Eilahn picked Fuzzykins up and nuzzled her. “She is simply a cat. Not a demon in disguise.” She shot Ryan an amused look. “Which is what you were thinking, yes?”
He chuckled, shrugged. “Do you blame me?”
“You know,” I said, thinking, “I had a cat when I was a little girl, but when I asked Tessa if we could have one she said she was allergic. And then after she introduced me to summoning she explained that cats didn’t like the smell of demons on us. I’d forgotten about that.”
Eilahn rubbed her nose against the cat’s. “She loves the smell of demons!”
I laughed. “Clearly so. I doubt Tessa ever conducted this sort of experiment. But either way, it’s nice to know we have a summoner-detector.”
“Time to pay a visit to the mayor?” Ryan asked.
“Damn straight,” I replied, then I glanced at my watch. “Well, first thing in the morning, that is. And with any luck he’ll also be violently allergic to cats.”
Chapter 18
After the others departed, I headed down to the basement and looked forlornly at the pristine floor. Even though I’d semi-promised myself earlier this year that I’d be better about concealing all signs of my summonings between rituals, my resolve to do so hadn’t lasted long. It was one thing when I’d only been summoning once a month, but when I started doing so more often it was tough to convince myself to scrub everything down when I’d only need to redraw it the next day or so. Plus, the power storage diagram kind of worked better when it wasn’t erased.
With a sigh I dug through my implements and found the tourniquet and syringe. The “traditional” way to get the blood necessary for the creation of a diagram involved a sharp knife and any of the veins in the forearm. Screw that. This summer I’d trained myself to use the same sort of equipment that phlebotomists used when taking blood. Helluva lot easier, hurt less, and I didn’t end up with scars all up and down my arms.
Luckily I only needed a couple of syringe-fulls to mix with the chalk. It took nearly an hour, but by the end of it I had both my summoning circle and my storage diagram rebuilt—and even had a bit of power channeled into the latter.
Then I went upstairs and slept like the dead.
The next morning I returned to the basement. I focused on gathering in as much available potency as I could, and carefully fed it right back into the storage diagram. Since it was only a few days after the full moon the power came to me fairly smoothly but still with enough hiccups and unsteadiness to remind me of why I used the storage diagram. I could feed potency in as unevenly as I wanted, but when it came time to use that stored power, I’d be able to draw it out in a smooth and steady flow. Glitches in the flow of power during a summoning tended to make for a dead summoner. I had enough threats to my person as it was. No need to take any unnecessary risks.
I was sweating with the effort after about thirty minutes, but it pleased me to see that I was already probably quite close to having enough for a summoning. After moving on to a quick shower and fresh clothing, I was ready to go meet the rest of our fine posse at Grounds For Arrest for a discussion of strategy.
Despite my thoroughly reasonable suggestion to test my theory by shoving the mayor into a small closet and then throwing the cat in there with him, the others overruled me and decided that it might be more prudent to simply approach him with cat in hand and watch Fuzzykins’s reaction. It was also decided that it’d be best if I wasn’t anywhere around, and that Eilahn should be the one to approach him, since, as far as we knew, he’d never encountered her.
Fine. But I still intended to watch from a distance. With binoculars. If there was any chance that I’d get to see the mayor’s face get clawed off, I didn’t want to miss it.
The plan was simple. Eilahn would have Fuzzykins in her arms and would wait for the mayor to come out of the City Administration building. She would “accidentally” walk into him, and we could then see how well my arcane-ability-detecting cat worked. Hopefully, with lots of blood. Then, once we confirmed that he was our bad guy summoner, Eilahn could somehow subdue him, we’d load him into the car, and then proceed to dig out every detail of this arcane-enhancing, multiple-stroke-inducing drug and his plan for tracking down the portals.
Really, it was a perfectly sensible plan.
Ryan and I were in his car, parked just down the street from the admin building. Zack had already done some recon and assured us that the mayor was, indeed, in his office.
I glanced at my watch. Nine a.m. Eilahn was in position, leaning against a bench with the cat draped over her shoulders like a stole. The cat didn’t seem to mind the position one bit. The demon scratched her under the chin while the cat kneaded her upper chest in ecstasy. “When the hell is he going to come out?” I muttered, impatient.
“Jill should be calling him now,” he assured me. The mayor would be getting a call from an ‘informant’ with information about the murders and my supposed part in them, with instructions to meet in the parking lot of the coffee shop. I didn’t think he’d be able to resist that.
“There he is,” Ryan said, unnecessarily since I had my binoculars locked onto the front door. I watched as the mayor tugged his coat around him and looked up and down the street, a cautious smirk on his face.
Smirk all you want, asshole, I thought with a smirk of my own as I watched through the binoculars. He started walking down the street towards the coffee shop, and a few seconds later Eilahn stepped out from between two cars and bumped into him. I smiled as I watched. It was beautifully done, and the demon shifted the cat to her arms smoothly as she flashed a dazzling smile at the mayor. He gave her a winning smile in return and reached to give Fuzzykins a scratch behind the ears…
.…and Fuzzykins acted like a completely ordinary cat and calmly accepted the proffered affection.
“Fuck,” I muttered. No blood. No claws. No screaming.
“Either he’s not the summoner,” Ryan said, “or the cat has completely mellowed.”
I lowered the binoculars as Eilahn and the mayor parted ways and continued in their respective directions—Eilahn to the corner and the mayor to a nonexistent meeting. Ryan started the car as I slumped in the seat, annoyed and disappointed. He drove around the corner and stopped, and a few seconds later Eilahn climbed in and put Fuzzykins back into her carrier.
“I am sorry, Kara,” the demon said. “She did not react adversely at all.”
“I saw,” I said, sighing. “Maybe I was wrong about the cat.” I grimaced and rubbed at my eyes. “Though it’s more likely I was wrong about the mayor.”
Ryan slid me a sympathetic look. “It’s possible he’s simply a dick.”