Free The Summoning by Carol Wolf Page A

it’s better not to try. So I said, “Oh? And will the wolf kind soon hear of another place they should be looking?”
    He smiled. “I don’t think so. We bears know how to keep our counsel. Not like some, who cry their business from the hilltops.”
    “It is said of the bears…” I began, stung.
    “Yes?” His smile broadened, and he inclined forward to loom over me.
    “That they are graceful, courteous and brave,” I finished.
    “That is all true,” he admitted gravely, straightening.
    “And very vain.”
    He laughed, and the other bear in the doorway laughed, too. Jacob lifted a hand to Tamara and went out.
    Tamara motioned me to an empty chair and cleared a corner of her huge table, piling a box of linen shawls on top of a stack of catalogues on the counter behind her. She had dark brown skin and an angular frame, and her every movement was precise, like a dancer. She sat down in the chair on the other side of the table’s corner. She didn’t offer a chair to Richard. He went to stand against the counter behind my chair. Her face might have been a model for one of the carved masks that hung in her store, with a heavy brow and sculpted cheekbones. Her expressions were as precise as her gestures. She was in her mid-thirties, but her eyes were older. She looked me over now with professional thoroughness.
    “This is a new occurrence, and full of omens: one of the wolf kind with a demon in her service.” She gave Richard another long, hard look, and then asked me, “Where is he from? How did he come to you?”
    I motioned to Richard to answer that question. He stepped up and began, “I was raised by the magician John Dee in 1583—”
    Tamara head went back and she launched into a peel of laughter. “Dr. John Dee? Oh, no—”
    “It is so,” Richard replied stiffly.
    “That amateur, that charlatan, that credulous old fool!” Tamara said when she could get out the words past her laughter. Finally she wiped her eyes. “So he did do it. He raised a demon.”
    “Or angel,” Richard said, his chin lifting.
    Her hand waved in the air at the detail. “Don’t you know what you are?” She shook her head. “Oh, goodness. Wait till I tell my sisters. Oh dear. Wait till I tell my mother!” She looked at Richard a little more kindly. “And you’ve been stuck here ever since?” When he nodded in answer, she surmised, looking him over, “Then you came here to learn about yourself.”
    Now that made sense to me. I looked up at Richard. He stood still as a dog that’s sighted game, so I could tell at once that he was interested, but he shook his head and answered her. “What I seek is protection from the Eater of Souls. Protection I will only gain if he is defeated.”
    She raised her brows at this, considering him. “And what you claim to offer us is what you may see in the cards?”
    “It’s more than that. These were given me by Dr. John Dee, who made them answer to me, so that I could answer to him. They will speak the truth to me of any question my master puts to me, present, past, and future. There are always questions that need answers, insights against the enemy it is useful to have.”
    Tamara lifted her hands, unbelieving. “But you are the Enemy!” she cried, pointing at him. “You are of the Enemy’s get.”
    Richard flushed to his ears. He raised his eyes and met hers for once. “Then isn’t it useful to know what the Enemy wants you to know?”
    She considered for a moment, her head to one side. I said, “Isn’t there a way to test what he’s saying?”
    Then she held out her hands for the cards. “Let me see your tarot deck.”
    He looked at me, and I nodded for him to hand them over. She glanced briefly at the pattern on the back, then she turned the cards over and spread them out on the table, now uncovering one, now covering another up again. She frowned at the medieval-looking paintings, their gaudy coloring, their seeming motion. She looked up at Richard. “What kind of