Sins of the Demon (Kara Gillian 4)

“I already knew he was a dick,” I replied, then sighed again. “Oh well, thanks for all y’all’s help.” I suddenly felt insanely weary and nauseated. “I guess I need to hit the books or something and see if I can shake anything loose.”

I had a feeling Ryan wanted to suggest some course of action that he could help out with or participate in, but as much as I enjoyed his company, I also desperately needed to not be around him for a while. Too much craziness going on, and unfortunately the mysteries surrounding him made up a big chunk of it. Maybe he could sense that, because after a few heartbeats Ryan gave a reluctant nod. He drove us back in silence to where my car was parked, put the car in park. Eilahn got out of the car, murmuring softly to the cat in her carrier.

“Thanks for all the help,” I said to Ryan. I gave him a smile, but it felt brittle and forced.

It must have looked it too, because his eyes seemed to darken with a tired worry. “I’ll check with you later, all right?” I thought he was going to give me a hug, but he seemed to check himself at the last second and instead merely gave my arm an awkward pat.

I nodded, then climbed out of the car. As soon as Ryan pulled away I turned to Eilahn. “Do you know anything about the locations that Rhyzkahl pulled up on my computer.”

“I do not,” she replied. “You wish to investigate them?”

“The local ones, at the very least.”

The demon gave a slight nod. “I am curious as well. You remember where they are?”

“I do.”

“Then let’s rock.”

I blinked at her, then grinned. “ ‘Let’s rock’? Where did you pick that up?”

“There was a movie about humans fighting aliens on your television the other night,” she said. “And one of the female warriors shouted it right before she unleashed her mayhem upon the creatures.” A smile curved her lips. “I rather liked it.”

“Well,” I said, “if there’s anyone who knows about the proper format for unleashing mayhem, it’s you.”

Unfortunately, there was no mayhem to be had, at least on this particular expedition. The first location we checked was Leelan Park, however I had zero idea where, in the park, we were supposed to look for whatever it was we were looking for. I was going on the theory that these locations had something to do with portals, but it was equally possible that Rhyzkahl had looked them up for some other reason entirely. Hell, maybe they were places where he’d shagged a previous girlfriend. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d meant for me to figure out what he’d been searching for. If he was oathbound against telling me something that he wanted me to know, he was certainly devious enough to find a loophole.

Leelan Park was a sprawling mix of sports fields, playgrounds, and picnic areas that took up nearly a mile of lakefront on the eastern end of Lake Pearl. There weren’t too many people out and about, even though it was around lunchtime and the sky was fairly clear. But school was still in session for another couple of weeks, plus the temps were probably in the low forties—a bit too brisk for most southerners to want to sit and eat their lunch outside.

I stood by the boat launch and zipped the collar of my coat higher. Now there was an impulse decision I was happy about. I couldn’t be sure if the purchase of the coat had been affected at all by the influence of the let’s-make-Kara-nuts drug, but I was fine with it, either way. Here by the water the wind did its best to find a way beyond this black leather armor, but my coat held its ground beautifully and kept me comfortable and warm. The wind had to be satisfied with whipping my hair into my face and mouth while I fidgeted and watched Eilahn scan the surroundings for any sort of arcane signs or residue. We’d already tried several other random locations within the park and came up empty, and I had little reason to believe that was going to change now.>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.