The Summoning (23 page)

That was something about having a friend: you heard new stories. I felt an impulse, when she told about her stepfather, to find out where he was and go kill him—I could identify with her about stepdads, really—but I figured that could wait. Since he lived somewhere in the greater L.A. area, he might soon be swallowed by the World Snake anyway, and that was good enough. If not, there’d be time to go after him later. Him first, and then, who knew? Maybe I’d go after mine. The rage burned in me suddenly at the thought. I’d have gone after him a long time ago, but my mom told me not to. Which is what I never understood. My mom was important. Even my dad deferred to her, along with the whole rest of the family. How could Ray come out of nowhere and just take everything over? Why didn’t she stop him? Why didn’t she let the rest of us take him out? Why didn’t she go after him herself? Why did she let him do the things he did? And his horrible boys, too.

I’d been roiling under these questions for years. Getting away had distanced me from the family problems, but thinking about stepdads brought it back again. One day, I was going back there to work everything out. My way. I banged on the table without thinking, interrupting Yvette in the middle of a sentence and startling the half-dozen other customers in the tiny store-front restaurant. I got up. “It’s time to go.”

I finished clearing the stage that afternoon, tied up the curtains out of the way, and got out a mop and bucket to wash down the whole huge stage. Rotten boards would be replaced after that, and the whole thing would be sanded and painted anew.

What would I do that night? I thought I’d go back down to Costa Mesa and see if Tamara was around, if she’d learned anything, or if she could tell me where or how to find Richard. Or maybe the sorceress from up the hill would have completed her working already and found out who I should talk to next. I thought about introducing Yvette to Tamara, as she’d probably like the shop—and then shook myself. She might be a friend, but she wasn’t going to get involved in my whole life. Maybe next time. If nothing else panned out, I could go back to the dance studio and see if I could track down another one of the Thunder Mountain Boys. I smiled at the thought. I really enjoy hunting.

I grabbed a hamburger on the way home so I didn’t have to cook. I was going to change out of my work clothes and go on my way. I had to drive around a huge silver limousine that was pulled up in front of my building. I thought nothing of it. Someone rich might be visiting Whittier College down the street, or they might have offspring there. I parked my car in the carport, came around the corner to my steps, and stopped. There was a young woman standing on my walkway. She wore a long, voluminous robe obviously covering her clothes underneath, and a scarf over her head, wrapped around her neck to keep it in place. She was holding what looked like a green triangular jewel suspended on a thin, almost invisible chain, and she stood very still, watching it move.

I said, “Hey.” I was expecting a couple of things: Tamara was supposed to get in touch with me, or the sorceress might send a message. I added, “You looking for me?”

She looked up at me with dark, luminous eyes. As I came closer, the jewel began to swing back and forth towards me. She glanced down at it, and then tucked it up into her sleeve and looked again at me. “Yes,” she said decisively. “I am.” She had an accent, but I couldn’t place it.

I said, “Did Tamara send you?”

She looked…expensive. The fabric of her clothes was new. She wore gold earrings, gold bangles on her wrists, and several rings with flashing stones. I couldn’t see the sorceress and her crew hanging out with someone this exotic.

She didn’t answer the question. She said, “I was sent to bring you with me. My father wishes to speak with you.”

“And he is…?”

Her head went up and she spoke with scornful pride, as if I should have known who her father was by looking at her. “My father is Sharrif Ibrahim Mechad Ibn al Hassan. Surely you have been expecting to hear from him?”

Well, someone must have gotten in touch with him for me. Maybe it was even Darius, before he was attacked. All right, I thought, I’ll bite. After all, what could happen?

“Just a sec,” I said. “I have to change. I’ll be right with you. You can come in, if you want.”

She did. When I came out from my room after the quickest of quick showers, dressed in clean jeans and a sweatshirt, she was standing in my living room. She’d gotten the green jewel out again and was watching it swing wildly to and fro around the room. When I came in it changed directions and swung just as wildly toward me. Funny, she didn’t seem to be moving her fingers from which the chain hung at all. Well, there were all kinds of magic. I should be used to it by now.

“Ready,” I told her.

When we went outside, the big silver limo had pulled up in front of the walkway. The driver sat straight-backed with both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. Beside the car, a heavy-set guy in his thirties stood holding open the backseat door. He was dressed in a long black button-down coat that hung almost to his knees. Both men had short beards and wore dark turbans. I moved away from the young woman toward my carport.

“I’ll take my own car, thanks,” I told her.

She held out her hand toward the car imperiously. “My father has commanded me to bring you to him.” The man holding the door bowed slightly.

“I’ll follow you,” I said, stepping further away from her. “My car’s just up there.”

She glared at me, lifting a hand and making a little sign in the air. There was a crack in the air, like a localized explosion of thunder—or did I just imagine it? I shook my head to clear it. Then I stepped away again and trotted up the hill to the carport. I didn’t know where I was going. We wolves like our independence. It’s part of our nature. L.A.’s a really big town, and it’s a really long walk almost everywhere. I didn’t want to be in a position where I couldn’t get home without asking.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

W
hen I drove down the alley to the street, the limo had turned around and was waiting. The woman leaned out the window to wave at me to follow them. I waved back. The limo set off at a stately pace, adhering to the speed limit at every instance, and pulled eventually onto the 605 going north. I wasn’t surprised when, after extensive signaling, the limo took the off-ramp to the 10 heading for the city. We hit traffic immediately. I trailed them slowly stop-start for half an hour or so, until the pace picked up again and I was able to get out of second gear—always a pleasure. We caught the 405 North eventually and got off on Sunset, heading toward the ocean. They signaled a while later and pulled into a side street, and I wasn’t a bit surprised when shortly afterwards the limo pulled into one of those gated mansion driveways that abound in that area. The lot was surrounded by a high stone wall. I parked across the street while the gates slid smoothly open to let the limo in.

The woman waved to me from the car to follow her. I crossed the street to do so. She leaned out the window. “No,” she said, “park your car in here. That way it will be safe.”

I looked up and down the street. There were cars parked here and there whose fenders were worth more than my whole car. I shook my head and smiled a false smile at her. I’d come to get information from her dad. I was liking her less and less.

“It’ll be fine out there.” I waved dismissively at my car, and walked along the limo and through the open gate.

Inside the gate, invisible from the road because of the high wall all around it, was a large lawn cut by a circular cobbled drive that forked near the house. One leg led to the front of the house, and the other curved around to the back. I assumed this was a front door visit, so I headed that way.

The door opener got out of the car. With a little bow he led the way toward the front steps. The car went off to the right, toward what I assumed was the multi-garage facility that would go with a place like this. I made a few long strides and caught up with my guide.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He made the same little bow once again and motioned toward the house without breaking stride. Not very bright, I thought, or—then it came to me—maybe he doesn’t speak English. Interesting.

“Where are you from?” I asked slowly.

All I got was the same little bow again, but we were at the house by that time, and maybe it just wasn’t time to talk. The house was huge. It was like a wedding cake, set on tiers, with a balcony circling each floor above the ground floor, big enough to be called a patio rather than a mere balcony. And there were gardens on each one, so the thing looked like a wedding cake with trees and bushes sprouting from it. It was painted a pale pink. Yuck.

The front doors opened as we mounted the steps, and when we got inside, there was no one there opening them. I think this was supposed to awe me or impress me, but I’d seen stuff that good at the grocery store, so what the hell. The doors closed behind us.

My ears went up as though I were in my other nature. I move my head from side to side, trying to be unobtrusive about it; something was really wrong.

The front hall was large, though dark after the bright sunshine outside. It was higher than it looked from the outside. The floor was tiled with intricate little black and white tiles, and there was a large fountain in the center depicting a rock mountain, with little streams trickling off it in all directions. A pool surrounded it, like a little moat. Of course, there were fish in the moat. The walls were darkly paneled, and I shot an appreciative glance at the shine they’d achieved. A lot of linseed oil polishing had gone into them. The walls were covered with old Persian carpets and faded colored tapestries.

The place wasn’t new, obviously, and the stuff on the wall was pretty darn old too, so I should have been experiencing a wild array of exotic scents of different strengths and ages. I should have been able to sense the history of the house and the people who lived there. I should certainly have been able to smell who had crossed that floor today, yesterday, even this week. I lifted my head, trying for another layer of air; I even thought of changing, because I could hardly sense anything. Tiny signals were getting through that should have been enormous. I could just sense the man beside me. The water, yes. And a tiny bite of the linseed oil, all right. But not at their usual volume, not with the usual detail. And everything else was faded, dampened down, almost as though I was trying to smell things underwater, and that, let me tell you, is practically impossible. I rubbed my face just to see if I had mistakenly and without noticing gotten a wet towel over my nose, but no.

Before I could figure out what was going on, one of half a dozen dark doorways leading off the hallway illumined briefly, and another manservant appeared. He stepped out beside the door and bowed me toward it. The man beside me bowed simultaneously, gesturing toward the door as well.

All right. I could take a hint. I crossed the hall, shaking my head a little as though the problem with my senses was in me, like a headcold or something, and I could somehow clear it.

The man at the door was dressed in the same smooth buttoned-down coat and turban as the guy from the car. For a second I thought it was the same guy. I even turned and looked back, but the other guy was still there. They were just dressed alike, I told myself, because my real way of telling who was who was by smell, and I could only faintly smell either of them. This was really bugging me. I wondered how soon I could leave.

I walked past the second guy and into a large room that was obviously the study and library of someone who was into a whole lot of different things. Three huge Persian rugs covered the hardwood floor. Bookshelves stood against the walls, higher than anyone could reach, and there was a ladder on a track so that someone could reach them, just like at Darius’s bookstore. A huge dark wood desk sat at one end of the room. Across from me, the only break in the shelves of books was a huge fireplace. Everything in the room was oversized, as though to infer that a giant lived there. But there wasn’t a giant in the room. The young woman was there, standing beside a large leather chair next to the fireplace, where a roaring fire was burning. In the chair sat a middle-aged man who turned to me with big friendly eyes as I came in, and motioned me to come over to him.

I still couldn’t smell anything. He was dressed in a white robe over a black gown, over white pants, and white leather slippers. Or so it seemed. The fact was, he was hard to look at, like a working is hard to look at. The hair on my arms went up, though it was warm in the room because of the fire. He stood up to greet me. He wasn’t that tall, but he seemed to fill the room nonetheless. That wasn’t right either, because everything else was so large.

“Welcome,” he said, with a broad, gentle smile, and a graceful gesture of his hand. His face was long and thin, with a meticulously cut beard framing his mouth and cheeks. He had deep-set eyes that looked saddened by all that they had seen, and yet they were luminous, like his daughter’s. His beard was dark, but a white turban hid the hair on his head. “My daughter has guided you here safely; I am so glad. She would be delighted to perform introductions, but she is mortified that she did not catch your name?” He put a little question on the end of that, and with it came a little pull in the air. At the same time, he motioned me to sit down in the leather chair opposite his.

I looked at his daughter instead. I had my mouth open a little, trying to bring scent into my nose that way. Hell, my senses were so bad, I couldn’t tell exactly if it was his daughter—I mean, the same young woman I’d met outside my apartment. She was dressed the same, all right, but she’d pulled her scarf up so that it covered the lower part of her face. The top part of the scarf had dipped so that it covered her forehead to her brows. She didn’t look mortified. She looked pissed off. She looked like she’d just had a major chewing out from Dad. Somehow this made me happier.

“Actually,” I said, “I didn’t catch her name either.”

His brows rose, and he turned and spoke to her mildly, the syllables flowing from his lips like water in a language I’d never heard. She bent her head at his words as though she was bracing herself against a storm. Though I couldn’t understand the words, the effect was impressive. When he finished speaking, she bowed, then backed away a few steps, and walked to the wall. When she got there, one of the bookshelves opened. She slipped swiftly through this doorway and then it moved back into place.