“Felt it? Yes, I’d say we felt it. Sam’s hanging from the top of the living-room curtains and the coffeepot’s bringing in radio broadcasts from 1520—apparently Martin Luther was just excommunicated. I missed part of Suleiman the Magnificent’s birth announcement as your father called to say he’d felt it in the next county. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I touched a piece of jewelry from the Otherside and there was a bit of a reaction. Don’t worry, I covered everything up, and the jewelry’s been totally nullified.”
“Where…?”
“Was the jewelry?” Diana interrupted. “Around the wrist of a fellow student. How did she lay her hands on a bracelet—and an incredibly ugly bracelet, I might add—that came from the Otherside? She bought it in a store called Erlking’s Emporium. Just where exactly is Erlking’s Emporium? Kingston.”
“Oh, Hell.”
“Probably.” Leaving the cafeteria, she headed for the main stairs and the front doors. “I figure I just blew a crack through their shielding and that Claire ought to be getting the Summons any minute.”
“Claire’s not in Kingston right now; she’s answering a Summons in Marmora.”
“Well, if it’s important, I’m sure the id…powers-that-be will give it to someone else.”
“You’re not getting anything?”
“Nope, nothing.” There was no one in the main hall. Another fifteen meters and she’d be out the doors and home free.
“Good. And while I have you, I thought we’d agreed you weren’t going to wear that T-shirt to school?”
“Sorry, Mom; the school has a ‘no cell phone’ rule. Gotta go.” Flipping the phone closed, Diana paused in front of her reflection in the glass of the trophy case. The writing across her chest—red on black—said, My sister’s boy toy went to Hell and all I got was a lousy T-shirt. She seemed to be the only one in the family who found it funny.
“Ms. Hansen.”
Phone still in her hand, Diana spun around and smiled up at the vice-principal. “It was my mother, Ms. Neal. I had to take the call.”
“Yes, I’m sure. But that’s not what I wanted to speak with you about. You’re an intelligent young woman, Diana, and while your years here have not been without…incident…”
The pause nearly collapsed under the memory of the whole football team thing. Some changes lingered, even in the minds of the most prosaic Bystander.
“Yes, well, your marks are good,” the vice-principal continued after a long moment, “in spite of your frequent absences, and I can’t help but feel it’s a real shame that you’ve decided not to go on to college or university.”
Diana shuddered. More time spent under academic authority? So not going to happen. “I’m afraid I’m just not the higher education type, Ms. Neal.” Sliding sideways, she moved a little closer to the door.
“Job prospects…”
“I have a job. Family business. Pays well, chance to travel, making the world a better place and all that.” Also demons, dangers, and the possibility of dying young but it still beat pretty much any other profession as far as Diana was concerned. Well, maybe not sitcom star or Hollywood script doctor but everything else. “You might say it’s the kind of job I was born to do,” she added reassuringly.
From the sudden contentment on Ms. Neal’s face, a little too reassuringly.
“It’s nice to know that at least one of my students will be leaving the school for a bright and beautiful future,” she sighed. “I’ll never forget you, Diana.”
Diana smiled. “Actually, you’ll forget me the moment I step out the door.”
“I don’t think…”
And then the threshold was between them.
Ms. Neal’s brow furrowed. She stared at Diana for a long moment, shook her head, and walked away.
Although not by nature a bouncy person, Diana almost skipped down the steps of the school. It was two thirty on Thursday, June the twenty-third, and she was finally free to be what she’d been intended to be from birth. Crossing the threshold for that last time had moved her from reserve to active Keeper status.
At two thirty-one, the Summons hit.
Both hands clamped to her temples, she tried to uncross her eyes. “Okay. I probably should have expected that.”
“Mom? You home?”
“She’s at the Pough house,” Sam told her, coming out of the living room. “There was some kind of emergency involving ravens and bad poetry. She said…” He paused, stared at Diana for a moment, then rubbed up against her shins. “We’ve got a Summons!”
“We do.” She told him about the bracelet as they pounded upstairs.
“Kingston?” Sam jumped up on the end of the bed. “Shouldn’t it be Claire’s Summons, then?”
“No. It’s mine.”
“Yeah, but…you know…it’s just…”
“Austin.” Diana dumped assorted end-of-year crap out of her backpack and shoved in her laptop, a pair of clean jeans, socks, underwear, and her hiking boots. There were places Otherside where even heavy rubber sandals wouldn’t be enough. Actually, there were places where hazmat suits wouldn’t be enough, but she planned on staying away from the Girl Guide camp. “You’re afraid to go onto his territory.”
“I am not afraid. But he doesn’t like me.”
Zippered sweatshirt. Pajama bottoms. Tank tops. “He’s old. He doesn’t like anyone except Claire.”
“He likes you,” Sam protested following her into the bathroom.
“He tolerates me because I can operate a can opener.” Shampoo. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Soap. Towel. “Don’t worry. We’ll be in and out before Claire and Austin even know we’re there.”
Eyeing the toilet suspiciously—who knew porcelain could be so slippery—Sam jumped up onto the edge of the sink. “You know, a hole big enough to pass physical objects through might be harder to close than you think.”
Diana snorted, threw in a couple of rolls of toilet paper just in case, and headed for the kitchen where she packed a box of crackers, a jar of peanut butter, a nearly full bag of chocolate chip cookies, and six tins of cat food.
“Less chicken, more fish,” Sam told her.
“Fish gives you cat food breath.”
He looked up from licking his butt. “And that’s a
