The Second Summoning

FOUR

“THAT’S HIS TRUCK. He’s here!”

“Claire…can’t breathe…”

“Sorry.” She loosened her grip on the cat, who squirmed out of her arms and stalked to the other end of the couch, tail lashing from side to side. Brushing drifts of cat hair off her sweater, she murmured, “I can’t believe how nervous I am.”

“I can’t believe how nerdy you are,” Diana sighed. “You love him, he loves you, yadda, yadda, yadda. Now haul ass out there and let him know he’s at the right house.”

“Keepers don’t…”

“What? Make spectacles of themselves with Bystanders in public?” Diana’s mimicry of her sister was cuttingly accurate. “If you wait until he comes up to the house, you’ll have to invite him in. If he comes in here, he’ll have to make nice with Mom and Dad. If, on the other hand, you meet out there, you can take him directly to your place and make nicer with each other. Your choice.”

Eyes locked on the figure getting out of the truck, Claire hesitated…

“You know Dad’ll want to show him the photo album.”

…and decided.

“Now haul ass out there and let him know he’s at the right house?” Austin snorted as he walked over to stand beside Diana at the open door. “I never knew you were such a romantic.”

Fireworks! Claire thought with the small part of her brain still functioning. Then she realized it was just the Christmas lights on the front of the house reflecting in Dean’s glasses. He tasted like coffee and toothpaste. Or coffee-flavored toothpaste.

After a moment, she pulled her mouth far enough away from his to sigh, “You’re here.”

He smiled down at her, finding it just a little difficult to focus. “I’m here.”

“I’m glad you came.”

“I’m glad you called.”

“I can’t hear them.”

“Lucky you,” Austin muttered, moving away from the open door. “If I have to hear any more, I’m going to hork up a hairball. That dialogue is so banal she should have run into his arms in slow motion.”

“There’s a foot of snow on the path,” Diana reminded him. She took another look. “Or rather there was.” The snow beneath Dean’s work boots and Claire’s running shoes had melted and the cleared area was spreading fast. Peering through fog created by the sudden, localized heat, she grinned and yelled, “Get a room!”

“Diana?”

“Mom.” Diana pulled the door closed as she turned. There were some things that shouldn’t be shared across the generations. Third Eye Blind and bicycle shorts topped the list, but watching Claire suck face with a hunka hunka burning love in the front yard followed close behind. Most of the time, Diana tried to be sensitive to parental feelings. “What can I do for you?”

“Was that Dean’s truck I heard?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Has Claire gone out to meet him?”

“Yes, she has.”

“Is she going to bring him inside to say hello to the rest of us?”

“I somehow doubt it.”

Martha Hansen studied her younger daughter’s expression. “I see. It’s like that, is it? Well, good.”

“Good?”

“Yes, good. I like Dean, and I hope he and Claire will find happiness together. Not many Keepers manage to find someone to share their lives with,” she added, shooting a pointed look at her younger daughter. “Most of you are such arrogant know-it-alls that you end up old and alone.”

“Yeah, yeah, if we end up old at all.” Diana waved off the warning. Since she had every intention of going out young in a blaze of glory, it was moot. “So you don’t mind about the hot monkey sex in the front yard?”

Martha’s smile grew slightly wistful. “Your father and I were like that when we first got together. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”

“Eww, gross!” The list of not to be shared was hurriedly revised, parental coupling confidences now moved into the primary position.

“Shouldn’t I go in and say hello to your parents?”

Dad’ll want to show him the photo album.

“No.”

Dean pulled back reluctantly, tracing a line of kisses up her face as he lifted his head. “Claire, it’s polite.”

He was never impolite. Claire didn’t think he could be. “If a little old lady showed up right now,” she murmured while nibbling on his chin, “would you help her across the street?”

“What little old lady?” Although cognitive thought was becoming increasingly difficult, he was fairly certain they hadn’t been talking about little old ladies.

“Any little old lady.”

Now he was confused. Separating his chin from her mouth with a soft sucking sound, he looked around, wondering where the fog had come from. “I don’t see a little old lady.”

“There is no little old lady.” Claire made a mental note to be more specific in the future. “I was just making the point that there’s a time and a place for everything, and this is not the time to be with my parents.” She glanced down.

Dean’s cheeks flushed crimson. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away from his jeans. “Claire, I…” Then the length of her thigh brushed against his, and he made a sort of choking noise deep in his throat as he bent his mouth back to hers.

“I have my own apartment over the garage,” she murmured against his lips. “It’s not actually part of my parents’ house. Technically, we can go directly up there without being rude.”

“Claire…”

“If we go up there now, I can give you your Christmas present.”

“Christmas isn’t until tomorrow,” he protested weakly.

Twisting free of his grip, she slid her hands up under his sweater until she could feel his heart slamming against his ribs so hard that the muscle sheathing them shivered under the impact. She shivered a bit herself and murmured, “Do you really want to wait?”

“Way to go, Dean! He’s carrying her up the stairs. Ouch, that had to hurt. Hit her head on the side of the garage.” Shaking her own head in sympathy, Diana shifted position slightly to get a better angle on the scene. “She seems to be okay—they’re carrying on. Probably has so many endorphins in her system she can’t feel a thing.”

“Diana!” Her mother twitched the curtains out of her grip. “That’s quite enough of that!”

The garage having just cut off her line of sight, Diana shrugged and stepped away from the window, raising both hands in exaggerated surrender. “Not a problem, Mom, your wish is my command.”

“Good.” Martha tucked a strand of graying hair back behind her ear and folded her arms. “Then let me make that wish just a little more specific—no more spying on your sister, period. No hidden microphones. No web cams. No scrying in any form; no mirrors, no bowls of water, and especially no entrails. I need those giblets for the gravy. You will leave Claire and Dean alone while they…”

Diana’s eyebrows rose to touch her hairline.

“Yes, well, just never mind what they’re doing. They’re adults, and it’s none of your business. Or mine or your father’s,” she added before Diana could speak. “When you’re out on your own, we will extend the same courtesy to you, so there’s no need to look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like your life is a never-ending battle against personal oppression. You’re seventeen, Claire’s twenty-seven.”

“And Dean’s twenty-one.”

“Which means?”

“Absolutely nothing. I’m happy she’s happy. I’m happy they’re happy. I’m happy you’re happy. But, all things considered, you might want to have the fire department on standby.”

“The fire department is on standby,” her mother pointed out dryly. “Or have you forgotten what happened last Christmas when the star of Bethlehem went supernova.”

Diana had long since stopped protesting that they’d have won the Christmas lighting contest had the fire department simply damped down the crèche like she’d asked them to instead of putting the whole thing out because her parents always answered with irrelevancies. The roof had been perfectly safe. Essentially safe. Slightly scorched…

A short time later, having been forced to eat a piece of fruitcake and talk to Aunt Corinne on the phone, she straightened up from the wall that separated her room from Claire’s apartment, set the empty glass down on her desk, and sighed. “That works on television.”

“So does David Duchovny but he’s got just as slim a connection to the real world,” Austin reminded her, eye narrowed as he watched her push a handful of pencils one at a time, into a mug. “I thought your mother told you to leave them alone.”

“She didn’t specifically say no eavesdropping.” Picking a pair of sweatpants off the floor, Diana poked her finger through a ragged hole in the knee.

“She didn’t specifically tell you not to feed the cat, but I notice you’ve managed to resist.”

“You just ate some fruitcake.”

“Your point?”

“Do cats even like fruitcake?”

“Does anyone?”

She threw the sweatpants into the laundry basket and dropped into her desk chair, spinning herself petulantly around and around. “You’re being awfully understanding considering that Claire’s shut you out, too—after we got them together.”

“If you think I’m interested in watching talking monkey sex,” Austin snorted, “think again.”

“That’s hot monkey sex.”

“You’re all talking monkeys from where I sit. And I’ve seen that friction thing; it never really changes.”

A six-car passenger train roared across the room and into a tunnel.

“Okay,” he said thoughtfully when the noise had died. “That was different.”

“Diana!”

Waving away the lingering scent of burning diesel, Diana opened her bedroom door, fingers hooked in the trim as she leaned out into the hall. “Yeah, Dad?”

“What the bloody blue blazes was that?”

“I think it was a euphemism.” The vibrations had knocked askew a set of family photographs hanging on the wall across from her. A previously serious portrait of Claire had developed a distinctly cheesy grin. “Or maybe a metaphor.”

“Well, don’t do it again!”

“It wasn’t me!” She closed the door, not quite slamming it, and walked to the bed. “Why does he always assume it’s me?” she demanded, scooping Austin up into her arms.

“It always is you.”

“Not this time.”

“Natural mistake, though. Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Trust me. Three, two, one…”

The possibilities opened.

Wide.

“Holy shit!” One hand pressed against the glass, Brent Carmichael turned away from the window and stared at the half dozen firefighters standing behind him. Behind them, the cards they’d abandoned lay spread out on the table. “Did you see that?”

“I’m still seeing it,” one of the others muttered trying to blink away afterimages.

“It came from the direction of the Hansen place.”

Someone whimpered.

The silence stretched past the point where it could be comfortably broken and then went on a little longer. Finally, the shift senior, a man with eighteen years experience and two citations for bravery, cleared his throat. “I didn’t see anything,” he said.

A mumbled chorus of, “Neither did I,” followed the collective sigh of relief.

“But…” Brent looked out into the darkness of Christmas Eve, at the starlit beauty of the velvet sky above, at the strings of brightly colored Christmas lights innocently mirroring that beauty below, and remembered other visits to the Hansen house. Or tried to. Most of the memories were fuzzy—and not warm and fuzzy either, but fuzzy like trying to pull in the WB without either a satellite dish or cable, picture skewed, one word in seven actually audible. And the harder he tried, the less he could remember.

Except for the incident with the burning bush. That, he couldn’t forget.

Denial became the only logical option.

Happy to have that settled, he turned back to the game. “What moron just chose Charmander against Pikachu?”

The light should have dissipated.

Should have.

Didn’t.

Instead, it found itself in an empty, cavernous room in a large, two-story brick building. Caught by the power woven into the snowflake pattern, it rose up through the crepe-paper streamers toward the ceiling, was filtered and purified, and poured back through the center hole.

More now than merely a glorious possibility, it hovered for a moment above center court, then, following the pull of need, it passed through the window, and out into the night.

Lena thoughtfully flicked her lighter on and off. She’d already taken the batteries out of the smoke detector in the hall, but after a certain point that became moot and her father would come charging down into her room demanding to know if she was trying to burn down the house.

There were six candles burning under her angel poster, nine among the angel figurines on her dresser, three votive candles in angel candle holders, and one in a souvenir Backstreet Boys mug on the bedside table.

Close to the limit.

One more, she decided, and started searching through the stubs of melted wax for something worth burning. Nothing. Unfortunately, that one more had gone from being an option to being a necessity during the search. Slowly, she turned to her bookshelf.

The angel standing beside her CD player was an old-fashioned figure about a foot high in long flowing robes and wings. He was even carrying a harp. His gold halo circled a pristine white wick.

Heart pounding, Lena approached with the lighter. This had been her very first angel, plucked out from between a broken Easy-Bake oven and a stack of macramé coasters at a neighborhood yard sale. Oh, please, she thought as the flame touched the wick. Let this sacrifice be enough to make it happen!

There was no need to be more specific about what it was. It was always the same thing. She’d wished for it on a thousand stars, her last three birthday cakes, the wishbones of four turkeys, Christmas and Thanksgiving, and with a penny in every body of water she passed. The school custodian had fished enough pennies out of the toilets in the girls’ washrooms that he’d treated himself to a package of non-Board of Education toilet paper—the kind that couldn’t be fed through a laser printer.

The wick darkened, a bit of wax melted on the top of the golden head, and then the flame roared up high enough to scorch the ceiling, filling Lena’s basement bedroom with light.

The light moved slowly away from the candle, into the center of the room.

“It’s an angel,” Lena cried, eyes watering, eyebrows slightly singed.

And because she believed, it was.

The light took form.

And substance.

And became everything a not quite seventeen-year-old girl wanted in an angel.

In the moment of making, the door flew open and a large, dark-haired man, waving one hand in front of his face to clear the smoke, burst into the room. “Lena! How many times have I told you…?” His eyes widened, and his bellow became a roar. “What the devil are you doing in my daughter’s room?”

Lena knew that angels were sexless, but her father didn’t know that the beautiful young man with the bicolored hair was an angel, and his belief in what he was seeing was as strong as hers.

The last little bit of substance formed out of a father’s fears.

And, all things considered, it wasn’t actually that little.

His expression a cross between confusion and panic, the angel ducked the first blow, slipped under an outstretched hand, and ran for the bedroom door. He would have made it except that he hit a bit of unexpected anatomy on the edge of a chair and the sudden pain dropped him to his knees. The second blow connected.

Lying on the floor, hands clasped between his legs, he stared blearily up at the angry man standing above him, and wondered just what exactly was going on.

He wasn’t the only one.

“What do you mean, he had no clothes when he got here?”

Diana, heavily shielded and doing her best impersonation of nothing at all, waited in the triangle of deep shadow behind the love seat, determined that this would be the year. From where she crouched, eyes grown used to the dark could see the entire fireplace—top to bottom, side to side—and, beyond it, the lower curve of the Christmas tree. On the mantel, beside the cards, was a glass of milk and three cookies. Homemade chocolate chip cookies, with the chips still soft from the oven. Only the best bait would slow him down.

She’d almost caught him a couple of times, but something had always distracted her at the crucial moment. When she was younger, she’d wanted to see him just for the sake of seeing him. Now, after so many failures, it had become a point of pride.

The instant camera she held had been in her stocking three years ago. She suspected he was taunting her.

A sudden clatter up on the roof brought a pleased smile—earlier in the day, she’d cleared away the snow that might muffle the first sounds of her quarry’s arrival.

A bit of soot fell from the chimney onto the hearth.

Show time.

Then something slammed against her shields and exploded into a rainbow of metaphysical light.

Blinded by the brilliant yellows and reds and greens, Diana stood, tipped a lamp over with her shoulder, caught it before it hit the floor, and stumbled out from behind the love seat. She could hear nothing over the thrumming of frustrated possibilities but when one hand brushed for an instant against fur trim, she took three quick pictures with the other.

Then the moment passed, and she could both see and hear.

The milk glass was empty, the cookies were gone. The stockings bulged.

Austin was lying on the hearth, a brand new calico square stuffed with catnip under one front paw. “Aren’t you getting a little old for this?” he sniffed.

“Isn’t he?” Blinking away the last of the afterimages, Diana dropped onto the sofa with a frustrated groan. “He’s never done that before.” Bending forward, she scooped the developing evidence up off the rug. “At least I…”

A familiar black-and-white face stared up at her from all three photographs.

Leaping up beside her, Austin nodded toward the middle picture. “Could I get a copy of this? You’ve caught my best side.”

It was the self-satisfied “Ho Ho Ho” drifting down the chimney that really hurt.

Head pillowed on Dean’s chest, Claire half woke to a sudden metaphysical prod. Still wrapped in a warm cocoon of exhaustion and fulfillment, slightly smug from having lived up to the expectations of all parties involved, she shunted it off into the barricade she’d set up years before when Diana had decided privacy was a relative term and then went back to sleep.

Every year, at the moment Christmas Eve became Christmas Day, a miracle was said to occur—animals were given a chance to speak.

In a cream-colored bungalow just outside Sandusky, Ohio, a small gray tabby with a white tip on her tail woke, stretched, and walked up the length of the body under the covers until she could poke a paw into a half-opened mouth.

Midnight. And the miracle.

“Hey. Wake up and feed me.”

Father Nicholas Harris stood in the open doorway of St. Patrick’s, shaking hands and wishing his parishioners would just go home. He loved celebrating the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve—it was one of the few masses in the year where the verb celebrate actually seemed to apply—but he’d been up early after a late night, and he was so tired he actually thought he’d seen the silhouettes of flying reindeer and a heavily laden sleigh cross the high arc of the window over the door during the second soloist’s somewhat shrill but enthusiastic rendition of “The Holly and the Ivy.”

“Father Nick, I’d like you to meet my sister Doris and her family.…”

He smiled, shook hands with a dozen strangers, declined his fourth invitation to Christmas dinner, and tried not to think of what the open door and the December night were doing to his heating bill. Finally, the end was in sight, only two more hands to shake.

“Father…”

One of Frank Giorno’s hands enclosed his in an unbreakable grip while the other grabbed a bit of jacket and dragged a young man forward.

“…this punk who showed up naked in my daughter’s bedroom believes he’s an angel, so I brought him to you.”

He didn’t know why he was in a small book-lined room, but since no one was yelling at him, or shaking him, or hitting him, things were looking up. Adjusting bits he wasn’t used to having pressure on, he studied the man behind the desk, recognized him as another servant of the light, and hoped that Lena’s father had been right during all the shouting and that this was where he was supposed to be.

Trying not to fidget under the searchlight intensity of his unwanted guest’s gaze, Father Harris shuffled a few irrelevant papers around and wondered irritably why Frank Giorno hadn’t just called the police. He had to be in denial about finding the young man in his daughter’s room. Granted the boy deserved points for originality in a bad situation, but what angel ever had bleached blond tips on short dark brown hair? Or managed to slouch in such a convincingly adolescent way? Or looked quite so confused? The boy’s eyes were…

…were…

Gold flecks in velvet brown brightened, merged, and became a window into…

…into…

Father Harris rubbed at his own eyes. He was far too tired to do any kind of counseling when he was not only seeing things but smelling grilled cheese sandwiches—his favorite food. Far, far too tired to wait for a stubborn teenager to speak first. “What’s your name, son?”

Name? Did he have a name? Everything had been named in the beginning so it was entirely possible. He started from the top, hoping something would sound familiar. There were only 301,655,722 angels after all, he’d have to reach it eventually.

“Son, your name?”

Startled, he grabbed one at random. “Samuel?”

“Are you asking?”

“No.” It had become his name. Whether it had been his name before was immaterial—he hoped.

“Samuel what?”

Was there more? He didn’t think so. “Just Samuel.”

Father Nicholas sighed. At this rate they’d still be sitting in his office on New Year’s. “What are you on, Samuel?”

That was easier. He glanced down. “Laminate.” When the priest made an unhappy face, he took a closer look. “Laminate flooring, in medium oak, three ninety-nine a square foot, twenty-year warranty.”

“No…”

“No?”

Something in the young man’s expression insisted that the question be answered, as asked. “Well, yes. How did you know?”

He shrugged matter-of-factly. “I have higher knowledge.” It was in the original specifications; higher knowledge, mobility, great hair, and he was supposed to have brought a message, although he didn’t actually know what the message was. Lena Giorno’s shaping had been a little vague about everything except the great hair. That, she’d been quite definite about.

“Higher knowledge about flooring?”

“Yes.” He waited for the priest to ask about other topics, but Father Harris only sighed again and ran a hand back through his hair.

“Okay, Samuel. Let’s start over. What did you take?”

He straightened, appalled at the question. “Nothing!”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. I swear to…you know.” One finger pointed toward the ceiling. “These clothes were given to me.” He glanced down at the front of his sweatshirt then back up again. “I don’t even know who Regis Philbin is.”

“Well, you’re probably the only person in North America who doesn’t,” the priest muttered. Then, raising his voice, he added, “Why were you in Lena Giorno’s bedroom?”

“She called me.”

“On the phone?”

“On a candle.”

“She called you on a candle?”

“Yes.”

Knowing Lena as he did, Father Harris took a shot in the dark. “An angel candle?”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re an angel?”

“Yes.”

Feeling as if he’d just won a game of twenty questions, Father Nicholas sank back in his chair. “You’re an angel because Lena wanted you to be an angel?”

Samuel nodded, happy that someone finally understood. “Yes. But her father expected me to be something else, so…” He spread his hands and looked down the length of his body. “…things got confused.”

“I’m sure they did.”

“I have genitalia, and I don’t know what to do with it. Them.”

“Genitalia?”

“You know, a…”

A hurriedly raised hand cut off the details. “I know.”

“It’s making everything…strange.”

Now that was a complaint the priest had heard before. While he’d never heard it put quite that way, a good ninety-nine percent of the teenage counseling he did involved raging hormones. It felt so good to be back on familiar ground, he thought he might as well start off with a few stock platitudes. “If you want to maintain your self-respect, it’s important to fight the temptations of the flesh.”

“Okay. But what do I do with them during the battle?”

And the familiar ground shifted. More tired than he could ever remember being, Father Harris rubbed at his temples and muttered, “Try tucking left.”

Fabric rustled.

Fine. I surrender. I don’t know what he’s on, but I’m going to let him sleep it off. In the morning, when we’re both coherent, I’ll find out just who he is and what I should do with him.

Next morning…

“Merry Christmas, Dean.” Hurrying across the living room to take his free hand in hers, Martha Hansen reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

“Mrs. Hansen…”

“Martha. We’re glad you could join us.”

Holding his other hand, Claire smiled up at him. “Told you.”

“You told him what, Claire?”

She switched the smile to her mother. “That he had no reason to be nervous.”

“It wasn’t your mother…” Dean began in a low voice, but Claire cut him off before he could finish, adjusting her grip to drag him across the room.

“Dad? This is Dean.”

John Hansen balanced his mug on the arm of the sofa, stood, and shook Dean’s hand. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, son. The rest of the family has had only good things to say.”

“Not quite true. I told you I thought he had a lot of nerve telling me how to behave and that, even though he may be woogie, I couldn’t see what Claire saw in him. OW!” Diana glared across the room at her sister.

“Context, dear,” her mother admonished. “You’d almost got him sacrificed. And, Claire, you know better than to use the possibilities like that.”

“Which is why I threw a hazelnut.”

“I apologize; your aim is improving.”

“What about me?” Diana demanded, dropping down on the floor by the Christmas tree.

“You should also apologize. Dean’s a guest in this house, and you’re being deliberately provoking.”

All three women turned to look at Dean, whose ears darkened from scarlet to crimson. “That’s okay. It’s…uh…I mean…”

“Dean?”

He turned toward Claire’s father wearing the same desperately hopeful expression as a Buffalo Bills fan during NFL playoffs. “Yes, sir?”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come on, the pot’s in the kitchen. We’ll go get some for everyone.” Detaching Claire’s hand from Dean’s arm, he drew the younger man out of the living room, saying, “I have this sudden urge to build a workshop. You’ve got no idea how great it is to have a little more testosterone in this house.”

“Like some of us had a choice about that,” Austin snorted from the top of the recliner as they passed.

Dean had been a little unsure of what to expect when he walked into the Hansens’ living room with Claire that morning. After all, everyone in the room would know exactly how they’d spent the night. He didn’t regret any of it—although his memory of times five and six had grown a little hazy—and he felt as though things were now back on track, that he was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing with his life.

But he could see how things might be awkward.

It didn’t help that both Claire’s parents were Cousins, less powerful than Keepers but still among those who helped keep the metaphysical balance. Dean had learned from experience how painful an unbalanced metaphysical could be.

He was fairly certain Mrs. Hansen had liked him when they’d met back at the guesthouse, but Mr. Hansen was a total unknown. Following the older man into the kitchen, he searched for the right thing to say. Found himself saying, “I really love your daughter, sir.”

“John.”

“Sorry?”

“If you’re going to be a part of Claire’s life, and all signs seem to indicate you are, you might as well call me John.”

“Yes, sir. John. Signs?”

“You know…” He set down the coffeepot and waved his hands around in the universal symbol for spookiness. “…signs: bright lights in the sky, heart-shaped frost patterns on the windows, K-Tel’s love songs of the ’70s mysteriously cued up on the CD player.”

“I see.”

“Really?”

“No, sir. But I know how I feel and I know how Claire feels, and that’s what matters.”

Claire looked more like her father than her mother, Dean realized as the older man’s mouth curled into a familiar smile and he clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. Give me a minute to finish up here, and we’ll get back to the ladies.”

“Women,” corrected a bit of empty air over the sink.

John raised a hand and there was a muffled, “Ow!” from the other room. “And don’t ever expect any privacy,” he sighed.

“No, sir.”

Glancing around the kitchen, Dean noted the juvenile artwork framed and hung in the breakfast nook, the souvenir tea towel stamped with the ubiquitous My daughter closed a hole to Hell and all I got was this lousy tea towel, the simmering pot of giblets, the mess.…His eyes narrowed. The early morning stuffing of the turkey had left bread crumbs and less easily identifiable debris scattered along six feet of counter. It looked as though the turkey had put up a fight. And very nearly won. He picked up the dishcloth without thinking and by the time the tray of coffee was ready, the counter was spotless.

As John handed Dean the tray, he nodded approvingly. “If you ever stop loving Claire, feel free to keep coming around.”

“With a little scouring powder, I could get those stains out of the sink.”

“Later, son.”

Back in the living room, Dean had barely handed the tray in turn to Martha when Claire stuffed a large, lumpy, striped sock into his hands. It took him a moment to realize what it was. “There’s a stocking for me?”

“Hey, the big guy doesn’t make mistakes.” Diana smashed a chocolate orange apart against the side of the fireplace. “Five people in the house, five filled stockings.”

“The big guy?”

“Santa. St. Nick. Father Christmas.”

“Is real…” And then he remembered the sound of Hell arguing with itself. “…ly efficient.”

Claire patted his arm as he sat. “Nice recovery.”

“Thank you.”

A couple of hours later, after the stockings were emptied and presents had been unwrapped and exclaimed over and rather too much chocolate had been eaten for the time of day, Claire took a long swallow of lukewarm coffee and sank back against Dean’s arm. “This has been the best Christmas ever. It’s been…” She cocked her head and frowned. “…quiet.”

Diana looked up, started to protest, paused, and nodded. “Too quiet,” she agreed.

Austin dove under the couch.

“Do you feel any kind of a Summons at all?”

“No. You?”

“No. Not since last night. I felt the prod and…Of the Summons, you deviant!”

Diana raised both hands. “Hey. Didn’t say anything.”

“I saw your face.”

“We’ll deal with Diana’s face later, Claire,” their mother sighed. “Right now, what happened last night?”

Claire chewed her lower lip, trying to remember. “It woke me and I…oh, no. I shunted it into the privacy barrier. It must still be there.”

Martha Hansen shook her head. “Claire, I realize you were a little preoccupied last night, but that was very irresponsible of you. Release it at once.” As Claire reached into the possibilities, she added a worried, “Let’s just hope it wasn’t urgen…”

Every light on the Christmas tree exploded, and as brightly colored shrapnel ricocheted off hastily erected shields, the angel on the top of the tree broke into a loud chorus of “Day Dream Believer.”

“That,” Austin observed from under the couch, “doesn’t sound good.”