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.”