Summoned (28 page)

The deep water around the Servitor runs bright; it stares up through the brightness at the blazing black of day and the surface-paddler that’s blackest of all.

Black equaled white. Sean knew the paddler was a swan, though the Servitor couldn’t name it—

He jerked but not awake, because he hadn’t been asleep. Sean goggled at the actually white tiles on the floor and walls. Actually white, too, were the curtains at the window, and actually blue the wedge of sky he saw when the curtains fluttered apart.

He stood and looked into the mirror over the sink. His face was white (actually white, scared.) After a few seconds, he closed his eyes again.

The black paddler is right above. The Servitor can swim up and grab the webbed feet, drag the paddler under, and devour it, as it has devoured other paddlers since it found the abundance of this greater river. But its hunger is not for paddler flesh.

Sean opened his eyes. He must have been developing a waking connection to the Servitor all morning, and he’d been too stupid to realize it. He’d been starving because the Servitor was starving, and bagels and muffins were like swans, not the right food for their hunger.

For
its
hunger.
He
was Sean in the bathroom. He was not the thing in the river. Keep that straight and he’d be okay. The connection could even help. The Servitor was his camera and microphone, while he was the spy, following everything from a secure location.

He closed his eyes.

Other paddlers float by. These are not alive. They are vessels used by humans to traverse the water; humans dip in false feet to propel themselves along. There are long vessels with many feet. There are short vessels with two feet, like the one that approaches. A false foot dips in on one side. It rises, and a false foot dips in on the other side.

There’s flesh enough inside such small vessels to satisfy it until the summoner comes—

A kayaker-eating spy camera was not cool. Sean opened his eyes wide and was back in front of the bathroom mirror. Okay, but what good did that do? The camera was still running, still thinking about having a snack, even though the cameraman wasn’t looking through the lenses. Sean squeezed his eyes shut tight, was in the river, flung out thought.
Leave the boats alone. Stay down on the bottom.

The Servitor writhes, roiling the riverbed on which it lies. A sparkling cloud of silt rises around it. If the summoner won’t let it hunt, when will he come and feed it?

Feed it, like he’d promised in his dream.
I’m not sure.

Maybe the summoner doesn’t mean to come.

No! I’ll come soon. Wait.

The summoner must come to the river, to the stone building where there were bones, though only dust remains. If the summoner will give his blood, it will tell him secrets.

I will. Stay there until I do.

Its hunger burns. It twitches among the water weeds, still watching the floating vessels.

In the mirror Sean saw beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. He wiped his face with a hand towel. Hungry? He was hungry now like when Mom had died, when people had brought food to the house, but it had been the wrong food. Nobody brought the salad with red lettuce and green peppers, like Mom liked, and the lasagna had sausages, which Mom hated, and none of the cakes was chocolate with vanilla frosting, which was what she had on her birthday. It would be bad to eat what Mom didn’t like now that she was dead. It would be mean, like she didn’t matter anymore.

Grandpa Stewie and Uncle Joe, when Sean told them how mean it would be, they made a lasagna with spinach and mushrooms, and the red and green salad, and the chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Then Sean ate, and Dad ate, too. Dad cried, sitting at the table, eating. They ate because they were so hungry and finally there were the right things to eat.

“I’m going crazy.” Confirmation: Sean said it out loud to his reflection, which was sweating again. Soon he’d stink like a pig, but he wasn’t taking another shower. The water running over him would be like lying in the river with the thing that had decided it would rather not feed itself, either, unless it got exactly what it wanted. Plus he’d have to close his eyes and closing his eyes was no longer a great idea. Coffee. Lots of coffee.

The phone rang. He was halfway downstairs when Gus yelled, “Sean! Your father.”

He ran the rest of the way to the kitchen and snagged the phone. “Dad, are you guys okay?”

“Fine. What about you?”

How much of the truth should he tell? It depended on what they’d been able to do in Arkham. So he tried a neutral answer: “Not bad. You guys get into Geldman’s?”

“Helen did. She talked to him and to Orne, too, over a magical typewriter. I guess you had to be there.”

Dad sounded up for the first time in days. Sean gripped the receiver. He put his other hand over his stomach, which was unsure whether to growl at the proximity of Eddy’s omelet or to clench into upchuck mode. “What did they say?”

“Orne told Helen how to read the blotted passages. They’ve got to be read in the real book, so we’re going to the library.”

Relief, sudden and draining, made Sean close his eyes. Instantly he was in the river. He popped his eyes open. “That’s great! Can we do the spell tonight?”

“I guess so. You stay in the house until we come, understand?”

“Right. I will, Dad.”

“Wait a second.”

A pause while the phone switched hands, because now Helen spoke. “Sean, how are you feeling?”

He knew what she was really asking, but what good would the truth do? She and Dad were already doing as much as they could. “I’m okay,” Sean said. “Eating like a pig.”

“Did you read the printouts I left?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you had any feeling, awake, that you’re connected to the Servitor?”

Again, when it came down to it, he couldn’t lie to her. “A little, I guess.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, if I close my eyes, I can get into its head. But that’s good. I can tell it’s just lying around in the river. I can tell it to stay there.”

There was a long silence on the line. Had Helen covered her mouthpiece to relay the news to Dad?

“Sean.”

Helen’s voice, in his ear. He almost jumped. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Geldman gave me a drug—a potion—that should help you. He says it’ll strengthen your mind against the Servitor.”

“That’s good. If you trust him.”

“I do. So hang tight. We should be back before dark.”

The line went dead before Sean could thank her—they were in a hurry. Good. He handed the receiver back to Gus, who was studying him, maybe to make sure sympathetic tentacles weren’t sprouting from his chin. Eddy was staring, too.

Sean summarized the call for them.

“Ms. Arkwright rules,” Eddy said.

“Yeah. Is there any coffee?”

“I’m going to make some,” Gus said.

“I’ll do it.”

Like Joe-Jack, Gus indulged in fresh-roasted beans from the Coffee Exchange. Sean picked the seriously caffeinated Kid from Brooklyn blend, and he leaned over the grinder, trying to breathe in some jolt from the fumes. One way or another, he was going to stay bug-eyed awake until Dad and Helen got home.

21

On
the sunniest day, the stained-glass windows in Special Collections drowned the reading room in submarine gloom; today, under storm clouds, the principal illumination came from the tabletop lamps under which patrons hunched, so many divers after doubtful pearls. “You could wait out here,” Helen whispered to Jeremy. “Come up with a plan to make these damn windows less dreary.”

Jeremy didn’t even glance at them. “Forget it. This time I’m tagging along.”

Part of her was annoyed by his persistence, but a bigger part was relieved. “I’ll have to sign you in.”

“Sign away.”

Luckily, Matt Bridgeman was on duty rather than Mrs. Wolff, who deplored the admission of “tourists” into the Archives. When Helen said Jeremy was a visiting scholar, Matt didn’t eye his jeans and demand credentials. He simply countersigned the guest log and buzzed them through the door behind the desk.

They entered a vaulted room the size of a gymnasium. It had open stacks in the middle and conservation labs and special security rooms around the perimeter. The Arcane Studies Archives were in the east corner, behind a steel door with both a dead bolt and an electronic lock. Helen had always smiled at the extra safeguard, new technology to protect dusty lore. Now as she punched the entry code and slotted her key, she wondered why the safeguards weren’t stronger.

Even with air filtration and dehumidifiers, the Archives smelled of decomposition only tenuously arrested. There were no windows, and the overhead lights were dim, leaving much of the long room in shadow. Metal shelving held the newer books, closed cabinets the older and more fragile. A single table occupied the no-man’s-land between the two storage camps, low-UV lamps on its stainless-steel top and aluminum chairs around it. A glass door opposite the entry led to the microfilm and digital media room. They wouldn’t need to go in there. Today they were after the genuine article.

“I expected a stuffed crocodile at least,” Jeremy said.

“A stuffed croc would reek pollutants. We’re state-of-the-art conservation here. Very expensive, but Arcane Studies has gotten a lot of private funding over the years.”

“From whom?”

“Most of the donors are anonymous, which I used to think was odd. Not anymore. Grab a seat.”

Going through her book-handling routine soothed Helen, and she omitted no detail. First she spread a blotter on the table and centered on it a Plexiglas book cradle. Beside the cradle went book weights and notepaper and pencils. A microspatula for turning pages. Acid-free bookmarks. Finally, cotton gloves for them both.

“You should put those on now,” she told Jeremy. “In case you have to handle the book.”

He obeyed without comment. Notwithstanding his joke about the crocodile, he understood fragility. Old glass, old paper, both brittle, as fleeting as life but precious enough for immortality. Fleeting as life, that was a comforting thought. Evidently it didn’t apply to people like Orne.

But, as Geldman had implied, it could apply only too aptly to Sean.

Helen went to the largest of the metal cabinets. Like the entry, it had both a keyed lock and an electronic one. She opened them and hefted out the archival box that contained the
Necronomicon
. It settled heavily against her breastbone. Funny, this was the first time she’d touched the greatest treasure under her care. That couldn’t bode well for her paramagical aptitude—shouldn’t the thing have
drawn
her? Or, if she was a good little parawitch, shouldn’t it repulse her now? Instead its bulk was just a weight she was relieved to shift onto the table.

“That’s the infamous tome?” Jeremy said. He sounded unimpressed.

Helen lifted the lid of the archive box. There was no burst of noxious green light, no ectoplasmic hand darting for her throat. Just cracked and gnawed leather. The binding of the
Necronomicon
was calfskin, not human hide; analysis had proven that. Still, she didn’t like the give of the leather when she removed the book to the cradle. It felt like there was flesh beneath it. And blood: The
Necronomicon
fell open, releasing a tang of damp iron.

“Nice,” Jeremy said, wrinkling his nose.

“It’s in good condition, actually, given its age.” The text block was intact, though the book looked much perused. Helen stripped off her gloves. “I’m going out to take the potion.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“As sure as I’m going to be.”

Jeremy stepped between her and the door. “All the warnings Geldman gave you. Eyes bleeding, going blind. You shouldn’t have to be the one to risk that.”

She couldn’t deal with another wrangle like the one they’d had on the way to the library. “Jeremy, I’m the paramagician.”

“Maybe you are, maybe not. I’m Sean’s father. That’s fact. I should take the potion.”

“Geldman gave it to me. I’m taking it.”

“Helen.”

She ducked around him, into the neighboring washroom. Even the brief delay at the door had planted dread in her gut, where it instantly took fresh root. Damn Jeremy for making sense when sense was what she had to give up.

Helen fished the tiny brown vial out of her breast pocket and twisted its cork to break the seal. “Bishop’s #5” sounded like the name of a perfume, but the only perfume it smelled like was one that had sat on milady’s vanity for too many years after her demise, rotting with her. Acrid vapor stung Helen’s nostrils as she lifted the bottle. Quickly, before she could chicken out, she poured thick liquid into her mouth. It was the nastiest thing she’d ever tasted, tongue-scaldingly bitter. Somehow she swallowed and somehow withstood the urge to retch. Though not retching might be a mistake. What if the “potion” was poison, a way for Orne and Geldman to get rid of her? Good job, Helen, realizing that now.

Bishop’s #5 burned all the way to her stomach.

She grabbed a paper cup from the dispenser, filled it to slopping over, and drank. Would the water dilute the potion? Who knew, but washing the taste out of her mouth was not optional.

“Helen?” Jeremy, outside the washroom.

She straightened from the sink, coughing. “God, that was filthy stuff.”

“Can I—”

“Wait.”

After pocketing the empty vial (in case the coroner wanted to analyze the dregs), she came out. Jeremy blatantly scrutinized her face. “Better now?” he asked.

“I think so. Let’s get to it.”

By the time they were seated at the library table, Helen actually did feel better. The sting in her mouth had changed to a pleasant tingle, like the aftertaste of a strong liquor, and, speaking of liquor, she was two drinks buzzed, or three.

“Is anything happening?”

She put on her gloves, picked up the microspatula, and started turning pages in the
Necronomicon
. The most extensive of the blotted marginalia were toward the middle of the book, on two pages facing each other. “I’m feeling tipsy.”