Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian 6)

With a small impatient sigh, I folded

my arms over my chest and gave him a bland look. “Is there something you wanted to say to me?”

A look of true bafflement came over his face, and I knew damn well it was because I wasn’t sweating in fear and jumping to do his bidding.

“What have you done?” he murmured, eyes searching over me as if trying to find whatever hidden trick I was using.

Fiendish glee soared through me, but I widened my eyes and brought my hands to my mouth in mock dismay. “Oh no! Was I supposed to call you?” I exclaimed with great drama. “I’ve been sitting by my phone waiting for you to call me!” I fluttered my hands. “Oh my goodness, what a faux pas!” I gave him an innocent look even though fury roiled through me. He was pulling his shit on cops and friends, and that was way beyond the pale.

Yet he didn’t seem to fully hear my words. Feet shifting ever so slightly, his expression flickered for a brief instant in a weird mix of confusion, worry, and anxiety.

A second later it hit me. He’s not in control. And that’s completely unfamiliar territory. Payback’s a bitch, motherfucker.

“It was him . . . Mah zahtal,” Farouche breathed, mispronouncing the name, though it didn’t seem to be intentional. And the Oh shit in his eyes might as well have been written in neon.

I laughed low, and I sang a line from “My Boyfriend’s Back.”

Uncertain and shaken—though it was clear he fought to keep it hidden—he shot a look to the surveillance camera in the corner of the room and flicked his hand to the door. A few seconds later it opened, and he departed without another word.

Now that he was gone, my pulse hammered at the insanely close call. I counted to five then moved to the door and peered out, while keeping a very sharp eye out for any of Farouche’s cronies.

Instead I saw Eilahn bound around the corner, consternation on her face that shifted to stark relief as she saw me in one piece.

Still she pulled me fully into the hallway, raked an assessing gaze over me then peered hard into my eyes before relaxing. “I saw the ginger one and him as they departed,” she told me with a low growl beneath her words. “Forgive me. I did not expect a threat in this place.”

“No reason for you to,” I reassured her. “And you can’t ride my ass everywhere. I figure you’d have known if I was in any real danger.” I went on to relate everything that happened.

“You sang to him?” Her brow puckered. “Is this a traditional means of taunting?”

“Well, sort of.” I paused to consider. “But it depends on the song. ‘We Are the Champions’ is certainly better than ‘Muskrat Love.’” Then again, the latter would probably be more effective as torture. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. “I’ll educate you on the way home.”

• • •

Before we left the station I stopped by Boudreaux’s office to find out what he knew about Farouche and why he set me up to be in a room with the man. As much as Boudreaux and I failed to get along, I nevertheless knew in my gut that he wouldn’t deliberately fuck me over. Had Farouche put the fear whammy on him?

Yet, if anything, it turned out to be the opposite. Farouche had wanted to surprise me with a job offer, Boudreaux told me, eyes near glowing with an eager desire to please Farouche. It hadn’t occurred to him to question the scenario, because this was how Farouche had wanted to meet with me.

I extricated myself from the weird conversation and left the station with Eilahn. “Bryce was right. It’s not just fear,” I said after several minutes of brooding and driving. “He can also lay on the charisma and make people devoted and loyal.” I shuddered. “I’m not sure which one scares me more.”

“He is a very dangerous man,” Eilahn muttered.

I continued on home in complete agreement.

Chapter 28

Mzatal was still deeply involved on the mini-nexus when we returned home, and I decided to have Eilahn tell him about my encounter with Farouche while I summoned Steeev.

Paul and Bryce weren’t in the common areas when I returned to the house. I scrawled “do not disturb” on a sticky note and slapped it on the basement door, then poured a big glass of tunjen and headed down. It felt both weird and good to perform a summoning in the middle of the day with utter confidence. A year ago—hell, a few months ago—I would’ve balked at the mere idea due to the lack of lunar influence and the extra difficulty that posed. Training with Mzatal had stripped all that nonsense away, and I’d learned how to adapt and compensate for different summoning conditions.

I set the tunjen aside and got to work. The storage diagram was nicely topped off, and it took only about fifteen minutes to change the existing ritual diagram to the parameters for a syraza. I checked and rechecked the sigils, bindings, and power flows, tapped the storage diagram, and began.

I spoke the name “Steeev” as the invocation to call the syraza, confident and calm. I knew I had a successful summoning. It felt right. Only once did I encounter a shift in the currents of power as I formed the portal, but I smoothly adjusted the anchors and dealt with the shift with no further issues, and silently thanked the hundreds of hours of practice Mzatal had insisted I do.

The syraza arrived with a jolting pull in the potency flows. I grounded and anchored the power, then looked up to see him, kneeling and breathing hard, in the center of the diagram.

“Steeev,” I said, “I apologize for summoning you without warning.”

He lifted his head. “Is . . .” He paused as though testing his ability to speak. “Is there a problem with the qaztahl?”