He took a dragging breath. “I have no idea what went wrong—whether it was the way the call went out or the way it was received out in the other sphere. Tessa told me later that she believes that when one summons a lord, there are different forms and protections and terms that have to be used.” He shrugged. “I’m not a summoner, so I didn’t really know what she was talking about.”
I swallowed and said nothing.
“Anyway, the circle made the call to Szerain,” he continued after a moment, “and something came through. Only it wasn’t Szerain.”
“Rhyzkahl,” I murmured, forgetting my desire to stay silent.
Greg nodded. “They invoked the bindings, but …” He shuddered. “They didn’t realize what they’d done. Didn’t realize at first that it wasn’t Szerain—that they’d summoned a lord who was not amenable to such things.” He rubbed his arms. “They didn’t realize how dangerous and powerful he is. He’s so …”
“Beautiful.”
He looked up at me. “You have seen him.”
I just nodded.
“Damn,” he breathed. “Someday I want to hear how that happened.”
“Finish your story, please?” I urged.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “He was … angry, God almighty, so angry. I could feel it, like a smothering blanket. The bindings that they had were useless. Rhyzkahl scattered them and …” He paled, his hands beginning to shake.
I leaned forward. “What happened?”
Greg clenched his hands together. “I don’t remember everything. But what I do remember is that he knew that Tess and I were there. I don’t know why he didn’t destroy us like the others, but he knew we were there.”
“How do you know?”
He looked up at me. “Because he said so. Pointed right at us while his hands were still—” His voice faltered. “His hands were still covered with my mother’s blood.” He gave a low moan and dropped his head into his hands. “My father asked him to remove her cancer. And he did. God almighty, he did. Every bit of it. Ripped it all from her. It’s been almost thirty years and I still remember that. My father lying dead at his feet, and my mother …” He shook his head, unwilling or unable to say anything more.
I was silent for a moment, then risked touching his knee. “Was everyone else killed?”
Greg took in a heaving breath. “Yeah. It was a slaughter. A fucking slaughter. As soon as Rhyzkahl finished and left, Tess grabbed my hand and dragged me out of there.” He scrubbed at his face. “She kept her head, I’ll give her that. I was totally hysterical, nearly catatonic. She got me away and to a safe place, then she went back and dumped every can of gasoline we had down the stairs and started a fire. Covered it all up.” He sighed, and I could see him pushing the memories back down. “Her mother had been killed, too, but she held it in until it was all over.”
Suddenly so much about my aunt made sense. What a hideous burden to hold for all those years. I felt an odd twinge of guilt for some of the unkind things I’d thought about Tessa. And there was a small part of me that wanted to deny, to refuse to believe that it could have been the same Rhyzkahl, the same Demonic Lord that had killed all those people, but deep down I knew that it was true, knew that he was capable of wreaking that sort of vengeance to satisfy his honor. I’d felt that same rage coming from him, that same capacity for slaughter, before he inexplicably changed his mind and decided to seduce me instead.
“I’d always heard that it was a heater explosion during a cocktail party,” I said.
Greg shrugged, color beginning to return to his face. “There wasn’t much of an investigation. I mean, back then they didn’t have CSI. And the fire was so hot that there wasn’t much left anyway. They just went in and found bone fragments and teeth and didn’t think much more of it except that it was terribly tragic. I mean, this is a small town.” He laughed weakly. “Which is kinda funny when you think about how many damn summoners were living around here.”
I nodded, but it made perfect sense to me. There were areas of arcane power here that tended to draw in people with the ability to take advantage of them, which was one of the reasons that New Orleans was such a hotbed of the “supernatural.”
I closed my notebook. “I appreciate you telling me all of this, Greg,” I said, standing.
He stood as well. “You’ve seen him. And you’re alive. How?”
I shrugged, an unconscious imitation of him. “I wish I knew.”
CHAPTER 11
I stood at the door to my aunt’s house, staring at the blue-and-white wood with the stenciled flowers at the edges and the way-too-cheerful Welcome! sign on the door, working up the nerve to knock and face her. Okay, facing my aunt wasn’t the big deal, but telling her just what had happened in my summoning was. She’s going to freak. Totally fucking freak. I sighed and knocked. It was past time that I talked to her about it. I’d been finding every possible reason to put it off in the last few days, and now two weeks had passed since the summoning.
My aunt pulled the door open a split second later. “Took you long enough to knock,” she said with a questioning smile. “I was starting to wonder if you’d fallen asleep on my doorstep.”
I stepped inside, automatically wiping my feet. Today my aunt was wearing a full Japanese kimono with an expertly tied obi—with her frizzy blond hair in two pony-tails that stuck out from the sides of her head. Shockingly, it worked on her.
“If you knew I was out there, why didn’t you open the door?”
“You were obviously deep in thought about something. And I hate it when people interrupt me when I’m deep in thought, so I figured I’d let you finish first.” She smiled brightly, then closed the door with a shove of her sandaled foot. “Okeydokey, sweetums. What’s cookin’ in that head of yours?” She eyed me shrewdly, and I was reminded yet again that, despite my aunt’s eccentricities and mannerisms, she was smart and perceptive and more than a little dangerous, though not to me. So far. She might yet kill me after hearing what I had to say.
“I need to talk to you about my summoning. I mean, about what happened in my summoning.”
As if a switch had been thrown, Tessa was all seriousness. “Yes, it’s about time we had that talk, but I knew there was no point in doing so until you were ready.” She took my arm in a gentle but inexorable grasp and led me into the kitchen, pushing me onto a wrought-iron stool and then setting a cup of steaming tea in front of me as if it had been conjured. Don’t be silly, she can’t conjure. She just saw you on the step and got it ready.
Tessa sat on the stool on the other side of the counter and folded her arms in front of her.
I took a sip of the tea. Sweetened just the way I liked it, just the right temperature, and not one of those hideous fruity teas that Tessa usually favored. She’s worried about me, I realized. Knowing now what I did about the death of my grandmother, I found myself understanding—or, at least, willing to accept—a bit more about my aunt’s manner. Tessa had been seventeen and her sister, Ellyn—my mother—had been nineteen when Gracie Pazhel and the other summoners were killed. Michael Pazhel had dealt with his grief over the loss of his wife by examining the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. About a year later, Ellyn escaped by marrying my father, Marcus Gillian, leaving Tessa to figure out her own way in life.