Secrets of the Demon

Chapter 5

I thought I’d have trouble falling asleep—that so-tired-I’m-wired feeling humming through me. But I barely remembered crawling into bed and the next thing I knew it was one in the afternoon.

I caffeinated myself, showered, and made myself reasonably presentable before heading over to my aunt Tessa’s house. Tessa had been released from the neuro center a couple of months ago, after she’d mysteriously recovered from her even more mysterious coma. It hadn’t been mysterious to me—I’d been fully aware that her essence had been pulled away from her body to fuel a powerful arcane ritual. She’d spent six weeks in a coma—without a mark on her body or anything that showed up on a CT scan or an MRI to explain it. With Rhyzkahl’s help and instruction I’d created an arcane beacon to draw her essence back to her body—barely in time, too. Her body had been perilously close to losing its grip on life.

It had been another month before they’d allowed her to be released, but she’d finally convinced them—in her inimitable acerbic fashion—that she was in full possession of her faculties. After she was discharged I made sure to send a fruit basket to the nurses on her floor—as much of an apology as a thank you.

My aunt’s house was in a historic district along the lakefront, full of century-old houses maintained or restored to immaculate condition. Gleaming white with elegant blue molding and pristine landscaping, Aunt Tessa’s house fit the neighborhood perfectly. My aunt, not so much.

I knocked twice, then opened the door and stuck my head in. “Aunt Tessa?”

“Kitchen!”

I headed obligingly in that direction and found my aunt perched on a stool at her counter with the daily crossword in front of her. Her frizzy blond hair was pulled up into a twist on top of her head, and she had on billowing hakama pants that nearly overwhelmed her skinny frame and a gray T-shirt that said FRAK OFF—overall, a somewhat tame look for her. Unlike her personal style, her kitchen was as exquisite as the rest of her house—rose-colored tiled floors, lovely wallpaper with subtle patterns of climbing ivy, and dark granite countertops. Her one deviation from the original nature of the house was her appliances—stainless steel and thoroughly modern.

Well, there was one other deviation: the summoning chamber in the attic. I rather doubted the original owners had intended for the space to be used in that manner.

At the kitchen table sat Carl, with a mug of coffee beside his hand and a book in his other. He lifted his eyes briefly and gave me a small nod, then returned his attention to his book. I was still getting used to thinking of him as Tessa’s boyfriend. To me he was Carl the Morgue Tech, quiet, somewhat emotionless, and—I’d discovered—impervious to arcane wards and who knew what else. And for him, that small nod was the equivalent of an exuberant greeting. Tall and lean with an athletic build, he had hazel-brown eyes set in a lightly tanned face and closely cropped hair that was more transparent than blond. He really didn’t fit the stereotypical image of a lanky and pasty morgue worker, but his general demeanor made up for any deviation from the expected norm. I took a quick peek at the cover of the book he was reading. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures.

Yep, more than made up for not looking the part.

Tessa gave me a smile. “Hiya, sweets. You had a busy night last night?”

I pulled myself onto a stool opposite her. “Er, well yeah. Had a thing with the FBI task force. Woke up about an hour ago.”

“So was it a demon?”

I blinked at her. “Huh?”

She pursed her lips. “The singer. The threats. Was it a demon that attacked her?”

“How on earth did you know about that?”

Tessa gave an exaggerated sigh and flipped her newspaper over to show me the front page. “I didn’t lose all my brains cells while I was in that silly coma. The paper stated that Lida Moran was receiving threats that ‘demons would take her soul,’ ” she said, making quote marks with her fingers. “You were working late last night with your FBI friends, and there was an incident during her concert.” She gave me a smug smile. “So. Was it a demon?”

I chewed my lower lip as I scanned the article. It was a well-sanitized version of what had happened—no doubt thanks to the efforts of Ryan and Knight—with a few eyewitness accounts of audience members who, luckily, were skeptical enough to say that it was “some dude dressed up like a demon or something.”

I began to set the paper down, then paused at another sight of the name Moran in a different article near the bottom of the page. LOCAL BUSINESSMAN BEN MORAN DONATES TO WOMEN’S SHELTER. I was usually completely clueless when it came to who The People were, but even I knew that Ben Moran was a major player in the local social and business scene. “Is Ben Moran related to Lida?” I asked.

“Her uncle,” Carl said without lifting his eyes from his book. “He was her guardian too, after her dad died several years ago. They live on the other side of the lake.”

“The rich side,” Tessa added with a quirk of a smile. “Ben Moran is on the board of Lake Pearl Bank and owns Moran Debris Removal.”

“Well, I’ll get to see for myself,” I said. “I’m going over there this afternoon to talk to Lida and see if I can find out anything more about what happened last night.”

Tessa tapped the counter. “Which brings us back to my question: Was it a demon?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not sure what it was, but I’m damn near positive that it wasn’t anything from the demon sphere.” I set the paper down, satisfied that there was no mention of me, and nothing that remotely implied that anything supernatural had occurred. Not that I expected the newspaper to say anything of that sort. “It had a strange resonance though,” I continued, not concerned about Carl overhearing any of this. He was already clued in about the demon summoning, and he was also the last person I was worried about blabbing indiscreetly. “I’m pretty sure I’d know it again if I felt it. I had a zhurn with me, and it said that the thing was some sort of construct. Maybe a golem or something of that ilk.”

Carl abruptly straightened and closed his book. “Time for me to leave,” he said with a ghost of a smile. He stood and moved to Tessa, giving her a sweet kiss on the cheek before heading out. A few seconds later I heard the front door open and close.

I resisted the urge to comment on how strange he was. I didn’t exactly have much room to talk. I returned my attention to Tessa. “Um, anyway, I don’t really know too much about constructs or golems, so I’m probably going to be spending some time in your library doing research.”

Her mouth drew down into a frown. “I’m not sure I want to allow you back in there after you ransacked it so terribly!”

I met her eyes with my own steely gaze born of too many weeks of uncertainty, stress, and feelings of betrayal. “If you’d been honest with me, there would have been no need to rearrange anything in that library.”

I was shocked to see pain and sadness flicker across her face before she looked away. “I thought it was the right thing to do at the time,” she said, voice suddenly quiet and hoarse. The capitulation and show of submission hit me like a blow. Tessa had always been the dominant one in our relationship—perfectly reasonable and logical since, not only had she been entrusted with raising me after my parents had died, but she’d also been my mentor in the art of summoning.

It wasn’t the only change in her that left me somewhat unnerved. Somehow she’d known of my agreement to become Rhyzkahl’s summoner, and in the weeks after she’d woken from the coma I kept expecting her to lay into me about it—to give me a full verbal flaying. Or to at least want to know more about the circumstances that had led to the agreement, or the terms of my oath. But neither argument nor conversation had ever materialized, and the couple of times that I’d tried to speak about it, she’d hurriedly changed the subject, as if the thought of even mentioning a demonic lord was anathema.

I shifted uncomfortably on the stool, suddenly insanely glad that Carl had left before he’d been forced to witness this. Or had he somehow known this was coming, and excused himself accordingly? Anything was possible. Especially with him. “Look, if you don’t want me to use the library, I’ll understand.”

Tessa sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “No, go ahead and use it. I’m sorry I said that. Besides, you need it more than I do right now.”

Something about her tone made me frown. “Aunt Tessa, have you summoned since . . . you came back?”

She gave a soft snort. “There’ve only been two full moons since I was released from the hospital. Give me a little time to adjust, all right?”

I schooled my expression into an understanding smile. I had yet to tell her about my discovery that potency could be stored—and without resorting to the kind of torture and murder that the Symbol Man had used. Summoners utilized the natural potency that flowed in the world to create the portal between the spheres through which the demons were summoned from their world to ours. Potency was also required to power the wards and bindings that protected the summoner from being torn to pieces—either by the forces of the portal, or by the summoned demon. Power was easiest to draw and control during the full moon, which was why summonings were almost always performed on—or very close to—the full moon. On rare occasions a summoner could perform a ritual when there was no moon, but only when calling a very low-level demon, for whom very little power would be required for the bindings and protections. During the waxing and the waning of the moon, the danger lay in the erratic inconsistency of available potency. A hiccup in the flow of power during the forming of a portal could mean an ugly and bloody death.

However, in an effort to “woo” me to become his summoner, Rhyzkahl had provided me with instructions for a ritual to help draw my aunt’s essence back to her body. And I’d discovered that a portion of the diagram used in the process could be used as a means to store small quantities of power, and—more important— release it in a smooth and steady flow. I still wasn’t sure if Rhyzkahl had intended for me to discover this means of storing potency, but he certainly had yet to voice any objections to my use of it.

But I had absolutely no idea why I was holding back from telling my aunt about this. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t seem like herself. Was that it? The storage diagram was a huge discovery, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized that it had the potential to be dangerous as well. What could be done with a massive supply of stored potency?

I could summon other demonic lords. And bind them, with enough preparation. Not that I ever would. One demonic lord was enough for me, and such summonings were insanely dangerous. But what if another summoner—one with scruples similar to the Symbol Man—had this knowledge? What could someone like that do with a demonic lord at his command? I’d faced that possibility once already—even chosen to die rather than let it happen.

A chill swept through me. What if that’s why I might be in danger? Not only did Rhyzkahl have the advantage of having a summoner bound to him, but he had one who wasn’t limited to summoning during the full moon. There might be some who would seek to remove his advantage, or worse, there might be some who would seek to protect themselves by removing one who had knowledge that could make it easier to enslave them. All the more reason for me to keep it to myself. The last thing I wanted to do was put Tessa in any sort of danger again.

I jerked as Tessa put a hand on mine. “You look ill, sweets. What is it?”

I forced a smile. “Sorry. Lost in thought for a second. I think I’m still tired from last night.”

She gave my hand a pat. “I’ll make you some of that boring oversweetened tea that you tolerate, okay?”

I laughed. “That would be slightly delightful.”

I expected her to turn and go to the sink, but her hand stayed on mine. Her gaze had gone distant, and I even glanced behind me to see if she was looking at something out the window.

“Aunt Tessa? Is something wrong?”

The barest hint of a frown furrowed her brow. “Do you ever wonder why Szerain was willing?”

I blinked. “Huh?”

She dropped her eyes to mine. “Szerain. The lord that my mother and Peter Cerise and the others were trying to summon . . .”

Even with her clarification it still took me a few seconds to figure out what she was referring to. “Right. When Rhyzkahl came through instead,” I said, keeping my face immobile. Nearly thirty years ago Peter Cerise had gathered five other summoners together in a bold, ambitious, and shockingly dangerous attempt to summon the demonic lord Szerain. Cerise’s wife was dying of breast cancer, and Szerain was—supposedly—amenable to being summoned for such a need. This was most assuredly not the case for any other demonic lord.

Perhaps the summoning would have proceeded without incident if Szerain had actually been the one to come through the portal, but Peter Cerise and the other summoners were unaware that the then-teenage Tessa was hiding in that basement that night. And though she’d yet to realize her potential as a summoner, her presence altered the forming of the portal. A different—and unwilling—demonic lord was pulled through instead: Rhyzkahl, one of the most powerful of the demonic lords.

The result was a slaughter. Rhyzkahl killed all the summoners except for one who later went on to plan another summoning of Rhyzkahl out of vengeance—becoming the serial killer known as the Symbol Man— and who had tortured and murdered his victims in order to gather the power needed to make such a powerful summoning successful.

“Yes,” Tessa said, expression strangely calm. “That’s the one. Do you ever wonder why Szerain was willing to be summoned?”

The serene look on her face was beginning to seriously unnerve me, especially considering the topic of our conversation. Her mother—my grandmother—had been one of the summoners Rhyzkahl had slain. “I, uh, hadn’t really thought about it.”

“You should,” she said, voice soft. “The demonic lords never do anything without motive.” Then she patted my hand and looked back at me with a perfectly normal Tessa-smile. “Let me get that tea for you now.”

I fled to the library after taking a few token sips of tea, but my mind was on Tessa’s strange words—and her stranger mood shift.

Why would a demonic lord be willing to be summoned? I could think of an answer right off the top of my head: the demonic lord in question had an arrangement with a human summoner, much like the arrangement I had with Rhyzkahl. So perhaps Szerain had a summoner of his own at one time as well. Perhaps he still did. I knew next to nothing about the demonic lords except for Rhyzkahl, and I didn’t exactly know a whole lot about him either—even if we did have crazy hot sex every time I summoned him.

But if some other summoner were to think that Rhyzkahl might be willing to be summoned simply because I was able to do so . . . well, that would most assuredly be a fatal mistake on their part. That, I was certain of. A summoning was considered a deep and terrible insult to a lord, a slight to their honor that could not go unanswered, else they risked losing yet more honor. It would be like yanking the pope out of his chair and setting him to clean your bathroom. But a thousand times worse, and with far more devastating repercussions. Honor was the bedrock of the demons’ society.

There were twelve levels of demons: from the first-level zrila to the twelfth-level reyza. The higher level demons had more arcane skill and strength than the lower, but the demonic lords were above all of those. They were denizens of an alternate plane of existence, and I had the ability to open a portal between this world and theirs and summon them forth to serve me in exchange for a suitable offering. While it was an affront for any demon to be summoned, the demons gained status among their kind through knowledge gained in this sphere or the artifacts and offerings the summoner might exchange for the demon’s service. Once the terms of a summoning were set—the offering and required service agreed upon—the demon’s honor compelled it to complete the agreed upon task to the best of its ability, just as that same honor compelled the summoner to abide by the terms of the agreement. The demonic code of honor was a summoner’s protection. Without it, any summoning would demand more power than one human could conceivably draw on his or her own, since it would be necessary to bind and enslave the demon and force it to the summoner’s will. And, then, of course, that summoner would be living in constant fear that the demon might break its bindings and free itself. I had little doubt that the summoner’s messy death would quickly follow.

I’d long been taught that it was impossible to summon a demonic lord and survive, though I knew now that there were exceptions to this. And if I have an arrangement with a demonic lord, who’s to say there aren’t other summoners who do as well?

I could feel the subtle brush of the protections pass over me as I entered my aunt’s library, a mental prickling on the edge of my awareness. The arcane wards in the house and the library were now back to their previous strength, though when they were “installed” this time around I made sure that I had complete access. I’d received a rude surprise when Tessa was in the hospital and I’d found that her library and summoning chamber had been protected against me—with wards of deadly strength that I later discovered had been placed shortly after my first encounter with Rhyzkahl. It was an understatement to say that I’d felt terribly betrayed. I’d been unable to fathom why she hadn’t said something to me, and even now I still didn’t have a clear answer as to her motivations for doing it.

I checked that the portal in the corner was well warded. It wasn’t an actual portal that a demon could be summoned through—more like a weak spot in the fabric between our world and the demon sphere. Or perhaps some sort of arcane pressure valve. I wasn’t quite sure, to be honest. What I did know was that when I removed the wards in the library, some arcane beasties were able to come through—or, in at least one case, were pushed through from the other side—and had caused quite a bit of trouble. I had a feeling that portal was the reason she’d warded everything against me—and, I assumed, Rhyzkahl—but that precaution had backfired since I’d been forced to have all the protections removed after Tessa had been incapacitated.

I’d braced myself for a protest from Tessa when I had the wards restored to normal, but she’d stayed silent on the subject. It was yet another shift of power that made me uncomfortable. It was almost like a grown child who suddenly had the care of an elderly parent, though that was a weak analogy in a lot of ways. Tessa was only in her late forties and far from needing any sort of care. But there was definitely a strange fragility to her now that had never been there before.

And she was out of her body for weeks, I chided myself. Give her some time to recover. I was being unrealistic to expect her to bounce back to fully normal in the course of a couple of months.

Still, I didn’t feel like lingering in the library, especially while Tessa was elsewhere in the house. The scattered books had been stacked in semi-neat piles, with as much system as there’d been before the incident with the portal. Or so it seemed to me, since I wasn’t convinced that there’d ever been a system. But somehow I managed to find a number of books in the same general area that had stuff vaguely related to arcane constructs and golems.

Ryan called as I was stuffing the books into my bag. I knew this without looking because I’d actually assigned Ryan a ringtone of his own. Not that my phone rang so often that it was necessary. Pretty much the only calls I ever got were from Tessa, Ryan, Jill, or the dispatcher. My social life—a pathetic thing indeed.

“You awake yet?” he asked.

“Not only awake, but I’ve had a shower, coffee, and am finishing up at my aunt’s library. So there.”

I heard him chuckle. “In other words, you’ve solved the mystery and there’s no need for us to go speak to Lida.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take all the fun out of it,” I said. “I suppose we can still go through the motions.”

“If you’re still at your aunt’s house, I’m only a few blocks away. Want me to pick you up?”

“Works for me. Meet you out front.”

I disconnected, then ducked out of the house, calling out a“bye” to Tessa before she could challenge me as to what I was taking from the library.

Or not challenge me. I didn’t want to face the possibility that she wouldn’t even ask.

I snagged my gun and badge out of my car, and after a brief debate, grabbed my jacket as well. I might as well look as official as possible, even if it was my day off. And when was the last time I had a real day off? I thought with a slight scowl.

About thirty seconds later a dark blue Crown Victoria pulled up to the curb. The passenger-side window slid down and Ryan gave me a mock leer. “Hey chicka chicka! You lookin’ hot. You sellin’ that?”

Groaning, I yanked the door open and slid in. “You are so weird.”

He laughed. “Okay, the gun and badge does kill the sexy a little bit.”

“Hey now, some guys would pay extra for that!”

“This is true,” he said with a grin.

I buckled my seat belt, then grimaced. “Also, the stain on the jacket screams, ‘Oh, do me, baby. Do me now.’” I swiped at the dark streak on the hem of my jacket, but only managed to make it a bigger dark streak. “It’s so not fair. The cops on TV have awesome wardrobes.”

“With terrific shoes,” he added.

“Yes! High heels on crime scenes are an absolute must.”

Ryan snickered. “I dare you to come out to your next crime scene wearing stilettos.”

I made a hacking sound. “I’d be laughed out of the department. Especially after I fell on my face a few times trying to walk in them.” I thought for a second. “I don’t even think I own a pair of heels higher than about two inches.” And I only owned one pair like that, I realized—the ones I wore for court or funerals.

He gave me a sidelong glance. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, because god knows you’d have every right to take this the wrong way . . . But do you ever, um, dress up?”

I glowered at him.

“Okay, you’re taking it the wrong way,” he said with a self-conscious chuckle. “I’m not saying you’re not pretty and feminine and all that good stuff. Because you are.” He flashed me a smile that mollified me somewhat. “But when was the last time you had a chance to dress up and go out and be fancy?”

My throat tightened up and I turned to look out the window so he couldn’t see how deeply the question had affected me. “I dunno,” I said as casually as I could, throwing in a shrug for good measure. “A while, I guess. I’ve had a lot going on.” Never, I thought in sudden silent misery. At least not since I was a kid. How fucked up is that? I’d had two boyfriends, but neither relationship had lasted very long, and the dating had consisted of movies and crawfish boils and fishing trips. And Rhyzkahl doesn’t exactly take me out on the town.

I heard Ryan swear under his breath. Obviously my attempt to hide my upset hadn’t been very successful. “I’m sorry, Kara. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.”

I schooled my face into a pleasant expression and looked over at him. “Ryan, it’s okay. I just . . .” I shrugged. “My teen years were a mess, and then when I started training as a summoner I became pretty isolated.” “A mess” was a mild description. My mother had died of cancer when I was eight, and then three years later my dad had been killed by a drunk driver. My aunt had been less than thrilled to be saddled with the care of a preteen, and by the time I was fourteen I was doing my best to destroy my life with drugs. The discovery that I had the potential and skill to become a summoner had given us both the impetus to get my life back on track, but the need to keep the demon summoning a secret had pretty much killed any chance of a social life.

“You never went out with your aunt for anything? Special occasions?”

I raised my eyebrow. “You’ve met my aunt, right?”

He winced, then gave me a rueful smile. “Yeah. Wow. Sorry.” He shook his head. “Look, as soon as this case gives us some breathing room, how about you and I dress up like people with actual lives, and go eat someplace where the staff has all their teeth and the napkins aren’t made out of paper.”

I could only stare at him for several heartbeats as my thoughts floundered. Was he asking me out on a date? But he didn’t say it was a date, and if I assume it’s a date that could end up being totally awkward if he didn’t mean it that way. But should I play it safe, or jump on the chance that he meant it as something more? Though if I jumped and missed . . .

Uncertainty abruptly flickered in his eyes, and he reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. “I mean, just as friends, right? Two good friends going out and enjoying themselves.”

I managed to nod, though my smile felt brittle. “It sounds great,” I said, relief and disappointment doing the tango in my stomach. “For this I’ll even buy a dress.”

“Tight and slinky?” He gave me a comical leer again. “And stiletto heels?”

I smiled despite my inner turmoil, obscurely grateful for his attempt to break the tension. “Nah. Floor length. Long sleeves. Y’know: Amish.”

“Wear the stiletto heels with it, and it’s a deal.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Just drive.”