The Summoning

I crawled from our cubbyhole, looked, and listened. I waved Rae out.

"First thing I need to do is get money," I said. "I've got my dad's but we might need more. There's a daily withdrawal limit, and that's probably all I'll get, so I have to act fast, before they put a trace on it or freeze the account. Derek said the nearest ATM was —"

"What are you doing?" Rae asked.

"What?"

She took hold of my arm and pointed at the blood. "You don't need money; you need a doctor."

I shook my head. "I can't go to a hospital. Even if they haven't put out an APB on me yet, I'm too young. They'd call my Aunt Lauren —"

"I meant your Aunt Lauren. She's a doctor, isn't she?"

"N-no. I can't. She'd just take us back —"

"After they shot at us? I know you're mad at her right now, but you've told me how she's always worrying about you, always looking out for you, defending you. If you show up at her front door and say that Davidoff and his buds shot at you, even with tranquilizers, do you really think she'll march you back to Lyle House?"

“That depends on whether she believes me. A week ago, yes. But now?" I shook my head. "When she was talking to me about Derek, it was like I wasn't even Chloe anymore. I'm a schizophrenic. I'm paranoid and I'm delusional. She won't believe me."

"Then tell me exactly what the gun and the dart looked like, and I'll say I saw it, too. No, wait! The dart. Derek pulled one out of his shirt, right? Do you know where it is?"

"I —I think so." I thought back, pictured him dropping it in the delivery bay. "Yes, I know exactly where it is."

"Then let's go get it."

It wasn't that easy. For all we knew, the factory yard was swarming with cops searching for two teen runaways. But when we looked out, the only people we saw were a half-dozen factory workers, heading in to work Sunday overtime, laughing and talking, lunch pails swinging, takeout coffees steaming.

I took off my blood-soaked sweatshirt and swapped it for Liz's hoodie. Then we crept out, moving from cover to cover. No sign of anyone looking for us. That made sense. How many teenagers run away in Buffalo every day? Even escaping from a home for disturbed kids wouldn't warrant a full-out manhunt.

Last night, it had probably been only Lyle House employees chasing us. Maybe board members, like Tori's mother, more worried about the home's reputation than our safety. If they wanted to keep our escape quiet, they'd be gone before any factory employees arrived. By now they were probably in a meeting, deciding what to do and when to notify our parents —and the police.

I found the dart easily, and put it into my backpack. Then we headed for the business district, looping three blocks past Lyle House and keeping our eyes open. Nothing happened. We found a pay phone, I called for a cab, and gave the driver Aunt Lauren's address.

Aunt Lauren lived in a duplex near the university. When we walked up her steps, the Buffalo News was still there. I picked it up and rang the bell.

After a minute, a shadow passed behind the curtain. Locks clanked and the door flew open. Aunt Lauren stood there in a short bathrobe, hair wet.

"Chloe? Oh my God. Where —" She pulled the door open. "What are you doing here? Are you okay? Is everything all right?"

She tugged me inside by my injured arm and I tried not to wince. Her gaze shot to Rae.

"Aunt Lauren, this is Rae. From Lyle House. We need to talk to you."

As we went inside, I did a proper introduction. Then I told her the whole story. Well, the edited version. Very edited, with no mention of zombies, magic, or werewolves. The boys had been pla

She stared down at the dart, lying on her coffee table, on top of a stack of New Yorker magazines. She picked it up, gingerly, as if it might detonate, and turned it over in her hands.

"It's a tranquilizer dart," she said, voice barely above a whisper.

"That's what we thought."

"But — They shot this at you? At you?"

"At us."

She slumped back, leather squeaking under her.

"I was there, Dr. Fellows," Rae said. "Chloe's telling the truth."

"No, I —" She lifted her gaze to mine. "I believe you, hon. I just can't believe— This is so completely . . ." She shook her head.

"Where did you find Lyle House?" I asked.

She blinked. "Find?"

"How did you find it for me? In the yellow pages? Through a recommendation?"

"It came highly recommended, Chloe. Very highly. Someone at the hospital told me about it and I did all my research. Their recovery rate is excellent and they had glowing reports from patients and their families. I can't believe this happened."

So I hadn't randomly arrived at Lyle House. It'd been recommended. Did that mean anything? I fingered Liz's hoodie and thought about us —all of us. No ordinary group home would track runaways with tranquilizer guns. The ghost had been right. There was a reason we'd been at Lyle House and now, withholding the truth from Aunt Lauren, I could be putting her into danger.

"About the ghosts . . ." I began.

"You mean what that Gill woman said?" Aunt Lauren slapped the dart back onto the magazines with such force that the pile fell, magazines sliding across the glass table-top. "The woman is obviously in need of mental help herself. Thinking you can communicate with ghosts? One whiff of that to a review board and her license will be revoked. She'll be lucky if she isn't committed. No sane person believes people can speak to the dead."

Okay, forget the confession . . .

Aunt Lauren rose. "I'm going to start by calling your father, then my lawyer, and he can contact Lyle House."

"Dr. Fellows?"

Aunt Lauren turned to Rae.

"Before you do that, you'd better take a look at Chloe's arm."

Forty-six

AUNT LAUREN TOOK ONE look and freaked out. I needed stitches, immediately. She didn't have the supplies at home, and I had to have full medical attention. Who knew what I might have severed or what filth or germs might have been on that glass? While she was rebandaging me, she made me drink a bottle of Gatorade to replace any fluids I'd lost from bleeding. Within ten minutes, Rae and I were in the back of her Mercedes, tearing from her garage.

I dozed off before we reached the first traffic light. I supposed all those sleepless nights had something to do with that. Being in Aunt Lauren's car helped, with its familiar smell of berry air freshener and its soft beige leather seats and the faded blue spot where I'd spilled a slushie three years ago. Back home. Back to normal.

I knew it wasn't that simple. I wasn't back to normal. And Derek and Simon were still out there and I was worried about them. But even that worry seemed to fade as the car bumped along, like I was leaving it behind in another life. A dream life. Part nightmare, part . . . not.

Raising the dead, escaping from the clutches of an evil doctor, tearing through abandoned warehouses with people shooting at me. It all seemed so unreal in this familiar car, the radio station tuned to WJYE, my aunt laughing at something Rae said about her choice of music, saying I complained, too. So familiar. So normal. So comforting.

And, yet, even as I drifted off, I clung to the memories of that other life, where the dead came to life and fathers disappeared and sorcerers conducted horrific experiments and buried the bodies under the house and boys could make fog appear from their fingertips or turn into wolves. Now it was over and it was like waking up to discover I couldn't see ghosts anymore. The feeling that I'd missed out on something that would make my life tougher but might also make it different. An adventure. Special.