The Summer Tree Read Free

with a few of Kevin’s remoter Russian ancestors thrown into the mix by marriage. Jennifer, on Marcus’s left arm, was urging them on with her laughter, while Dave Martyniuk loped silently along on the grass beside the walkway, looking a little out of place. Matt Sören, quietly companionable, had slowed his pace to fall into stride with Paul. Schafer, however, withdrawing, could feel the conversation and laughter sliding into the background. The sensation was a familiar one of late, and after a while it was as if he were walking alone.
    Which may have been why, partway along the path, he becameaware of something to which the others were oblivious. It pulled him sharply out of reverie, and he walked a short distance in a different sort of silence before turning to the Dwarf beside him.
    “Is there any reason,” he asked, very softly, “why the two of you would be followed?”
    Matt Sören broke stride only momentarily. He took a deep breath. “Where?” he asked, in a voice equally low.
    “Behind us, to the left. Slope of the hill. Is there a reason?”
    “There may be. Would you keep walking, please? And say nothing for now—it may be nothing.” When Paul hesitated, the Dwarf gripped his arm. “Please?” he repeated. Schafer, after a moment, nodded and quickened his pace to catch up to the group now several yards ahead. The mood by then was hilarious and very loud. Only Paul, listening for it, heard the sharp, abruptly truncated cry from the darkness behind them. He blinked, but no expression crossed his face.
    Matt Sören rejoined them just as they reached the end of the shadowed walkway and came out to the noise and bright lights of Bloor Street. Ahead lay the huge stone pile of the old Park Plaza hotel. Before they crossed the road he placed a hand again on Schafer’s arm.
    “Thank you,” said the Dwarf.
    “Well,” said Lorenzo Marcus, as they settled into chairs in his sixteenth-floor suite, “why don’t you all tell me about yourselves? Yourselves,” he repeated, raising an admonitory finger at grinning Kevin.
    “Why don’t you start?” Marcus went on, turning to Kim. “What are you studying?”
    Kim acquiesced with some grace. “Well, I’m just finishing my interning year at—”
    “Hold it, Kim.”
    It was Paul. Ignoring a fierce look from the Dwarf, he levelled his eyes on their host. “Sorry, Dr. Marcus. I’ve got some questions of my own and I need answers now, or we’re all going home.”
    “Paul, what the—”
    “No, Kev. Listen a minute.” They were all staring at Schafer’s pale, intense features. “Something very strange is happening here. I want to know,” he said to Marcus, “why you were so anxious to cut us out of that crowd. Why you sent your friend to set it up. I want to know what you did to me in the auditorium. And I really want to know why we were followed on the way over here.”
    “
Followed?
” The shock registering on Lorenzo Marcus’s face was manifestly unfeigned.
    “That’s right,” Paul said, “and I want to know what it was too.”
    “Matt?” Marcus asked, in a whisper.
    The Dwarf fixed Paul Schafer with a long stare.
    Paul met the glance. “Our priorities,” he said, “can’t be the same in this.” After a moment, Matt Sören nodded and turned to Marcus.
    “Friends from home,” he said. “It seems there are those who want to know exactly what you are doing when you … travel.”
    “Friends?” Lorenzo Marcus asked.
    “I speak loosely. Very loosely.”
    There was a silence. Marcus leaned back in his armchair, stroking the grey beard. He closed his eyes.
    “This isn’t how I would have chosen to begin,” he said at length, “but it may be for the best after all.” He turned to Paul. “I owe you an apology. Earlier this evening I subjected you to something we call a searching. It doesn’t always work. Some have defences against it and with others, such as yourself, it seems, strange things can happen. What took place between us