Таня Хафф - Long Hot Summoning

Under the shadow of a scruffy teenage mustache, the first boy’s lip curled. “So we just let the cat win?”

The third boy sighed and scratched at the growing damp spot under his arm. “Cats always win. One way or another.”

“Oh, yeah, hiding under a parked…” Narrowed eyes widened. “…minivan.” He shifted his gaze across the nearly uniform rows of family vehicles until it returned, eyes wide, to Dean. “You find the cat, man, you can have it. We don’t want it.” Hands shoved deep into his pockets, he turned on one heel. “Come on.”

Does everybody know about the minivans ? Dean wondered as the three boys slouched back inside the mall. He waited until he heard the doors close, then he waited a few minutes more, just in case. Picking the folded newspaper up off the bench, he walked out to his truck.

As he stepped off the concrete pad and out of the building’s shadow, the heat hit him like a warm, wet sponge. By the time he had the driver’s door open, his T-shirt was clinging damply to his back.

“Took you long enough,” Austin panted, crawling out from under the truck bed.

“Sorry.” Scooping the cat up in one hand, Dean dropped him gently on the seat and slid in after him. “What happened, then?”

“The possibilities wouldn’t let me through, but the others are fine, so don’t sweat it.” An emerald eye turned briefly toward Dean. “That was sort of a joke. Is there any water in here?”

After their last visit to the vet, Claire’d begun keeping a bottle of water and a small bowl in the glove compartment. It was tepid, but Austin drank almost all Dean poured.

“Are you okay?”

“Give me a minute.” The cat sat up, rubbed a paw over wet whiskers, and sighed. “Ever notice how much a group of teenage boys resembles a dog pack?”

“Uh, no.”

“So that was some other guy doing all that alpha male posturing?”

Dean thought back over the encounter and frowned. “I didn’t…”

“You didn’t sniff their butts, but other than that, it was all big dog, little dogs. Don’t get me wrong. If it weren’t for my whole dogs-are-an-accident-of-nature belief system, I’d have been very impressed.” He folded himself into tea cozy position. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Dean asked, still working his way through the dog thing.

“Well, why are we still sitting here? I have some serious napping scheduled for this afternoon and I’d like to get to it.”

“We’re just going to leave, then?”

Austin sighed. “Yes. I don’t like it any more than you but that’s the way it is. We leave. They stay. They save the world. We go home and you feed the cat. At least now you also have vital and important duties to perform.”

“Right.” Dean fished his keys from his pocket and started the engine. “Don’t be taking this the wrong way, but I’d be happier if you were with Claire.”

“Likewise.”

* * *

“You know, I’m starting to think this isn’t the actual anchor. That it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Mixed metaphors aside, I think you’re right.” Claire straightened up from examining a display of remarkably realistic stone garden gnomes. “I also think they’re using a basilisk, so keep your eyes peeled.”

“That would explain the stone guy with the stone net and the wet stain on his stone trousers,” Diana acknowledged, crossing toward her sister. “I was wondering why they’d only stock one of such a guaranteed big seller. Where do you think it is?”

“The basilisk? Hopefully, not here.”

“Not the basilisk, the anchor.”

“It’s got to be close. It’s not in the store. It’s not in the storeroom…”

“It’s probably behind the construction barrier,” Sam yawned. He closed his mouth to find both Keepers staring at him. “What? It’s covered in danger, keep out, authorized entry only, this means you signs. It seemed kind of obvious.”

After a moment, Diana sighed. “He’s right.”

“You say that like you’re surprised,” the cat protested.

“Only because I was,” she told him reassuringly as she shoved him off her backpack and heaved it back up onto her shoulders. “Let’s get a move on. They’ve got to know we’re here by now.”

“If they don’t, they will in a moment.” Claire nodded toward the door. “It’s warded to keep things in.”

“Given the basilisk, good. Otherwise, that kind of sucks.”

“And it explains why no one’s shown up so far. They know they can take their time coming to get us because we’re not going anywhere.”

“We aren’t?”

“Hypothetically. Do you think you could not want those wards there enough to get rid of them?”

“I could just get rid of them.” As Claire turned toward her, Diana raised both hands. “Except I’d be imposing my will on the Otherside, and that would be breaking the Rules, and so I would never, ever do it because that would make me just like the bad guys.”

“Hey!” Sam bumped her in the calf with his head. “What are you talking about?”

“You can influence the Otherside with strong subconscious desires or by consciously wanting or not wanting something badly enough, but you can’t just demand it be one thing or the other,” Diana explained, bending just enough to stroke the end of his tail through her fingers. “Even if you’re very young and it was sort of an accident, no matter what people say.”

“Is this another doesn’t-know-her-own-strength story?” the cat wondered.

Claire nodded. “Every door that had ever been used as an access was blown off its hinges.”

“Okay, okay, fine. But nobody got hurt, so no harm, no foul.” Diana stepped closer to the wards. “You do something once…”

“Twice.”

“Okay, twice, and all of a sudden you can’t be trusted.”

“I trust you. I’m the one who asked you to not want the wards, remember?”

“Right.” Her brow furrowed. The absolute last thing she wanted was to be stuck in a shadow Emporium with a possible basilisk and her sister telling remember-how-Diana-blew-up-the-sofa stories. The wards flickered. And again. And disappeared to the sound of sirens and a blinding array of flashing lights.

“I think you set off an alarm!” Sam yelled.

“What was your first clue?” Diana shrieked back at him as the three of them ran out the cleared door and into the concourse.

“It was either the sirens or the flashing lights!”

The shadow construction barrier was the same painted gray plywood as the original.

“Unless this is the original and the other one’s the shadow.”

“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!”