Таня Хафф - Long Hot Summoning

Diana shuddered. More time spent under academic authority? So not going to happen. “I’m afraid I’m just not the higher education type, Ms. Neal.” Sliding sideways, she moved a little closer to the door.

“Job prospects…”

“I have a job. Family business. Pays well, chance to travel, making the world a better place and all that.” Also demons, dangers, and the possibility of dying young but it still beat pretty much any other profession as far as Diana was concerned. Well, maybe not sitcom star or Hollywood script doctor but everything else. “You might say it’s the kind of job I was born to do,” she added reassuringly.

From the sudden contentment on Ms. Neal’s face, a little too reassuringly.

“It’s nice to know that at least one of my students will be leaving the school for a bright and beautiful future,” she sighed. “I’ll never forget you, Diana.”

Diana smiled. “Actually, you’ll forget me the moment I step out the door.”

“I don’t think…”

And then the threshold was between them.

Ms. Neal’s brow furrowed. She stared at Diana for a long moment, shook her head, and walked away.

Although not by nature a bouncy person, Diana almost skipped down the steps of the school. It was two thirty on Thursday, June the twenty-third, and she was finally free to be what she’d been intended to be from birth. Crossing the threshold for that last time had moved her from reserve to active Keeper status.

At two thirty-one, the Summons hit.

Both hands clamped to her temples, she tried to uncross her eyes. “Okay. I probably should have expected that.”

“Mom? You home?”

“She’s at the Pough house,” Sam told her, coming out of the living room. “There was some kind of emergency involving ravens and bad poetry. She said…” He paused, stared at Diana for a moment, then rubbed up against her shins. “We’ve got a Summons!”

“We do.” She told him about the bracelet as they pounded upstairs.

“Kingston?” Sam jumped up on the end of the bed. “Shouldn’t it be Claire’s Summons, then?”

“No. It’s mine.”

“Yeah, but…you know…it’s just…”

“Austin.” Diana dumped assorted end-of-year crap out of her backpack and shoved in her laptop, a pair of clean jeans, socks, underwear, and her hiking boots. There were places Otherside where even heavy rubber sandals wouldn’t be enough. Actually, there were places where hazmat suits wouldn’t be enough, but she planned on staying away from the Girl Guide camp. “You’re afraid to go onto his territory.”

“I am not afraid. But he doesn’t like me.”

Zippered sweatshirt. Pajama bottoms. Tank tops. “He’s old. He doesn’t like anyone except Claire.”

“He likes you,” Sam protested following her into the bathroom.

“He tolerates me because I can operate a can opener.” Shampoo. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Soap. Towel. “Don’t worry. We’ll be in and out before Claire and Austin even know we’re there.”

Eyeing the toilet suspiciously—who knew porcelain could be so slippery—Sam jumped up onto the edge of the sink. “You know, a hole big enough to pass physical objects through might be harder to close than you think.”

Diana snorted, threw in a couple of rolls of toilet paper just in case, and headed for the kitchen where she packed a box of crackers, a jar of peanut butter, a nearly full bag of chocolate chip cookies, and six tins of cat food.

“Less chicken, more fish,” Sam told her.

“Fish gives you cat food breath.”

He looked up from licking his butt. “And that’s a problem because…?”

“Good point.” She made the change, pulled the small litter box and a bag of litter out of the broom closet and packed them as well. “I think that’s everything. Now I just need to leave a note for the ’rents.”

“Make sure they can see it.” A few moments later, his pupils closed down to vertical slits, Sam stared up at the brilliant letters chasing themselves around the refrigerator door. “That seems a little much.”

“Well, they’ll be able to see it.”

“Yeah; from orbit.”

“Some cats are never happy.” About to pick up the pack, she paused. “You want to get in now? Our first ride’ll meet us at the end of the driveway.”

“Might as well.” He flowed in through the open zipper, and the green nylon sides bulged as he made himself comfortable. “Hey…” Folded space distorted his voice. “What’s with the rubber tree and the hat stand?”

“They’re holding open the possibilities.” Zipping up all but the top six inches, Diana swung the pack over her shoulders and headed for the road.

Their first ride took them into Lucan.

Their second, to London.

In London, they got a lift from a trucker carrying steel pipe to Montreal. Diana spent the trip strengthening the cables that held the pipes to the flatbed—a little accident prevention—and Sam horked up a hairball on the artificial lamb’s wool seat cover. Which was how they found themselves standing by the side of the road in Napanee, a small town forty minutes east of Kingston.

At Sam’s insistence, they stopped for supper at Mom’s Restaurant…

“No, that’s not a cat in my backpack. It’s an orange sweater that just happens to enjoy tuna.”

…where they met someone willing to take them the rest of the way.

* * *

Her back to the West Gardener’s Mall parking lot, Diana waved as the metallic green Honda merged into Highway Two traffic. “That was fun. I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘It’s Raining Men’ sung with so much enthusiasm.”

“My ears hurt,” Sam muttered, jumping out onto the grass.

“I suppose you’d rather have angelic choirs?”

“Are you nuts? All those trumpets—it’s like John Philip Sousa does choral music.” Carefully aligning his back end, he sprayed the base of a streetlight. “It’s all praise God and pass the oom pah pah.”

“I’m not even sure I know what that means, but just on principle, please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Okay, I’m kidding.”

She turned to face the mall. “Now say it like you mea…” And froze. “Oy, mama. That’s not good.”

The circles of light that overlapped throughout the parking lot had all been touched with red, creating a sinister—although faintly clichéd—effect. At just past nine, with the mall officially closed, the acres of crimson-tinted asphalt were empty of everything but half a dozen…

“Minivans. It’s worse than I thought.”

* * *

He had stood at this door, at this time, every Friday night for the last twenty-one years. There had been other doors in the long years before, but there would be no other doors after. He would make his last stand here. The door was open only to allow late shoppers to exit; he, a human lock, protected the mall from those who would enter after hours.

He watched the girl stride toward him. His lips curled at the sight of bare legs between sandals and shorts. His eyes narrowed in disgust at the way her breasts moved under her T-shirt. He snorted at her backpack and her youth.

Were it up to him, he’d never let her kind into the mall. He knew what they got up to. Talking. Laughing. Standing in groups. Standing in pairs. Pairs tucked away in Bozo’s School Bus using lips and hands.

He stiffened as she stopped barely an arm’s length away.

“The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

Pink lips parted. “ Please move out of my way.”

Twenty-one years at this door. “The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

Dark brows rose and dark eyes tried to meet his, but he stared at the drop of sweat running down her throat to pool against her collarbone and refused to be drawn in.