I owned just over ten acres out here, and most of it remained woods. My house was smack in the middle of the property, with only about a hundred-foot radius around the structure cleared of thick forest and underbrush, though there were still plenty of trees around the house to shade it beautifully all year long. The house itself was a single-story Acadian with a steeply pitched roof, high ceilings, and a broad porch that extended across the entire front. The high ceilings also made it hard as shit to heat in the winter, but I had long ago accepted that electric blankets were made for just that reason. Besides, in south Louisiana it didn’t get all that cold. The house was close to one hundred years old, with walls and ceilings that had been made with precise tongue-and-groove construction. The exterior was supposed to be a dusky blue, but it was also unfortunately in dire need of a new paint job and had a rather mottled appearance where the white of the old paint showed through.

But the best feature of the house was its elevation. It sat on enough of a hill that I was able to have a basement, though not so high up that it could be seen above the surrounding trees from the highway. Houses with basements were practically nonexistent in this region, and the large basement of this house was absolutely perfect for the kind of arcane activities that my aunt and I dealt in. Aunt Tessa had converted the attic in her own house into a summoning chamber, but she frequently moaned that it wasn’t as good as a basement. It was a lot harder to make an attic noiseproof and lightproof, and the earth that surrounded a basement helped soak up excess arcane resonance. Plus, the heat in any attic in the South was damn near unbearable in the summer.

I returned to the foyer, compulsively checking everything again and quietly pleased with how nice it looked. I could have people over every now and then, the thought intruded. Maybe a crawfish boil in the backyard for people from work? It really was a lovely little house, and there was a part of me that wanted to show it off. I had dim childhood memories of my parents throwing parties and having people over—before my mother got sick. But neither of them had dealt with the arcane, I reminded myself. They’d had no reason to be secretive and private.

I had plenty of reason. I’d have to scrub the shit out of the basement to make sure there was no evidence of a summoning diagram. I grimaced. And hide all my implements. Would anyone come, anyway? I had plenty of casual friends from work, but Jill was probably the only one I felt any real “friendship” toward, and I could count on zero hands the times we’d hung out together outside of work. Baby steps, Kara, I chided myself. Make some friends, then worry about throwing a party.

I scowled and pulled my focus back to the task at hand. I could worry about my social life some other time. I checked one more time that the curtains completely covered the windows, then headed to the hallway door that led to the basement. I paused in front of it, taking a deep breath and rolling my head on my neck to work the tension out. I was good at this, I reminded myself. This was going to be a very low-level summoning, and I’d performed plenty of them successfully. I’d worked my ass off for the past decade to learn everything I could about summoning demons. I knew the chants, the bindings, the names. I’d studied rituals dating back centuries, when it was first discovered that there were people who were genetically gifted with the ability to open a portal between this world and another—a world of creatures that came to be known as demons. Last year I’d even taken leave from work and scraped together the money to spend two months in Japan, studying under the summoner who had been my aunt’s mentor—a waste of time and money, I later decided. The convergence had been too weak to summon anything really interesting, and Tessa’s mentor—a wisp of a man who looked old enough to have been around for the first summoning—was a rude, condescending asshole.

I slipped off my bathrobe, folded it neatly, and set it against the wall in the hallway, despite my usual habit of dropping clothing wherever I happened to be. For the thousandth time I reminded myself that I needed to put a hook on the door for just this reason. I opened the basement door and walked naked down the stairs, skin prickling with goose bumps at the slight chill that lingered in the air despite the fire I’d lit earlier. It was spring closing in on summer, but the basement held the cold fiercely at times. I pulled the waiting clothing off the hook at the bottom of the stairs—drawstring pants and a loose shirt made from a gray buttery-soft silk. I’d never bought into the whole flowing-silken-robes thing—far better to be free from distractions, able to move about.

I stepped off the stairs, bare feet chilling against the concrete of the floor. The basement was huge—almost the same square footage as the main floor of my house. There was a fireplace in the south wall that tended to get a lot of use, since the basement stayed cool in the summer and became downright frigid in the winter. A couple of years ago, I’d converted the third of the basement that contained the fireplace into a mini-office, carpeted in a plush deep-red shag that only barely avoided looking like it belonged in a bordello. A heavy oak table and a comfortable wingback chair that I’d scored at an estate sale completed the ensemble. The other two-thirds of the basement floor was smooth concrete, unmarked except for the intricate and large circular diagram I had laboriously chalked out earlier.

I rubbed my arms as I scanned the room. The only light came from the fireplace and a few low candles placed around the circle, but it was enough. It wasn’t as if I would need light to read anything. There wouldn’t be time to read if things went wrong.

I’d already put my materials out, the implements I would need set in precise alignment outside the complex diagram. I was reusing the diagram I’d created for my summoning of Kehlirik, with the changes needed for the different-level demon that I would be calling. A diagram for a twelfth-level demon was a large and complicated construction that usually took me a good three hours to complete. The changes needed to summon the luhrek Rysehl had taken only twenty minutes.

Placing myself so that the fire was at my back, I moved to the edge of the diagram, careful not to touch it with my feet or clothing.

I took a deep breath, allowing myself to bask briefly in the rich and warm contentment that I found in summoning. I was in control during a summoning ritual. If something went wrong, I had no one but myself to blame. I knew what the consequences were, and even though they could be dire and extreme—especially if a demon’s honor was somehow impugned—the end reward of having a demon at your service was worth the risk and occasional pain. Performing the rituals and dealing with the demons was headier than any drug—something I knew from brash experience, unfortunately.

But this summoning tonight was a straightforward one. Not even a tenth as difficult as the one from last night. I knew better than to be cocky—I bore a few scars from summonings that had not gone well—but I was quite familiar with Rysehl, and I knew what to expect from him.

Taking a deep, calming breath, I lifted my arms and began, my voice echoing off the wood-paneled walls as I spoke the words. Working carefully, I began by laying the shields on the room itself, then progressed to setting the wards on the diagram.

I kept my arms up as I chanted, finishing the wards, then starting in on the bindings, setting them carefully so that I could trigger them with the merest thought. Those could not fail. Demons were bound until suitable terms could be reached—an agreement on an offering in return for the demon’s service. Once terms were set, a demon’s honor wouldn’t allow it to break the agreement, but until that time the bindings kept me safe from claws and teeth and arcane perils. This was especially important when summoning the higher-level demons—the reyza and syraza and zhurn—where you had to be utterly certain that the terms were set before releasing the bindings. The higher demons did not like being summoned. In fact, some utterly despised it, submitting only after intense and protracted battle with the bindings that the summoner had in place.