“This better be good!” I barked at the unlucky caller.
“Am I interrupting something?” Ezra replied, the running water muffling his smooth voice.
My irritation vanished. “Just in the shower.”
“Oh. Hmm.”
I waited, allowing him all the time he wanted to think about me in the shower.
“Earth to Ezra,” Aaron said sarcastically. “You were calling to tell Tori how she needs to get over here, remember?”
My phone wasn’t the only one on speaker, it seemed. “Why do I need to get over there?”
“Robin is on her way.” Ezra’s tone gave no indication that my shower comment had derailed him. “You should come over too. Kai will be here any minute.”
I snapped to attention. “Robin is going over there? Why?”
It took only an instant for Ezra to reply, but that moment in time seemed to stretch forever, the planet’s orbit frozen as I waited for the words I hadn’t dared to hope for so soon. Words I’d been afraid would never come.
“She figured it out.”
I flung open Aaron’s front door, rushed inside, and almost crashed into Robin’s back.
She yipped in surprise and turned, her arms overflowing with long rolls of brown paper and a gray backpack hanging off her shoulder. Amalia was just ahead of her, halfway out of her leather boots.
Aw damn, I’d hoped to beat them here. I’d hurried as much as possible, but considering I’d been wet and naked when Ezra had summoned me, I supposed it had been a long shot.
“Hi Tori,” Robin said, oddly breathless. “How are you?”
I arched my eyebrows. “If you’ve actually found a way to save Ezra, then I’m absolutely fantastic.”
Ezra and Aaron were waiting for us in the living room, and standing between them was Kai, looking as cool and poised as always in dark jeans and a slim-fitting black sweater. He gave me a quiet smile when I rushed over to hug him.
Greetings were brief, then we moved to the dining table, where Robin laid out her armload of supplies.
“All right,” she said, her voice higher than usual with nerves. “Amalia and I looked at every angle of the demon mage ritual. Like a regular demon contract, there’s no way to break it. Once the demon spirit and human soul are bound, it can’t be undone.”
Standing beside Ezra, I waited silently. If that’s all Robin had to say, she wouldn’t be here.
“So we looked for ways to circumvent the contract instead of breaking it. After all, the biggest issue here is that Eterran is trapped inside Ezra’s body. The contract between them is secondary to that.”
Amalia put a hand on her hip. “From start to finish, contracting a demon requires three steps: summoning the demon, negotiating a contract, and binding the demon to the infernus.”
Robin slid the cult grimoire out of her backpack and opened it to a marked page. “The demon mage ritual is four steps. Summoning is exactly the same—the demon is called into a summoning circle. Then negotiation.”
“That’s a bit different,” Amalia noted dryly. “From what I’ve read, demon mages are damn near impossible to create in part due to ninety-nine percent of demons refusing to agree to it.”
Tucking a damp curl behind my ear, I grimaced. “Yeah, well, what is the demon even getting out of the deal?”
“Lies,” Ezra answered in a growl. “That is what they offered.”
Robin frowned. “But you can detect lies. All demons can.”
Aaron and Kai stiffened as Ezra’s left eye burned crimson.
“Lies given as truth.” Hatred chilled Eterran’s quiet snarl. “A second man explained the contract. He did not lie, but every word he spoke was false. I knew nothing of humans and their ways. I did not think to make the summoner speak the same words.”
“Wait.” I peered at his crimson eye. “You know when you’re being lied to?”
“Not in this body.”
“Oh.”
Robin glanced between us, then cleared her throat. “The contract for a demon mage is straightforward. Simply put, the demon agrees to bind itself to the human’s soul. We’re not really sure what that entails, but I’m assuming that bond gives the host enough control to keep the demon from immediately overpowering his mind.”
We all looked questioningly at Ezra/Eterran, but he didn’t speak.
“The third phase,” Robin continued, “is the ritual that turns the host into the equivalent of a summoning circle. Then, for the final stage—”
“—the demon is summoned into the host,” Ezra finished quietly.
A dark, haunted shadow lurked in his eyes, and I reached out, surreptitiously sliding my hand into his. His fingers closed tightly around mine.
“And that’s the key,” Robin said. “That’s how we’ll undo this.”
I blinked dumbly. “How?”
“We’re going to summon Eterran out of Ezra.”
Silence.
Kai stepped closer to the table. “It’s been a while since I studied Demonica basics, but from what I remember, summoners can call a demon of a particular type, but they can’t summon an individual demon.”
“Not from the demon world, no,” Robin replied. “But making a demon mage requires summoning the already summoned demon a second time in order to insert him into the human host. We’re going to do exactly that.”
“There are complications,” Amalia added. “The big one being blood.”
I squinted at that ominous statement. “Blood?”
“The second summoning required Eterran’s blood.” Ezra frowned between the two women. “He doesn’t have a body anymore. My blood isn’t demon blood.”
“No, your blood wouldn’t work,” Robin agreed. “But I think we can modify the spell to summon Eterran using blood from the same House. Are you familiar with demon Houses?”
“Yeah,” Aaron answered. “Different demon types are called Houses and there are nine or ten of them.”
“Twelve,” she corrected as she lifted her backpack onto the table. “But yes. Their Houses are essentially lineages, so any blood from Eterran’s House will be nearly identical.”
A dozen demon Houses—and her demon was the king of one of them? That was what Ezra had said when we’d handed over the demonic amulet.
I pressed my hands to the table. “You want us to get another demon’s blood?
