Summoning the Night

by Jenn Bennett

  My stomach flipped. I forced panicked thoughts to quiet and considered the news rationally. “How many descendants of transmutated members are in their early teens?”

  “Including both children and grandchildren, seventeen.”

  Seventeen? That seemed like a small and large number all at the same time. “Does Lon know?”

  “My son, Mark, is parked outside, discussing this with Lon on the phone right now.”

  “Why did you come here to tell me in person?”

  “Because I want to know what the hell you plan to do about all this.”

  You would think someone needing a favor would want to ask a little nicer. Indignation brought warmth to my cheeks, but I slid another mug into place and did my best to manage a calm tone. “This all centers on the bargain that Merrin made with the demon Chora.”

  “That’s fine and dandy, but how is knowing this going to keep my kids safe?”

  “If we can figure out why the spell—”

  He interrupted me, raising his voice. “How is this going to bring the four children back home?”

  I met his furious gaze and held it, listening to the tropical music and quiet conversations floating around the bar. “We need to find a way to track Merrin down again,” I finally answered.

  “I agree.”

  “Your people are still watching the Silent Temple?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m assuming they’ve seen nothing suspicious.”

  Dare made no comment, just studied my face like an artist memorizing shapes. I felt extremely uncomfortable. After a few seconds, he casually reached into his jacket on the chair next to him and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  “They are tracking every person who goes in and out of the temple. So far this has proved fruitless. However, that’s not the only tracking I’ve been doing. You’ll forgive me, but I had someone do a little checking up on you after the incident in the Hellfire caves last month.” He unfolded the paper and slid it across the table. “Magicians have a tendency to be loose wires. Imagine my surprise when we discovered an odd discrepancy in your origins.”

  My hand shook as I set down a mug. The paper was a photocopy of a handwritten birth certificate. Arcadia Anne Bell. Born 1905. Dare removed a second piece of paper. A copy of my modern birth certificate using her name. Forged, of course.

  My pulse doubled . . . then tripled.

  “It was old newspaper articles from the 1950s that got our attention. Cady Anne Bell, winner of several equestrian trophies. She was a fine rider. Only one of the articles listed her as Arcadia. That’s the one that tipped us off, of course. We dug up the old certificate from a hospital warehouse outside Kirkland, Washington.”

  Airtight. That’s what the caliph had told me about the identity years ago, before I started college. Something warm trickled down from my nose. I tasted copper. One watery, crimson drop fell and splashed on the bartop.

  “Oh, my,” Dare said, reaching across the table to hand me a paper napkin.

  On instinct, I tilted my head back, then remembered that was wrong. Never back. The blood would slide down my throat and I’d vomit. I held my nose closed with the napkin and leaned forward, breathing hard through my mouth. I hadn’t had a nosebleed since I was . . . I didn’t know when. I tried to remember. A child? No. A teenager. When I parted ways with my parents. Breath was coming too fast, and my temples were throbbing. I was going to rupture more than a few vessels in my nose if I didn’t calm down.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “No,” I answered honestly. Brimming tears stung my eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He picked up the photocopies, stacked them together and refolded them, then slid them back into his jacket. “I’ve had problems with magicians in the past, Merrin being a prime example. If he is, indeed, the Snatcher, and if he gets away with it again, I’ll never forgive myself. Never. The children’s lives are my responsibility. I hired Merrin. He ate dinner in my home with me and my wife, and I never suspected anything. I blamed poor, stupid Bishop. And why? Because of a ridiculous argument.”

  I didn’t care about any of this. My mind was racing, trying to put together my next move. What the hell was I going to do? All these years I’d been hiding from occultists who wanted me dead, and my fake identity had been ferreted out by some rich demon doing a standard background check? I pulled the napkin away from my nose, checking to see if the bleed was slowing. The printed Tambuku logo was obscured, soaked through with blood. I picked up a fresh napkin and clamped it back before the tiny trickle could fall.

  Dare smoothed the lapels of his suit jacket and leaned back in his bar stool to squint at me. “Perhaps you and I can strike a new bargain concerning the Snatcher. If you stop him and return our children to us unharmed, then we’ll keep this matter of your identity under wraps.”

  I bristled at his threat.

  “Once you’ve completed that task,” he continued, “you might be interested to know that the Hellfire Club can always use another rogue magician to help with our summoning and warding needs . . . and other matters.” His lips stretched into a tight smile. “It pays handsomely.”

  Fury sliced through my flailing panic. I dropped the napkin on the table and leveled my gaze at him. “I couldn’t give a damn about your money. I’m not summoning a bunch of low-level demons for your perverted parties.”

  “We’ve never had any complaints from the succubi.”

  “Oh, really? It totally surprises me that your prisoners aren’t complaining to the people holding them against their will.”

  His brows shot up.

  “I mean, who wouldn’t want to screw an entire lot of wrinkly, stoned rich guys?”

  “There are women, too. We aren’t sexist.”

  “Even porn stars and prostitutes get a choice. They also get paid.”

  “Touché.”

  “For the record,” I added, shoving my arm into a jacket sleeve, “I don’t hire out my magick. I don’t need money that badly.”

  “Lon’s assets are nothing to sneeze at.”

  That sent me into orbit. I was fed up with feeling hunted, threatened, and living in the shadows. I was not about to be bullied by a man who thought he could slap his dick on the table and hold my life in his bony fingers. But to add insult to injury, he added, “You may want to plan for the future. When you’re young, it’s hard to see past tomorrow, but once Lon’s midlife crisis wears off, he’ll get bored with you. Then my financial offer might look more enticing. Especially to someone like you with a past you’d like to keep hidden.”

  His words felt like a slap in the face. I knew he was just goading me, knew what he was saying about Lon wasn’t true, but the implication was a finger poking around in my insecurities. Insecurities about our age difference. About Lon’s status in La Sirena versus the working-class life I’d created for myself. Dare’s observation was worse than all the gossipy looks Lon and I got when we were out together in public.

  A dark corner of my brain roared to life. Violent thoughts sprung from nowhere. I wanted to pound Dare’s face into the table, make him take back the seed of doubt he’d just planted in my brain. And in that moment, I did something rash. My Moonchild power came to me like a loyal soldier following an order, fast and unquestioning. The bar fell into unnatural shadows and the blue dot appeared. I shaped it into a binding triangle and slammed it down over Dare before he could straighten his suit jacket.

  The darkness fell away from my vision and the bar reappeared. Dare cried out in surprise as Heka trapped him where he sat. I could hear people murmuring in the distance, but I didn’t care. If any savages were in the bar, they couldn’t see the Heka anyway.

  Dare’s shock sluiced away. He laughed and gave me a rotten smile. “Impressive, Ms. Bell. Just splendid. How did you manage this without sigils?”

  “You listen to me,” I said, sticking my face in front of his, as close as I could get to the binding without breaking it. The Heka
from the binding tickled my nose. “Lon and I will do our best to stop this goddamn Snatcher. But you’re not going to bully me into doing Hellfire dirty work, and if you ever, ever imply that I’m some freeloading dinner-whore after Lon’s money—”

  Dare tugged at his tie, rocking it back and forth to loosen the knot at his throat. A bead of sweat dropped down his domed head, but his eyes fixed on mine with defiance. “You’ll what, Ms. Bell? Follow me around and bind me every hour? This might scare the weaker Earthbounds that patronize this establishment, but it doesn’t scare me. If you want me to keep your alias secret from Lon, you’re going to have to do more than this.”

  I laughed. “Lon already knows my secrets. What he doesn’t know, apparently, is what a despicable asshole you really are. He told me you were one of the few people he trusted in La Sirena—that you were a good person. But you’re just like the rest of the Hellfire members, aren’t you?”

  “Despicable or not, I am Lon’s family and have been since he was born into this community. Who are you, Ms. Bell? That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

  Despite his bravado, Dare was turning a nasty color. The thought crossed my mind that the pressure from the binding could cause a heart attack in someone his age. I tugged at the binding with my mind, dissolving the magick and freeing him.

  He crumpled into his chair, breathing heavily, then slowly stood up. “I don’t know why you’re using a fake name, but believe me when I say that I can find out. And Lon might know who you are, but I’m betting other people do not. Unless you want everyone knowing what you’re trying to hide—a Ms. Kar Yee Tsang, perhaps—I suggest you refrain from binding me again.”

  Every muscle in my body tightened. Kar Yee was only a few feet away, behind the office door. She would never forgive me for lying to her all these years. Never.

  Dare smiled like a man who knew he’d just won a small victory. “And regarding your future work with the Hellfire club? I don’t think you’re in any position to turn down my offer, so consider yourself officially moonlighting for me. You can start by recharging the summoning circle you broke in the caves last month. But first, you might want to try a little harder to stop our former magician from taking more of our children.”

  He turned to leave and my brain fired on again.

  “Wait,” I called out. “Are their homes warded? The seventeen kids?”

  His head swiveled. He glanced at me over his shoulder. “No.”

  “Send me a list. I’ll start in the morning.”

  The magical wards took me almost twelve hours to erect. Though they were temporary, unlike the massive wards that Lon and I had around our homes, at least they offered some protection.

  It was just before nightfall when I pulled around the circular driveway in front of Lon’s house to park behind his SUV and beat-up black pickup truck. The warding magick had taken everything out of me. I felt empty and frazzled, and though my stomach was currently attempting to calm, I had vomited several times throughout the day from post-magick nausea.

  I unlocked the front door and ditched my coat and purse in the wide foyer before heading into the living room. Jupe’s frizzy curls poked up over the couch when I called out his and Lon’s names.

  “How was school?” I asked.

  “It blew chunks.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  He grunted. “Everyone at school was in a shitty mood, including Ms. Forsythe, and she’s never mean. How are we not supposed to be afraid of the stupid Snatcher when all the teachers are being jerks because they can’t admit they’re scared too?”

  He didn’t sound afraid. His tone was grumpy, more negative than usual. I leaned over the back of the couch and spotted Mr. Piggy curled up in his lap. “Everyone’s on edge.”

  “This is my birthday week and everyone’s ruining it.” He scooped up Mr. Piggy and held him too close to his face, but the pygmy hedgehog didn’t seem to mind. He snuffled around Jupe’s neck, then made his hedgie happy noise, something between a whistle and a purr.

  “You only get the one day for your birthday, you know—not a whole week. You aren’t Elvis.”

  He grumbled an indiscernible reply while keeping his eyes on the television. His long legs were propped up on the coffee table, socked feet crossed. Beyond the living room, soft golden lights from the patio and deck spilled through glass doors. A row of black-and-white photos in modern metal frames hung above the doorway: Jupe as an infant and toddler—all beautifully composed, taken by Lon.

  Jupe shifted his position on the couch, then moved the hedgehog in annoyance and groaned. “Ugh, I can’t take it anymore.”

  “Take what anymore?”

  He didn’t say anything for several seconds, so I started to stand up and go find Lon. He put his hand on my arm to stop me. “Cady . . . I need to tell you something.”

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  His dramatic sigh was interrupted by Lon’s muffled voice calling my name from the other end of the house.

  “How does he know I’m here?” I whispered conspiratorially, trying to coax a smile.

  “He knows everything.”

  “Tell me,” I insisted again, leaning down to butt my forehead against his temple. He exhaled through his nose and traced his finger over Mr. Piggy’s feet, stalling.

  Lon called for me again, this time sharper.

  “Go on.” He picked up the remote and absently flipped through channels. “I’ll tell you later. It’s not important.”

  Though I was pretty sure that was accurate, it must’ve been important to him.

  “I’ll be back in a sec.” I followed Lon’s voice, Foxglove trailing at my heels, and walked past the scent of dinner wafting from the kitchen. My stomach grumbled indecisively. I was starving and felt shaky, but I wasn’t sure if I could keep anything down just yet.

  I continued on to Lon’s library. He opened the door before I could knock. His faded T-shirt was dotted with cooking splatter and his hair had been hastily pulled back into a short ponytail, one wavy lock hanging free by his face. His brow furrowed as he looked me over.

  “Jesus. You look like hell,” he said. Scents of the library floated out from behind him—old leather, crumbling paper, parchment. Pleasantly musty.

  “I feel like it, too. I never want to do that much magick in one day again. Ever.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to. I think I found out why he’s doing it now.”

  “Who?”

  “Grand Duke Chora.”

  “Why?”

  “Timing. Remember how the incubus said the words on the cannery mandalas were names of stars?”

  “‘Stars that open doors,’ yep.”

  “It got me thinking about planetary alignments. Saturn takes thirty years to complete an orbit.”

  “Twenty-nine and a half,” I corrected.

  His eyes narrowed in frustration. “Did you already think of this?”

  “Lon, I just set seventeen wards—my mind is mush and I can’t stop shaking. I’m not thinking of anything right now.”

  He kissed the bridge of my nose, then herded me inside the library, glancing over my shoulder to make sure Jupe wasn’t following. Foxglove threaded her way between us and trotted around the rectangular pillar of books in the center of the room, heading to the rug in front of the fireplace. I stepped over her and plopped down into an ochre armchair, kicking off my shoes.

  “Look.” He brought the Æthyric silver tube to me, pointing to a diamond shape etched on the opposite side of Grand Duke Chora’s name. The diamond was filled with crisscrossing, seemingly random lines, like a wonky Spirograph. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t either, at first,” he said. “Then I realized what it looked like—an astrological birth chart.”

  I held it closer, turning it to catch the light better. “If it was in a circle, maybe.”

  “Yes, if it was a chart from Earth, but what would one look like from another plane?”

  H
e had my attention now, and he knew it. His brows lifted enthusiastically.

  “Different plane, different planets? I’ve never considered it,” I admitted.

  “Why would you? Who cares about Æthyric sun signs?”

  “I barely care about mine.”

  “Exactly.” He strode to his desk at the other side of the room. “But one of my rarer books—”

  “One of the Vatican’s books?” I teased.

  “Maybe.”

  I snorted. “Go on.”

  “This book has a strange chapter about planetary alignments. I never paid much attention to it—the planets are all wrong, so I thought it was just medieval hooey.”

  “Hooey?”

  One corner of his mouth curled. “You know as well as I do that there’s a lot of fucking hooey in thirteenth-century grimoires.” He marched back with a photocopy from the book and handed it to me.

  I pretended to be offended as I snatched the paper from his fingers. “You don’t even trust me to look at the real thing? Is this from the Liber Sacer?”

  “It’s in the preservation safe—I wasn’t going to leave it out until you came back home.” Yes, I’d heard all his grimoire-geek talk about how that particular book, and a few others like it, could “under no circumstances” disintegrate away in the air like the bogus transcribed copy in the Sloan Collection.

  I was too tired even to roll my eyes. “What am I looking at?”

  “Æthyric astrology, I think. See the diamond here?”

  “Holy shit,” I muttered. He was right—had to be. The diamond was divided into quadrants and marked with small symbols that looked remarkably close to Earth’s planetary symbols, just cleaner—and oddly familiar. I glanced at Chora’s name etched into the silver tube, comparing. “The weird alphabet from the cannery!”