The Summoning (7 page)

“After I cooked you that nice breakfast?” he said lightly, but his fear spiked again.

This did not add up. “Level with me, then,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I want to defeat the Eater of Souls, as I told you. It’s true, once I had this,” he raised his soul gently in his hands, “I could duck service sometimes, if I wasn’t properly bound in time. But the Eater of Souls is coming here. I need the most powerful master I can find, for all our sakes.”

“And you chose me,” I said. “Great.”

He shook his head again. “I didn’t choose you. In truth, I sought the sorceress. But I was truly bound to you by the events of that night, by the working, by her and by you. It’s true by every sign I’ve learned to look for. I only hope it is enough.”

CHAPTER FIVE

R
ichard started on the dishes, and I let him. He was probably quicker at it anyway. And there were things to wash I’d never owned before, a colander, for instance. And if I had made breakfast, there wouldn’t have been nearly so many dishes to wash, anyway, so I left him to it.

When he was finished he hung up his apron on a new hook he’d installed inside the larder door. He was just making himself right at home. He put his leather jacket back on, not because he was cold but because he’d put the soul in its inside zip pocket. He sat down across from me and took out the deck of tarot cards he’d shown me the first time he’d come to my house. He set them in front of me.

“Will you cut them?”

“What for?”

“I promised you the answers that you seek. Ask whatever you like, and I will ask the cards.”

I had a lot of questions about my life. I had burning questions that I’d longed to know the answers to for years. Was my dad still alive? Was my older brother? But every hunter knows you follow one trail at a time. And everything I asked the demon would be one more thing he knew about me. I trusted him to the extent I did, in my house, and in—he said—my service because I knew I could kill him—in his human form, in any case. The Eater of Souls was coming. That came first. I pushed the cards back to him. He looked up at me, surprised.

“Not now,” I said. “Later. Sometime. Maybe. Now we need to find some of those people you talked about, who can answer questions about what is going down here.”

Another beautiful day in Southern California: cloudless and warm, and almost clear. As we headed down the freeway to Costa Mesa through the light Saturday morning traffic, I could actually make out the hills to the south and east that border Orange County. I can’t say I didn’t miss the sharp, cold air of the coast that I was used to, the long, empty beaches, the scent of the fog, the rain, the silence of the woods… but driving down the freeway, among thousands of cars, I was as free as I could be, while still very hard to find.

Richard directed me to a music shop just off one of the main downtown streets. We parked across the street and walked along the opposite sidewalk to World Music: Ethnic and Tribal Instruments. Under the sign was a large display window with masks and colorful draperies, guitars, and strange banjos made out of gourds. To the right of the door was a little brick courtyard with strange metal sculptures and a couple of benches. A group of black guys sat there, listening to the smallest of them drumming on a djembe. He was good. We were about to jay walk over to that side of the street when I caught a whiff of those guys. I stopped and put my hand out. I’ll say this for the demon, he paid attention. He stopped when I did.

They were bears. Not the drummer, he was straight human. I thought about it, trying to remember what I knew of our larger cousins. I’d never met one before. I hadn’t expected to find them in the city but, frankly I’ve never believed that myth about hibernation. And there were four of them. I decided they probably would not commit mayhem on a city street. Probably. Anyway, I could run. I wondered if the sage we had come to see was a bear as well, or if she just had powerful friends. I started across the street.

We were downwind. I saw them notice us, without turning. I knew to the second when they got a whiff of me. All four of them turned at once. They didn’t get up, but they sure seemed awfully big all of a sudden. I stopped on the sidewalk so they could get a good look and smell of me.

“Hey,” I said.

“How’s it going?” one of them said after a moment.

“All right.” I sure had their attention. The little guy left off drumming, not sure what was going on. The demon kept behind me. I made my intentions clear. “We’re looking for Madam Tamara. This her place?”

The next-to-biggest guy answered me. He had a heavy face, and a scar over his brow across one eye. “Sure is. She’s probably in back.” He nodded to me, friendly, and turned back to the drummer, who was still smiling uncertainly. The others nodded in their turn. I nodded back and went on by. I didn’t realize how keyed-up I’d been until I let go of my breath as we passed them.

“You meet those guys before?” I asked Richard. “Is that why you couldn’t see Madam Tamara?”

He shook his head. “I never got that far. She has wards all around this block.”

“I didn’t feel any.”

He smiled wryly. “Demon wards. For such as I am. I couldn’t cross them, if I didn’t have this.” He touched the pocket of his jacket where he kept his soul. He stepped ahead and opened the door for me. “Are they her bodyguards?”

“Couldn’t you tell?” I asked him. “They’re bears.”

His face changed. “Oh.” He was still standing there staring back at them as I went inside.

I stopped just inside the door, taking in an intoxicating medley of scents as the hair rose on my arms. Wood, incense, cloth, paints and dyes, and a brush of traces of people from far away places, who ate differently, who had sweated and sometimes bled into the work of making the carvings, the weavings, the clothes, the instruments. It was like a hundred talking books all playing quite distinctly at the same time. As I took this all in, it was a moment before my other senses focused, and I heard the tap and whistle of the instruments being tried, the wind chimes gonging, muffled laughter and intense conversations, and saw the counters of beads and music, figurines and instruments, and the displays of clothes and bags, shawls and headdresses. But all that wasn’t what was making the hair on my arms come up.

The air had a charge in it, a hum that can be sensed in any place that magic is frequently raised. Outside, the drummer keyed into it, helping to sustain it, and fed it into his own drumming at the same time, probably without knowing he was doing it. It made a pleasant buzz, a counterpoint to the symphony assaulting my senses. There were half a dozen customers. One tried on masks, taking them down one by one from the wall. A couple were experimenting with whistles, a pair of girls pranced in front of a narrow mirror, decked in colorful clothes, and one was in the corner examining every millimeter of one of the African drums. They were all caught in the buzz, I noted. I’d bet people hung around here all the time without knowing why.

Next to the corner with the drums was a doorway into the back, covered by a curtain. Richard followed me as I crossed the store toward the ward I felt there. It conveyed the impression that there was a wall beyond the curtain, though I could see it moving in the slight air current. There were layers to the ward that said, “Oh, look over there,” and “There’s nothing back here.” She was strong, all right, and crafty. I called from the doorway, “Madam Tamara?”

A rich, melodious voice answered, “Yes? Come in.” The wards parted as she spoke.

Well, she certainly wasn’t expecting trouble. Or she was too tough to worry. I led the way through a narrow office, with desks on either side and shelves piled with papers, through another doorway and into a large workroom whose walls were lined with crowded counters, above which were crammed shelves. The center space was mostly taken up by an enormous long table, piled with half-unpacked boxes of ceramics, jewelry, shawls, carvings, and gourds, cluttered with instruments half-repaired, pieces of furniture awaiting another coat of paint, and lined with chairs that were also cluttered with piles of stuff. A tall, dark woman in a flowing dark blue cotton dress with an elaborate red and blue turban covering her hair was bent over what looked like a huge, hammered copper mirror. She looked up as I came in and started to smile in greeting, when her attention moved—and riveted—to Richard behind me.

She was quick. She spat a curse, leaped for the wall and lifted up a wooden crucifix. Her movements somehow set trembling a set of bells that hung in one corner of the room, and a free-standing gong on the counter opposite went off as though someone had smacked it but good. She held out the cross toward Richard, describing signs with her other hand, and speaking loudly and adamantly in a foreign language. I started for her, but stopped, because there was no point in scaring her. Richard walked on past me, went up to the woman, who held her ground, and fell on his knees. He leaned forward and kissed the crucifix, and then sat back on his heels. She fell silent.

“I went to mass twice a week for a hundred years,” he told her. “I can recite by heart the entire Anglican Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible.”

“Be silent,” she said. She laid the cross on his head. He didn’t move, and nothing happened. Since Richard had started this, I waited to see how he’d resolve it, but that’s when two of the bears came in the back door behind her, and the other two came in behind me. She wasted not a second, but stepped back, still holding the crucifix like a spear, and nodded at Richard. “Kill that thing.”

The second-largest one, the one with the scar across his eye that had spoken to me outside, came forward from the back door. He changed as he went over to Richard, so when he picked Richard up without effort by the scruff of his neck, he wore his bear aspect and his man aspect at the same time. I could see them both plainly, superimposed one over the other. A neat trick. I’d have to try it some time.

I was already up on the table, the most direct route to both of them. I didn’t change yet, as I wanted him to understand me, but my switch was thrown already and he knew it.

His arm swung back to swat Richard into oblivion.

“Put him down,” I said.

“You know what that is?” Tamara asked me, calmer now that her friend had Richard in hand.

“I know what he says he is. I know that he is mine. Put him down and leave him alone.” I waited another second and added, “Now.”

“Do you claim to control him?” Tamara asked, with a good deal of skepticism in her voice.

That pissed me off. “He won’t make a move without my permission. Now put him down.”

The bear looked over at Tamara. She spread her hands toward Richard, as though trying to read his nature from the air. “Strange,” she said. “He should never have been able to get this far.”

“He is under my protection,” I told them again.

Tamara gave me a quizzical look, and spared one more glance for Richard. “All right. Jacob, you can put him down.”

The bear dropped him. I let that pass. After all, Richard had gotten us into this. Richard fell hard and didn’t move. I jumped lightly off the table to stand over him. “You can get up,” I told him.

“Did you raise that thing?” Tamara asked me.

I shook my head. “He was raised a long time ago.”

Richard got to his feet, keeping his head bent and his arms crossed unobtrusively over the zippered inside pocket that held his soul.

“Are you a sorceress?” Tamara demanded. Her hand went out again, deep brown and long-fingered, feeling the air between us for some information I couldn’t comprehend.

I laughed. “Not me.”

“But this one obeys you?” She was studying us both intently.

“So he tells me.” I turned to Richard, who nodded once, keeping his eyes down.

“You keep strange company, for one of the wolf kind.”

I raised my brows. “So do you.”

There was a shifting and a grunt of appreciative laughter from the four bears. Tamara glanced at them and cracked a smile. “A varied and interesting life brings varied and interesting company. True.” She returned the crucifix to its place on the wall. “Very well. Now tell me, to what do I owe this visit? What has caused you to bring that thing into my presence?”

I looked at Richard. “Tell her.”

Tamara interrupted. “I would rather that you tell me.”

“All right. I hear you’re one of the bunch that’s up against the World Snake.” They got still as I named the name. “Richard here tells me I’m in that fight, too. He tells me he has information that you need.”

Tamara looked at me for a long moment. I was beginning not to like this bitch. “And you believed him?” she asked.

“He’s not allowed to lie to me,” I told her, though I was pretty sure he could find ways around that.

She smiled at my words. Obviously, she had the same reservations. “Let us hear this information. Reasonable people,” she looked around, taking in the bears, “may then judge the value of the demon’s words.” She turned her cold glance on Richard. “You may speak.”

“Hold on,” I said, and asked Tamara, “First, tell me about the World Snake. Is it true that it’s coming here? Do you know this? Because I heard it from him.” I nodded at Richard.

Her face then looked as grave as it did strong. “Signs tell us she has turned. Many powerful adepts, whom I have learned to trust, have divined this, each in their own way. She has turned; she is moving this way.” She cocked an eye at me. “You felt the earthquake?”

I nodded.

“Yes. This may well be her destination. That is what we fear. Do you know what comes of a visitation by the World Snake?”

I gestured to Richard. “He mentioned the names of some cities I never heard of. And one I do know that’s gone, except I think it was an island: Atlantis.”

“That’s so.” Her voice was strong and musical, despite the gravity of what she was telling me. “It is said that the Worm swallows cities, and no trace is left of their passing but human memory. We are taking what measures we can.”

“Hah.” One of the bears snorted, and she glared at him.

“The power raisers of this city are working together—” She shot a look at the bears, trying to figure out where the chortle had come from, but they were all looking up or down or away. She amended, raising her voice to make her point, “We are trying to work together in a meaningful way. Those who are able are raising barriers of deflection. Those who can do more are doing their utmost to send her away out to sea. According to legend, this was done successfully at least once before. Some are studying to find the means, or to make the means certain. Others are… doing what seems best to them.” Another hard glance at the bears, but none of them had spoken. They might have been holding their breaths. She looked back at me. “Yes, to answer your question. The World Snake is coming here, unless something can be done to prevent it.”