The Second Summoning

“Oh, please, send me back now.” Falling backward, Samuel groaned and rubbed both hands over a visibly distended belly. “Why did I do that to myself?” Compelled to answer truthfully, Diana snorted. “I think you were showing off.”

“Showing off what?”

“Beats me.”

“I feel awful.”

She dropped down onto the other bed. “What did you expect after a large with the works and half of my Hawaiian?”

“I wasn’t expecting anything!” A mighty belch delayed part two of the protest.

Startled but impressed, he waited until the echoes died down before continuing. “I just thought. . . .”

“Thinking? As if. You were being a guy.” She squirmed back toward the pillows, propping them against the wall. “And speaking of, you’re starting to smell.”

“My olfactory senses have been working since I got here, thank you very much.”

“Right. Rephrasing, you stink.”

“I stink?”

Eyes rolling, she picked up the TV remote. “Don’t take my word for it. Check the pits.”

He lifted an arm. “I’m not supposed to smell like this?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I’ll show you how the shower works in the morning. After that last incident, I don’t want you approaching new plumbing on your own.”

“I thought I was supposed to urinate against the wall.”

“Uh-huh.” A quick flip through the available channels brought the expected result: there was nothing on.

“What was that?” Samuel heaved himself up onto his elbows. “No, not that.

Back. Back. There.”

Diana frowned. “It’s a documentary on lions.”

“What are they doing?”

She adjusted the contrast, but they were still doing it. “They’re having sex.”

“Kewl.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Vaguely proud of himself, although uncertain of why he should be, he belched again.

Byleth hadn’t expected to have so much fun. With a sense of Keepers too close for comfort, she’d planned on a low profile and a road trip in the morning.

She’d listened to the praying, she’d eaten the meal, and she hadn’t been able to stop a snort of amusement during the preaching.

So they’d asked her if she had a question.

Surrounded by teenagers pulled from the streets, Byleth stood, hands jammed into the pockets of her black jeans, weight resting on one hip, expression sullen, and asked, “If Lloyd leaves London at 6:00 p.m. on a train heading east going 90

kilometers an hour and Tom leaves Toronto at 6:15 p.m. on a train heading west at 110 kilometers an hour, when will they die in a fiery explosion?” Eyes dark from lid to lid compelled the truth.

“I don’t know.”

“Why?” She threw the word onto the end of his sentence so quickly momentum kept the ball rolling.

“I never paid attention in math.”

“Why?”

“I was fixated on Miss Miller’s breasts.”

“Why?”

“They were perky. What does this have to do with the text?” Leslie/Deter demanded, fingers white on the edge of the lectern.

“Nothing.” The last thing she wanted to do was test the man’s faith. That was the sort of inane probing the good guys got up to. “Boxers or briefs?”

“Egyptian leather thong.”

Things went downhill from there.

Staring up at the exit sign, Claire listened to Dean breathe and waited for morning. Diana had gone too far this time. She hadn’t been Summoned to the angel, or she’d have mentioned it, Summoned Keepers had the final say on any situation.

Diana without a Summons meant Diana should be at home studying or whatever it was teenagers did these days. Piercing something maybe.

Claire hadn’t been Summoned either, but as an active Keeper that only meant that she was already doing what she was supposed to be doing. The angel’s physical form blocked any attempt to find the demon. Therefore, she had to return the angel to the light. QED, essentially, Latin for “so there.” Diana’s personal opinions on the matter were irrelevant. Even more so than usual.

If functional genitalia defined personhood, then Dean . . .

She chopped off the thought before it could crawl out any further. Functional genitalia didn’t define love either, and she loved Dean. In a relatively short time he’d become as essential to her life as breathing. She loved being with him, talking, laughing, traveling, cuddling, touching, kissing, caressing; turning her head, she pressed her face against the warm skin of his shoulder. He smelled so good, she wanted to ...

Okay, that’s it. Get up. Which wasn’t, perhaps, the best chastisement under the circumstances. Sliding out from under the covers, she grabbed her robe off the other bed.

“Hey! I was asleep on that!”

“Sorry.”

“I should hope so.” Disdaining the jump, Austin stalked over the bedside table and curled up between Dean’s legs muttering, “Angels, demons, impotence; I see no reason why the cat should suffer.”

She woke Dean at five, and they were on the road by six-thirty. They would have been on the road an hour earlier, but when they went to check out, Dean discovered that the sleepy middle-aged woman behind the desk had once lived in St.

John’s right next door to a guy he’d played hockey with. The permutations took a while to work through.