The Second Summoning

“Now was that so hard?” Harry asked, smiling at her reflection as he slid back behind the wheel.

“Yeah, it was.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll get easier with time.” She was afraid of that.

“Excuse me.” Braced against the movement of the escalator, Samuel reached forward and tapped the heavyset matron on one virgin-wool covered shoulder. “The sign says that if you stand on the right, then people in a hurry can walk up the left.”

“There’s no space on the right,” she pointed out sharply.

“Then you should have waited.”

“And maybe you should mind your own business.”

“You shouldn’t let the fear of being on your own keep you in a bad relationship. Your husband is controlling and manipulative, and just because he doesn’t love you anymore, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love yourself . . .” The sound of her palm connecting with his cheek disappeared into the ambient noise. In the fine tradition of mall crawlers everywhere, those standing too close to have missed the exchange either stared fixedly at nothing or isolated themselves from the incident behind a loud and pointless conversation with their nearest companion.

As they reached the second level and the heavyset woman bustled off to the left, Diana smoothed the tiny hole closed, grabbed Samuel’s arm, and yanked him off to the right.

“What was that all about?”

Rubbing at the mark on his cheek, he looked confused. “I was just trying to help, you know, do that message thing.”

“And what help is a message telling that woman her husband’s a creep who doesn’t love her anymore?”

“She knows that. Now she needs to move on.”

“And you know that because . . . ?”

He shoved his hands in his front pockets and shrugged. “I have Higher Knowledge.”

“Which gives you personal information on the life of a perfect stranger but neglects to tell you what a stoplight means?”

“Yes.”

She’d never heard such a load of sanctimonious crap. “Just don’t do that again, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Did you know that with the price of those boots you could feed a Third World child for a year?”

Something in the gold-brown eyes compelled an honest answer.

“Yeah, I do.”

“So . . . ?” Samuel prompted, smiling encouragingly.

“So why don’t you mind your own fucking business, dude?”

“That’s the guilt talking.”

“Yeah?” A very large hand wound itself into the front of Samuel’s jacket.

“And in a minute you’re gonna feel my fist talking!” Diana handed the shoebox to the clerk and reached into the possibilities just in time to keep an innocent Bystander from committing mayhem on an angel, as justified as that mayhem may have been. Freeing Samuel’s jacket, she shoved him out of the store and started things up again.

“I was just . . .”

“Well, stop it.”

“But . . .”

“No. People like to have their moral failings pointed out about as much as they like to have their personal lives discussed in public by strangers.” She tightened her grip and dragged him quickly past a couple playing what looked like the Stanley Cup finals of tonsil hockey. When she finally slowed and took a look at him, he seemed strangely restrained. “What?”

“Those two people . . .”

There were thousands of people in the Center, but she had a fairly good iIlea who he meant. “Yeah? What about them?”

“They had their tongues in each other’s mouths.”

“I didn’t notice.”

He snorted, a very unangelic sound. “They looked like they had gerbils in their cheeks.”

“Okay.” She had to admit she was intrigued by the image. “So?”

“So isn’t that unsanitary?”

“Gerbils?”

“Tongues.”

“Not really. And don’t get any ideas, our relationship is strictly Keeper/Angel.”

“I wasn’t . . .”

“You were.”

“I couldn’t help it.”

He sounded so miserable, Diana found herself patting his shoulder in sympathy. “Come on, we’ll duck out at the next doors, a little cold air will clear your head.”

“It’s not my head.”

“Whoa. Didn’t I make myself clear? We’re not discussing other body parts.” If the last pat rocked him sideways a little more emphatically than necessary, well, tough.

The sidewalk outside the mall was nearly deserted. There was a small group of people huddled together at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, waiting for the streetcar, and a lone figure hurrying toward them from the other direction in what could only be described as a purposeful manner.

Hair on the back on her neck lifting, Diana stared at the approaching figure, then looked down at two identical snowflakes melting on the back of her hand.

“Shit!”

“What’s that smell?” Samuel muttered. He checked the bottom of both shoes.

“Forget the smell. Move it!”

She hustled the angel north, hoping that Nalo hadn’t seen them. The older Keeper had no more authority over Samuel than she did, but something, the identical flakes that continued to fall, the way every car on the road was suddenly a black Buick, the street busker playing “Flight of the Bumblebee” with his lower lip frozen to his harmonica, something was telling her to keep them apart.

At the corner of Yonge and Dundas, Diana felt the possibilities open.

“Hold it right there, young lady!”