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I pursed my lips. “I consider you a friend. And I’m from the South. We’re some seriously huggy folk down there.” I let out a sigh. “Idris, you didn’t even see that I’d finished the series. You’re totally distracted. I can’t afford any distractions, and neither can you.” My gaze narrowed, and I pulled the neckline of my shirt down enough to really show the sigils on my chest. “This is how high the stakes are now. If you hadn’t been as focused as you were to retrieve me, Rhyzkahl and Jesral would’ve succeeded. I’d be their thrall, their weapon, and they’d probably have Szerain’s blade by now. Where do you think that would leave you and Mzatal?”
He looked shell-shocked, so I continued as I pulled my shirt back up. “They’re not giving up,” I told him. “I have to stay on my toes, and I need you to be at my back, as a friend and ally.”
The poor guy took a step back, looking as if he’d had a bucket of ice water thrown on him. He shook his head, face flushing, then turned and hurried out without another word.
“Fuuuuuuck,” I groaned. I hoped to hell that Mzatal had been monitoring and had the damn fruit ices ready.
Fretting about Idris, I settled into practicing the series. To my relief, I had no trouble getting it to remain stable. Even his computer program analogy began to make sense, now that I understood that the sigils and series were simply chunks of instructions, ways to shape potency for each step of the process.
I continued to practice and trace, losing myself in the focus and pausing only to grab a quick lunch that Faruk brought.
Shortly after the midday tone, Idris returned. I looked over at him, my brow furrowed, totally unsure what to say, if anything. He looked calm. Really calm. A curl of dread formed in my chest. Shit. Had he simply buried it all?
Idris smiled and headed my way. I returned the smile cautiously. He stopped a couple of feet away and leaned against the edge of the table.
“Thanks, Kara,” he said, his voice sounding as calm as he looked. “I needed that.”
“You’re okay?” I asked uncertainly. “Dude, I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings or anything. I swear.”
Idris ran his hand over his hair. “Yeah, I’m good. For real. I let everything get all blown out of proportion,” he said, opening his hands and shrugging. “I went and ran the stairs. Talked to Jekki and the reyza Juntihr. Everything’s straight now.” He gave me a sincere smile. “You don’t have to worry about me stalking you anymore.”
“It wasn’t that,” I said with a grimace. “I mean, not all that.” I paused. “Okay, that was a lot of it.” I gave him a wry smile. “But it was also that I don’t think I’m the one who can make you happy. I think I’d be a better wingman for you than a girlfriend.” I gave a snort. “Because, dude, have you not figured out that I have some major issues?”
Idris laughed. “Yeah, you do,” he said. “Anyway, I realized that I don’t need any girlfriend right now. Not until some of the shit settles.” He drew a breath and released it slowly. “And yeah, I care about you. A lot. And that’s one of the reasons it’s important for me to focus on what we’re doing here, with the ritual and everything else. Any one of us loses focus—you, Mzatal, me—the whole thing caves.”
Some of my tension slid away, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks,” I said. “Time to get back to work then.” He grinned in response and within a minute had surrounded himself with a ring of floaters.
Smiling, I watched him for a moment while I wondered what the hell he did to chill out so quickly. We both worked in focused silence for a while, me on my basics, and he on diagram diagnostics.
After about a half hour, Idris stood in the center of a complete diagram, looking it over and making minor tweaks. “This is one thing I love about working in the demon realm,” he said, “being able to use the floaters instead of chalk. I mean, apart from it being way more efficient, it’s so much easier to make adjustments.” He shook his head, let out a low whistle. “I still can’t believe you summoned Lord Rhyzkahl. On your own. With chalk.”
I lifted my shoulders in a self-conscious shrug. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”
The exasperated look he gave me told me exactly how naïve I sounded.
I cast my gaze over the shimmering ring around him, then looked back at him, frowning. “Wait. If I didn’t use chalk, then how the hell else would I do it on Earth?”
“Well, with floaters,” he said with a duh! tone. “But of course you haven’t finished the shikvihr, so that’s not possible for you yet.”
My bafflement increased. “You can use floaters on Earth? And what does the shikvihr have to do with it?”
He looked up at me, blinked. “Everything!” Idris took a big breath. “Okay, so you’ve seen the shikvihr, right?” He didn’t even wait for me to nod, simply hurried on, clearly excited by the topic. “See, there’s eleven rings to it. Each ring learned here causes a permanent enhancement to potency-holding and general skills usage. In the demon realm, you can dance the rings you know and use the specific attributes of those rings. With me so far?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s like a magic kata-thing that trains mind and body and all that.”
A pained expression flickered over his face, but apparently I wasn’t wrong enough for him to correct the finer details of my analogy. “There’s an exponential increase between the rings, so it’s a huge advantage to learn as much as possible,” he continued. “And even though you can’t dance the shikvihr on Earth unless you know the whole thing, the passive enhancement does carry over, so it boosts summoning and warding and stuff.”
“So a summoner on Earth could have it, but it wouldn’t be anything obvious.”
“Yeah, but it’s not common anymore since it can only be learned in the demon realm from a lord. Plus, it’s a super big challenge to learn.”
Considering I’d never even heard of it before, I had to agree with him about its not being common. “But what does that have to do with using floaters on Earth?” I asked again.
He grinned. “Sorry. If you complete the full shikvihr here, then you can actually dance the shikvihr, floaters and all, on Earth. Once you’ve laid the shikvihr, you can use other floaters. No need for chalk and blood!”
Well, that sounded cool as shit. Looked like the damn thing was worth learning after all and not simply as a stepping stone for returning home.
Mzatal entered, glanced at me, then approached the diagram Idris had created, eyes traveling over it in assessment.
