I pulled myself onto a stool at the counter and made a sour face. “Yeah, and I’m in super mega-craziness right now.” The kitchen itself felt as welcoming and familiar as my aunt—dark granite countertops, wallpaper with subtle patterns of climbing ivy, a deep dusty-rose tiled floor, and stainless steel appliances without a smudge or fingerprint in sight.
She set the kettle on the stove, turned the burner on, then took a seat on a stool opposite mine. “Tell me. What’s going on now?”
“Well . . .” I had to think for a moment about where to begin. “When’s the last time you talked to Katashi?”
Tessa’s brow creased in thought. “It’s been a while.”
“Good,” I said, relieved. At least I didn’t need to tackle a problem in that arena. “Please let me know if you hear anything at all from his people. Anything.”
“You told me Katashi caused some trouble for you.” Her gaze sharpened. “Has something else happened with him?”
I spread my hands flat on the cool marble of the countertop. “You could say that.” I proceeded to fill her in on the Idris situation and the craziness at the warehouse. Tessa listened carefully while I spoke, and when the teakettle began to whistle she got up to pour water into two mugs.
“Crazy stuff indeed,” she said as she dunked teabags into each mug. “Idris. He must be pretty important.”
“He’s amazingly gifted, especially considering he’s barely twenty.” I smiled. “You’d like him. Super nice guy.”
Tessa placed my tea before me, curled her hands around her own mug. “What was he doing in the demon realm in the first place?”
I shamelessly reached for the bowl of sugar cubes and dumped several into my tea. “Training with Mzatal. He was under agreement—it’s sort of like a contract.”
She took a sip, brow furrowed. “Is that what you have with Mzatal?”
“We did,” I said. “We don’t now. I mean, nothing official. He trains me, and we work together. We’re partners.”
Her eyes dropped to the ugly scar on my left forearm. “Is he the one who removed Rhyzkahl’s mark?” she asked, tone abruptly sharp and biting.
I looked down at the ripple of scar tissue. “No. Rhyzkahl did that,” I said, voice expressionless. Yet I hesitated before continuing with the rest, the details of how he’d sliced the mark from my flesh, and what else he’d done to me. I hadn’t told her any of that yet, had simply left it at “Rhyzkahl betrayed me.” I knew Tessa had seen my sigil scars when she summoned me back to Earth, but she had yet to ask about them, and I didn’t want to push it. Last year, she’d been captured and used in a ritual that left her comatose, her essence lost in the void. After she returned to her body, she’d been fragile. Docile. Completely unlike the Aunt Tessa I knew. She even stopped summoning for months, and only resumed in order to rescue me from the demon realm. Carl had played a significant role in keeping her on track despite the oddity of their match, and I could only speculate that his near-emotionless manner helped to ground her and keep her focused.
Yet even though she’d come a long way in her recovery, a measure of fragility still clung to her. The hideous details of my torture would only upset her, and I saw no need to risk destabilizing her now.
I rubbed the scar, changed the subject. “Back when you studied with Katashi, did you learn the sigil technique called the pygah?” Mzatal had told me the pygah was part of the foundation for all other summoning work, yet Tessa had never even mentioned it.
She set her tea down, brow furrowed as though trying to remember. “Pygah,” she murmured, then her face lit up. “Pygah. Yes, I did. I haven’t thought about it in years. Not since . . .” She trailed off, staring past me with unfocused eyes.
Frowning, I laid my hand on her forearm. “Tessa? Not since when?”
She blinked, brought her gaze back to me. “Not since I found out I was pregnant. I remember clear as a bell doing a pygah then, but,” she shrugged, “I haven’t thought of it since.”
Worry flared hot and bright. How do you “forget” a major arcane tool? I did a frickin’ pygah of my own to help maintain a façade of calm.
“Why did you pygah when you found out you were pregnant?” I asked.
That earned me a raised eyebrow and a withering look. “Wouldn’t you?”
Okay, she had a point there. “You were still with Katashi when you got pregnant?” I asked, oh-so-casually.
“With Katashi?” Confusion clouded her eyes. “It was a fling with an American living in Japan. He left before I knew I was pregnant so, when the baby was stillborn, I didn’t call him.”
Goosebumps shivered over my entire body. Those were almost the exact words she’d used the last time I’d asked, and again I had the disturbing feeling she wasn’t so much remembering it as reciting a story. “Programmed” was the word that came to mind, and right behind that, “manipulated.” Even though I didn’t have a badge anymore, my cop-instinct still worked, and right now it tingled like crazy. I knew in my gut that baby didn’t die. What I didn’t know was who had made Tessa believe so and why?
“What was the father’s name?” I kept a pleasant and casual smile on my face.
“I had a fling. He was American.” Tessa waved a hand dismissively.
Yeah, well, she could dismissively gesture all she wanted, but I wanted some answers. “Back when you had the, ah, fling with the American,” I pressed, “you were still in training with Katashi?”
A slight frown crossed her face. “I remember we summoned the reyza, Pyrenth,” she murmured as though trying to dust off twenty-year-old memories. “But that was before I was pregnant.”
“I met Pyrenth in the demon realm,” I said. “At Rhyzkahl’s. He was my escort at times.” I leaned forward. “What else do you remember about your training back then?”
“I remember working on this, over and over.” She traced her fingers through the air as though drawing a sigil, and her frown deepened. “What is that called?”
Sick worry tightened my chest. Tessa had a great memory for arcane structures. “It’s called a durik, for ritual stabilization,” I told her, lifting my hand to trace the sigil. “It’s usually used in combination with a . . .” I trailed off. Not a mere sigil. The durik and its companion were floaters.
Icy coils of dread wrapped around me. The art of tracing floaters could only be learned in the demon realm, and Tessa had never mentioned or even implied she’d ever been there.
“Durik. Silly of me to forget that.” Tessa stood and carried her mug back to the stove, topped it off with hot water even though she’d only taken a few sips from it.
My heart hammered at the implications. “It must have slipped your mind, like the pygah. No big deal.” Except that it was. It was a huge fucking deal. “Tessa? Have you ever been to the demon realm?”
Her mug crashed to the floor, sending out a splatter of hot liquid and shards of stoneware.
“Shit!” I jumped up and came around the counter. “Are you okay?” I grabbed at a dishtowel and crouched to mop up the spreading pool of tea.
“A little clumsy, that’s all,” she murmured. She looked down at me, brow faintly furrowed, yet didn’t stoop to help me clean up the mess, which was very unlike her.
I stood, dishtowel in my hand, raked my gaze over her to make sure she hadn’t been cut or scalded. No visible blood or burns that I could see, but she looked pale as death. She pressed her hand over her solar plexus. “I feel strange,” she said, voice thready.
I dropped the dishtowel back on the floor amidst the shards, took her gently by the arm and led her around the mess and into a chair at the kitchen table. My already high worry wound tighter as she went without protest. “Do you need some water?” I asked.
Tessa blinked, seemed to come back to herself a bit. “Some tea would be nice.” Her eyes went to the mess on the kitchen floor, and she winced. “I’d better clean that up.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I insisted. That was more normal for her at least. “Do yo
u want me to call Carl? I’m sure he’ll come right back.”
“Oh no, sweetling. No need to worry him.” She gave me a smile that only reassured me a little.
I quickly readied another mug of tea and set it in front of her, then finished cleaning up the spill and broken mug while I mentally replayed the incident. Once I finished the cleanup I sat at the table with her again. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I’ll be right as rain as soon as I finish this cup,” she said brightly. “Now what were you telling me about your agreement with Mzatal?”
What the fucking hell? Had she forgotten the last few minutes of our conversation? My anxiety clawed higher, and I had to take a long sip of my tea before I could keep my voice and expression composed enough to speak casually. “I said that we have an agreement based on mutual respect. We ditched the contractual one.” I plastered on a smile. “I learn a lot from him . . . in the demon realm.” I watched for any flicker of reaction and saw nothing but honest interest in her face. I hesitated, then jumped in with both feet. “Have you ever been to the demon realm?”
Again she pressed her hand to her solar plexus. Her eyes went wild for a second, then her face relaxed and brightened. “That water hot yet?”
My hands tightened around the mug. “Your tea is in front of you.”
“Oh!” She looked down. “So it is.” She smiled, lifted it, and took a sip.
This wasn’t some sort of dementia, not with this odd programmed feel. It was something far more sinister, more deliberate. Mzatal would be able to get to the bottom of it but I had another day before I summoned him again.
I took a breath and calmed myself. This had been with her for twenty years. Another day wasn’t going to harm her. “I’m summoning Mzatal again tomorrow,” I told her. “I’d love for you to meet him.”
Tessa’s mouth tightened. “This one must be quite different from Rhyzkahl.”
You can say that again! “Yes, he’s very different,” I said. “I care about him a great deal.”
Worry shadowed her eyes. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said.
I reached to give her hand a light squeeze. “I know. It’s why I’m training with him. I need to get really damn good at what I do so that I won’t be as vulnerable.”
She opened her mouth as though to speak then jerked her head up to look at the clock. “Crap! I need to go. I promised Melanie I’d close at the store tonight.” My aunt owned a natural food store in downtown Beaulac, and after her hospital stay last year hired her ditzy nurse, Melanie, as a full time worker.
“That’s cool. I’ll call tomorrow.” I stood as she did. “I want to bring Mzatal over to meet you, since I’m shacking up with him and all that.” I faked a grin as I added silently, And since it’s obvious someone has messed with your head.
“That’ll be good,” she said, belying the flicker of disapproval in her eyes. “I should meet him.”
I kept the fixed smile on my face. “You mind if I use your bathroom before I go?”
“As if you need to ask?” Tessa rolled her eyes. “Go for it. I need to scoot. Lock up when you leave, please.”
With that she hurried out and to her car. I surreptitiously peered out the front window, watched her drive off as anger and sorrow wound together in the pit of my stomach.
Someone had manipulated my aunt.
I intended to find out who and why.
Chapter 17
I quickly slipped into my aunt’s bathroom, retrieved a handful of hair from her brush and dug a used tissue out of the waste basket, then left the house—making very sure to lock up behind me since I would never hear the end of it otherwise.
Eilahn dropped from an oak tree in the front yard, landing with impossibly graceful ease. I had to wonder what the neighbors thought of a beautiful woman shimmying up a tree but doubted Eilahn gave a crap about what they thought.
She moved to me, brow creased. “You are disturbed.”
“My aunt. She’s . . .” I drew a breath in a doomed effort to steady my voice. “She’s either having a stroke or she’s been manipulated.”
Concern narrowed Eilahn’s eyes. “If she is having a stroke, does she not require medical attention?”
Scowling, I sat down on the step. “She’s not having a stroke. That would be easier to deal with.” I gave her a quick recap of my conversation with Tessa and the associated weirdness.
Eilahn pursed her lips. “A manipulation to avoid focus on time in the demon realm as well as to fabricate the death of a child. This is indeed a grave matter.”
“No shit!” I exclaimed. “But why the hell would she need to be manipulated about that and by who?”
“This I do not know.”
Frustrated and worried, I returned to my car and retrieved a pre-addressed padded envelope from the back seat. I placed the used tissue in a plastic bag, then carefully selected about a dozen hairs with the root follicle still attached. I tucked those into another bag and slipped both into the envelope to join the others containing Idris’s hair and his toothbrush.
One way or another, I’ll know for sure.
I sealed the envelope and headed to the post office, where I nearly ended up in a knock-down-drag-out fight with Eilahn over our apparent need for several hundred stamps with pictures of kittens on them. I finally talked her down to a slightly more reasonable eighty stamps, which was still far more than I could possibly need, and would no doubt last me until the next century. I paid the too-cheerful postal employee for the stamps and the overnight shipping charge for the envelope, then quick-stepped back to my car with Eilahn while she made delighted noises at each and every stamp.
She abruptly cut off her rapt perusal, lifted her head, and went demon still.
Alarm crept in. “What’s wrong?”
“Wards have triggered at the house,” she told me, voice serious as she continued to assess. “Intruders at the perimeter near the fence line on the west side. Multiple people.”
I surged toward my car. “Shit! Does Zack know?” Though as soon as I asked the question, I knew the answer. “Never mind. Of course he does.” Zack had set the majority of the wards along the new fence line. If Eilahn felt the alarm wards trigger, Zack surely had as well. “Can the intruders get through?”
“Unless they have a demahnk or a qaztahl with them, they will not pass.”
I stopped and wheeled to face her. “They don’t, do they?!” The most likely culprits were Katashi and his summoners, which meant it was sickeningly possible they had one of the Mraztur with them.
“I can only sense presence, not the specifics,” Eilahn replied, which did nothing to ease my anxiety. “Zack may know more. Is Ryan at the house?”
“I don’t think so,” I said as I yanked the car door open. “He had to go to the office.” My phone rang. I snatched it from my pocket, checked the number. “Zack! You’re at the house? Eilahn said someone’s trying to get onto the property.”
“I’m not at the house,” he said, utterly calm. “I was calling to let you know about it. They’ve withdrawn now, but it was a serious, focused attempt.”
“Do you know who it was?” I jammed my key into the ignition, cranked the engine.
“I wasn’t there to see,” he said. “I’m heading that way momentarily.”
“Any sense that Rhyzkahl or one of the other assholes was there?”
“No. They definitely didn’t have a qaztahl with them.”
I exhaled in relief. “All right. I’m heading home now too.”
“I’ll see you there,” he said and disconnected.
As I drove home my thoughts churned back and forth between Tessa’s manipulation and the attempted intrusion. It was only when Eilahn reached and touched her cool hand to my shoulder that I realized I’d been muttering under my breath.
“All will be well,” she said with such solid conviction that I found my anxiety slipping away.
“Thanks,” I said and gave her a grateful smile. The syraza was a kickass bodygu
ard, but she also did a damn good job protecting my mental health.
I made the turn onto Serenity Road, a narrow two-laned affair with deep ditches on either side. My dad had died on this road—killed by a drunk driver when I was eleven—and I’d avoided it for close to a decade afterward even though the road offered a significant shortcut into town, shaving the travel time from forty minutes to the thirty it now took. When I became a cop I began to use it again, and the first time I drove it I couldn’t even find the place my dad was killed. The tree he’d been crushed against had long since been cut down, and even the tight curve had been straightened and graded in the intervening years. I probably could have located the exact spot from the accident report, but what would have been the point? Sometimes the past was best left in the past.
“Kara!” Eilahn shouted, but I’d already seen the dark blue Lexus sedan swerve into our lane and had my foot jammed hard on the brakes. For an instant I weighed whether going into the ditch would be worse than hitting the car head on.
Then both options disappeared as the sedan screeched to a stop sideways, blocking the road.
“Shit!” I skidded to a rubber-burning stop, all the while aware that the other vehicle’s move was intentional. Too precise to be anything else. And the location had obviously been carefully chosen. A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed another car coming to a stop behind us.
“It’s a trap,” I snarled as I threw the car into park. “Bail out!” I hit my seat belt release and shoved the door open all in one motion, yanked my gun from its holster and prepared to dash to the trees beyond the ditch.
I made it two steps before I stuttered to an awkward stop, freezing at the sight of the MAC-10 submachine gun leveled at me. Heart thundering, I extended my hands out to the sides in as non-threatening a manner as possible and kept my gun lowered as I took in the details beyond the muzzle of the submachine gun. A red-and-grey-haired powerhouse of a man in a well-tailored black suit held the MAC-10 as he stood beside the open front passenger door of the Lexus. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Eilahn motionless on the other side of our car, though her stance told me she was poised to move. Ever since she’d been shot she habitually wove protective arcane shielding, but it wasn’t infallible.
Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian) Page 18
