Summoned (30 page)

Eddy bent into view over him. The movie played on her face.

He closed his eyes. What would Eddy say if she knew he was letting people get slaughtered? What about Dad or Helen Arkwright, Celeste or Gus, Joe-Jack, Phil, and their other friends, Geldman even?

“Hey, Sean.”

The Servitor heaves itself into the reeds.

Go back.

It will not.

“Sean, come on.”

I’ll come now, if you do what I say.

It doesn’t believe. It peers through the reeds at the bikers. The woman frowns. “Something stink?” she asks the man.

“Tide must be going out.”

“Sean, stop faking it. I know you’re awake.”

This time he hurled thought like a javelin:
I mean it. Wait in the river. I’m coming.

The Servitor rocks back on its haunches. It let its prey go last night because the summoner promised to come to the river and give it more blood. The summoner never came.

I swear, I’ll come this minute. Let them go. Wait for me.

If he doesn’t come, it will find other meat.

Coming.

Eddy was shaking him. Sean kept his eyes clamped shut until
the Servitor eases back into the water. Life-radiant clouds of minnows scatter before it.

She’d shake his damn teeth loose. He shouldered Eddy’s hand away. “Lay off! What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong with
you
? Your face was all screwed up. Were you dreaming?”

“I was
resting
.”

“You’re sweating buckets, too, by the way.”

He was. The study was hot, in spite of the river-ghost swaying over it. Sean stood up, on carpet, in riverweed. Gus wasn’t in the room. “Where’s my uncle?”

“Downstairs, on the treadmill. I’ve got to go. Mom’s taking me to Pa Ndau class; then I’m supposed to go over to Keiko’s.”

Eddy gone, Gus in the basement gym. No one to stop Sean. “Right,” he said. “No problem.”

“You sure? I mean, were you in the Servitor’s head just now?”

“Yeah, but nothing’s going on. It’s still in the river, down near the old receiving tomb.”

“Because if you need me to stay, I’m here. The stupid class is no big deal, and I can go to Keiko’s another day. We were just going to hang out.”

For Eddy to blow off a school project was, like, revolutionary. For a second, Sean felt like he was going to bawl. Then he said what he had to say to get her gone: “I’m okay. Except I smell like a pig. I’m going to take a shower.”

“Make sure you call me later, about the dismissing ritual.”

“Soon as I know.”

Eddy gave him a last look so long Sean was afraid she wouldn’t leave after all. Then she trotted into the kitchen, and he heard the back door slam.

What about Gus? Sean didn’t have time to set up much, but he did turn on the shower in the hall bathroom. Gus would hear it running when he came upstairs and for a while, at least, he’d think Sean was still in the house.

Outside the front door Sean stopped. He was crazy to go, especially if Dad and Helen would be back soon. Could he break his new promise to the Servitor? When he was up in the bathroom arranging the shower trick, he’d closed his eyes and heard, river muffled, the retreating roar of the motorcycle. So the bikers were safe.

Yeah, but all the Servitor had to do to find people-snacks was take a jog up to the boulevard.

Through superimposed riverscape, he peered down Keene Street. No Civic, no Dad and Helen. Should he call them? If they did have the dismissing ritual, he could go to the Servitor with a big surprise, not just with the blood in his veins.

For one second, that was all, he closed his eyes. It was long enough for the bubbles of Servitor-thought to deal him pseudopoidal prods of impatience.

He opened his eyes. No Civic. No more time. On the steps to the sidewalk, he wobbled, light-headed from hunger or disoriented from navigating two surrounds at once. He stiffened his knees. Then he walked toward Hope Street, and beyond Hope, toward the cemetery and the river.

23

The
first things Helen saw after her fall were black rectangles slashed with fiery pinstripes. The rectangles billowed and collapsed, billowed, collapsed, like membranous air-gates through which monsters struggled to birth themselves. She shrank away, then made out what the rectangles were: blinds drawn against afternoon sun, stirred to false life by the AC unit underneath them.

The blinds covered the windows of her own office at the MU Library. She lay on the couch. Someone had taken off her cap of spikes and wrapped her forehead in damp cloth. When she touched the cloth, a hand towel, her fingers came away wet with water, not blood, so her swollen bladder of a head hadn’t burst after all. That was a plus.

On the minus side, her intact head throbbed like an infected tooth. “Damn,” she muttered.

The mutter incited movement beyond the arm of the couch on which her feet were propped. Helen peered between her sneakers, expecting to see gossamers. Not one. Only Jeremy, with a cell phone at his ear.

To the phone, he said, “Wait, Professor. She’s waking up.”

Professor? If it was Gus, why the formality? And why was Jeremy talking on
her
phone?

He knelt by her head. Too loudly, he said, “Helen? You hear me?”

She winced. “Like a megaphone.”

“Sorry. You can see me?”

“I can see fine, I guess. How’d I get here?”

“After you passed out, that guy at the desk wanted to call nine-one-one, but I talked him into helping me get you over to your office. You’ve been unconscious for hours—it’s after six. I was about to drag Geldman out of the pharmacy. But as long as your eyes are all right. I mean, I could tell they weren’t bleeding, and your pulse and breathing seemed okay, but I couldn’t tell if you were blind.”

Bleeding, blind? Oh, Geldman’s warning. “Is that him on the phone? Mr. Geldman?”

“No. It’s Marvell.”

The name made her sit up, which was a mistake—pain jolted from the top of her skull into her cervical vertebrae. She dropped back onto the unforgiving vinyl cushions.

“Whoa!” Jeremy said, gruff with alarm. “Lie still. He called about a quarter hour ago. I’ve already told him everything.”

Jeremy put the phone in her hand, warm from his grip. Helen pressed it against her ear. “Professor?”

“Helen! Thank God. You’re all right, aren’t you?”

Her eyes watered at the vigor of his voice, buzzy as it was. “I guess so. I don’t have the symptoms Geldman said would mean trouble. You know Geldman? He knows you.”

“Oh yes, I know Solomon, and I’ll be giving him hell for selling you a potion that could’ve blinded you.”

“He had to. Didn’t Jeremy explain?”

“The boy’s father? Yes. Rotten mess, and you in the middle of it.”

“Are you still in the mountains?”

“No, I’m in London. Leezy McGrigor said you were in trouble. Her son drove me into Inverness, and I was lucky enough to catch the last plane south. I’m flying to New York in an hour, then on to Rhode Island.”

Helen’s throat tightened. “I’m sorry to break up your vacation, but I can’t tell you not to come. Talk about planes, I feel like I’ve been piloting one upside down while trying to read the flight manual.”

Marvell laughed, then spoke with an equally comforting gravity: “I’m the one who should be sorry. The Order trusted me to watch you, and here I put myself out of reach for days. And I don’t know how to apologize to Mr. Wyndham.”

“You know Geldman. Do you know Redemption Orne, too?”

“Only his history. The Order heard rumors of his survival years ago, in Henry Arkwright’s time. No one could confirm them.”

The Order, twice now. “You’re talking about the Order of Alhazred.”

A couple beats of silence, followed by a sheepish, “Yes, Helen.”

“Geldman was surprised I didn’t know about it.”

“I should have told you sooner. What you’ve already done, on your own, proves that.”

Given the trouble Marvell was taking now, Helen couldn’t let him berate himself. “No, you were right. I needed to do that background reading first.”

“The Order of Alhazred, then. Well, briefly, it’s an international group, magicians, paramagicians, ordinary people. They’ve got two things in common. They all know the truth behind the Cthulhu Mythos, and they all work to mitigate the dangers posed by its creatures and adherents. Henry Arkwright was one of its founders, after the Dunwich incident.”

“Which Lovecraft wrote the truth about, whatever Uncle John used to say.”

“Lovecraft was an Order member, though not a popular one, the way he told tales out of school. Obviously there’s a huge amount more I have to tell you, but the important thing now is keeping you and the others safe. I’ve already contacted another member in Providence, Thomas O’Conaghan. I told Mr. Wyndham about him, and it turns out they’ve already met.”

O’Conaghan, right. The detective who’d stopped by the Litinski house. “Can he help us with the dismissing ritual?”

“I’m afraid Tom hasn’t witnessed a dismissal before. I have, so I want to be there when Sean tries it. Especially now that he’s been inoculated—he could need someone to keep him on track.”

“Even if he takes the Patience Orne potion?”

“That should help, but it’s not a sure thing. For tonight Tom is going to take all of you to a hotel downtown. The Servitor won’t want to expose itself to traffic and crowds. Tomorrow night, we’ll get rid of it.”

It seemed time to say good-bye, but Helen didn’t want to give up the connection to Marvell, distant as it was. “This call must be costing a fortune.”

“To hell with that. Look, Helen. I’m going to help you make sense of what’s happened. I remember what it’s like, to find out the impossible is real.”

She cradled the cell phone closer. “Professor, I saw things after I took the Bishop potion. Creatures floating everywhere. And gates—I don’t know, with some kind of veil over them and things inside trying to get out.”

“The floating things are called ghost-efts. Their niche seems to be interdimensional rifts. They’re always passing in and out of our plane—they’re as common as dust mites, only less harmful; I’ve never heard of anyone who was allergic to them.”

“The other things? In the gates?”

“They can’t get to our plane without powerful intervention from our side.”

“Like Sean’s ritual?”

“No, something much more difficult. Don’t worry. Sean won’t be summoning any of those beasts.”

Helen smiled.

“I do have to go now.”

“All right. See you soon, Professor. Thank you.”

The connection broke. For a few seconds, she kept the silent phone to her ear. Then she put it in her shirt pocket and swung her legs off the couch. Fresh pain jolted into her skull, not quite as horrific this time.

Jeremy was still there. He’d been there the whole time. “O’Conaghan’s supposed to meet us at Cel’s.”

“And take us to a hotel. Sounds like a plan.” Helen got to her feet and headed toward her desk, more or less steady. She had sunglasses somewhere. A scrabble through her drawers turned up everything but. A cell phone rang, Jeremy’s. “Gus,” she heard him say. “How’s it going?”

Was O’Conaghan at the Litinski house already? Damn it. She’d probably left the sunglasses in her car, now at the garage.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding.”

The sudden tension in Jeremy’s voice made Helen almost slam her fingers in a drawer.

“Well, when did he go?” Jeremy demanded. “What? Okay, we’re coming. Jesus.” A pause. “No, you stay there. He might come back. And, Gus, remember that Providence detective? We’ve heard from Marvell. He says O’Conaghan knows about Servitors, but I can’t go into it now. Ask O’Conaghan. He’s coming over to your house to be our bodyguard until Marvell flies in. Helen found the spell we need. Right.”

He pocketed the phone and turned to her. “Sean’s gone. He left the shower upstairs running so Gus would think he was in it. After half an hour, and the water still running, Gus checked. No Sean. No Sean anywhere in the house. Nobody over at Eddy’s, either.”

The shower-subterfuge ruled out an innocent walk, didn’t it? Helen straightened. No sunglasses? Too bad. Instead she grabbed a visor from the coatrack and jammed it on. “Let’s go, then,” she said.

24

All
the way to Blackstone Boulevard, Sean walked submerged streets. Cars hurtled through the ghost aquascape like massive catfish; people wavered past like the drowned undead. Too quickly now the superimposed river, the Servitor’s input, was starting to obscure what was actually around him. Twice he bumbled into fireplugs. Once he stepped into traffic and an SUV catfish nearly splattered him across the weedy blacktop.

He dashed across the boulevard, last of the car-gauntlets, to the gates of Swan Point Cemetery. Instantly the Servitor rose from the river bottom. With two equal surrounds in motion, Sean’s disorientation became unbearable. He sat on one of the boulders in the cemetery wall and closed his eyes, to see through the Servitor alone.

It paddles to the shore. Draped in silver shadow, the riverbank is deserted, the smell of humans a distant titillation. Much closer now is the smell of the summoner. The Servitor must make a safe place on land, for the summoner can’t live underwater.

It flops up the marble steps of the receiving tomb, tries the door, and finds it riveted shut. The leaded windows beside the door are too narrow for the summoner to squeeze through. Low in the façade are two iron grates a yard square, but these are too visible from the turnaround at the end of the road. Gnarled rhododendrons hug the curving tomb walls; the Servitor jostles through them to the place where marble facade turns to brick. Where the brick wall runs into the side of the bluff, the Servitor finds another ventilation grate.

With a flex of its shoulders, it yanks the grate out of crumbling mortar to expose a bright square of night, dankly cool and redolent.

Through the Servitor, Sean peered inside the receiving tomb. How many times had he and Eddy speculated about its contents? Good old practical Eddy had been right: The place was empty. No skeletons, not a bone. No disintegrated coffins, either, although there were three walls of coffin niches.