Page 82 of Crossroads Magic
That it would be a mundane, modern object like a hockey puck took a moment of adjustment. My mother had always called it a “token”. She hadn’t called it a rock, or a ball, or anything specific. A token was an object that represented something else. It was a sign or a symbol. A ticket was a token; it represented permission to enter, or your clothes that you pick up from the cleaners in exchange for the ticket.
This particular token contained the power necessary to summon…something. A demon, I guessed. Or perhaps what it summoned depended upon the summoner.
After a moment of reflection, it didn’t seem strange that a hockey puck could be used as a token. Just because sigil-carved rocks and pieces of wood were what everyone used in novels, didn’t mean that wasallthat could be used.
Only Harper had kept the token in a warded bag. While my mother had tossed it into a junk-filled drawer.
But that, too, made sense. If someone could remove the token from a ward-protected bag, then it could be removed from anywhere. The hockey puck looked like it belonged in this drawer, among the other odds and ends. Anyone not knowing what they were looking for, exactly, would pass right by it. I had, the first time I’d looked in this drawer.
I left the drawer open and fetched the potholder that hung on the wall next to the poker stand by the stove. I cleared everything away from the hockey puck and used the potholder to pick it up.
I laid it carefully on the stove top, which wouldn’t react to the cold.
My mother had found the summoning token. What did that mean? She hadn’t mentioned it in her journal, but her journal entries had stopped two days before she died. Perhaps she had found the token in the intervening days.
Had she really intended to try inverting the token, the way she had written? She had seemed determined enough, in her journal. But she had left the token in a drawer.
Had Harper killed her because she wouldn’t return it? It seemed like a petty thing to kill someone over, but Harper was soangryall the time….
I sat and stared at the black piece of rubber sitting innocently on the top of the stove.
“Mom.”
I looked up, my heart leaping.
Ghaliya stepped down the steps to the sitting room floor, and moved gingerly to the other wing chair and sat on the front of the cushion. The hex bag swung and bounced against her chest as she moved.
“You’re up!”
She nodded.
“How do you feel?”
Ghaliya thought about that for a moment. Then she smiled, stretching her dry, chapped lips. “I’mstarving!”
I drew in a deep, deep breath, pleasure and relief spearing me. “What do you want to eat? Name it. I’ll make it, if I can.”
Ghaliya considered. “One of your special grilled cheese sandwiches.”
“Done.” I got to my feet.
“Can I have—”
“Onions on it? Of course.”
Ghaliya gave a soft laugh. She touched the back of her head. “Did I imagine it, or did you cut my hair while I was half-out-of-it?
“That’s a story for another time,” I told her. “Don’t touch the puck on the stove, while I’m gone, okay?”
“What the hell?” She looked at the puck. “Why not?”
“That’s also a story for another time.” I hurried out of the apartment and down the stairs to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
With onions.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Trevalyan examined the hockey puck sitting on the potholder in the middle of his chopping block, while he tugged at the ends of his long mustache and the long, thin goatee.
