Таня Хафф - Long Hot Summoning

As far as Diana was concerned, all high schools needed Keepers. Nothing poked holes in the fabric of reality faster than a few thousand hormonally challenged teenagers all crammed into one ugly cinder-block building. Unattended, that was exactly the sort of situation likely to create the kind of person who developed an operating system that crashed every time someone attempted to download an Amanda Tapping screen saver.

The sudden appearance of a guidance counselor actually emerging from his office and heading straight for her nearly sent Diana running toward the nearest washroom. She didn’t want her last day ruined by yet another pointless confrontation. Fortunately, she realized he felt the same way before her feet started moving. Fuck it. What’s the point? flashed into the thought balloon over his head and he slid past without meeting her gaze.

The thought balloons had appeared back in grade nine when, after half an hour of platitudes, she’d wondered just what exactly he was thinking. An unexpected puberty-propelled power surge had anchored the balloons so firmly she’d never been able to get rid of them and she’d spent the last four years finding out rather more than she wanted to about the fantasy lives of middle-aged men.

Pamela Anderson.

And hockey.

Occasionally, Pamela Anderson playing hockey.

Some of the visuals were admittedly interesting.

The wrongness led her up the stairs, through the first cafeteria and into the second—weirdly, the hangout of both the jocks and the music geeks—empty now except for a group of girls who’d laid claim to the far corner by the northwest windows. A flash of aubergine light pulled her toward them. The senior girls’ basketball team, Diana realized as she drew closer. Probably hanging around in order to remain the senior girls’ basketball team. Over two thirds of them were graduating, so once they stepped out the door, they’d be a team no longer.

“…so I said to him, I’m not putting that in my mouth.” Tall, blonde, ponytail—Diana didn’t know her name. “First of all, I don’t know where it’s been and secondly, this lipstick cost twenty-one dollars.”

“And what did he say?” asked one of her listeners.

“Oh, you know guys. He took it so personally. All like, ‘you would if you loved me.’”

“So what did you say?”

“That I loved my lipstick more.”

In the midst of the laughter and catcalls that followed her matter-of-fact pronouncement, Blonde Ponytail looked up and spotted Diana.

“Did you want something?” she asked icily.

“Uh, yeah.” Diana leaned a little closer; trying to get a better look at the heavy bangle Blonde Ponytail wore around her left wrist. “ Please tell me where you got your bracelet.”

“This? At Erlking’s Emporium in the Gardener’s Village Mall. I got it last weekend when I was visiting my father in Kingston.”

Great.

Kingston.

Where there used to be a hole to Hell.

Oh, sure. It could be coincidence.

“It’s silver, you know.”

Well, it was silver colored; the broad band embossed with large flowers each centered with a demon’s eye topaz. It was quite possibly the ugliest piece of jewelry Diana had ever seen. “No, it isn’t. It only looks like silver.”

“What? You mean that troll lied to me?”

Troll.

With any luck, that was a colorful exaggeration rather than the mystical version of a Freudian slip.

Diana didn’t feel particularly lucky. Stretching out a finger, she lightly touched the edge of one metallic petal.

A much larger flash of aubergine light.

A moment later, Diana found herself pressed face first into one of the cafeteria’s orange plastic chairs discovering far more than she wanted to about the olfactory signature of the last person sitting in it. Then she realized she was actually under the chair and heaved it to one side.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Just a little bruised.” Accepting the offered hand, she pulled herself to her feet. “Static electricity,” she explained, trailing power through the basketball team. “I must have completed some kind of circuit.”

Several heads, probably the ones who hadn’t passed physics, nodded sagely.

The insistent trill of a cell phone broke the tableau.

“Mine,” Diana admitted, digging her backpack out from under the table. Eyes widened as she unzipped an outside pocket. After the unfortunate 1-800-TEACHME incident back in the spring of 2001, students were not permitted to use their cell phones while on school property. Oh, yeah, I’m a rebel, she thought flipping it open, then added aloud, “It’s my mother.”

When the team seemed inclined to linger, she threw a little power into, “Everything’s cool. You can go now.”

“Diana? What just happened?”

“You felt that at home?” She headed back toward the other cafeteria as the girls reclaimed their table, Blonde Ponytail muttering, “What a piece of cheap junk; I’m going to wring that troll’s neck.”

“Felt it? Yes, I’d say we felt it. Sam’s hanging from the top of the living-room curtains and the coffeepot’s bringing in radio broadcasts from 1520—apparently Martin Luther was just excommunicated. I missed part of Suleiman the Magnificent’s birth announcement as your father called to say he’d felt it in the next county. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I touched a piece of jewelry from the Otherside and there was a bit of a reaction. Don’t worry, I covered everything up, and the jewelry’s been totally nullified.”

“Where…?”

“Was the jewelry?” Diana interrupted. “Around the wrist of a fellow student. How did she lay her hands on a bracelet—and an incredibly ugly bracelet, I might add—that came from the Otherside? She bought it in a store called Erlking’s Emporium. Just where exactly is Erlking’s Emporium? Kingston.”

“Oh, Hell.”

“Probably.” Leaving the cafeteria, she headed for the main stairs and the front doors. “I figure I just blew a crack through their shielding and that Claire ought to be getting the Summons any minute.”

“Claire’s not in Kingston right now; she’s answering a Summons in Marmora.”

“Well, if it’s important, I’m sure the id…powers-that-be will give it to someone else.”

“You’re not getting anything?”

“Nope, nothing.” There was no one in the main hall. Another fifteen meters and she’d be out the doors and home free.

“Good. And while I have you, I thought we’d agreed you weren’t going to wear that T-shirt to school?”

“Sorry, Mom; the school has a ‘no cell phone’ rule. Gotta go.” Flipping the phone closed, Diana paused in front of her reflection in the glass of the trophy case. The writing across her chest—red on black—said, My sister’s boy toy went to Hell and all I got was a lousy T-shirt. She seemed to be the only one in the family who found it funny.

“Ms. Hansen.”

Phone still in her hand, Diana spun around and smiled up at the vice-principal. “It was my mother, Ms. Neal. I had to take the call.”

“Yes, I’m sure. But that’s not what I wanted to speak with you about. You’re an intelligent young woman, Diana, and while your years here have not been without…incident…”

The pause nearly collapsed under the memory of the whole football team thing. Some changes lingered, even in the minds of the most prosaic Bystander.

“Yes, well, your marks are good,” the vice-principal continued after a long moment, “in spite of your frequent absences, and I can’t help but feel it’s a real shame that you’ve decided not to go on to college or university.”