The Summoning (35 page)

Richard looked down at the bottle with compassion. “Let it go, if you would. Or let me do it. I will free it gently, where it needs to go.”

All I could do was nod. He lifted his hand, staring intently, and gradually the light sank in the bottle, and went out. Then he flicked his fingers and the bottle vanished before my eyes. Great. No recycling.

“So all you needed from the start was for John Dee to set a limit to your time here? And he didn’t, so there wasn’t one?”

He didn’t try to answer. He started making terms. “Mistress, I will serve you, with all my powers, to the end of your tiniest whim, for all of your days on Earth, if you would set my term of service as your last breath. Mistress…”

His voice rose as I shook my head.

“Mistress, I beg of you—”

“That’s not what I want,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I want,” I continued, while his eyes bored into me like blue suns from another world, “and then I’ll set you free.”

The word emerged as though from his last breath. “Anything…”

I tried to say it. And then I had to stop. Wolves don’t cry. I don’t cry. And I don’t show what I feel easily. But I had to, to have what I wanted. “I want Richard back. My Richard. For—for two weeks. Until the new moon. I want the Richard back that I knew. Just for that long. When the new moon comes, Richard can go. And so can you. And this will be so, whether I die, or the world ends.” I added quickly, “Unless you’ve had anything to do with it.”

And there was Richard, my own Richard, in his own clothes, and his short hair, with the little scar on his cheek and all, and the scent of him was the same. But the fear was gone. “You know,” he said quietly, “that I am not allowed to harm you.”

I reached out to him through the tears in my eyes, and in his arms I was warm.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A
ll right, it wasn’t the same. But I tried to pretend it was, and I succeeded most of the time in believing it. It was fun, playing at being in love. And if love is doing things together, and enjoying it, well, then that much of it was real.

Why didn’t I keep him? My lightest whim granted to my last breath and all that? I am young and need to grow. I have things to learn and new powers to attain. If I am to be what I am meant to be, having my whims granted is just going to get in the way. Besides, wolves don’t keep pets. We don’t run with our prey.

Richard and I spent as much time in the next two weeks in wolf form as in human form. I liked that, because in wolf form I didn’t have to think about anything but what was in front of me, and what was in front of me was great. I lost my job. What the hell. Sacrificing my job to be with Richard just made our time together it seem more important.

I fell asleep on the night of the new moon, curled up with Richard beside me, our mingled scent on the sheets. In the morning, he was gone. I lay there alone for a long time, and I was too happy to cry.

Why didn’t I ask for my dad back? Why didn’t I ask for my stepfather’s head on a hubcap? Or my stepbrothers’ entrails made into harp strings, and played while they were still alive? We made up a lot of possibilities, Richard and I, lying side by side on the hillside where we had run and played and hunted for hours. But I asked for none of these things.

I am a daughter of the wolf kind. What I want, I get for myself. And so it will be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I must thank my side man, my true and all, best friend and husband, Eric Elliott, who can’t find the place in the contract where it says he has to read all my drafts, but does it anyway. Keep looking, it’s there.

To Doug, who opened the door, and my awesome agent, Laurie McLean, who knew the way, and is even more splendid than Doug said she was. And to Jeremy Lassen, Ross Lockhart and Night Shade Books for embarking me and the wolf girl on this wonderful adventure.

Thank you to Kit for her generous and thought-provoking notes, to Janna, and also Allan and Bill, for saving me from error, and grateful thanks to Deborah Ruth, for standing by in the middle of the night, down to the wire, with encouragement and wise counsel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carol Wolf earned a B.A. in History at Mills College, an MFA in Drama-Playwriting at Rutgers University, and pursued a life in the theater, which resulted in about thirty productions of her plays on five continents, including the feminist musical farce,
The Terrible Experiment of Jonathan Fish
, and the award-winning
The Thousandth Night
. She wrote the scripts for the blockbuster video games
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
, and
Legacy of Kain: Defiance
. She co-founded a micro-budget film company, Paw Print Studios, and produced and directed
The Valley of Fear
(a horror comedy, much more comedy than horror), and
Far From the Sea
, a drama. She studied broadsword fighting in the SCA, Uechi-rhu karate, and recently earned a black belt in Iaido. She has lived on both coasts, and in Europe, and presently lives in the Foothills of the Sierra Nevadas with her husband, two border collies, and a varying number of sheep.