Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

I couldn’t even find it in me to nod. Would we? Just over a day left, and we still didn’t have much to go on. “Go shower. Get some rest.”

“You need to sleep too,” Ryan reminded me.

“I will,” I lied. “I just want to go over a few more things before I head home.”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Do that.”

He turned and left the office, and I lowered my head to the desk again, groaning under my breath. It was going to happen tomorrow night. Would he succeed this time? Judging by the estimated times of death of the pile of bodies, he most certainly had made an attempt on the last full. He was probably summoning at the exact same time that I was summoning. Too bad there wasn’t some way for me to find out where he was by tracking the portal he was opening….

I lifted my head and turned my pencil end over end, musing on that. Perhaps someone who had far far greater skills in the arcane than I could do that sort of thing. It would probably be well beyond the ability of any human. Would a Demonic Lord even be able to track a portal? If they were actually being summoned, yes, of course, but by then it would be too late. But what if the portal could be—

I sat bolt upright, sucking my breath in through my teeth. The Symbol Man had tried to summon this past full moon. And he had tried to summon Rhyzkahl. And he had failed.

I began to laugh, knowing there was a trace of hysteria to it. He had failed because I’d been attempting to summon Rysehl, and Rhyzkahl had used my portal to escape. Holy crap, I didn’t fuck up the summoning. The wash of relief that went through me was so great I could feel tears leaking down my cheeks. I hadn’t screwed up. Rhyzkahl had hijacked my portal to save himself from being summoned by someone who had the ability to bind him. Stupid blind happenstance. And that’s why he didn’t slay me or take me, I realized. Even though it hadn’t been my intent, I was still his means of saving himself. Once he realized that I wasn’t the original summoner, his honor wouldn’t allow him to harm me.

And he seduced me because he figured he’d use the opportunity that he’d been presented with. He wanted me to trust him just so that I would later call him to this sphere. That was not as welcome a realization, and I was shocked to realize how much it hurt, even though deep down I’d suspected it. Not desirable, not interesting, just a convenient summoner. I scrubbed at the tears that continued to trickle down my face, choking back the thick knot in my throat. I’d never been pursued, wooed, or seduced before, and it had been nice—so very nice—to believe that there was something about me that attracted that sort of attention. I’d wanted to believe it so badly. Too badly. He would have done the same to whomever the summoner was, I thought, with more than a touch of misery. Not necessarily sex but some manner of seduction, whether it was power, or wealth, or whatever else he could have offered to gain the summoner’s interest.

He had read my needs, my secret aches, and played upon them. Demons were utterly self-serving, and I hadn’t truly accepted just how deeply that ran.

I took a shaking breath, wiping my face one more time. Fine. Whatever. I don’t have time to wallow in self-pity. But at least now I knew how to buy more time to catch the Symbol Man. I guess I’ll be summoning tomorrow. Let’s see if Rhyzkahl can save himself twice.

But this time I wouldn’t trust him any further than I could throw him.

Chapter 26

I went home and took a long hot shower to wash the stench of death away, then forced myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I knew that I would need to be rested if I was going to summon. It galled me to basically stop my investigation—especially after the chief’s ultimatum—but rationally I knew that I needed to get some sleep, whether I summoned or not.

But after I crawled into bed I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling, unable to shut off my racing thoughts. It felt almost strange not to have Ryan in the house. I was getting too used to him being around, and that was disturbing too. I liked him, and I wasn’t used to that. He’s just a coworker, a team member. Stop reading too much into it. He’s just paying attention to you because he’s fascinated by the summoning stuff.

Was that all there was to it? Rhyzkahl’s cryptic warning still left me with an uneasy ripple. Not that I had any reason to trust Rhyzkahl … but at the same time he had no reason to lie to me, and his ilk didn’t lie unless it fit into their whole code of honor.

I eventually managed to fall asleep and even slept solidly, with no nighttime visitors and no dreams that I could remember. I woke before my alarm went off at six a.m., which was also about five seconds before my cell phone rang.

I rolled over and snatched it off the nightstand, groaning when I saw that it was the Beaulac PD number. “Detective Gillian,” I said.

“Hey, Gillian.” I recognized the familiar voice of Captain Turnham. “Got some strange news for you.”

“Strange? Or bad?”

“Well … not really sure. I got a call from the chief this morning, asking questions about your task force.”

I sat up, sighing. “Yeah, I know. He thinks I’m in over my head. He told me that I was off the case and that he was assigning Pellini and Crawford to the team, but I wheedled a twenty-four-hour reprieve to prove that I belong on the case.”

“Those weren’t the questions he had.”

I frowned. “What questions, then?”

“Well … mostly questions about Agent Kristoff. Has he been spending a lot of time at your house?”

I could feel my back tightening in anger. “A lot of time? If you two are wanting to know if we’ve been sleeping together, the answer is a) no, and b) not that it’s any of your fucking business. Sir.”

“Gillian, chill.” I heard him exhale. “That’s good to know, but not for the reasons you might think. The chief apparently talked to one of his FBI buddies, and … well, no one at the FBI has heard of Special Agent Ryan Kristoff.”

I could only blink in shock for several seconds. Finally I found my voice. “I’m not sure I understand, Captain. Do you mean no one in the New Orleans office has heard of him? Or do you mean that he’s on a secret task force and so his name is not well known?”

“I mean that the chief did some checking, and there’s no Ryan Kristoff who works for the FBI.”