Fury of the Demon

Chapter 16

After going through my usual get-clean-and-dressed routine, Eilahn and I headed to my aunt’s house. On the way there, I listened to the recording of my phone conversation with Idris, played it over and over while I fought to catch any new reference or hint, any meaningful cough or hesitation. By the time we reached my aunt’s neighborhood of old, quality, lakefront houses, I’d been through it at least a dozen times, with no new revelations.

I saw Carl’s white minivan parked at the curb in front of my aunt’s house. Carl was her boyfriend, though I also knew him as the morgue tech at the coroner’s office.

It wasn’t until I pulled into Aunt Tessa’s driveway that I realized the last time I’d visited her was the day I was abducted to the demon realm. Everything about her century-old two-story house was the same—white with blue gingerbread trim, carefully maintained landscaping, rocking chairs on the porch—yet it was impossible to quantify how much I’d changed since then. Then again, my aunt probably knew a little something about major life changes. After a decade of living in Japan as Katashi’s student, she’d given up her life there and returned to Louisiana to raise me after my dad died. Not that leaving Katashi was a bad thing, in light of recent events.

I slipped through my aunt’s aversion wards with ease and smiled at the Welcome! sign on her door. It stood in sharp contrast to the arcane protections around her house that would keep any unwelcome visitors from actually making it to the porch, much less gain entry, unless they were exceedingly determined and arcanely skilled.

As I climbed the steps, Carl stepped out of the front door, keys in hand. Tall and thin with close-cropped pale hair, he offered me a ghost of a smile which I took as a huge welcome home greeting from him. “Morning, Kara,” he said. “Doc and I miss seeing you at the morgue.”

“I bet you do. Who else can you torment with the whole needles-in-dead-eyes thing?” From the very first time I’d gone to an autopsy, Carl had attempted to get me to collect the vitreous—a process that involved sticking a needle into the eyeball to draw out the fluid. Hugely squicky.

He gave a dry chuckle. “At least you finally called my bluff.”

“Damn straight. Are you on your way to the morgue now?”

“I am. Running late.”

“I won’t keep you. Good to see you, and tell Doc I said Hi.”

“Will do.”

I watched him for a moment as he continued to his minivan, then I turned to the door, still baffled at the odd-couple match between my diminutive, whacky aunt and the lanky, taciturn—though seemingly devoted—Carl. After knocking once, I entered. “Hi, honey! I’m home!”

A laugh came from the direction of the kitchen. “About damn time!”

I headed that way, where my aunt immediately enveloped me in as crushing a hug as she could give. Her unbound mane of frizzy blond hair completely obscured my face, but I didn’t mind one little bit. I breathed in the faint scent of lavender touched with jasmine—calm and sweet, totally unlike her personality, yet still completely her.

“I’ve missed you!” she said after finally releasing me.

“I’ve missed you too,” I replied with a smile. “Sorry I wasn’t over sooner. Everything went crazy as soon as I got back.”

She turned and began to run water into the kettle. She wore a flowing gauzy skirt paired with a clinging top of blue and purple gradients, and big dangly earrings that I knew would look absurd on me but suited her perfectly. “Dealing with crazy stuff get you crazy times,” she said. “No doubt about that.”

I pulled myself onto a stool at the counter and made a sour face. “Yeah, and I’m in super mega-craziness right now.” The kitchen itself felt as welcoming and familiar as my aunt—dark granite countertops, wallpaper with subtle patterns of climbing ivy, a deep dusty-rose tiled floor, and stainless steel appliances without a smudge or fingerprint in sight.

She set the kettle on the stove, turned the burner on, then took a seat on a stool opposite mine. “Tell me. What’s going on now?”

“Well . . .” I had to think for a moment about where to begin. “When’s the last time you talked to Katashi?”

Tessa’s brow creased in thought. “It’s been a while.”

“Good,” I said, relieved. At least I didn’t need to tackle a problem in that arena. “Please let me know if you hear anything at all from his people. Anything.”

“You told me Katashi caused some trouble for you.” Her gaze sharpened. “Has something else happened with him?”

I spread my hands flat on the cool marble of the countertop. “You could say that.” I proceeded to fill her in on the Idris situation and the craziness at the warehouse. Tessa listened carefully while I spoke, and when the teakettle began to whistle she got up to pour water into two mugs.

“Crazy stuff indeed,” she said as she dunked teabags into each mug. “Idris. He must be pretty important.”

“He’s amazingly gifted, especially considering he’s barely twenty.” I smiled. “You’d like him. Super nice guy.”

Tessa placed my tea before me, curled her hands around her own mug. “What was he doing in the demon realm in the first place?”

I shamelessly reached for the bowl of sugar cubes and dumped several into my tea. “Training with Mzatal. He was under agreement—it’s sort of like a contract.”

She took a sip, brow furrowed. “Is that what you have with Mzatal?”

“We did,” I said. “We don’t now. I mean, nothing official. He trains me, and we work together. We’re partners.”

Her eyes dropped to the ugly scar on my left forearm. “Is he the one who removed Rhyzkahl’s mark?” she asked, tone abruptly sharp and biting.

I looked down at the ripple of scar tissue. “No. Rhyzkahl did that,” I said, voice expressionless. Yet I hesitated before continuing with the rest, the details of how he’d sliced the mark from my flesh, and what else he’d done to me. I hadn’t told her any of that yet, had simply left it at “Rhyzkahl betrayed me.” I knew Tessa had seen my sigil scars when she summoned me back to Earth, but she had yet to ask about them, and I didn’t want to push it. Last year, she’d been captured and used in a ritual that left her comatose, her essence lost in the void. After she returned to her body, she’d been fragile. Docile. Completely unlike the Aunt Tessa I knew. She even stopped summoning for months, and only resumed in order to rescue me from the demon realm. Carl had played a significant role in keeping her on track despite the oddity of their match, and I could only speculate that his near-emotionless manner helped to ground her and keep her focused.

Yet even though she’d come a long way in her recovery, a measure of fragility still clung to her. The hideous details of my torture would only upset her, and I saw no need to risk destabilizing her now.

I rubbed the scar, changed the subject. “Back when you studied with Katashi, did you learn the sigil technique called the pygah?” Mzatal had told me the pygah was part of the foundation for all other summoning work, yet Tessa had never even mentioned it.

She set her tea down, brow furrowed as though trying to remember. “Pygah,” she murmured, then her face lit up. “Pygah. Yes, I did. I haven’t thought about it in years. Not since . . .” She trailed off, staring past me with unfocused eyes.

Frowning, I laid my hand on her forearm. “Tessa? Not since when?”

She blinked, brought her gaze back to me. “Not since I found out I was pregnant. I remember clear as a bell doing a pygah then, but,” she shrugged, “I haven’t thought of it since.”

Worry flared hot and bright. How do you “forget” a major arcane tool? I did a frickin’ pygah of my own to help maintain a façade of calm.

“Why did you pygah when you found out you were pregnant?” I asked.

That earned me a raised eyebrow and a withering look. “Wouldn’t you?”

Okay, she had a point there. “You were still with Katashi when you got pregnant?” I asked, oh-so-casually.

“With Katashi?” Confusion clouded her eyes. “It was a fling with an American living in Japan. He left before I knew I was pregnant so, when the baby was stillborn, I didn’t call him.”

Goosebumps shivered over my entire body. Those were almost the exact words she’d used the last time I’d asked, and again I had the disturbing feeling she wasn’t so much remembering it as reciting a story. “Programmed” was the word that came to mind, and right behind that, “manipulated.” Even though I didn’t have a badge anymore, my cop-instinct still worked, and right now it tingled like crazy. I knew in my gut that baby didn’t die. What I didn’t know was who had made Tessa believe so and why?

“What was the father’s name?” I kept a pleasant and casual smile on my face.

“I had a fling. He was American.” Tessa waved a hand dismissively.

Yeah, well, she could dismissively gesture all she wanted, but I wanted some answers. “Back when you had the, ah, fling with the American,” I pressed, “you were still in training with Katashi?”

A slight frown crossed her face. “I remember we summoned the reyza, Pyrenth,” she murmured as though trying to dust off twenty-year-old memories. “But that was before I was pregnant.”

“I met Pyrenth in the demon realm,” I said. “At Rhyzkahl’s. He was my escort at times.” I leaned forward. “What else do you remember about your training back then?”

“I remember working on this, over and over.” She traced her fingers through the air as though drawing a sigil, and her frown deepened. “What is that called?”

Sick worry tightened my chest. Tessa had a great memory for arcane structures. “It’s called a durik, for ritual stabilization,” I told her, lifting my hand to trace the sigil. “It’s usually used in combination with a . . .” I trailed off. Not a mere sigil. The durik and its companion were floaters.

Icy coils of dread wrapped around me. The art of tracing floaters could only be learned in the demon realm, and Tessa had never mentioned or even implied she’d ever been there.

“Durik. Silly of me to forget that.” Tessa stood and carried her mug back to the stove, topped it off with hot water even though she’d only taken a few sips from it.

My heart hammered at the implications. “It must have slipped your mind, like the pygah. No big deal.” Except that it was. It was a huge fucking deal. “Tessa? Have you ever been to the demon realm?”

Her mug crashed to the floor, sending out a splatter of hot liquid and shards of stoneware.

“Shit!” I jumped up and came around the counter. “Are you okay?” I grabbed at a dishtowel and crouched to mop up the spreading pool of tea.

“A little clumsy, that’s all,” she murmured. She looked down at me, brow faintly furrowed, yet didn’t stoop to help me clean up the mess, which was very unlike her.

I stood, dishtowel in my hand, raked my gaze over her to make sure she hadn’t been cut or scalded. No visible blood or burns that I could see, but she looked pale as death. She pressed her hand over her solar plexus. “I feel strange,” she said, voice thready.

I dropped the dishtowel back on the floor amidst the shards, took her gently by the arm and led her around the mess and into a chair at the kitchen table. My already high worry wound tighter as she went without protest. “Do you need some water?” I asked.

Tessa blinked, seemed to come back to herself a bit. “Some tea would be nice.” Her eyes went to the mess on the kitchen floor, and she winced. “I’d better clean that up.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I insisted. That was more normal for her at least. “Do you want me to call Carl? I’m sure he’ll come right back.”

“Oh no, sweetling. No need to worry him.” She gave me a smile that only reassured me a little.

I quickly readied another mug of tea and set it in front of her, then finished cleaning up the spill and broken mug while I mentally replayed the incident. Once I finished the cleanup I sat at the table with her again. “Are you feeling any better?”

“I’ll be right as rain as soon as I finish this cup,” she said brightly. “Now what were you telling me about your agreement with Mzatal?”

What the fucking hell? Had she forgotten the last few minutes of our conversation? My anxiety clawed higher, and I had to take a long sip of my tea before I could keep my voice and expression composed enough to speak casually. “I said that we have an agreement based on mutual respect. We ditched the contractual one.” I plastered on a smile. “I learn a lot from him . . . in the demon realm.” I watched for any flicker of reaction and saw nothing but honest interest in her face. I hesitated, then jumped in with both feet. “Have you ever been to the demon realm?”

Again she pressed her hand to her solar plexus. Her eyes went wild for a second, then her face relaxed and brightened. “That water hot yet?”

My hands tightened around the mug. “Your tea is in front of you.”

“Oh!” She looked down. “So it is.” She smiled, lifted it, and took a sip.

This wasn’t some sort of dementia, not with this odd programmed feel. It was something far more sinister, more deliberate. Mzatal would be able to get to the bottom of it but I had another day before I summoned him again.

I took a breath and calmed myself. This had been with her for twenty years. Another day wasn’t going to harm her. “I’m summoning Mzatal again tomorrow,” I told her. “I’d love for you to meet him.”

Tessa’s mouth tightened. “This one must be quite different from Rhyzkahl.”

You can say that again! “Yes, he’s very different,” I said. “I care about him a great deal.”

Worry shadowed her eyes. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said.

I reached to give her hand a light squeeze. “I know. It’s why I’m training with him. I need to get really damn good at what I do so that I won’t be as vulnerable.”

She opened her mouth as though to speak then jerked her head up to look at the clock. “Crap! I need to go. I promised Melanie I’d close at the store tonight.” My aunt owned a natural food store in downtown Beaulac, and after her hospital stay last year hired her ditzy nurse, Melanie, as a full time worker.

“That’s cool. I’ll call tomorrow.” I stood as she did. “I want to bring Mzatal over to meet you, since I’m shacking up with him and all that.” I faked a grin as I added silently, And since it’s obvious someone has messed with your head.

“That’ll be good,” she said, belying the flicker of disapproval in her eyes. “I should meet him.”

I kept the fixed smile on my face. “You mind if I use your bathroom before I go?”

“As if you need to ask?” Tessa rolled her eyes. “Go for it. I need to scoot. Lock up when you leave, please.”

With that she hurried out and to her car. I surreptitiously peered out the front window, watched her drive off as anger and sorrow wound together in the pit of my stomach.

Someone had manipulated my aunt.

I intended to find out who and why.