The Second Summoning

NINE

VAGUELY AWARE HE WAS BEING PULLED FROM SLEEP, Dean sighed deeply and arched his back. He could feel the sheet sliding away, warm air currents brushing against him, and…His eyes snapped open. “Claire, what are you doing?”

She smiled up at him. “Solving the angel prob…” Glancing down, she sighed. “Okay, should have worded that differently.”

“Claire!”

“I just thought that if you got going without thinking about things, momentum would keep you going. And it was working.” In the dim winter light seeping around the edges of the hotel curtains, she looked distinctly miffed. “I should never have said the ‘a’ word.”

He fumbled for his glasses. “Claire, I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“You’re both pathetic.”

Ears burning, Dean dragged a blanket around his waist and slid out of bed. “I’ve, uh…you know…bathroom.”

“Try a verb,” Austin snorted from a pile of Claire’s clothes on the unused bed.

As the bathroom door closed behind Dean—and then opened again as he pulled the blanket inside—Austin leaped carefully to Claire’s side. “Do you want me to talk to him, mano a mano?”

“Thanks for the offer, but no.”

“Why not?”

“Well, to begin with, you had your mano removed.”

“Not my idea.”

“Still.” She stroked the velvet fur between his ears with her thumb. “I think this is something Dean and I have to work out on our own.”

“You mean something Dean has to work out on his own. It’s not actually about you.”

Claire shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

“Of course, I’m wrong.” Austin sat down and curled his tail around his front toes. “This has nothing to do with a young man who desperately wants to make you happy and, because of an inadvertent angelic evocation, is afraid he’ll never be able to make you that happy again. Oh, no, this has to do with you being older and more experienced so that he’s intimidated. Or it has to do with you being a Keeper because he wouldn’t have caused an angel if you weren’t. Or it has to do with you being a Keeper and therefore responsible for everything under the sun.”

“That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?”

The cat sighed. “Duh.”

“So what should I do? No, wait.” A raised hand cut off his reply. “Don’t tell me. I should feed the cat.”

“Good choice.” Jumping from the bed to the dresser, he sat down again by his food dish. “You see how much easier life becomes when you concentrate on the essentials?”

The hair Diana had found in Father Harris’ house was very dark at the bottom and very blond at the tip. The style was popular with the male trendies at her school, but she’d never considered it an especially angelic look. Apparently, Lena did.

Technically, the angel—Samuel—was none of her business. Technically, he wasn’t Keeper business at all.

“Mom? Do you have any clear packing tape?”

Attention on breakfast preparations, Martha pointed across the kitchen with the spatula. “It’s in the junk drawer.”

Junk accumulates. Even those with very little, those chased from their homes by war or natural disaster, those for whom home is no more than a rough shack or a circle of barely roofed thatch, even they find themselves accumulating odds and ends for which they have no immediate need. In North American kitchens, the junk drawer can be found two drawers below the cutlery, just above the drawer holding the clean dish towels.

“It’s jammed.”

“Jiggle it.”

Even in houses with no more metaphysical content than could be found in a frozen, microwavable dinner—which at that, has more metaphysical content than actual food content—these drawers contain far more than is physically possible.

“Dart of Abaris, elf shot, scissors, string, Philosopher’s Stone, half a dozen ponytail elastics…” Diana’s eyes widened as she dumped the cloth-covered elastics into a small golden chalice. “Do you even care we could get big bucks for this thing on eBay?” she demanded, brandishing a tiny beanbag polar bear with a maple leaf on his chest.

Her mother glanced up from the toaster. “E what?”

“Gack. Am I the only person in this family who pays attention to this century?”

“Yes.”

“Explains a lot,” she muttered, shoving three plastic forks and a discolored envelope of dried mugwort aside to finally pull out the packing tape. “I’ll be heading into the closet later, so don’t worry if you can’t find me.”

“Diana, we talked about this…”

She sighed and grabbed a piece of toast on her way out of the kitchen. “I’m not going to consciously impose my will on the Otherworld.”

“Again.”

Continuing down the hall, she raised her voice without turning. “It was an accident, Mother.”

“It’s always an accident, Diana, but no one likes replacing all their closet doors.”

“It’s not like I didn’t apologize,” she muttered, shoving the last of the toast in her mouth and grabbing her coat and boots from the front hall. “And, hey, not my bad the tabloids got involved; if you don’t want people to know you have skeletons in your closet, don’t keep skeletons in your closet.” It had been sheer bad luck for that British Keeper that the force of the explosion had blown the tibia out the window and onto the street.

Back in her bedroom with the door securely closed and warded behind her, Diana threw her coat on the bed, pulled off a piece of tape about twenty centimeters long, picked up the angel hair with it, and wrapped it around her wrist. While she hadn’t exactly lied to her mother—she was going into the closet—she’d neglected to mention that she planned on going out the other side, a maneuver generally considered too dangerous to attempt.

The only reason Keepers exited at the same place they entered was plain old lack of imagination as far as Diana was concerned. So what if there were no other geographical references to the real world—she had that covered.

And all she had to do was make a phone call.

“Isn’titabeautifulmorning!Lookatthewaythesnowsparkles!”

Doug sucked muffin out of his teeth. “First cup of coffee, kid?”

“Ican’tbelieveI’vebeenherefortwodaysandIonlyjustdiscoveredthis.” Grinning broadly, Samuel raced down the front steps of St. Mike’s and back up again.

“You have to remember to breathe, kid.”

“I do?” Well, now he did. Sucking in a huge lungful of cold air, he started to cough.

“Cough into your cupped hands,” Doug told him. “Then you breathe in the warmed air.”

It took Samuel a minute to catch on, then another minutes for his lungs to get the idea. Finally, eyes watering, nose running, he looked up and gasped, “Ow.”

Doug nodded agreeably. “Life’s a bitch.”

“A female dog?” Samuel asked, wiping various bodily fluids off his face before they froze.

“Oh, yeah.”

And things were just starting to make sense.…Trying to work out this new worldview, Samuel turned, stiffened, and raced down to the sidewalk. “Are you crazy?” he demanded, yanking the cigarette out from between cracked lips and throwing it on the ground. “You’re destroying your body! You only get one, you know.”

Craig Russel, who’d been smoking since he was twelve and in better economic times had maintained a two-pack-a-day habit, peered out at Samuel from between the tattered ear flaps of his deerstalker, then down at his cigarette lying propped almost on end by a bit of dirty snow. Not entirely certain what had just happened, he squatted and extended fingers stained yellow-brown with nicotine.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Samuel ground the cigarette into pieces and the pieces into the snow. “Those things are bad for you!”

Grizzled brows drew in. “You smashed my smoke.”

“Well, yeah. It’s poison.”

“You smashed my smoke.” Craig stood, slowly, and leaned forward to stare into Samuel’s face. “My last smoke.”

Eyes beginning to water again, Samuel leaned back. “Do you have any idea how bad those things made your breath sm…” His mouth opened and closed a few more times, but no sound emerged. Up on his toes, back arched, he pushed at the air with stiff fingers.

“Let him go, Craig.”

“He smashed my smoke. My last smoke.”

“Yeah, I know, but you keep hold of his balls any longer and people’ll start to talk.”

Craig stared down at his right hand as though he recognized neither it nor the crushed fabric and flesh it held. “He smashed my…”

“No shit. But I bet he’s really, really sorry.” Scratching at a scab buried deep in the stubble on his chin, Doug turned a bloodshot gaze on the younger man. “Ain’t you, kid?”

Samuel nodded. Vigorously. The pigeon about to land on his head banked left and settled on his shoulder. A second pigeon, following close behind, touched down on the other side.

“Oh, man.” Eyes wide, Craig opened his hand and backed away. “He’s got pigeons!”

Three.

Four.

Craig turned and ran.

Bent nearly double, both hands cupping his crotch, Samuel whimpered. Five pigeons landed on his back, jostling for space.

“You shouldn’t of smashed Craig’s smoke, kid.”

“But they’re…bad for…him.”

Finally freeing the scab, Doug flicked it away. “Worse for you.”

That was hard to argue with. “He’s stronger than…he looks.”

“Yep.”

Finally beginning to get his breath back, Samuel cautiously straightened, dumping the five pigeons into the feathered crowd gathered around his feet. “Is there an up side to these things?” he demanded, cautiously pulling fabric away from his body. “They’ve been nothing but trouble since I got them.”

“Them? Oh. Them. Well, there’s girls.”

“What do they have to do with girls?”

Doug frowned thoughtfully. “I forget.”

Half a block away, a pay phone began to ring. The diaspora of street people fanning out from St. Mike’s paused as one, then began moving again. Phones had nothing to do with them.

“Half a mo, kid. That’s probably my bookie.” A little more than half a minute later, he was back. “Not mine, kid. Yours.”

“But I don’t have a bookie.”

“Que sera. She still wants to talk to you.”

The pigeons reluctantly gave way before him and fell in behind.

Samuel picked up the phone—patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, and he had no idea why he knew that but didn’t know which end he was supposed to speak into. Finally, he figured it out. “Hello?”

“Samuel? My name is Diana, and I’m a Keeper. Do you know what a Keeper is?”

“The people who maintain the metaphysical balance of good on this world.”

“Ta dah.”

He thought about everything he’d seen and heard over the last two days, especially about the things he’d heard last night in the shelter. “You’re not doing a very good job.”

“Give me a break, I’m still in high school. I want to meet you, so I need you to do me a favor. Find a closet door, open it enough to get your arm through, and wave it around.”

“Wave it?”

“Your arm. When I grab your hand, pull me through to your side.”

“You’ll fit through a space I can get my arm through?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said…”

“Yeah, I know what I said. You can open the door a little wider when you pull me through.”

“Oh.” He wondered if she was pretty. Then he wondered why it mattered. Then he found himself wondering about her breasts. He had a feeling he shouldn’t be, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

“Samuel?”

He pushed a pigeon out of the phone booth. “How do you know my name?”

“Father Harris told me. Are you all right?”

“My genitalia hurts.”

“What have you been…never mind. I don’t want to know. Can you find a closet door?”

Samuel sighed and shrugged even though he knew the Keeper couldn’t see him. “Sure.”

“Brillig. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

St. Patrick was right. There was something funny about that boy. Lacing up her boots, Diana went over their conversation but couldn’t put her finger on it. For an angel, he’d sounded pretty much like any of the guys she went to school with, right down to that last, irritating “Sure.”

Minus the comment about the genitalia.

Or given a different choice of words at the very least.

She shoved her arms into her jacket, stuffed her hat and mittens into the outside pockets, checked her inside pocket for her wallet, and stepped into the closet, pulling the door closed but not latching it behind her. She’d have preferred to be traveling with her backpack, her computer, and her cell phone, but the possibilities reacted badly to electronics. Last time she tried to take her computer in with her, every window in the Otherworld had to be closed and reopened before things stabilized.

Tripping over a pile of shoes propelled her half a dozen staggering steps into the darkness. Arms flailing, she finally regained her balance after careening off a number of hard objects she couldn’t identify through the bulk of her jacket.

“Stupid goose down…makes me look like the Michelin Man.”

Stupid winter.

Stupid cold.

“Like it would’ve killed my parents to have settled outside of Disney World?” she asked the darkness. The darkness answered with the distant strains of a familiar theme song. Wincing, she redirected her concentration toward the angel, wondering just what made subconscious control of the Otherworld so different from conscious control.

Worse luck that Samuel wasn’t in Florida. She could use a break from late December in Canada.

It grew lighter.

The ground compacted under her boots.

A jack pine dropped a load of snow down the back of her neck.

“Oh, man!”

By the time she finished dancing around, flapping the snow away, it was fully light. Or as light as it was going to get at any rate. Snow-covered hills rolled away into the distance. To her right, a jagged rock outcrop rose up only a little grayer than the sky. To her left, and pretty much directly above her, evergreens bowed under their burden of snow.

Blowing out a disgusted plume of air, Diana dug for hat and mitts thinking that Mrs. Green, her CanLit teacher, ’d be creaming herself at so much landscape and isolation. “Yeah, right,” she muttered, dragging her hat over her ears. “Like Canada in late December doesn’t include coffee shops and Boxing Day sales. Couldn’t have landed in an Otherworld Starbucks or HMV, oh, no. That would be too easy.”

What made subconscious control of the Otherworld so different from conscious control? Well, that was obvious: conscious control created a place where people actually wanted to be.

She couldn’t see the angel’s arm.

Which wasn’t surprising since there weren’t any doors.

“You can’t go back in there, kid.”

Samuel paused, one hand on the small door leading into St. Mike’s. “Why not? It’s a House of Light, and I’m an angel.”

“Well, yeah, but the priests get all bent out of shape if you hang out inside during the day. They got stuff to do, you know.”

“I won’t get in the way. I have to stick my arm into a closet.”

“Why?”

“It’s for a girl.”

“Hey.” Both Doug’s hands went up. “Say no more re amore. You go put your arm in a closet, and I’ll be waiting right here when they toss your ass back into the cold.”

“Sure.” Hurrying along the side of the sanctuary, he found himself really loving that word. It was a good, all-purpose sort of a word. “Sure,” he told himself softly. It could mean anything. Passing a niche holding a statue of Mary cradling an infant Christ, he smiled up at her. “Sure,” he said.

“And just what does that mean?” she demanded, shifting the baby to her other hip.

“You know…”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked. Stand up straight, Samuel, don’t slouch. And what have you done to your hair?”

“Um…” He touched his head. He hadn’t done anything to his hair. Had he? “I, uh, have to go put my arm in a closet.”

“Fine. Just remember to clean up when you’re done.”

“Sure. I mean, okay.”

“Teenagers,” the statue sighed as he hurried away.

“I refuse to believe my subconscious had anything to do with this,” Diana sighed.

“Beg pardon, Miss?”

“Never mind.” She settled back in the furs, left arm held out, coat shoved up, mitt shoved down. As they came out from under the trees and started across a rolling expanse of snow, the glowing angel’s hair taped around her wrist began to fade. When she pointed to the right, the driver, a pure white Alaskan Malamute, leaned out, barking, “Gee! Gee!”

The seven Mounties in the traces angled to the right, the sled came around, and the hair began to glow strongly again.

The Mounties were fresh and running well. They were making good time.

Standing in the basement of St. Mike’s with his arm stuffed into a broom closet, Samuel wondered why his hand was getting cold.

“There’s the trading post, Miss. Smells like we’ve found your exit.”

Diana sniffed at the frigid air, then rubbed her nose with the back of her mitten. “All I can smell is aftershave.”

“I had the Mounties groomed this morning.”

“Let’s just not go there, okay?”

The hair taped to her wrist blazed, and an answering light waved up and down at the trading post door. It disappeared for a moment then, just as Diana was beginning to worry, it reappeared again. A closet, wardrobe, armoire, or the like was necessary to enter the Otherworld but any door would do for a way out. Under normal circumstances, walking into the trading post with an intent to travel would put her back in her bedroom, but Samuel straddled both worlds as a metaphysical construct, and could, therefore, anchor an exit. Diana had thought out the theory very carefully.

Checking the ancient texts…

Consulting the mystic oracles…

Watching the National Geographic special on PBS…

Actually, the idea had come to her at two a.m. when a particularly loud whir/click from her clock radio had pulled her from a dream where she seemed to be either Sharon Stone or Barney Rubble. Which was in no way connected to anything much.

Since here she was and there was Samuel, the theory seemed sound and nothing more would have been accomplished even had she checked, consulted, and spent the evening with public television instead of Laura Croft.

By the time the sled pulled up in front of the trading post, Diana had untangled herself from the furs. Swinging both legs over the side, she sank up to her boot tops in the snow, staggered and would have fallen had the husky not stretched out a foreleg to help her. “Thank you.” Balance regained, she moved away from the runners, just barely managing to resist a totally inappropriate urge to rub his tummy.

“Glad to be of service, Miss.” He touched the edge of a pointed ear with one paw, whistled to his Mounties, and rode off into a convenient and localized sunset.

Diana watched them disappear, then climbed the thick plank stairs toward the light. Which disappeared.

Samuel rubbed his arm where the door kept closing on it and wished the Keeper would hurry.

The light reappeared, and from beyond it, Diana heard a voice say: “Why the hell does that damned door keep opening?”

Then the light disappeared again.

“Ow!”

Appeared.

“There’s nothing wrong with the damned latch.”

Disappeared.

“OW!”

Appeared.

This time, Diana had her mitten off. She reached into the light, felt fingers close around hers, and kicked the door open.

She heard the unmistakable hollow impact of wood hitting forehead, half an expletive, and then she was standing in a dim basement staring into the gold-flecked eyes of the angel. She could see the light he was made of, and that was good, but that wasn’t all she could see, and that was bad. Standing almost nose to nose, she realized he wasn’t much taller than she was and unthreateningly attractive in a boy band sort of way.

“Thanks for hurrying,” he muttered, releasing her hand and cradling his arm against his chest.

Diana blinked. “Are angels allowed to be that sarcastic?”

“Apparently.”

“Hey! What are you kids doing down there?”

They turned together to face the middle-aged nun stomping toward them.

“Please, excuse us, Sister. We were just leaving.”

She stopped in mid-stomp. “Right. Fine. Get going, then!”

“You can’t do that to a servant of the light,” Samuel protested as they hurried up the stairs.

“Yeah, I can. Just did.”

“But you’re not supposed to.”

“Did you want to explain what we were doing down there to Sister Mary I’ve-spent-more-years-teaching-teenagers-than-you’ve-been-alive-so-don’t-give-me-any-lip?”

“Her name is Sister Mary Francis.”

“So what? Look, Samuel, some things you can explain to Bystanders, some things you can’t. Pulling a Keeper out of a closet is totally can’t.”

They retraced Samuel’s path along the Sanctuary. He carefully avoided eye contact with the statue of the Holy Mother.

Half a dozen pigeons waited with Doug on the front steps. As Samuel stepped outside, they started toward him, noticed Diana, and came to a sudden, feather ruffling stop.

“The flying rats with you?” she sighed.

“Sort of. I can’t get rid of them.”

“Not a problem.” She raked a disdainful gaze over the birds and without raising her voice said, “Scram.”

A moment later, the steps were clear, a lone feather lost in the panic the only indication the pigeons had ever been there at all.

“Why didn’t it work when I did that?” Samuel muttered, hands shoved into his pockets.

“You wouldn’t hurt them, and they knew that. I, on the other hand, am perfectly capable of roasting them with a few chestnuts over an open fire and they knew that, too.”

“But you wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

The gold flecks swirled into the brown. “Yes, I do.”

“Stop it!”

“Kids, kids, kids.” Doug heaved himself up onto his feet and walked over. “Not the place to be spatting.”

“Spatting?” Diana wrinkled her nose at the smell. “Who are you?”

“This is Doug, he’s an angel, too. He taught me how to eat, how to urinate…”

“Eww, gross.”

“…where to sleep. I wouldn’t have gotten through last night without him.”

“You’d have managed, kid.”

Diana snorted. “You’re an angel?”

He spread his arms. The smell intensified. “Fuckin’ A. But my work here is done.” Sliding sideways a step, he elbowed Samuel in the ribs. “You’ve got your girlie to take care of you now, kid. Me, I hear a bottle of…” His brows drew in. “Doesn’t really matter what’s in the bottle, come to think of it.” A grayish tongue swept over dry lips. “But something’s callin’ me, that’s for shittin’ sure. See ya, kid.”

“See you, Doug.”

Watching Doug descend to the sidewalk and head north, Diana couldn’t think of a less likely angel—although she supposed it was a harmless enough delusion. “Come on, I’m freezing, let’s walk.”

Samuel shrugged. “Sure.”

At the sidewalk, she glanced back up at the impressive front of the cathedral. And frowned. It had been snowing lightly, enough to obliterate all but the most recent footprints. A single line matching her boots led up to the wide double doors. She looked down at Samuel’s feet, then she looked north. The snow lay like an ivory carpet, surface unbroken to the corner.

“Son of a…”

A small dog trotting by on the other side of the street paused expectantly.

Diana waved him on. “Never mind.”

“Claire!”

Down on one knee by the side of the road, Claire waved at Dean to be quiet. She almost had the stupid hole closed and…

Grabbing her under both arms, Dean threw her back toward the truck just as the SUV fishtailed across the highway, slid right over the hole, and came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the ditch.

Claire stared at the skid marks, noted that the heavy vehicle would have gone right through her, then squirmed around in Dean’s arms. “Thank you,” she said, and pulled his mouth down to hers. After a moment, in spite of heavy clothes and subzero temperatures, she got the distinct impression that they could solve the angel problem right there.

“I should see if the buddy in the car’s all right, then,” he murmured, separating their mouths only far enough to speak.

“You should.” She flicked her tongue against his lips and slid her hand up under his coat.

Dean jerked back and slammed his head into the truck. “Lord t’undering Jesus, Claire! Your fingers are like ice!”

“Sorry.”

He touched a hand to the back of his head and winced. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay. That sounded like it really hurt.”

“Hey, Florence Nightingale.” Austin’s head appeared over the tailgate. “The man knows if he’s okay. Get back to work. I’m freezing my furry little butt off out here!”

“You could have stayed in the truck,” Claire reminded him as she stood and wondered if it was against some sort of guy code to help Dean to his feet.

Austin flicked his ear to dislodge a snowflake. “I had to use the little cat room. Now, you,” he fixed Dean with a baleful glare, “check the yuppie mobile. You…” The single eye switched targets. “…close the hole. And you…” Lifting his head, he scowled at the sky. “…stop snowing on me. I’m old.”

“Austin, that’s not…”

A sudden gust of wind blew the last flakes sideways. No more fell.

Only the front wheels of the SUV had gone into the ditch; a good two thirds remained firmly on the wide shoulder. The engine purred quietly to itself, the sound barely audible and nothing came out of the exhaust in spite of the cold. It was a deep maroon with a high gloss finish that looked like it could withstand a meteor strike and, in spite of four-wheel drive and heavy duty suspension, this was likely as far off road as it had ever been.

Squinting through the tinted glass, Dean realized the thin, blonde woman behind the wheel was on the phone. When he tapped on the driver’s door window, she opened it a finger’s width but continued looking down at the laptop open on the leather upholstery of the passenger seat. “Ma’am, you don’t need to call for a tow. You’re barely off the road; you can just back up.”

She ignored him and kept talking. “…telling you the bank beat by nine cents the average estimate of sixty cents a share.”

“Ma’am?”

A slender hand in a burgundy leather glove waved vaguely in his direction. “But you’re forgetting that volatile capital markets allowed a forty-five percent increase in fees, and that’s where you can attribute most of the profit growth.”

“I’m after heading back to my truck now.”

“Look, Frank, it was loan volumes that brought the interest income up nine percent to three hundred and thirty-seven million dollars.”

“Ma’am?”

“Three hundred and thirty-seven million dollars, Frank!”

“Never mind.”

Claire and Austin were waiting inside the truck.

“I guess the driver’s all right,” Dean told them as Claire lifted Austin off the driver’s seat and onto her lap, “but she wouldn’t actually talk to me.”

“She? Should I go?”

“Got three hundred and thirty-seven million dollars?” When Claire answered in the negative, he grinned. “Then I doubt she’ll talk to you either.” Putting his glasses back on after carefully wiping the condensation off the lenses, he frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“A new Summons; stronger than these little roadside things.” She rested her chin on the top of Austin’s head. “It feels strange.”

“Is it the angel, then? ’Cause if I wasn’t scared abroad by Hell, an angel won’t trouble me much.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Only one way to find out.” He pulled carefully onto the highway. “Which way?”

“North.”

“So, dear, when you call yourself a demon—is that a club?”

“No.” Byleth sagged farther down in the back seat, the shoulder belt preventing a really good slouch. “It’s not a fu…”

“Language.” Half turning, Eva raised a cautioning finger.

“It’s not a club.” Byleth had no idea how the mortal woman did it. Something about her tone of voice, her expression, evoked an instinctive obedience. If the Princes of Hell could figure it out, they’d be…well, since they were already ruling Hell, nothing much would change but the shouting. Hell could do with a little less shouting in Byleth’s opinion.

“It’s not a gang, is it?” Harry asked, trying to catch her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Because I know how seductive gangs can be. Black leather and motorcycles and…”

“Harry.”

Under the edge of his tweed hat, Harry’s ears pinked.

Eva half turned again. “Harry had a bit of a past before he met me.”

“I’ll bet he did,” the demon muttered.

“What was that, dear?”

“It’s not a gang.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

The day was not going as planned. Coercing the old man into driving her to Toronto had somehow turned into a cheerful family outing. With snacks. She should have walked out right after that big homemade breakfast and found some punk kid who’d just got his license and who’d do anything she asked if she just bounced those really annoying breasts at him in a promising sort of a way. Not that she’d keep the promise, of course. Her kind excelled at broken promises.

“Shall we play license plate bingo, dear?”

Fortunately Harry answered before she could.

“Byleth’s too old for that, Eva. Remember what our lot were like at her age?”

“The boys,” Eva began, but Harry cut her off, one hand leaving the steering wheel just long enough to pat a rounded knee.

“The boys played to make you happy, but our Angela drew the line about the same time she started high school.”

“I suppose,” Eva sighed. Then she perked up and half turned one more time. “Where do you go to high school, dear?”

“I don’t.”

“Oh, you have to get an education, dear. After all, knowledge is power.”

“Power is power,” Byleth snarled. She should have power. She should be able to reach into the dark heart of humanity and twist it to her purposes. Not only had some extra anatomy put an unexpected crimp in her plans—and she was so going to kick that angel’s ass when she found him—but her current minions gave her very little to work with.

“Hey, Mr. Porter, that guy in the import flipped you the finger as he passed.”

Which is not to say she didn’t do what she could.

“Harry, that’s no reason for you to drive faster,” Eva warned.

He smiled at her briefly. “Of course not.”

But the speed crept up.

It didn’t take much to keep it rising.

The inevitable siren brought a smile and a frisson of anticipation.

Lips pressed into a disapproving line, Eva kept silent as Harry pulled over and turned off the engine.

Behind them, a car door slammed and footsteps approached along the gravel shoulder. When Harry rolled down his window, Byleth straightened to get a better look.

“License and registration, please.”

The Ontario Provincial Police constable was tall and tanned, his hair gleaming gold in the winter sunlight. His eyes were blue, his voice was deep, and his chin had the cutest cleft. The breadth of his shoulders filled the window.

“Do you know how fast you were going, sir?”

In the back seat, Byleth sat up straighter, tugging at her jacket.

“I’m sorry, Officer. Some kid passed me in a sporty little import, and I guess I just rose to the challenge.”

A quick swipe of her tongue across her lips. Did she still have any lipstick on? She knew she should have put more on at the last rest stop.

“You can’t let other people do the driving in your car, sir.”

That was clever. He wasn’t only the cutest thing she’d seen since she arrived, he was smart, too.

“Now 113km in an 80 should be a three-hundred-dollar fine and six points off your license, but…”

Why didn’t he look at her?

“…I’m going to let you off with a warning. This time. If I pull you over again…” His voice trailed off.

And he was merciful.

Handing back Harry’s paperwork, he finally glanced into the back seat, but his gaze slid over her like she was completely unworthy of being noticed.

Arms folded, brows in, she slid back into her slouch, achieving new lows. What the hell did she care about merciful anyway?

“Thank you, Officer.”

“Drive safely, sir. Have a good day, ma’am. Miss.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Whatever.”

He glanced into the back again, then he smiled at Harry. “Teenagers, eh?”

“Teenagers, eh?” Byleth mocked as the officer returned to his cruiser. “What a jerk.”

“Good-looking man, though. Wasn’t he, dear?”

“I never noticed. And what are you smiling about?” she demanded as the Porters exchanged an amused glance.

“Nothing.”

“Good.” Glaring straight ahead, she refused to acknowledge the police car as it passed, repeating, “Jerk. Jerk. Jerk. Jerk,” vehemently under her breath.

“Careful, Austin.” Scooping him back up onto the seat, Claire wore a worried expression. “Are you all right? You were sound asleep, and then…”

“And then I wasn’t. Yeah, I know.” He got his legs untangled and climbed over to her right thigh, where he could stand and look out the window. “Something we passed woke me up.”

“Do you want me to pull over?” Dean asked.

“No.” He put a paw on the glass and watched the traffic across the median speeding south. “It’s gone now.”