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Pellini shrugged. “He stopped showing up to take me away the summer after I turned seven. The last few times didn’t last very long, and everything was more, um, transparent, I guess.” He frowned. “He said it was harder for him to reach me, but I didn’t understand why. He didn’t come back for ages.”
I itched to ask Pellini when Kadir returned and to where, but first we needed to get him assessed so that we knew what we were up against. “And you’re hoping I can do what?” I asked. Under the table I sent a quick text asking Eilahn to bring the kehza out. “Explain all this? Partner up with you? Teach you more?”
“Partner up? No. No!” He shook his head. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Why can’t I stop seeing and feeling?” He gave me a look full of pleading. “I just want everything to get back to normal where I can shut it off.”
A rustling of leaves was the only warning before the kehza bounded across the lawn toward Pellini with great sweeps of its wings.
“Shit!” He jerked to his feet, eyes locked on the creature headed straight for him. The kehza’s claws dug furrows in the grass as it stopped at the base of the steps. Growl-hissing, it leaped to the porch, broad nostrils flaring as it took in Pellini’s scent.
Pellini stood motionless, eyes wide as dinner plates. He didn’t appear scared though.
“It needs to touch you,” I told him. “That’s all.”
The kehza moved closer, but to my shock Pellini stepped forward to rub the edge of its wing—the equivalent of scratching a dog behind the ears.
“Chu,” he murmured, doubling my shock. “Chu” was a demon greeting.
“Needs to touch me?” Pellini said without taking his eyes from the kehza. “Why?”
I stared at the kehza and then at Pellini. A kid meeting up with Kadir in interdimensional space was one thing. Familiarity with physical demons took it to a new level. And this was Pellini! Asshole. Rude and obnoxious. Ordinary. “How the hell do you know how to interact with demons?”
“Demons?” He glanced at me with a frown even as the demon placed its clawed hand on his forearm. “You mean—” He nodded toward the kehza.
“Yes, creatures like this one,” I began, but Idris had reached his limit. He took a step forward, hands clenched at his sides.
“Step away from the kehza and sit down,” he ordered, voice harsh.
Pellini pivoted to face Idris, shoulders tensing at the overt hostility. Though Idris didn’t appear to be armed, Pellini no doubt sensed he had the potential to be dangerous. He lifted his hand from the kehza and took a slow step back. I signaled to the demon, and it moved away from Pellini to crouch by my side.
“Dahnk,” it said to me, settling its wings close on its back.
I murmured acknowledgment, weirdly relieved. “Dahnk” meant “not” in demon. In other words, Pellini was not a summoner, and Idris’s glower confirmed he’d heard the verdict. I pulled a hunk of sausage off the platter and offered it to the kehza with a murmur of thanks. It growled and bounded to the porch rail with its prize.
“Maybe I should go,” Pellini said, wary.
“I’m sorry about the sudden hostility,” I said and wished Idris would crank it down a few fucking notches. “But you come out of the blue and do—” I waggled my hands in an over-the-top copy of how he’d batted the potency away. “I’ve been training a decade and can’t do anything like that. You’ve raised a whole lot of questions that we need answers to.”
For all his faults, Pellini wasn’t stupid. He rubbed at his brow in apparent frustration but sat down. “I bet I have way more questions than y’all do,” he said. “But as to how the hell I know about demons, Mr. Sparkly came back when I was seventeen, and right after that a few demons began to visit regularly. Kuktok and Sehkeril mostly, but there were a couple of others, too.”
Sehkeril. One of Kadir’s reyza. That clinched it. “Whose side are you on?”
For the first time, Pellini looked truly flummoxed. “Side?”
“Your Mr. Sparkly is—” I was reluctant to say “enemy” because I didn’t think that was a correct definition of Kadir’s role in all of this crap, “—not an ally of ours. And there are other arcane practitioners who will do, and have done, horrific things to further their cause. The murder victim in the eighteen wheeler? That’s the level of stakes we’re dealing with.”
“I don’t know anything about ‘sides,’” he said. “There’s nothing going on with me and the demons and Mr. Sparkly now. He cut me off twenty years ago.” Anger flashed across his face combined with a shimmer of loss. “Nothing,” he repeated, voice strained.
“Why did he cut you off?” I asked. “What happened?”
Pellini spread his hands. “Dunno,” he said. “After he returned, every third full moon he’d take me to the between-space. This went on for seven years, but that last day he was late, and when he showed up I could hardly see him. He didn’t explain, just reached out and—” He swallowed and rubbed the center of his chest. “I don’t know what he did, but it felt as if he ripped my heart out.” His voice dropped, turned hollow. “He said, ‘hide,’ then vanished. After that, everything fell apart.”
Idris marched off the porch and back onto the nexus. I didn’t know what he was up to now, but at least he wasn’t glaring holes through
Pellini anymore. I suspected Kadir had extracted an arcane implant from Pellini when he told him to hide. Whatever the purpose of the implant, I could only suppose that it would have drawn unwanted attention to Pellini.
“Who were you hiding from?” I asked.
“No idea,” he said. “He never told me about enemies.”
