Long Hot Summoning Read Free Page A

Standing in pairs. Pairs tucked away in Bozo’s School Bus using lips and hands.
    He stiffened as she stopped barely an arm’s length away.
    “The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.” Pink lips parted. “ Please move out of my way.” Twenty-one years at this door. “The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”
    Dark brows rose and dark eyes tried to meet his, but he stared at the drop of sweat running down her throat to pool against her collarbone and refused to be drawn in.
    “Okay, fine. We’ll just have to do this the hard way.”
    “The mall is closed. It will reopen tomorrow at nine a.m.”

    “Yeah, gramps, I got it the first time.” His eyes burned and he blinked, only a single blink, but when his vision cleared, the girl was gone.
    Good. It was good that she was gone. Gone with her shorts and her breasts and all her infinite possibilities.
    Diana stopped just the other side of Bozo’s School Bus, set her backpack down on the yellow plastic kiddie ride, and waited while Sam climbed out.
    “That was creepy,” he muttered, licking at a bit of ruffled fur.
    “Very. And aren’t people that old supposed to be retired or something?”
    “Or something,” the cat agreed. “Hey.” Front paws on the Plexiglas window, Sam peered into the bus. “This thing has seat belts. They don’t take it out of the building, do they?”
    “Uh, no.”
    “Then why seat belts?”
    “I have no idea. But you know what’s really whacked? My bus-the one I rode down potholed dirt roads at a hundred and twenty klicks every morning and afternoon with a whole lot of very small bouncy children-no belts.” Swinging her pack back onto her shoulders, she headed for the main concourse. “Stay close and no one will see you.”
    Sam fell into step by her right ankle. “Considering what that thing smelled like, I can think of one reason for seat belts. This place is huge. How are we going to find the Erlking Emporium?”
    “Easy. We find the you-are-here sign. It’s probably at the end of this side hall.”
    It wasn’t.
    Although the side hall and one of the huge anchor stores spilled out into the main concourse at the same place, there was nothing to help mall patrons find their way through the two-story maze of stores they now faced.
    “Maybe someone from the Otherside took it,” Sam offered when it became clear they were directionally on their own.
    “It’s possible.” Motioning for Sam to be quiet, Diana froze as a final shopper slipped through the partially barricaded Kitchen Shop storefront, clutching a cheap manual can opener and trailing the ill wishes of the teenage clerk like black smoke behind her as she hurried down the side hall. “She feels like the last one in here. We’d better get moving before that creepy old security guard heads this way.” Sam butted his head reassuringly against her leg. “You can take him.”
    “Well, yeah. But I’d rather not. Come on. Blonde Ponytail said . . .”
    “Who?”
    “The jock with the bracelet. I never got her name. She said the store was on the lower level, so let’s find some stairs.”
    Behind reinforced glass or steel bars, the stores themselves were places of shadow.
    Unless the bracelet was the only piece of the Other-side they were selling, Diana should have been able to sense the Emporium, her Summons directing her like a child’s game of Warm and Cool where the parts of “Warm” and “Cool” were played by “I Can Live With the Headache if I Have to” and “Shoot Me Now.” Unfortunately, the Summons was unable to poke through the interference from the back rooms where a hundred part-time teenagers counted up a hundred cash drawers and ninety-seven of them came up short. By the time the cash had to be counted for the third time, the emanation of frustrated pissiness was so strong Diana couldn’t have sensed a trio of bears if they were sneaking up beside her.
    “Hey, Rodney River has orange polyester bell-bottoms