senses summon

His face reddened and darkened at the same time. “You’d better be careful, asshole.”
“Or what?” I asked.
“Or something bad is going to happen to you.”
“Nah,” I said. “Won’t turn out like that.”
That ticked the kid off. His jaw clenched so hard that I thought he might crack some of his teeth. His fists clenched with audible popping sounds.
At the same time, the air grew thicker and tighter and more threatening, and there was a sudden rippling sensation against my skin, as if someone had abruptly torn a long strip out of the fabric of my blue jeans. Then there was a sound in the greenery, and my skin began to crawl on the back of my neck. I came on balance in an instant.
Remember those instincts I was talking about earlier? Mine were telling me that something dangerous had just come into the world.
The kid staggered suddenly and dropped to his knees, panting. Then his head came up, his eyes wide and everywhere. “Oh no,” he breathed. “Oh no, no, no, no.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I muttered, understanding what had happened.
The kid had a strong magical talent, and a gift for summoning. Magic is mostly in your head, and unfortunately for anyone who’s got to deal with us, human beings’ heads are murky, conflicted places. All kinds of things are going on in there, a lot of them under the surface, a lot of them not entirely in our own control.
Hoodie’s subconscious had gathered up all that anger and fear he’d been feeling and sent it spiking out of him like a kind of spiritual beacon; a beacon that had attracted the attention of something from the spiritual world— something that had just crossed into the shadows of the walkway.
The spirit world is the home of an unlimited variety of supernatural beings —but I was going to take a wild guess and assume that this one wasn’t a placid herbivore.
“Right here? In the park?” I demanded of the warlock in an aggrieved tone. “Hell’s bells, kid.”


Brief Cases, Zoo Day, Page 392-393