“That’s terrific,” I said, since I knew that was expected. But that wasn’t what I was interested in. “Can you tell me how you saw Rhyzkahl?”

He pulled another cigarette out of the pack but didn’t light it. “It was almost thirty years ago. Tessa and I had both just turned seventeen.” He grimaced. “My father was a summoner.” He slowly tapped the cigarette against the pack. “Tess and I used to spend a lot of time together. Even when we were little, you know, back in the days when kids actually went outside and played instead of the crap now where they sit inside and play video games—”

“Or read comic books?” I couldn’t keep myself from interjecting.

Greg gave a small bark of laughter. “Oh, no, they had comics back then, and we read plenty of ’em. But then we’d go outside and pretend that we were those superheroes and bad guys.” He smiled, a reminiscing look on his face. “We had long complex stories …” He shook his head. “Then when we got older we moved on to other interests. Anyway. My father was a summoner, as was Tessa’s mother.”

I couldn’t completely keep my face still as that bit of information sent a shock through me. Fortunately, Greg wasn’t looking at me and didn’t seem to notice my reaction. My grandmother?

Greg let out a heavy breath. “My father was pretty well skilled. He had no problems calling the minor demons and even called high-level demons fairly regularly.” Greg’s expression grew brooding. “Then my mother became ill. Cancer. I took her to the doctor, but …” He shook his head as if to dislodge an unpleasant memory. “My father decided that he needed the level of … assistance that could be gained only from a Demonic Lord.” He crumpled the cigarette in his hand, watching the flakes of tobacco drift to the floor. “My mother and Tess’s mother, Gracie, were the best of friends, and so Gracie assisted my father in his plan to summon a lord. There were a total of six summoners there—my father, Gracie, a husband and wife from here in town, and then two solo summoners from New Orleans. And, of course, my mother, though not in the circle itself. They all wanted this chance to perform such a major summoning.”

I tried to breathe silently, not wanting to do or say anything that could distract from the tale.

“I knew that my father was planning this summoning. He’d decided he would try to summon Szerain, a minor lord who supposedly was more open to this sort of assistance with the proper callings and terms. I … didn’t agree with my father’s decision. I told him so, several times.” Old pain flickered in his eyes. “I knew when they were going to attempt the summoning and I didn’t want to be alone, so I asked Tess over. Tess and I … well, we used to go down to the basement to fuck.” His mouth quirked in a boyish smile, while I tried not to show my surprise at the frank admission. Then shame flickered briefly across his face. “I didn’t tell her why I wanted her to come over. Just let her assume … Anyway, that night we were going at it hot and heavy when we heard people coming down the stairs, so we hid and watched.”

He took a dragging breath. “I have no idea what went wrong—whether it was the way the call went out or the way it was received out in the other sphere. Tessa told me later that she believes that when one summons a lord, there are different forms and protections and terms that have to be used.” He shrugged. “I’m not a summoner, so I didn’t really know what she was talking about.”

I swallowed and said nothing.

“Anyway, the circle made the call to Szerain,” he continued after a moment, “and something came through. Only it wasn’t Szerain.”

“Rhyzkahl,” I murmured, forgetting my desire to stay silent.

Greg nodded. “They invoked the bindings, but …” He shuddered. “They didn’t realize what they’d done. Didn’t realize at first that it wasn’t Szerain—that they’d summoned a lord who was not amenable to such things.” He rubbed his arms. “They didn’t realize how dangerous and powerful he is. He’s so …”

“Beautiful.”

He looked up at me. “You have seen him.”

I just nodded.

“Damn,” he breathed. “Someday I want to hear how that happened.”

“Finish your story, please?” I urged.

He ran his fingers through his hair. “He was … angry, God almighty, so angry. I could feel it, like a smothering blanket. The bindings that they had were useless. Rhyzkahl scattered them and …” He paled, his hands beginning to shake.

I leaned forward. “What happened?”

Greg clenched his hands together. “I don’t remember everything. But what I do remember is that he knew that Tess and I were there. I don’t know why he didn’t destroy us like the others, but he knew we were there.”

“How do you know?”

He looked up at me. “Because he said so. Pointed right at us while his hands were still—” His voice faltered. “His hands were still covered with my mother’s blood.” He gave a low moan and dropped his head into his hands. “My father asked him to remove her cancer. And he did. God almighty, he did. Every bit of it. Ripped it all from her. It’s been almost thirty years and I still remember that. My father lying dead at his feet, and my mother …” He shook his head, unwilling or unable to say anything more.

I was silent for a moment, then risked touching his knee. “Was everyone else killed?”

Greg took in a heaving breath. “Yeah. It was a slaughter. A fucking slaughter. As soon as Rhyzkahl finished and left, Tess grabbed my hand and dragged me out of there.” He scrubbed at his face. “She kept her head, I’ll give her that. I was totally hysterical, nearly catatonic. She got me away and to a safe place, then she went back and dumped every can of gasoline we had down the stairs and started a fire. Covered it all up.” He sighed, and I could see him pushing the memories back down. “Her mother had been killed, too, but she held it in until it was all over.”

Suddenly so much about my aunt made sense. What a hideous burden to hold for all those years. I felt an odd twinge of guilt for some of the unkind things I’d thought about Tessa. And there was a small part of me that wanted to deny, to refuse to believe that it could have been the same Rhyzkahl, the same Demonic Lord that had killed all those people, but deep down I knew that it was true, knew that he was capable of wreaking that sort of vengeance to satisfy his honor. I’d felt that same rage coming from him, that same capacity for slaughter, before he inexplicably changed his mind and decided to seduce me instead.

“I’d always heard that it was a heater explosion during a cocktail party,” I said.

Greg shrugged, color beginning to return to his face. “There wasn’t much of an investigation. I mean, back then they didn’t have CSI. And the fire was so hot that there wasn’t much left anyway. They just went in and found bone fragments and teeth and didn’t think much more of it except that it was terribly tragic. I mean, this is a small town.” He laughed weakly. “Which is kinda funny when you think about how many damn summoners were living around here.”

I nodded, but it made perfect sense to me. There were areas of arcane power here that tended to draw in people with the ability to take advantage of them, which was one of the reasons that New Orleans was such a hotbed of the “supernatural.”

I closed my notebook. “I appreciate you telling me all of this, Greg,” I said, standing.

He stood as well. “You’ve seen him. And you’re alive. How?”

I shrugged, an unconscious imitation of him. “I wish I knew.”

I stood at the door to my aunt’s house, staring at the blue-and-white wood with the stenciled flowers at the edges and the way-too-cheerful Welcome! sign on the door, working up the nerve to knock and face her. Okay, facing my aunt wasn’t the big deal, but telling her just what had happened in my summoning was. She’s going to freak. Totally fucking freak. I sighed and knocked. It was past time that I talked to her about it. I’d been finding every possible reason to put it off in the last few days, and now two weeks had passed since the summoning.