Shadow Summoner: Choronzon Chronicles Book One

by Tess Adair

  “Actually, I’m not sure all your classmates would agree with you,” she answered tactfully. “What was it that made you feel she was special?”

  “She just was,” he answered with a shrug, perplexed. In that moment, he looked far more similar to his classmates than he had this whole time. “She was smarter and nicer than anybody else in this school. You could just tell. We didn’t really have the same friends, of course. Different social circles, you know. But I knew what she was like. She was…well, she was perfect. I mean, I know there were some rumors about her—something about that nasty girl on the soccer team. But those were just rumors. If you’d met her, you would understand. She was the kind of girl who made other girls jealous. And sometimes jealous people tell lies. But that’s all they were. Just lies.”

  So many of Violet’s fellow students, and even her teachers, seemed quite determined to pin down exactly what “kind” of girl Violet had been. So far Logan had yet to see any evidence that any one of them had gotten it right.

  “I see,” said Logan. There didn’t seem to be much purpose to arguing the point with this one.

  “That Li girl,” he continued, his face turning a little darker. As his features twisted slightly with what looked like resentment, she thought he looked a little familiar somehow. But then it was gone. “She’s—I’ve heard about her. Something Li. I’ve heard she’s got a bad temper. I wouldn’t believe anything that came from her, myself. Like I said, I’m sure she was just jealous.”

  “Right,” Logan nodded. Not sure jealous is the right word. Enraged, maybe.

  Suddenly, he wiped his face clear of expression and pasted on a placid smile. “You know, I hate to cut this short, but I was actually hoping to get out a little early so I could get a head start on this US History project I’m doing. Do you mind if I get going?”

  “Not at all,” answered Logan honestly. “I’m just here for whatever you need. Feel free to come back if you think of something you’d like to talk about.”

  “That’s quite gracious of you,” he said as they both stood. He reached out his hand to shake hers, and she couldn’t think of a good way to refuse so she complied. “It was wonderful meeting you. Hope I’ll see you around again.”

  “Sure,” she said, matching his placid smile.

  Then he went, and she watched him go. Were his feet a little splayed when standing? He shrugged in his jacket as he walked out the door, and the movement made him look briefly hunch-backed.

  For a moment, she wondered if she should have pinned him down, tried to get something more solid out of him. But her days in this school seemed to drag on forever, and at the moment, she wasn’t sure she could get her brain to grind out another question for anybody. Besides, he was her last appointment. She was free.

  She pondered what kind of takeout options she might find on her way back to the hotel.

  The answer had been the diner, but this time she’d chosen their self-proclaimed New York deli style vegetarian sandwich, boasting an intriguing nut-based veggie patty and pickled cabbage. She’d picked out seasoned fries for her side and added on a diet root beer.

  Once she was back in the motel room, she immediately changed into her new after-hours outfit of a loose tank top and boxers before throwing the small window open wide. She felt restless and uncertain; she wanted to get out of this pointless small town and far away from the stench of adolescence. But her job was far from complete, and she wasn’t yet sure what her next step should be.

  She started to turn the television on, but then she changed her mind. Instead, she went over to the clothes rack and fished her ancient laptop out of the case that hung off one of the hangers. She planned to connect to her father and Knatt’s database, which she’d migrated to the cloud herself, quite painstakingly, about a year ago. In lieu of any real action she could take, she hoped that research might make her feel a little less useless.

  While the clunky piece of technology roared slowly to life, she opened up her still-hot bag of French fries and started munching. She didn’t know what counted as New York style when it came to fries, but they were crispy and salty, so she figured they were good enough either way.

  She had nearly finished the bag by the time the computer was up and running. Wiping her hands thoroughly on the provided napkins, she grabbed the slip with internet connection instructions and got started.

  Someone had summoned a beast to kill Violet. She had a growing list of who might be the summoner. She figured she might as well start a list on what kind of beast might have been summoned. After all, odds were high that the beast was still around. And who could say if the summoner would be able to maintain control of it?

  So that was what she wanted to do—start a list. But as she made her fourth go at getting the motel’s internet to work, she started to suspect that the world was not prepared to cooperate with her plans.

  Glancing over at the small bedside table where her sandwich still sat, she found the landline phone. She picked up the handset and dialed zero.

  “Front desk,” a young female voice said almost immediately.

  “Hi,” said Logan. “I’m in room 14B, and uh—well, I’ve followed the instructions on the card a couple of times now, but I can’t seem to access the internet. Is there anything you guys can do about that?”

  “Sorry,” the front desk girl answered. “Internet’s down for the whole building. No word on when it’ll be up again.”

  “No word? Have you guys, I don’t know, called the company, or—”

  “Yeah, we’ve called,” Logan could almost see her shrug through the phone. “But they just don’t know. Happens sometimes. The internet goes out and it doesn’t come back, sometimes for days. I wouldn’t lay bets on getting it back anytime tonight.”

  Logan bridled her frustration. “Well. Thanks for your help.” She hung up before she heard if the girl gave her any answer.

  Of course the internet was out. She was stuck in the middle of Nowhere, USA, so why shouldn’t her only connection to the rest of the known universe vanish? The feeling that she was trapped in this pointless little town intensified.

  She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and gave it one more shot. She tapped the necessary options to switch her phone into a hot spot and did her best to get her laptop running on it. But every time her laptop connected, the hot spot blinked out of existence. She let out a long sigh. At this point, it was impossible to say if this continuous technological failure was due to the uselessness of small towns or the lingering impression of the letha summoning. Either way, the result was the same.

  Still, she reasoned with herself, it wasn’t her only connection. She could attempt to call Knatt and ask him to connect to the database and go through it with her. She’d successfully used the phone as an actual phone already, so she had reason to believe that at least that function might work. Hell, he’d probably love that—he might even say something stupid like happy to see you finally showing initiative. He loved to act surprised when she did her job the right way. They were going on two years of official partnership now and she’d never once messed up anything that couldn’t be fixed, but he still carried on like she might blow them all up at any minute.

  She stared down at the phone in her hand and hovered over the idea. Did she want to talk to Knatt right now? She wanted access to the database, yes. But did she actually want it badly enough to subject herself to whatever piece of disapproval he might have waiting for her? After a moment of guilty hesitation, she put her phone down again. Maybe on a better day. She was about to give up on the whole idea and go back to her sandwich when it occurred to her that Knatt was not the only person she could call.

  Running contrary to her entire life philosophy, Logan actually had accumulated a handful of friends over the years. Not many, but a few.

  She couldn’t say why exactly, but the first person she thought of was Alexei Marin. She’d met Alexei under slightly unusual circumstances; long before she’d returned to the estate to take over
her father’s side of the business with Knatt, she’d taken on a client who had called her south. If Knatt had ever had an unimagined reason to nag her, it would have been during that particular window of her life. She’d had no regular source of income then, and no regular place to sleep either. Instead of settling down into a job and a life somewhere, she made sporadic money contracting with disreputable clientele, usually for some kind of illegal activity. For the most part, she stole things. Since disappearing from her father’s estate, she’d learned more than enough magic to do so easily.

  Most of the clients who hired her had no idea that magic was real, and they hired her to steal from places or people who also had no idea magic was real. So, usually, once she was given a location to look for the desired item, all she had to do was summon a little shadow and she could sneak on and off premises with no problem. If she ever needed to get through a lock or into a safe, it helped that she had super-strength.

  The equation altered somewhat if the client did know a thing or two about magic. Such was the case the week she met Alexei. She’d come to San Francisco to steal (“steal back,” her client insisted) some precious gem from an impressive-looking townhouse at the top of one of the city’s absurdly hilly streets. Only unlike most other townhouses in the city, this one was owned by a powerful letha practitioner who had bound his safe with demon power, making it almost impossible to break open.

  Before this particular contract, she’d only taken on a handful of clients who knew about magic. What she didn’t realize at the time was that she’d already unwittingly entered into a pre-established and uncommonly discreet subculture of the criminal underworld—one with more than a few connections to the paranormal underworld to which her father belonged.

  Of course, none of that mattered on this particular job, as she’d lost the work before she’d gotten anywhere with it. On her way back from her initial meeting with the client, as she stomped down an unsavory back street towards her questionable hotel room, dizziness struck her, and her spine exploded in pain.

  When she woke up some time later sprawled on the ground, she had an image in her mind and a direction she needed to follow. She called her client immediately to ask for an extension on the job, but her client refused. Already following the trail the Key had left for her, she politely declined the contract offer and expressed the hope that they wouldn’t hold it against her, but the timing simply wouldn’t work out.

  She saw Alexei for the first time the day after that. She had chased a nasty creature down a dark alley before losing track of it, somewhere between a fire escape and a dumpster. Keeping her body as still and quiet as possible, she crept along the edge of the dumpster, hoping to get a jump on it. Unfortunately, when she spun around the last corner, it was nowhere to be seen. Confused, she partially straightened herself and turned back toward the open end of the alley.

  And suddenly she found herself face-to-face with a dark, surprisingly handsome stranger. She almost felt like she was looking at a cartoon; his features were perfectly delicate and symmetrical, his full lips smiling sweetly, and she could have sworn his dark eyes actually sparkled. And, of course, she couldn’t help but notice the stunningly obvious—those brilliant, impeccable three-piece suits he always wore, even when he had to make his way down alleys as dank and dismal as this one. This particular suit was midnight blue. She hadn’t known it yet, but he was partial to blue.

  “Are you lost?” he asked pleasantly, waving a hand to indicate her semi-crouching stance and the scene behind her.

  She looked him up and down, somewhat bewildered.

  “Are you?” She waved her own hand, indicating his outfit.

  He looked admiringly down at himself.

  “Well, I’ll admit I didn’t plan on interacting with the peasants very much today.”

  And that was the end of their conversation—for the moment anyway. The beast she was chasing moved again behind her, and she scrambled after it—following it all the way up a connecting wall, leaving the mysterious, gorgeous stranger behind. She came back later on the off-chance he’d stuck around, but of course he hadn’t.

  And she figured she would never see him again. Hell, a part of her figured she had hallucinated him altogether.

  But she did see him again.

  And now she had his number in her phone. How long had it been since she’d last talked to him? Had she called him since that job in Sacramento? She couldn’t remember.

  Well, maybe he can. She pulled up his name and pressed down to dial it.

  He picked up after one ring. Of course he did. She imagined he spent a majority of his down time practicing how to be charming and unnerving.

  “Why hello, darling,” his velvety voice drawled on the other end. “It’s not often I get to hear from the daring adventurer. How exciting. Is there danger afoot?”

  For whatever reason, her mind conjured up an image of him tipping a glass of Scotch in her direction, possibly while standing in front of a large fireplace. Apparently she viewed him as an amalgamation of clichés.

  “I guess you could say that. Isn’t there always?” She gave her bag of fries a shake, hoping to find a few more down at the bottom.

  “Of course.” She heard him sigh. “Well, I have to admit I’m a little disappointed.”

  “Really?” Success—she grabbed the last half-burned fry. “Why?”

  “For half a second, I thought maybe you just wanted to talk to me.”

  She felt a smile creep surreptitiously across her face.

  “Does this mean I’m not interrupting anything? You don’t have a date or something else on the calendar? I’m shocked.”

  “Yet. You’re not interrupting anything yet. But if this takes longer than an hour, we’ll be crossing into interruption territory.”

  Logan glanced over at the clock. “You have a date at 9:30 at night?”

  “A bit early for me, I know.” His voice fell somewhere between mock pomposity and mock resignation. “But apparently some people have to get to work in the morning.”

  “So I’ve heard.” She fell back on the pillows, hoping to get a little closer to the breeze coming in from the window.

  “So how are you, H.C.?”

  “Well, I’ve been working with children all day. So not great.”

  “Good god. Why would you subject yourself to that?”

  “I have to, for a while anyway.” If she angled her head just right, she could see the stars through her window. “A girl died. She went to the local school. I’m investigating.”

  “Someone’s paying you to investigate a school?”

  Except for the “payment” part, yeah—but she couldn’t say that. “Something along those lines, yeah. So for now, I’m stuck in Montana, interviewing high school students. You know, this might actually be my own personal hell.”

  “Ah, but think of it this way,” said Alexei, and she could hear the twinkle in his voice, “once you get done there, maybe poor old Mr. Beirnbaum won’t seem so bad.”

  She let out a quiet, unexpected snort of laughter. Mr. Beirnbaum had hired them jointly on a case about a year back. He was a little old man with four cats and an impressive and wide-ranging vintage pornography collection—which he had insisted on showing her about eight different times. And, as Alexei had been determined to mention daily, he smelled like old cheese and dust. On the other hand, he paid well.

  “She laughs,” said Alexei, his voice light and smooth. She conjured up an image of him again, all charming smile and thick, slightly overgrown hair. “It was all your fault, you know. You tempted him. You and your lady charms.” He had the slightest accent; she could only hear it in his “a” and his soft “r.”

  “My lady charms? What are those exactly?”

  “Why Miss Henrietta…how explicit do you want me to get?”

  Logan rolled her eyes and let her head fall to the other side. “Please don’t. My memory of poor old Beirnbaum couldn’t take it.”

  “Speaking of explicit, did he e
ver show you any of his engravings?”

  “Yes. Wait, did he show you his engravings?”

  Alexei chuckled, and she imagined a light in his eyes. “Try not to be too jealous. He certainly preferred you, but he was perfectly happy to harass me instead, if you weren’t around.”

  “Is it still harassment if you enjoy it?” She heard him laugh again. “You know, all things considered, that contract wasn’t half-bad. Working with you wasn’t half-bad, anyway.”

  “Yeah. We should do it again sometime.”

  She felt herself fall quiet. She liked talking to Alexei, but every time she did, she noticed a certain undercurrent to it, and it unsettled her.

  “Hey,” Alexei said into the quiet, “were you calling me to talk about something specific?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Logan, remembering. “I was gonna ask you about monsters that rip out people’s hearts.”

  “Mm. You do know how to turn me on.”

  “Apparently I’m in the part of Montana that the internet hasn’t reached yet, which means I have no access to the cloud.”

  Alexei made a clucking noise. “And no access to that huge private database of yours.”

  She shot an eyebrow up, even though he couldn’t see her. She liked to think he could hear it in her voice. “Did I tell you about that?”

  “Maybe,” he answered. “Well, don’t worry, darling. It may not be as comprehensive as your illustrious partner’s, but I do have some research we can use.”

  “You’re a blessing,” said Logan. She gave him a description of the wound, and postulated a theory that the beast could sense heartbeats. Alexei didn’t know anything about the Key, so it was better not to mention the vision. She also had him narrow down the field to beasts that could be summoned, and to some extent controlled. She hesitated for a moment, then added, “Also…can you look for any that…kind of look like a wolf? I—I’m not sure, but I think I remember reading about…well, wolf-demons that rip out hearts or something. My memory’s a little vague on specifics.”