Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

“Yes,” I said. “You’re at risk of being a victim.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh, my God, you can’t let him get me!”

I reached out and put my hand on top of Michelle’s. “I won’t. That’s why I’m talking to you now. I know you don’t want to hear this, but jail is the safest place for you right now.”

Michelle stared at me, then shook her head. “I can’t stay here. It’s cold, and the food is awful, and all the other women in the holding cell are nasty.”

“Would you rather be slit open from throat to twat?” I said, forcefully blunt.

Michelle seemed to deflate. Her eyes filled with tears again. “This just sucks. Jail sucks.”

“I know,” I said, softening my tone. “I know, but give me just a bit more time. We’re close to this guy. Once we catch him, then you’re out of here.” I gave Michelle a wry smile. “And I’ll do my best to make sure that any time you spend in here will apply to your sentence.”

Her lip quivered. “Okay. But this still sucks.”

I stood and pressed the button to call the guard back. “I know, Michelle. But it beats being dead.”

I didn’t head back home or to the office. There was a conversation I’d been meaning to have for a while now, and time was running out to get all the answers.

I walked up the steps to my aunt’s house and rang the doorbell. It was barely six a.m., but I knew she would already be up and about. True to form, the door opened before the echoes of the bell had faded away.

“Hiya, sweets. You know you don’t have to ring the bell.”

“Aunt Tessa,” I said without preamble, “we need to talk.”

Tessa’s smile faded and she gave a nod, as if she’d been expecting this visit. She turned and headed down the hall to the kitchen and then sat at the counter, pushing a cup of tea toward me.

I couldn’t help but smile a bit as I lifted the cup. Perfect, as always.

“Aunt Tessa, I need you to tell me about the time you saw Rhyzkahl.”

Tessa sighed and set her hands on the counter as if to examine her nails. “I knew you’d be coming to me at some point about that whole thing.” She lifted her eyes to mine. “It’s all connected, isn’t it?”

“I’m almost positive,” I said. “But I need some more information, and you’re the only one who can give it to me.”

Tessa squeezed her eyes shut briefly. “I can still see the whole thing. Even almost thirty years later.”

“Greg told me that you two were in the basement when his father attempted to summon Rhyzkahl,” I said, gently prompting.

Tessa shook her head firmly. “No, he wasn’t attempting to summon Rhyzkahl. Only someone with a death wish would do that. He was trying to summon another lord, Szerain, who was much lower in stature than Rhyzkahl and supposedly willing to negotiate terms. It was a ridiculous and doomed attempt to heal his wife of breast cancer, which had gone undiagnosed and untreated because of his insane aversion to the medical community.” Her voice was filled with bitterness. Then she sighed again. “Not that there was much that could have been done back then. They just didn’t have the treatments they do today, but she might have had a few more years.” An expression of regret flickered across her face. “We’ll never know now.”

“Aunt Tessa,” I said, leaning forward. “Please tell me everything that you remember about that night.”

Tessa curled her hands around her cup, empty as it was. “Greg and I had both just turned seventeen. Our birthdays were only a few days apart. We’d been playmates since we were just kids—used to spend darn near every waking minute together. When we got older, the friendship just naturally progressed to intimacy.” Her lips twitched. “I guess you could say we were best-friend-fuckbuddies.”

I knew she wanted me to react, but I refused to amuse her. Get to the point, I thought silently.

After waiting a few breaths for me to respond, Tessa began to speak again. “Greg’s mother had been sick for a while, and his father decided that performing an incredibly risky, idiotic, insane summoning was preferable to actually taking her to seek medical help. We knew that it was breast cancer only because Greg had snuck her out and taken her to see a damn doctor.” Anger colored her voice. “At that time, I had no idea what a summoning was or that I had any talent for it. I knew that my mother had a private study that was sometimes locked, but that was about it. But that Saturday night, Greg called me and asked me to come over. He didn’t say so, but I knew he was worried about his mom and didn’t want to be alone. His parents had some sort of dinner party planned for that night, and I figured that meant we’d have lots of time to fool around in his basement.” A ghost of a smile lit her face. “I was doing my best to distract him from his worries, when people started coming downstairs. My mother was among them, which I hadn’t expected. We scrambled to grab our clothes and dove behind a bookcase, figuring we’d hide until they all left again.” She shook her head. “But they didn’t leave. We stayed behind that bookcase and watched as the ritual began.” She set the cup down and stood, moving to the sink to look out at her backyard and the morning sun on the lake beyond.

“Go on,” I prompted after a moment.

Tessa rolled her head on her neck as if trying to ease the tension. “You have to understand the … feelings of guilt that I’ve dealt with all these years. I know it’s not rational, but I feel guilty all the same.”

“Aunt Tessa, why?”

“I could feel the ritual, feel the opening of the portal.” Her voice was low, thready. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a summoning, and I could instantly feel that it was something I could do.” Her shoulders slumped. “And without knowing what I was doing, without thinking, I sat in my hiding place behind that bookcase and I reached out mentally to that portal as it opened.”

“Oh, shit,” I breathed.