“Kara,” Jill said. “I swear to god I’m about to throttle both of you. Just tell me.” Her mouth twisted in annoyance, but I could see a touch of fear in her eyes. Fucking hells, I hoped this wasn’t a dealbreaker for her.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I said. “Even Ryan.”
“Especially Ryan,” Zack added, face a mask of worry.
“Fine!” she said, bafflement and worry warring on her face.
“Zack’s a demon,” I announced.
I half expected her to yank her hand from his and storm out. But instead she pursed her lips, fell silent for a moment, then gave a short nod. She cocked her head and looked at Zack. “You’re like Eilahn?”
He shot me a pained look.
“He can’t confirm it directly,” I explained, more than a little surprised that she took it so well. Then again she’d also accepted pretty easily the presence of demons and my ability to summon them. And she and Votevha hit it off pretty damn easily, too. What’s up with that? But I didn’t have time to wonder about that right now. “Apparently he’s under some pretty serious oaths,” I said. “But as far as I’ve been able to determine, yes, he’s a syraza, and he’s protecting Ryan.”
She frowned and looked down at their intertwined hands. I watched as she absently ran her thumb over his. “Okay. So, hypothetically speaking, if a human woman and a demon were to have a kid together, what would the kid…be?”
Zack cleared his throat. “First off, I wish to state that if, hypothetically, I were a demon, I would never purposely get a child upon a human woman without her informed knowledge and consent.” The look he gave her was agonized and earnest. “And truly, if I were a demon, I would likely have had utter faith in contraceptive methods in place.” Then he winced. “Although, if I were a demon, I should have remembered that we are quite…virile.”
Jill’s lips twitched ever so slightly at that.
“But a child,” Zack hurried on, “would appear human in every way, though as the babe matured it might show an aptitude for handling arcane power.” He fell silent and looked at her miserably. “Jill, I care for you deeply, and I already love this babe beyond measure. But if you wish me to leave and cease to bother you, I will abide by your wishes. I do not wish to cause you to suffer.”
She let out a snort of laughter. “You ass,” she said and leaned in to kiss him. “Stop talking like that. You’re freaking me out. Don’t you fucking dare leave me.”
I excused myself as the two started shamelessly snogging, though I don’t think they noticed me leaving.
I headed out to the front porch, surprised to see Eilahn and Ryan sitting on the steps, the cat on the side of Eilahn away from Ryan, who glanced back and gave me an uncertain smile.
I gave him a reassuring one back, then crouched and tried to pet the cat. To my annoyance it hissed and swiped a claw at me, then ran off in a streak of calico fur.
I watched it go. “That cat is psychotic.”
“It hates me too,” Ryan offered, shrugging.
“Yeah, but…” I trailed off as a realization smacked into me. “She didn’t hate me when I was wearing the cuff.” I turned to Eilahn. “Can you go get her?” I asked.
Eilahn stood, nodded. “Interesting theory. You think she dislikes non-demons with arcane ability?”
“Exactly!” Maybe I didn’t need to worry about summoning another demon after all. Grinning, I dashed back inside and grabbed up the cuff. Jill and Zack gave me a curious look, but I simply winked at them and hurried back outside, just as Eilahn was returning to the porch with the cat snuggled in her arms. I snapped the cuff on and did my best to ignore the rush of queasiness that came with it.
Eilahn held the cat loosely as I reached out to pet her. Fuzzykins gave a mild mrowr and bumped against my hand. Grinning, I pulled the cuff off, nearly chortling in delight as the cat’s mood instantly shifted to hostile.
“Do all cats act this way around arcane practitioners?” Ryan asked, peering doubtfully at the cat. “Or is this one more than just a regular cat?”
Eilahn picked Fuzzykins up and nuzzled her. “She is simply a cat. Not a demon in disguise.” She shot Ryan an amused look. “Which is what you were thinking, yes?”
He chuckled, shrugged. “Do you blame me?”
“You know,” I said, thinking, “I had a cat when I was a little girl, but when I asked Tessa if we could have one she said she was allergic. And then after she introduced me to summoning she explained that cats didn’t like the smell of demons on us. I’d forgotten about that.”
Eilahn rubbed her nose against the cat’s. “She loves the smell of demons!”
I laughed. “Clearly so. I doubt Tessa ever conducted this sort of experiment. But either way, it’s nice to know we have a summoner-detector.”
“Time to pay a visit to the mayor?” Ryan asked.
“Damn straight,” I replied, then I glanced at my watch. “Well, first thing in the morning, that is. And with any luck he’ll also be violently allergic to cats.”
Chapter 18
After the others departed, I headed down to the basement and looked forlornly at the pristine floor. Even though I’d semi-promised myself earlier this year that I’d be better about concealing all signs of my summonings between rituals, my resolve to do so hadn’t lasted long. It was one thing when I’d only been summoning once a month, but when I started doing so more often it was tough to convince myself to scrub everything down when I’d only need to redraw it the next day or so. Plus, the power storage diagram kind of worked better when it wasn’t erased.
With a sigh I dug through my implements and found the tourniquet and syringe. The “traditional” way to get the blood necessary for the creation of a diagram involved a sharp knife and any of the veins in the forearm. Screw that. This summer I’d trained myself to use the same sort of equipment that phlebotomists used when taking blood. Helluva lot easier, hurt less, and I didn’t end up with scars all up and down my arms.
Luckily I only needed a couple of syringe-fulls to mix with the chalk. It took nearly an hour, but by the end of it I had both my summoning circle and my storage diagram rebuilt—and even had a bit of power channeled into the latter.
Then I went upstairs and slept like the dead.
The next morning I returned to the basement. I focused on gathering in as much available potency as I could, and carefully fed it right back into the storage diagram. Since it was only a few days after the full moon the power came to me fairly smoothly but still with enough hiccups and unsteadiness to remind me of why I used the storage diagram. I could feed potency in as unevenly as I wanted, but when it came time to use that stored power, I’d be able to draw it out in a smooth and steady flow. Glitches in the flow of power during a summoning tended to make for a dead summoner. I had enough threats to my person as it was. No need to take any unnecessary risks.
I was sweating with the effort after about thirty minutes, but it pleased me to see that I was already probably quite close to having enough for a summoning. After moving on to a quick shower and fresh clothing, I was ready to go meet the rest of our fine posse at Grounds For Arrest for a discussion of strategy.
Despite my thoroughly reasonable suggestion to test my theory by shoving the mayor into a small closet and then throwing the cat in there with him, the others overruled me and decided that it might be more prudent to simply approach him with cat in hand and watch Fuzzykins’s reaction. It was also decided that it’d be best if I wasn’t anywhere around, and that Eilahn should be the one to approach him, since, as far as we knew, he’d never encountered her.
Fine. But I still intended to watch from a distance. With binoculars. If there was any chance that I’d get to see the mayor’s face get clawed off, I didn’t want to miss it.