The Second Summoning

by Tanya Huff

  “But…”

  “Merry Christmas, and I’ll try to stay in touch.”

  “We really made an angel, then?” Dean asked as he turned out onto the road.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “Seems a little…”

  “Light on the sausage stuffing.” Austin lifted his head out of the box, his eye gleaming indignantly. “there’s barely enough here for two people, let alone three.”

  “First of all, you’re not a people, you’re a cat.” Sliding one hand under his chest, Claire lifted him onto her lap. “Second, if you’ve stuck your litter-poo paw in the sweet potatoes, I will hurt you. Third…” She stroked a finger down the back of Dean’s thigh. “…I think we could’ve made an angel without Diana’s or Lena’s help.”

  It took him a moment, then he grinned, caught up her hand, and brought it to his lips. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Are you two planning on continuing this sort of behavior?” Austin demanded from Claire’s lap. “Because I’m old, you know, and I don’t think my insulin levels are up to it.”

  Claire pulled her hand away from Dean’s mouth and smoothed down a lifted line of fur. “Someone’s jealous.”

  “Of him?” The cat snorted and dropped his head down on his paws. “Oh, please.”

  “You sure?”

  “Cats don’t get jealous.”

  “Really?”

  “They get even.”

  “Austin.”

  “I’m kidding.”

  Diana stood in the driveway until Dean’s truck disappeared from view, and then walked back to the house kicking at clumps of snow.

  …as nice as it is to have those questions answered…

  Nice.

  There were times when she just wanted to take Claire by the ears and shake loose that more-Keeper-than-thou attitude of hers.

  She’s always thought the sun shines out of her butt…

  Having carefully negotiated a tight curve, Dean glanced over at Claire and smiled. He loved the way the light shone up and through the chestnut highlights in her hair, how it made her eyes seem dark and mysterious, how it.…Hang on. “Where’s that light coming from?”

  Claire sighed. “Just drive.”

  SIX

  A LITTLE OVER AN HOUR after leaving the Hansen house, Dean turned off York Street and stopped the truck in the parking lot of the London bus terminal. “Here, then?”

  “Here.”

  “Inside?”

  “No, over there.” She pointed to a bus parked at the back of the lot, barely visible between the blowing snow and the fading daylight.

  Dean put the truck in gear and moved slowly forward. Given the holiday, the terminal hadn’t seen a lot of traffic, so the parking lot, unplowed since morning, lay under a mostly unbroken blanket of snow. About three meters from the bus, he felt the steering wheel jerk in his hand and then begin to spin with that horrible, loose feeling that could only mean all four tires had no traction at all. He fought the skid, thought he had it, lost it again, and shouted, “Brace for impact!” just as the truck stopped with its passenger door a mere two inches from the front fender of the bus.

  “Brace for impact?” Austin asked, removing his claws from Claire’s jeans. “Do you even know how to swear?”

  Heart pounding, Dean shut off the engine. “What good would swearing do?”

  “Since you have to ask, probably none at…hey! What did I say earlier about dangling?” he demanded as Claire lifted him off her lap.

  “Sorry.” Brow furrowed, she rolled down her window and peered at the bus fender.

  “Excuse me! Old cat in a draft!”

  “Austin, be quiet. Dean, I’m going to have to get out your side.” She rolled up the window and reached under the cat to undo her seat belt. “We’re so close to the hole, I’m not sure you can safely move the truck. We’ve got a cascade going on here,” she added, sliding across, under the steering wheel, and out into the parking lot. As Dean struggled to hold the door against the wind, she leaned back into the cab. “Are you coming?”

  “Is it summer yet?”

  An icy wind blew pellets of snow down under her collar. “Not exactly.”

  Austin settled down, folding his front paws under his ruff. “Then I’m staying inside.”

  “All right. I’ll reset the possibilities to keep you warm.”

  “Thank you. Although if you don’t close that door,” he added pointedly, “it won’t make much difference.”

  Claire stepped back and nodded to Dean who, in spite of the wind, managed to close the door without slamming it. “You know anyone else would’ve just let it go.”

  “I’m not anyone else.”

  He had an arm on either side of her, gloved hands braced against the truck, and his smile was, if not suggestive, open to suggestion. Since they’d blocked the hole, effectively rendering it harmless, Claire figured it couldn’t hurt to take a short break. Besides, Austin was locked away behind glass and steel, making it too good an opportunity to miss.

  When they pulled apart a moment later, an eight-meter circle of parking lot had been cleared of snow. The asphalt directly underfoot steamed gently.

  “Is that going to happen every time?” Dean asked a little shakily, following Claire around to the bus.

  “I honestly don’t know.” Her lips felt bruised and all her clothing felt way too tight. “How about we stop for the night once I get this hole closed?”

  Dean glanced at his watch. “It’s ten after four.”

  “It’s getting dark.”

  He looked up at the sky and down at Claire. “I saw a hotel just up the road.”

  “So did I.” Dropping to her knees by the bus fender, she pulled off her glove and, holding a finger an inch or so off the chrome, traced a triple gouge in the metal.

  “That’s it, then?” Dean asked behind her. “It’s some small.”

  “A cascade doesn’t have to be very big. The driver probably clipped a car on the way out of the parking lot—because clipping a moving car would have caused an actual accident—didn’t stop, opened a hole, and flashed nasty possibilities all hither and yon on the bus route, probably causing a number of minor fender benders all day, which kept the hole from closing. Hence, cascade. It’s kind of like if every one of those minor fender benders had picked off the scab.”

  Dean winced. “I wasn’t after asking. But how do you know the driver didn’t stop?”

  “Driver stops, no hole.” Reaching into the possibilities, she pressed her thumb hard against one end of the first gouge. The metal rippled. The gouge disappeared. Twice more and the hole was closed. “I expect I’ll be closing a few holes this thing inspired,” she said as Dean helped her straighten up. “Sign says London-Toronto but since we’re still in London, it was clearly London-Toronto and back.” Pulling her glove on, she noticed a new glow of adoration in his expression. “What?”

  “You’ve never mentioned you do bodywork.”

  “I can rustproof, too.”

  “You can?”

  She grinned up at him. “No, sorry. I just wanted to see your eyes light…Oh!”

  “New Summons?”

  “No…”

  “No?”

  “No. It’s something else. Something close.”

  “So much for quitting early.” He was disappointed, of course, but the cold had pretty much taken care of the actual incentive.

  “No.” Claire started across the parking lot. “Really close.”

  When she reached the sidewalk, she paused and turned right. “Whatever it is, it’s inside the bus terminal.”

  The door was locked. The sign said, “TERMINAL CLOSES 4PM CHRISTMAS DAY.”

  “I guess that’s it until tomorrow, then.” Dean polished a few fingerprints off the glass and turned away. “Look, there’s the hotel.” A little confused, he watched Claire pull off her glove—not the reaction he’d been expecting. “What?”

  “I guess this has never come up�
�” Reaching into the possibilities, she opened the door.

  “Claire! That’s breaking and entering!”

  “I didn’t break, so it’s just entering.” She grabbed two handfuls of his coat and shoved him inside. “Move. Life is so much easier if we don’t have to explain to Bystanders.”

  “But this is illegal!” he protested as the door closed behind them. When she stepped forward without answering, he grabbed her arm. “The mat!”

  She jerked back and looked down. “What?”

  “Wipe your feet.”

  Claire considered a couple of possible responses. Then she wiped her feet.

  Half a dozen paces inside the terminal, she dropped down to one knee and pressed the spread fingers of her right hand against the tiles. “This isn’t good.”

  “I’d say it’s some disgusting,” Dean growled, kneeling beside her. “How can anyone leave their floors in this condition.”

  “Dean…”

  “Sorry. I expect you found something else that isn’t good?”

  Claire lifted her hand. The pads of her fingers sparkled. “Angel residue.”

  “Merry Christmas. You’ve reached the Hansen residence. No one feels like taking your call, so at the beep…”

  “Not now, Diana, we’ve got a problem. I’m at a pay phone in the London bus terminal, and you’ll never guess what I’ve found.”

  Phone jammed between ear and shoulder, Diana slid a platter of leftover turkey into the fridge. “Buses?”

  “Angel residue.”

  “That would’ve been my next guess.”

  “Right. It seems like Lena’s visitor hasn’t gone home.”

  “Unless he’s taking the bus.” She reached into the possibilities, opened a pocket on the second shelf, and shoved in the cranberry sauce, half a bowl of sweet potatoes, and an old margarine container now full of gravy. “You know, kind of a ’this bus is bound for glory’ thing. Say, how come you’re not using the cell phone you got for Christmas? No long distance charges and the battery’s good until the end of days. When you’re standing at the start of the Apocalypse, you’ll still have enough juice to call 911.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “I dunno. Run?”

  “I’m not using the cell phone because I left it in the truck. And I need you to go talk to Father Harris at St. Pat’s. He’s the last person who we know saw the angel. Maybe he knows where it’s—he’s—headed. I’ve got another Summons on the way out of town, and since I just closed a cascade, I expect to have a whole string of them all the way to Toronto, so I’ll call you once we’re settled for the night.”

  “No need. I’ll e-mail anything I find out.” As her sister started to protect, Diana rolled her eyes. “Claire, let’s make an effort to join the twentieth century before we’re too far into the twenty-first, okay? Later.”

  Hanging up and heading for her coat and boots, she wondered what it was that made Keepers—herself excluded, of course—so resistant to technology. “Only took them a hundred years to get the hang of the telephone,” she muttered, digging for mittens. “And Austin’s probably more comfortable with it than Claire is.…”

  “Austin, what are you doing with that phone?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?” Claire demanded as she slid back into the truck.

  “I mean that there isn’t a Chinese food place in the city that’ll deliver to a parking lot.”

  After a last-minute discussion concerning the dishes and how they weren’t being done, Diana walked out to the road, flagged down a conveniently passing neighbor, and got a ride into Lucan. Fifteen minutes later, still vehemently apologizing for the results of the sudden stop, she got out at St. Patrick’s and hurried up the shoveled walk to the priest’s house, staying as far from the yellow brick church as possible. Strange things happened when Keepers went into churches and, in an age when Broadway show tunes coming from the mouths of stained-glass apostles weren’t considered so much miraculous as irritating, Diana felt it was safest not to tempt fate—again.

  Strangely, Protestant Churches were safer, although locals still talked about the Friendship United bake sale when four-and-twenty blackbirds were found baked into three different pies. Claire, who’d been fifteen and already an adult to Diana’s five-year-old eyes, had been both horrified and embarrassed, but Diana remembered their mother as being rather philosophical about the whole thing. There were, after all, any number of nursery rhymes that would’ve been worse. Although not for the blackbirds, she reflected, carefully stepping over a large crack in the sidewalk.

  There were no synagogues or mosques in the immediate area and by the time she started being Summoned away, she was old enough to understand why she had to keep her distance. The incident at that Shinto shrine had been an unfortunate accident.

  Okay, two unfortunate accidents, she amended climbing the steps to the front door. Although I still say if you don’t actually want your prayers answered, you shouldn’t…“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Verner. Is Father Harris in?”

  The priest’s housekeeper frowned, as though recognition would be assisted by the knitting of her prominent brows. “Is it important? His Christmas dinner is almost ready.”

  “We ate earlier.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “I only need a few minutes.”

  “I don’t think…”

  A tweak of the possibilities.

  “…that vill be a problem.” The heels of her sensible shoes clicked together. “Come in. Vait in his office, I vill go get him. You haf an emergency. You need his help. How can he sit and do nothing vhen he is needed? I vill pull him from his chair if I must. Pull him from his chair and drag him back here to you.” She didn’t quite salute.

  A little too much tweak, Diana reflected as the housekeeper turned on one heel and marched away. She made a slight adjustment before Mrs. Verner decided to invade Poland.

  The small, dark-paneled, book-lined office came with a claustrophobic feeling that was equally the fault of its size, the faux gothic decorating, and the number of faded leather-bound books. Diana couldn’t decide if the painting over the desk—a three-legged figure standing on multicolored waves against an almost painfully green background—made the room seem smaller or let in the only light. Or both.

  “It’s Saint Patrick banishing the snakes from Ireland,” announced a quiet voice behind her. “It was painted by one of my parishioners.”

  “Probably one who donated beacoup de cash to the rebuilding fund,” Diana observed as she turned.

  Father Harris took an involuntary step back, the sudden memory of St. Jerome belting out “Everything’s Coming up Roses” propelling his feet. He didn’t know why he was thinking about stained-glass and show tunes, but for a great many reasons he couldn’t maintain a grip on, he was quite certain he needed a drink.

  Diana smiled at him reassuringly. “Lena Giorno tells me her father brought an angel to you last night.”

  “A young man who thought he was an angel,” the priest corrected. He was fairly certain the girl’s smile was supposed to be reassuring, but it was making him a little nervous.

  “You don’t think he’s an angel?”

  “I very much doubt an angel would appear in such a way in the bedroom of a teenager girl.”

  “You mean naked?”

  “That’s hardly a suitable topic for you and me to discuss.” Taking a deep breath, he folded his arms and gave her the best “stern authority figure” glare he could manage under the circumstances. “And now, young lady, if you don’t mind my asking, what is your name and what is your connection to young Samuel?”

  Diana’s smile broadened. “Samuel,” she repeated under her breath. “Should’ve known better than to give out his name.” Refocusing on Father Harris—whose expression had slipped closer to “confused elder trying to make sense of the young and failing miserably”—she asked, “Did he stay here last night?”

  “Yes, but he was gone this morning. No
w, see here young lady…”

  “May I please see where he slept?”

  About to demand that she answer his earlier question concerning who she was and what she wanted, Father Harris found himself stepping back into the foyer and leading the way up the stairs.

  The alleged angel had slept in a small room at the end of the hall. It held a single bed, a bedside table, a dresser, and what was probably another picture of Saint Patrick. This one was a poster, stuck to the wall with those little balls of blue sticky stuff that invariably soaked oil through the paper. The elderly saint had only two legs in this picture, was wearing church vestments, and was, once again, banishing snakes.

  “I don’t know what you thought you’d find.” The priest folded his arms, determined to make a stand. This was his house and…

  A phone rang.

  Downstairs.

  It continued to ring. And ring.

  “Please, don’t mind me,” Diana told him. “I’ll just stay up here a moment longer.”

  He was halfway back to his office before he wondered why Mrs. Verner hadn’t answered the phone.

  Diana reached into the possibilities as she stepped up to the poster.

  The saint blinked twice and focused on her face. “And what’ll it be, then, Keeper?”

  “I need some information about the guy who stayed here last night.”

  The lines across the saint’s forehead deepened. “Oh, and you haven’t noticed that I’m up to my ankles in snakes here; what is it that makes you think I was paying any attention?”

  “Well, I…”

  “You wouldn’t be having a beer on you, would you?” A short but powerful kick knocked a snake right out of the picture.

  “Why would a saint want a beer?”

  “I’m an Irish saint, and you can pardon me for being a stereotype, but I was originally painted five hundred years ago and I’m a wee bit dry. Now, what was your question again?”

  “Do you know where the guy who stayed here last night went when he left this morning?”