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Tessa’s brow creased in thought. “It’s been a while.”
“Good,” I said, relieved. At least I didn’t need to tackle a problem in that arena. “Please let me know if you hear anything at all from his people. Anything.”
“You told me Katashi caused some trouble for you.” Her gaze sharpened. “Has something else happened with him?”
I spread my hands flat on the cool marble of the countertop. “You could say that.” I proceeded to fill her in on the Idris situation and the craziness at the warehouse. Tessa listened carefully while I spoke, and when the teakettle began to whistle she got up to pour water into two mugs.
“Crazy stuff indeed,” she said as she dunked teabags into each mug. “Idris. He must be pretty important.”
“He’s amazingly gifted, especially considering he’s barely twenty.” I smiled. “You’d like him. Super nice guy.”
Tessa placed my tea before me, curled her hands around her own mug. “What was he doing in the demon realm in the first place?”
I shamelessly reached for the bowl of sugar cubes and dumped several into my tea. “Training with Mzatal. He was under agreement—it’s sort of like a contract.”
She took a sip, brow furrowed. “Is that what you have with Mzatal?”
“We did,” I said. “We don’t now. I mean, nothing official. He trains me, and we work together. We’re partners.”
Her eyes dropped to the ugly scar on my left forearm. “Is he the one who removed Rhyzkahl’s mark?” she asked, tone abruptly sharp and biting.
I looked down at the ripple of scar tissue. “No. Rhyzkahl did that,” I said, voice expressionless. Yet I hesitated before continuing with the rest, the details of how he’d sliced the mark from my flesh, and what else he’d done to me. I hadn’t told her any of that yet, had simply left it at “Rhyzkahl betrayed me.” I knew Tessa had seen my sigil scars when she summoned me back to Earth, but she had yet to ask about them, and I didn’t want to push it. Last year, she’d been captured and used in a ritual that left her comatose, her essence lost in the void. After she returned to her body, she’d been fragile. Docile. Completely unlike the Aunt Tessa I knew. She even stopped summoning for months, and only resumed in order to rescue me from the demon realm. Carl had played a significant role in keeping her on track despite the oddity of their match, and I could only speculate that his near-emotionless manner helped to ground her and keep her focused.
Yet even though she’d come a long way in her recovery, a measure of fragility still clung to her. The hideous details of my torture would only upset her, and I saw no need to risk destabilizing her now.
I rubbed the scar, changed the subject. “Back when you studied with Katashi, did you learn the sigil technique called the pygah?” Mzatal had told me the pygah was part of the foundation for all other summoning work, yet Tessa had never even mentioned it.
She set her tea down, brow furrowed as though trying to remember. “Pygah,” she murmured, then her face lit up. “Pygah. Yes, I did. I haven’t thought about it in years. Not since . . .” She trailed off, staring past me with unfocused eyes.
Frowning, I laid my hand on her forearm. “Tessa? Not since when?”
She blinked, brought her gaze back to me. “Not since I found out I was pregnant. I remember clear as a bell doing a pygah then, but,” she shrugged, “I haven’t thought of it since.”
Worry flared hot and bright. How do you “forget” a major arcane tool? I did a frickin’ pygah of my own to help maintain a façade of calm.
“Why did you pygah when you found out you were pregnant?” I asked.
That earned me a raised eyebrow and a withering look. “Wouldn’t you?”
Okay, she had a point there. “You were still with Katashi when you got pregnant?” I asked, oh-so-casually.
“With Katashi?” Confusion clouded her eyes. “It was a fling with an American living in Japan. He left before I knew I was pregnant so, when the baby was stillborn, I didn’t call him.”
Goosebumps shivered over my entire body. Those were almost the exact words she’d used the last time I’d asked, and again I had the disturbing feeling she wasn’t so much remembering it as reciting a story. “Programmed” was the word that came to mind, and right behind that, “manipulated.” Even though I didn’t have a badge anymore, my cop-instinct still worked, and right now it tingled like crazy. I knew in my gut that baby didn’t die. What I didn’t know was who had made Tessa believe so and why?
“What was the father’s name?” I kept a pleasant and casual smile on my face.
“I had a fling. He was American.” Tessa waved a hand dismissively.
Yeah, well, she could dismissively gesture all she wanted, but I wanted some answers. “Back when you had the, ah, fling with the American,” I pressed, “you were still in training with Katashi?”
A slight frown crossed her face. “I remember we summoned the reyza, Pyrenth,” she murmured as though trying to dust off twenty-year-old memories. “But that was before I was pregnant.”
“I met Pyrenth in the demon realm,” I said. “At Rhyzkahl’s. He was my escort at times.” I leaned forward. “What else do you remember about your training back then?”
“I remember working on this, over and over.” She traced her fingers through the air as though drawing a sigil, and her frown deepened. “What is that called?”
Sick worry tightened my chest. Tessa had a great memory for arcane structures. “It’s called a durik, for ritual stabilization,” I told her, lifting my hand to trace the sigil. “It’s usually used in combination with a . . .” I trailed off. Not a mere sigil. The durik and its companion were floaters.
