Таня Хафф - The Second Summoning

Glancing across the cab, Dean made a deductive leap. “The demon?”

Claire nodded.

“We aren’t after heading for Toronto, then?”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“Nice to get some good news.” He turned his attention back to the highway. “Going through Toronto’s insanity enough.”

“I never noticed any insanity.”

“You’re not driving.” After his first trip through Toronto, Dean had decided that the Montreal reputation for having the worst drivers in Canada was undeserved. Sure, Montreal drivers all drove like maniacs, but at least they drove like maniacs who knew what they were doing. As near as he could figure, Toronto drivers had their heads so far up their collective arse they had to make it up as they went along.

“The biggest possible mess,” Diana repeated as the subway pulled into Union Station. “Oh, my God! She’s going to Kingston!” Grabbing up Samuel, she ran for the doors, paused, turned, and said, “Are you really an angel?”

Doug smiled. “Can’t you tell?”

“No.” The first whistle blew and she stepped out onto the platform. She should have been able to tell. Behind the closing doors, Doug spread his hands and bowed. Diana could see his lips move, but the roar of the old Red Rocket drowned him out.

He turned and waved as the subway headed north up the University line.

“I wonder what he said,” she murmured, hurrying toward the escalators.

“Lex clavatoris designati rescindenda est.”

“Good ears.”

“I’m a cat.”

“Only recently, so you can cut back on the attitude.” Diana shifted the cat to her other arm, cut off an elderly Asian man, and raced up the narrow stairs, boots pounding against the metal treads. “And while I agree that the designated hitter rule has got to go, what does that have to do with him being, or not being, an angel?”

Samuel hooked his claws through her jacket. “Don’t angels play baseball?”

“The Anaheim Angels. It’s just the name of a team—I like so truly doubt there are actual metaphysical players on it.”

“You sure?”

“No. And you know what? I don’t care.”

“Qui tacet consentit,” Samuel muttered, as she stepped out onto the tiles and headed for the train station at a fast trot.

“ Fac ut vivas! And stop showing off, I can’t think of anything more annoying than a cat who criticizes in Latin.”

“A cat who horks up a hair ball in a hundred-and-forty-dollar-pair of sneakers?”

“ Tres gross. You win.”

Leaning into the turn leading to a well-worn flight of limestone stairs, he smiled. “Of course.”

“ That was cutting back on the attitude?”

“What attitude?”

Taking the stairs two at a time, Diana realized why so many of Claire’s conversations with Austin ended in unanswered questions.

“So why is the demon going to Kingston?” Samuel asked as they leveled out and headed across the polished marble floor toward the line for train tickets.

“She’s going to reopen a hole to Hell. OW!”

“Sorry.” Samuel fought his claws free of jacket, sweater, shirt, and flesh. “Are you serious?”

“No, I’m bleeding!”

“Hey, I said I was sorry, but you can’t just mention Hell to an angel and expect no reaction.”

“Fair enough.” Diana slid in between the velvet ropes and prepared to wait for the first available sales agent. At the moment, all three of them appeared to be on break. “That’s one powerful union,” she muttered when reaching into the possibilities produced no visible results.

“Hell?” the cat prodded.

“Okay, short version of a long story: My sister and I closed this really old hole to Hell in the basement of a sort of hotel in Kingston before Christmas. Sealed the site, saved the world—yadda, yadda, yadda—but the place will still remember the hole, so reopening it will give the demon the biggest bang for the least buck. If she gets past the Cousin monitoring the site fast enough—and from what Claire told me about the dirty old man, she shouldn’t have much trouble if she came fully outfitted—she’ll have time to get the hole open before Claire catches up. We may not have to worry about Claire erasing her personhood because the rising darkness will completely overwhelm it.”

“Not to mention overwhelm the world with pure unadulterated evil insuring that everyone on it lives short miserable lives of pain and desperation.”

“Well, yeah. That, too.”

THIRTEEN

“N OW BOARDING AT GATE RORG,VIA Rail train number gonta sev to Nootival, with stops at Gaplerg, Corbillslag, Pevilg, and Binkstain.”

“That’s us,” Diana declared, scooping the cat up off the bench as the station loudspeakers repeated the announcement in French.

“Hey, watch the whiskers,” Samuel protested as she stuffed him into the backpack she’d bought at the station shop, heaved him up onto one shoulder, and hurried toward the gate. He peered out through the open zipper at the back of her ear. “And I thought we were going to Kingston on the train to Montreal.”

“That’s right: Binkstain on the train to Nootival.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Just try to look like luggage, would you.”

The sudden blip of a police siren woke Austin out of a sound sleep. One moment he was lying between Claire and Dean with a paw thrown over his eyes, the next he was up over the seat back and into the depths of his cat carrier muttering, “You can’t prove it was me, anyone could have left that spleen on the carpet.”

“You’ve got to admire his reflexes,” Claire allowed, waving one hand through the contrail of cat hair.

“Do I, then?” Dean asked, gearing down and maneuvering the truck carefully to the narrow shoulder winter had left bracketing highway seven. “Sure. Okay, I guess.”

Claire shot him a questioning glance, noted the muscle jumping along his jaw, and the distinct “man about to face a firing squad” angle to his profile. “You’ve never been pulled over before, have you?”

“No.” He sighed and laid his forehead on the steering wheel.

It was a vaguely embarrassed no, but whether he was embarrassed because he’d been pulled over now or because he’d never been pulled over before, Claire couldn’t tell. Some guys might be bothered by reaching twenty-one without a speeding ticket—or more precisely the story of how they got the ticket—but would they be the same guys who were bothered by un-ironed underwear? “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.” She twisted around within the confines of the seat belt. “There’s a demon out there; we haven’t time to jump through hoops for the OPP.”

“No.”

This, however, was a definite no. An inarguable no. She watched Dean’s chin rise as he rolled down the window and recognized his “taking responsibility” look.

“You don’t do the crime,” he announced, “if you can’t do the time.”

“What?”

“It’s the theme song from a seventies’ cop show.”

“You weren’t around in the seventies.”

“I saw it at my cousin’s. In Halifax. On the Seventies’ Cop Show Network. He has a satellite dish,” Dean added as Claire’s brows drew so far in they met over her nose. “Look, it’s not important, I just don’t want you messing with the cop’s head. I broke the law, so I’m after facing the consequences.”

“You were doing one hundred ten in an eighty. It’s not like you’ve been out robbing banks or clogging Internet access to I’ve-got-more-money-than-brains. com.” Over the years, Claire had fixed a number of tickets while catching rides with Bystanders. Once, she’d attempted to convince a Michigan State Trooper that ninety-seven miles an hour on I-90 through Detroit was a perfectly reasonable speed. Poking around in his head, she discovered she hadn’t been the first—or even the most convincing. “Dean, I’m sorry, but, as a Keeper, I have to say that getting rid of this demon has to be right at the top of our to-do list.”