"Huff, Tanya - Keeper 3 - Long Hot Summoning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

Cover art by Judy York.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1256.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.



First Printing, May 2003 123456789
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U S PAT. OFF AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Back in the summer of 2001,I attended a convention in Toronto called TT15. Or possibly TT2001 ... it used to be called Toronto Trek and that’s how I remember it. Anyway, after my reading, during the question and answer session, I talked about this book which I’d just started writing. I gave a brief synopsis of what it was about and mentioned that it didn’t, as yet, have a title. A woman in the back of the room called out, “What about LONG HOT SUMMONING?”
The perfect title.
I don’t know who you are, but if you’re reading this, this one’s for you!

ONE
Throwing her backpack over one shoulder, Diana  raced out the front door and rocked to a halt at the sight of the orange tabby crossing the front lawn. Or more specifically, at the sight of what dangled from the cat’s mouth. With one of its disproportionately long arms barely attached and dragging on the grass, and something that looked like intestine wrapped around one bare ankle, the bogey was unquestionably dead. An eyeball bounced gently against its bloody forehead with every step. “Nice catch,” she noted, half her attention on the approaching bus. “Where did you find it?”
“Ood ‘ile,” Sam told her proudly, his voice distorted by the body.
“You know you can’t eat it, right?”
Amber eyes narrowed, he let the bogey drop and fixed Diana with an incredulous glare. “Do I look like an idiot?”
“No, but you haven’t been a cat for very long . . .” Six months ago, he’d been an angel. Angels didn’t  concern themselves with the small things that slipped through the possibilities. “. . . and you know how my mother feels about that whole puking on the white wool rug thing.”
“Once! I did it once!”
“Yeah, so did I, and she’s never let me forget it either.” With a scream of abused brake linings, the bus stopped more or less at the end of the driveway. “I don’t have time to bury it now, so try to leave it where Mom’s not going to trip over it.” Turning, she took two steps and turned again, pulled around by the weight of Sam’s regard. “Oh, right. Sorry. You are a mighty hunter. Your skill with tooth and claw is amazing. Fast. Deadly. I stand in awe.”
“Hey! Sarcasm.”
“Not sarcasm,” Diana protested hurriedly. There were any number of imaginative places the dead bogey could be left. “But I’ve got to go. Mr. Watson won’t wait forever.”
“I’m amazed Mr. Watson stops at all.”
“Yeah, well, need provides and all that. Remember, I’ll be home early,” she added, trotting backward up the path, “just in case there’s anything you don’t want me to catch you doing.”
A presented cat butt made his opinion of that fairly plain.
Mr. Watson looked more nervous than impatient. He nodded a silent reply to Diana’s cheerful good morning, closed the door practically on her heels, and jerked the bus into gear. Had Diana not already been reaching into the possibilities, she’d have landed on her ass as he burned rubber trying to outrun half-buried memories. Fully burying them would have messed with his ability to drive, so only the less likely edges had been fuzzed out, leaving him in a perpetual state of nearly remembering things he’d rather not. Which was actually a state fairly common among school bus drivers.
Diana tried not to resent his attitude, but it wasn’t easy. This semester alone she’d stopped a black pudding from devouring an eighth grader, saved Chrissy Selwick from a three-headed dog attracted to the aconite in the herbal body mist she’d been given for Christmas—might as well have had “eat me” tattooed on her forehead—and prevented a Gameboy™ from taking over the world. Handheld computer games were more competitive than most people thought.
She’d also stopped Nick Packwood from hanging a second grader out the window by his heels, but since she still wasn’t entirely certain the kid hadn’t deserved it, she usually left that particular incident off her “reasons Mr. Watson should thank his gods I’m on the bus” list.
Making her way back through the rugrats, Diana noticed without surprise that the last six rows—the rows reserved for the high school students on the route—were nearly empty. On this, the last day of the high school year, only two freshmen had been unable to find alternative transportation. “My brother was going to give me a ride/‘ said the first as she passed. ”But he had to go to work really early.“
“Yeah. I was going to ride my bike, but I had, like, an asthma attack,” the other explained, holding up his inhaler for corroboration.
Diana ignored them both. First, because a senior acknowledging freshmen would open up all sorts of possibilities she had no desire to deal with. Second, as the youngest, and therefore most powerful Keeper, as one of the Lineage who maintained the mystical balance of the world, as someone who had helped dose a hole to Hell and faced down demons, she didn’t need to justify her reasons for taking the bus.
Settling into her regular seat, she thanked any gods who might be listening that this would be the last day she’d ever be at the mercy of public education.
Frowning, Diana crossed the main hall toward the stairs, trying to get a fix on the faint wrongness she could feel. It wasn’t a full-out accident site; no holes had been opened into the lower ends of the possibilities allowing evil to lap up against closed doors leading to empty classrooms, but something was out of place and, as long as she was in the building, finding it and fixing it was in the job description. Actually, it pretty much was the job description.
As far as Diana was concerned, all high schools needed Keepers. Nothing poked holes in the fabric of reality faster than a few thousand hormonally challenged teenagers all crammed into one ugly cinder-block building. Unattended, that was exactly the sort of situation likely to create the kind of person who developed an operating system that crashed every time someone attempted to download an Amanda Tapping screen saver.
The sudden appearance of a guidance counselor actually emerging from his office and heading straight for her nearly sent Diana running toward the nearest washroom. She didn’t want her last day ruined by yet another pointless confrontation. Fortunately, she realized he felt the same way before her feet started moving. Fuck it. What’s the point? flashed into the thought balloon over his head and he slid past without meeting her gaze.
The thought balloons had appeared back in grade nine when, after half an hour of platitudes, she’d wondered just what exactly he was thinking. An unexpected puberty-propelled power surge had anchored the balloons so firmly she’d never been able to get rid of them and she’d spent the last four years finding out rather more than she wanted to about the fantasy lives of middle-aged men.
Pamela Anderson.
And hockey.
Occasionally, Pamela Anderson playing hockey.
Some of the visuals were admittedly interesting.
The wrongness led her up the stairs, through the first cafeteria and into the second—weirdly, the hangout of both the jocks and the music geeks—  empty now except for a group of girls who’d laid claim to the far corner by the northwest windows. A flash of aubergine light pulled her toward them. The senior girls’ basketball team, Diana realized as she drew closer. Probably hanging around in order to remain the senior girls’ basketball team. Over two thirds of them were graduating, so once they stepped out the door, they’d be a team no longer.
“... so I said to him, I’m not putting that in my mouth.” Tall, blonde, ponytail—Diana didn’t know her name. “First of all, I don’t know where it’s been and secondly, this lipstick cost twenty-one dollars.”