Excitement and relief twined together within me. “I’ll be ready.”

He touched my cheek then turned and departed without another word.

I watched him go. Was it at all possible that he was going to miss me? Was that why he was being so strangely tender? I shook my head to dismiss the thought. Right now all I wanted to worry about was getting my ass back home.

I returned to my room, bathed, then stood frowning at the simple, pretty pullover dress laid out on the bed. I’d been thinking jeans, a zrila-shirt, and sneakers would be ideal for going home, but for all I knew, clothes might have significance in demon-side rituals. Whatever. All that mattered right now was getting home. After dressing and combing out my hair, I had nothing left to do but wait impatiently and watch the progress of the sun toward the horizon.

Shortly after the sun began to set a faas burst through the door, baring teeth. “Come! Come! Qaztahl waits!”

“Okay, okay!” I said with a smile. The faas hopped out, and I followed it down the corridor. It stopped at the open door to this wing’s smaller library and pointed inside.

“Here here heeeeere.”

“Rhyzkahl’s waiting for me here?” I asked, brow furrowed.

The faas peered at me as though I was a silly but very lovable human. “No! Jesral waiting!”

Doubt tightened my stomach. I took a settling breath and wished I was wearing more than the very simple dress with no bra, then entered the small library.

Indeed, Jesral was there, draped casually in a chair, sitting partially sideways with one leg over the other. There was nothing casual, though, behind his eyes or in his aura. Slim, with short brown hair, sharp features, and a keen gaze, he didn’t radiate scary the way Mzatal did but felt more like a silent, stalking jungle cat—deadly, but able to hide it when he desired. He wore a grey turtleneck beneath a dark blue velvet suit that did absolutely nothing to decrease the subtle aura of danger. He turned his head to look at me as I entered, while the rest of his posture remained in total comfortable casualness.

“Ah, Kara Gillian,” he said, flashing me a smile. “I am Lord Jesral. I have heard so much about you. What a delight to finally have the chance to meet you properly.”

I inclined my head, wary. “Lord Jesral, I confess I don’t know much, if anything, about you.” I gave him a small and careful smile.

His eyes widened. “Rhyzkahl has not spoken of me?” He shook his head and made a single tsk sound. “He has spoken of you at length. Though there was cause in that, and perhaps not so the other way.”

I folded my arms over my chest as I studied him. “And why have I been the subject of so much conversation?”

“Most recently, regarding the ritual,” he said, eyes on me, still smiling. “To which I will escort you, that you may return to Earth.”

“And why do you care whether I return to Earth?”

He laughed. “What matter would it have to me if you stay or go? I aid because Rhyzkahl asks it.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “And do you do everything he asks of you?”

“Clever, clever girl.” His face shifted from the smile to a far more penetrating look. “Would you believe any answer I gave you?”

I affected a casual shrug, though inside my pulse raced. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this light conversational banter carried higher stakes than I could ever imagine. “Lies and truth are all information of some sort, Lord Jesral.”

He dropped his crossed leg to the floor, gaze intense and flat out disturbing in a far different way than any of the others. A strange smile of cold satisfaction crept over his face, as though I’d managed to confirm some suspicion he’d been harboring.

“This is so very true,” he said, standing and flicking non-existent dust from his sleeves. “Though it is helpful to discern a lie from truth in order to glean the most refined information. I can offer one as easily as the other.”

I unfolded my arms. “I’m a cop. I’m used to lies. But how about you humor me and tell me the truth.” I lowered my head and kept the smile on my face. His too-friendly demeanor disturbed the hell out of me. “Why is it that you so eagerly leap to do Rhyzkahl’s bidding? Do you fear him? Love him? Owe him? Or are you merely sucking up in order to keep in his good favor?”

He adjusted his clothing with a few smooth, practiced moves, then gestured toward the door. “We have a mutually beneficial working relationship,” he said, “and he would just as readily leap at my bidding.”

I headed to the door and allowed myself to be escorted. I was more than ready to get the fuck away from the demon realm and all of these lords. “A working relationship?” I gave him an ingenuous smile. “And what sort of work do you and Rhyzkahl do?”

Jesral laughed in a way that wasn’t at all comforting. “If Rhyzkahl has chosen not to even speak of me to his marked summoner, there must be a reason. It is not for me to step between the two of you and spoil it.”

I pressed my lips together and continued on in silence, utterly sick of this place and the bullshit intrigue. Shadow memories flickered as we walked, but I did my best to keep a careful lid on them.

Jesral finally stopped before the double doors to the antechamber. He flicked a hand to open one of them by about a foot. “And so here you are, Kara Gillian. I will see you again soon, I am certain.” He took my hand before I could pull it away, lifted it to his mouth without bending, kissed the back, and released it.

I wanted badly to say something cutting and clever, but I couldn’t come up with a damn thing. No doubt I would in about five minutes. Instead I simply gave him a nod and a tight smile, then ducked through the door.

Chapter 18

The antechamber swallowed me, overly spacious, overly white, and utterly barren, as though decor had gone missing. The opulence and splashes of color in the rest of the palace warmed and augmented the white, but here, it was unbroken winter. I hurried across the expanse of floor, demon-marble chilling my bare feet.

With a breath of relief, I passed through the open door of the summoning chamber itself, its dark gray walls and floor and pleasing warmth a startling contrast to the room behind me. It seemed the lords had identical summoning chambers, which I guessed had to do with function rather than taste. Hundreds of sigils ringed the chamber, too many to even begin to puzzle out their purpose or meaning. All pulsed faintly, yet to be ignited and activated. That’s what we’ll be doing, I realized, tension and a vague worry twined with a near breathless excitement. I didn’t know how this sort of ritual worked, but it still excited me to be intimately involved in such a creation.

Rhyzkahl stood with his back to me, barefoot and wearing almost the same thing he’d worn on my first accidental summoning of him: cream-colored leather breeches that hugged the muscles of his legs, and a white shirt of some sort of silky material. I controlled my impatience and nerves while he completed a sigil. Finally, he turned to me.

“Close the door,” he said. “Then ignite the sigil upon it.”

I shut the heavy door but paused, frowning as I peered at the sigil. It was a deeply complex thing, with whispers of something intimately familiar. Yet I had no idea how to do what he asked.

“Use your connection with the grove. Ignite it as you would a closure seal for a portal, but draw the grove energy as well,” Rhyzkahl said. “It is a source of deep power, and its use to ignite the master seal will offer the greatest anchoring and shielding for the ritual.”

I nodded, then drew on the grove and extended to the sigil. An instant later it flared to life, igniting a chain of patterns that ran along the perimeter of the chamber. I exhaled in delight, the weirdness with Jesral forgotten.

“Excellent,” Rhyzkahl said. “Without a summoner controlling the portal from the exterior, it is vital that the room be deeply shielded and solidly anchored when the portal opens.”

I didn’t have to ask him what could go wrong if it wasn’t. An unshielded portal could do very bad things. I wanted to get back to Earth in one piece, thank you.

“Are you ready to begin?” he asked.

“I am,” I replied, smiling.

He lowered his head slightly, hair falling forward to frame his face and drop it into shadow as he held his hand out to me. My pulse quickened as I crossed through the diagram to take his hand.

With his other hand he sealed the patterns, then pulled me in closer. He looked down on me, eyes veiled and distant. “You have come to me, dear one,” he said, a smile with a hint of sadness curving his mouth. “To go home.”

After my encounter with Jesral, I didn’t know what Rhyzkahl had gone through to make this ritual happen. Something sure seemed to weigh on him, and I didn’t want to add to it, just go home. I smiled up at him. “Yeah. And thank you,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.

Slowly, he lifted his head to look beyond me as if thinking of something else. Mentally prepping for the ritual, I figured. Excitement wound through me for multiple reasons, and I had to firmly tamp down the desire to jump up and down or laugh or anything else that would no doubt seriously fuck up Rhyzkahl’s focus.

I glanced around at the myriad of sigils, then scanned the arcanely traced glyphs on the floor. There’d only been about a half dozen in Mzatal’s purification ritual. Here, they covered a good portion of the summoning chamber floor. My eyes rested on the center—Rhyzkahl’s mark. I frowned. Something about the glyph next to it looked familiar. I was sure I’d seen it before, but damn, I couldn’t place it.

I looked up as Rhyzkahl drew a deep breath and dropped his gaze back to me. “I do not always get what I want,” he said, which confused me at first until I remembered that I’d asked him that question the other day. But why was he telling me now? Did he want me to stay here in the demon realm?

He released my hand, expression unreadable as he laid a hand against the side of my face. “Soon you will be gone,” he murmured.

I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re going to miss me.”