The Second Summoning

SIX

A LITTLE OVER AN HOUR after leaving the Hansen house, Dean turned off York Street and stopped the truck in the parking lot of the London bus terminal. “Here, then?”

“Here.”

“Inside?”

“No, over there.” She pointed to a bus parked at the back of the lot, barely visible between the blowing snow and the fading daylight.

Dean put the truck in gear and moved slowly forward. Given the holiday, the terminal hadn’t seen a lot of traffic, so the parking lot, unplowed since morning, lay under a mostly unbroken blanket of snow. About three meters from the bus, he felt the steering wheel jerk in his hand and then begin to spin with that horrible, loose feeling that could only mean all four tires had no traction at all. He fought the skid, thought he had it, lost it again, and shouted, “Brace for impact!” just as the truck stopped with its passenger door a mere two inches from the front fender of the bus.

“Brace for impact?” Austin asked, removing his claws from Claire’s jeans. “Do you even know how to swear?”

Heart pounding, Dean shut off the engine. “What good would swearing do?”

“Since you have to ask, probably none at…hey! What did I say earlier about dangling?” he demanded as Claire lifted him off her lap.

“Sorry.” Brow furrowed, she rolled down her window and peered at the bus fender.

“Excuse me! Old cat in a draft!”

“Austin, be quiet. Dean, I’m going to have to get out your side.” She rolled up the window and reached under the cat to undo her seat belt. “We’re so close to the hole, I’m not sure you can safely move the truck. We’ve got a cascade going on here,” she added, sliding across, under the steering wheel, and out into the parking lot. As Dean struggled to hold the door against the wind, she leaned back into the cab. “Are you coming?”

“Is it summer yet?”

An icy wind blew pellets of snow down under her collar. “Not exactly.”

Austin settled down, folding his front paws under his ruff. “Then I’m staying inside.”

“All right. I’ll reset the possibilities to keep you warm.”

“Thank you. Although if you don’t close that door,” he added pointedly, “it won’t make much difference.”

Claire stepped back and nodded to Dean who, in spite of the wind, managed to close the door without slamming it. “You know anyone else would’ve just let it go.”

“I’m not anyone else.”

He had an arm on either side of her, gloved hands braced against the truck, and his smile was, if not suggestive, open to suggestion. Since they’d blocked the hole, effectively rendering it harmless, Claire figured it couldn’t hurt to take a short break. Besides, Austin was locked away behind glass and steel, making it too good an opportunity to miss.

When they pulled apart a moment later, an eight-meter circle of parking lot had been cleared of snow. The asphalt directly underfoot steamed gently.

“Is that going to happen every time?” Dean asked a little shakily, following Claire around to the bus.

“I honestly don’t know.” Her lips felt bruised and all her clothing felt way too tight. “How about we stop for the night once I get this hole closed?”

Dean glanced at his watch. “It’s ten after four.”

“It’s getting dark.”

He looked up at the sky and down at Claire. “I saw a hotel just up the road.”

“So did I.” Dropping to her knees by the bus fender, she pulled off her glove and, holding a finger an inch or so off the chrome, traced a triple gouge in the metal.

“That’s it, then?” Dean asked behind her. “It’s some small.”

“A cascade doesn’t have to be very big. The driver probably clipped a car on the way out of the parking lot—because clipping a moving car would have caused an actual accident—didn’t stop, opened a hole, and flashed nasty possibilities all hither and yon on the bus route, probably causing a number of minor fender benders all day, which kept the hole from closing. Hence, cascade. It’s kind of like if every one of those minor fender benders had picked off the scab.”

Dean winced. “I wasn’t after asking. But how do you know the driver didn’t stop?”

“Driver stops, no hole.” Reaching into the possibilities, she pressed her thumb hard against one end of the first gouge. The metal rippled. The gouge disappeared. Twice more and the hole was closed. “I expect I’ll be closing a few holes this thing inspired,” she said as Dean helped her straighten up. “Sign says London-Toronto but since we’re still in London, it was clearly London-Toronto and back.” Pulling her glove on, she noticed a new glow of adoration in his expression. “What?”

“You’ve never mentioned you do bodywork.”

“I can rustproof, too.”

“You can?”

She grinned up at him. “No, sorry. I just wanted to see your eyes light…Oh!”

“New Summons?”

“No…”

“No?”

“No. It’s something else. Something close.”

“So much for quitting early.” He was disappointed, of course, but the cold had pretty much taken care of the actual incentive.

“No.” Claire started across the parking lot. “Really close.”

When she reached the sidewalk, she paused and turned right. “Whatever it is, it’s inside the bus terminal.”

The door was locked. The sign said, “TERMINAL CLOSES 4PM CHRISTMAS DAY.”

“I guess that’s it until tomorrow, then.” Dean polished a few fingerprints off the glass and turned away. “Look, there’s the hotel.” A little confused, he watched Claire pull off her glove—not the reaction he’d been expecting. “What?”

“I guess this has never come up…” Reaching into the possibilities, she opened the door.

“Claire! That’s breaking and entering!”

“I didn’t break, so it’s just entering.” She grabbed two handfuls of his coat and shoved him inside. “Move. Life is so much easier if we don’t have to explain to Bystanders.”

“But this is illegal!” he protested as the door closed behind them. When she stepped forward without answering, he grabbed her arm. “The mat!”

She jerked back and looked down. “What?”

“Wipe your feet.”

Claire considered a couple of possible responses. Then she wiped her feet.

Half a dozen paces inside the terminal, she dropped down to one knee and pressed the spread fingers of her right hand against the tiles. “This isn’t good.”

“I’d say it’s some disgusting,” Dean growled, kneeling beside her. “How can anyone leave their floors in this condition.”

“Dean…”

“Sorry. I expect you found something else that isn’t good?”

Claire lifted her hand. The pads of her fingers sparkled. “Angel residue.”

“Merry Christmas. You’ve reached the Hansen residence. No one feels like taking your call, so at the beep…”

“Not now, Diana, we’ve got a problem. I’m at a pay phone in the London bus terminal, and you’ll never guess what I’ve found.”

Phone jammed between ear and shoulder, Diana slid a platter of leftover turkey into the fridge. “Buses?”

“Angel residue.”

“That would’ve been my next guess.”

“Right. It seems like Lena’s visitor hasn’t gone home.”

“Unless he’s taking the bus.” She reached into the possibilities, opened a pocket on the second shelf, and shoved in the cranberry sauce, half a bowl of sweet potatoes, and an old margarine container now full of gravy. “You know, kind of a ’this bus is bound for glory’ thing. Say, how come you’re not using the cell phone you got for Christmas? No long distance charges and the battery’s good until the end of days. When you’re standing at the start of the Apocalypse, you’ll still have enough juice to call 911.”

“And tell them what?”

“I dunno. Run?”

“I’m not using the cell phone because I left it in the truck. And I need you to go talk to Father Harris at St. Pat’s. He’s the last person who we know saw the angel. Maybe he knows where it’s—he’s—headed. I’ve got another Summons on the way out of town, and since I just closed a cascade, I expect to have a whole string of them all the way to Toronto, so I’ll call you once we’re settled for the night.”

“No need. I’ll e-mail anything I find out.” As her sister started to protect, Diana rolled her eyes. “Claire, let’s make an effort to join the twentieth century before we’re too far into the twenty-first, okay? Later.”

Hanging up and heading for her coat and boots, she wondered what it was that made Keepers—herself excluded, of course—so resistant to technology. “Only took them a hundred years to get the hang of the telephone,” she muttered, digging for mittens. “And Austin’s probably more comfortable with it than Claire is.…”

“Austin, what are you doing with that phone?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?” Claire demanded as she slid back into the truck.

“I mean that there isn’t a Chinese food place in the city that’ll deliver to a parking lot.”

After a last-minute discussion concerning the dishes and how they weren’t being done, Diana walked out to the road, flagged down a conveniently passing neighbor, and got a ride into Lucan. Fifteen minutes later, still vehemently apologizing for the results of the sudden stop, she got out at St. Patrick’s and hurried up the shoveled walk to the priest’s house, staying as far from the yellow brick church as possible. Strange things happened when Keepers went into churches and, in an age when Broadway show tunes coming from the mouths of stained-glass apostles weren’t considered so much miraculous as irritating, Diana felt it was safest not to tempt fate—again.

Strangely, Protestant Churches were safer, although locals still talked about the Friendship United bake sale when four-and-twenty blackbirds were found baked into three different pies. Claire, who’d been fifteen and already an adult to Diana’s five-year-old eyes, had been both horrified and embarrassed, but Diana remembered their mother as being rather philosophical about the whole thing. There were, after all, any number of nursery rhymes that would’ve been worse. Although not for the blackbirds, she reflected, carefully stepping over a large crack in the sidewalk.

There were no synagogues or mosques in the immediate area and by the time she started being Summoned away, she was old enough to understand why she had to keep her distance. The incident at that Shinto shrine had been an unfortunate accident.

Okay, two unfortunate accidents, she amended climbing the steps to the front door. Although I still say if you don’t actually want your prayers answered, you shouldn’t…“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Verner. Is Father Harris in?”

The priest’s housekeeper frowned, as though recognition would be assisted by the knitting of her prominent brows. “Is it important? His Christmas dinner is almost ready.”

“We ate earlier.”

“He didn’t.”

“I only need a few minutes.”

“I don’t think…”

A tweak of the possibilities.

“…that vill be a problem.” The heels of her sensible shoes clicked together. “Come in. Vait in his office, I vill go get him. You haf an emergency. You need his help. How can he sit and do nothing vhen he is needed? I vill pull him from his chair if I must. Pull him from his chair and drag him back here to you.” She didn’t quite salute.

A little too much tweak, Diana reflected as the housekeeper turned on one heel and marched away. She made a slight adjustment before Mrs. Verner decided to invade Poland.

The small, dark-paneled, book-lined office came with a claustrophobic feeling that was equally the fault of its size, the faux gothic decorating, and the number of faded leather-bound books. Diana couldn’t decide if the painting over the desk—a three-legged figure standing on multicolored waves against an almost painfully green background—made the room seem smaller or let in the only light. Or both.

“It’s Saint Patrick banishing the snakes from Ireland,” announced a quiet voice behind her. “It was painted by one of my parishioners.”

“Probably one who donated beacoup de cash to the rebuilding fund,” Diana observed as she turned.

Father Harris took an involuntary step back, the sudden memory of St. Jerome belting out “Everything’s Coming up Roses” propelling his feet. He didn’t know why he was thinking about stained-glass and show tunes, but for a great many reasons he couldn’t maintain a grip on, he was quite certain he needed a drink.

Diana smiled at him reassuringly. “Lena Giorno tells me her father brought an angel to you last night.”

“A young man who thought he was an angel,” the priest corrected. He was fairly certain the girl’s smile was supposed to be reassuring, but it was making him a little nervous.

“You don’t think he’s an angel?”

“I very much doubt an angel would appear in such a way in the bedroom of a teenager girl.”

“You mean naked?”

“That’s hardly a suitable topic for you and me to discuss.” Taking a deep breath, he folded his arms and gave her the best “stern authority figure” glare he could manage under the circumstances. “And now, young lady, if you don’t mind my asking, what is your name and what is your connection to young Samuel?”

Diana’s smile broadened. “Samuel,” she repeated under her breath. “Should’ve known better than to give out his name.” Refocusing on Father Harris—whose expression had slipped closer to “confused elder trying to make sense of the young and failing miserably”—she asked, “Did he stay here last night?”

“Yes, but he was gone this morning. Now, see here young lady…”

“May I please see where he slept?”

About to demand that she answer his earlier question concerning who she was and what she wanted, Father Harris found himself stepping back into the foyer and leading the way up the stairs.

The alleged angel had slept in a small room at the end of the hall. It held a single bed, a bedside table, a dresser, and what was probably another picture of Saint Patrick. This one was a poster, stuck to the wall with those little balls of blue sticky stuff that invariably soaked oil through the paper. The elderly saint had only two legs in this picture, was wearing church vestments, and was, once again, banishing snakes.

“I don’t know what you thought you’d find.” The priest folded his arms, determined to make a stand. This was his house and…

A phone rang.

Downstairs.

It continued to ring. And ring.

“Please, don’t mind me,” Diana told him. “I’ll just stay up here a moment longer.”

He was halfway back to his office before he wondered why Mrs. Verner hadn’t answered the phone.

Diana reached into the possibilities as she stepped up to the poster.

The saint blinked twice and focused on her face. “And what’ll it be, then, Keeper?”

“I need some information about the guy who stayed here last night.”

The lines across the saint’s forehead deepened. “Oh, and you haven’t noticed that I’m up to my ankles in snakes here; what is it that makes you think I was paying any attention?”

“Well, I…”

“You wouldn’t be having a beer on you, would you?” A short but powerful kick knocked a snake right out of the picture.

“Why would a saint want a beer?”

“I’m an Irish saint, and you can pardon me for being a stereotype, but I was originally painted five hundred years ago and I’m a wee bit dry. Now, what was your question again?”

“Do you know where the guy who stayed here last night went when he left this morning?”

“The angel?”

“Yes.”

“I have no idea. But I’m telling you, Keeper, there was something funny about that boy.” He shook his head in disgust, halo wobbling a bit with the motion. “Who ever heard of a confused angel, eh? In my day, angels had no emotions, they did what they were sent down to do and then they went home. Is this like to be some New Age thing?”

“I don’t know.”

Another snake ventured too close and was punted off to the left. “There’s going to be trouble, you mark my words. An angel without a purpose is like a…a…”

“A religion with no connection to the real world?”

“Who asked you?”

“Did he use the bed?”

“Aye, he laid himself down although I can’t say I know why since he doesn’t have to sleep. Good old-fashioned angels, they didn’t lay down. Have you heard he’s got himself a…” His hand pumped the air by his crotch.…

…which wasn’t a gesture Diana thought she’d ever see a saint make. “I heard.”

“And what’s the idea behind that, I ask you? You listen to me, Keeper; angels today, they have no…”

Figuring she couldn’t really be rude to a metaphysical construct, Diana cut him off in mid rant. It looked like he was winding up for another kick, and she was starting to feel a little sorry for the snakes.

The hand of Mrs. Verner was apparent in the precision of the bed making—sheets and blankets tucked so tightly in they disdained a mere bouncing of quarters and were ready instead to host a touring company of Riverdance. Not expecting much, Diana checked for anything that might have been left behind—it was, after all, a day when miracles had already happened. Skimming the surface with her palm, she drew a two-toned hair from under the edge of the pillow but nothing else.

“Have you finished?”

The hair went into her pocket as she turned toward the priest. “Yes. Thank you. He didn’t tell you where he was heading?”

“He didn’t tell me he was going to leave,” Father Harris answered shortly. At the bottom of the stairs he turned to face her. “I want you to know that if you kids are mixed up in drugs…”

“Drugs?”

“Yes, drugs. Nothing that boy said last night made any sense.”

“Unless everything he said was the truth.” Widening her eyes and cocking her head to one side, Diana gazed up at the priest. “Don’t you believe in angels, Father Harris?”

“Angels?”

“Yes.”

“His Holiness the Pope has argued for the existence of angelic spirits, and therefore the official position of the Catholic Church is that they are insubstantial.”

“Okay. And you personally?”

“I, personally, remain uncertain. However,” he continued, cutting off her incipient protest with an upraised finger, “I am sure that young Samuel was, and is, no angel.”

“Why?”

“He had…” The priest’s gesture was considerably less explicit than the saint’s.

“An upset stomach? A basketball?”

“GENITALIA!”

Which pretty much ended the conversation.

Standing on the porch, Diana watched her breath plume out and came to a decision.

In the church, St. Margaret began singing “Climb Every Mountain.”

“Uh, Claire, your head’s kind of…”

“Pointy and striped? Don’t worry, it’s just hat head.” She tossed the toque behind the seat and ran her fingers up through her hair, dislodging most of the red and white. “When Diana was ten, she decided to make everyone’s Christmas present and this was mine. I know it looks dorky, but it’s really warm and it’s getting cold out there.”

“Getting cold?” Austin pressed against Dean’s thigh and glared up at her. “Getting? I’m warning you, don’t touch me again with any part of your body or any one of your garments.”

“Look, I’m very sorry that the edge of my jacket brushed against your ear.”

“The frozen edge of your jacket.” He flicked the ear in question. “And I accept your apology only because I seem to be getting some feeling back.”

“Did you get the hole closed okay?” Dean asked as Claire fastened her seat belt. He told himself he watched only to be sure she was secured before he began driving, that it had nothing to do with the way the belt pressed the fabric down between her breasts. Unfortunately, he was a terrible liar and he didn’t believe himself for a moment.

“No problems. It looked like one of those big off-road vehicles actually went off the road, and the driver had no idea of how to use the four-wheel drive because he’d only bought the car to prove his was bigger.”

“And you could tell that from the hole?”

She flashed him a grin. “I extrapolated a little, there really wasn’t much there. I probably only got Summoned because it was on the shoulder of a major highway and could have caused accidents. And, of course, the more accidents it caused, the bigger it’d get. You know.”

He didn’t, but he was beginning to get the idea. Shifting into first, he pulled carefully back out onto the 401. “Can I ask you something?”

“Seven. But none of them meant anything to her.”

“Austin!”

“And Jacques was dead, so maybe he shouldn’t…”

Claire grabbed a piece of turkey out of the box behind the seat and stuffed it in the cat’s mouth.

“That wasn’t actually the question,” Dean admitted.

“And it certainly wasn’t the answer.” It was almost dark, and the dashboard lights left Dean’s face in shadow. She wished she knew what he was thinking. She could know what he was thinking, if she asked in the right way. She only had to say, “Please tell me what you’re thinking, Dean.”

It slipped out before she could stop it.

“The headlights look a little dim; I’d better clean them next time we stop.”

That was it?

“And, Claire? Don’t do that.”

“That? Oh. Right. Sorry. It’s just…”

“You’re used to having your own way with Bystanders.”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Okay, yes.” She slumped down in the seat. “So what was your question?”

“How could Lena create an angel? I thought angels just were.”

“The light just is, but where angels are concerned, you can’t separate the observer from the observed. Every angel ever reported has been shaped by the person doing the reporting—by what they believe, by what they need. If you need an angel to be grand and glorious, it is. Or warm and comforting. Or any other combination of adjectives. Wise and wonderful. Bright and beautiful. Great and small…”

“At the same time?”

“Probably not. Thing is, they usually deliver the message they were sent with and disappear.”

“Message?”

“Oh, you know: Be nice to each other. Fear not, there is a supreme good and it hasn’t forgotten you. Don’t cross that bridge. Stop the train.”

“Feed the cat.” He looked up to see both Claire and Dean staring down at him. “Hey, it could happen.”

“Anyway,” Claire continued as Dean turned his attention back to the road, “message delivered, the angel goes home. This one seems to be hanging around.”

“Why?”

“No message,” Austin told them, climbing onto Claire’s lap. “You two opened wide the possibilities, Diana made possible probable, and her little friend defined it—but it has no actual reason for being here. It’s going to be looking for a reason.” He pushed Claire’s thigh muscles into a more comfortable shape. “But let’s look at the bright side. At least she isn’t Jewish, and it isn’t Hanukkah. Old Testament angels were usually armed with flaming swords.”

“I’d rather have flaming swords,” Claire sighed. “It’d be easier to find. Given the stuff Lena had in her bedroom, we’re probably talking a New Age kind of angel; human appearing, frighteningly powerful, smug and sweetly sanctimonious busybody.”

“Kind of like a jed…”

Her palm covered the cat’s mouth. “We don’t have enough problems?” she demanded. “You want to add trademark infringement?”

“What I don’t understand,” Dean interjected before someone lost a finger, “is how an angel can be a bad thing.”

“This kind of angel isn’t, not in and of itself—ignoring for the moment the way they always think they know what’s best for perfect strangers.” She paused, and when it became apparent Austin was not going to add a comment, went on. “But I can’t help thinking that much good walking around in one solid clump is well, bad.”

“Good is bad?”

“Metaphorically speaking.”

“And a remarkably inept metaphor it is, too,” Austin sighed.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Dean said, “So what do we do?”

“We hope Father Harris tells Diana where the angel went and that he went with a purpose so that, purpose fulfilled, he’ll go home. If not, we hope someone convinces him to go home before…”

“Before what?”

“I don’t know.” She stroked Austin’s back and stared out at a set of headlights approaching on the other side of the median. “But I can’t shake the feeling that something’s about to go very, very wrong.”

The darkness that had been seeping through the tiny hole in the woods behind J. Henry and Sons Auto Repair since just before midnight Christmas Eve struggled to keep itself together. While adding a constant stream of low-grade evil to the world might have been an admirable end result in times past, this time, it had a plan. It didn’t know patience, patience being a virtue, but it did know that rushing things now would only bring disaster—which it wasn’t actually against as long as it was the stimulant rather than the recipient. Had anyone suggested it was being subtle, it would have been appalled. Sneaky, however, it would cop to.

It had been maintaining this isolated little hole for some time, carefully, without changing anything about it, unable to use it but keeping it open when it might have sealed on its own—just in case. The hole was too small to Summon a Keeper, and because it was in the woods behind a closed garage outside a small town no one ever came to on a road that didn’t actually go anywhere, it was unlikely that either Keeper or Cousin would ever stumble over it by accident.

When the other end of the possibilities had opened and shifted the balance so dramatically, it saw its chance. It allowed the change in pressure to squirt it up through the hole and the concentration of the light to help keep it together.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Physics as metaphysics.

It grew steadily, secure in the knowledge that the nearest Keeper was too far away to stop it.

But, because inactivity would make them suspicious, it indulged itself with a little misdirection.

In the parts of the world that had just celebrated Christmas, holes created by family expectations widened and the first strike capabilities of parents against unmarried adult children became apparent.

In other parts of the world, low levels of annoyance at the attention paid to exuberant consumerism cranked up a notch, and several places burned Santa in effigy. The people of Effigy, a small village in the interior of Turkey, took the day off.

Somewhere else, a man picked up a pen, stared at it blankly for a moment and, shuddering slightly, signed his name, renewing “Barney” for another season. But that might have been a completely unrelated incident.