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I scooped up the paper and skimmed it, then gave her a horrified look. “Jill, this is awful!”
“What?” She started toward me, worry filling her eyes. “What is it?”
“Oregano. Macaroni. Sard
ines. Peanuts.” I backed away as she tried to snatch the paper from me. “These will be horrible cookies!”
“Oh! You!” She grabbed the shopping list then seized me in a hug. “I’m sorry. I’m so so so sorry.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “You should be. Sardines in cookies? What kind of monster are you?”
Jill hiccupped a laugh then released me and wiped her eyes. “You are such a dork.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, Xharbek is impersonating Zack, and you didn’t grab him because, duh, you’re not a demigod and you don’t have a death wish.”
“Actually, I did grab him. But, yeah, demigod.” I made a face. “I hate to say it, but taking Zack’s place is a pretty smart move on his part. Not to mention, an added Fuck You to Zakaar.”
Jill dropped back into her chair with a sigh. “Yeah. He’s smart.”
“Hey now, our AWOL four are smart, too,” I said. “Smart and sharp enough to have hidden from Xharbek all this time.” I mentally crossed fingers that Xharbek’s energy signature would give me an edge in locating them. “They’re going to be all right,” I insisted. “No getting bummed out now.”
She remained silent and still for close to half a minute before she finally spoke. “There are days when this library seems to mock me with how much I don’t know, but then I realize that I know things it doesn’t, and I can learn, and conjecture, or have faith that something is true.” She spread her hands flat on the table. “I know that my daughter is special. Very special. I’ve learned that the man I knew as FBI Agent Ryan Kristoff is actually Szerain, an exiled demonic lord, and I learned that the man I fell in love with, the father of my child, isn’t a man at all, but a beautiful and powerful creature who’s lived longer than humans have walked on Earth.” Her eyes lifted to mine. “I’ve conjectured that if Xharbek gets his hands on my daughter, I will never see or touch her again.” Her breath shuddered. “But I have faith . . .” She shook her head. “I have to believe that Zack would never hurt our child and would never separate us unless he felt the need was truly desperate.” Her hands tightened into fists. “Yet at the same time, I’m absolutely certain that he was wrong to take her away from me. I’m her mother. I should be with her.”
“You’ll get her back,” I said fiercely. “We’ll fix everything and take down Xharbek, and you’ll get her back.”
Jill squared her shoulders, pulling her composure together to give me a nod. “I have faith in you most of all.”
“You fucking bitch,” I muttered as my eyes filled with tears. Sniffling, I blotted them with my sleeve. “That was really low.”
She laughed. “Well, I do. You’re Kara Gillian, the Supreme Arcane Commander, Mistress of the Nexus.” Her eyes danced. “And of a certain demonic lord.”
“You did not just go there.”
“I’m sorry, how long have you known me?”
“Not nearly long enough.”
Chapter 8
Rhyzkahl was still in his house with the door closed when I returned to the nexus. Fine with me. The less distraction, the better.
Though I’d spent countless hours searching for Ashava and the others, this time a flutter of anticipation accompanied me as I stepped onto the slab. I had Xharbek’s energy signature now, as well as my suspicion that he’d narrowed down where they were. If I could find where his nasty self had left the most footprints, I could focus my own search.
I danced the shikvihr, tracing the swoops and arcs of the luminescent sigils with practiced grace until seventy-seven of them floated around me—seven full rings, bright and potent thanks to the augmentation and lord-like focus of the nexus. Though I was able to create floating sigils here on the nexus, mastery of all eleven rings would give me the ability to do so everywhere else on Earth. Floaters offered a huge advantage in speed and intensity over chalk diagrams or glyphs traced without substance in the air. Moreover, each completed ring came with an increase in power. Unfortunately, my training with Mzatal had come to a screeching halt after the battle at the Farouche Plantation, and I had zero idea when it might resume, if ever. With Mzatal closed off and the worlds at war, it was all too possible he might never train me again. And the only other available lord was not someone I wished to train with.
My gaze slid to the little house in Rhyzkahl’s orbit. No fucking way did I want him training me, but there was more than one way to skin a cat. Part of the upgraded security system included surveillance cameras that monitored every inch of the nexus and Rhyzkahl’s prison. And he practiced the shikvihr for hours every day.
A smile stretched my mouth. Learning the sigils from security videos was far from ideal, but it was better than the nothing I had otherwise. Time to take matters into my own hands. After all, no way would I settle for less than the complete ritual.
In the meantime, even a partial shikvihr augmented my arcane skills. Every day I repeated the ritual, using the borrowed power of the nexus like a robotic suit to move my arcanely paralyzed body. Sigil by sigil, I re-carved the mental pathways that made me a summoner, and sigil by sigil, I reminded my essence of who and what I truly was.
Angus McDunn had left a seed of my talent behind when he’d stripped the rest. The nexus and my work with the shikvihr were its fertilizer and super-grow lights, allowing me to regain in weeks what might have otherwise taken years.
With a sweep of my arm, I ignited the rings and drank in the power. They flared then settled into a slow spin around me, seven concentric rings. Using my lord-sight perspective, the flows of Earth potency leaped into a colorful other-worldly hologram around me. Here on the nexus, I sensed them like a network of luminous arteries that spanned the globe. I was able to easily decipher their pulses, detect and smooth turbulence, and identify affected locations. Off the nexus, I could barely even grasp the concept—clear evidence of the vast difference between humans and the demonic lords. Though the lords were half human, their other half came from the nearly godlike demahnk.
Now that I was connected to the flows, I recalled the feel of Xharbek, used it as a focus and methodically eliminated areas where I sensed nothing of his signature, like crossing off states on a map. I continued to painstakingly exclude sections of flows until I was left with perhaps a dozen possibilities, places that flickered with Xharbek’s arcane footprint. Faint, but there.
So far so good. Now to search within those areas. Though Ashava and Zack had strong arcane signatures, I limited my search to Szerain’s since I knew his best of all. Made no difference that he’d been suppressed as Ryan during most of my time with him. The signature was the same. Szerain was Ryan. Ryan was Szerain.
Deepening my concentration, I called up memories to augment my search. Laughing with him while watching his sci-fi TV shows. Arguing over waffles. Promising I wouldn’t forget him when he faced being submerged again. A parting kiss. Hours of . . .
