Read Online Summoning the Night by Jenn Bennett - Free Book Online Page A

life.
    Though it was somewhat comforting to listen to Jupe’s account of his day as we drove from La Sirena Junior High to their place, it wasn’t enough to stop my mind from wanderingto Dare’s request. Lon’s either, I guess, because he kept glancing at me while Jupe spiritedly yammered away from the backseat.
    It took us fifteen minutes to reach the ocean cliffs at the edge of La Sirena where they lived, another five to climb the winding road up the mountain. Towering redwoods, pines, and cypress trees blocked out the October sun until we ascended to the very top. Lon owned ten acres of prime Big Sur coastal land: part hilly forest, part clifftop beauty, and a short stretch of rocky beach about a quarter of a mile drop below it all. Amanda, in full-blown gossip mode, once told me that it was some of the most expensive real estate in the country. All I knew was that it was lush and beautiful and private, and that I’d spent so much time there recently, it was starting to feel like home.
    The house stood in a cleared section of land overlooking the blue Pacific, a blocky modern home with long horizontal lines, stackstone walls, and enormous plate-glass windows. Expensive and stylish, but not showy. I liked the way the stone and wood made it seem as if it was an organic part of the land.
    I also liked the acre-sized ring of stones that we crossed to get there—Lon’s house ward, the same one that he’d helped me build around my house, strengthened with strong protective magick. It kept out imps, potential robbers, and any other miscellaneous intruders. Most people intending harm wouldn’t be able to cross the ward. Anyone strong enough to manage it would be dropped to their knees by a debilitating, high-pitched noise, and we’d be alerted.
    As the car’s tires crunched over the circular gravel driveway in front of Lon’s house, I spotted two figures with aqua halos standing together at the front doors. Mr. and Mrs.Holiday lived in a small house at the edge of Lon’s seaside property. When his parents died nine years ago—just before his divorce—he hired them full-time to help take care of Jupe and tend to the house and land.
    I was a little shocked the first time I met them. “Mr.” and “Mrs.” were, in actuality, two women in their late sixties. They’d been together for forty years and married in the Netherlands before it was legal in the States. Jupe was the one responsible for nicknaming them Mr. and Mrs. when he was younger. They found it endearing, so it stuck.
    â€œOh, damn,” Mrs. Holiday called out to Jupe as we exited the SUV. “I was hoping you’d been kidnapped again. Then I could set fire to your room and be done with cleaning it.”
    â€œDream on, woman.”
    â€œJupe,” Lon complained crossly.
    â€œDream on, old lady,” Jupe amended with a teasing smile.
    Mrs. Holiday tried to swat at him, but missed when a dog barreled from behind her and lunged for Jupe. Foxglove was a sleek chocolate Lab with a purple collar, and she spent half her time patrolling the clifftop property, the other half trailing Jupe.
    â€œManaged to survive the school day, Jupiter?” Mr. Holiday inspected Jupe’s face while her partner reached for his backpack. They sported similar short, silvery hairdos and looked a bit like Martha Stewart circa 1995, dressed in khakis and billowing, long-sleeved shirts with the collars extended.
    â€œWhere’s Mr. Piggy?” Jupe asked as Foxglove gave him one last lick on the cheek.
    â€œProbably burrowed inside the garbage dump you call a dirty clothes pile,” Mr. Holiday said.
    I glared at Jupe. “He’s loose?” The last time Jupe let my hedgehog roam free in their house, Lon stepped on a shed quill with his bare feet. He was not happy.
    â€œI closed him up in his crate before school, I swear!” Jupe’s eyes darted between me and Mr.