Long Hot Summoning

by Tanya Huff

  How long was he supposed to be waiting, then?

  “Dean McIssac? Christ on crutches, it is you!”

  The young woman who dropped into the other seat had a blaze of red hair over startlingly black eyebrows and breasts that threatened to spill out over the top of her…Actually, Dean had no idea of what she was wearing. He remembered the breasts. When he wasn’t playing hockey, dreams of those breasts had pretty much got him through his last year of high school. And occasionally when he was playing hockey, which was how he’d dislocated his shoulder. Unfortunately, she’d been dating the same guy since grade nine and no one else stood a chance. She’d been the perfect, safe, unattainable fantasy. “Sherri Murphy. What’re you doing so far from home?”

  “Working. Same as. Got a job out at the nylon plant.” Sherri grinned across the table at him. “Damn, it’s some good to see a familiar face. You here alone?”

  “Yeah…”

  Her grin sharpened.

  Dean wondered why he’d never noticed the predatory curve to it before. No wait; he knew why. “Uh, Jeff…”

  She shrugged, and he missed the first few words. “…boat with his dad. Like you can support a family fishing these days.” Her gaze turned frankly speculative. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “You got a girl?”

  “A girl…yes.” Floundering without knowing how he’d gotten caught up by the surf, he clung to the thought of Claire. “She’s around here somewhere.” Which, if somewhere was stretched about as far as it could go, was the absolute truth.

  Head cocked to one side, Sherri studied his face. “You know, word was, Dean McIssac couldn’t lie to save his life.” The tip of her tongue traced a moist line over her lower lip.

  Something warm and soft brushed up against Dean’s ankle, and he felt his cheeks begin to burn. “Listen, there’s a, uh, bar down in Portsmouth Village, the, uh…” The pressure against his leg increased, moving softly up and down his calf. “…Ship to Shore. Bunch of us from home are there most Saturdays.”

  “Talking about when you’re going back east?” Her voice had picked up a wistful tone.

  “Yeah. That, too. The owner has a load of Black ‘Arse trucked up from home about once a month.”

  “Beer and nostalgia, hard to resist.”

  The lightest touch against the inside of his knee. Dean’s whole body twitched although, crammed into the seat as he was, he couldn’t jump back. He was amazed she’d found enough room to maneuver under these tiny tables.

  “I’m not remembering you as being this jumpy.” Smiling like she knew a secret, she stood. “Saturdays, eh? Maybe I’ll be stopping by, then. I’d like to meet the girl who finally got you.”

  More than a little confused, he watched her walk away.

  Got me wha…

  A gentle caress against his other leg.

  Sherri had disappeared into the drugstore.

  How did she…?

  Oh.

  Ears on fire, he glanced down at the mirror in his lap. The chicken half of the basilisk was in his hockey bag eating Red River cereal. The lizard part, a long, prehensile, bright green scaly tail, was rubbing up and down his leg.

  She must think I’m a total idiot.

  Leaning forward, both hands under the table, he gently shoved the tail into the bag.

  Claire could never find out about this.

  A warm beak investigated his fingers. He pushed it back down toward the cereal.

  Austin could never find out about this.

  Holding the zipper clear of stray feathers, he quickly closed it.

  The squawk was remarkably loud. Half a dozen heads turned toward him.

  “Just caught my basilisk in the zipper,” he explained, threw the bag over his shoulder and hurried for the door, his ears so hot he was sure they were leaving a thermal trail behind them.

  * * *

  Dean listened to the flat, definitive click in disbelief and then turned the key again, just in case. Another click followed by a silence so complete he could hear feathers being rearranged in the hockey bag now tucked behind the seats. “I don’t believe this. The battery’s dead.”

  “You were gone for a long time; I got bored.” Austin licked his shoulder. “I was listening to the radio.”

  “But I have the keys, and you couldn’t use a key if you had one.” Click. Nothing. “How did you even turn the electrical system on?”

  “It’s a cat thing.”

  He laid his head against the steering wheel and jerked it back almost immediately as the black plastic branded the arc of its upper curve into his skin. “You’re telling me cats can hot wire cars, then?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Austin snapped. “This is a truck.”

  “Right.” Because that was all the explanation he was ever going to get. Okay. He got out of the truck and stared across the parking lot, watching the heated air rise up off the asphalt and shimmer like a curtain between worlds. If only it was that easy. Kevin had borrowed his jumper cables back in March and never returned them. He’d be smacking the buddy upside the head for that come Saturday, but it wasn’t going to do him any good now. A basilisk, a talking cat, and a dead battery walk into a bar…Turning his back on the minivans, he banged his head against the hood of truck.

  “You look like you’re having a bad day. Is there something I can do to help?”

  She was about his age, her name was Mary, she was up from the States for a music festival, and she had, not only a set of jumper cables, but a set long enough to reach from her battery to his. “My brother bought them for me,” she told him tossing a waist-length braid back over her shoulder as she efficiently hooked the two vehicles together. “There, try it now.”

  The truck turned over on the first attempt. Dean hit the parking brake, put it in neutral, and got out to help Mary coil her cables.

  “Is that your cat?” she asked as Austin put his paws up on the dashboard and peered out at them.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Ah.” She nodded wisely. “Your girlfriend’s cat. You have the look of a man in over his head.”

  As she bent to put the cables in the trunk, Dean was horrified to see the hockey bag rise up from behind the seats and attempt to take flight. He gestured wildly at Austin, who made a rude gesture in return just as the bag slid forward, hit the seat, and knocked Austin’s feet out from under him. On the bright side, bag and cat were out of sight by the time Mary turned. Dean thanked her in a hurry, shook her hand, yanked his feet out of the tar, and dove back into the truck.

  The bag was on the floor on the passenger side. Austin was on the bag, smacking random bits of covered basilisk. “I’m getting too old for this kind of…” A fast right, quickly followed by a left hook, quelled an incipient uprising. “…shit.”

  “If you hadn’t run down my battery, we’d be home by now!”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault you had to be rescued by a girl?”

  “Yeah. It is. Your fault.” He glanced up, noticed Mary frowning at him, waved, put the truck in gear, and started for home. In over his head. That pretty much summed up his life of late.

  He needed Claire back in the worst way.

  * * *

  Sam knew he was supposed to be calm, cool, and collected—although he had no idea of just what he was supposed to collect. He knew that he, as a cat, should be an example of self-confident serenity to the horde of mall elves, armed and armored from sporting goods, who were about to go into battle against the forces of evil.

  Sporting goods aside, this wasn’t going to be battle by Disney.

  He had a feeling that even as an angel, he’d sucked at serenity. Unfortunately, since that whole Soldier of the Lord thing would come in handy right about now, the more time he spent in fur, the less he remembered about his life BC. Before cat.

  Back and forth across the top of the shelves that defined the open court around the fire pit. He couldn’t stop pacing.

  The unmistakable of sound of a two-fi
ngered whistle echoed through the enclosed space, instantly silencing the babble of conversation. A dozen heads of exotic hair turned toward the sound.

  “Dudes! Listen up.” Red braid swinging across the broad shoulders of his hockey pads, Will nodded toward Arthur, who stood beside him on a chair pulled away from a kitchen set in home furnishings. “Our fearless leader’s got something to say!”

  The Immortal King looked out at the crowd, his blue eyes sweeping from face to face, refusing to be hurried. Under his black leather jacket, he was wearing an umpire’s padded breastplate. In his left hand, he held a pair of heavy leather gauntlets from gardening supplies. In his right, he held Excalibur.

  It was so quiet Sam could hear only the faint creak of plastic padding. It was almost as though the mall elves were holding their breath, waiting for their leader to speak.

  The ringing crash of the aluminum bat bouncing loudly across the tiles spun everyone around. They watched in unison until the bat finally hissed to a stop under Kith’s raised boot. Then they all looked at Sam.

  He hadn’t even noticed the bat before he knocked it off the shelf.

  Ignoring the pounding of his heart, and pretty sure he’d just lost the first of the alleged nine lives, he sat down and wrapped his tail pointedly around his front paws. Given the overwhelming, all encompassing level of noise, he didn’t think he could pull off the classic “I meant to do that” expression, so he settled for the slightly less difficult “What?” aimed directly at Arthur. Unable to help themselves, the elves turned again, searching for what he was staring at.

  Poets knew that cats looked at kings because poets were no more immune than anyone else when it came to discovering what cats were staring at.

  Arthur sighed. “You called me here,” he said after a moment, “to make you one people. To stop the bickering that made you easy prey for the darkside. To teach you how to hold the line against the darkside and say, this far you shall go and no farther. This I have done. You are one people. You act as one against the darkside. You hold the line. But it is no longer enough. The darkside has taken one of us and one of the Keepers who came to set us free. We cannot just hold the line while Kris and Diana are in the hands of our enemies. It is time we take the fight to them!”

  “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

  Caught up in the rhetoric, it took Sam a moment to realize why the response made him so edgy. He’d seen much the same thing on a grade-school playground while waiting for Diana to close an accident site under the slide.

  Tossing back his hair with one hand, lifting Excalibur above his head with the other, Arthur yelled out, “Who is with me?”

  All the hair lifted along Sam’s spine and in the second between the question and the answer, he shouted, “Wait!”

  * * *

  “Ow! Where are we?”

  “In a refrigerator.” Bent nearly double, Claire reached for the door, hoping it was still open. “I’d have told you to duck, but I didn’t want to end up on an extended visit to Donald, Daisy, or Howard.”

  “So, Meryat’s not in here?”

  “No. Meryat’s not in here.” There was focused and then there was obsessive. Lance had crossed the line some time ago. “Hands off!”

  “Sorry! There’s not much room!”

  “Well, it’s a refrigerator,” she muttered, flicking the edge of the egg tray and trying to remember if it was on the door in this particular model. They had more than the actual room available but not by much.

  “Would this be a good time to tell you that I’m a little claustrophobic?”

  “No.” Okay. That was the butter thingy. Had to be the door. Both hands against it, Claire pushed.

  “We need to get out now.”

  “I’m working on…Hey!” Those were hands where they had no business being. Not that Lance seemed to notice as he began to throw himself against the sides of the fridge. “Careful! You’re going to…”

  Too late.

  The fridge went over, the door flew open, and Claire spilled out into Large Appliances wrapped up in a panicking grad student. She slapped him purely for medicinal reasons.

  Rolling free, she found herself staring up at a pair of worried amber eyes, cinnamon nose nearly touching hers. No mistaking the tuna breath. “Sam! Ow!” Half a heartbeat later, she had an armful of marmalade cat and a row of bleeding puncture marks along her collarbone. “Oh, baby-cat, you have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

  The ecstatic purring stopped. Sam squirmed free and backed up until all four feet were each applying approximately ten pounds of pressure to Claire’s chest. “Baby-cat?”

  “Term of endearment.”

  “Baby-cat!”

  “I’m sorry. I was caught up in the moment. It will never happen again.”

  Whiskers bristling, Sam stared at her with such intensity, her eyes started to water. “See that it doesn’t,” he snorted at last and walked away muttering, “Baby-cat? I’d like to see what’d happen if she tried that on Austin. He’d remove her spleen…”

  Claire smiled and sat up. It was good to be back.

  “What’s with the elves in hockey gear?” Lance demanded, bouncing up onto his feet, panic forgotten.

  Actually, that was a good question.

  White, plastic shoulder pads gleaming under the store’s florescent lights, the mall elves pushed their way between the washers and dryers and surrounded the open area in front of the toppled fridge. Whatever they’d been doing, it had certainly got them worked up; Claire’d never seen them so excited. They were in constant movement, all talking at once. Half a dozen hands reached down to lift her to her feet.

  “Thank you, okay, that’s great, I’m fine, yes it’s good to be back…Hey!” An elf she didn’t recognize backed away, hands in the air. Sure, he could have just been smoothing down the back of her skirt and she could have just spent a couple of hours with the gods of ancient Egypt. Oh, wait…

  “They’re happy to see you!” Lance pointed out, accurately but unnecessarily.

  “He’s not Australian?” Stewart asked, shooting a disbelieving glance up at the taller blond.

  “Not so that you’d notice.”

  “Weird.” He handed over her sandals. “You left these here.”

  Claire thanked him, bent to slip them on, and straightened as the surrounding babble rose in volume.

  Lance’s fingers closed over her shoulder. “Meryat!”

  She sighed. “Arthur.” And stepped forward to meet the Immortal King.

  He clasped her wrist in a warrior-to-warrior move Claire’d only ever seen performed in old movies. It was moderately reassuring that he hadn’t changed enough from his basic parameters to greet her with a high five. “I am truly glad to see you back, Keeper.”

  “I’m truly glad to be back.” She glanced at his chest. “Decided to have a sports day while I was gone?”

  “We are armored for battle.”

  “Battle? The darkside is attacking?”

  “No.” Blue-black hair fell over his eyes as he shook his head. “We take the fight to them.”

  It seemed like she’d managed to find the mall just in time. “No, we don’t…”

  “Your sister, the Keeper Diana, and Kris, my captain, have been captured.”

  “Yes, we do. How do you know this?”

  “A budgie mirror gave the news to Sam.”

  “Okay, then.” That was just ludicrous enough to be a reliable source. She waved toward the various bits of surrounding padding. “Can I assume you were about to leave?”

  “We were.”

  “Just let me get my stuff…”

  “Claire?”

  Right. Lance. Her own personal albatross. Except that an actual albatross would be significantly less annoying. Still…Bystander. Keeper. Responsible. Yadda. “Lance…” She reached back, got a good grip on his sleeve and dragged him forward. “…this is Arthur. He’s in charge of the elves.”

  “The Arthur?”

  “Yes.”

>   Lance frowned. “I would have thought Oberon…”

  “Apparently not.”

  “He’s younger than I imagined him being.”

  “That’s because you didn’t imagine him.” She gestured toward the kids. “They did. Arthur, this is Lance. He’s a very confused grad student looking for his professor and a reanimated mummy.”

  Arthur stared up at the large, blond man and his pale cheeks paled further. “Lance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Du Lac?”

  “Benedict.”

  The Immortal King released the breath he’d been holding. “Thank God.”

  YOU’RE WELCOME.

  THIRTEEN

  “YOU LOCKED SAM IN A CRATE?”

  “With both you and your sister missing, I felt responsible for his safety. I asked him to give me his word that he’d remain here, in the store. He wouldn’t.” Arthur glanced over at Claire, his expression somewhere between concerned and defiant. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “You were,” Claire told him reassuringly. “But that’s not actually relevant. If I were you, I’d check your bedding before getting into it and your shoes before putting them on.”

  A quiet voice murmured “Ooo, shoes…” from around ankle height but when Claire looked down, Sam was nowhere to seen.

  “Sorry.”

  Arthur waved it off. “It’s all right…”

  He was lying, but she appreciated the effort.

  “…we have greater troubles now facing us than possible retribution by one annoyed cat.”

  And if Arthur was very lucky, Sam hadn’t heard that. “So you’ve armed your people and are about to…?”

  “Meet the enemy head on, rescue your sister and my captain, and end this once and for all.”

  “That’s the plan?”

  “No, those are our objectives. How we achieve those objectives—that’s the plan. Once we have drawn the enemy into battle, Teemo and Kith will take the scout’s route in behind their lines and effect the rescue.”