calling Toot

So, instead of bothering with a simple bait-and-snare, I braced my feet, held out my right hand palm up, placed the doughnut upon it like an offering, and murmured a Name.
Names, capital N, have power. If you know something's Name, you automatically have a conduit with which you can reach out and touch it, a way to home in on it with magic. Sometimes that can be a really bad idea. Speak the Name of a big, bad spiritual entity and you might be able to touch it, sure-but it can touch you right back, and the big boys tend to do it a lot harder than any mortal. It's worth as much as your soul to speak the Name of beings like that.
But the Nevernever is a big place, and not to mix metaphors, but there are plenty of fish in that sea. There are literally countless beings of far less metaphysical significance, and it really isn't terribly difficult to get one of them to do your bidding by invoking its Name.
(People have Names, too. Sort of. Mortals have this nasty habit of constantly reassessing their personal identity, their values, their beliefs, and it makes it a far more slippery business to use a mortal's Name against them.)
I know a few Names. I invoked this one as lightly and gently as I could in an effort to be polite.
It didn't take me long, maybe a dozen repetitions of the Name before the entity it summoned appeared. A basketball-sized globe of blue light dived out of the snow overhead and hurtled down the alley toward my face.
I stood steady as it came on. Even with relatively minor summonings, you never let them see you flinch.
The globe snapped to an instant halt about a foot away from the doughnut, and I could just make out the luminous shape of the tiny humanoid figure within. Tiny, but not nearly so tiny as the last time I had seen him. Hell's bells, he must have been twice as tall as the last time we'd spoken.
"Toot-toot," I said, nodding to the pixie.

Small Favor Chapter 5, Page 33-34


"Hey, Sanya. Stick your fingers in your ears?"
The big Russian stared at me. "What?"
"Your fingers," I said, wiggling all of mine, "in your ears." I pointed to mine.
"I understand the words, obviously, as I am someone who has been practicing his English. Why?"
"Because I'm going to say something to the pizza and I don't want you to hear it."
Sanya gave the sky a single, long-suffering glance. Then he sighed and put his fingers in his ears.
I gave him a thumbs-up, turned away, cupped my hands around my mouth so that no one could lip-read, and began to murmur a name, over and over again, each utterance infused with my will.
I had to repeat the name only a dozen times or so before a shadow flickered overhead, and something the size of a hunting falcon dropped out of the sky, blurred wings humming, and hovered about two feet in front of me.
"Bozhe moi!" Sanya sputtered, and Esperacchius was halfway from its sheath by the time he finished speaking.
I couldn't stop myself from saying, "There's some real irony in your using that expression, O Knight of Maybe."
"Go ahead!" piped a shrill voice, like a Shakespearean actor on helium. "Draw your sword, knave, and we will see who bleeds to death from a thousand tiny cuts!"
Sanya stood there with his mouth open and his sword still partly in its sheath. "It is . . ." He shook his head as if someone had popped him in the nose. "It is . . . a domovoi, da?"
The little faerie in question stood nearly fifteen full inches in height, appearing as a slender, athletic youth with the blurring wings of a dragonfly standing out from his shoulders and a tuft of hair like lavender dandelion fluff. He was dressed in garments that looked like they'd been thugged from someone's old-school G.I. Joe doll, an olive-drab jump-suit with the sleeves removed and holes cut through it for his wings. He wore a number of weapons about his person, most of them on nylon straps that looked like they'd been lifted from convention badges. He was carrying one letter opener shaped like a long sword at his side and two more, crossed over each other, on his back. I'd given him the letter opener set last Christmas, advising him to keep half of them stashed somewhere safe, as backup weapons.
"Domovoi?" the little faerie shrilled, furious. "Oh, no, you didn't!"
"Easy there, Major General," I said. "Sanya, this is Major General Toot-toot Minimus, the captain of my house guard. Toot, this is my boon companion Sanya, Knight of the Cross, who has faced danger at my side. He's okay."

Changes chapter 33, Page 325-326