middle of the backseat, on the off chance the mood struck me to continue grinding my way through the damn things.
“I’ll drive until we get out of the area,” I said to Bryce as we finished loading our stuff into the vehicle. “Once we’re sure we’re clear you and I can trade off.”
“I do know how to drive,” Paul piped up, though his eyes remained glued to his laptop.
“Do you want to take a turn driving?” Bryce asked Paul, eyebrow raised.
Paul looked up, frowned as he considered, then shook his head. “Nah. That would suck.”
Bryce rolled his eyes. “Which is why we didn’t ask you to drive. I know you pretty well by now.”
I bit back a laugh. Those two were as bad as siblings.
With that settled, we headed out.
• • •
We stopped about every ninety minutes, or whenever Mzatal started looking a bit peaked or antsy, though it was actually more of a feel than a look. The pressure of his aura would take on an uncomfortable edge, and everyone knew it was time to stop.
By the third hour of driving we developed a smooth routine: feel the aura, find a suitable spot to stop, let the demonic lord out to breathe and chill for a few, check in with Eilahn, get back in and change drivers, keep going.
“What’s the plan when we get to Austin? Go straight to this woman’s house?” Bryce asked as he settled into the driver’s seat for his turn at the wheel.
I winced. “Pretty much. Unfortunately we don’t have any intel on what to expect when we get there.”
“In other words, we’re winging it?” He glanced in the rear view mirror and gave me a wry smile.
“You got a better plan?”
Bryce chuckled. “Nope. Luckily I’m pretty good at making it up as I go.” He passed a slow-moving car then waited until he was clear and back in his lane before speaking again. “What about this woman? Is there anything personal about her that might help?”
I leaned forward. “Boss? You’re the one who actually knows her.”
Mzatal turned his head to look at me. “She is near eighty years of age. Other than the summoning of Faruk at Christmas, I have not known her to summon in recent years. I have not encountered her in person nor, to my knowledge, has she ever visited the demon realm. She is competent, having survived to this age.”
“Was she ever involved with Katashi?” I asked.
“I am unaware of any current association,” he said, “though she is one of his oldest living students.”
I chewed on that. Katashi had performed his miraculous first summoning in about 1926, so he’d probably been summoning for twenty-five or thirty years before she became his student.
Was she summoning while she was married? I wondered. What did the normal family life of a summoner look like? I sure as hell wasn’t an example, nor was Tessa. “I know you said she hasn’t summoned much in a decade. Was she pretty good at it when she summoned regularly?”
He regarded me, inclined his head. “For her time, she excelled.”
“I wonder why she summoned Faruk,” I mused aloud as I settled back in my seat.
“To play chess,” Mzatal replied.
I blinked. “Seriously? She went through all of that for a chess partner?”
“Faruk reported that Rasha was lonely,” he said. “There may be more, but it seemed Faruk told all she knew.” He exhaled. “And Faruk is a relatively simple summons.”
A wash of pity for the old woman temporarily eclipsed her place on the possible bad guy list. I’d spent my summoning life isolated from other summoners except for Tessa and the few I met during my brief stint with Katashi. Hell, I’d grown up socially isolated as well, and pretty much without friends. “Lonely” and I were old and bitter pals.
Pushing the unsettling thoughts away, I stuck my headphones on and started the playback of Idris’s call. I doubted that the two clues I’d found so far—StarFire hidden in start a fire, and the subtle implication of his family in his use of the word people—were the only ones he’d seeded into the conversation. Now I knew to listen for micro-pauses, inflections shifts, or emphasis, and during my second break from driving I finally got two more, one right after the other. Once I heard them, I couldn’t believe I’d missed them.
I smiled, played it again.