Read The Day Before Tomorrow for Free Online Page B

to go?’
    ‘We’ll go to my place.  I need to get some things anyway.  To summon Hecaté.’
    * * *
    Denny was planning to go AWOL.  As much as he needed to get back to Tamar, he also needed some answers, and home was the place to get them.  Captain Stiles might have been another source, but, unless he was a most consummate actor, it was fairly evident that he knew as little about what was going on as Denny himself. 
    He laid his plans carefully and slipped out of the hospital in the early hours of the morning.  That would give him a good four hours before his absence was noticed, and, by the time it had been reported and verified and the MP’s had been notified, he would have another hour at least maybe two. Denny grinned.  Thank God for good old army efficiency.  With papers made up for him using Karl Morris’s tags he hoped to get as far as the air field. From there it would be easy.  And, since they would be looking for Corporal Sanger, even if he was stopped, so what?  He was Private Morris, and he could prove it. 
    This was getting ridiculous, he thought.  Just how many people could one man be in a lifetime?  He was already two of him.
    * * *
    Tamar took to the teleporting like a Djinn to a bottle, so to speak.  It felt disturbingly familiar.  Also, it was fun. 
    With Ophelia safely deposited in hospital, Tamar felt like she could breathe easier.  She wondered vaguely what the soldiers would think when they found their captives mysteriously flown, but she had other things on her mind. 
    Cindy’s house was a surprise. She had expected something a little more austere or perhaps even gothic.  Certainly not the abundance of pink roses and chintz that met her eye.  Cindy was, after all, by her own admission, a witch.  And she favoured black for clothing as most witches do.  (Cindy also liked black because it showed off her bright hair nicely.)  But as far as interior décor was concerned, she apparently preferred the feminine approach.  Her living room was the only thing that might have given away her true age – it was firmly stuck in the 1980s.
    Cindy had that look on her face, that look of modest pride, which some women have when they are showing you their baby.  Tamar was evidently expected to gush and say:  ‘Oooh, how lovely.’  But Tamar never said anything that she did not mean (which is not the same as saying what you do not mean– sometimes silence is golden). Instead, she got right to the point.  You might think that under the circumstances, Cindy would have been in control of the situation, since it was her goddess that they were summoning, and her idea to summon her.  Not to mention that she knew how to do it, and Tamar did not.  But this was not the case.  Tamar had never found herself in a situation that she was not in command of, and this was no different.  
    ‘So, let’s get started then.’  It was a command, not a request.
    ‘Well, I ought to do it in private really,’ Cindy demurred.
    ‘Why?’ said Tamar flatly.
    ‘Well …’
    ‘We’re summoning this god person for my benefit aren’t we?’
    ‘Yes, I …’
    ‘So, I ought to be in on it, oughtn’t I?’
    ‘It’s just that I …’
    ‘Anyway, two heads are better than one.’
    ‘I really think …’
    ‘I should be there. Why are you being so secretive, what have you got to hide?’
    ‘Nothing, I just …’
    ‘I want to see you do it. Anyone would think you were making the whole thing up, the way you’re going on.  Come on, let’s get on with it.’ She propelled Cindy into the kitchen.  ‘In here, is it?’
    Cindy made a last ditch attempt to assert some authority.  ‘Look, it really …’
    ‘Now!’ insisted Tamar.
    ‘I knew I’d see it your way,’ sighed Cindy.  ‘No, not in there, we’ll try scrying first, it’s quicker.
    ‘Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ intoned Tamar sarcastically. 
    The embarrassed look on Cindy’s face strongly