“From papers left behind by his grandsire and granddam—instructions given to them by the demonic lord to whom they were sworn.”
A cold chill of foreboding went through me. “You mean Szerain, right?”
Kehlirik nodded.
“What were Szerain’s plans?”
“I am oathbound. I cannot answer that question.”
I tucked my thumbs into my pockets and nodded. I was getting used to this sort of questioning. “Would his plans be detrimental to this world?”
“That is subjective,” he replied. “But I would conjecture that one such as yourself would not be pleased with the possibility of widespread destruction and upheaval of the current society.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, good conjecture there,” I muttered. “Why does Raymond Bergeron need a summoner?”
“Because the abilities of a summoner are required for the initial opening of a gate,” he answered. He tilted his head. “And if that summoner is bound into the gate by another summoner, it can then be opened and closed at the second summoner’s will.”
Figured. “And is he doing this with the goal of impressing Szerain and perhaps calling him?” I eyed the demon with a knowing smile and he gave a soft hiss of approval.
“I do not know his mind,” the reyza answered. “But there are other lords, and I’m certain you are able to conjecture the benefits of owning a gate.”
I shoved my hand through my hair. I could definitely conjecture what would happen if a sociopath like Tracy ended up with it. “If I destroy this,” I lifted my chin toward the diagram in front of me, “will it make it impossible for the gate to form?”
“No,” Kehlirik replied. “This merely refines and concentrates the power drawn from the portals.”
I frowned, disappointed.
“However,” he continued, “destroying it will cause the power flows to be weaker. It is far more likely that a skilled summoner could dismantle an unfocused gate.”
That was better. A lot better. “Did Raymond Bergeron screw up by not telling you to keep quiet about all this?”
The demon stood and spread his wings, baring his teeth in an unmistakable grin. “He did.”
I had the feeling the demon didn’t care much for Tracy/Raymond. Laughing, I retreated to the kitchen and found an empty plastic pitcher. After filling it to the brim with water, I returned to the door of the bedroom. “Just so we’re clear,” I asked, “you’ll only attack me if I enter the room, right?”
“That is correct, little summoner.” Clearly he knew what I was up to, because he shifted to the far corner of the room and shielded his book with one wing.
“Awesome.” I let fly with the pitcher of water toward the diagram, smiling in vicious satisfaction as the chalk lines blurred and melted into each other. I couldn’t feel the arcane, but I knew there was no way that diagram was still active.
I set the pitcher down and gave the demon a respectful bow. “My thanks, Kehlirik.”
“It was my honor, Kara Gillian,” he replied, bowing his head in response.
I started to leave, but then paused and turned back. “One more thing…would the wards surrounding this house prevent me from being summoned?”
The demon shook his head. “Those protections are far more specialized.”
Oh well, that was probably too much to hope for. “Okay, then, are you prohibited from altering the wards protecting this house?”
A deep rumbling came from the demon. “I am not.”
I flicked a glance to the book he was reading. “There’s this TV show that I think you’d really like.” I said, thinking of the space cowboy thing Ryan had strong-armed me into watching. I looked back to the demon. “If you could deactivate the wards, I’ll summon you as soon as is possible so that you can watch it.”
“These are terms I can and will abide by,” he answered, to my delight and relief.
I could tolerate watching the show again if it meant I wouldn’t have to puke on my way back out.
I headed to the front door. “Ryan, did you hear all that?”
“I did,” he said through the earpiece. “Tell Kehlirik I love him.”
“Like hell,” I replied. “I’d rather not piss him off.”
As soon as I got back in the car—without having to stop and puke, thankfully—I called Jill and put her on speakerphone to give her the rundown. “My next job is to figure out if there’s some way to block the portals so he can’t pull power from them,” I said after I caught her up. “Problem now is that I don’t know if that’s possible. Plus there are probably some other portals in play that he knew about before he started using enemies of mine to find these latest three portals.”
“I was thinking there might be other portals too,” Jill said. “I put this focus you just found on the map to see if we could maybe figure out where other portals might be, but it still isn’t all that clear. I mean, it’s not forming some recognizable pattern.”
I considered that for a moment while I absently toyed with the cuff. My eyes dropped to the mark on the inside of my left forearm. Without othersight it was practically invisible, like a faint and faded henna tattoo. “Well, unfortunately it might be part of a pattern that we don’t recognize. A sigil or a mark.”
“Sort of like constellations, right?” she replied. “If you only have half the stars of the big dipper, you’d never realize that’s what it is.”
“Exactly.”
Ryan rubbed his chin. “But do we need to know what the whole constellation is?”
I exhaled. “Well, without knowing the whole pattern we don’t stand much chance of figuring out how to disable it—which would be a whole lot nicer and neater to do instead of having some big fucking showdown or confrontation. He can’t start this shit without me, and as long as I’m wearing the cuff, I’m not going to be feeling compelled to head there.”
Zack grinned. “No confrontation? Is that even allowed?”
“Well, if not,” I said, “I plan on being a bad girl.”
Jill gave a snort. “So what else is new?”
I ran a thumb over the mark on my forearm. “Jill, if I give you some general locations, can you look in your database and see if there’ve been any deaths there in the last, say, forty years or so?”
“I think so,” she said. “The records department supposedly just finished putting the last fifty years of reords online.”
I gave her the locations that Rhyzkahl had looked up on my computer. “Look for deaths that would have occurred right before the summoning of Szerain, or within a year or so.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “You think that they might have tried to open this gate-thing once before?”
“Right,” I said. I didn’t look up at him, since I wasn’t sure I could keep my face totally neutral. “Szerain was up to something, and I think that he needed an easier way to be summoned.” But would that have been enough to get him punished? There had to be more to his crime than that.
Out of nowhere the memory of my dream swam up. For an instant I could smell the dust of the place on my tongue, feel the stone against my feet.
.…smooth marble cool against my cheek as I struggled for breath, the taste of blood thick in my mouth…
“Kara. Kara?”
I blinked and jerked my gaze up to Ryan. What the hell just happened? That wasn’t part of the dream.
“You okay?” he asked. “You just went pale.”
I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Just hungry, most likely. We should go grab a bite to eat soon.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” he said.
Jill cleared her throat on the phone. “You were right, Kara. Three deaths. All looked to be natural.”
“And I’ll bet anything that all three were linked somehow to one of the summoners,” I said. “Then that summoner was killed by Rhyzkahl in the summoning-of-Szerain that went wrong, and so now Tracy’s picking up where he or she left off.” I fought the urge to slide a look toward Ryan. I wonder how Tracy would react if he knew that Ryan was Szerain. I bit back an inappropriate giggle. With as many oaths and secrets and whatnot going on around Ryan, I had no doubt that Tracy was completely clueless as to that little detail.
My phone beeped to indicate another call was coming in—one with an out-of-state area code. Something about the number tickled at my memory, but I couldn’t immediately pin it down. “Lemme get this call, Jill. If it’s a telemarketer I’ll just hang up on them.”
I took it off speakerphone and clicked on the new call. “Detective Gillian,” I answered.
“Kara? It’s Roman.”
Something about the tone of his voice sent a warning zing through my body. “Hiya, Roman. What’s up?” I replied, keeping my own tone light.
“There’s a man here with a gun pointed at my head,” he said, and now I could hear the slight shake in his voice. “He says if you don’t come to the…the gate he’s going to shoot me.”
I couldn’t breathe for several seconds. When I finally could I said, “It’s going to be all right, Roman. Let me talk to him, please.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. I upped the volume on the phone and motioned him closer so that he could listen in.
“Hello, Kara,” Tracy said after a few seconds. “I figured you needed some incentive to move you along.”
“You’re a cocksucker. Where is this gate? I haven’t been able to pinpoint it.”
“That’s because you’re being stubborn and resisting it, but it doesn’t matter now. Come to three five two Garden Street. Oh, and the usual ‘no weapons’ and ‘come alone’ rules apply. I have a zhurn helping keep a lookout. If it catches a whiff of any of your FBI friends—or any other cops for that matter—your ex here will get splattered, and the cops will get torn apart.” He said it easily, with a laugh in his voice. “Speaking of, I’m intrigued by the fact that there’s been no traffic on the PD radio about a shooting victim at my house. I know I didn’t miss. How’d you manage to cover that one up?”