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Chapter 5
The cab of the u-haul reeked of cigarette smoke, but since the air conditioner was nonfunctional it meant we had to drive with the windows down anyway. Fortunately, it was a warm night, and the open windows made for an almost pleasant ride.
Kehlirik had been surprisingly willing to be toted like cargo in the back of the truck, apparently looking upon the whole thing as one more unusual experience that he could relate to his demonkind buddies. I knew that experience in other realms helped demons gain status, so I had to guess that riding in a truck counted. In fact, he’d almost looked excited, which for a twelfth-level demon was utterly unheard-of.
Unfortunately, the U-Haul had been the best idea I could come up with for transporting the demon, since, as Ryan had pointed out so cleverly, there was no way in creation that he would fit into my Taurus. I wasn’t even sure he’d fit into an SUV, which I could have probably rented as well. He would have been cramped—especially with his wings—but, more important than that, I really didn’t want to risk anyone seeing that I had a big horking demon riding in the back of my car.
Not that the reyza was a demon-from-hell kind of demon. The creatures I summoned had been named thousands of years ago, long before any of the world’s religions had designated “demons” as agents of evil and residents of hell. I wasn’t enough of a theologian to know how that had all come about, but my demons resided in a different sphere of existence that converged with this one, and they were no more evil than a gun was. Powerful, dangerous, and deadly, yes. Evil incarnate, no.
It was a thirty-minute drive from my secluded house in the sticks to my aunt’s house on the lakefront. St. Long Parish was small and quiet, mostly rural, in comfortable driving distance of New Orleans. Beaulac, the parish seat, was barely big enough to be defined as a city, and the only reason Beaulac had as large a population as it did was because of Lake Pearl. The city curved around the lake as if hugging it possessively, and Beaulac took great pains to make sure that the lake and its environs were clean and attractive. Tourism, hunting, and fishing were the main attractions of Beaulac, but there was also a cadre of über-rich who lived in the area, mostly on the lakefront. These were people who had no need to commute anywhere—either retired from lucrative careers or independently wealthy.
My aunt Tessa had been fortunate enough to inherit her house from a distant great-aunt shortly after my mother died. The inside of her house was beautifully decorated and maintained, and aside from a few modifications that she’d made, it would have fit right in with any of the other museum-quality houses in the area.
Only, very few people ever got the chance to see the inside.
I turned onto the two-lane highway that paralleled the more sedate drive that bordered the lake, then frowned and took my foot off the accelerator as I saw the flashing lights of marked units up ahead. “Shit.”
Ryan flicked a glance at me. “What?”
I grimaced, glancing at my rearview mirror. There was no way to turn around, and even if there was, it would look insanely suspicious. “It’s state police. They must be doing a DWI checkpoint.”
His face etched into a frown as he looked at the distant flashing lights. “Are you sure it’s not some of your guys?”>But enough about that. I had a demon to summon. And a U-Haul to rent.
Chapter 4
My house was still pretty clean from my summoning the night before, which meant that all I had to do was scoop the dirty clothes off the floor and run the vacuum around. Clutter and messes could harbor pockets of unwanted energy, or so my aunt had always said—even though I was fairly sure that was merely a line of bullshit she used to make me clean my house occasionally. But I wasn’t going to tempt the fates by forgoing it.
Fortunately, the cleaning didn’t take much time at all, and once I’d made the necessary changes to my diagram for summoning a reyza instead of an ilius, I went to bed and slept for a solid four hours. I woke up at nine p.m., then took my shower and tried to convince myself I wasn’t being stupid for allowing Ryan to attend the summoning.
My stomach gave a nervous flip-flop, and I scowled. Fear had its place during a summoning—caution was always prudent, and a summoner had to maintain his or her guard in expectation of the worst. But fear that made for uncertainty or shaking hands was the sort that would get a summoner killed.
Of course, thinking about it that way didn’t exactly help control the fear. Don’t be afraid, because if you are, well, you know, you could die a miserable, bloody death.
“Been there, done that,” I muttered. Then I couldn’t help but smile. I had pretty much been through the worst that a summoning could offer, so what the hell was I worried about?
Fortunately, I didn’t have long to fret. At ten on the nose, the doorbell rang.
I pulled the belt on my robe tight and opened the door, gesturing Ryan in. He had a smile on his face.
“You’re going to transport a demon in a U-Haul truck?”
“Well, as you pointed out, it’s not like I can stuff him into the trunk of my car. Are you ready?”
He gave a shrug and a nod. “Ready as I can possibly be, I guess.”
I walked to the door that led to the basement, then stopped and turned to him. When I spoke, I kept my voice deathly serious, because this was deathly serious.
“Ground rules,” I said, holding up a hand. “Do exactly as I say. Stay exactly where I tell you. Keep your mouth shut unless I specifically tell you that you can speak, and then only say what I say you can say. And,” I took a deep breath, “do not mentally extend to feel anything arcane.”
His expression turned puzzled. “I … don’t know how to do that anyway.”
I scowled at him. “You think you don’t. And you probably don’t. But just in case you do and you feel something that you would like to feel more of—don’t!”
He nodded gravely. “I understand.”
I hoped he did. “All right.” I pulled the basement door open. “There are two circles down there. One’s big and complicated and has candles around it and is chalked out in all sorts of nifty colors. The other’s a lot smaller—chalked in blue and green by the wall opposite the fireplace. You get the small one. Go down the stairs and step into that circle without touching the chalk, then face the wall and close your eyes.”
He gave me another grave nod, then walked down the stairs and to the circle. To my intense relief, he didn’t waver at all from my directions and turned to face the wall.
