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I heard Eilahn’s cat-like footfalls on the stairs behind me. “This is not good,” she breathed.
“I have no power for a summoning,” I said grimly. “Or hot water, for that matter.” I sank to sit on the stairs and looked glumly at Lake Basement. I knew I needed to go back upstairs and turn off the water, then find a shop vac or some other way to get all the damn water out of here, but I couldn’t muster up the energy. Damn. I was looking at a full day’s work ahead of me simply to get the basement into any sort of condition where I could do a summoning. Then another day or so for the floor to dry. And then a couple more to recreate the storage diagram and load it with power.
I dropped my head into my hands. “This. Sucks.” I could conceivably use my aunt’s summoning chamber, but I was still looking at a delay of at least a day to create and “charge” a storage circle.
Eilahn sat down beside me. “I cannot argue with you. But take heart, we are not completely without strength or options.”
I cocked a glance at her, gave her a sour smile. “Yeah, but this means we’re back to the ‘throw the cat at him’ plan.”>“Well,” I said, “unless this guy has a double running around, this is the father of one Officer Tracy Gordon.”
Chapter 20
“He was in my house. In my basement.” I kicked at the carpet and scowled. “He took pictures of my summoning chamber!”
“The basement was clean,” Eilahn reassured me for about the tenth time. “He saw nothing.”
But surely he could sense the arcane residue from the diagrams. Would he be able to figure out the configuration? No, I decided after a moment’s thought. Without knowing the structure of the sigils it would be impossible. I’d been able to figure a lot of it out on my own, but it had been that one particular sigil that Rhyzkahl gave me that jump-started my whole thought process.
“Is he working today?” Ryan asked. “Maybe we can get into his house while he’s not there and see what we can find. Do you know where he lives?”
In answer I looked to Jill. She was the one doing the fancy computer work. “Hang on,” she said as she slid her finger on the touchpad. “Got his address—lives in Lakewood Heights subdivision. And according to the shift schedule, no, he’s not working,” she said, mouth tight. Ryan grimaced.
Yeah, that would have been way too easy. “Okay, so we don’t have shit for info on Raymond,” I said, “but what do we have on Tracy Gordon? He had to go through a background check to get hired.”
Jill bent her head to the screen again. “Good point.” She chewed her lower lip as she did her computery stuff. “Hmm. Well, according to this, Tracy Gordon is about two years older than Raymond, and ran away from a foster home in Colorado about a year before Raymond took off.”
“They met as runaways,” Ryan murmured. “Something must have happened to the real Tracy—died or was killed, and Raymond took over his identity.”
A terrible chill walked up my back. Is that why Ryan and Zack’s backgrounds are so perfect? Did they replace real people? I tasted bile in the back of my throat. Somehow I knew that was the truth. Nothing else made sense. Whoever exiled Ryan…did they kill the original Ryan and Zack? Or were their deaths fortuitous and convenient?
“It gets better, folks,” Jill said, frowning at the screen. I forced myself to pay attention. “Tracy went to a shelter for runaways when he was sixteen, got his GED, and was accepted to LSU—possibly because his standardized test scores were through the roof.”
“He’s definitely not stupid,” I said.
“Uh huh, and then he proceeded to graduate with a degree in chemistry, and went on to—ta-da—pharmacy school, though it looks like he dropped out after three years.” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “I think any doubt that he’s our man is gone gone gone.”
“And then for some reason he decided to become a cop,” Ryan murmured. “When did he get hired?”
Jill clicked some more keys. “Early summer of this year.”
I met Ryan’s eyes. “Right after we stopped the Symbol Man.”
“He read between the lines of the news reports and figured it out,” Ryan said, eyes narrowed. “Figured out you were a summoner. Maybe had you assessed to be sure.”
“And whatever his plan is,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose, “he needs a summoner or someone with a decent level of arcane ability.”
Jill looked up from her keyboard. “So, is he also behind these attempts to summon you to the demon realm?”
“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “Or rather, if so, certainly not directly. Whoever’s doing that is actually in the demon realm. A summoning is just that—a summons, or call. It’s not possible for someone to push or send me through from this end.” I glanced at Tessa and Eilahn for confirmation.
“Correct,” Eilahn answered as Tessa gave a nod. “The summoning attempts must be considered a completely separate threat.”
I sat down on the fainting couch and dropped my head back to stare up at the ceiling. “Right, because one threat simply isn’t enough for my boring ol’ life.” I sighed as another realization came to me. “Y’all do realize that there’s no way we can prove Tracy killed those people, right?”
The answering silence told me that if they hadn’t realized it before, they sure as hell did now. I lifted my head to look around at them. “Seriously. I doubt he conveniently left behind a To Do list that says, ‘Murder Kara’s enemies’ on it.”
“Maybe not,” Ryan said, “but he seems pretty hell-bent on fucking with you. There isn’t enough evidence to have you arrested right now, but what if that’s his next step?”
“But if I’m in jail, how can I go do whatever it is he wants me to do with whatever’s in that hot zone?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t think that’s part of his plan. He has something else in mind.” Sitting up, I shot a hard look over at my aunt. “You need to stay tight within these wards, y’hear me? If he’s gunning for revenge for his grandparents, you’d be a target.”
