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“Fuck,” he growled. “And I suppose you have to be in there with it?”
Yes. Out there would have been preferable, but that wasn’t really an option. I quickly shoved a pile of books off the table, cringing as they landed in ugly heaps with the sound of tearing paper. I grabbed a pen off the floor and inscribed a quick and crude circle into the surface of the wooden table, still holding the umbrella over me. Tessa would be livid at the damage to her table, but I didn’t give a shit at this point. I’d refinish the damn thing later. I stepped back and began to slowly pull power again, but this time into the circle. I was going to try a dismissal, but since I didn’t have the faintest clue as to what this creature was and didn’t know its name, the standard dismissal that I used for demons wasn’t going to work. Instead, I was going to open a generic portal and try to keep it small enough so the arcane creature would get sucked through and returned to wherever it came from, but nothing else would.
There were only two things that could screw this up. First, if the thing was actually a resident of this sphere, I’d be spending arcane energy to make a portal for no reason at all. Second, if the thing had been summoned by another and was somehow bound to this sphere, I would need to do a far more specific dismissal.
I kept my attention divided as carefully as I could while I created my mini-portal, fighting to keep the power under control as it began to form and also paying attention to the shelf where I’d last seen the creature go. I’d never tried to create a portal of a specific size before, so I was going strictly on barely remembered theory. It also didn’t help that it was hard as shit to draw power when it was daytime during a waning moon. But I didn’t need a lot for what I was hoping to make.
Pain suddenly seared the middle of my back, and my control of the forming portal faltered badly as fatigue slammed into me. I fell to my knees and scrabbled at my back as I mentally grabbed for the portal. My fingers closed on something that wiggled and clawed alarmingly, sending a deep shock through me. A third way for this to fail: There’s more than one creature!
I’d maintained my hold on the portal though, which had widened to a bright slit in the universe a few inches wide. I chucked the squiggling thing in my hand at the portal, grimly pleased when it was drawn in with a sharp pop, like a roach into a vacuum. I could hear Ryan shouting something to Jill, but I couldn’t spare the focus to make it out. The pain had spiraled up, and the strange fatigue had increased to the point where it was taking everything I had just to maintain the portal. I heard a high-pitched whine from the shelf that I’d been watching, and then the other one shot out from behind the book. It grabbed on to the heavy chandelier, wrapping claws around a dangling crystal and resisting the pull of the portal as it bared its teeth at me. I knew that all I had to do was swat at it and it would fall into the vortex, but the pain in my back had increased to breath-stealing proportions, and even the thought of standing made my eyes water with the agony.
“Come here, ya little fucker!” I heard Jill cry out. I watched through pain-slitted eyes as she bounded into the room with a garbage bag in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a fierce grin as she snapped the creature up into her tongs and yanked it off the chandelier, crystal and all, then stuffed everything into the bag.>“Oh, I have a laundry list,” I said, evading the question. “But going through Tessa’s library is an adventure in disorganization. How did you know I was here?”
“You weren’t at your house or at the station, so I figured you’d be here.”
My car was in the garage, but he’d known I was here. When he called he hadn’t asked where I was; he said that he’d been knocking. He would never hurt me, I reminded myself, somewhat surprised at how certain I was of this. I turned and headed down the hall, hoping I wasn’t being hopelessly naïve. Just because I felt safe with him didn’t mean it was actually safe to be with him—either physically or emotionally.
“I’m finally able to get into her library,” I said over my shoulder, “so I figured I’d do as much research as I could.”
An awkward silence settled around us as I gathered my stuff up. It seemed like both of us wanted to pretend that the weirdness of yesterday hadn’t happened, which was fine with me, but now it felt like we were in a strange conversational limbo.
I cleared my throat, seeking to fill the void with any noise. “I never thanked you for coming to the funeral with me the other day. I’m … not sure I could have handled it alone.”
He shook his head, looking briefly haggard. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
I shrugged, picking up the stack of books that I wanted to read more carefully. “So what are you up to now?” I wanted to ask him why he was here, why he’d wanted to track me down so badly, but I was a bit afraid of the answer. Or, rather, I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer. Chickenshit.
“Oh, well …” I could see him hurriedly thinking of a response. “I was thinking of raising my cholesterol level at Lake o’ Lard and was wondering if you wanted to get something too. Part of my Kara-needs-to-eat plan.” He flashed a grin, but I could sense the faint edge to it.
I gave him the smile he was expecting. “Can we have a devil-dog-free meal this time?”
He laughed. “What, you didn’t like the entertainment?”
I suddenly didn’t want to play games anymore. I met his eyes. “Are you going to tell me why that thing attacked us?”
His smile faded. “I can’t … truly can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” I challenged.
“Can’t. I promise! I honestly don’t know.”
I exhaled and nodded, but a knock out front stopped me from asking my next question, which would have been something on the order of How the fuck are you able to change memories?
“Hi, guys!” Jill’s perky voice chirped from the porch. Ryan stepped out into the hallway with me following, as Jill walked in through the open front door. “There’s a party and no one invited me?”
Ryan gave her a grin. “My God, what were we thinking?”
“Ryan thinks I’m too skinny,” I told her. “We’re going to forage for food. Wanna come?”
Her eyes flashed mischievously. “I don’t want to intrude on y’all’s date.”
“It’s not a date,” we both said simultaneously, then turned to scowl at each other. I looked hastily away, absurdly put out that he’d been so quick to deny the possibility that lunch with me could be considered a date. It was beside the point that I’d leaped to deny it as well.
Jill let out a snort. “Oooookay, I can see that now. Sure, I’m up for food.”
I set my stack of books down on the porch and dug in my pocket for the key, oddly conflicted that Jill would be joining us. There was still a strange tension between Ryan and me, and I couldn’t decide if having Jill there would get us past what had happened in the past couple of days or if I would continue to react like a jealous third-grader every time Ryan looked her way. How about if I stop being an insecure idiot? If he decides he likes her more than he likes me, then … more power to them. They’re both my friends. I can be a grown-up about this.
I just wished my stomach didn’t hurt at the thought.
