Secrets of the Demon (Kara Gillian 3)

He unfolded his arms, then inclined his head to me in a gesture that was damn near mocking. “Two questions answered,” he said, but before I could speak he continued. “However, I will be benevolent and answer your third as well. Pay Skalz’s price if you so desire, but I doubt his service will come cheaply—and there are others far more suited to giving protection. I have stated this before: I would be willing to assign you a protector. Think on it carefully.”

And then he was gone.

I scowled at the empty space before me. Sure, he’d assign me a protector—someone who could also keep tabs on me. And how the hell would a demon be able to protect me at all times anyway? At least Skalz could blend into any shadow, but I still didn’t think he’d be able to conceal himself during the day.

Rhyzkahl had stated once before that he didn’t like the thought of me risking myself—which, considering my line of work, was tough luck on his part. I also didn’t like the “big tough man will protect fragile female” implied in the offer.

But was this different? I was starting to get better at parsing his answers to my questions—even though I wasn’t necessarily getting better at asking them. I had the feeling that—once again—I’d wasted both of my questions, which left me somewhat screwed since I’d also wanted to find out about the thing that had attacked Lida. But on reviewing his second answer, I was uncomfortably aware that he’d left out other possible ways that another demonic lord could come after me. My aunt had the portal in her library—a weak spot between the spheres that demons couldn’t go through, but lower-sentience creatures could be pushed through. It was heavily warded and protected now, but if there was one, surely there could be others in the world.

And, of course, there was the chance that some other summoner could bring a demon through that would then attempt to carry out some sort of action against me. There weren’t many summoners—perhaps only a hundred or so in the entire world, though I didn’t think that anyone knew for certain. But again, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

I took a deep breath, forcing calm. Those were remote possibilities. Right now I couldn’t see tying myself to Rhyzkahl any more than I needed to simply on the basis of Skalz’s remark.

If I’d learned anything at all in the past six months, it was that nothing a demon said could ever be taken at face value.

Chapter 9

My alarm went off at six A.M., to my enormous annoyance. After slapping my clock to shut off the damn beeping, I glowered at it for several seconds as I tried to remember why the hell I had it set for so early, since I was on a ten-to-six shift this month.

Then I remembered. Jill, I thought, curling my lip. My nemesis.

I scowled and threw off the covers. Jill wasn’t actually my nemesis, merely my running partner. However, the two were awfully similar in my mind, especially at this hour of the morning.

Jill Faciane was one of the few people I could call friend, and also one of the extremely few people who knew I summoned demons—something she’d discovered by accident after she’d come into my aunt’s house and discovered a reyza in the hallway. Somehow I’d managed to convince her that the eight-foot-tall winged, horned monster in the house was friendly, which had led to me explaining how I could possibly know this.

It had been an interesting conversation, to say the least.

Shortly after I’d become sworn to Rhyzkahl, she and I had begun a Monday morning social hour—usually involving coffee and donuts. Then last month she got a wild hare up her ass and decided we needed to start running instead of being lazy slugs, pointing out that we had a PT test coming up. In theory I was heartily in favor of fitness as a requirement to be a police officer. In reality I hated running more than life itself, but at least it gave me time to indulge in all sorts of gossip with Jill. Not that I really had a choice. Jill had proven to be remarkably hard to budge on this, the stubborn bitch.

But first I intended to have my coffee. Nothing was going to happen until I had a caffeine infusion.

I loaded the coffeemaker with the appropriate quantities of grounds and water, then waited impatiently for enough to brew so that I could fill my mug. I glanced at the clock as I stirred in my usual insane amounts of sugar and creamer. I had barely enough time to check my email before I had to head out, which was convenient since I had an annoying tendency to forget to check it when I was at home. Not that I suffered from an overflowing inbox, but sometimes the penis-enlargement spam was worth a chuckle.

I sipped cautiously as I walked down the hall to the living room and my computer, humming in silly pleasure as the coffee worked its lovely stimulating magic on my nervous system. I set my mug on the desk, then went still.

Something’s different. The thought skittered through my head. Something was out of place . . .

The chair. It was pushed all the way in. I never did that. A chill ran down my spine even as I tried to talk myself out of being freaked. Okay, so it’s more than possible that I actually did push it in after I used it last time. Except that the keyboard tray was also pushed in. Again, I never do that. Pushing in the chair was like making the bed—they were both actions I considered to be totally pointless since I was merely going to undo it the next time I wanted to use the computer or sleep in the bed.

My gaze swept over the desk and computer, finding more things out of place. It was all little inconsequential things . . . the mouse was moved, the keyboard shifted. But taken together it was an unnerving whole. And, when I finally sat down at the computer, I realized that the monitor had been adjusted as well. For someone taller.

It’s impossible. This house is warded to the teeth. I’d learned my lesson after dealing with the wards at my aunt’s house and had spent several weeks summoning the demon Zhergalet to get my own house as secure as it could be.

I took a deep breath in an attempt to control my stupid paranoia. This was insane. Why the hell would someone break into my house to use my computer? Jiggling the mouse to clear the screensaver, I was relieved to see the familiar sight of my computer desktop. At least it still worked.

I leaned back in my chair, staring at the screen. I dozed off for a few minutes, after Rhyzkahl and I . . . Had it only been a few minutes? I hadn’t bothered to check the clock or anything. Had he used that opportunity to come up here and . . . what, surf the Internet? It sounded insane. And how would he know how to use a computer? And why?

Unless he was simply trying to learn more about this world? That made a strange sort of sense. But why hide it from me?

I rubbed my arms, chilled by uncertainty. I didn’t know whether I wanted to summon the lord immediately to confront him, or put off seeing him again as long as possible.

I scowled. I couldn’t summon him again. It would be several days before I could store enough power to do so. Besides, what would it accomplish? What, I was going to accuse him of using my computer, and he would say, Yes, I did, and I would say something like, Oh, well, don’t do it again?

Yeah, that would be effective.

But the acceptance that I wasn’t immediately going to summon the demonic lord didn’t stop me from fretting about the whole thing pretty heavily while I drove over to Jill’s house. I wanted badly to talk to someone about it, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Ryan. And I didn’t want to go anywhere near the subject of Rhyzkahl with my aunt.

I grinned wickedly. My nemesis. Jill wanted to drag me out of bed early? Then she could listen to all of my whining.