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“Apparently you made an impression.” A barely perceptible shudder went through him. “He can, um, summon me to him.”
I sat up straighter. “You mean he snaps his fingers and, poof, you’re wherever he’s at?”
“I guess. I’m not really sure.”
That sounded weirdly like the strange bond Rhyzkahl had forged with me after my very first summoning of him where I only needed to call him with strong intent to bring him to me. “Just once or whenever?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Being able to summon you to him isn’t exactly insignificant,” I said slowly. “But it also isn’t as if you agreed to slaughter all the youngling Jedi.”
Pellini nodded. “In the end, I think I made the right choice. For the sake of humanity, I mean.”
I laughed. “Don’t get too full of yourself, or I’ll have to find you a bigger room.”
“Nah, you got it all wrong. This is about you.”
“How the hell is it about me?”
“See, if I died, you’d be so prostrate with grief that Xharbek would win without breaking a sweat,” Pellini said, smiling. “So, y’know, I had to make a pact with the devil in order to save the world. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be kicked back on some fluffy cloud right now tuning my harp and eating grapes.”
“I don’t have grapes, but I could probably scrounge up some old raisins. And I think I still know how to put together a guitar out of a shoebox and yarn.”
“Yeah?” Pellini grinned. “But what about the fluffy cloud?”
I tapped my chin, considering. “How about a leaf pile? Complete with a goofy dog and a bunch of kittens.”
“Now that sounds like heaven.”
Chapter 32
Once I had Pellini all tucked in, I made a quick trip to see Nils Engen, our resident medic, who delivered the very scientific diagnosis of “Yeah, your knee is pretty messed up.” Fortunately, he also gave me a proper knee brace, though it came with orders to rest, ice, elevate, and ibuprofen the offending body part. With the knee braced and ibuprofen speeding through my system, I returned to the war room where, for the next two hours, I did my best to follow Engen’s orders while on conference call after conference call—catching up on DIRT business, being debriefed, and hunting down updates on rift activity.
Or rather, the complete lack of rift activity. Not one single demon had come through any rift worldwide since midday. The previous record for no demons had been seventeen minutes. Ten hours made me edgy. It felt too much like the calm before the storm. Moreover, I had to wonder if events in the demon realm had triggered this lull. Lannist’s demise? The Jontari theft of the gimkrah? Unfortunately, I’d barely glanced at my watch while we were hopping from realm to realm, so I couldn’t be sure of the timing.
After I finally disconnected from a conference call with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I got as far as swinging my braced leg out from beneath the table before the security switchboard patched through yet another call: Lieutenant Garvey, the officer on duty at the Spires.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he said. “As per your standing order, I’m calling to notify you of activity at IZ-212 that occurred at eighteen-oh-three.”
“Right. That’s when we pulled out of there.” I winced at the unintended annoyance in my voice. It was possible Garvey had only recently come on duty and didn’t know we’d been at the Spires. I forced a smile that I hoped carried through into my tone. “Anything after that?”
“No, ma’am. That’s—”
“Alrighty then. Have a good night, Lieutenant.”
“Do you want me to email the full report?”
“What report?”
“Of the eighteen-oh-three activity, ma’am.”
“I was there. I don’t need it.”
“No, ma’am, you weren’t. Your group left at seventeen fifty-nine.”
I pounded my fist against my forehead. “You said there wasn’t activity after I left.”
“No, ma’am. Let me clear up the confusion.” He spoke with the unruffled patience of a math tutor explaining fractions. “Your group left the area at seventeen-fifty-nine. At eighteen-oh-three, the Demon Lord Muzztol appeared out of nowhere on the road outside the compound, near the security checkpoint.”
