Long Hot Summoning

by Tanya Huff

  Another word from within the hood.

  Dr. Rebik cleared his throat, his ears red. “Yes. Well, there’s no need to go into the specifics. The point is, the priest was insulted and, in a fit of pique, had her poisoned. Then he cursed her ka so that Anubis could not find it, confining it and her to the sarcophagus until a string of peculiar conditions were met that allowed the lock to be opened and Meryat to rise again.”

  “Peculiar conditions?”

  “Learned man. Eyes the color of rotting reeds. That sort of thing.”

  “A learned man with greenish-brown eyes doesn’t seem that peculiar.”

  “Three nipples…”

  “Ah.” Cheeks burning, Dean paid a great deal of attention to his next swallow of coffee. “Lance says Meryat took over your mind.”

  The doctor smiled into the shadows as desiccated fingers with blackened tips closed around his hand. “Meryat took over my heart. How could I not love a woman who’d suffered so bravely for so long? I know what you’re thinking, she’s not at her best physically, but every day she’s in the world she gains back a little more of her beauty.”

  “She’s not sucking the energy out of people, is she?”

  “People give off energy merely by existing. She absorbs that.”

  “Lance said that when you left the lab, you left him for dead.”

  That drew his attention back to Dean. “I pushed him into a supply closet,” he explained dryly, “and locked the door. Lance tends to exaggerate.”

  “Yeah.” Dean decided he’d best keep both the foul fiend and pustulant monster comments to himself. “Does he exclaim everything he says, then?”

  “Almost everything, yes. I’m amazed you managed to send him away. He’s remarkably tenacious.”

  “I didn’t so much send him away as send him on a wild goose chase. He still thinks he’s after you.”

  “I’m glad he isn’t. Well done and thank you.” As Dr. Rebik drained his mug, Meryat asked a question, her words running together like liquid and music combined. “Meryat wonders if you wonder how we found this place. This sanctuary.”

  Dean shrugged, trying to look as though having the guest house called a sanctuary didn’t please him as much as it did. “You’d be amazed at the people who find this place.”

  “In our case, it came about when Meryat’s ka managed to gain a small amount of freedom even before I opened the sarcophagus. Still trapped, it couldn’t touch the real world, but it could touch what she calls the possibilities. They told her of the Keepers and specifically of the Keeper who works from this inn. We were hoping you’d help us. Until she fully regains her physical form, Meryat is helpless and prey to every media influenced, addle-pated adventurer we meet.”

  “Meet a lot?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Dean considered the hole to Hell that had once heated the guest house. “Not really, no.”

  “So will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Help us.”

  “Me? I’m not the Keeper.”

  Meryat’s hand which had been reaching toward him, exposing more of a wrapped arm than he really wanted to see, withdrew.

  “You’re not?”

  “No. The Keeper’s my, uh, girlfriend and she’s away on business right now. But I’m expecting her back any time,” he added as Dr. Rebik’s face fell and Meryat’s hooded head sagged forward. “The room’s available as long as you need it.”

  “So we’ll wait.”

  Meryat asked another question.

  “No, my love, I can’t think of a place we’d be safer. And now, if you don’t mind, Meryat needs to lie down. As yet she can manage only an hour or two on her feet a day.”

  Dean stood as they did and managed to keep from flinching when Meryat’s fingertips touched the bare skin of his forearm for an instant as they passed. He took a long, comforting swallow of coffee and when he heard the door close on the second floor, said, “You were some quiet.”

  Austin, who’d been lying on the windowsill, lifted his head from his front paws. “Something Dr. Rebik said isn’t right.”

  “Yeah, three nipples. That’s just wrong.”

  “Hey, I’ve got six!”

  “My point exactly; nipples should come in even numbers.”

  Austin shot him a suspicious look but let it go. “Something else…”

  “Last night he had to translate for her; this morning, she understood what we were saying.”

  The emerald eye blinked once in surprise. “You’re not as dumb as you look. But that wasn’t it.”

  “You think Dr. Rebik was lying?” Dean asked as he gathered up the doctor’s empty mug and headed for the dishwasher.

  “No, but I think there’s stuff he’s not telling us.”

  “He said he’s sparing Meryat’s feelings. You can’t blame him for that.”

  “Why not?” Austin’s tail carved a series of short jerky arcs through the air. “I wish Claire was here.”

  “Me, too.”

  * * *

  “Elderly ninja assassins?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, you kind of implied it.”

  “Sam…”

  His ears bridled as he leaped to the top of Bozo’s School Bus and turned to glare. “You did. You said there were handrails around the skylights and, if the way to the roof was in the wrong area, we could expect an attempt on Arthur’s life. Then you said, ‘but not ninjas’ and you’ve been mumbling about dangling old people ever since. So: elderly ninja assassins.”

  “Okay, you win.” Claire scooped him off the ride and continued out into the main concourse with him tucked indignantly under one arm. “Just stop repeating it so I can stop thinking about it!”

  “It’s not the worst thing you could be thinking about,” Sam muttered. “I mean if anything’s got to drop down from the roof, el…” He squeaked as she tightened her grip. “…that would at least be easy to beat. Right?”

  “Wrong. The Otherside deals with subconscious imagery, it takes what you think you’re thinking about and warps it.”

  “So if I was thinking about a nice, juicy, unattended salmon?”

  “Nothing would happen. When I say it takes what you’re thinking, I don’t mean you specifically. Cats live in the now, there’s nothing in your thoughts the Otherside can use.”

  “Fine. If you thought about a nice, juicy salmon?”

  “We’d probably get grizzlies.”

  Back feet braced against her hip, he squirmed around until he could stare up at her. “You’re kidding?”

  “Or a rain of frozen peas. Maybe even big, green, frozen grizzlies.”

  “Why would the Otherside want anything to do with what’s in your head?” he demanded as Claire set him down. “Things aren’t weird enough around here without your two cents’ worth?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Hey, what if you thought about big, green, frozen grizzlies?”

  “You wouldn’t get salmon.” She stroked a hand down his back. “Wait here.” Kith and Teemo glanced around as she approached the barricade and then returned to staring down the stairs into the lower level. As far as Claire could tell, it looked like the lower level of the West Gardner’s Mall. No eldritch mists. No skulking shadows. No shambling hulks of darkside muscle.

  Nothing out of the ordinary.

  That wasn’t good.

  “Any sign of Diana and Kris?”

  “Nada.” Teemo scratched in through the ripped armpit of his now sleeveless Spider-man T-shirt—looking less like the semimythical creature he was becoming and more like the fifteen-year-old he’d been. “There was some crap-ass music playing, but it stopped a while ago. Don’t worry about your blood, Keeper, Kris’ll keep her safe. She’s one sneaky bi…Ow!” He shot a pained glance over his shoulder at Kith. “I wasn’t gonna say bitch!” he protested. “I was gonna say…uh…”

  Kith raised a remarkably sardonic eyebrow.

  “Never mind what
I was gonna say. I wasn’t talkin’ to you nohow.” He turned his back on the other elf with such exaggerated indignation, he reminded Claire of Austin. “Kris’ll keep your sister safe,” he repeated. “Arthur already said that if we see any shit happening, we should let you know.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t recognize the elf on guard at the hexagonal opening until she got close enough to see the features under the lime-green hair. “Daniel?”

  “Hey, Keeper.”

  She’d only walked down to the end of the small corridor, been outside for a minute, two at the most. Three on the absolute outside. How had he had time to…? “What did you do to your hair?”

  He pulled a strand forward, looked at it, looked at her like she was asking a trick question. “Uh, dyed it. Wicked look, right?”

  The second hand on her watch zipped around from the eight to the two, then slowed.

  She hated time distortions.

  “Right. It’s very…green.” And not something she was responsible for. “Listen, I was wondering, do you know where the access to the roof is?”

  “The roof?”

  Claire leaned back and pointed up. “There’s got to be an access. There’s parking and there’s handrails.”

  “Okay.” Daniel squinted into the gray light currently substituting for actual sky. “I never seen any stairs, but there’s an elevator down by the security office. I seen the sign on food court runs.”

  “Where’s the security office?”

  Leaning over the Lucite barrier, he pointed down the left side of the lower level. “It’s not too far past the bottom of the stairs ’cept you go along the other hall.”

  “It’s on the darkside?”

  “Arthur says it’s sort of territory we both claim, but yeah.”

  “Do you know if it works?”

  “The security office?”

  “The elevator.”

  “No friggin’ idea, Keeper.”

  “Okay…” This was very bad. “They could come through the skylight. You’ll have to watch up as well as down.”

  “Through the skylight?” Daniel repeated, glancing up again.

  “Yes.”

  “That kinda sucks.”

  “Yes. It does.” Pivoting on one heel, Claire headed for the department store and nearly tripped over Sam.

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Good. Think and walk; I have to warn Arthur.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Assassinating the Immortal King makes sense—cut the head off the snake and the snake dies.”

  “What do snakes have to do with anything?”

  “Sorry, angel leftover. We…they…use snake analogies a lot. You know, up there. Occupational hazard.” He jumped up onto the edge of a planter and hooked all five claws on one front paw into Claire’s skirt, dragging her to a halt. “If I was the darkside, and if this whole segue thing meant enough to me, I’d drop an assassin in during the battle when no one would notice. If the dark elf wins, the assassin helps the meat-minds pick off the mall elves. If the dark elf loses, then it finds a place to lay low until it gets its chance. Bada bing, bada boom.”

  She pulled her skirt free. “Another leftover angel thing?”

  “No, I’ve been watching The Sopranos with your dad. Look, it makes sense for the darkside to kill Arthur, but it doesn’t make any sense for them to drop an assassin in now after the battle when all the elves are on full alert.”

  Claire looked back at Teemo and Kith on the barricade. At Daniel. Were there more shadows on the upper concourse than there had been?

  It was definitely too quiet.

  “You’re right,” she said. And started to run.

  Sam jumped down and raced after her. “At the risk of sounding last millennia; duh.”

  * * *

  Sunlight streamed down through the skylight into the food court, bright enough to wash away the light spilling from the bulbs over each table. Bright enough to wash away the shadows.

  Kris frowned. “There’s never been sunlight before.”

  “It’s probably coming through from the real world. This end of the mall’s almost totally matched up. We haven’t got much time.”

  “Is this the sort of stuff you and your sister need to know?”

  “No. This is the sort of stuff we pretty much already knew. We have to go deeper in. We need to see who more than what.” Diana dunked her face into a filled sink, trying to rinse away the soap she’d used to remove the lipstick camouflage. Man, that stuff could remove freckles! When she surfaced, Kris was waiting with a paper towel. “Thanks.” The towel was only marginally less destructive than the soap, and they were both an exact match for supplies in women’s washrooms worldwide. Diana made a mental note to check the supplier when they got home. This could be a foothold situation that the Lineage had missed for years. And the toilet paper was definitely Hellish.

  “So,” Kris grunted, leaning against a stall and watching Diana in the mirror, “what now?”

  “Now, unless we open the door and there’s a power-of-darkness coffee klatch happening close enough for us to eavesdrop on, we need to get to the Emporium. It’s as close to the anchor as we’ve ever come.” She tossed the damp paper in the wastebasket and turned to face a skeptical mall elf.

  “It’s where you two came through. They’ll be guarding it.”

  “You’ve taken me as far as we agreed. You don’t have to go on.”

  “Like I’m supposed to go back to the other wizard and tell her I ditched her kid sister just when things got tough? Fuck you.”

  “Okay. I mean, you’re right,” Diana corrected herself hurriedly, hoping the flush she could feel would be taken as the result of strenuous exfoliation. “Then if it’s just meat-minds on guard, we’ll go around them. If it’s something else, then that could tell us what I need to know. I wish I’d been able to get a look under that dark elf’s helm.”

  “Before you slagged him?”

  “Not much point after.” She glanced toward the washroom door. “There’s not going to be a lot of cover out there.”

  “No shit. You’d think they’d leave all that sunshine for the end. Doesn’t evil usually prefer darkness and all?”

  “Common mistake. Evil doesn’t care. The thing you’ve got to remember about evil,” she murmured, falling into step just behind the other girl’s left shoulder as they headed for the door, “is that it’s an unapologetic opportunist. It’ll move in wherever there’s an opening.”

  The smell of fresh coffee wafted up the short hall.

  The black clothes made them stand out against the pale green tiles like…

  …like licorice in mints, like cow patties in the grass, like Goths in a flower shop, like the wipeout from the wand caused permanent brain damage. What’s up with Analogies R Us?

  Diana forced herself to pay attention just as Kris said, “I don’t see anyone…anything. Let’s go.”

  They turned left, away from the food court, staying close to the lockers and then ducking low to cross the open front of the sporting goods store. Diana thought she saw a rack of torture implements as they passed—which was actually encouraging because she was fairly certain such stores didn’t usually stock thumb screws in with their free weights in the real world. Although it certainly explained that whole no pain, no gain thing. Vaguely human shapes moved around in the big drugstore across the hall and she could only hope they were part of a darkside patrol. Customers, even faint images of customers, would be bad. Not that a darkside patrol would be exactly good….

  Kris’ grip on her arm dragged her attention back to their more immediate concern—the length of corridor they had to cover unseen in order to get to the Emporium. The two planters and four benches provided the only cover. But, on the bright side, the corridor was empty except for those two planters and four benches.

  Nothing ventured…Diana shrugged free, dashed forward, dropped as she passed the first planter, slid the last five feet to the bench, and rolled und
er it at the last instant.

  “What do you think you’re doing,” Kris growled into her ear a moment later.

  Diana turned and tried not to think about the confined conditions pressing them cheek to cheek. “I was thinking that the Emporium wasn’t going to get any closer and the longer we waited the more risk of someone coming through the food court and spotting us.” So not the time to say something like “You smell incredible.”

  “Next time, warn a person!”

  “I thought you might protest…”

  “Yeah. Good call.”

  “…and we didn’t have time.”

  The lights were off in the travel agency and a handwritten sign taped to the cracked window said only, “Closed for Renovations.” A poster advertising London at $549, Berlin at $629, and Gehenna at $666 was the only other visible indication that the store had ever been used. Either she’d really done some serious damage when she smacked the travelers back or they were too close to segue for any more tours to be booked. The Tailer of Gloucester still had bits off animal butts hanging in the window, so hopefully it was the former not the later.

  Hopefully and animal bits; not the sort of things that usually showed up in the same thought.

  “Next bench,” she murmured against Kris’ skin. “You’ve got to go first.”

  Kris’ reply was essentially unintelligible although the sarcasm came through loud and clear. Out from under the bench, she pushed herself up into a sprinter’s start, and disappeared from Diana’s line of sight.

  Diana followed half a heartbeat behind, put a little too much push on the final slide, and would have gone right past the bench had strong hands not grabbed a double handful of clothes and yanked her sideways. Her face impacted at the join of shoulder and neck, her nose connecting painfully with Kris’ collarbone.

  “Is this the place?”

  Blinking away tears, she lifted her head as far as the bench allowed. In the short time since they’d crossed over, the Emporium had come to look almost identical to the store in the original mall. “This is it.”