Mark of the Demon

straightened. “Fine. You have twenty-four hours”—he sneered the words—“to show me some goddamn results, or not only will you be off the case but you’ll be back in Patrol.”

I willed calm with everything I had to keep my anger and dismay in check. “Yes, sir.” I didn’t dare say anything more. I had no idea how I was supposed to explain my conviction that the murders were all for the purpose of gathering arcane power, but in twenty-four hours the Symbol Man would be starting his ritual, so it was probably a moot point anyway. I would either stop the summoning or I wouldn’t. And if I didn’t, losing my job would be the least of my worries.

Chief Morse sat down, glowering. “You’re still in way over your head.” When I didn’t respond, he waved a hand at me. “Get out. Twenty-four hours or you’re through. Remember that.”

I nodded again, then pivoted and exited as quickly as I could. I slunk back to my own office and shut the door behind me, then sat heavily in my chair and dropped my head to the desk.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” I moaned.

Ryan cleared his throat. “I take it you were on the receiving end of an ass-chewing?”

“I think I dropped two sizes. Does my ass look smaller? It feels smaller.”

He snorted and I lifted my head, sighing. “I am apparently completely incompetent, and I am to be removed from the case. However, I successfully begged for twenty-four hours to prove that I deserve to remain a detective.”

“In twenty-four hours it’s not going to matter,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, no shit.” I opened my notebook to pull out the picture of Greg and Peter Cerise. “Here,” I said, handing the picture to him. “Here’s the killer. Go wild.”

“Great. Case solved. Go home.” He took the picture from me and examined it closely, then looked up at me and shrugged. “It could be anyone. I’ll scan it and send it to my ‘peeps,’ as you refer to them.”

“Well, there’s one piece of good news I can give you,” I said. “One of the Narcotics guys recognized his arrestee as one of our potential victims. Michelle Cleland.”

His eyes widened. “That’s fantastic. So she’s in jail?”

“Yep, and I told her not to bond out. Jail is the safest place for her.”

“No kidding. How did she feel about staying in jail?”

I gave him a mirthless smile. “Well, once I explained the possible alternative, she reluctantly agreed to it. Of course, it helps that she can’t afford the bond.”

“Good. That’s very good.” He stood up. “Well, at least we know that one of them is safe.” He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing. “Your company is scintillating, but I need a shower. I’m going to scan and send the picture to Quantico and then go crash for a bit.”

“The full is tomorrow night.”

Ryan looked pained. “I know. I’ll tell the imaging guys to put a big rush on the age progression. We’ll find a way to stop him.”

I couldn’t even find it in me to nod. Would we? Just over a day left, and we still didn’t have much to go on. “Go shower. Get some rest.”

“You need to sleep too,” Ryan reminded me.

“I will,” I lied. “I just want to go over a few more things before I head home.”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Do that.”

He turned and left the office, and I lowered my head to the desk again, groaning under my breath. It was going to happen tomorrow night. Would he succeed this time? Judging by the estimated times of death of the pile of bodies, he most certainly had made an attempt on the last full. He was probably summoning at the exact same time that I was summoning. Too bad there wasn’t some way for me to find out where he was by tracking the portal he was opening….

I lifted my head and turned my pencil end over end, musing on that. Perhaps someone who had far far greater skills in the arcane than I could do that sort of thing. It would probably be well beyond the ability of any human. Would a Demonic Lord even be able to track a portal? If they were actually being summoned, yes, of course, but by then it would be too late. But what if the portal could be—

I sat bolt upright, sucking my breath in through my teeth. The Symbol Man had tried to summon this past full moon. And he had tried to summon Rhyzkahl. And he had failed.

I began to laugh, knowing there was a trace of hysteria to it. He had failed because I’d been attempting to summon Rysehl, and Rhyzkahl had used my portal to escape. Holy crap, I didn’t fuck up the summoning. The wash of relief that went through me was so great I could feel tears leaking down my cheeks. I hadn’t screwed up. Rhyzkahl had hijacked my portal to save himself from being summoned by someone who had the ability to bind him. Stupid blind happenstance. And that’s why he didn’t slay me or take me, I realized. Even though it hadn’t been my intent, I was still his means of saving himself. Once he realized that I wasn’t the original summoner, his honor wouldn’t allow him to harm me.

And he seduced me because he figured he’d use the opportunity that he’d been presented with. He wanted me to trust him just so that I would later call him to this sphere. That was not as welcome a realization, and I was shocked to realize how much it hurt, even though deep down I’d suspected it. Not desirable, not interesting, just a convenient summoner. I scrubbed at the tears that continued to trickle down my face, choking back the thick knot in my throat. I’d never been pursued, wooed, or seduced before, and it had been nice—so very nice—to believe that there was something about me that attracted that sort of attention. I’d wanted to believe it so badly. Too badly. He would have done the same to whomever the summoner was, I thought, with more than a touch of misery. Not necessarily sex but some manner of seduction, whether it was power, or wealth, or whatever else he could have offered to gain the summoner’s interest.

He had read my needs, my secret aches, and played upon them. Demons were utterly self-serving, and I hadn’t truly accepted just how deeply that ran.

I took a shaking breath, wiping my face one more time. Fine. Whatever. I don’t have time to wallow in self-pity. But at least now I knew how to buy more time to catch the Symbol Man. I guess I’ll be summoning tomorrow. Let’s see if Rhyzkahl can save himself twice.

But this time I wouldn’t trust him any further than I could throw him.

CHAPTER 26

I went home and took a long hot shower to wash the stench of death away, then forced myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I knew that I would need to be rested if I was going to summon. It galled me to basically stop my investigation—especially after the chief’s ultimatum—but rationally I knew that I needed to get some sleep, whether I summoned or not.

But after I crawled into bed I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling, unable to shut off my racing thoughts. It felt almost strange not to have Ryan in the house. I was getting too used to him being around, and that was disturbing too. I liked him, and I wasn’t used to that. He’s just a coworker, a team member. Stop reading too much into it. He’s just paying attention to you because he’s fascinated by the summoning stuff.

Was that all there was to it? Rhyzkahl’s cryptic warning still left me with an uneasy ripple. Not that I had any reason to trust Rhyzkahl … but at the same time he had no reason to lie to me, and his ilk didn’t lie unless it fit into their whole code of honor.

I eventually managed to fall asleep and even slept solidly, with no nighttime visitors and no dreams that I could remember. I woke before my alarm went off at six a.m., which was also about five seconds before my cell phone rang.

I rolled over and snatched it off the nightstand, groaning when I saw that it was the Beaulac PD number. “Detective Gillian,” I said.