Long Hot Summoning (35 page)

And then, lungs burning, they were running on concrete, not stone.

Almost out ...

They missed the turn that would have taken them through the construction zone and found themselves in the access corridors instead.

The troll was waiting at the back door of the Emporium.

Before Claire could stop her, Diana grabbed him by the tie and shoved her face up into his, snarling, “Your choice, Gaston! The Otherside’s a big place. You can lose yourself in it, or you can deal with me.”

His eyes widened, showing pale yellow all around the gray. “But . . .”

“Billy goats
but
as you very well know. I’m counting to three. One . . .” On two, he chose to leave the tie in her hand and pound farther up the access corridor into the mall.

Diana dropped the piece of pale leather and swiped her hand against her thigh, moisture drawing darker lines through the pale pink dust. “Eww.”

“Definitely,” Claire agreed, using the moment to catch her breath. Not the way she’d have handled it, but since it worked . . . “What are you doing?”

“This is where we came in. This is the best place to cross back!” Bad hand cradled against her chest, she stepped between her sister and the steel door. “We’re not done.”

“The Summoning ended when that hole closed;
I’m
done!” Dark brows drew in, their challenge plain. “And
I’m
going after Kris!” Claire had her choice of half a dozen good arguments. She used the only one that would work. “What about Sam? He’s still in the mall. I left him guarding Arthur.”

“You
left him,” Diana snapped. “You go ... you . ..” She blinked. Swallowed.

Scrubbed her hand across suddenly wet eyes. “Sorry. I just . . .”

“I know.”

“You
can’t
know.”

“Dean . . .”

“Didn’t go to Hell for
you!". "
I’m sorry.” She scrubbed at her eyes again. “But he didn’t.”

“I know,” Claire said again, because it was pretty much the only thing Diana was willing to hear at the moment. She jerked open the steel door with her good hand.

“Let’s go get Sa-” A crack opened suddenly in the concrete floor. Somewhere, not very far away, a steel reinforcing rod snapped with an almost musical twang. “Not good!” Shoving Diana into the storeroom, she slammed the door shut with her shoulder and locked it.

It sounded like someone was playing a steel guitar in the access corridor.

Playing it badly.

“How far do you think the destruction will come?” Diana demanded as they charged through shards of broken garden gnomes toward the store.

“It’s already come farther than I thought it would.”

“Great.”

“Not really. I was wondering, last time you used the wand, it knocked you flat.

This time . . .”

“I think Kris’ sacrifice caused a backlash. I got-I don’t know-refilled. I’m feeling . . .” Diana flashed half a pain-filled grin and straight-armed the door out into the Emporium. “... in the pink.”

Claire managed a nearly identical smile. “We’ll get her back.”

“I know.” Easily clearing the fallen T-shirt rack, Diana lengthened her stride and raced for the concourse. One foot out the door, she stopped, turned, and ran back.

“Where are you going?” Claire figured she had grounds for sounding shrill.

From behind them, one small room away, came the unmistakable sound of a steel door buckling.

“Promises to keep.” Dragging a wooden crate of resin frogs under the antique mirror, she climbed up, and slapped the glass. “Jack! Hey! Time to go.” The blue-on-blue eyes popped into view so fast they came accompanied by a faint
boing.
“The whole place is falling apart!” Jack also sounded a little shrill, Claire noted. “What did you do?”

A green glass ball fell from a shelf and shattered. Something hissed and scuttled away.

“We won. Sort of.”

“How do you
sort of
win?”

“I don’t want to get into that right now.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

A muscle jumped in Diana’s jaw. “I said, I
don’t
want to get into it.” She ducked her head behind the edge of the frame. “Is this all that’s holding you on?”

“How should I know?” Shrill had given way to slightly panicked. “I don’t have eyes in the back of my glass.”

“Fair point. Claire . . .”

No time to argue. Claire reached up, noted somewhat absently that much of her left hand seemed to be purple, and grabbed the lower edge of the carved and gilded wood. “I’ve got it.”

Jack was a lot heavier than he looked. They dragged him past the writhing box of rubber snakes, past the toppling display of scented candles, and reached the concourse just as the windows started to shatter. As the first triangular piece of glass whistled past, Claire spun him around, his back to the store, and pushed Diana down behind him.

“Claire, we haven’t time . . .!”

“To get cut to ribbons? You’re right.”

“Hey!” Jack’s eyes were as wide as Claire’d seen them. “Get me farther away!

I’m breakable here!”

Barely enough room for them both but barely was better than the alternative.

“Calm down. You’ve got a wooden backing.”

“Calm down? That’s glass breaking! Lots and lots of breaking glass! Do you know how that makes me feel?“

“Do I care?” Claire snapped. As Jack’s eyes fled to the far corner, two tiny blue pinpricks deep in the glass, she sighed. “I’m sorry. I do care. We’ve just had a ...

bad time.”

“Sort of winning?”

“Yeah.”

Sort of ... Diana lifted her head out of the shelter of her arms and stared into the mirror. She didn’t look any different. She should have looked different. Wasn’t that the sort of thing that changed a person?

It took her a moment to realize that the mall was totally silent. No more crashing. No more breaking. No more dying. Apparently, this was as far as it went.

“Claire?” She almost didn’t recognize her voice. She sounded about seven. “Why did she do it?”

Carefully brushing aside broken glass, Claire sat down cross-legged on the floor. It wasn’t quite a collapse. “I don’t know. I guess she didn’t want you to die.”

“Yeah, but it’s part of the whole ‘saving the world’ thing. It’s in my job description. Our job description.”

“And it seems that saving you was in hers.”

“I didn’t want her to.”

“She didn’t ask you.” Claire reached out and wiped away a tear with her thumb. “We’ll get her back.”

“Because you promised?”

“Because it’s part of our job description.”

“Right.” Diana dragged her sleeve under her nose, leaving a smear of darker pink across one cheek. “Time to sit around and sob about things later! Let’s get Sam and . . .” She paused, half standing, and cocked her head. “Is there a reason you’re flipping me the finger?”

Swelling had moved the second finger on her left hand out from the rest. “It’s broken.”

“It’s
what
?”

“Broken.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“When?”

“Before!”

“During our copious amounts of spare time? While we were running for our lives, saving Jack, or trying not to be julienned?”

“Yeah, then.”

“Sorry, next time. Don’t touch it!” She leaned back away from Diana’s questing fingers. “I’ll fix it as soon as we cross back.”

“Does it hurt?” Jack wondered, coming out to the front of the glass.

Did it hurt? There were a number of things Keepers weren’t permitted to say to Bystanders. But since Jack was a metaphysical construct . . .

“Diana!”

Claire closed her mouth, words unsaid, watched Sam race toward them, and sighed. Probably for the best.

“. . . and then, he just vanished!”

“You accepted a challenge from the Shadowlord?”

Sam squirmed around in Diana’s arms. “For the three hundredth time, I’m fine.”

“You could have been killed.”

“For the five hundredth time, I wasn’t!”

Continuing to ignore the post-fight metaphysical analysis going on around her, Diana buried her face in Sam’s fur and held on tight.

“Ow, that was a rib.”

“Sorry.” She loosened her hold just a little and drew in a deep breath of warm cat. He smelled like safety and comfort. Okay, scraping the clump of shed cat hair off her soft palate wasn’t exactly comfortable, but still . . . She didn’t know what she would have done if she’d lost him, too.

Too.

Right.

As they reached the stairs, the whole procession moving at the snail-like pace of the most seriously wounded elves, she tucked Sam back under one arm and grabbed Claire’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

“Diana, you have no idea how much I wish we could. While you were gone, I found out that Dean is in danger of . . .”

“Overfeeding the cat? Stepping on a hairball? Austin’s with him, how much danger can he be in?”

They were facing off at the bottom of the stairs, Arthur’s army breaking into two streams around them. The two elves carrying Jack set him down and leaned on the top of his frame.

“There’s a three-thousand-year-old life-sucking mummy staying at the guest house.”

“A three-thousand-year-old life-sucking mummy?”

“Say that three thousand times fast,” Sam muttered.“

“No.” Diana absently stroked a marmalade shoulder and frowned at her sister.

“Since when?”

“Impossible to tell with the time distortions.”

“How did you . . .”

“Claire!”

Claire nodded toward the sunburned blond starting down through the climbing elves, her pack in one hand and Diana’s in the other, declaiming apologies with every step. “He told me.”

“Who’s he?”

“Lance.”

“A lot?”

Arthur stopped beside them and visibly shuddered. “Fortunately, no.”

“While you were gone,” Claire explained, “I went on a little tour of the Othersides and . . .”

“The Otherside’s what?”

“The Othersides plural. Long story.”

“Then skip it. You found him . . . ?”

“At our beach.”

“The one in the guest house?”

“Yes. Longer story.”

“Skip it, too.”

“He’s not Australian,” Sam announced as Lance reached the lower concourse and set the packs down.

Diana looked confused. “Why would he be?”

The cat shrugged as well as his current position allowed. “I have no idea.”

“He’s a Bystander. Wait.” She raised a hand cutting off Lance and Claire together. “I don’t care why he’s here, but as he obviously can’t stay, we’ve got even more reason to leave immediately. He’s got to go back, Dean’s in danger, Kris is in
Hell
-three strikes, let’s motor!”

Without the time to count to ten, Claire counted to three. “Believe me, Diana, I
want
to, but the injured elves are our responsibility.”

“No, they aren’t.” Diana nodded toward the Immortal King. “They’re his responsibility. We did our bit. The hole’s closed. The segue’s been disrupted, and without an anchor the two malls will continue to drift farther and farther apart. Street kids looking for a place to belong will have to look somewhere else-not necessarily a good thing but a thing.
Our
work here is done.” Claire sighed, cradling her left hand in her right. The pain in her broken finger-which was now hurting up her arm, across her shoulders and into her right ear for reasons she wasn’t entirely clear on- made it difficult to concentrate, but Arthur
was
alive, Hell
had been
defeated, and the world
had been
saved from a shopping mall where midnight madness sales meant exactly that. However, while Diana had a point, she’d missed one as well. “Diana, Kris . . .”

“
Now
, Claire! Or are you tired of Dean already?” Even the ambient noise of bells in elvish hair quieted. Lance opened his mouth. Arthur shook his head. He closed it again.

There were also a number of things Keepers didn’t say to other Keepers.

Claire made a mental note to say most of them to her younger sister at a later time.

“I’m going to allow for the stress you’re under,” she said quietly. “Pick a door.” Any door would take them back to the access corridor in the actual mall. The point of departure remained the point of return regardless. “Let’s go home.”

“Fine!” Pivoting on one heel, shifting Sam’s weight against her hip, ignoring the little voice that told her she’d gone too far, Diana scanned the lower concourse stores. “There, that kid’s store, the Rainbow Wardrobe. Nothing bad should come out of it.”

“How responsible of you.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“Fine.” Claire turned toward Arthur. “The mall is no longer a segue, so we can come and go the same way we can from any other place on the Otherside. I’ll be back to check on things.”

The Immortal King glanced at Diana, his blue eyes sympathetic, then turned his gaze back to her. Less sympathy, more understanding, Claire noticed. “When?” Her watch appeared to be keeping time to a rhumba beat. “Unfortunately, I have no idea.”

“Claire! Now, or I’m going without you!”

Under no circumstances was Claire allowing Diana back into the world unsupervised. Even standing right beside her, it would be hard enough to keep her from making a foolish attempt to rescue Kris the moment she could manipulate the possibilities-on the other side of reality, it would be impossible. Claire picked up her pack, wrapped her good hand around Lance’s arm, and hurried to join Diana at the store.

When the door flew open on its own, they stepped back together. Jumped back together. Fortunately, Lance was in hiking boots.

A sound spilled out first-like a terrified chicken being chased by a snake.

Dropping her grip on Lance, Claire shoved her hand into her belt pouch. She hadn’t closed the zipper after the throne room and for one, heart-stopping moment she thought it was empty. Then her fingers closed around a peppercorn. Enough? It had to be. Releasing the contained possibilities, she yelled, “Everyone close your eyes!” as something squawked and exploded out into the lower concourse.

A moment.

Two.

Cats hunted by sound. “Sam?”

“I don’t hear it.”

“I can’t open my eyes!”

She signed and opened hers. “Yes, you can, Lance.”