Long Hot Summoning (17 page)

“No, he’s not an idiot.” Dr. Rebik smiled and stroked the back of her hand with one finger. “He’s just under the impression that archaeology should be an adventure, like it is in the movies and on television. Mystic relics. Cursed idols. Dark magics. The return of ancient gods, wrathful and virtually omnipotent. He has a problem differentiating between fact and fiction.”

“And yet . . .” Dean set a mug of coffee in front of the doctor and dropped into a chair across from him, cradling his own mug with both hands. “. . . you
are
traveling with a resurrected mummy there.”

“Yes, well, there’s always an exception that proves the rule.”

“He said you broke the seal keeping Meryat in her sarcophagus.”

“I did. Good coffee. Blue Mountain?”

“Organic Mexican.”

“Ah.” Another swallow and a happy sigh. His face puffy and deep purple bags under both eyes, the archaeologist looked as thrilled to be up at six thirty as Dean felt.

“My Meryat was once the wife of Rekhmire, Grand Vizier to Ramses the Great.
One
of Ramses’ Grand Viziers at any rate. He had four that we know of during the many years of his rule. She used to give the most magnificent parties-we’ve found records of them in a number of writings of that era-and at one of them she inadvertently insulted a High Priest by . . .”

Another word from within the hood.

Dr. Rebik cleared his throat, his ears red. “Yes. Well, there’s no need to go into the specifics. The point is, the priest was insulted and, in a fit of pique, had her poisoned. Then he cursed her ka so that Anubis could not find it, confining it and her to the sarcophagus until a string of peculiar conditions were met that allowed the lock to be opened and Meryat to rise again.”

“Peculiar conditions?”

“Learned man. Eyes the color of rotting reeds. That sort of thing.”

“A learned man with greenish-brown eyes doesn’t seem that peculiar.”

“Three nipples . . .”

“Ah.” Cheeks burning, Dean paid a great deal of attention to his next swallow of coffee. “Lance says Meryat took over your mind.” The doctor smiled into the shadows as desiccated fingers with blackened tips closed around his hand. “Meryat took over my heart. How could I not love a woman who’d suffered so bravely for so long? I know what you’re thinking, she’s not at her best physically, but every day she’s in the world she gains back a little more of her beauty.”

“She’s not sucking the energy out of people, is she?”

“People give off energy merely by existing. She absorbs that.”

“Lance said that when you left the lab, you left him for dead.” That drew his attention back to Dean. “I pushed him into a supply closet,” he explained dryly, “and locked the door. Lance tends to exaggerate.”

“Yeah.” Dean decided he’d best keep both the foul fiend and pustulant monster comments to himself. “Does he exclaim everything he says, then?”

“Almost everything, yes. I’m amazed you managed to send him away. He’s remarkably tenacious.”

“I didn’t so much send him away as send him on a wild goose chase. He still thinks he’s after you.”

“I’m glad he isn’t. Well done and thank you.” As Dr. Rebik drained his mug, Meryat asked a question, her words running together like liquid and music combined.

“Meryat wonders if
you
wonder how we found this place. This sanctuary.” Dean shrugged, trying to look as though having the guest house called a sanctuary didn’t please him as much as it did. “You’d be amazed at the people who find this place.”

“In our case, it came about when Meryat’s ka managed to gain a small amount of freedom even before I opened the sarcophagus. Still trapped, it couldn’t touch the real world, but it could touch what she calls the possibilities. They told her of the Keepers and specifically of the Keeper who works from this inn. We were hoping you’d help us. Until she fully regains her physical form, Meryat is helpless and prey to every media influenced, addle-pated adventurer we meet.”

“Meet a lot?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Dean considered the hole to Hell that had once heated the guest house. “Not really, no.”

“So will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Help us.”

“Me? I’m not the Keeper.”

Meryat’s hand which had been reaching toward him, exposing more of a wrapped arm than he really wanted to see, withdrew.

“You’re not?”

“No. The Keeper’s my, uh, girlfriend and she’s away on business right now.

But I’m expecting her back any time,” he added as Dr. Rebik’s face fell and Meryat’s hooded head sagged forward. “The room’s available as long as you need it.”

“So we’ll wait.”

Meryat asked another question.

“No, my love, I can’t think of a place we’d be safer. And now, if you don’t mind, Meryat needs to lie down. As yet she can manage only an hour or two on her feet a day.”

Dean stood as they did and managed to keep from flinching when Meryat’s fingertips touched the bare skin of his forearm for an instant as they passed. He took a long, comforting swallow of coffee and when he heard the door close on the second floor, said, “You were some quiet.”

Austin, who’d been lying on the windowsill, lifted his head from his front paws. “Something Dr. Rebik said isn’t right.”

“Yeah, three nipples. That’s just
wrong
.”

“Hey, I’ve got six!”

“My point exactly; nipples should come in even numbers.” Austin shot him a suspicious look but let it go. “Something else . . .”

“Last night he had to translate for her; this morning, she understood what we were saying.”

The emerald eye blinked once in surprise. “You’re not as dumb as you look.

But that wasn’t it.”

“You think Dr. Rebik was lying?” Dean asked as he gathered up the doctor’s empty mug and headed for the dishwasher.

“No, but I think there’s stuff he’s not telling us.”

“He said he’s sparing Meryat’s feelings. You can’t blame him for that.”

“Why not?” Austin’s tail carved a series of short jerky arcs through the air. “I wish Claire was here.”

“Me, too.”

“Elderly ninja assassins?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, you kind of implied it.”

“Sam . . .”

His ears bridled as he leaped to the top of Bozo’s School Bus and turned to glare. “You did. You said there were handrails around the skylights and, if the way to the roof was in the wrong area, we could expect an attempt on Arthur’s life. Then you said,
‘but not ninjas’
and you’ve been mumbling about dangling old people ever since. So: elderly ninja assassins.”

“Okay, you win.” Claire scooped him off the ride and continued out into the main concourse with him tucked indignantly under one arm. “Just stop repeating it so I can stop thinking about it!”

“It’s not the worst thing you could be thinking about,” Sam muttered. “I mean if anything’s got to drop down from the roof, el . . .” He squeaked as she tightened her grip. “. . .
that
would at least be easy to beat. Right?”

“Wrong. The Otherside deals with subconscious imagery, it takes what you think you’re thinking about and warps it.”

“So if I was thinking about a nice, juicy, unattended salmon?”

“Nothing would happen. When I say it takes what you’re thinking, I don’t mean you specifically. Cats live in the now, there’s nothing in your thoughts the Otherside can use.”

“Fine. If
you
thought about a nice, juicy salmon?”

“We’d probably get grizzlies.”

Back feet braced against her hip, he squirmed around until he could stare up at her. “You’re kidding?”

“Or a rain of frozen peas. Maybe even big, green, frozen grizzlies.”

“Why would the Otherside want anything to do with what’s in your head?” he demanded as Claire set him down. “Things aren’t weird enough around here without your two cents’ worth?”

“Apparently not.”

“Hey, what if you thought about big, green, frozen grizzlies?”

“You wouldn’t get salmon.” She stroked a hand down his back. “Wait here.” Kith and Teemo glanced around as she approached the barricade and then returned to staring down the stairs into the lower level. As far as Claire could tell, it looked like the lower level of the West Gardner’s Mall. No eldritch mists. No skulking shadows.

No shambling hulks of darkside muscle.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

That wasn’t good.

“Any sign of Diana and Kris?”

“Nada.” Teemo scratched in through the ripped armpit of his now sleeveless Spider-man T-shirt- looking less like the semi mythical creature he was becoming and more like the fifteen-year-old he’d been. “There was some crap-ass music playing, but it stopped a while ago. Don’t worry about your blood, Keeper, Kris’ll keep her safe. She’s one sneaky bi . . . Ow!” He shot a pained glance over his shoulder at Kith.

“I wasn’t gonna say bitch!” he protested. “I was gonna say . . . uh . . .” Kith raised a remarkably sardonic eyebrow.

“Never mind what I was gonna say. I wasn’t talk-in‘ to you nohow.” He turned his back on the other elf with such exaggerated indignation, he reminded Claire of Austin. “Kris’ll keep your sister safe,” he repeated. “Arthur already said that if we see any shit happening, we should let you know.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t recognize the elf on guard at the hexagonal opening until she got close enough to see the features under the lime-green hair. “Daniel?”

“Hey, Keeper.”

She’d only walked down to the end of the small corridor, been outside for a minute, two at the most. Three on the absolute outside. How had he had time to . . . ?

“What did you do to your hair?”

He pulled a strand forward, looked at it, looked at her like she was asking a trick question. “Uh, dyed it. Wicked look, right?” The second hand on her watch zipped around from the eight to the two, then slowed.

She hated time distortions.

“Right. It’s very . . . green.” And
not
something she was responsible for.

“Listen, I was wondering, do you know where the access to the roof is?”

“The roof?”

Claire leaned back and pointed up. “There’s got to be an access. There’s parking and there’s handrails.”

“Okay.” Daniel squinted into the gray light currently substituting for actual sky. “I never seen any stairs, but there’s an elevator down by the security office. I seen the sign on food court runs.”

“Where’s the security office?”

Leaning over the Lucite barrier, he pointed down the left side of the lower level. “It’s not too far past the bottom of the stairs ‘cept you go along the other hall.”

“It’s on the darkside?”

“Arthur says it’s sort of territory we both claim, but yeah.”

“Do you know if it works?”

“The security office?”

“The elevator.”

“No friggin‘ idea, Keeper.”

“Okay . . .” This was very bad. “They could come through the skylight. You’ll have to watch up as well as down.”

“Through the skylight?” Daniel repeated, glancing up again.

“Yes.”

“That kinda sucks.”

“Yes. It does.” Pivoting on one heel, Claire headed for the department store and nearly tripped over Sam.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Good. Think and walk; I have to warn Arthur.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Assassinating the Immortal King makes sense-cut the head off the snake and the snake dies.”

“What do snakes have to do with anything?”

“Sorry, angel leftover. We . . . they . . . use snake analogies a lot. You know,
up there.
Occupational hazard.” He jumped up onto the edge of a planter and hooked all five claws on one front paw into Claire’s skirt, dragging her to a halt. “If I was the darkside, and if this whole segue thing meant enough to me, I’d drop an assassin in during the battle when no one would notice. If the dark elf wins, the assassin helps the meat-minds pick off the mall elves. If the dark elf loses, then it finds a place to lay low until it gets its chance. Bada bing, bada boom.” She pulled her skirt free. “Another leftover angel thing?

“No, I’ve been watching
The Sopranos
with your dad. Look, it makes sense for the darkside to kill Arthur, but it doesn’t make any sense for them to drop an assassin in now after the battle when all the elves are on full alert.” Claire looked back at Teemo and Kith on the barricade. At Daniel. Were there more shadows on the upper concourse than there had been?

It was definitely too quiet.

“You’re right,” she said. And started to run.

Sam jumped down and raced after her. “At the risk of sounding last millennia; duh.”

Sunlight streamed down through the skylight into the food court, bright enough to wash away the light spilling from the bulbs over each table. Bright enough to wash away the shadows.

Kris frowned. “There’s never been sunlight before.”

“It’s probably coming through from the real world. This end of the mall’s almost totally matched up. We haven’t got much time.”

“Is this the sort of stuff you and your sister need to know?”

“No. This is the sort of stuff we pretty much already knew. We have to go deeper in. We need to see
who
more than what.” Diana dunked her face into a filled sink, trying to rinse away the soap she’d used to remove the lipstick camouflage.

Man, that stuff could remove freckles!
When she surfaced, Kris was waiting with a paper towel. “Thanks.” The towel was only marginally less destructive than the soap, and they were both an exact match for supplies in women’s washrooms worldwide.

Diana made a mental note to check the supplier when they got home. This could be a foothold situation that the Lineage had missed for years. And the toilet paper was definitely Hellish.

“So,” Kris grunted, leaning against a stall and watching Diana in the mirror,

“what now?”

“Now, unless we open the door and there’s a power-of-darkness coffee klatch happening close enough for us to eavesdrop on, we need to get to the Emporium. It’s as close to the anchor as we’ve ever come.” She tossed the damp paper in the waste-basket and turned to face a sceptical mall elf.

“It’s where you two came through. They’ll be guarding it.”