Summoning the Night

by Jenn Bennett

  Lon hesitated to send Jupe to school the next morning. He could’ve saved himself some trouble if he’d just kept the boy home, because it was only a couple hours later that he got a call from the principal’s office: they were temporarily closing the school.

  By the time we made our way over there, cars already filled the front parking lot and crowded the drop-off area, causing a traffic jam on the main road outside the school. Frustrated, Lon maneuvered his SUV through a gap and double-parked.

  Inside was even worse. A total clusterfuck of parents waited outside the principal’s office—mostly those complaining about the school’s decision. They were shutting down for the rest of the week, until Halloween was over. The principal said it was a decision made by the school board, which didn’t want to be held liable for any children being abducted from school. Even though no kids had gone missing during the day, they said they weren’t taking any chances. They couldn’t afford to hire additional security, and they were nervous.

  Parents were scared and angry at being forced to take time off work and make other arrangements for their kids, teachers were upset, and the school staff was trying to maintain order and get everyone out. Total chaos.

  Lon swore under his breath as we fought the crowd to Jupe’s homeroom.

  Ms. Forsythe’s classroom was noisy. No one sat in their seats; they were grouped around the window watching the parking lot, huddled together in the corner, buzzing with gossip. Ms. Forsythe was standing in front of a chalkboard covered with lists of stars and astronomy vocabulary. A 3-D model of the solar system hung above her desk.

  “Mr. Butler, Ms. Bell.”

  Though she was dressed in the same poncho she’d been wearing when I met her in the faculty parking lot, she now looked frazzled and run-down. Her eyes were bloodshot. She absently scratched her head, then tucked the ends of her unkempt bob behind her ears in exaggerated slow-motion.

  “Bet you’ll be glad to get out of here today,” I said, having to speak up to be heard over the din.

  “This has been a disaster,” she said in a weary voice. “They called us in at five this morning to tell us what was going on. I’ve been cussed out by angry parents and it’s like a war zone in here.”

  “I’m sure they understand it’s not your fault.”

  “To be honest, I stopped caring about fifteen minutes ago.”

  Yikes. “The girl who went missing last night, Mindy . . . was she your student?”

  “No, but I know her and her mother—not well, yet it’s shocking nonetheless.” She sighed heavily. “I think it’s the right decision to close the school. I understand that it’s hard on working parents, but most of the teachers are terrified something will happen on their watch, and no one’s getting any sleep.” She rubbed a temple and sighed. “My mother picked a fine time to get her stomach stapled—I was only supposed to stay with her for a few days while my house was being tented for pest control, but now I’m taking care of her, too.”

  “Not roaches, I hope.” I thought of the cannery and shuddered.

  “Termites,” she said. “Costs me a small fortune every few years. And on top of all that, no one realizes what we’ve been having to do, sending the kids to the bathroom in pairs, watching their every move—it’s been stressful.”

  “It’s hard on everyone,” I agreed. “Do you have kids of your own, or . . . ?”

  “No. My husband died years ago. We never had children.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, my dear. I’ve got a wonderful family, friends, and my students. And I have the support of my church. I’m quite blessed.”

  Strangely, I could appreciate this, though not in any way she’d understand. When my parents left me and went into hiding after they were charged with murdering the leaders of rival occult orders, the only thing that kept me sane was the regular contact I had with my caliph, who is the head of the E∴E∴ and my godfather. Maybe that’s one reason why, when I moved to Morella a couple of years back, I turned for friendship to Father Carrow, a local retired priest who lives down the street from me and who also introduced me to Lon.

  Lon shifted his stance, antsy to leave. He hates crowds. “We’re taking Jupe.”

  Ms. Forsythe nodded wearily. “Be my guest. He’s over in the back with Jack.”

  As we elbowed our way through the crowded classroom, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other of the seventeen descendants of transmutated Hellfire members were students here. I never thought to ask when I was doing the warding magick yesterday. So many kids in one place at one time. If the Snatcher operated in the daytime, he could take the rest of his victims in one fell swoop right here.

  That’s when it hit me. Maybe we’d been going about things all wrong. You couldn’t summon an Æthyric demon who was already on earth, and you couldn’t find a magician who didn’t want to be found. But if I couldn’t track down Merrin, then maybe I could draw the bastard out of hiding—or maybe even Duke Chora himself. . . . If I could get all the remaining transmutation descendants in one place, at one time, would he come?

  The annual Morella Halloween Parade was a big earner for the city, with attendance that topped 100,000. It was dark, crowded, and one of the featured floats was sponsored by Dare Energy Solutions, Mark Dare’s company in La Sirena. After a couple of hours of persuading, the senior Dare agreed to populate the float with the transmutation descendants. If that wasn’t bait, I didn’t know what was.

  A couple of weeks back, when Jupe and I first made plans to attend the parade, it was just going to be me, him, and Lon, and the world was both Snatcher-free and anti–Halloween protester free. Now the protesters were out en masse, holding up handmade signs and shouting through bullhorns behind police barricades, and Jupe was one seriously unhappy boy, sitting at home with the Holidays, barricaded within the house ward. Both the housekeepers knew how to shoot—Mr. Holiday had been the one to teach Lon, when he was Jupe’s age—and Lon had left them with loaded shotguns . . . just in case. I didn’t feel guilty for refusing to offer up Jupe as bait along with the others. Lon either. Especially when we showed up before the start of the parade and discovered that Mark Dare’s kid was also safe at home.

  I wasn’t, however, an unfeeling monster who didn’t care about the other kids. I felt extremely anxious about this whole baiting plan. A little sick to my stomach, even. If anything went wrong, it would be my fault. So I told myself that nothing could go wrong. I wouldn’t let it.

  Halloween music pumped from portable speakers, but you could barely hear it over the clamor of the crowd. Every ten or twenty feet, food vendors and drink merchants were set up under tents and doling out smoked sausage, roasted nuts, gallons of beer and daiquiris. Hundreds of costumed revelers sauntered shoulder to shoulder up and down the packed sidewalks.

  The Dare float was designed as a waterfall lit up with thousands of sparkling white lights. The float riders were divvying the free throws that they’d be tossing out to the crowd. Candy? Plastic spider rings? Small toys? No: flashing key chains with the corporate logo. “Way to advertise your business instead of promoting Halloween spirit,” I remarked to Lon as we both donned parade badges and took our places at the rear of the float.

  In addition to Lon and me, Dare had stationed a small army of plainclothes armed guards to walk in front and on either side. Everyone riding the float was dressed in white long-sleeved T-shirts, white jeans, and white gloves. Weird and creepy. The entire company must be drinking the Kool-Aid. Because of this, Mark Dare was easy to spot. He was standing on a platform at the foot of the sparkling waterfall wearing blue jeans—not white—and his T-shirt was the only one with printing. The front read, in Frankie Goes to Hollywood–style block letters, CLEAN AND LEAN. The back read, WE DARE TO POWER YOUR FUTURE. What a tool.

  After a quarter of an hour, everyone was in place. The Grand Marshal announced the official start of the parade over the loudspeakers, and the crowd broke out into even louder cheering, whoops, and whistles. Lon and I
could see both sides of the float from our vantage point in back. We followed at a close distance, scanning the crowds on the sidelines for Merrin or anyone suspicious. Earlier in the day, Dare had made public announcements concerning the participation of junior high students on the float, spreading the word on TV, radio, and online. “We will not be bullied into hiding” was his catchphrase. If Merrin and/or Duke Chora were monitoring the children’s whereabouts—and someone had to be, in order to pull off the kidnappings so flawlessly—they knew the kids were here.

  Nothing remarkable happened along the parade route for the first thirty minutes, but somewhere along the route’s halfway mark, the floats in front of us came to slow halt. We waited anxiously for several minutes, then overheard policemen along the sidewalks saying that some Halloween protesters had jumped the barricades a few blocks up and were standing in front of one of the floats with signs.

  A few more minutes passed. Dare’s twinkling float waited in front of us, and while Lon watched the left side, I continued to survey the right, a couple of yards away from him. My eyes tracked Mark Dare again. He was shrugging on a dark jacket. At first I thought the cold must’ve gotten the better of him, but then he slipped around to the back of the float’s flatbed, glancing over his shoulder. In a series of quick movements, he jumped down to the road, squeezed through a gap in the barricade, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Not exactly the behavior you’d expect from someone who was helping to watch the kids on the float. It crossed my mind that Mark had been present at one of the kidnapping scenes—the Halloween carnival at Brentano Gardens amusement park. He was alone when he talked to us in line that day. Said his wife and kid were elsewhere in the park. Later that night, another kid went missing there.

  But that was crazy, right? I mean, Mark Dare was an asshole, sure, but what reason would he have to be involved in the snatchings? Still, I couldn’t help wondering why he jumped off the float in the middle of all this.

  I glanced at Lon. He was still patiently watching to the left side of the float. I tried to catch his attention. He finally looked my way, but before I could get close enough to tell him about Mark’s odd behavior, a bass-heavy rumble up the road drew everyone’s attention.

  Boom!

  A column of fire shot straight up into the sky, flaming up past the second stories of the buildings that flanked the street. It was coming from the Little Red Riding Hood float: Grandmother’s cottage was on fire.

  An anxious roar fanned through the crowd as the police reacted quickly, helping people off the flaming float and herding them into the shocked crowd. Dare’s plainclothes guards crowded closer to our float, all on full alert. Once Lon saw that they were in place, he ran to my side.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “Electrical fire?” I suggested, craning my neck to see.

  “Isn’t it close to where the protesters were breaking through the barricades?”

  People near the fiery float were struggling to retreat. A tower of flames rocketed into the sky. So strange, the way it burned in a neat, round column.

  I squinted. Blue-white light fizzled where the column of fire met the float’s cottage roof.

  “Whoa!”

  “What?” Lon demanded.

  “Heka! That fire was set with magick.”

  His green eyes darkened with panic. We stared at each other, neither of us knowing what to do for several moments. Good news was, magical fire doesn’t technically burn; it’s a parlor trick. That meant the people on Red Riding Hood were likely unharmed.

  Lon glanced back at the flaming float and the thousands of people who were watching it burn. “A diversion.”

  That’s exactly what it was. A diversion set by a magician.

  Lon informed one of the guards that we were going to the fire, then the two of us plunged into the rankled crowd and headed toward Red Riding Hood.

  The column of magical fire might not have been real, but the heat it emitted sure felt believable. It toasted my skin with a preternatural warmth as we neared the barricade a few feet behind the float. No way we’d be able to get any closer. We fought the crowd just to stay in place and not be rolled along with the tide of people who were following police instruction to abandon the area. I spotted an empty sidewalk bench, the back of which advertised a demon-friendly restaurant near Tambuku.

  “Up there!” I shouted to Lon.

  We scrambled to the bench and stood on the seat to survey things from a better vantage point. Most of the crowd had thinned on the opposite side of the road, where the sidewalk was narrow. But on our side, where all the vendors were stationed and an empty parking lot made room for hundreds, it was still chaotic. Heads and halos bobbed in a sea of people moving in all directions as police and parade security did their best to herd them while also directing the nearby floats to move aside and make way for a fire truck that wailed in the distance.

  I pulled Lon’s face down and spoke in his ear. “Watch near the float—the magician will have to stop the spell or risk the firefighters discovering that they can’t put out the fire!”

  Together we scanned the float, looking for anyone out of the ordinary. But when I spotted something odd, it was a thing, not a person.

  A hidden side door on the flaming cottage was cracked open several inches. Probably just access to a small stow area for extra candy, or jackets and purses. However, a glob of hazy white light was bobbing through the crack. The door shut by itself, then the ball of light moved a few feet, hovered, and stopped.

  My pulse increased. All magick has a visual signature, a nebulous glow very similar to Earthbound halos.

  The ball of light that hovered in the air outside the small cottage door looked to be the right level if it were, say, being emitted by a charged talisman. One that was hanging around someone’s neck—especially if that someone was a magician using some kind of invisibility spell.

  “Mother of Sorrows,” I muttered.

  “What?” Lon shouted in my ear.

  I pointed. “That light. It’s moving.”

  He watched it move with growing awareness. “Let’s follow it.”

  “Hold on.” Last time we’d gone up against him—if that was, indeed, Frater Merrin standing on the edge of the float—he’d bowled us both over with his weird little Heka weapon.

  In my peripheral vision I saw the approaching fire truck, slowly picking its way around the stalled floats ahead. I was still tracking the ball of light floating around the corner of the cottage. The magician was on the move, probably to get a look at the fire truck. He was going to wait until they turned hoses on it to break the spell, so it would appear like they did it. I’d bet my life on it.

  “Can you charge one of your wards to cover us?” Lon asked.

  “What?”

  He tapped my arm. “Invisible Man.”

  And I wondered where Jupe got his love of horror movies? “My Ignore spell would be better in this crowd.”

  “Do it.”

  We jumped off the bench and settled ourselves in the shadow of a low brick wall, giving people room to walk by us on the sidewalk.

  While I pushed up my coat sleeve, Lon whipped out his pocket knife. One quick flick on my fingertip and I had blood to charge the Ignore seal. I gripped Lon’s arm and fired up the spell to cover both of us.

  The stomach-cramping nausea made me think I’d been successful, but the fact that we could now push our way through the crowd without people noticing our elbows in their ribs proved it. Though my tattooed invisibility sigil granted me greater visual cover, the Ignore spell forced people to disregard sight, touch, and sound. Unless you punched someone in the face or shouted at the top of your lungs, most folks wouldn’t give you a second look.

  We made it to the edge of the float and stood a few feet from the bouncing ball of light. The way it moved up close, I had no doubt now that it was a talisman. With all the hustle and bustle around, it could easily be dismissed as a trick of light to any Earthbounds who might spot i
t, but I wasn’t fooled.

  The firefighters jumped off their truck and barked out commands to one another. Before long, they were readying a hose. As the deluge of water hit the cottage roof, the ball of light dipped and the circle of Heka surrounding the fire fizzled. The fire receded, then went out completely like a candle being snuffed.

  I knew it!

  The ball of light dropped down off the float. We followed it, beelining through the dwindling crowd on the opposite side of the street. Two blocks down a side street, we trailed it into Vietnamese Soup Restaurant. Fragrant lemongrass, garlic, and unctuous pork hung heavy in the air as we trotted past mostly empty tables, and one lone person ordering takeout. The ball of light floated into a narrow corridor past the counter.

  We stole down the hallway just in time to see the men’s restroom door opening and the ball of light entering one of two tangerine Formica stalls, then the door closing behind it. The rasp of a lock sliding shut echoed around the tiled room. Our mystery magician wanted privacy.

  A low grunt floated from the locked stall. Lon motioned to me. He wanted the Ignore spell removed. Before I could comply, the air shuddered with power. He was transmutating.

  My chugging heartbeat increased its pace as Lon’s halo flamed up. I dropped the Ignore spell and nearly collapsed with exhaustion.

  Lon stood in front of the locked stall, menacing and furious, halo on fire and horns spiraling, as he listened with one palm splayed across the stall door. Reading the magician’s thoughts, presumably. I squatted to peek under the stall and saw a pair of dark shoes and pants. The toilet flushed.

  Lon’s hard face wrinkled with puzzlement. He cut me a look, but I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say. Was it not Merrin? What was going on? I hated being out of the loop. Hated feeling sick to my stomach with post-magick sickness and worry.

  Inside the stall, the lock slid, metal on metal.

  The moment it clicked open, Lon pushed the door into the stall, slamming it back with a disturbing crack, and threw himself shoulder-first inside the stall, charging like an aggressive ram. I jumped as a surprised shout burst from the stall.