The Summoning (4 page)

He shook his head. “I know it’s you, because until today, that card in that form never appeared in my deck before. And I’ve had these a long, long time.”

I forked the meat onto my plate. After a moment, I got out a second plate and put some meat on that, too. I got out some cutlery and put it on the table across from me with the other plate, and sat down to the second half of my supper. “Sit down,” I told him, pointing. He didn’t have to be told twice, but he waited till I had my first mouthful before he started in. Then he ate faster than I did. Boy, he must have been hungry.

I leaned back in my chair when I’d finished. “All right, demon. Let’s have the rest of the story. What are you doing this side of Hell?”

He’d been finished for a while, looking at his plate as though he’d like to pick it up and lick it. But he raised his head and took a breath. “I am here because I was summoned by the most ignorant practitioner of the magical arts in the history of the craft, who called my name, commanded me into human form, this form, and set no limitations in time or space for my durance here. None!”

“Uh huh.” I thought about this. “Okay, there’s some magician who can call up demons, make them human—”

“Make them wear human form, pardon me.”

“All right. But he’s supposed to put an end time on how long you stay, and he didn’t. Is that right? So—don’t tell me. Now that you belong to me—as you say—you want me to kick his ignorant ass.”

He smiled then, and for a moment I saw the ghost of the beautiful boy he had been commanded to be. “I wish it were so simple. John Dee has been dead more than four hundred years. I am good and stuck here.…” He looked away, his mouth hardening.

I didn’t let him help with the dishes, or even clear them. I didn’t want him to feel that much at home in my place. He wasn’t staying. He didn’t seem to know that yet. While I cleaned up, I made him tell me the rest of the story. He didn’t tell it all, but I guessed that.

“I thought when John Dee died, I would return to my true form and be free to go. When he found he could not use me as he hoped, he gave me to his daughter, who kept house for him. She was never at a loss to find me something more to do. Then John Dee died, and I went on as before.… I thought when Katherine died, then I’d be free, but it wasn’t so. She sold me to pay a debt, and I found myself still bound.”

“They had to die while you were still working for them. Is that it?” I turned off the water and hung up the dishrag.

“I thought so, too,” he said. “But I once consulted with a master of the magical arts, who interested himself in my case. He told me that because I was summoned and bound here in this form without end, that this is my fate. I have been in servitude to one master after another ever since.”

“Yeah? So last night, when you headed up the hill, who was your master then?”

He blushed. The rose color was awfully pretty on his pale skin. I watched him flail around for a lie that would work for him. He held out his hands again. “That was… different. Things have changed since then.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Look.” He put the deck of tarot cards down on the table in front of him. “Will you cut them?”

“All right.” I like card tricks. I cut the cards and pushed the deck across the table toward him. He didn’t touch them.

“Turn over the top card,” he said.

I did. It was the Moon again. “Good going!” I pushed the deck toward him.

Again he shook his head. “Will you shuffle them?”

I put the card back in the deck and shuffled them idly for a while, wondering what trick he would pull next. Then he said, “Whenever you like, choose a card from the deck.”

I simply turned the deck over to reveal the bottom card. It was the Moon. I dropped that card on the table where I could see it, and shuffled again. I looked a challenge at him, but he only nodded. “Whenever you like, turn over the card of your choice.”

So I cut the deck and turned over the top card. It was the Moon. When I looked over at the card I had dropped on the table, it seemed I had mistakenly dropped the Knave of Wands there instead. Except I hadn’t.

I handed him back his cards. “Cute trick,” I said, but he only shook his head again.

“I have cast the cards a hundred times today. Every time, you appear in the central place, balancing the issue between of the fate of this city, the coming of the Eater of Souls, and the Great Snake.” He lowered his head and added, “And of my fate, as well.”

I cracked a smile at that. “That’s real funny. What do you think I am, some kind of superhero?”

He said, “I only know what I am told. We are at the outset of catastrophe, and you are the vital player.”

“And with you at my side, we will prevail? That’s rich. I always liked those stories too, but just now, these days, I’m just hanging out on the outskirts of L.A., doing my thing, living my life, know what I mean?” I backed him across the living room toward the door. I was about to reach past him and open it for him, when he held out the cards again.

“I am not without my uses.” He sounded like a hawker in the marketplace, only this guy was selling himself. “I can offer you what it is you want, what you have been longing for.” He fanned the cards in his hand.

“What are you talking about?” I said, low and dangerous.

He turned the cards over and fanned them face up, so the bright strange shapes writhed before my eyes. “I am, as I said, the tool of my master. I can read the cards for you. I can find what is lost to you. I can discover what it is you want to know.”

“Out,” I said. And I bit off the word as my four paws hit the floor. He backed toward the door, still talking.

“Only if you want, Lady… your tool to use… if in return you would aid me…”

I walked him to the door, my head low, my mouth open. I get bigger when I’m angry. So they say. I almost didn’t fit in the doorway, so I think it must be true. He backed out onto the landing and down the stairs.

I slammed the door on his last words, took two turns around the living room as his footsteps retreated to the foot of the stairs and he stood hesitating. After a while, I heard him walk away. I got up on the big chair and curled up. How did he know? What did he know? He can’t have read my mind. Could he have read my heart? And I’d thought, for the longest time, that mine was dead.

CHAPTER THREE

W
hen I got to L.A., I’d chosen Whittier because of the hills. They aren’t very high, but they go on quite a ways, and if you’re willing to cross a road, they go on even farther. There are no trees to speak of, and the traffic noise never ends, but there is space, and many trails, the scent of grass and the web of the creatures’ lives that live there, and at night there are almost never any people. I took off for the hills when the moon was high, trying to run my way back to peace of mind, trying to run from thoughts I thought I’d escaped months ago, when I left home, the home of my mother, and her new mate.

Up in the hills the air was cool and almost fresh. The California grasses and herbs were sweet and damp from the dewfall. I climbed the hill beyond where the Wiccans had had their working—nothing there tonight, except the wards that whispered, Go away, there’s nothing here, you don’t want to be here. On the next rise I stood with my back to the city lights, looking out into the darkness of the hills beyond. Down the rise where the park abutted the houses, a family of raccoons made a ruckus in the trash cans. A snake had passed here not long before. Four deer stood in the hollow below, not moving, not making a sound, waiting for me to go.

My coyote cousins began to sing across the way. I sat down to listen to them.

Everything changes. The days turn. The moon rises and falls. My dad was gone, and I didn’t know what happened to him.

I wore a new name now, though I was not yet used to it. My family name is Hunter. I left my puppy name, the one my brothers called me, the one I was called at school, behind me when I went away. My dad called me Amber. I use it these days, because I like to hear the word.

I had two brothers of my own. When I was fourteen, Carl, my older brother, went with my mom and my dad to the Gathering. My younger brother Luke and I, not being of age, stayed home with my Aunt Dora. When my mom came home, she brought Ray with her. Her new husband. My dad and Carl never returned. Ray moved in to my mom and dad’s room. My dad’s stuff was packed in boxes, down to the coffee cup he always used, and sent away. Carl’s room was cleared out, and my four hated stepbrothers moved in. Life at home was insupportable from that point on.

My mom wouldn’t talk about it. She wouldn’t answer questions. She said, when I was older I would understand. Well, I was older, and I did not understand. How could she let that bastard, that monster, into her house, in the place of my dad? And why wouldn’t she tell me what had happened to Dad and to Carl?

No one I knew would talk to me. They were all afraid of Ray. I didn’t blame them. I was afraid of Ray, too.

All right, it pissed me off that I wasn’t the darling of the house anymore. I’d always been my dad’s favorite. I knew it, everyone knew it, but my brothers were sweet about it. I was their favorite too. I knew what it meant, among my family, to be my mother’s daughter, the Daughter of the Moon Wolf. When the clods invaded, they tried to make me into their servant.

They’d done me a favor in a way, I tried to tell myself once more. Because of them, I’d learned to fight. I’d grown into my powers early, and made them sorry. I’d had to fight for Luke as well as myself, which gave me twice as much to do. I’d put my oldest stepbrother in the hospital the last time he bothered me. Unfortunately, that brought me the attentions of his dad.

How could my mother put up with someone like that? That was the question that made my fury rage. But what that did was cover my little-girl question, which was, how could she let him do that to me?

I learned not to be beaten down by him. I learned how to fight back. He was too strong for me, but his sons were not. The next time he bothered me, I went after his youngest boy. He only did it one more time before he got the message.

They knew I’d take off as soon as I came of age. So I took off even earlier, as soon as I possibly could, so they couldn’t stop me.

My dad was wise. He looked out for me. When I rode the surge of my blood in blind passion and for the first time made the twist that brought forth my wolf nature, when I fell onto four legs, stunned by new senses, crippled by a different throat, a different height, a different brain, my dad was there. He changed in front of me, nosed me onto my feet, and led me up the pasture, into the meadow, up into the woods. Slowly, exploring every trail, every scent, every sound or motion, we gamboled and tracked, leaped and played, until I fell into an exhausted heap, too tired to move. He carried me home. It is easy for the two-natured to make a mistake, when we first learn to change. My dad was there, and he saw that I didn’t.

When Dad didn’t come back from the Gathering, I held all his lessons close. He showed me the old family caches, some of them dating back to when we first settled the area more than a hundred years ago. I emptied them, and hid them anew, obscuring my track with every trick he taught me. My mom must have known about the caches, but she said nothing. I hoped that meant that at least in this small way, she was still on my side.

One of my cousins also planned to leave. Ray brought trouble to a lot of people. She found out how to buy new I.D.s, and she got one for me. I left tiny little hints, like mistakes, that I was planning to hide in the mountains. I spent more time in the woods, hunting, learning to be invisible. I left trails, and then crossed and re-crossed them, so I would be hard to track.

When the time came, I emptied all my caches and I left with my cousin in her car. We drove down and picked a car she bought for me with my money, and then we drove off in different directions. I headed into the mountains. There are a lot of mountains in California.

You can hide in the wild, in your true nature. You can hide in the mountains, in the woods, where the trees are indifferent. In the city, the people, like the trees, are indifferent, but there your trail is obscured every day by a million cars and a million people.

I made a big loop out into the desert, then doubled back and drove south. I chose Los Angeles, rather than San Francisco, because it is not only big, really big, but there are fifty ways to get out of there, if you have to.

All right, I had questions. Questions I had been longing to hear the answers to for more than two years. Where was my dad? Was he all right? Was he dead? Did Ray kill him? What happened to my brother? Why was Ray able to come in like he did, and why did he suddenly have such power over everyone, over my mother, over me? Where was he from, what did he really want? In time, I swore on my soul that is the same in both my natures, that I would know the answers.

But for the time being, I was too young, and not yet strong enough, to fight back. I needed to wait, I needed to grow, I needed to find all my power. And meanwhile, I needed to stay hidden. So I had a policy. No ties, no alliances, no contacts. Just me, and I would take care of myself.

My mom didn’t know where I was. All right, true. But she gave up her right to know my whereabouts when she stopped taking care of me. I was hoping the family would think my stepdad had done for me. That would bring him a lot of trouble, and it would serve him right. But if he was not yet defeated, when the time came, I would do it. I swore it.

Out across the way, the coyotes yapped and bayed. I stood up and raised my head and sang my loneliness, betrayal, and loss. I silenced every living thing for ten miles around.

I sat and thought for a while, in the quiet. The traffic sounds were like the distant roar of the sea. It was true that if the city I had chosen was going to be destroyed, then I was involved. And I had claimed some territory, despite my policy of invisibility. It’s in my nature, after all. And why else had I gone up the hill last night, except to see what was going on? My family hadn’t found me yet. They weren’t going to look here. They were out wandering all over the mountains, tracking the elusive wolf. And there are hundreds of miles of mountains in California. There were answers I wanted that would be worth having. And knowledge is power, and I like power a lot.