The Summoner. Alisha Steele

      Alex sat at her vanity, brushing her long toffee-brown hair. One hundred strokes. Every night. Religiously. It didn’t matter that they’d proven it wasn’t at all beneficial and that it, in fact, caused breakage. It was a habit, and Alex Brannigan was nothing if not a slave to her habits.

      She’d already washed her face and gotten into her favorite nightie, a short white one with La Nightshirt in big black text across the front. It was so ancient that the fabric was practically see-through at her shoulders and across the top of her modest, B-cup breasts. And didn’t that make her feel older than dirt. She’d dated guys who were younger than her sleep apparel.

      “Yep, gettin’ old,” Alex grumbled, leaning in to examine her “not quite” wrinkles in the mirror. She scrunched up her face and pursed her full lips to see the lines more clearly. Nope, not quite wrinkles. Not yet…but soon. Wannabes, that’s what they were. Wannabe wrinkles.

      She put down the brush and reached for the new night cream she’d picked up that afternoon. It was guaranteed to make her skin look as dewy and fresh as a sixteen-year-old’s. After all, it had elasticin, whatever that was, and vitamin C! Alex snorted. That was probably twenty bucks well wasted. But hell, with her thirtieth birthday only three years away, she was more than willing to part with a little money in an honest search for the fountain of youth.

      She was wrestling with the anti-tamper seal that cosmetics manufacturers think is funny to Krazy Glue to the top of their products when the bathroom lights did that dimming thing, the one the lights always seemed to do right before the power cut out completely.

      “Shit!” she hissed, real panic tingeing her voice. “God-damned house!”

      Alex lived in an historic Queen Anne two-story complete with a turret room, two unnecessary balconies and abundant stained glass windows. It was lovely, a true pleasure to own—when the power and plumbing were actually working.

      “Please, please, please!” She leaped up from the low brass stool, but forgot that she had her left ankle hooked through the stool’s support bracket. Rather than the mad dash out the door she’d been trying to accomplish, all she managed to do was land face-first on the floor. The lights gave another feeble flicker before the room plunged into darkness.

      Alex moaned in terror as the familiar, sibilant voices swelled to life.

      “Aaalexxx…”

      “Alexaaandraaa…”

      “Hear me, Summoner…”

      All four walls of the bathroom—from waist height to the ceiling—were covered in mirrors. It was a feature that had almost dissuaded her from buying the place. Honestly, what was the look they were going for, Victoriana meets the Playboy Mansion? The fact that no one should have mirrored anything in a period home wasn’t the issue—it was the mirrors themselves. Or rather, what lurked inside them.

      But Alex refused to live her life in fear. So she’d gone ahead with the purchase with plans to have the mirrors ripped out at the earliest possible opportunity. It was an opportunity that, unfortunately, hadn’t come yet. She wasn’t even finished unpacking; this was only her second week in the house.

      Alex kicked her foot, shaking off the stool and sending it skittering across the tiles. Taking care to keep her head well below the white wainscoting, she scrambled on hands and knees toward the door. There was no moon out tonight and the room was completely black. On the one hand, she was grateful for that. It meant she couldn’t see the owners of those whispering voices beckoning to her from within the glass, the half-formed ghosts that always appeared to her in darkened mirrors. On the other hand, it also meant she misjudged where the exit was by a good foot and a half. Alex, with lowered head, slammed full tilt into the bathroom wall.

      “Ahh, there’re the lights,” she mumbled as she crumpled into an undignified heap. Indeed there were lights now, pretty white and purple ones that danced playfully across her vision.

      Alex laid her face against the deliciously cool floor and succumbed to unconsciousness.

      * * * *

      This dream again?

      How fabulous.

      Not.

      Alex tentatively touched the egg-sized knot gracing her forehead. It hurt! People weren’t supposed to feel real pain in dreams. She knew that. But apparently she was an exception. Pain. Pleasure. Hot. Cold. Her subconscious faithfully rendered each sensation.

      Her breath misted the already thickly fogged air around her, and she was still clad in just her short nightgown. Alex wrapped her arms around her torso, making a valiant attempt to ignore the chills racking her body, and took stock of her surroundings.

      It had been almost ten years since she’d been treated to this particular nightmare. Alas, it looked like nothing much had changed. It was still a never-ending plain of murky darkness, and it still appeared to be full of vague bogeymen whose only motivation, so far as she could tell, was to torment her with their calls while staying just out of sight, hiding in the edge of her peripheral, helped in their shyness by the eternal gray, unrelenting fog.

      And yes, it was still a scary, sucky place to find herself.

      As if on cue, the voices started up again. The sounds were so much more chilling, so much closer, on this side of the glass.

      “The Summoner…”

      “She has come…”

      “Alex…”

      “Alexandr—”

      Her name rose on a growling howl, only to abruptly cut off.

      Alex whirled in place, trying to catch sight of her tormentors, but the mist was too dense. All she caught were hints of large, misshapen forms sliding inhumanly fast through the fog. Her skin was already goose-pebbled from the cold air but, nonetheless, it tried to tighten even further. Her hair did its best to lift straight off her body, as if it were planning to leave regardless of whether she was fool enough to stay.

      From previous experience, Alex knew that trying to find a way out would be futile. There wasn’t one. And though she had always awoken after her regulation eight hours, often more tired than when she’d fallen asleep, while she was here time stood still. This was eternity, and she was trapped in it.

      She twirled again when unseen hands stroked her back, only to lose her footing and stumble to her knees in the gray mud. Her admirer, as usual, was nowhere to be seen.

      “Aaalexxx…”

      “Shit!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She hated feeling alone and afraid. In her real life, she was always strong. People admired her for her calm manner, for her level-headedness in the face of any crises, for her guts. She couldn’t have run the Seattle chapter of Dovescot, a refuge for battered women, without her share of guts. Many was the time she’d chased a pissed-off Bubba from the front lawn of the sprawling women’s shelter with only a rifle and her own unswerving faith in her invincibility. Never mind that she was only five-two and weighed all of a hundred pounds; Alex knew she could take those wife-beaters down, and when they looked into her cold blue eyes, the bastards usually realized that they weren’t