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I felt frozen to the spot as his words seemed to clang around in my skull, slicing at me. He was right. That was the worst of it. Every word of it had been true. Now I knew he was interested in me, wanted me as more than “just friends,” and I’d gone and fucked it up before I’d ever given it a chance.
I barely felt the gentle hand on my shoulder. “Kara,” Zack said softly. “He worries. He is frightened for you, and he is lashing out with his pain. You did not deserve that.”
“Yes, I did, Zack.” I turned to look at him in misery. “Yes I did. Everything he said was the truth.”
The gentleness and understanding in his eyes surprised me, until I realized that if he really was a demon he was probably far older than the twenty-something years that Special Agent Zack Garner supposedly had. “Even if he spoke truth,” he said, “he couched it in vile terms and with vicious intent, designed to make you feel pain equivalent to what he feels. You cause him pain, but only with the intent to spare him such. Your bond to Rhyzkahl exists only because you felt there was no other choice save to allow Ryan to be consumed. Ryan knows all of this, but knowledge and logic are easily overshadowed by passion and pain.”
I gazed up at him. “Zack?”
“Yes, Kara?”
“You’re doing that ‘talking like a demon’ thing again.”
He blinked, then gave me a wry smile. “Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I’ll talk to him.” He shook his head. “He’s going to be beating himself up right now anyway.” He caught my eyes again. “Can you summon Rhyzkahl tonight?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I couldn’t store any more potency last night, and it’s still a few days from the full moon.”
He grimaced. “All right. I don’t mean to be a nag about this, but I can’t think of anyone else who could give you the help and protection you need.”
I thought about the amount of power in my storage diagram and sighed. But maybe there was another option . I could try calling him to my dreams. A chill walked down my back at the memory of the last time I tried that, during the search for the Symbol Man. In a desperate move to glean information about one of the murders, I’d made a conscious effort to call the demonic lord to my dreams—a reasonable enough move considering that he’d visited my dreams before. Or so I’d foolishly assumed. But Rhyzkahl had not been pleased to be called forth in such a manner. For several nightmarish minutes he’d manipulated the dream state, teaching me in unforgettable fashion that he was a creature of more power than I could fathom, and that he did not serve me.
But this would be different, I told myself. This wouldn’t be calling him to get him to serve me. Besides, I was fucking bound to him now.
I nodded morosely. “Yeah. I know. I promise, I will as soon as I possibly can.”
Zack gave me a reassuring smile. “Hey, don’t get bummed out. We’ll get through this.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t sound very convincing.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said firmly. “I’m gonna go chase Ryan down. I’ll check in with you later on.”
I mumbled something in the way of acknowledgment and watched him drive off, then returned inside and paid our bill. The most sensible thing for me to do now would be to go on home, hunker down with the financial information, and forget that this lunch ever happened.
But I found myself driving to my aunt’s shop instead. It had been a quaint little natural food store before her coma, and I’d been forced to close it during her time at the neuro center. As soon as she recovered she reopened it, but bigger and better than before. It still had a section for the organics and natural food store stuff, but now there was also a small café and a yoga studio. And her business had never been better.
A subtle floral scent surrounded me as I walked in, paired with soft and soothing music that sounded faintly oriental. Tessa was behind the counter, barefoot, wearing purple leggings paired with a billowing white silk blouse, topped with yards of red beads draped around her neck. She looked up at the sound of the bell over the door and gave me a bright smile that managed to lift my spirits a few millimeters. Sketching a wave to her, I headed over to the cooler and snagged an iced tea, then found an unoccupied table in the corner. A few minutes later she plopped down into the chair across from me.
“You look wrung out, sweets,” she said, eyeing me with worry.
“I feel wrung out,” I admitted. “I’m working a big case that has me pretty baffled.”
“You work too hard,” she said, “but I know it’s important to you.”
I rubbed at my temples, still knotted up from the blowup with Ryan. “Yeah. My personal life is a fucking mess too. Or at least it feels that way.”
She made a tsking noise. “You’re simply unused to having a personal life.”
“Well, this is true,” I said with a tired smile. “Being a social isolate was easier in a lot of ways.”
“I’m serious, Kara. Think about it. Six months ago you were practically a hermit, without a single person you could call friend.”
I fought the urge to scowl. “I wasn’t quite that pathetic.”
She gave me a dubious look. “You didn’t have any friends, and you know it. Now stop being so defensive. I’m more responsible for that than you. But my point is that now you do have friends. And you don’t know how much you can rely on them without scaring them off.”
I wanted to protest, but unfortunately she’d managed to nail down a hefty portion of my current angst. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “I guess so.”
“So, enough psychoanalysis,” she said brightly, as if she’d solved all of my ills in a few sentences. “You’re investigating the murder of Vic Kerry?”
