Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

And while I knew he was just teasing me and giving me shit, I never knew quite how to respond when guys joked with me in a quasi-sexual way. My aunt Tessa was not the most sociable of people, and I’d been forced to figure out the complexities of social skills on my own—with varying degrees of success. That was one of the reasons I loved being a cop: There was a built-in sense of brotherhood that satisfied a long-buried desire to somehow belong.

That was also why I loved being a summoner—there were rules when dealing with demons. Dealing with humans was never simple or straightforward.

Justin didn’t seem to notice my angst—he just snickered at my reaction, then settled down to the business of taking my statement and the report of the burglary. He took a few obligatory pictures of the damage to the window by the front door but didn’t bother going inside. Damn good thing, since the door to the basement was still ajar. That would have been a tough one to explain—the chalked circle, the carefully placed candles, the tinge of incense. I kept my smile fixed on my face while I gave myself a mental head-smack. I had no desire to be dubbed a “Satanist” by people who had zero clue about demons and the arcane. Even though there was no such creature as “Satan” or “Lucifer” or a “Prince of Darkness”—at least not among the creatures I dealt with—that fact wouldn’t help me explain away my penchant for summoning the other-planar creatures that were known as demons.

Finally Justin had all the information he needed and had my perp stuffed into the back of his car. He scowled as he closed the door. “Dopehead. He’s totally zoned out.” He glanced back at me as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Hey, I think you cut yourself on some of the glass.”

I followed his gaze to my left forearm, where a thin trickle of blood was snaking its way down to my hand. I quickly swiped at the blood with the hem of my shirt. It wasn’t the first time I’d stained the shirt with blood. “Yeah, looks like I brushed against something. It doesn’t look too bad though.” I knew it wasn’t a serious cut. The knife I’d used was razor-sharp, and I’d become skilled at making the requisite slice no deeper than it needed to be. It was always worth that small pain to feel the sense of utter satisfaction after a successful summoning, to know that, as long as I didn’t screw up anything in the ritual, I would be able to control a demon. Even if I couldn’t control anything else in my life, I knew I had that.

“Well, be thankful that you’re not working tonight. Apparently the night watchman at the wastewater plant found a body.”

I leaned against his car. “Unless the guy was killed with a bad check, I doubt I’ll be involved.” That was one nice thing about working mostly white-collar crimes: I very seldom got called out in the middle of the night for an investigation.

Okay, that was the only nice thing. Everything else about it bored the living crap out of me. For two years I’d busted my ass as a detective in Property Crimes, and three weeks ago I’d finally been rewarded with a transfer to the Violent Crimes Division. However, I had yet to have a case assigned to me, and since there were still plenty of check-fraud and identity-theft cases, I’d continued to work those while I learned the ropes of homicide investigations.

But I could live with that. The feeling of accomplishment at the promotion had been damn near as sweet as a successful summoning. Here I was with thirty looming on the horizon, and I could actually say that I was finally getting somewhere in my life. I had a solid career and something resembling a future, despite my best efforts to fuck up my life when I’d been young and stupid.

“Girl,” Justin corrected as he pulled on his seat belt. “Not a guy. Cut all to shit, from what I heard, with a big mark on her chest.”

Goose bumps sprang up on my arms. “You mean, cut as in torture? Is the mark on her chest a symbol?”

Justin snorted. “Now, why you gonna go thinking like that? It’s probably some crack whore who got on the wrong side of her dealer.”

“Or it could be the Symbol Man—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re as bad as the rookie officer who called it in,” he chided with a teasing smile. “He was squalling that he had a ‘Symbol Man murder!’ Don’t you be overreacting and jumping to conclusions too. I mean, it’s been three years since the last body was found. And the methodology is different too. All the other bodies were found in remote areas, pretty decomposed. This one’s a fresh dump, in a place with a security guard, which would guarantee that the body would be found quickly.” He lifted his radio and keyed up, advising the dispatcher that he was clear of the scene with one arrest. “If anything, it might be a copycat,” he said, after replacing the mic in its holder. “He killed twelve people, then stopped. Why start up again after three years?”

“Thirteen,” I corrected, an odd excitement and unease running through me. “There were thirteen bodies found. I read through the case files just a couple of weeks ago. And maybe he stopped because he got sick, or was in jail.” Or maybe he was just waiting for the right time to come around again? A sliver of sick fear wormed its way down my spine at the thought. I didn’t want this particular theory of mine to be right.

The phase of the moon was only one factor when summoning a demon. The spheres containing this world and the demon world moved in patterns much like the orbits of planets, and summonings could be performed only when the spheres overlapped. The greater the overlap, or convergence, the easier it was to perform the more-complex summonings. The convergence had been so small for the past few years that it had been damn near impossible to summon anything higher than eighth level.

But now the convergence was nearly as high as it could possibly be and would remain so for at least another month.

If those murders were part of some sort of summoning, that would explain why he’d stopped. And why he would start again now. I rubbed at my arms, unsettled.

“Whatever. Guess we’ll find out eventually,” he said, glancing back to see if his arrestee was still zoned out. “All right, lemme get this dumb-ass to the jail. You just go on back to your nice comfy bed, and don’t worry your little head about any more mean ol’ bad guys coming in.”

I pushed my unease aside and gave him the laugh he was expecting. “I feel so safe.”

“Protect and serve and all that shit,” he said, giving me a mock salute, then he rolled up his window and drove back down my winding driveway.

My smile died as soon as he was out of sight. I returned to the porch, mincing over the gravel in my bare feet as quickly as possible, then snatched up my cell phone and scrolled through my stored numbers.

“Turnham here,” my captain answered crisply on the first ring. I breathed a mental sigh of relief that I hadn’t woken him up. I’d taken a chance in assuming that, if there was any suspicion at all that this was a Symbol Man case, he’d be on the scene.

“Captain, it’s Kara Gillian. I heard you might have a Symbol Man case at the wastewater plant?” I was trying to keep my voice level and calm and professional, but I had a feeling that my eagerness leaked through.

“How the hell did you hear that? Do you keep your radio on twenty-four/seven?”

I couldn’t help but smile. There were plenty of cops who lived and breathed police work and who did keep their police radio on at all times. In fact, I’d been one of them when I was first hired, listening obsessively to every call and keeping mental tabs on what was going on in the world outside my house. I loved being a cop, and it had been like a deep breath of fresh air for me to be a part of something special after more than a decade of what was often bitter loneliness. It had taken nearly a year for me to finally accept that I could, in fact, occasionally turn my radio off and still be just as much of a cop. “No, sir,” I said. “I had a 62R at my house, and Deputy Sanchez clued me in when he picked up my perp.”

“Ah. Well, that’s all right, then.” He sounded mollified. “And I’m glad to hear you nailed the guy. I take it you want to be in on this case?”

“Well, sir, if you don’t think I’d be in the way. It’s just that I probably have the most familiarity with the case files right now, and I think I could help.” I held my breath as I waited for his response. Most likely he’d tell me to meet up with the lead detective in the morning to fill him in. But what I really wanted was to see the body.

“If you don’t have a problem coming out to the scene at this hour, that’s fine with me. You have something to contribute, and it would be good experience for you,” he said, to my relief.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I promised. I raced back inside to change as soon as I hung up, suddenly deeply grateful to my drug-addicted intruder for choosing tonight to break into my house.