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He didn’t seem to notice my hesitation over the seating arrangements and simply sat on the end of the couch closer to the chair. “More?” he frowned. “Tell me.”
I did so, giving him a rundown of the graa attack as well as the summoning attempt.
“Fucking hell,” he breathed after I finished. “So there’s another summoner involved, there are two deaths that seem to be connected, and someone in the demon realm is still trying to summon you.”
I nodded.
“Are any of these related to each other?” he asked.
I spread my hands and shrugged. “I have no fucking idea.”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Is your life ever dull?”
I could only laugh. “Not in the ways that count!”
He reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “I have your back,” he said. “In any way I can. You know that, right?”
The memory of the being who’d blasted the golem with arcane power rose up. I could barely reconcile that creature and Ryan as the same person.
“I know that,” I said. He released my hand and gave me a warm smile.
A quiet fell, undercut by the muted rush of the water heater. “Where’d you grow up?” I asked, feeling as if I was taking a hammer to the smooth glass of the silence. It sounded more abrupt than I’d intended. “I mean, you’re not from the South, are you?”
A slight smile creased his mouth. “Depends. Are you going to call me a damn Yankee if I admit I was born in upstate New York?”
“Nothing so nice,” I replied with a small laugh.
He folded one leg over the other, resting his ankle across his knee. “I guess I’ll have to brave the insults then. Saratoga, New York. Went to high school at Saratoga Springs High then left for the bustle of the big city.”
“New York City?”
He grinned. “Cleveland.”
This time my laugh was genuine. “Oh, my. Culture shock!”
“In more ways than one.”
I tucked my feet underneath me. “What about your folks. Do they still live in Saratoga?” I knew what the answer would be. Or rather, I knew what he needed to tell me.
He shook his head, a shadow flickering across his face. “My mother passed away right before I started college. My dad about five years later.”
I made the appropriate sympathetic expression. He believed it. Surely nobody was that good an actor. “Any brothers or sisters?”
“Nope. I have some cousins I never see, but that’s about it.”
Hunh. I’d expected him to say that both his parents had been only children or some such thing. But maybe whatever caused him to have these fake memories also made him have no desire to seek out the rest of his mythical family.
His memories are fake. They have to be. Is his personality fake as well? Is this the real Ryan? If he ever remembers who he is, will this person go away? Will he still regard me in the same way?
I already knew the answer to that. There was no possible way he’d see me in the same light. Except…somehow he’d acted with the instincts and abilities of his former self when I was hurt and the golems were threatening. Were those instincts always running in the background? Or was that a one-time chink in the armor that held him? I could keep on grilling him about his past, but what was the point? I had zero doubt that if—no, when—I verified this info it would all check out. Whoever had taken the effort to insert this nuanced memory and background would have surely taken steps to make sure the paper trail jived as well.
Fuzzykins chose that moment to stalk into the room. She leaped nimbly onto the end of the couch and stared balefully at Ryan.
“When did you get a cat?” he asked. He reached out a hand to give the cat a scratch, then yanked it back as Fuzzykins snarled and swiped at it with a claws extended.
“It’s Eilahn’s.” I quickly explained the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the cat. “Don’t feel bad. She hates me too. But she completely adores Eilahn.”
“That’s pretty funny,” he admitted. Then, “Are you summoning tonight?”
