A smile whispered across her face. “Still do, sweets.” Her eyes grazed across the arcane tattoo on the inside of my left forearm for a hundredth of a heartbeat, then returned to mine. I knew that my aunt could see the Mark on my arm. Even through the fabric of my long-sleeved shirt, she could surely sense it. I also knew she was fully aware of what it meant—that I was sworn to Lord Rhyzkahl. I’d expected some sort of argument or confrontation about it, but it had never materialized. Yet in that ever-so-brief flick of her eyes, we’d had the discussion about the mark and what it meant. She wouldn’t stop worrying, but I knew she supported me, no matter what.
“I know,” I replied, suddenly all full of warm fuzzies. I cleared my throat, about to embarrass myself by welling up with tears or something equally dorky.
Tessa saved me. “Who was the victim at your scene?” she asked.
I straightened my shoulders and got control of myself. “Her brother. Barry.”
Tessa’s mouth became a stiff line. “Yes. The one who thought you were ready to try heroin at the tender age of fourteen.”
“That’s the one.”
“You’ll pardon me if I’m not consumed with grief over his passing.”
I gave a low snort. “No, I get it.” Even though that brush with death had been a wakeup call for my aunt and me, Tessa would never forgive the man for nearly killing me. Frankly, I was a little shocked that he’d never received a visit from a demon.
I didn’t like the unpleasant thought that popped into my head. Carl had said she wasn’t summoning anymore, but how much did he really know? “Tessa, did you ever send a demon after him?” Like, very recently?
To my surprise she gave a sharp laugh. “Oh, how I was tempted. But I accomplished far more by sending the narcs after him and making sure he went to jail.”
Reassured, some of the tension eased out of my back. She wouldn’t lie to me about something like that.
“Now tell me why you think there’s something off about his death.” She cast a narrow-eyed gaze my way.
I shook my head. “First I have to tell you about the other death.” I quickly recounted the incident with the car crashing into mine and the driver’s subsequent death. “The driver was Evelyn Stark,” I finished.
She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them they were dark with sympathy. “She was drunk again?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. But here’s where it gets weird. Both Barry and Evelyn died of multiple strokes.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“And here’s where it gets even weirder,” I said with a humorless smile. “Yesterday morning Eilahn and I were attacked by a graa while we were placing wards around the PD building.”
Her eyebrows dove into a dark frown. “Which means there’s another summoner in the game.”
“Right. I don’t know yet how much of a part this summoner has, but I figure my best course of action right now is to track his or her ass down.”
My aunt grimaced. “Not an easy task.”
“What about that librarian you met in New Orleans when you were first starting out—the one who hooked you up with Katashi?”
She sighed. “No, she passed away quite some time ago.” Her brow furrowed in thought. “I’ll get in touch with Katashi, see if he knows of anyone working in this area.” Pain flashed quickly through her eyes and was gone. “He owes me anyway,” she added softly.
I knew Katashi, the summoner who’d trained my aunt. I’d gone to Japan last year for a couple of months to study under him—a complete waste of time and money. He was ninety if he was a day, and a condescending, sexist asshole. I could barely tolerate him for two months. I had no idea how my aunt had put up with him for close to a decade.
“I appreciate it,” I said.
Her chin dipped in a nod. “I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for Katashi to respond. You’d best get to your research, if you want to have any chance of results.”
I smiled wryly. “I guess I’d better.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” she said, then looked back to her cards as Carl walked back into the kitchen and sat back in his chair as if he’d never left.
I slipped off my stool and made my escape to the library.
Ages ago—or so it seemed—Ryan had asked me why I summoned the demons. And my reply to him was something flip, on the order of, “Because I can.” But, in truth, there was so much more to it than that. It wasn’t simply the fact that I had this ability. It was the fact that the summoning gave me something in my life that I didn’t have and probably never would have. It gave me purpose and a sense of accomplishment, and it was something that I’d earned. No one had anointed me as a summoner. Other than the innate ability to open the portal, I had to work and learn and study and bleed to get to my current skill level. I wasn’t heir to some incredible power or fortune that had been bestowed upon me, and it wasn’t as if some supernatural accident had occurred that had made me this way—like the stories where a homely girl is turned into an all-powerful vampire or werewolf or some such thing. No, I’d fucking earned this. This power, this ability was mine.
That’s why I summoned the demons. Because I could.
But right now, standing in the middle of Aunt Tessa’s library, I almost wished I couldn’t. Because then maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with this nightmare of a room.
My aunt insisted that there was a method to the madness in her library. And, to her credit, there was something about this place that somehow allowed me to find what I needed to find, even if it wasn’t always what I was looking for. Yet I continued to insist that it could not truly be called a library. Those were places of order, with some sort of system in place for keeping track of the contents. When one thought of a library, one might imagine a room with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, perhaps a table and some chairs. And yes, this room had all that. But the shelves were crammed—sometimes literally—with books, not always with the spine out, and certainly not with even a passing nod to alphabetization or any other comprehensible system. And the tables and chairs were also stacked high—books, papers, and the occasional scroll or big, horking tome. Shoved into the corners were more books, maps, and the occasional curio that I could never tell if it was some sort of valuable artifact or something that had caught her eye at a garage sale. To complete the bizarre image, the room was lit by an enormous crystal chandelier that took up most of the ceiling.
Only one corner of the room was clear—a heavily warded spot that I now knew held a portal of sorts between our world and the demon realm. It wasn’t the type of thing that a sentient creature could come through, but if left unwarded plenty of other things could come through—or be pushed through, as I’d found out the hard way. The best guess was that it acted as some sort of “pressure valve.” Regardless, we now knew that it needed to stay warded and well-protected. I was perfectly fine with leaving it the fuck alone.
Putting the portal out of my mind, I began my search for anything that might help me figure out how to track down another summoner, as well as any references to humans being summoned to the demon realm. I even kept my eyes peeled for any references to strokes, though with my limited knowledge of anatomy and physiology, it was likely that I’d skim right over something pertinent without even realizing it.
After an hour of pulling books and papers off the shelves at random I’d learned that pineapples are classified as berries, that if one should desire to summon a nyssor by the name of Votevha the best possible offering is bacon, and that a whale’s penis is called a “dork.”
Sighing, I did my best to replace everything where I’d found it. Not only was I no closer to finding this summoner, but now I was craving a BLT like crazy. And I didn’t even like tomatoes.