"Too bad none of this stuff seems to really work," I told the bag sadly. It declined to answer me. I plopped down on the floor beside it, glancing at the clock. There was still an hour to go before I had to head out.
"No time like the present, I suppose," I said as I plucked a thick piece of chalk from the bag. "It can't hurt to give it another shot. What's the sense in being put in a haunted hotel room if you don't get to see the ghost?"
Clearing my mind of everything but the vision of an open door, I traced a circle before me using the chalk. The circle would hold the ghost after I Summoned it, until I either Released it to its next existence, or grounded it into the here and now.
That was the theory, anyhow. I hadn't actually ever successfully Summoned a real ghost, although I did have a nasty run-in with a chill wind in a mansion on the Oregon coast that was supposed to be haunted by a timber baron. Still, as Anton was the first to tell me, a draft does not a ghost make, which left me more than a little desperate. My job with UPRA was at stake, and although I knew England was just teeming with spiritual activity, thus far the ghosties had chosen to stay away from me.
A bit jadedly I intoned the words traditionally used to Summon ghosts.
"It's not going to work," I told my toes as I finished the invocation. "It never works. I'm going to have to go home without one single successful Summoning under my belt, and that'll be the end of my short and less than brilliant career as a regional Summoner. Stupid English ghosts. You'd think the least they could do is to show up for an out-of-town visitor!"