The Second Summoning

by Tanya Huff

  Banishing the demon down its own power stream and sealing the breach behind it would solve the problem nicely. A few minutes spent reinforcing things, and all but one of the embarrassing complications rising out of Dean’s first time would be taken care of and the other Keepers could just go back to saving the world instead of hanging about in metaphysical chat rooms speculating about her love life.

  Halfway down the stairs, she reached into the possibilities.

  Her focus split between the demon and the anticipation of dealing with that one remaining complication, she didn’t see Diana until her sister surged up out of a crouch, whirled around, and caught her power, stopping it cold a full three feet from its target.

  The room, the house, and a three-block radius grew so quiet no one dared drop so much as a single pin. The point midway between the Keepers began to crackle and hum.

  “I can’t let you do this, Claire,” Diana announced dramatically. “It isn’t right.”

  Claire closed her mouth so forcefully the crack of her molars impacting could be clearly heard. “What are you doing here?”

  So much for dramatic announcements. “What’s it look like I’m doing, doofus? I’m stopping you.”

  “From doing my job!”

  “From doing the wrong thing!”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me!”

  “Diana, I’m warning you, get out of my way.” Claire’s voice had begun to hold more fear than anger. The last time Keeper had fought Keeper, the fight had occurred on the exact same spot and it had ended with one Keeper lost to darkness. “I was Summoned to deal with this thing!”

  Diana squared her shoulders. “Then deal with the thing part and leave the rest of her alone.”

  “It’s not a her! It’s a demon! Stop being so stubborn and look at its eyes!”

  “I’ve looked into her eyes, which is more than you’ve done, and I know what I’ve seen.”

  “You’ve seen what it wanted you to see.”

  “You are so wrong. I saw what she didn’t want me to see. I saw someone who, from the moment she found herself in that body, made excuses to act against what she perceived as her nature. To act like a person. Okay, a kind of bitchy not easy to get to know I wouldn’t trust her to watch my backpack, kind of a person but a person. And you have no right to destroy that.”

  “She’s seduced you!”

  “What? The lesbian thing and a cute girl in a tight red sweater? Sure, I’ve noticed, but I no more let every beautiful woman I meet seduce me than you let every beautiful man.” Glancing over Claire’s shoulder, she smiled up the stairs. “Hey, Dean. And,” she switched a burning gaze back to Claire. “You just called her she.”

  “That’s totally irrelevant!” It didn’t matter how much power she pulled, her little sister effortlessly pulled more. “Diana, listen to me. So far the dampening field has contained this little rebellion of yours, but once it gets out…”

  “Little rebellion of mine?” Diana rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Claire, I’m serious about this. This is serious.”

  “And you don’t seem to recognize how serious this is.” Older sister clearly wasn’t working, Claire switched to older Keeper, her voice cold. “You are betraying everything you’re supposed to protect!”

  “Hey, Earth to stick up her butt, I’m protecting what I’m supposed to protect! I’m protecting a person from darkness. And you.”

  The air began to buzz and, between the Keepers, grow distinctly brighter.

  Just inside the door, Dean had to squint to make out Diana’s face and could only just barely see the back of Claire’s head. “Claire, she’s making a lot of sense. Why not shut this down and listen to her?”

  The temperature began to rise.

  “She wasn’t Summoned, Dean. This goes against everything we are.”

  Diana stamped her foot against the floor in frustrated emphasis. “Claire! We’re not slaves to what we are. We’re as free to make choices as anyone, and I know I’m doing the right thing.”

  The vibration started in the center of the light and worked its way through the room.

  “You’ll open the hole yourself in a minute!” Claire warned.

  “I’m just standing here, you’re the one throwing power.”

  “Hello? Does anyone care what I want?” Byleth demanded.

  NO.

  “I do.” Austin came out from behind Dean’s legs and walked slowly down the stairs, the energy in the room fluffing him out to twice his normal size. He brushed against Claire’s legs as he passed and looked pointedly at a drift of orange cat hair on Diana’s jeans, then sat down just outside the old pentagram’s center. “So tell me, besides the latest Cure CD, what do you want?”

  “How did you…?”

  He smiled at her. “I’m a cat.”

  “But…”

  “Let it go,” Dean advised from the top of the stairs.

  Byleth looked at him, realized he was nothing more than human but, more importantly, nothing less than human, looked at the two Keepers, looked at the cat, and sighed. “All right. Fine. You want to know what I want? I don’t know, okay?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “What, are you deaf?”

  “Sounds human to me,” Austin declared as though that settled it.

  “Well?” Diana demanded, spearing her sister with a dark gaze. “We haven’t got time for DNA evidence. Which one of us blinks first?”

  Claire could feel Dean behind her, even through all the building possibilities. This was more than a Summoning, this was her chance to fix things between them. Balance of good and evil aside, if she didn’t banish the demon, they’d be condemned to long nights of playing cards with a cat who cheated.

  “Claire, please?”

  She had no intention of looking into the demon’s eyes, she knew too well how darkness worked, so she looked into her sister’s instead and saw Diana honestly believed in what she was doing. It wasn’t defiance, it wasn’t sibling rivalry on a grand and possibly explosive scale, it was, plain and simple and totally unexpected, an attempt to do the right thing.

  But I was Summoned to deal with the demon.

  Would it be enough to destroy merely the demonic?

  “Maybe,” she said softly, “we’re both right.”

  Feeling her eyebrows singe, Diana smiled, relieved. “I can live with that. Byleth?”

  Byleth screamed.

  LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

  “Break her contact!” Claire commanded, gathering up the possibilities as Diana released them.

  They had no more than a heartbeat before Hell reached her. “How?”

  An orange blur raced past before Claire could answer, slammed into Byleth’s chest and, in flash of both black-and-white light, knocked her over backward.

  “She’s clear!”

  AND SO AM…

  Claire hit it first with all the power that had been building against Diana’s block.

  NOT YOU TWO AGAIN!

  Then Diana slammed the power from the block against it.

  WE ARE THE HEART OF DARKNESS; YOU CANNOT PREVAIL.

  “Can too.”

  “Diana, don’t argue with Hell.”

  Together, they backed the heart of darkness down the narrow path, denying the possibilities it represented one after the other, until finally they shoved it right back where it had come from…

  THIS IS REALLY STARTING TO PISS ME OFF.

  …and sealed the hole tight.

  I’LL BE BACK!

  AND I’LL BE BEETHOVEN.

  SHUT. UP.

  OW!

  Dropping to her knees beside Byleth, Diana scooped Samuel’s limp body into her arms and peered anxiously into golden eyes. “Are you okay?”

  He tried to focus on her face. “I, I can’t feel my tail.”

  “Sorry.” She shifted her knees.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s better.”

  “He’s fine.” Austin laid a paw on the younger cat’s flank. “That was a brave t
hing you did, kid.”

  “It was a dangerous thing,” Claire corrected, untangling herself from Dean’s embrace and coming to stand over them. “Who are you, and where did you come from?”

  Diana sighed. “Chill, Claire. His name is Samuel, and he’s with me.”

  A set of claws pressed into the sleeve of her jacket, releasing a puff of down. “I am?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He rubbed his head against her face. “Yeah, I am.”

  Claire opened her mouth to demand more information, but the look on Austin’s face stopped her. She smiled and shook her head. “Welcome to the family, Samuel.” When Diana glanced up, startled, the smile vanished. “You, however, are still in deep trouble.”

  “I was…” About to say right, Diana glanced past Claire to Dean shaking his head warningly and said instead, “…wrong. I was wrong to defy an older Keeper in such a way, but there wasn’t time to for anything else. I’m not sorry I did it, but I am sorry we had to clash like that.” Settling Samuel against her chest, she held up a hand. “Friends?”

  “I’m still mad at you.”

  “I know.”

  “This is bigger than taking my bra to school for show and tell.”

  “It wasn’t that big a bra.”

  “Diana.”

  “I know.”

  Claire looked down at their clasped hands, unable to remember the actual moment when their fingers had linked. “This is going to take more than an apology.”

  “Then tell me what it’s going to take, oh, older, wiser, shorter Keeper.”

  “Stop it.” The corners of her mouth twitching, she released her sister’s hand. “You were right and you know it, and there’s no need to be so irritating about it.” Before Diana could disagree, she dropped to her knees on Byleth’s other side. “Let’s just take care of this little problem before she wakes up and puts us through all that…indecision again. I won’t go so easy on you the next time.” But the heavily mascaraed eye pried open was pale gray and the rest of Byleth’s body was equally darkness free. “That’s strange. Samuel knocking her free of the site so unexpectedly must have dragged the rest of it out of her.”

  When no one offered any better explanation, Claire sat back on her heels and spread her hands. “So. What do we do with her now?”

  “Why don’t I carry her to a bed and we all spend some time thinking about it?” Dean asked, stepping forward. “You two don’t always have to have instant answers.”

  “Obviously you haven’t read the handbook,” Diana snorted.

  Claire ignored her with the ease of someone who’d spent seventeen years living with a cat. “That’s a good idea, Dean. I’m sure we can come up with something once we’ve all detached a little.”

  “I’ll be after putting her in my old room, then.” He slid his arms under Byleth’s shoulders and knees and lifted her easily. “It’s closest.”

  Rising with Byleth’s body, Claire reached out and pressed her hand against Dean’s cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t keep my promise to banish the demon.”

  He smiled. “I’m after feeling it’s not going to matter.”

  “You think?”

  “I do.”

  “Yes!”

  “Code?” Diana asked, watching her suddenly cheerful sister follow Dean and his burden up the stairs.

  Austin shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Uh, Austin, about Samuel.”

  “What about him?” He gave her the sort of look that was usually accompanied by small feathers around the mouth.

  Suddenly unsure, Diana set the orange cat on his feet and stood. She had a feeling she’d need all the advantage height could give her.

  “He knows,” Samuel told her before she could decide how to answer. “He knows what I was.”

  “Will you tell Claire?” Diana asked the older cat, hoping he couldn’t sense how anxious she was. “After what we went through with Byleth, if she found out what Samuel was, she wouldn’t want him around. She’d be worried it could happen again.”

  “Hey, it’s none of my business how you two crazy kids got together,” Austin snickered, starting up the stairs. “And I think Claire’s going to have plenty of other things to do for the next little while.” Halfway up to the basement, he turned and glared into golden eyes following close behind, looking concerned. “If you so much as insinuate I’m too old to be doing this, I’ll notch those virgin ears of yours.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So you should be, kid. So you should be.”

  Claire was waiting for them at the foot of the basement stairs. “Dean’s just digging out a blanket. Diana…”

  “I thought we worked through this?” Diana demanded, folding her arms and lifting her chin defiantly, working the “best defense is a good offense” line. “Look, I know it was your Summoning and I shouldn’t have gotten involved, but you’ve got to admit you were working from your own agenda here and not seeing what was so obvious to me. If I hadn’t stopped you, we’d have lost all the potential Byleth represents.”

  “I’m not arguing.” Her tone was so mild Diana braced herself. “I was only going to ask if Mom and Dad knew where you were.”

  “Mom and Dad?” It took her a moment to realize the implications. “Oh, no. I got so into stopping you and saving Byleth, I forgot to call.” Patting her pockets, she remembered she’d left her cell phone behind. “Nuts! I’ll have to use the phone in the office.”

  Kicking aside the cashews, she raced up the stairs two at a time with Samuel at her heels.

  Claire and Austin followed a little more sedately.

  “You’re not going to go on and on to her about this little incident, are you?”

  Claire shook her head, smiling contentedly. “No need. I’ll let the pros handle it.”

  Exiting into the first floor hall they heard a desperate, “But, Mom, I meant to call!” and then giggling.

  Cat and Keeper exchanged puzzled looks.

  Giggling?

  Before they had time to investigate, the only other door in the hall swung open to reveal a small Victorian elevator. Dean and Jacques had repaired it in the fall but when, on the inaugural trip, they’d boldly gone where no elevator had gone before, Claire’d declared it off limits until she was able to study it. Unfortunately, she’d been Summoned away before she had the chance.

  A short, gnomelike man stepped out, arm in arm with an elderly bottle-redhead of formidable proportions. Matching his and hers lime-green bathing suits under open parkas and a trail of fine white sand suggested they’d just been to the beach. They stopped short at the sight of Claire and Austin.

  “Augustus Smythe? Mrs. Abrams? What…? Where…?” Realizing that shock could keep her stuttering questions she didn’t want the answers to all afternoon, Claire managed to pull herself together. “Never mind. Not important.”

  Snorting hard enough to nearly flip his mustache, Augustus Smythe stepped forward. “About time you got here.”

  “It is?”

  “I should think so. We’re on a commuter plane to Toronto in two hours and then it’s off to sunny Florida.”

  “Florida?”

  “We have a nice little condo in a seniors building only a block from the ocean.” Mrs. Abrams wrapped both hands around Augustus Smythe’s upper arm and beamed. “You’ll have to come down and see us some time, Connie.”

  “Claire.” This was all just a little more than she could cope with right now.

  “Don’t contradict,” Smythe warned her. “It’s rude. And what’s more,” he continued, turning his scowl on his companion, “she can’t come see us, she’ll be here.”

  “No.” Claire raised both hands. “I’m not…”

  “You are. You’re the new Keeper for this whole region. Check your damned e-mail on occasion, why don’t you. There you are, McIssac, I wondered where you’d got to. Figured you wouldn’t be far.”


  “Mr. Smythe? Mrs. Abrams?” Dean’s astonished gaze slid off the shelf of lime-green supported bosom exposed in the open parka and wandered around the hall, unsure of where it was safe to alight.

  “Hello, dear boy. My, you’re looking well.”

  “Thank you, um, you, too.”

  She released her grip on Augustus Smythe’s arm just long enough to wave at the elevator. “We’ve been working on our tans.”

  “No time for chitchat.” One hairy-knuckled finger jabbed toward Dean…“McIssac here will run the guesthouse.”…then changed direction to jab at Claire. “You’ll take care of the metaphysical from Brockville to Belleville with this as your base. He needs to be more than your love slave, and this area needs a permanent Keeper. Your cat looks like he could use a few less nights sleeping rough, too.”

  “He’s never slept any rougher than a Motel Six,” Claire protested.

  “It was awful,” Austin sighed.

  “No doubt.”

  “Just wait a minute.” Her urge to grab Augustus Smythe’s arm aborted when he turned to glare. “Keepers my age don’t get tied to one place.”

  “Times are changing. Thanks to modern communications, modern transportation, and spandex, Keepers can get to sites before they grow big enough to be dangerous.”

  “I’ve closed dangerous sites!”

  “You dead yet? Then don’t argue with me. A century ago, you’d have beaten considerable odds to be alive at your age. But now, fewer Keepers die, more Keepers are alive, the lineage can cover more of the world safely and still have what resembles a life. It’s basic math. Your sister’ll probably spend her first few years closing sites no one’s been powerful enough to close until now. If she doesn’t blow herself to kingdom come first.”

  It sounded good. But there had to be a catch. “So eventually the world won’t need us.”

  “Did I say people were getting smarter?” He turned to Mrs. Abrams. “Did you hear me say that people are getting smarter?”

  She beamed down at him. “I surely didn’t, puddin’.”

  “There, see? The dumb asses in this world will always need someone to clean up after them. You’re just getting a chance to live happily ever after while you do it. We’ll get changed and out of your way. Coming, Mags?”