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It took me nearly three hours to clean up the basement and remove all evidence of arcane activity, scrubbing down the concrete floor to erase any traces of diagrams and hiding away my implements. It took me another hour to gather together the potencies to lay a few false trails and place some small protections—all the time certain that the knock on the door would be coming at any minute. Of course, it did occur to me that, if he never came back with a warrant, this whole fiasco had been a good exercise in concealment and use of potency. And, I had to admit to myself, one that I probably should have done a while back.
I stepped back and surveyed the room. To any mundane eye, it looked just like a basement library—a comfortable little quiet study, with smooth concrete floor and wood-paneled walls. To the arcanely trained eye, there was far more to see, but most of it was false trails and muddled signs. Yep, I definitely need to have a quicker method for hiding and cleaning up. In fact, I realized guiltily, I really needed to make it a habit to clean up and hide my implements after every summoning, just to be on the safe side. I’d become far too lazy and complacent. A drawback to having hardly any visitors.
The sun was just beginning to poke through the curtains in the foyer as I emerged from the basement, but at least I was ready for him to come with a search warrant now. I sighed heavily and flopped onto the couch in the living room. The clock on the mantel read five a.m. He probably wouldn’t be able to get a judge to sign a warrant before eight a.m., unless he wanted to go wake one up. And then it would take at least an hour to get a team together. Enough time for a nap, I decided, eyes already closing. I curled up on the couch, tugging an afghan throw over me. Screw him. I was ready.
“You are entertaining men in your house? Should I be jealous?”
I opened my eyes, blinking in the sunlight shining onto the couch. Someone stood in front of the window, and all I could see was the silhouette of someone tall. “Huh?” I squinted and shaded my eyes. “Ryan?”
The figure laughed, and I went cold. Not Ryan. He stepped forward and now I could see the heavy fall of white-blond hair, the angelic features, the exquisite beauty. He was dressed in shirt and breeches, much like the first time I encountered him, except that this time the breeches were black leather and the shirt was a shimmering green that seemed to catch the light and toss it back into the air. Trepidation stabbed through me as I sat up. “Rhyzkahl. This is another dream, right?”
He smiled brilliantly. “Can you not tell?” He stepped closer and then dropped fluidly to one knee, reaching and stroking the back of his fingers across my cheek, sending a hot thrill of sensation through me. “Do I feel like a dream?”
My breath shuddered in my chest. “You … you felt real the last time, but that was only a dream.”
His eyes flashed in amusement. “Was it? Perhaps that was real and everything after has been a dream.” He leaned into me, breathing against my neck. “The line blurs, does it not?”
I pulled back. “Don’t fuck with me like that,” I said. “I didn’t summon you, so this must be a dream. You’re not really here.”
“Does it matter if I am here or not?” His voice was soft and silky. “You still can find pleasure from my touch.”
“Pleasure isn’t everything.”
He sat back slowly, regarding me. “An existence without pleasure would be difficult to bear.”
I found myself smiling. “True enough. Perhaps I should have said that sexual pleasure isn’t everything.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment of my point. “There are infinite pleasures in this existence.” He stroked a finger along my jawline. “I would share many such experiences with you, if you would allow me.”
I took a careful breath. “If I call you to me.”
“Yes. There is little that can be done in this dream state.”
But I knew now what such a call entailed. I struggled to change the subject quickly, before he could press me further. “Actually, there is something you might be able to help me with.”
One perfect eyebrow arched silkily. “Go on.”
I felt suddenly giddy. “I was going to do a summoning tonight—of a low-level demon. But since that didn’t work out, maybe you could share a measure of your knowledge with me?”>“It was worth a try,” he said with a smile. “You don’t get anywhere if you don’t try.”
I returned the smile. “I know what you mean.”
My hallway clock chimed midnight, and he cocked his head. “It is true that summonings have to be done by midnight?”
“No,” I said, “not at all. But it helps if they’re completed before sunrise, because everything gets a bit unstable when the potencies shift from lunar to solar. There are some rare summoners who work in the daytime, and they always try to finish before sunset. Same principle.”
Ryan grinned. “I feel like I should be taking notes. This is great stuff to know.”
I shrugged. “But that’s one of the reasons summoners aren’t generally all-powerful people with demons at their beck and call. It’s fucking hard to summon a demon, and then it’s tough to keep control of a demon for more than a few hours. Especially higher-level demons. They don’t like being summoned in the first place.” It was certainly possible to keep a demon for longer than a few hours, but that was another skill I had yet to master.
He leaned back in the chair. “So how did you get into law enforcement?”
I curled my fingers around my mug. “My mom died of cancer when I was eight and my dad was killed by a drunk driver when I was eleven, so my aunt came to live with me.” Best not to mention the fact that my aunt was a summoner. Let Ryan figure that out on his own. “I turned into something of a wild child—acting out and all that stuff—but somehow I managed to graduate from high school with an adequate GPA.” I didn’t know him well enough to tell him how I’d nearly destroyed my life with drugs and how finding out I could summon demons brought me back from that edge.
“Anyway,” I continued, “when it came time for me to go off to college, my aunt sat me down and had a serious talk with me about how in this day and age education was a priority. I got my act together and went off and got a degree—art history.” I rolled my eyes. “Talk about a pointless degree. I found out that there aren’t too many jobs that use art history degrees, and after I whined for about three months about not being able to get a decent job, my aunt got fed up, threatened to kick me out, and told me to go apply to the Beaulac Police Department, since they were accepting applications.” I smiled. “Best thing she ever did for me. So at the ripe age of twenty-two, I became a street cop, though I think my aunt had something safe like ‘dispatcher’ in mind when she told me to go apply.”
“She sounds pretty no-nonsense.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “She doesn’t take shit from anyone, that’s for sure. I worked as a street cop for five years, then transferred over to Investigations. I’ve been a detective for two now.”
