The Second Summoning

“Like why would a basically decent man take a swing at a messenger of the light.”

“Is that what opened the hole?”

“Diana, Mr. Giorno punched an angel; what do you think?”

“Just checking.” Leaning forward, Diana brushed a bit of thick, dark hair back off of Lena’s face and softly called her name. “Don’t wake up,” she instructed when the sleeping girl began to stir, “just tell me, without getting angry, why your father hit the angel.”

“He was naked.”

“Your father?” Given the amount of hair curling up through the opening of Mr. Giorno’s collar and right down to his knuckles, that was an image Diana quickly banished.

“Not my father. The angel.”

“The angel was naked?”

“Uh-huh.” She smiled slightly. “I saw his thing.”

“Lena, angels don’t have things.”

“I know that.” Even asleep she managed the emphasis. “But he did. I think . .

.” Her brow furrowed. “I think my father gave it to him. It was big.”

“And your basis of comparison would be?”

“Diana!”

Without turning, she flapped a hand at her sister to shut off further protests.

“You can get back to me later on that, Lena. Right now, you drift off again and I’ll call you if I need you.”

“O ...” A long sigh. “. . . kay.”

After checking to see that she’d gone deep again, Diana stood and spread her arms triumphantly, modifying the gesture somewhat to catch the cherub she’d knocked off a shelf. “Tah dah. Her father burst into her room as Lena’s obsession was manifesting a naked angel, jumped to the fatherly conclusion, and slugged the guy.” Claire rolled her eyes and added a little more power as the cover shifted.

“Only a teenager would manifest a naked angel.”

“Get over it. You manifested a naked Dean all last night.”

“That’s not the . . .”

“And ignored a Summons, this Summons, while you were doing it. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done the same thing under similar circumstances. All I’m saying is that you have no cause to be pointing the finger at someone else’s hormones.”

After a long moment, during which several high-pitched voices could be heard insisting that they hadn’t touched the gravy and they didn’t know what was floating in it, Claire sighed. “Okay. You have a point. And since he might have had clothing had things not been interrupted and since her father seems to have added the ... uh ... thing

. . .”

Diana snorted. “You know, Claire, if you’re playing with one, you really should be able to name it.”

This was more than Claire could take from a sister ten years younger. “Good,” she snapped, “because I was thinking of calling it Floyd!” She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth and snapped her teeth closed just a little too late to catch them. From the way Diana’s eyes lit up, she knew she’d be paying for that comment for the rest of her natural life. And possibly longer. “Let’s just get back to work,” she suggested sharply, her tone a preemptive strike. “I’ll seal this. You clear the hatred out of your friend.”

“Sure.”

“Diana . . .”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

“That wasn’t. . .” When Diana lifted an eyebrow in exact mimicry of Claire’s best sardonic expression, Claire had to laugh, in spite of what would be inevitable later. “. . . what I meant, as you very well knew.”

“Yeah. But I’ll still be careful.” She sat back down on the edge of the bed and gently turned Lena’s face toward her. “Although the urge to do something about her decorating is extreme.”

“... but did you ever stop to think that perhaps they didn’t want quite so many chestnuts in the stuffing?” Claire asked as they picked their way up the icy front path to the truck.

Diana shrugged. “Beats what was in there before I fixed it. And that, by the way, is why you should never keep the litter box in the kitchen.” Things were back to normal in the Giorno household. Tree and dinner had been restored, gifts repaired, the cat appeased, and family tensions resolved.

The site it had involved considerably more cleanup than a Keeper would normally perform, but, as Diana pointed out just before the cat knocked the tree over again with no help at all from the dark possibilities, it was Christmas.

Dean jerked awake when Claire opened the passenger door. “Everything fixed, then?”

“Everything we could fix,” she acknowledged as she kicked the snow off her boots and slid over beside him. “Sorry it took so long.”

“That’s all right. Your thing kept the truck warm.”

“Her thing?” Diana snickered, climbing in. “Got a name for it?”

“Ignore her,” Claire advised, hoping Dean would assume her ears were red from the cold.

From the look in his eyes, he didn’t.

He glanced at Diana, then back at her, but only said, “Where to now?”

“Back to pick up our stuff and then south, we’ve got another Summons.”

“Another Summons?” Martha Hansen set the roasting pan on the stove top and lifted an indignant Austin down off the counter before she turned to face her daughters. “Do you think it concerns the angel?”

“Unlikely. Mr. Giorno took him to Father Harris over at St. Patrick’s, so that should be the last we see of him.”

“Him?”