sudden, localized heat, she grinned and yelled, “Get a room!”

  “Diana?”

  “Mom.” Diana pulled the door closed as she turned. There were some things that shouldn’t be shared across the generations. Third Eye Blind and bicycle shorts topped the list, but watching Claire suck face with a hunka hunka burning love in the front yard followed close behind. Most of the time, Diana tried to be sensitive to parental feelings. “What can I do for you?”

  “Was that Dean’s truck I heard?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Has Claire gone out to meet him?”

  “Yes, she has.”

  “Is she going to bring him inside to say hello to the rest of us?”

  “I somehow doubt it.”

  Martha Hansen studied her younger daughter’s expression. “I see. It’s like that, is it? Well, good.”

  “Good?”

  “Yes, good. I like Dean, and I hope he and Claire will find happiness together. Not many Keepers manage to find someone to share their lives with,” she added, shooting a pointed look at her younger daughter. “Most of you are such arrogant know-it-alls that you end up old and alone.”

  “Yeah, yeah, if we end up old at all.” Diana waved off the warning. Since she had every intention of going out young in a blaze of glory, it was moot. “So you don’t mind about the hot monkey sex in the front yard?”

  Martha’s smile grew slightly wistful. “Your father and I were like that when we first got together. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”

  “Eww, gross!” The list of not to be shared was hurriedly revised, parental coupling confidences now moved into the primary position.

  “Shouldn’t I go in and say hello to your parents?”

  Dad’ll want to show him the photo album.

  “No.”

  Dean pulled back reluctantly, tracing a line of kisses up her face as he lifted his head. “Claire, it’s polite.”

  He was never impolite. Claire didn’t think he could be. “If a little old lady showed up right now,” she murmured while nibbling on his chin, “would you help her across the street?”

  “What little old lady?” Although cognitive thought was becoming increasingly difficult, he was fairly certain they hadn’t been talking about little old ladies.

  “Any little old lady.”

  Now he was confused. Separating his chin from her mouth with
a soft sucking sound, he looked around, wondering where the fog had come from. “I don’t see a little old lady.”

  “There is no little old lady.” Claire made a mental note to be more specific in the future. “I was just making the point that there’s a time and a place for everything, and this is not the time to be with my parents.” She glanced down.

  Dean’s cheeks flushed crimson. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away from his jeans. “Claire, I…” Then the length of her thigh brushed against his, and he made a sort of choking noise deep in his throat as he bent his mouth back to hers.

  “I have my own apartment over the garage,” she murmured against his lips. “It’s not actually part of my parents’ house. Technically, we can go directly up there without being rude.”

  “Claire…”

  “If we go up there now, I can give you your Christmas present.”

  “Christmas isn’t until tomorrow,” he protested weakly.

  Twisting free of his grip, she slid her hands up under his sweater until she could feel his heart slamming against his ribs so hard that the muscle sheathing them shivered under the impact. She shivered a bit herself and murmured, “Do you really want to wait?”

  “Way to go, Dean! He’s carrying her up the stairs. Ouch, that had to hurt. Hit her head on the side of the garage.” Shaking her own head in sympathy, Diana shifted position slightly to get a better angle on the scene. “She seems to be okay—they’re carrying on. Probably has so many endorphins in her system she can’t feel a thing.”

  “Diana!” Her mother twitched the curtains out of her grip. “That’s quite enough of that!”

  The garage having just cut off her line of sight, Diana shrugged and stepped away from the window, raising both hands in exaggerated surrender. “Not a problem, Mom, your wish is my command.”

  “Good.” Martha tucked a strand of graying hair back behind her ear and folded her arms. “Then let me make that wish just a little more specific—no more spying on your sister, period. No hidden microphones. No web cams. No scrying in any form; no mirrors, no bowls of water, and especially no entrails. I need those giblets for the gravy. You will leave Claire and Dean alone while they…”

  Diana’s eyebrows rose to touch her hairline.

  “Yes, well, just never mind what they’re doing. They’re adults, and it’s none of your business. Or mine or your father’s,” she added before Diana could speak. “When you’re out on your own, we will extend the same courtesy to you, so there’s no need to look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like your life is a never-ending battle against personal oppression. You’re seventeen, Claire’s twenty-seven.”

  “And Dean’s twenty-one.”

  “Which means?”

  “Absolutely nothing. I’m happy she’s happy. I’m happy they’re happy. I’m happy you’re happy. But, all things considered, you might want to have the fire department on standby.”

  “The fire department is on standby,” her mother pointed out dryly. “Or have you forgotten what happened last Christmas when the star of Bethlehem went supernova.”

  Diana had long since stopped protesting that they’d have won the Christmas lighting contest had the fire department simply damped down the crèche like she’d asked them to instead of putting the whole thing out because her parents always answered with irrelevancies. The roof had been perfectly safe. Essentially safe. Slightly scorched…

  A short time later, having been forced to eat a piece of fruitcake and talk to Aunt Corinne on the phone, she straightened up from the wall that separated her room from Claire’s apartment, set the empty glass down on her desk, and sighed. “That works on television.”

  “So does David Duchovny but he’s got just as slim a connection to the real world,” Austin reminded her, eye narrowed as he watched her push a handful of pencils one at a time, into a mug. “I thought your mother told you to leave them alone.”

  “She didn’t specifically say no eavesdropping.” Picking a pair of sweatpants off the floor, Diana poked her finger through a ragged hole in the knee.

  “She didn’t specifically tell you not to feed the cat, but I notice you’ve managed to resist.”

  “You just ate some fruitcake.”

  “Your point?”

  “Do cats even like fruitcake?”

  “Does anyone?”

  She threw the sweatpants into the laundry basket and dropped into her desk chair, spinning herself petulantly around and around. “You’re being awfully understanding considering that Claire’s shut you out, too—after we got them together.”

  “If you think I’m interested in watching talking monkey sex,” Austin snorted, “think again.”

  “That’s hot monkey sex.”

  “You’re all talking monkeys from where I sit. And I’ve seen that friction thing; it never really changes.”

  A six-car passenger train roared across the room and into a tunnel.

  “Okay,” he said thoughtfully when the noise had died. “That was different.”

  “Diana!”

  Waving away the lingering scent of burning diesel, Diana opened her bedroom door, fingers hooked in the trim as she leaned out into the hall. “Yeah, Dad?”

  “What the bloody blue blazes was that?”

  “I think it was a euphemism.” The vibrations had knocked askew a set of family photographs hanging on the wall across from her. A previously serious portrait of Claire had developed a distinctly cheesy grin. “Or maybe a metaphor.”

  “Well, don’t do it again!”

  “It wasn’t me!” She closed the door, not quite slamming it, and walked to the bed. “Why does he always assume it’s me?” she demanded, scooping Austin up into her arms.

  “It always is you.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Natural mistake, though. Close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me. Three, two, one…”

  The possibilities opened.

  Wide.

  “Holy shit!” One hand pressed against the glass, Brent Carmichael turned away from the window and stared at the half dozen firefighters standing behind him. Behind them, the cards they’d abandoned lay spread out on the table. “Did you see that?”

  “I’m still seeing it,” one of the others muttered trying to blink away afterimages.

  “It came from the direction of the Hansen place.”

  Someone whimpered.

  The silence stretched past the point where it could be comfortably broken and then went on a little longer. Finally, the shift senior, a man with eighteen years experience and two citations for bravery, cleared his throat. “I didn’t see anything,” he said.

  A mumbled chorus of, “Neither did I,” followed the collective sigh of relief.

  “But…” Brent looked out into the darkness of Christmas Eve, at the starlit beauty of the velvet sky above, at the strings of brightly colored Christmas lights innocently mirroring that beauty below, and remembered other visits to the Hansen house. Or tried to. Most of the memories were fuzzy—and not warm and fuzzy either, but fuzzy like trying to pull in the WB without either a satellite dish or cable, picture skewed, one word in seven actually audible. And the harder he tried, the less he could remember.

  Except for the incident with the burning bush. That, he couldn’t forget.

  Denial became the only logical option.

  Happy to have that settled, he turned back to the game. “What moron just chose Charmander against Pikachu?”

  The light should have dissipated.

  Should have.

  Didn’t.

  Instead, it found itself in an empty, cavernous room in a large, two-story brick building. Caught by the power woven into the snowflake pattern, it rose up through the crepe-paper streamers toward the ceiling, was filtered and purified, and poured back through the center hole.

  More now than merely a glorious possibility, it hovered for a moment above center court, then,
following the pull of need, it passed through the window, and out into the night.

  Lena thoughtfully flicked her lighter on and off. She’d already taken the batteries out of the smoke detector in the hall, but after a certain point that became moot and her father would come charging down into her room demanding to know if she was trying to burn down the house.

  There were six candles burning under her angel poster, nine among the angel figurines on her dresser, three votive candles in angel candle holders, and one in a souvenir Backstreet Boys mug on the bedside table.

  Close to the limit.

  One more, she decided, and started searching through the stubs of melted wax for something worth burning. Nothing. Unfortunately, that one more had gone from being an option to being a necessity during the search. Slowly, she turned to her bookshelf.

  The angel standing beside her CD player was an old-fashioned figure about a foot high in long flowing robes and wings. He was even carrying a harp. His gold halo circled a pristine white wick.

  Heart pounding, Lena approached with the lighter. This had been her very first angel, plucked out from between a broken Easy-Bake oven and a stack of macramé coasters at a neighborhood yard sale. Oh, please, she thought as the flame touched the wick. Let this sacrifice be enough to make it happen!

  There was no need to be more specific about what it was. It was always the same thing. She’d wished for it on a thousand stars, her last three birthday cakes, the wishbones of four turkeys, Christmas and Thanksgiving, and with a penny in every body of water she passed. The school custodian had fished enough pennies out of the toilets in the girls’ washrooms that he’d treated himself to a package of non-Board of Education toilet paper—the kind that couldn’t be fed through a laser printer.

  The wick darkened, a bit of wax melted on the top of the golden head, and then the flame roared up high enough to scorch the ceiling, filling Lena’s basement bedroom with light.

  The light moved slowly away from the candle, into the center of the room.

  “It’s an angel,” Lena cried, eyes watering, eyebrows slightly singed.