Таня Хафф - Long Hot Summoning

LONG HOT SUMMONING

The finest in Fantasy and Science Fiction

by TANYA HUFF from DAW Books:

THE SILVERED

THE ENCHANTMENT EMPORIUM

THE WILD WAYS

The Confederation Novels:

A CONFEDERATION OF VALOR

Valor’s Choice/The Better Part of Valor

THE HEART OF VALOR (#3)

VALOR’S TRIAL (#4)

THE TRUTH OF VALOR (#5)

SMOKE AND SHADOWS (#1)

SMOKE AND MIRRORS (#2)

SMOKE AND ASHES (#3)

BLOOD PRICE (#1)

BLOOD TRAIL (#2)

BLOOD LINES (#3)

BLOOD PACT (#4)

BLOOD DEBT (#5)

BLOOD BANK (#6)

The Keeper’s Chronicles:

SUMMON THE KEEPER (#1)

THE SECOND SUMMONING (#2)

LONG HOT SUMMONING (#3)

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, Volume 1:

Sing the Four Quarters/Fifth Quarter

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, Volume 2:

No Quarter/The Quartered Sea

WIZARD OF THE GROVE

Child of the Grove/The Last Wizard

OF DARKNESS, LIGHT, AND FIRE

Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light/The Fire’s Stone

TANYA HUFF

LONG HOT SUMMONING

The Keeper Chronicles #3

Copyright © 2003 by Tanya Huff.

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-101-65801-7

Cover art by Judy York.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1256.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

First Printing, May 2003

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES—MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A.

Back in the summer of 2001, I attended a convention in Toronto called TT15. Or possibly TT2001 . . . it used to be called Toronto Trek and that’s how I remember it. Anyway, after my reading, during the question and answer session, I talked about this book which I’d just started writing. I gave a brief synopsis of what it was about and mentioned that it didn’t, as yet, have a title. A woman in the back of the room called out, “What about LONG HOT SUMMONING?”

The perfect title.

I don’t know who you are, but if you’re reading this, this one’s for you!

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

ONE

T HROWING HER BACKPACK OVER ONE SHOULDER,Diana raced out the front door and rocked to a halt at the sight of the orange tabby crossing the front lawn. Or more specifically, at the sight of what dangled from the cat’s mouth. With one of its disproportionately long arms barely attached and dragging on the grass, and something that looked like intestine wrapped around one bare ankle, the bogey was unquestionably dead. An eyeball bounced gently against its bloody forehead with every step. “Nice catch,” she noted, half her attention on the approaching bus. “Where did you find it?”

“Ood ’ile,” Sam told her proudly, his voice distorted by the body.

“You know you can’t eat it, right?”

Amber eyes narrowed, he let the bogey drop and fixed Diana with an incredulous glare. “Do I look like an idiot?”

“No, but you haven’t been a cat for very long…” Six months ago, he’d been an angel. Angels didn’t concern themselves with the small things that slipped through the possibilities. “…and you know how my mother feels about that whole puking on the white wool rug thing.”

“Once! I did it once!”

“Yeah, so did I, and she’s never let me forget it either.” With a scream of abused brake linings, the bus stopped more or less at the end of the driveway. “I don’t have time to bury it now, so try to leave it where Mom’s not going to trip over it.” Turning, she took two steps and turned again, pulled around by the weight of Sam’s regard. “Oh, right. Sorry. You are a mighty hunter. Your skill with tooth and claw is amazing. Fast. Deadly. I stand in awe.”

“Hey! Sarcasm.”

“Not sarcasm,” Diana protested hurriedly. There were any number of imaginative places the dead bogey could be left. “But I’ve got to go. Mr. Watson won’t wait forever.”

“I’m amazed Mr. Watson stops at all.”

“Yeah, well, need provides and all that. Remember, I’ll be home early,” she added, trotting backward up the path, “just in case there’s anything you don’t want me to catch you doing.”

A presented cat butt made his opinion of that fairly plain.

Mr. Watson looked more nervous than impatient. He nodded a silent reply to Diana’s cheerful good morning, closed the door practically on her heels, and jerked the bus into gear. Had Diana not already been reaching into the possibilities, she’d have landed on her ass as he burned rubber trying to outrun half-buried memories. Fully burying them would have messed with his ability to drive, so only the less likely edges had been fuzzed out, leaving him in a perpetual state of nearly remembering things he’d rather not. Which was actually a state fairly common among school bus drivers.

Diana tried not to resent his attitude, but it wasn’t easy. This semester alone she’d stopped a black pudding from devouring an eighth grader, saved Chrissy Selwick from a three-headed dog attracted to the aconite in the herbal body mist she’d been given for Christmas—might as well have had “eat me” tattooed on her forehead—and prevented a Gameboy™ from taking over the world. Handheld computer games were more competitive than most people thought.

She’d also stopped Nick Packwood from hanging a second grader out the window by his heels, but since she still wasn’t entirely certain the kid hadn’t deserved it, she usually left that particular incident off her “reasons Mr. Watson should thank his gods I’m on the bus” list.

Making her way back through the rugrats, Diana noticed without surprise that the last six rows—the rows reserved for the high school students on the route—were nearly empty. On this, the last day of the high school year, only two freshmen had been unable to find alternative transportation.

“My brother was going to give me a ride,” said the first as she passed. “But he had to go to work really early.”

“Yeah. I was going to ride my bike, but I had, like, an asthma attack,” the other explained, holding up his inhaler for corroboration.

Diana ignored them both. First, because a senior acknowledging freshmen would open up all sorts of possibilities she had no desire to deal with. Second, as the youngest, and therefore most powerful Keeper, as one of the Lineage who maintained the mystical balance of the world, as someone who had helped close a hole to Hell and faced down demons, she didn’t need to justify her reasons for taking the bus.

Settling into her regular seat, she thanked any gods who might be listening that this would be the last day she’d ever be at the mercy of public education.

* * *

Frowning, Diana crossed the main hall toward the stairs, trying to get a fix on the faint wrongness she could feel. It wasn’t a full-out accident site; no holes had been opened into the lower ends of the possibilities allowing evil to lap up against closed doors leading to empty classrooms, but something was out of place and, as long as she was in the building, finding it and fixing it was in the job description. Actually, it pretty much was the job description.