Perhaps the summoning would have proceeded without incident if Szerain had actually been the one to come through the portal, but Peter Cerise and the other summoners were unaware that the then-teenage Tessa was hiding in that basement that night. And though she’d yet to realize her potential as a summoner, her presence altered the forming of the portal. A different—and unwilling—demonic lord was pulled through instead: Rhyzkahl, one of the most powerful of the demonic lords.

The result was a slaughter. Rhyzkahl killed all the summoners except for one who later went on to plan another summoning of Rhyzkahl out of vengeance—becoming the serial killer known as the Symbol Man— and who had tortured and murdered his victims in order to gather the power needed to make such a powerful summoning successful.

“Yes,” Tessa said, expression strangely calm. “That’s the one. Do you ever wonder why Szerain was willing to be summoned?”

The serene look on her face was beginning to seriously unnerve me, especially considering the topic of our conversation. Her mother—my grandmother—had been one of the summoners Rhyzkahl had slain. “I, uh, hadn’t really thought about it.”

“You should,” she said, voice soft. “The demonic lords never do anything without motive.” Then she patted my hand and looked back at me with a perfectly normal Tessa-smile. “Let me get that tea for you now.”

I fled to the library after taking a few token sips of tea, but my mind was on Tessa’s strange words—and her stranger mood shift.

Why would a demonic lord be willing to be summoned? I could think of an answer right off the top of my head: the demonic lord in question had an arrangement with a human summoner, much like the arrangement I had with Rhyzkahl. So perhaps Szerain had a summoner of his own at one time as well. Perhaps he still did. I knew next to nothing about the demonic lords except for Rhyzkahl, and I didn’t exactly know a whole lot about him either—even if we did have crazy hot sex every time I summoned him.

But if some other summoner were to think that Rhyzkahl might be willing to be summoned simply because I was able to do so . . . well, that would most assuredly be a fatal mistake on their part. That, I was certain of. A summoning was considered a deep and terrible insult to a lord, a slight to their honor that could not go unanswered, else they risked losing yet more honor. It would be like yanking the pope out of his chair and setting him to clean your bathroom. But a thousand times worse, and with far more devastating repercussions. Honor was the bedrock of the demons’ society.

There were twelve levels of demons: from the first-level zrila to the twelfth-level reyza. The higher level demons had more arcane skill and strength than the lower, but the demonic lords were above all of those. They were denizens of an alternate plane of existence, and I had the ability to open a portal between this world and theirs and summon them forth to serve me in exchange for a suitable offering. While it was an affront for any demon to be summoned, the demons gained status among their kind through knowledge gained in this sphere or the artifacts and offerings the summoner might exchange for the demon’s service. Once the terms of a summoning were set—the offering and required service agreed upon—the demon’s honor compelled it to complete the agreed upon task to the best of its ability, just as that same honor compelled the summoner to abide by the terms of the agreement. The demonic code of honor was a summoner’s protection. Without it, any summoning would demand more power than one human could conceivably draw on his or her own, since it would be necessary to bind and enslave the demon and force it to the summoner’s will. And, then, of course, that summoner would be living in constant fear that the demon might break its bindings and free itself. I had little doubt that the summoner’s messy death would quickly follow.

I’d long been taught that it was impossible to summon a demonic lord and survive, though I knew now that there were exceptions to this. And if I have an arrangement with a demonic lord, who’s to say there aren’t other summoners who do as well?

I could feel the subtle brush of the protections pass over me as I entered my aunt’s library, a mental prickling on the edge of my awareness. The arcane wards in the house and the library were now back to their previous strength, though when they were “installed” this time around I made sure that I had complete access. I’d received a rude surprise when Tessa was in the hospital and I’d found that her library and summoning chamber had been protected against me—with wards of deadly strength that I later discovered had been placed shortly after my first encounter with Rhyzkahl. It was an understatement to say that I’d felt terribly betrayed. I’d been unable to fathom why she hadn’t said something to me, and even now I still didn’t have a clear answer as to her motivations for doing it.

I checked that the portal in the corner was well warded. It wasn’t an actual portal that a demon could be summoned through—more like a weak spot in the fabric between our world and the demon sphere. Or perhaps some sort of arcane pressure valve. I wasn’t quite sure, to be honest. What I did know was that when I removed the wards in the library, some arcane beasties were able to come through—or, in at least one case, were pushed through from the other side—and had caused quite a bit of trouble. I had a feeling that portal was the reason she’d warded everything against me—and, I assumed, Rhyzkahl—but that precaution had backfired since I’d been forced to have all the protections removed after Tessa had been incapacitated.

I’d braced myself for a protest from Tessa when I had the wards restored to normal, but she’d stayed silent on the subject. It was yet another shift of power that made me uncomfortable. It was almost like a grown child who suddenly had the care of an elderly parent, though that was a weak analogy in a lot of ways. Tessa was only in her late forties and far from needing any sort of care. But there was definitely a strange fragility to her now that had never been there before.

And she was out of her body for weeks, I chided myself. Give her some time to recover. I was being unrealistic to expect her to bounce back to fully normal in the course of a couple of months.

Still, I didn’t feel like lingering in the library, especially while Tessa was elsewhere in the house. The scattered books had been stacked in semi-neat piles, with as much system as there’d been before the incident with the portal. Or so it seemed to me, since I wasn’t convinced that there’d ever been a system. But somehow I managed to find a number of books in the same general area that had stuff vaguely related to arcane constructs and golems.

Ryan called as I was stuffing the books into my bag. I knew this without looking because I’d actually assigned Ryan a ringtone of his own. Not that my phone rang so often that it was necessary. Pretty much the only calls I ever got were from Tessa, Ryan, Jill, or the dispatcher. My social life—a pathetic thing indeed.

“You awake yet?” he asked.

“Not only awake, but I’ve had a shower, coffee, and am finishing up at my aunt’s library. So there.”

I heard him chuckle. “In other words, you’ve solved the mystery and there’s no need for us to go speak to Lida.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take all the fun out of it,” I said. “I suppose we can still go through the motions.”

“If you’re still at your aunt’s house, I’m only a few blocks away. Want me to pick you up?”

“Works for me. Meet you out front.”

I disconnected, then ducked out of the house, calling out a“bye” to Tessa before she could challenge me as to what I was taking from the library.