Summoning the Night (13 page)

“Cady, right?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Oh, yes. I've heard
all
about you from Jupe.”

Uh-oh.

“I expected you to be wearing a rubber catsuit and wielding a sword.”

Errr . . .

“He's got a big imagination,” she explained with a smile.

“And a bigger mouth,” Lon grumbled.

Her laugh was confident. “Better than being afflicted with shyness.” She turned to me. “You're the one who's been teaching him about constellations.”

The way she said this, I felt like I was in trouble. “Is that a bad thing?”

Her face brightened. “Oh, no. It's good. Though he's gotten a few wrong, and insists on correcting me in front of the class.”

“That's Jupe's short attention span, not her lessons,” Lon said with a hint of a smile.

“Oh, I never doubted that. You know, I think it's wonderful that he has a new female role model in his life. I've noticed a real difference in him recently. He's much more positive.”

“Thanks, but I doubt that's because of me.” I shifted uneasily on my feet.

“Don't be so sure. He's more focused. Scoring better on exams, too. Confident—though he's never really had a problem being sure of himself,” she said with a wink.

Lon crossed his arms over his chest. “He's been more confident than usual around the house. Seems to think he's coming into his knack.”

Ms. Forsythe's eyebrows raised. “Oh, really? I haven't heard this tidbit. He's too young, don't you think?”

I nodded. “That's what we've been saying.”

“I once had a female student who came into her knack early, maybe ten years ago. But it's rare. And I haven't noticed anything unusual going on with Jupiter.”

“Well, if you overhear him claiming to be able to persuade people with the sound of his voice, please do me a favor and tell him he's full of it,” Lon said. “He'll listen to you.”

She chuckled. “That Jupiter. So wonderfully dramatic!”

Lon's expression said that he did not quite agree with that assessment.

“I overheard him saying in homeroom that he was going to the carnival tonight,” she said, tugging her purse onto her shoulder as she stepped back to unlock her car door.

“We're going to try to make it over there after school, before it gets dark.”

She opened the car door and braced her hands on the top edge. “That's probably wise, with all the Snatcher talk floating around town. The kids are starting to invent danger around every corner. I don't normally allow negative talk in my classroom, but I do encourage them to stay alert. Better safe than sorry, I tell them.”

Lon mumbled an agreement. But I couldn't help but wonder if the teachers who worked here thirty years ago had recited the same adage to their students . . . while Bishop stood in the same spot where I stood now, making a mental list of his potential victims.

“How many times have you been here?” I asked Jupe as the three of us approached the entrance of Brentano Gardens amusement park later that afternoon.

“This year, or my whole life? 'Cause if you just mean
this
year, then that would only be three times, but if you mean since I was born, then, uh, let's see—”

I whistled and drew my fingers across my throat. “Never mind.”

“But—”

Lon reached over his son's shoulder, clamped his hand over Jupe's mouth, and pretended to punch him in the stomach. Jupe's muffled cry of laughter echoed off the pavement. They wrestled the entire way inside.

Brentano Gardens sat opposite the boardwalk in the heart of La Sirena, just across Ocean Drive. The brick wall surrounding it stretched over several outlying blocks of the Village and was shaped like the crenellated wall of a European castle, the rooftop outlined in white lights. It originally opened in the early 1920s, and its claim to fame was having one of the oldest American wooden roller coasters still in operation.

During the last two weeks of October, the park stayed open nightly until midnight for their annual Spooktacular carnival. When we arrived, would-be revelers were already lined up shoulder to shoulder at the ticket booths.

The park was sweetly old-fashioned, with bales of hay and pumpkins stacked around small kiosks shaped like overgrown toadstools. A tree-lined promenade filled with quaint restaurants and shops welcomed us at the entrance. Good thing, because I was starving. However, my excitement over the possibility of dining at the smiling-penis-rated Alps Fondue Chalet was trampled when we discovered the wait was well over an hour. We decided to skip it and go for bad carnival food instead. No one was happier about this development than Jupe, who happily polished off an entire corn dog and a fat pile of cheesy fries in a few short bites.

As we sauntered further into the park, Jupe hammed it up as our tour guide. Sure, the park brochure might tell you that the Whirling Wammie ride was built in the 1960s, but did you know that Jupe had thrown up after riding it—not once, not twice, but five times? He proudly pointed out all five vomit spots. There was also Thor's Lightning, on which Jupe lost a flip-flop when he was seven, and the Black Forest Water Flumes, the ride that “almost drowned” him the following year when he wriggled out of his seat restraint and tried to go overboard while waiting for the ride to start. Lon rolled his eyes and silently shook his head behind Jupe's back as his son related the dramatic event in stunning, high-def detail.

Two Spooktacular attractions were set up in the center of the park: the unfortunately named Jack-O-Land—which Jupe, and probably every other kid under eighteen referred to as Jack-Off-Land—and our intended destination, the Spirit Cove ride.

“Eye of Horus, the line is long,” I mumbled in frustration.

“It's a Butler family tradition,” Jupe said brightly. “We have to ride it.”

“No,
you
have to ride it.”

“Dad said we can't separate tonight,” Jupe argued.

Yeah, but I wasn't in danger of being kidnapped by some elderly ex-Hellfire member with a chip on his shoulder.

“Buck up, witch,” Lon said. “I hate crowds. If I have to endure it, so do you. What's two hours out of your life?”

“Two hours?” I glanced at the the queue area. It snaked around a dozen or more handrails. Hundreds of people shuffled along a few inches at a time.

“It looks like a cow pen,” I protested.

“
Moo
-ove,” Lon wisecracked as he urged me into the line behind Jupe. It kind of smelled like a cow pen, too. Someone needed to pass a law forcing people to use antiperspirant. I would vote for that; moreover, I would happily stand in line for two hours to do so.

While Lon checked his phone, I busied myself with thinking of ways that he was going to repay me later. We'd been in line only a few minutes when Jupe spotted someone he knew ahead of us and leaned over the rail to chat. While doing so, he conducted some discreet scratching beneath the waistband of his jeans. “Look,” I whispered to Lon. “Did you see that? What's going on with that? He told me it was an injury.”

“Hmph. I'll bet.”

“Is this a boy thing? Did you injure yourself when you were his age? Being . . . overenthusiastic?”

“More chafing than I care to admit . . . the occasional carpal tunnel flare-up,” Lon said with a self-deprecating shrug. As I bit back a laugh, he assured me, “I wouldn't worry. He'll be fine.”

“But will
I
? Now I'm gonna have to scrub those images out of my brain. I liked it better when he was sweet and innocent.”

“You're a little late boarding that train. He hasn't been innocent for years. He's had his hands in his pants since kindergarten.”

“Stop!” I protested, covering my ears.

Lon laughed heartily and tugged me against his side. “Parenting sucks in all kinds of ways.” He followed Jupe's movements with his eyes, shaking his head at his son's obvious discomfort. Then I noticed someone from Dare's brunch party walking past the ride queue.

I elbowed Lon. “Look. Isn't that Dare's son, Mark?”

At the sound of his name, the blond man looked up and spotted Lon, then me. The wince was barely perceptible, but it was pretty clear that we were the last two people he wanted to see. He pasted on a polite grin and stopped outside the rail near us. “Lon . . . Arcadia. Twice in one week. Imagine that.”

“Small world,” Lon agreed.

“I'm here with the family,” Mark said, lifting up the collar on his jacket to shield his neck from the wind. “My wife is waiting with my son to get a pumpkin carved. I'm surprised the crowds are so large tonight. A pretty big turnout for a town fighting against Halloween right now. Did you see that civil action group on the news this morning?”

“Yep.”

“Maybe they'll have better luck in Morella.”

“Maybe.”

“Can't keep down the Halloween spirit here. Too much money to be made.” He laughed, rubbing his hands together, then blew into them to keep warm.

Lon nodded absently, as if he couldn't possibly care less.

“Hey . . . I was wondering about why you two were visiting my father the other day. Everything okay?”

Dare hadn't told Mark that we were trying to track down Bishop? Guess he really wasn't lying about all the animosity between them.

“Everything's fine,” Lon said, avoiding Mark's original question.

Mark waited for more, then tried another tactic. “No one from the club sees you much anymore.” He paused, then added, “Though I did hear you brought Arcadia to the last Hellfire event at the caves . . .”

“Mmm-hmm,” Lon answered. Blank, cool. No emotion whatsoever.

“You two coming again for Samhain?”

“Not if my life depended on it.”

Mark's chuckle was dry and awkward. He cleared his throat. “Don't see you around the Village these days either, but I've been busy working long hours and I hear you're always out of town on those photo shoots of yours. Still the big celebrity, I guess. Life in the fast lane, all that. Speaking of celebrity, how's Yvonne? Heard from her lately?”

“She's fine.” Lon wrapped an arm around my waist and herded me forward to catch up with the now-moving line. “Nice to see you again, Mark. Take care.”

Mark's jaw flexed. He wasn't happy about being dismissed. He mumbled a good-bye, adjusted his jacket collar, and continued on his way.

Half an hour after our encounter with Mark, we finally made it through the queue. A park employee dressed in a black-and-white striped chain-gang-prisoner costume herded the three of us into a staging area. Groups of people ahead of us
entered the four-person boats on one side of a small canal filled with blood-red dyed water.

“Huh. I could swear that this thing used to go faster,” Jupe said to the man as we watched a seashell boat emerge from the indoor ride and glide to a slow stop.

“It's an older ride. We had some minor track problems at the higher speed, so we switched to a slower setting about a month ago,” the park employee explained in a professional voice, straightening his name tag. It read
Henry
above chipped gold stars and what seemed like an afterthought,
20 Years of Service.
“You may not know this, but this attraction originally started out as the popular Beach Fun Party ride in the 1970s. Back then, they operated the ride at an even higher speed so that the two waterfall drops would splash the riders. It was changed to Mermaid Cove in 1980s, and then Spirit Cove ten years ago.”

“Yeah, I know all that,” Jupe said with breezy immodesty. “My dad rode it when he was a kid. He said it was better because the animatronic mermaids used to be girls in tiny bikinis.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively to underscore his words.

Both Lon and Henry looked simultaneously embarrassed about this factoid.

“Uh, yes, I suppose,” Henry said before composing himself to continue the history lesson. “It was fast enough to require belted lap restraints, which they later removed when they revamped to the Halloween theme and slowed the ride down. As for the ride's speed this season, it does make the wait longer, and we apologize for that. But the tradeoff is that you can enjoy the Spirit Cove experience for a full nine minutes instead of the normal four and a half.” He smiled encouragingly at Jupe, then called for the next group of people.

“Damn,” Jupe muttered under his breath. “That's almost twice as slow.”

“That's
exactly
twice as slow,” Lon said.

“Whatever. It might as well be It's a Small World. This blows.”

“Is it scary?” I asked. “I'm not a fan of people jumping out at me.”

“Nah, it's kinda lame.” His eyes darted to the side.

“That's not what you said three years ago,” Lon said.

“I was just a kid, and thanks for bringing that up, assbag.”

“
Father
Assbag,” Lon calmly corrected. “And you're the one who was bragging earlier about vomiting. So go on, tell Cady all about how you weren't scared that time.”