Summoned (34 page)

“No. I’m a paramagician. Well, studying to be one.”

“I see.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Celeste said. “Is that like a paramedic?”

“Pretty much. I can’t do magic the way a magician can, but I can use magical tools.”

“Like that flashlight of yours?” Jeremy asked.

“Exactly. It’s a regular one modified to turn magical energy into wavelengths that repel things like the Servitor. Still, the light shouldn’t have been enough to drive it off its—” O’Conaghan looked at Jeremy, then shrugged. “Its prey.”

Jeremy snorted. “Actually, it had already given up on this prey before you came. Sean must have ordered it off.”

“Did you, Sean?”

Sean pulled away from his aunt. “It was the Black Man. You know who he is, Detective?”

O’Conaghan’s expression didn’t change, and maybe Helen wouldn’t have noticed him paling except for the way his freckles suddenly stood out like spattered brown paint. “He’s an avatar. Of Nyarlathotep. You’re saying
he
called off the Servitor?”

“The palace I went to in the Servitor’s mind, the Black Man was there, and I was going to talk to him. Then the potion pulled me back so I was seeing out of the Servitor again, only the Black Man came with me. I tried yelling at the Servitor to leave Dad alone. It wouldn’t listen. The Black Man said something to it, and it stopped right away.”

Sean ran out of breath, and his forehead had sheened over with sweat. He staggered. Celeste, Jeremy, and O’Conaghan converged on him. O’Conaghan, the closest, broke Sean’s fall and deftly maneuvered him into an armchair. While Celeste tucked Sean’s head between his knees, O’Conaghan drew Jeremy to Gus’s couch. He gestured for Helen to follow.

Conference time. Helen went to the couch. Screw her wobbly knees. Celeste could only handle one fainter at a time.

Low-voiced, O’Conaghan said, “I didn’t know how deeply Nyarlathotep was involved in Sean’s case.”

“Isn’t this Nyar-thing supposed to be a god?” Jeremy said, so tightly his teeth had to be clenched. “Why would a god pay attention to one kid, my kid?”

Gus said it without a trace of sarcasm: “He sees the fall of a sparrow.”

“This god’s not worried about sparrows,” O’Conaghan said. “Magicians are what interest him. If he’s after Sean before he’s even someone’s apprentice, Sean must be a serious adept.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Helen said. “That Sean’s adept, I mean.”

O’Conaghan pulled his tie and collar loose, exposing more freckles. “Could be. But direct contact with any Outer God is incredibly dangerous, even for a master magician. We can’t let Nyarlathotep get at Sean again. He’s doing it through the Servitor, so we’ve got to dismiss it tonight.”

“Professor Marvell said to wait for him.”

“But when you talked to him, you didn’t know the Servitor had already possessed Sean, so he didn’t have all the facts.”

“What about the hotel idea?”

“That would just keep the Servitor at a physical distance. Psychically, it could get to Sean wherever he is.”

Sean had raised his head. Could he hear? Helen dropped her voice further. “As long as the Patience Orne potion is working, the connection seems broken.”

“How much is left?”

She didn’t even know. Helen took the cobalt bottle from her pack and held it to the light of the nearest lamp. It couldn’t be, but it was: She’d already poured more than a quarter of the bottle’s contents into Sean.

O’Conaghan came over to look. “Was it full to start?”

“Yes.”

“It won’t last the night.”

She had pressed the bottle to her sternum as if it was a guardian amulet. “If you think Marvell would want us to go ahead—”

“Let’s do it now,” Sean said. His voice was calm, but Helen saw the white-knuckled grip he had on his left elbow. “When I close my eyes, I’m seeing through the Servitor again. The potion’s wearing off.”

“Helen,” Jeremy said. “Give him more.”

“No, Dad. She’s got to save it for when I do the dismissing spell. It’s going to be hard. The Servitor doesn’t want to go. Like, it’s still got a job to do.”

Helen put the obvious question, seemed she was good at that: “What job, Sean?”

“Bringing me to the Black Man. Even if I’d bound the Servitor, I wouldn’t be its real master. The Black Man is, in the end. In the beginning, too, I guess.”

Alpha, omega, merged and twisted into lazy-eight infinity.

“Sean’s right,” O’Conaghan said. He touched Helen’s pack. “You’ve got the ritual in there?”

With excruciating care, she stowed the cobalt bottle and withdrew the other treasure, Jeremy’s penciled notes. “Here. Sean, are you ready to learn it?”

Unfolding himself from his chair, he nodded.

Helen trailed him into the study, which was impenetrably dark to her again normal eyes until Jeremy flicked on the chandelier. The light made her wince, but only for the first seconds of adjustment, and she was relieved to realize that her headache was subsiding. Before the night was over, though, she might wish she had more of Bishop’s #5, so she could see what was hidden but, too certainly this time, not harmless.

Helen
stayed awake and jittery during the study session. Maybe it was end-game adrenaline, maybe a communication of urgency from O’Conaghan. It wasn’t the coffee Celeste brought in. Helen didn’t dare touch that—why brandish a lit match at gasoline?

She, Jeremy, and O’Conaghan all memorized the incantations of the dismissing ritual along with Sean—if he stumbled, they had to be ready with prompts. It was a good thing that Enoch Bishop had been Puritan enough to prefer English to Latin pomp. Puritan wizards with their new and improved spells. Should she be worried that it was beginning to make sense to her? She fed Sean a couple teaspoons of Patience Orne’s #11, but his eyes still furtively strayed to corners and ceiling. Around eleven, he shoved his chair back. “We’ve got to go,” he said.

Gus’s swollen ankle barred him from their party. Celeste insisted on taking his place, which was a relief. Given the Servitor’s record, it was likely they’d need a field medic more than a sharpshooter. Helen shouldered her pack and Eddy’s bat, Celeste her emergency bag and Gus’s oak walking stick. O’Conaghan had his flashlight and service pistol. For pentagram drawing, Jeremy had pocketed pastel sticks. For his weapon, he turned down Gus’s Colt, muttering that he’d probably shoot his own foot off with that. While the rest of them piled into the cars, he disappeared around the back of the house. He returned shouldering a pitchfork with a worn-smooth handle and a well-oiled iron head. “Granddad Wyndham’s,” he said. “Cel’s got a garageful of his tools.” A good choice, if the books Helen had been cramming all summer were right: Tradition conferred a certain magic of its own.

Celeste rode with O’Conaghan, whose Camry took the lead. Helen rode in the backseat of the Civic. In the front, beside Jeremy, Sean slumped silent. No wonder: What more could any of them have to say?

As they crossed from Providence into Edgewood, however, Sean groaned. “I’m seeing with it all the time now. Even if I open my eyes.”

Helen scooted forward. “Can you tell where it is?”

“It’s swum down the Seekonk. Now it’s in the harbor, where the tankers dock. If it comes up the bay and around the neck by the Yacht Club, it’ll get back into the Pawtuxet.”

“All right. That’s what we need it to do.”

“But it knows we’re going to dismiss it. It must think it can repossess me, no problem. It must think I can’t stop it.”

“You
can
stop it, Sean,” Jeremy said. “You summoned it; you can get rid of it.”

“I don’t know, Dad. The Black Man doesn’t want it back unless it brings me. I don’t want to see him again. I don’t want to talk to him.”

The rise in Sean’s voice was slight, but it started Helen’s adrenaline flowing as effectively as a siren in the ear. She pulled out the cobalt bottle. “Take some more of this, Sean.”

Sean didn’t turn toward her. He shook his head. “Save it for the spell. So I can do it. Please.”

Helen subsided and tucked away the bottle. Sean was right, and God knew, he was strong, but the steel in him was stretching, and steel could only stretch so far. When it had reached its limit, a light touch, even a touch of comfort, could snap it.

Did Jeremy sense the same thing? He pulled back the arm he’d stretched toward Sean and locked both hands on the steering wheel. O’Conaghan’s Camry had stopped at a green light, waiting for them. Jeremy hit the gas, and both cars made it through before the red.

28

The
Post Road entrance to the industrial park had an aluminum gate, chained and padlocked. Sean had been able to edge around it on his bike; a car trying that trick would slide into the drainage ditch. O’Conaghan got wire cutters out of his trunk and cut the lock. When their cars were through, he resecured the gate with a padlock of his own. They were lucky he’d brought the gear, or maybe it wasn’t luck. Probably Order of Alhazred members were always prepared to break into cult hideouts and ancient crypts. Sean was too scared right now to appreciate the coolness of it, but maybe a year from now he’d think tonight had rocked. That was, if they all survived it.

They parked in the lot by the river, where faint smears of chalk still marked his summoning site. “That pentagram’s what convinced me the animal killings might be Order business,” O’Conaghan told Helen. “I heard about it from a friend on the Warwick force. His theory was some kids had gotten their heads messed up by heavy metal.”

Which would have been a lot safer than a kid whose head was messed up by Redemption Orne. Sean stood at the broken apex of the pentagram and closed his eyes, so he could look through the Servitor’s without distraction. It had scaled the falls at the mouth of the Pawtuxet and climbed into the undertrussing of the Broad Street bridge. There it hunkered down, as if content to wait while he prepared.

“Sean.”

He opened his eyes. Helen stood next to him, holding out Patience Orne’s #11. Dad had a handful of pastels, O’Conaghan a length of string. They were ready. His turn. He took the blue bottle and sucked down every bittersweet drop. In seconds, the ghostly overlay of Servitor-sight was gone. His mind was all his own, and he had to use it fast, before he lost it again.

The moon had been dark the night of the summoning. Tonight it was full. Its brilliance bleached out the Summer Triangle, but according to the hidden notes Helen had read, you didn’t need a particular phase for the dismissing ritual. Besides, Sean welcomed the extra light. Between the moon and the head beams of O’Conaghan’s Camry, Sean had no problem inscribing a new circle. The banishing pentagram was inverted, which meant the angles of Earth and Fire had to point east and the angle of Spirit west, where Sean would stand. He crab-scuttled, drawing. Dad walked alongside, handing him fresh pastel sticks as he needed them. They weren’t as good for the job as sidewalk chalk—they broke easily, and the lines were thin. It wouldn’t matter. The important thing was the excitement the pentagram triggered in him. O’Conaghan and Helen, Dad and Celeste, they wouldn’t matter, either. He, Sean, would be alone with the gathering energy, the overflow from Azathoth the Source. He’d pull it in and then pour it out into the incantations Helen had taught him. He remembered every word: The Patience potion had made his mind clear to all horizons, north south east west, inside, out.

He straddled the downward point of Spirit and in the center of the pentagram drew the Elder Sign, a branch with five twigs, Hand of the Elder Ones who had known enough magic to control monsters worse than the Servitor. A tingling current crept upward from his fingertips. This was the
right
Sign. The tingle proved it.

He stood up.

“All set?” Helen said.

Celeste had ducked into the Camry, where she toggled the headlights from low beam to high as if practicing, then doused the lights altogether. Only the moon was left to gleam on Helen’s bat, the tines of Dad’s pitchfork, and the silver cap on Gus’s walking stick. O’Conaghan held the stick now, along with his flashlight.

Sean held nothing. The dismissing was much simpler than the summoning. No athame, no powders, just short incantations. As he brought his feet together in the angle of Spirit, lightning struck him again, without thunder, without pain, piercing him so that power could flow through him and from him, so that he knew he could do the ritual; of course he could—it was crazy he’d ever doubted it.

“All set,” he said.

“Is the Servitor coming?”

Helen couldn’t know. With the potion in him, could Sean?

He closed his eyes. Consciousness of the Servitor didn’t rush at him. But inside his circle, now the fearless Sean, he understood how to mentally grip the soul-thread that joined him to his familiar. It was like a supple umbilicus, spun out from his solar plexus into the night. To restore the numbed connection, he simply had to squeeze it.

He squeezed.

Black moon in the white sky and silver water rippling with black moonlight. The current tries to push the Servitor back over the falls, but the current is too weak to do that, too weak to slow its swim upstream.

Head back, eyes keen, Sean looked at a spread of stars undimmed by the full moon, in which the Summer Triangle lorded it over all the rest. “It’s coming up the river,” he said.

A wisp of double vision clouded his eyes, white river over the stars. Was the potion already starting to wear off? Seemed like it, but that was no reason to panic. In the angle of Spirit, Sean could rely instead on the thrum of power at his core and the answering thrum that vibrated through the soles of his sneakers from the Elder Sign.

The Servitor swims below the surface, only the ridged crown of its head cooled by air. It slithers over submerged branches.

The branches had to belong to the downed maple in the clearing where the Servitor had torn Hrothgar apart. The clearing was near the riverside lot, so it was almost time to pay the son of a bitch back for Hrothgar and for what it had tried to do to Eddy and Dad. Anger braided new force into the energies swelling Sean. Anger was good. With it, he was going to kick the Servitor right out of the world.