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My watch beeped. Five minutes until Operation Phone Home Szerain.
I made my way through the house to the back yard and marshalled everyone into their respective positions. Giovanni sat beside one of the bunker diagrams with Elinor in his lap. Pellini took up his usual spot outside the super-shikvihr while Turek crouched at the edge of the nexus closest to the rift. This would essentially be a replay of my first attempt to reach Szerain, though hopefully without the part where he pulled me into a dimensional pocket. This time—I hoped—Szerain would catch my line of potency, grab the others from the stronghold, and let us pull them all home.
Pellini’s attention stayed glued to his watch, which he’d calibrated to International Atomic Time right before the summoning. By 2:22 a.m., I had the ball of potency-string ready in my hand and my arcane eye on the resonance that marked where I needed to cast it.
The resonance abruptly dimmed and vanished, obscured by an odd static-like potency. It had the “scent” of Szerain though, which told me it was probably an aspect of the protections. My only option at this point was to trust that he’d be ready at the appointed time.
“Thirty seconds,” Pellini announced then took the end of the potency strand from me without lifting his eyes from the watch.
“Five.”
Four. Three. Two. One.
The static cleared precisely as Pellini said now. I flung the ball along the channel to that spot of perfect resonance and waited for my fishy to bite. One heartbeat. Two.
The potency line went taut, and Pellini and I pulled as hard as if we were trying to land Ahab’s white whale.
I yelped and tumbled backward as the tension on the line abruptly disappeared. Pellini landed on top of me, driving my breath out in a whoosh, except that Pellini was standing a couple of feet away, and it was Szerain who rolled off me and onto his back. No sign of Ashava, Zack, or Sonny, to my rising dismay.
A transparent iridescent shield like a tetrahedron-shaped bubble popped up with the bunker diagrams as the vertices. Turek hissed and moved in to help Szerain sit up. Dried blood caked his hair, and he looked battered and exhausted, as if he’d been rolled down a rocky hill after running a marathon.
“I couldn’t reach the others,” he said with undisguised frustration. “Xharbek’s presence was too strong.”
I kept a firm hold on my worry. “Are they okay?”
“For now,” he murmured, leaning heavily against Turek as if he didn’t have the strength to move. “Elinor? I can’t sense her.”
“She’s right here on the nexus,” I reassured him. “We did it.”
Szerain closed his eyes, and it seemed as if a palpable layer of tension sloughed away. “Looks like you didn’t do badly at all for your first Jontari summoning,” he said.
“Are you kidding?” I shuddered. “It was a mess from top to bottom.”
“Nah, it’s like flying a plane. Any time you don’t crash, you’ve won.” He shifted to sit without Turek’s support then went still, gazing down at the slab beneath us as if looking into the depths of a crystal clear ocean. “I could spend a decade examining what Mzatal created here and not understand a tenth of it,” he said with naked awe. Yet a heartbeat later sadness filled his eyes as they traced the connection to Rhyzkahl, trapped in his orbit.
Rhyzkahl met his gaze, revealing nothing in his expression or stance. Szerain breathed out a weary sigh, then turned his attention to his daughter where she lay cradled in her beloved’s lap. Giovanni glared at Szerain and clutched Elinor closer, only relaxing a trifle as Szerain looked at me. I didn’t miss the flash of hurt in his eyes at the rebuff, though.
“You pulled off the summoning without a gimkrah, which is no small feat,” Szerain said. “How did you lose it?”
I scowled. “You make it sound like I left it on the bus or something. We got ambushed and never had a chance.”
“Perhaps I should catch up on your exploits,” he said with a wry chuckle. He reached toward my head but stopped in surprise as I jerked back.
“Not that way,” I said with a grimace of apology. I had zero clue how to shield specific information, and no good would come from him reading that I’d made a pact with a demon to take Szerain’s essence blade from him. “It’s for your own good. Trust me. Please.”
He regarded me with a calculating, narrow-eyed expression, the most lordly I’d ever seen on him. “Of course.” He gave me a smile. “Turek is offering his perspective.” He gestured toward my bandaged hand. “Will you accept healing?”
“Yes, thanks,” I said and allowed him to unwrap the bandage. We’d moved past the incident, but Szerain wouldn’t forget I intentionally withheld info from him, for his own good or not. Turek would inform him of my privacy-veiled meeting with Dekkak, thus giving him plenty of fodder for speculation.
Warmth flowed into my hand from Szerain’s. He hummed softly as he worked, eyes unfocused, likely communing with Turek. After a quiet minute, his face lit up. “You have Elinor’s journal? Fantastic! I need it. Immediately.”
“Yeah, sure thing.” Maybe one of her bug drawings had a deeper meaning? “Hey, Tandon,” I called out. “Could you bring the journal from my nightstand, please?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, and was off like a friggin’ gazelle, long legs chewing up the distance in the blink of an eye.
The warmth increased to heat as the healing intensified. Szerain glanced at Turek, then back to me. “The discs,” he said.
My shoulders hunched. “I’m so sorry. They were beautiful, but—”
