Long Hot Summoning

by Tanya Huff

  “Not important right now!” Claire had both hands pressed flat against the wood. “We’ve got to get through this.”

  “How? There’s no door!”

  “Then want to get through harder!”

  “I am!” Diana scanned the barrier for any kind of a seam, but all she could see were the warning signs and the ubiquitous, Kilroy was here. “Oh, sure, but he’s not here now. The obnoxious gnome owes me ten bucks.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing!”

  Claire smacked the barrier with the palms of both hands, then backed away. “We’re going to have to use the access corridor to get behind it!”

  “I hate this, but you’re right!”

  They turned back toward the store, but before they’d taken a single step, the door to the storeroom crashed open and half a dozen misshapen bodies in badly fitting navy blue track suits charged through. Essentially bipedal, they looked like someone had crossed a rhinoceros with a hockey player.

  “Great! Not wanting them doesn’t seem to be working either!”

  “What are they?”

  “Who cares?” Diana grabbed Claire’s hand, yanked her around until she was facing down the concourse, and gave her a shove. “RUN!”

  Sam was already almost at the food court.

  The Tailor of Gloucester had become The Tailer of Gloucester with a number of samples hanging in the window. Diana would have liked a closer look at the multicolored fog swirling about inside the travel agency, but something slammed into her backpack as she passed the store and she decided that maybe concentrating on running would be the better plan. Fortunately, here on the Otherside, concentrating on running was enough to lend new speed to her feet.

  “What are they throwing?” Claire demanded as they began weaving through the tables in the food court.

  Something buzzed past Diana’s ear with an almost overpowering scent of gardenias, dented one of the metal chairs, and bounced out of sight.

  “I think it’s scented candles!”

  “Oh, that’s just great! Those things are deadly!”

  “Only in enclosed spaces!”

  On the far side of the food court, they followed Sam to the right; the crashing and banging of their pursuers through the tables and chairs drowning out the distant sound of the sirens.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Hey! Up here!”

  Both Keepers skidded to a halt and squinting up through the hexagonal opening to the upper level trying to make out the features of the person leaning over the edge.

  “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” the spiky silhouette demanded.

  “We’re not…” Claire began but Diana drove an elbow into her side.

  “Good witches!”

  “Then haul ass to the stairs! We’ll hold them off.”

  “We’re not…”

  Diana grabbed Claire’s hand again. “Close enough. Shut up and follow Sam!”

  Something whistled through the air behind them as they pounded up the concourse after the cat. The escalators were insubstantial, but the stairs were much as they’d left them. Except for the piled barricade at the top and the half-dozen teenagers standing behind it.

  Sam scrambled up and over but as the Keepers neared the top step, a genuine wood finish laminate armoire was rolled back out of the way. The packs made it a tight fit, but they both squeezed through and collapsed panting to the floor.

  Candles pounded the barricade, hitting with enough force to slam through a display counter and into the piled barbeques behind it. The tempered steel rang like a gong but held.

  The whistling noise was defined as the teenagers fired ceramic cherubs from heavy duty slingshots.

  “Did you want these guys?” Claire murmured.

  “I wanted rescue,” Diana admitted, “but I don’t think either of us had anything to do with this. It’s too…”

  “Clichéd?”

  “I was going to say too real, but strangely enough, too clichéd also works.”

  “They’re hitting the things,” Sam reported from the top of the barricade. “It’s stopping them, but they don’t seem to be taking much damage.”

  “Nah, they never do,” explained the teenager next to him, aiming and releasing again. “But if you hit them in the head, the bits of broken ceramic get in their eyes and they totally hate that. Damn! I don’t know what you guys did to get ’em so worked up ’cause usually they got a zero attention span.”

  Another volley. And then another. And then a cheer went up.

  “And we win again. The meat-minds’ll mill around for a while, then they’ll head home.” She tossed long, mahogany dreadlocks back behind her shoulders and stared down at Sam. “You talk.”

  He shrugged. “So do you.”

  “Good point.” Holding her bow across her chest, she turned to face the Keepers. “I’m Kris, Captain of the Guard. Who are you?”

  “Too real?” Claire whispered.

  Although Kris and the other archers were dressed in combinations of clothes obviously pulled off the rack, there could be no mistaking the pointed ears or the great hair.

  Elves.

  Except, of course, that elves didn’t actually exist.

  FOUR

  AS THE OTHERS MOVED TO STAND BEHIND KRIS, it became obvious that some ears were less pointed and some hair less blatantly great. Lined up in order, the seven would have looked like time lapse photography—from almost human to full elf.

  Claire’s eyes widened. “They’re Bystanders.”

  “Maybe once,” Diana agreed, watching one of them flick a brilliant red braid wound through with neon tubing back over his shoulder, “but not now. This place is changing them.” Feeling like a turtle stuck on its back, she tried to stand, struggling against the weight of the backpack. When Kris grinned and held out a hand, she accepted it gratefully. The elf’s grip was warm and dry, surprisingly callused and remarkably strong; Diana found herself lifted effortlessly to her feet.

  “You’re ’bout right for walkin’ on the weird side,” Kris observed as Diana reluctantly released her hand, “but your…sister?”

  Both Keepers nodded. Probably because of the Lineage, the family resemblance had always been strong.

  “Well, she’s a little old for this sort of thing.”

  Diana hid a smile as she helped a glowering Claire stand. Since Dean and the seven-year age difference, the whole age thing had become a sensitive point.

  “And, no offense,” Kris continued, “but you’re both too well fed.”

  “Too well fed for what?” Claire demanded, smoothing her skirt over her thighs.

  “For livin’ rough.”

  “That’s because we haven’t been.”

  “Totally obvious they didn’t fall in off the street,” the redhead snorted.

  “No, we didn’t.” Diana agreed, breaking in before Claire’s tone got them into trouble. “We came here deliberately.”

  That got everyone’s attention.

  A very pale blond with eyes so light only the pupils showed, stepped forward. “You can do that? Come here deliberately?”

  “Well, duh.” A boy who might have been East Indian jabbed him with the end of his slingshot. “They’re here.”

  “Well, duh, maybe they’re lying.”

  “Yeah? Maybe you’re an idiot.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a…”

  “Colin. Teemo.”

  Names held power. Whether Kris had known that before or had discovered it after crossing, she certainly knew it now. The argument stopped cold, both boys looking sheepish at suddenly being the center of attention.

  “We can cross deliberately,” Diana said into the sudden silence. “Not everybody can.”

  “How?”

  “Did we get here?”

  “Yeah. That. And why did you come? And who the hell are you?”

  Diana exchanged a speaking glance with Claire. If the, well, elves—for lack of a better word�
�could still swear with impunity, then they were influencing the Otherside on a subconscious level only. However they’d changed, they remained Bystanders, and the Lineage worked very hard at keeping Bystanders unaware of their existence.

  “Your Summons,” Claire murmured. “Your choice.”

  “The Rules…”

  “Diana, there’s a sign in that shoe store window advertising ruby slippers for half off. Unless they’re trying to attract the Otherside drag queen business, I’d say that the Rules have already been twisted pretty far out of shape.”

  “O–kay.” Claire had been a total Rule follower her entire life. Dean had obviously loosened her up a lot more than Diana had suspected. Bad, bad mental image. Think about…

  Kris folded her arms and glared. Her expression promised violence if she didn’t get an answer soon.

  Yeah, that works. “My name is Diana. This is Claire. That’s Sam. Essentially, we’re a sort of wizard called a Keeper.”

  “We’re not wizards,” Claire sighed.

  “Okay,” Diana muttered sotto voice, not the least surprised Claire’d had to stick her two cents in regardless of what she’d said about choices and whose they were. “You explain to the mall elves exactly what we are in three thousand words or less.”

  Claire’s eyes narrowed, then she sighed again. “Essentially,” she told their fascinated audience, “we’re wizards. It’s our job to make sure that metaphysical balances are kept.”

  “That the magical stuff between the worlds doesn’t go out of whack,” Diana clarified as half a dozen pairs of eyes stared at them blankly.

  Kris shook her head, dreadlocks bouncing. “You’re wizards?”

  “Essentially wizards,” Claire amended reluctantly.

  “They’re wizards,” Sam snorted. “I’m a cat.”

  “Right.” Kris acknowledged him with a quick smile and turned her attention back to the Keepers. “Well, since you’re here and since we’re here and since our candle throwin’ friends with the negative number IQs are here and since this is a fuckin’ shopping mall, I’m guessin’ that the magical stuff between the worlds is way whacked.”

  “Good guess.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not stupid.”

  “Kris.” One of the others, a skinny, dark-haired, androgynous kid probably no more than fifteen jumped the barricade. “The meat-minds have retreated back past the food court.”

  “Thanks, DK. All right, the rest of you go back to what you were doing before Jo gave the alarm. Me and Will’ll take these guys in to Arthur.” She jerked her head down the concourse toward the anchor store at the far end. “Let’s go.”

  Will turned out to be the redhead.

  “Actually,” Claire announced in a tone that suggested she’d neither forgotten nor forgiven the earlier too old and too well fed observation, “we’ve got to get back to the other end of the mall. We appreciate your assistance, but we have a job to do here.”

  Kris shrugged. “So do I. And my job says I take new people in to see Arthur.”

  “Claire…”

  “Diana?”

  She flashed Kris a smile, grabbed Claire’s arm, and yanked her close enough to mutter into her ear. “I know that time is a factor, I mean, it is my Summons and all, but these guys are a factor, too, because whoever’s running this segue isn’t going to be able to finish it while they’re still here. I mean, we weren’t expecting indigenous life.”

  “They aren’t indigenous!”

  “Maybe they didn’t used to be, but they are now.”’

  “All right, fine.” Claire pulled her arm free. “But if this thing goes critical while we’re talking…”

  “Then we’ll be in the right place because it can’t go critical until the forces of darkness attack and destroy this last bastion of the light.”

  “The forces of darkness are throwing scented candles!”

  “Yeah, but they’re throwing them really hard. And besides, you know as well as I do how fast things can change on the Otherside.” Diana patted Claire’s bare shoulder in a comforting sort of way and turned back to Kris. “So, take us to your leader. He is your leader, right?”

  Claire sighed. “Well, if he isn’t, you’ve just wasted that line.”

  “He is our leader,” Kris told them, and this time when she indicated they should start moving, there was very little room for arguing with the gesture.

  As the Keepers stepped away from the barricade and Sam jumped down to walk between them, Will fell in on one side, Kris on the other. They were clearly being escorted. Diana decided to think of it as an honor guard.

  “So,” she prodded after a moment. “This Arthur; what’s he like?”

  Kris glanced over at her and shrugged. “Not like us.”

  “Like you are or like you were?”

  “What’s the diff?”

  “You know; the whole ears, thick flowing tresses thing.”

  “The what?”

  Bystanders could lie to Keepers; they just couldn’t get away with it. Kris honestly didn’t know what Diana was talking about. Apparently their perception of themselves had changed as they had changed. Now why they’d changed the way they had; that was a whole different question without an answer. “Never mind, it’s not important. So, how is Arthur different from you?”

  “He came from outside.”

  “Outside?” Diana was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

  “Yeah, outside the mall.” Kris waved to the tall, slender girl standing guard at the intersection of the main concourse and the short hall leading to one of the outside doors. “We don’t know how he got in, ’cause we can’t get out, but he understands this place. He keeps us together; he made us strong. We were getting our asses kicked by all sorts of strange shit until he showed up.”

  “And he made you the captain of his guard?”

  “Yeah. He did. You got a problem with that?”

  “No. Of course not. You’re obviously really good at it and you, you know, you’re in charge and um…” Babble much? She’s going to think you’re an idiot. Get a grip! Diana took a deep breath and ignored Claire’s raised eyebrow. “So, were you the first one who crossed over?”

  A muscle jumped in Kris’ jaw. “Second.”

  Something in her tone made Diana remember all the things Austin had listed that were worse than BAM. Splat. Crunch. Grind. Chew. For some reason, especially chew.

  They were heading toward the large department store at what had been the west end of the mall. Cosmetic counters had been stacked on their sides to make a solid wall across all but a small section of the store’s wide entrance. A nod of Kris’s head and Will lounged in the opening.

  “Just so you know,” Claire said, delivering a speaking look to her sister, “you can’t hold us.”

  Kris shrugged. “Just so’s you know, I’m not planning on it. But I believe in coverin’ my ass, just in case.”

  “Of what?”

  “Whatever.” She led Diana, Claire, and Sam into a large open area where the faint, antagonistic scents of a dozen different perfumes lingered, told them to wait, and disappeared between two racks of plus size winter coats.

  “You know they might be able to hold us,” Diana murmured, with a quick glance at Will’s back. “This being the Otherside and all. If there’s enough of them wanting us held…”

  “You were the one who wanted to see their leader. I just think we should go in from a position of strength.”

  “They had to rescue us from walking cat food throwing scented candles,” Sam pointed out, tail lashing as he paced the perimeter. “Oh, yeah, that’s a position of strength.”

  Claire glared at the cat.

  Diana punched her lightly on the arm. “Missing Austin?”

  Claire shifted her glare up and over. After a moment, she sighed. “Yes. A lot. I hope he’s all right.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s with Dean. On second thought, worry about Dean.”

  “Very funny. I’m sure Austin will be a
huge help to Dean at the guest house.”

  “You’re delusional. You know that, right?”

  Claire smiled tightly. “It helps when you work with cats.”

  They watched Sam explore nooks and crannies they couldn’t see and listened to the distant sound of someone beating a drum kit to death with a couple of guitars and an electronic keyboard.

  “So, Arthur,” Diana said at last, rubbing her nose and moving away from a particularly strong patch of Phobia™ for Men. “He came in from outside the mall to bring them together and make them strong.”

  “The name could be a coincidence.”

  “Oh, please.”

  Claire sighed as deeply as the weight of her backpack allowed. “They needed a leader; he’s what their subconscious created.”

  Fur between his eyes folded into a darker orange “w,” Sam frowned up at them both. “Do you guys know this Arthur?”

  “Not this Arthur, but he’s just the sort of opportunistic archetype who’d show up in this kind of story. And you never just get him, do you?” Her own brow furrowed, Diana folded her arms.

  “We should be glad they’re not a little younger,” Claire reminded her. “Or we might have been dealing with Peter Pan.”

  “Yeah, but they’ve turned themselves into elves. Wouldn’t Oberon make more sense?”

  “I doubt this lot’s read much Shakespeare, but you have; you’d honestly rather deal with Oberon?”

  Diana considered it for a moment. “Okay, good point. Ass ears; not a great look. But still, that whole Immortal King crap just gets up my nose. Follow me, serve me, love me…gag me!”

  “Your opinion aside, Arthur is a nice, classic, archetypal answer to a leadership dilemma.”

  * * *

  Arthur turned out to be a tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped young man in his late teens with startlingly blue eyes and a wild shock of blue-black hair that kept falling attractively forward over his face in spite of a silver circlet.

  “Okay,” Claire said slowly as they walked toward him, drawn by the brilliant, perfect white crescent of his smile. “So he’s a nice anime archetypal answer to a leadership dilemma.”

  “And we can be grateful they’re becoming elves, not Pokémon,” Diana added.