Summoning the Night (4 page)

“We're fine,” I said.

Her face softened. “I called that big man to come guard the door next week during Halloween business.”

“Who? Charlie?”

She ignored me, stopping a couple of feet in front of Jupe to dart a critical eye up and down his lanky form. “So . . . you are the kid?”

Jupe froze, a deer in headlights, while taking off his rain-drenched coat. Kar Yee had that effect on people. I'm not sure if it's her gratingly honest demeanor or the bored-but-dangerous look in her eyes, but most of our regulars steer clear of her.

“This is Jupiter Butler,” I said. “He goes by Jupe.”

“Tall,” she observed.

Jupe remembered how to move and cleared his throat. “I've grown three inches this past year.” He lifted both eyebrows expectantly, waiting for her to be impressed by this tidbit.

“Hmm . . .” Kar Yee took a step closer and measured him with her outstretched hand. “Just how tall are you? It's hard to tell under all this hair.”

“Five-nine and three-quarters,” he said very seriously. “My dad says I'll be way taller than him by the time I go to
high school. That's next year, by the way.” Without looking, he reached behind him to set his coat on a bamboo barstool and missed. Neither of them seemed to notice when it hit the floor. I grumbled as I picked it up, then hauled a bag of lemons behind the bar.

Jupe eased onto a stool with the smarmy pizzazz of a Wayne Newton impersonator. He braced his arm against the edge of the bartop as the two Earthbounds examined each other's halos, hers more an aqua-blue compared to his pale green. “I've talked to you on the phone a couple of times when I've called here for Cady,” Jupe pointed out. “You were kinda mean, but I didn't mind. I don't like weak women. I like warriors.”

Kar Yee leaned against the bar, hand on hip. “Is that so?”

“Yep. My dad says that if you want to be a warrior, you should be able to take care of business and not be afraid to speak the truth.”

“Oh,
really
? Is that why he's hot and bothered for Arcadia here?” Kar Yee tossed an accusatory glance my way. She was well aware that honesty wasn't one of my strong suits.

“Probably,” Jupe confirmed. “My dad says he likes her so much that if she kicked him in the balls, he'd just thank her.”

I groaned at Jupe and struggled with the plastic netting on one of the lemon bags. Kar Yee laughed for the first time in . . . weeks, actually. Loud and genuine.

“Sounds like your dad is pussy-whipped,” Kar Yee said. “Do you know what that means?”

If he didn't have firsthand experience with the term, he damn well knew what it meant, all right. His nostrils widened as a lurid smirk transformed his face. And just like that, my world crumbled. The kid I'd played video games with after school yesterday was suddenly a horny teenager. And he was crushing on my best friend.

“Holy Whore, Kar Yee,” I complained. “Shut the hell up, would you?”

Too late. He was already moonstruck.

“What's your knack?” he asked.

“Do you want me to tell you or show you?”

“Kar Yee!” I snapped.

“I was just teasing,” she said to me, then leaned closer to Jupe. “I can make people afraid.”

“Really?”

“Really. My knack increases anxiety.” Very effectively, in fact. Though it didn't last long, she could scare the bejesus out of an entire room with a little bit of effort.

“I can make people do what I want,” Jupe blurted.

“Is that right?” Kar Yee said, as if he'd just told us he was an astronaut. “Aren't you a little young to have a knack?”

“Yes, he is,” I said.

“I'm an early bloomer,” he argued.

Kar Yee smiled and poked a slender finger into his bony chest. “I like you, Jupiter. You're tall, good-looking, and you make me laugh. When you're older, give me a call.”

Jupe tore his cell out of his jeans pocket. “Why wait? What's your home number?”

I reached over the bar and smacked him on the arm. “Don't do it, Kar Yee. He'll be texting you from school every half hour. Trust me.” Yesterday's smorgasbord of texts from Jupe included three general requests about what I was doing, one urgent message begging me to help him cheat on his English test, and two musings about possible magick spells I should work on (i.e., supercharging his dog, Foxglove, so she could run faster). If I didn't respond right away, he'd text twenty more times to ask if I'd gotten his original message. When I couldn't reply with a proper answer, I'd somehow
agreed to use Lon's generic text reply: LUBIB. That was shorthand for “Love you but I'm busy.” Jupe said the “love you” part was his personal addition to Lon's former canned response of BUSY, insisting that it detracted from the sting of being snubbed.

Before Kar Yee could debate whether it was a wise idea to give a teenage kid her digits, someone pounded on the door and Amanda's shadowy face pressed against the window bars. Kar Yee sauntered away to let her inside.

“Whew! What a storm.” Amanda closed her umbrella and shook out her long, sun-drenched locks as Kar Yee locked the door behind her. “Oh, hey, Cady. I didn't know you were working today.”

“I'm just dropping off fruit. Toni's tending bar tonight. This is Lon's son, by the way. Jupe, this is Amanda, our senior server.”

“Oh, I know who he is!” she said brightly. “You go to school with my cousin, Rosy. I'm from La Sirena, too. My parents own Three Dwarves Pottery Studio in the Village.” The Village was the tourist center of the small beach community, and Amanda's family's studio one of the busiest spots—less to do with their pottery skills and more because Amanda and her parents gossip like it's an Olympic sport and they're going for the gold.

“Rosy's pretty cool,” Jupe confirmed casually, “and I know your parents' place. Next to the crappy ice cream shop that serves freezer-burned Rocky Road.”

Amanda laughed. “Yeah, not my favorite either. Are you spending the weekend with Cady?”

“Lon's out of town,” I answered. “Jupe's staying with me tonight.”

He leaned against the bar, readying himself to charm girl
number two. At least he didn't seem traumatized by our run-in with Methbrain in the parking garage.

Amanda set a tinkling box on the bartop—new mummy mugs that her parents had designed for our two-day Halloween promo. Kar Yee came up with the bright idea to charge patrons twenty dollars for an exclusive holiday drink served in collectible mugs that customers could keep. If we could unload all three hundred mugs, we'd make a nice haul.

“So,
huge
news from La Sirena.” Amanda pried up the edge of the box tape with her fingernail. “Another kid went missing. Dustin Chapman—fifteen-year-old son of a wealthy broker.”

“What?” Jupe said. “I know that guy!”

Amanda's brow furrowed. “Oh, honey, I'm so sorry.”

“I mean, kind of know him,” he admitted. “My dad knows his dad. He goes to private school. What happened?”

“His parents said he was taking out the garbage last night. When he didn't come back in the house, they looked outside and found trash scattered all over the yard. Dustin was gone.” Amanda ripped the tape off the box with a violent pull. “There was blood on the driveway.”

“Blood?” Jupe squeaked.

“Yeah. So awful. He's the second kid to go missing in La Sirena. You've heard what everyone's saying?”

He nodded seriously. “The Snatcher.”

Kar Yee frowned. “Snatcher?”

“Some guy who kidnapped teens thirty years ago around Halloween,” Amanda explained. “He took seven kids in a couple of weeks. The day after Halloween—All Saints' Day—their names were found carved into a circle of trees in Sandpiper Park—just outside the Village—down on the beach. The cops never uncovered who did it, and the kids were never seen again. No bodies ever found.”

“Is this a real crime, or just an urban legend?” I said. “It sounds made up.”

“Oh, it's real,” Jupe assured me.

“Look it up on the internet,” Amanda challenged. “Sometimes you can even find the original police photos of the circle of trees, but most of the sites that put them up get pressured by the families to take them down. They closed the park after it happened. Ten years later, they leveled the trees and installed a stone memorial. Families of the kids still bring flowers and candles there on Halloween. Totally spooky.”

“It's supposed to be haunted,” Jupe added.

I rolled my eyes. “You know damn well there's no such things as ghosts.”

“Are you sure?” Wary eyes slid toward Amanda. I could easily guess his thoughts—he was questioning the fact that she was the only person in the room without a halo.

“She's not a savage,” I said. Savages are humans who don't believe in the existence of Earthbounds, magick, or anything else supernatural. Most humans can't see halos—with my preternatural sight, I was an exception—but some, like Amanda, take our word for it.

In Amanda's case, she had an extra push from an early age. “Ugly Duckling,” she announced with a raised hand, using the Earthbound term for nondemonic offspring. Her mother is human, father Earthbound. And, like other kids born from an Earthbound-human couple, Amanda is 100 percent human: no halo, no knack.

“Oh, cool. Anyway, I still think ghosts exist,” Jupe said stubbornly. “My dog sees things that I can't. None of the Earthbounds at my school have seen ghosts, but everyone says you get a weird feeling around that memorial stone in Sandpiper Park.”

Amanda nodded. “You need to be careful, Jupe. Don't go anywhere alone. You could end up like Dustin—one minute you're hauling out the garbage, the next you're gone. Poof! Until Halloween's over, you better make sure you've got someone with you at all times.”

“Damn. It's not safe
anywhere
.” Under the bar lights, the faint smattering of freckles over Jupe's nose and cheekbones seemed to darken against his pebble-brown skin.

“That is,
if
there's a Halloween,” Amanda amended. “Some crazy civic watch group is trying to get Halloween festivities canceled. They're gonna be on the morning news tomorrow, trying to scare the public into supporting them. And not just in La Sirena. Morella, too. They want to cancel the Morella Halloween Parade and ban trick-or-treating throughout the entire county.”

“What?” Jupe and Kar Yee said in chorus.

“No way! I've been wanting to go to the city parade for years and Cady promised to take me! They can't do this! My birthday's on Halloween!”

“I don't give a damn bout the parade,” Kar Yee said, “except that it's bad for business and I've just paid for three hundred mummy mugs!”

“Nobody's canceling Halloween, for the love of Pete,” I said.

“They'd better not.” Kar Yee scowled at Amanda, as if it were her fault for bringing bad news into the bar. Still, she had a point. For demons, Halloween was like St. Paddy's Day or Cinco de Mayo. Last year we cleared almost $10,000 on Halloween night alone—not to mention the considerable upswing in profits the week before. And that was
without
the mummy mugs.

Amanda toyed with the braided hemp bracelets on her
wrist. “Whether they cancel it or not, it's still scary that kids are being taken. I wonder if it's some copycat crime?”

Whatever it was, she needed to shut the hell up about it in front of Jupe. Tonight was the first time he'd be spending the night at my house, and I just wanted to have a normal, problem-free weekend with the boy while Lon was gone, but that was looking like a pipe dream at this point. Let's see: nearly mugged in parking garage, check; minor in bar, check; underage lust kindled by best friend, check; scary child-snatcher rumors, kaboom.

Good job, Arcadia Bell.

I spent the rest of the day doing my best to keep Jupe's mind off the Snatcher, which is probably why he was able to sucker me into hauling him to a downtown comic book shop, where he managed to drop his entire weekly allowance in five minutes. We spent the rest of the night at my place watching movies and playing with my pet hedgehog, Mr. Piggy. I finally got the two of them to conk out in my guest room sometime after three in the morning, and gladly succumbed to exhaustion myself shortly after.

But sleep didn't last long.

I sat up in bed a few hours later, groggy and disoriented. Steamy light floated out from the cracked door to the master bath. Someone was in the shower. My momentary panic cleared when I noticed a suitcase on the floor and one of the drawers in my bureau standing open: Lon's drawer. Our big commitment step. I cleaned it out for him a couple of weeks ago. Though he'd only stayed over once, it still felt satisfying that he kept a few things at my house. In turn, he generously gave me an entire side of his walk-in closet. Walk-in “room” was more like it—the closet was big enough to hold a dressing bench and built-in wooden island in the center with a
thousand drawers.
My
closet had louvered doors circa 1975 that were covered in dust and constantly falling off the track.