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“Shit!” Ryan surged up from the chair. “I’m late and I have a meeting.” He quickly came around the table, pulled me to my feet and gave me a hard hug. “Summon Mzatal. If you don’t think you can train with him, don’t go with him. And if you do go, we’ll hold down the fort here.”
With that he kissed my cheek, grabbed his briefcase, jogged to the front door, and was gone before I could even form a reply.
Blinking, I stared after him. A disguised demonic lord in a meeting with federal agents. That was fun to wrap my head around. Then I scowled. A disguised demonic lord who’d left before I could ask him about Elinor. Or the twelfth sigil. Or anything else.
“You win this round, Szerain,” I muttered. “But just you wait.”
• • •
With the decision made to summon Mzatal, the rest of the morning turned into a frenzy of activity: I topped off the storage diagram, woke Bryce up and told him to pack since I knew he’d want to come with me to be with Paul, did my own packing, had a quick talk with Jill and confirmed everything was okay with the bean and that Zack had called her that morning—all the while forming, discarding, and reforming arguments to use with Mzatal for why he shouldn’t shut me out and why I needed to be able to train with him and why I’d kept Vsuhl and then given it to Szerain. It was sure to be an entertaining discussion, one way or the other.
As soon as everything was ready, prepped, and packed, I called Tessa and wasn’t surprised when it went to voicemail. She was still in Aspen and wasn’t the sort to be glued to her phone when out having fun.
“Hi, Aunt Tessa,” I said into the recording. “Looks like I’m going back to the ‘retreat’ for a while. I’ll, uh, wri
te as soon as I can. Love you.”
I hung up. It felt oddly unfinished to leave without speaking to her, but we’d been successfully sending messages and letters back and forth for months now. Everything would be fine.
The thought of messages reminded me to do a final check of my email. There was only one item in my inbox, and I realized that Paul had probably worked some of his magic to get rid of my mountains of spam. My pulse gave an uneven lurch as I noted the sender. I opened it, read the attached DNA test results, then read them again.
“Welcome to the family, cousin Idris,” I murmured, pulse thudding weirdly. I’d suspected for a while, but having it confirmed raised even more questions. Or rather, one question in particular. One I dreaded asking.
I called Zack, held my breath as it rang. I’d made him promise not to answer the phone if he wasn’t up for a call, but voicemail wouldn’t cut it for what I needed to say and ask.
“Hey, Kara.”
“Hey, Zack,” I replied, relieved, though it quickly shifted to apprehension about the pending question. I stalled and took a moment to fill him in on my decision to return to training unless everything went pear-shaped between Mzatal and me.
“I’ll miss you for sure,” he said when I finished, “but it’s what you need to do. I’ll talk to Ryan tonight. We’ll keep things together here.”
I heard the unspoken “somehow,” yet I still thought he sounded a bit better. He seemed to be holding it together at least.
“Zack, I had a DNA test done on samples from Idris and Tessa,” I said in a rush. “He’s my cousin.”
Zack went super quiet.
I forged ahead. “Rhyzkahl’s the daddy, isn’t he.” It was more statement than question. With the timing of Tessa in the demon realm, it made sick sense.
Zack cleared his throat. “I’m flipping you the bird right now,” he said, letting me know I’d crossed into territory where he couldn’t or wouldn’t stray. The mandates, agreements, and oaths that bound him originated with the Demahnk Council and those he named only as “the others.” From what I could tell, the bond with Rhyzkahl was a subset of those oaths. Not that I truly understood how any of that worked.
But flipping the bird was answer enough. “Well, how about that,” I said with a sour smile. “That asshole made something awesome.” It also meant he’d had sex with me, all the while knowing he’d had sex with my aunt. Gah!
Shuddering, I hurriedly pushed the mental images away. “Does Rhyzkahl know about Idris?”
“He does not. I mean, hypothetically, if there was something to know.” Strain laced his voice as he desperately sought the balance of telling me without telling me.
I had more questions, but the interrogation could wait until I saw Zack in person. I had plenty to mull over, and he sure as hell didn’t need more stress right now. “You’d better write while I’m away at demon school,” I said lightly.
“You know it,” he said, sounding a bit more relaxed now. “On pink paper.”
“Perfumed, or it doesn’t count.”
Chapter 45
I hung up with him, and then could put it off no longer. Eilahn had Fuzzykins and her squirming little spawn in a giant pet carrier in the living room, and as Bryce paced anxious circles around it, I went down to the basement and began the summoning.
I spun the power out from the storage diagram in brilliant strands of potency, interlocked and coiled them together to create the portal. I made the call, held the strands—felt through them as the summoning found Mzatal and took hold.
