Long Hot Summoning

by Tanya Huff

  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 w
ait 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!”

  “And I’m a cat, so listen up.” He climbed from Claire’s lap up onto the table, leaving sweaty paw prints on the polished wood. “Going in tired and unprepared is a good way to get our collective butts kicked but, more importantly, going in tonight gives the advantage to the other side.”

  “You mean the Otherside?” Diana sniped.

  “Don’t interrupt. Two Keepers and two cats head into an empty mall in the middle of the night and we might as well call first to tell them we’re coming. There’s no way even the most idiotic, written for television, evil overlord isn’t going to notice something like that. The moment we cross over, BAM! And that’s if we’re lucky. We all know there’s a whole lot worse than BAM waiting out there.”

  “No, we don’t.” Ears saddled, Sam sat down on Diana’s foot. “What’s worse than BAM?”

  “Splat. Crunch. Grind. Chew.” When no one seemed inclined to argue, Austin continued. “We get a good night’s sleep and go in tomorrow morning with all the other shoppers, hiding in plain sight. We slip across with no one the wiser, you two close down the segue, and we’re home by lunch.”

  “Lunch?”

  Austin snorted. “Okay, it’s a metaphorical lunch some days in the future.”

  “Look, it’s my Summons,” Diana protested, tumbling Sam off her foot and jerking her chair away from the table. She had a strong suspicion that had come out sounding whinier than she’d intended.

  “You came here for help,” Claire reminded her. “You were there, in the mall; is there a chance the copy will be matched up before morning?”