The Second Summoning

TEN

“YOU ARE SO NOT LIKE WHAT I IMAGINED an angel to be. Your hair, your clothes…”

“My genitalia,” Samuel added a little mournfully.

Diana made a disgusted face and shoved mittened hands deeper into her pockets. “I wouldn’t know, and I’d really rather you quit mentioning it.”

“Them.”

“Whatever.”

“Why?” For no good reason, he jumped up and smacked the No Parking sign, checking out of the corner of one eye to see if the Keeper was impressed. She didn’t seem to be.

“They’re just not something people talk about in public.”

“Should we go someplace private?”

“You wish.”

“For what?”

“Pardon?”

“What do I wish for?”

“Well, if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

“But if I knew, you wouldn’t have to tell me,” he pointed out reasonably as they turned the corner onto Yonge Street. Across the road, a double line of people stood stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. “Those people are cold. Why are they standing there?”

“Best guess, they’re waiting to get into the electronics store for the Boxing Day sale.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Because it’s a sale.” She rolled her eyes. “I thought you had Higher Knowledge.”

“I do. The 26th of December is called Boxing Day because in Victorian England that’s when the rich boxed up their Christmas leftover for the poor.”

“Really?”

“It’s one theory. But it still doesn’t explain that.” He waved a hand at the crowd across the street. “Most of those people are anxious, over half are actually unhappy, and although they’ll be saving money, they’d all be better off if they just didn’t spend it. A new stereo won’t give meaning to their empty, shallow lives.”

Diana grabbed the back of his jacket as he stepped off the curb. “Where are you going?”

“To tell them that.”

“I’m just guessing here, but I think they know.”

He half-turned in her grip. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. It’s a human thing; a new stereo will help them forget their empty shallow lives.”

“Human memory is that bad?”

“Well, duh. Why do you think platform shoes and mini skirts have come back? Because people have forgotten how truly dorky they looked the first time.” Diana shuddered. “Me, I’ve seen my mother’s yearbook pictures.” She hauled him back up onto the sidewalk. “You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“You’re not supposed to be.” His situation had deteriorated farther than she’d feared. “Come on, I’ll buy you…” She checked her watch. “…lunch and we’ll talk.”

“…and that’s why you’re here.” Diana peered over the pile of fast food wrappers in front of the angel. “Are you blushing?”

“You said your sister…you know,” he mumbled.

“I really think you’ve got more to worry about than my sister’s sex life.” Elbows up on the table, she ticked the points off on her fingers. “One, angels are, by definition, messengers of the Lord, but because of the way you came into being, you have no message, thus leaving you with a distinct identity crisis.”

“Thus?”

“Don’t interrupt. Two, you can’t return to the light, so you’re stuck here even though you have no reason to be here and no visible means of support. Three, from what I’ve seen so far, the boy bits seem to be doing all the defining.”

“The what?”

She sighed. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Oh. Them. No, they’re not.”

“Yeah, they are.”

“No.”

“Yes. You shouldn’t be perpetually hungry. You shouldn’t know what a six-liter engine is.” Her eyes narrowed. “And you shouldn’t be looking at my breasts!”

Ears burning, he locked his gaze on her right eyebrow. “You’re a Keeper. You could send me back.”

“Only if you want to go.” Pushing a desiccated French fry around with a fingertip, she sighed again. This was, after all, why she’d come to Toronto. It had only taken a small prod from St. Patrick for her to realize that an angel designed by committee would need a Keeper’s help to go home—her help. “The problem is,” she said slowly, “if I send you back, you won’t be you anymore. You’d just be light.”

“But that’s what I am.”

Diana shook her head. “That’s not all you are. If I send you back, then the you that I’m talking to, the you that’s experienced the world, he’ll disappear. I’ll have killed him.”

“Killed me?” When she nodded, he frowned. “That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You already know about it.”

“Figure of speech, Samuel. I was agreeing with you.” She dropped her chin onto her hands. “I don’t know what to do, and I really hate that feeling.”

“Tell me about it,” Samuel muttered, unwrapping a fourth…something that seemed to involve chicken ova, a slice of pig in nitrate, and melted orange stuff probably intended to represent a dairy product. He’d eaten the first three too fast to really taste them, which all things considered, had probably been smart. “So, what you do think of the idea that I am the message? That I’m here to help people?”

“How? And don’t give me that look,” Diana warned him. “I’m not being mean, I’m being realistic. You can’t even help yourself.”

“I’ve been managing.”

“No. You haven’t. Can I think of an example? Hmmm, let’s see.” She leaned forward. “How about: without me, you’d be covered in pigeons.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“And pigeon shit.”

His brows drew in. He didn’t know they could do that. It was an interesting feeling. “I’m still a superior being, I can figure stuff out.”

“How do you know you’re a superior being?”

“I just…know.”

“So does every other male between twelve and twenty,” she snorted, folding her arms. “But that doesn’t solve their problems either.”

Samuel stared at her for a long moment, then he smiled. “I could be insulted, but I know you’re only saying that because of your own sexual ambiguity.” He took a large bite and chewed slowly. “I mean, you say you’re a lesbian, but you’ve never actually made it with a woman although you did make it with a guy and it wasn’t entirely his fault it was such a disaster.”

Her lip curled. “If you were to choke right now, I wouldn’t save you.”

They left the highway just north of Huntsville, heading southwest on 518.

“We’re close,” Claire insisted when Austin pointed out the total lack of anything but Canadian landscape around them.

“Close to what?” he snorted. “The edge of the world?”

“We need to turn right soon. There.” She pointed. “Is that a road?”

It was. After another thirteen kilometers of spruce bog and snow, they passed the first house. Then the second. Then a boarded-up business. Then, suddenly, they were in downtown Waverton—all five blocks of it.

“Park in front of the bank.”

Braking carefully, Dean peered down at the thick, milky slabs of frozen water. “I don’t know, Claire; it looks some icy.”

“We’ll be okay.”

“If you’re thinking of using my kitty litter to make it okay, think again,” Austin muttered, climbing up onto the top of the seat.

“You mean because I’m only a Keeper with access to an infinite number of possibilities and wouldn’t be able to get this truck moving without a bag of dried clay bits designed to absorb cat urine?”

“Essentially…” He paused to lick his shoulder. “…yes.”

Lips pressed into a thin line, Claire reached into the possibilities and slid the truck sideways across the nearly frictionless surface, bringing it to a gentle stop against the slightly higher ice sheet that was the curb.

Dean released the breath he’d been holding and forced the white-knuckled fingers of one hand to let go of the steering wheel long enough to switch off the engine. “You need to warn me when you’re after doing something like that,” he said, still staring straight ahead as though he intended to keep the truck from ending up at the New Accounts desk by visual aids alone. “Sideways is not a good way.”

“Sorry.”

He turned to face her then. “Really?”

“No.”

“Austin!”

“Just giving him the benefit of my experience. You’ve never been sorry when you do that sort of thing to me.”

“When have I ever…?”

“Plevna. December 12th, 1997.”

“How was I supposed to know claws don’t provide traction? It was an honest mistake.”

“Uh-huh.”

Yanking her toque down over her ears, Claire got out of the truck. “He scored the winning goal,” she pointed out to Dean as she closed the door.

“How did you hold the stick?” Dean wondered, pulling on his gloves.

Austin’s head swiveled slowly around. “I. Didn’t.”

“Oh.” His hindbrain decided it might be safer to back away, making no sudden moves. He caught up to Claire by the corner of the bank.

“Someone set this fire,” she said, looking up at the damage. “And that opened the hole.” Hugging her own elbows, she shook her head. “There’s a lot of nasty coming through for the size. This might take some time to seal up; can you keep me from being disturbed?”

“You got it, Boss.”

“You haven’t called me that for a while.”

Their eyes locked.

“You haven’t told me what to do for a while.”

“Maybe I should start.”

“Maybe you should.”

A muffled “Get a room!” from inside the truck redirected their attention to the matter at hand.

“Excuse me, Miss!” Mr. Tannison, the bank manager, hurried toward his damaged building from his temporary office across the street, upstairs over the storefront shared by Martin Eisner, the taxidermist, and Dr. Chow, the dentist. “You can’t stay there. Bricks could fall.” He forgot about the ice until his front boot surrendered traction and he began to slide. Before he could steady himself on the truck parked in front of the bank, a large hand caught his arm and set him back on his feet.

“It’s okay, sir. She’s perfectly safe.”

“She is?” Something about the young man made him feel like a fool for asking. He considered himself a good judge of character—well, he had to be in his position, didn’t he?—and by voice, expression, and bearing, this stranger said, “I will have my withdrawal slip filled out properly before I approach the teller, I would never stand too close at the ATM machine, and your pens are sacred to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh.” The blue eyes behind the glasses made him think of contributions to retirement savings plans done monthly rather than left until the last minute. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, sir, St. John’s. Newfoundland.”

“Small world. One of my tellers is from St. John’s. Rose Mooran.”

“Does she have a brother named Conrad, then? I played Peewee hockey with a Conrad Mooran.”

“No, not her brother, that would be her husband.”

“Husband? Lord t’undering Jesus.”

They spent a while longer discussing hockey and the relative size of the world, then Mr. Tannison patted a muscular arm, flashed a relieved smile, and hurried back across the street.

The clutch of eight-year-olds were a little harder to impress.

When Dean limped back to the truck, Claire was standing by the passenger door looking a little stunned.

“Is it closed?”

She nodded.

“What’s wrong?”

When she held up her hand, her fingertips were dusted with black glitter.

“Char?”

“Demon residue.”

“Once you’re in the city, where are you planning on going, dear?”

Byleth stared out past the Porters’ heads at the Toronto skyline, thrusting up into a gray sky like a not particularly attractive pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. “As far away from you as possible,” she muttered.

To her surprise, Harry Porter lifted an admonishing finger toward her reflection in the rearview mirror. “That is quite enough of that, young lady. There is no call for you to be so rude. You will apologize to Mrs. Porter this instant.”

“As if.”

“Fine.” At the first break in traffic, he moved into the right-hand lane and began slowing down.

“Harry…”

“No, Eva. She apologizes, or she walks the rest of the way.”

Demons understood bluffing. Byleth folded her arms and waited.

When the car finally rolled to a stop, Harry put it into park and turned around. “Last chance,” he said. “Apologize, or this is as far as we go together.”

She tucked her chin into her collar and glowered.

“If that’s the way you want it.” He unbuckled his seat belt, got out, and opened her door.

When she stared up into his face through the blast of frigid air, she realized he wasn’t bluffing. “You actually want me to walk. We’re still miles away!”

“We’re still kilometers away,” Harry corrected. “And I want you to apologize. It’s your choice whether or not you walk.”

It was cold outside. It was warm inside the car.

“Get back in the car and drive.”

He merely stood there. She might as well have tried to command a rock.

“I’ll hitchhike, then, and get picked up by a mass murderer, and then how will you feel when they find a broken bleeding body by the side of the road.” It wouldn’t be her broken, bleeding body, but he didn’t need to know that.

Harry shook his head. “Not even mass murderers would stop for you. Not at these speeds. You’ll be walking all the way.”

“I don’t want to walk!”

“Then apologize.”

The car rocked as four transports passed, belching diesel fumes. She contemplated kicking Harry into traffic, but Eva would likely fall apart and be totally useless and although she knew how to bring plagues and pestilence, she didn’t know how to drive.

“Make up your mind, Byleth.”

“Fine.” Anything to get her into the city where she could ditch these losers. “I’m s…” Her very nature fought with the word. “I’m sorr…” She had to form each letter independently, forcing it out past reluctant lips. “I’m sorry. Okay?”

“Eva?”

“Apology accepted, dear.”

“Now was that so hard?” Harry asked, smiling at her reflection as he slid back behind the wheel.

“Yeah, it was.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll get easier with time.”

She was afraid of that.

“Excuse me.” Braced against the movement of the escalator, Samuel reached forward and tapped the heavyset matron on one virgin-wool covered shoulder. “The sign says that if you stand on the right, then people in a hurry can walk up the left.”

“There’s no space on the right,” she pointed out sharply.

“Then you should have waited.”

“And maybe you should mind your own business.”

“You shouldn’t let the fear of being on your own keep you in a bad relationship. Your husband is controlling and manipulative, and just because he doesn’t love you anymore, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love yourself…”

The sound of her palm connecting with his cheek disappeared into the ambient noise. In the fine tradition of mall crawlers everywhere, those standing too close to have missed the exchange either stared fixedly at nothing or isolated themselves from the incident behind a loud and pointless conversation with their nearest companion. As they reached the second level and the heavyset woman bustled off to the left, Diana smoothed the tiny hole closed, grabbed Samuel’s arm, and yanked him off to the right.

“What was that all about?”

Rubbing at the mark on his cheek, he looked confused. “I was just trying to help, you know, do that message thing.”

“And what help is a message telling that woman her husband’s a creep who doesn’t love her anymore?”

“She knows that. Now she needs to move on.”

“And you know that because…?”

He shoved his hands in his front pockets and shrugged. “I have Higher Knowledge.”

“Which gives you personal information on the life of a perfect stranger but neglects to tell you what a stoplight means?”

“Yes.”

She’d never heard such a load of sanctimonious crap. “Just don’t do that again, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Did you know that with the price of those boots you could feed a Third World child for a year?”

Something in the gold-brown eyes compelled an honest answer.

“Yeah, I do.”

“So…?” Samuel prompted, smiling encouragingly.

“So why don’t you mind your own fucking business, dude?”

“That’s the guilt talking.”

“Yeah?” A very large hand wound itself into the front of Samuel’s jacket. “And in a minute you’re gonna feel my fist talking!”

Diana handed the shoebox to the clerk and reached into the possibilities just in time to keep an innocent Bystander from committing mayhem on an angel—as justified as that mayhem may have been. Freeing Samuel’s jacket, she shoved him out of the store and started things up again.

“I was just…”

“Well, stop it.”

“But…”

“No. People like to have their moral failings pointed out about as much as they like to have their personal lives discussed in public by strangers.” She tightened her grip and dragged him quickly past a couple playing what looked like the Stanley Cup finals of tonsil hockey. When she finally slowed and took a look at him, he seemed strangely restrained. “What?”

“Those two people…”

There were thousands of people in the Center, but she had a fairly good idea who he meant. “Yeah? What about them?”

“They had their tongues in each other’s mouths.”

“I didn’t notice.”

He snorted, a very unangelic sound. “They looked like they had gerbils in their cheeks.”

“Okay.” She had to admit she was intrigued by the image. “So?”

“So isn’t that unsanitary?”

“Gerbils?”

“Tongues.”

“Not really. And don’t get any ideas—our relationship is strictly Keeper/Angel.”

“I wasn’t…”

“You were.”

“I couldn’t help it.”

He sounded so miserable, Diana found herself patting his shoulder in sympathy. “Come on, we’ll duck out at the next doors—a little cold air will clear your head.”

“It’s not my head.”

“Whoa. Didn’t I make myself clear? We’re not discussing other body parts.” If the last pat rocked him sideways a little more emphatically than necessary, well, tough.

The sidewalk outside the mall was nearly deserted. There was a small group of people huddled together at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, waiting for the streetcar, and a lone figure hurrying toward them from the other direction in what could only be described as a purposeful manner.

Hair on the back on her neck lifting, Diana stared at the approaching figure, then looked down at two identical snowflakes melting on the back of her hand. “Shit!”

“What’s that smell?” Samuel muttered. He checked the bottom of both shoes.

“Forget the smell. Move it!”

She hustled the angel north, hoping that Nalo hadn’t seen them. The older Keeper had no more authority over Samuel than she did, but something—the identical flakes that continued to fall, the way every car on the road was suddenly a black Buick, the street busker playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” with his lower lip frozen to his harmonica—something was telling her to keep them apart.

At the corner of Yonge and Dundas, Diana felt the possibilities open.

“Hold it right there, young lady!”

Grinding her teeth, she pulled a token out of necessity, shoved Samuel into the line of people climbing onto the eastbound Dundas streetcar, and told him she’d catch up later.

“But…”

“Trust me.” She pried his fingers out of the down depths of her sleeve and, with one hand on an admirably tight tush, boosted him up the steps. “And try not to piss anyone off!” she added as the door closed. Staring back out at her through the filthy glass, he looked lost and pathetic, but she couldn’t shake the feeling he was safer away from the other Keeper.

Wrapping herself in surly teenager, she turned, stepped back up onto the sidewalk, and folded her arms. “Don’t call me ‘young lady’,” she growled, when Nalo closed the last of the distance between them. “I really, really hate it.”

“Really? Tough. Now, you want to tell me why you were hauling ass away from me, or do you want me to make some guesses?”

They were alone on the corner—there’d be no help from curious Bystanders. Diana snorted and rolled her eyes. Not a particularly articulate response but useful when stalling.

“Your parents don’t know you’re here, do they? Don’t bother denying it, girl…” An inarguable finger cut off incipient protest. “…you’ve got guilt rolling off you like smoke.”

Perfect! True, if a tad trite. Diana could have kissed her. She widened her eyes. “You won’t tell?”

“None of my business. I don’t care if you’re here to waste money, I don’t care if you’re here to see that boy you stuffed on the streetcar—oh, I saw him, don’t give me that look—but I do care about what you’ve been up to since you got here.”

“But I haven’t done anything!”

“You stopped time, Diana.”

Oops.

“I was trying to prevent a fight.”

Nalo sighed. “Girl, I don’t care if you were trying to prevent an Abba reunion.…”

“Who?”

“Never mind. The point is, you’ve been messing with the metaphysical background noise since you got here The whole place is buzzing.”

“It wasn’t me!”

“No? Then who?”

A black Buick cruised by, and Diana bit her tongue.

“Look, I spent half an hour on the phone with the 102-year-old Keeper monitoring that site in Scarborough who’s positive we’re heading toward a battle between the dark and the light, and I have better things to do with my time than convince the senile old bird we’re not heading for Armageddon. Either tone it down or take it home, but stop screwing up my…what’s that on your arm?”

Diana brushed away a little snow, taking the angel residue with it, and peered down at her sleeve. “Where?”

The older Keeper shook her head. “Must’ve been ice crystals.” She tucked a cashmere scarf more securely into the collar of her coat. “I think I’d like to keep an eye on you for a while. You can join me for a bit.”

Surrender seemed the only option, but she made a token protest regardless. “I can’t afford the kind of restaurants you like.”

“Honey, we’re Keepers. We should be, if nothing else, adaptable.”

“You buying?”

“I might be.”

“Then I can be adaptable.”

Distress bordering on panic pulled Samuel off the streetcar and across the road into a maze of four-story apartment buildings and identical rows of two-story brick town houses. He found the source of the distress crouched miserably at the bottom of a rusty slide and dropped to his knees beside her.

With gentle fingers, he brushed snow off her head.

She turned toward him, looked up into his eyes, and threw herself against his chest. “Lost, lost, lost, lost…”

“Shhh, it’s all right, Daisy.” He had to physically brace himself against the force of her emotions. “Don’t worry, I’ll help. Do you live in one of these buildings?”

Shivering, she pressed herself harder against him. “Lost…”

He could see where she’d entered the playground, but her prints were filling in fast. “Come on.” Standing, he tucked two fingers under her red leather collar. “We’ll have to hurry.”

They weren’t quite fast enough. The paw prints had disappeared under fresh snow by the time they got to River Street.

“Now where?”

The Dalmatian looked up at him with such complete trust, Samuel had to swallow a lump in his throat. Dropping to one knee on the sidewalk, he held out his hand. “Give me your paw.”

She looked at him for a long moment, looked at his hand, then laid her right front paw against his palm.

He reached into himself for the light.

“What was that?”

Diana kept her attention on her stuffed pita. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Did I even mention you?” Nalo swiveled around, her right hand combing the air. “Something shifted.”

“It’s not a hole.”

“No, it isn’t.” She sat down again, eyes locked on the younger Keeper. “So I guess it’s none of our business.”

The glowing paw prints led him to a town house in the Oak Street Co-op. As they turned down the walk, Daisy pulled free and raced for the door.

“Home! Home! Home!”

The door opened before she reached it, and a slender young woman rushed out and dropped to her knees throwing her arms around the dog. “You rotten, rotten old thing. How could you put me through that. Where’ve you been, eh?” Brushing away tears, she stood and held out a hand to Samuel. “Thank you for bringing her home. We just moved to Toronto from New Brunswick, and I think she went out looking for our old neighborhood. She doesn’t have her new tags yet.” Suddenly hearing her own words, she frowned. “So, without any tags, how did you find us?”

Samuel grinned, unable to resist the dog’s happiness. “We followed her prints.”

“Her prints, of course.” As a gust of wind came around the corner, she smiled out at him from behind a moving curtain of long, curly hair. “You must be half frozen. Would you like to come in and thaw out? Maybe have a hot chocolate, eh?”

He was suddenly very cold. “Yes, please.”

“In. In. In. In.” Daisy insisted on being between both sets of legs, but they somehow got inside and closed the door.

Her name was Patricia, her husband’s name was Bill. As Daisy enthusiastically greeted the latter, Patricia took Samuel’s jacket and led him into the living room. Left on his own, he felt a heated gaze on the back of his head. Slowly he turned.

“What is it?” The long-haired apricot-and-white cat turned his head sideways and stared at Samuel with pale blue eyes. “It’s awfully bright.”

“It’s an angel,” snorted the seal-point Siamese beside him, staring down the aristocratic arch of her nose. “Or a sort of an angel anyway. Someone seems to have messed up the design.”

“What’s an angel?”

“It’s like a cat, only with two legs, minimal fur, and no tail.”

“Oh.” Confused but clearly used to taking the Siamese’s word for things, he wrapped a plumy apricot tail around his toes. “It almost looks as if it understands us.”

“It does. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?” Patricia repeated, returning with three steaming mugs on a tray. “Oh. I see you’ve met Pixel and Ilea.” Setting the tray on the coffee table, she scooped up the Siamese. “This is really Ilea’s house. She only lets us live here because we know how to work the can opener.”

That was enough to distract Samuel from the heady scent of the hot chocolate. “Really?”

Rubbing the top of her head under Patricia’s chin, Ilea purred. Some questions were too stupid to need answers.

“Turn here.”

Dean glanced toward the boarded-up J. Henry and Sons Auto Repair and then back to Claire. “There’s a big batch of snow blocking the driveway.”

“Park on the side of the road, then, and we’ll walk in.”

When Austin made no protest, Dean sucked a speculative lungful of air through his teeth and pulled as far off the road as he could. It was one thing to have Claire explain exactly what demon residue meant and another thing entirely when the cat faced a walk over snow in subzero weather without complaint. Things were clearly some serious.

He shut off the engine and reached for his hat. “Is it Hell again?”

“I’d like to think we’d have noticed that,” Claire told him, chewing nervously on the thumb of her mitten.

“Well, I’d like to notice about a half a dozen garlic shrimp,” Austin pointed out acerbically, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll get them, and let’s face facts, there was a hole to Hell in Kingston for over forty years you Keepers never knew about.”

“You didn’t know about it either.”

“Hey, I’m the cat. I do comfort when needed and color commentary. I don’t deal with metaphysical rifts in the fabric of the universe, and I don’t fetch. Live with it.” His single eye narrowed. “Now let’s get on with it before it gets any colder out here.”

The snowbank blocking the driveway was about four-and-a-half-feet high but packed hard and easy to climb over. The snow in the parking lot was almost as deep and a lot softer.

“I’d better go first to break a trail,” Dean offered. “You can follow me, Austin can follow you. Which way?”

Claire pointed. A line of footprints, strangely unfilled by blowing snow stretched back behind the building. “Angels walk lightly on the world, they don’t leave footprints. Demons do. Demons want people to know they’ve passed by because you can’t tempt people who aren’t paying attention.”

A side door, leading into a small office, was open. Streaks of demon residue crossed the crumpled lock.

“It was in here,” Claire said softly, turning in place.

“No shit, Sherlock.” Austin kicked snow off first one back foot and then the other. “Its prints lead right to the door.”

The Keeper ignored him. “It took something from that hook, from the back of the chair, and from under the desk. Something that’s been here for a while given how thick the dust is.” Reaching into the possibilities, she filled the empty spaces with spatial memory. The translucent image of a pair of overalls hung from the hooks, a jacket draped over the back of the chair, and a pair of grimy running shoes lay half on top of each other under the desk. “Clothes?”

“Demons don’t wear clothes?” Dean asked, unable to resist poking a finger through the overalls as they disappeared.

“Yes, but I’ve never heard of a demon buying off the rack, let alone…” She waved a hand around the room and shuddered. “Granted they tend to be a little too fond of shoulder pads, but this is just not them.”

“The footprints keep going back into the woods.”

“Then that must be where the hole is, and if you say, ‘No shit, Sherlock’ to me one more time,” she warned the cat before he could speak, “you’ll be sorry.”

Austin stared up at her, whiskers bristling with affronted innocence. “I was merely going to ask if that was where Summons came from, but if you’re going to get snappy…”

“I’m sorry.” Pulling off a mitten, she rubbed at the crease between her eyes. “The thought of a demon wandering around unremarked by the good guys has me a little tense. I’d better lead from now on,” she added, walking back to the door. “If there’s danger out in those woods, better a Keeper face it than a Bystander.”

Although Dean didn’t like it, he couldn’t disagree and stepped out of her way.

“You were going to say ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ weren’t you?” he asked Austin quietly when Claire had moved a few paces ahead.

The cat snorted. “Well, duh.”

Claire picked her way carefully to the center of the small clearing, avoiding the worst patches of filthy snow. Squatting, she dragged her right mitt off with her teeth and extended her hand, fingers spread.

“What’s all over the snow?” Dean murmured to the cat he held cradled against his chest.

Austin squirmed around to get a better look. “Darkness. When it took form, it flaked.”

They watched Claire sift the air for a moment, then stand, frowning.

“This hole is tiny and old. It should have closed on its own and as far as passing a demon—it would have been like passing a kidney stone.” She shook her head. “I could be days defining it well enough to close it.”

“Gee, days spent out in the bush.” Austin sighed and laid his head in the crook of Dean’s elbow. “Words can’t express my elation.”

“You needn’t get too elated,” Claire told him, yanking her mitt back on. “And you needn’t get too comfortable either, I’m going to need you.”

“For what?”

“You get to play bad cop. Dean, maybe you should go back to the truck.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, wreathing his head in vapor. She was using the voice Diana referred to as more-Keeper-than-thou and, in his experience, that was never good. “Why should I go back to the truck?”

“We need answers, and we need them quickly. I’m going to gather up the darkness around the hole, and Austin’s going to question it.”

“The darkness?”

“It is substance; it should be coherent. But this is one of those ‘the ends justify the means’ situations and that’s always tricky for the good guys.” Reaching up, she broke a dead branch off an oak tree. “We’ll pull more darkness from the hole. I can contain it in a circle, but it’s going to want out, and you’ll be the only thing it can use to break free.”

“You’ll be inside the circle?”

“I’m a Keeper. I can deal.”

“And Austin?”

“It isn’t actually possible to make a cat do something a cat doesn’t want to do.”

“But we try to keep that quiet,” Austin added as he moved from Dean’s arms to Claire’s. “We learned a long time ago if people can hang onto the absurd hope that someday they’ll train us to stop scratching the furniture, they’ll keep handing over the salmon treats.”

Dean squared his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you if you’re going to be in danger.”

“I’ll be in more danger if you stay. And, you’ll be in danger. If you leave…”

“I won’t be able to help if you need me.”

“You’re fighting testosterone,” Austin murmured into her ear. “Millions of years of evolution that says he has to protect his mate. You can’t win.”

“His mate?”

“Mate, girlfriend, old lady—all valid evolutionary terms.”

“What?”

The cat sighed, his breath painfully loud up under the edge of her toque. “You know, if you watched more National Geographic specials and fewer after school specials…”

“You watch National Geographic to see lions mating!”

“So?”

Without the time to count to ten, Claire counted to three, looked into Dean’s eyes, and reluctantly decided Austin was right. She couldn’t win. If she convinced Dean to leave her, it would diminish him in his own eyes and, all things considered, further diminishing would not be a good thing.

“Okay. You can stay.” His smile made the potential for disaster almost worthwhile. Deep down, she realized how completely asinine that thought was, but she couldn’t seem to prevent a warm glow from rising. “Whatever happens,” she murmured a moment later, leaning away from his mouth, “don’t break the circle.”

To Dean’s surprise, the darkness gathered into a familiar form. Its legs were froglike and ended in three toes. Its arms, nearly as long as its legs, ended in three fingers and a thumb. Its eyes were small and black, and it appeared to have no teeth. Its fur and/or scales changed color constantly.

Imp.

The last time Dean had seen an imp, he’d been scraping the lumpy mass of its pulverized body out from under a sheet of wallpaper. The last time he’d seen an imp alive, it had been dangling from Austin’s mouth.

The tiny piece of physical darkness sat up, looked around, squeaked something that sounded very much like “Oh, fuck,” and disappeared under Austin’s front paws.

Claire squatted beside the cat. “Tell us everything that went on here, and I’ll pop you back through the hole before I close it.”

Faint defiant squeaking.

“Wrong answer.”

Austin’s tail lashed and the squeaking grew louder.

“You’re lying,” Claire sighed.

Indignant squeaking.

“I know, it’s hard for you to tell the truth. But it’s hard for Austin to keep his claws sheathed, too. You don’t honestly think they’d lie to protect you?”

Reluctant acknowledgement. From the intensity of the high-pitched torrent that followed, the imp was clearly spilling more than name, rank, and serial number.

Shifting from foot to foot, Dean tried not to think about how cold he was getting. Maybe he should have gone back to the truck. Maybe he should go now. He’d just go in and tell Claire he’d decided to leave.

Go in?

The toe of his right boot rested less than an inch from the circle Claire’d sketched in the snow with the oak branch. Backing quickly away, he tried and failed to remember moving forward. “…it’s going to want out, and you’ll be the only thing it can use to break free.” But if the darkness could reach outside the circle, did that mean the levels inside with Claire had become dangerously high? Claire was in danger. If he loved her, he had to save her!

If he loved her?

No if. In a world that had become a stranger place than he ever could have imagined, loving Claire was the one thing he was sure of. As he realized that, he realized he was standing back at the edge of the circle. He had to do something to distract himself.

“Wow, this is really…tidy.” Claire shifted her grip on the cat and turned slowly to look around the clearing. “Really.”

Dean finished squaring up a pile of fresh cedar prunings and straightened. “Are you okay?”

“We’re fine.” Erasing an arc of the circle with the edge of her boot, she stepped clear. “I got enough information to close the hole. I know why it never closed on its own, and I know how the demon came through. But you’re not going to like it.”

He didn’t.

“So you’re saying that by making the angel we made the demon possible?” When Claire reluctantly nodded, he felt the blood drain out of his face. It was a distinctly unpleasant feeling.

Austin studied him for a moment, then looked up at Claire. “I hope you weren’t planning on sex any time soon.”

In spite of the cold and the approaching dusk, there were still hundreds of people surging back and forth between the lights at Bloor and Yonge. Most of them, heavily laden with consumer crap they didn’t need, were tired, cranky, and desperately in search of one last bargain. Byleth had never seen anything so wonderful.

One hand clutching the dashboard as though she needed to anchor herself to the car, Eva shook her head. “I don’t like just leaving you here.”

“I’ll be fine.” She’d have been out of the car at the stoplight except the damned seat belt had jammed. And it would be damned, she see to it personally. “Pull over anywhere.”

“We’re willing to take you where you’re going,” Harry told her as he maneuvered the car into a parking place on the south side of Bloor Street, just past Yonge. “Eva’s right. I don’t like just leaving you.”

“I’ll. Be. Fine.” The stupid bulky coat was in the way. That was the problem. She squirmed around and yanked at the…there! A jerk on the handle had the door open. Byleth flung herself toward the world just in time to hear Eva say:

“I’d feel better if you took this money. It’s not much but…”

Half out of the car, she reached back and grabbed the envelope without slowing her forward momentum.

“I wrote down our phone number. Call us if you need help!” Eva called after her.

That would be a cold day in Hell, Byleth decided shoving the envelope in her jeans—Twelfth Circle excepted, of course.

“That’s certainly a generous offer, sweetheart, but I’m afraid you’re making it to the wrong guy.” He winked and patted her shoulder as he moved away. “Sorry.”

Byleth made a mental note not to offer that particular temptation to men wearing eyeliner. Beginning to get cold, she moved into the nearest store and sidled through narrow aisles to a young man examining a portable CD player. “You should steal that, Steven,” she murmured.

“Lifted one this morning,” he told her absently, responding unconsciously to the dark aura. “Besides, right at this mo, I got so many disks down my pants I can hardly walk.”

“That explains why your pants look like they’re about to slide right off your skinny ass,” she muttered.

“What’s your damage?” Projecting tough guy, he shot her a look from under pale brows and folded his arms. “Santa not bring you any prezzies?”

Santa had never brought her any presents—her part of reality never having exactly welcomed the spirit of giving. And frankly, that sucked. In her whole entire life, Santa had never given her anything! Okay, her whole entire life was just under forty-eight hours long and the Porters had given her plenty, but that was so not the point.

The tough guy look vanished. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. I never…I mean…it’s just…” Rifling his pockets, he pulled out a Santa Pez dispenser and held it out. “Here.”

“What is it?”

Steven folded the head back, forcing out a tiny pink tile. “It’s candy,” he said when she hesitated.

Break Santa’s neck, get a hit of sugar. Byleth crunched reflectively. I can deal.

“Take it.”

“What’s the catch?” Taking the Pez, she shifted her weight to one hip and looked him in the eye. “Did you want to have sex with me or something?”

His face flushed crimson, his ears scarlet. It wasn’t a particularly attractive combination. Muttering something inarticulate, he scuttled away as fast as the CDs down his pants and the crowded store allowed.

Byleth was confused. A total stranger had just give her a gift and refused something he wanted in return. Crunching candy, she went looking for store security. Ratting Steven out would realign her world.

“Hey, there’s a…”

“I’m dealing with a customer.” The harassed looking young women pushed past without really seeing her. “You’ll have to talk to someone else.”

“…particular model has a greater range, you’ll find…”

“That guy over there is shoplifting.”

“…that the battery may need to be recharged more often.”

Byleth pushed between the two men. “Did you hear me?”

“In a moment, Miss. Of course our spare batteries are also on sale, so that could easily solve the problem,” the salesman continued, passing the cell phone over her head.

“What about those chargers that fit into your cigarette lighter?”

“Hey? Hello?”

“We carry them. I’m not sure whether we have any left.”

“Why won’t anyone listen to ME!” They were ignoring her. It was like she didn’t exist—almost like, like she was actually a teenager! “This is MAKING ME ANGRY!”

“Hey! That’s enough of that!” The burly security guard folded her arms over her imitation police blazer and glared down at the demon. “You’re going to have to leave now, Miss.”

Byleth folded her own arms. “Make me.”

It shouldn’t have been possible.

“Fine!” she screamed from the sidewalk. “Like I care!”

Reaching into the dark possibilities and activating the store’s sprinkler system made her feel a little better.

“Summons?” Diana asked as Nalo paused, head cocked, listening to nothing.

After a moment, the older Keeper nodded. “Close, too,” she said, climbing the last few steps and emerging back out onto the corner of Yonge and Dundas. “Probably no farther than Bloor. Did you want to come with me?”

“Love to, but…” The sudden realization that it was almost dark cut off a fine sarcastic response. “Holy sh…” Nalo’s lifted brow cut off the expletive. “I’ve got to get home!”

And I do have to get home, she reminded herself a few moments later, racing back down the stairs to the bank of pay phones in the subway station. But first she had to find an angel.

A little confused, Patricia held out the phone. “It’s for you.”

Samuel mimicked the motion he’d just seen Patricia make. “Hello? At the Oak Street Co-op at just up from the corner of River and Dundas Streets, town house four.”

“How does it know that?” Pixel wondered.

“It has Higher Knowledge,” Ilea informed the younger cat without opening her eyes. “It knows things.”

“It didn’t know us.”

“So? Even Higher Knowledge has an upper limit.”

Distracted by the cats’ conversation, Samuel had to ask Diana to repeat herself, twice. Finally he nodded and handed back the phone. “My Keeper is going to meet me here.”

“If it’s all right with you,” Ilea prodded.

“What?”

“Ask my soft, smiley can-opener if it’s all right with her, you moron.”

“Of course it’s all right,” Patricia told him when he’d relayed the cat’s message.

“You’re relieved I have a Keeper?”

A polite response was lost in the gold-on-brown eyes. “Oh, yeah.”

Climbing up onto the streetcar, Diana felt her gaze pulled to the north. Something was…was…awareness trembled on the edge of consciousness.…

“Hey! Exact change!”

…and tumbled into the abyss.

Unrighteous anger kept her warm for a few blocks, but with the setting sun, the temperatures had plummeted. By the time she got to Yonge and Dundas, her teeth were chattering so loudly she almost couldn’t hear the security guard kicking her out of the Eaton’s Center. He walked away, scratching at a brand new case of head lice, but that was of little consequence when she was still out in the cold.

“You don’t look very happy. Maybe I can help.”

Byleth turned to find a middle-aged man standing very close. Under the edge of a sheepskin hat, his hair was graying at the temples, his smile was warm and charming, his eyes crinkled at the corners with sincere goodwill, his heart was blacker than hers.

“All right, let’s get this straight,” she snarled, tossing aside even a pretense of subtlety. “Thinking that I’m lost and alone in the big city, you’re about to get all fatherly and offer me a place to crash. Over the next little while you’ll addict me to heroin, then put me out on the street to quote, pay you back, unquote. You’ll take every cent I make and control me with physical violence.” He stepped back. She closed the distance between them. “Did I miss something?”

“I’m not…”

“You are so. But that’s not the point. The point is you’re trying to pull this bullshit on me.” Her eyes narrowed and went black from lid to lid. “I’ve had a really bad day. I mean, like really bad. I’m not even supposed to have genitalia!”

“I…”

“You can take a walk in traffic, asshole!”

Emergency crews were scraping him out from under the streetcar when she realized she could have handled that better. She couldn’t feel her feet, every muscle in her body had clenched tight, she couldn’t seem to get her shoulders to come down from around her ears, and her stomach felt like it was lying along her spine. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Next time wait until he’s got you inside the apartment! A quick examination of the gathered crowd suggested there wouldn’t be a next time any time soon. “Isn’t that always the way,” she muttered miserably, “never a pimp around when you need one.”

Manifesting the dark powers left her feeling wrung out and weak—it shouldn’t have, but she couldn’t manage enough energy to care.

“Hey, you look like you could use a place to stay.”

“Well, duh.” Turning, she came face-to-face with…“Oh, great. A God-pimp.”

Leslie/Deter’s lip curled. Pretty much all his understanding and patience had been used up earlier in the day when he’d gotten physical with his so-called friends. “Fine. Stay outside and freeze, then.”

Since that was beginning to seem highly likely, Byleth grabbed his arm as he started to walk away. “You’re supposed to be nicer than that. I’m not, but you’re one of the good guys.” When he continued to look annoyed, she sighed. “All right, I shouldn’t have called you that. I’m so…sorry.”

Harry Porter had been right. It did get easier. The implications made her knees buckle.

Leslie/Deter caught her, apologizing profusely in turn, and walked her toward the mission, explaining that after the meal they’d be hearing the word of God.

“Which word?”

“What?”

“Where I come from, we get a kick out of hearing the old guy try and say aluminum.…”