Touch of the Demon

“No,” I said emphatically, shaking my head. “No, Idris, I swear that had absolutely nothing to do with your summoning of me. That was an entirely different clusterfuck.”

He exhaled in profound relief. “Oh. Okay.” Some of his color began to return. It was clear he didn’t like the image of someone getting shredded, but he was obviously better able to deal with the horror of it if he wasn’t the cause. “Sorry,” he said, giving me a shaky smile. “Kinda freaked me out.”

“Understandable.” I liked him a lot more now that I knew it would affect him so deeply. So what the hell is he doing here serving this lord? I wondered.

“It was a gate,” I told him. “Or rather, an attempt at one. The summoner who created it—Tracy Gordon— tried to lock me into it.” I grimaced. “I got out, but then the guy’s partner threw him into the still-active gate.” I flicked my fingers out in a “explosion” gesture, winced. “The reason you weren’t able to summon me was because I had something a lot like this,” I said, tapping the collar around my throat.

Idris began to smile, then grinned as the pieces fell into place for him. “That’s why the sliders would just… slide! I thought it was a new variance or something and couldn’t nail it.” Remembered frustration flashed across his face. “The lord said it was something Earth-side and to keep doing what I was doing.” He rolled his eyes. “Now I’m glad I didn’t start trying new variances. I’d never have—” He winced. “—um, gotten you.” A puzzled look came over him. “But, if you had an artifact why didn’t you leave it on or stay behind wards?”

I let out a low snort. “After Tracy died it unbalanced the gate. It would have been disastrous, so I took the cuff off to close the gate down properly.” I shrugged, spread my hands. “So, for you, patience is a virtue.”

“Yeah, for sure in your case,” Idris said. “It’s not usually possible to summon a human from Earth unless they’re at a hotspot—a permanent place that’s been amped up for that. Humans simply don’t carry enough natural potency for it to work right. Like, when I summon Katashi here, it’s from a hotspot at his place.” He shrugged.

“How the hell did you get me then?” I held no illusions that I had some sort of mega-potency going on.

He grinned. “It was something the lord figured out and had me work on with him. It took a whole month to get the parameters right,” he said with a note of casual pride in his voice. “Lord Mzatal knows his stuff. He had me tap into one of the hotspots here and learn the patterns. It kinda developed from that.”

“Is it pretty much the same the other way around? I mean, a summoner on Earth trying to get a human from here?” I continued to hold onto the slim chance that Tessa would get past her summoning block and rescue my ass. Slim because ever since she’d spent time in the void earlier this year, she’d given no indication that she would ever summon again. She’d always summoned like clockwork before, and I wondered if she even could now. But surely she would at least try to rescue me, right?

“Well, the human still needs to be on a hotspot,” he said. “But for the most part it’s about the same.”

My hopes lifted again. “How many hotspots are there here? One on every corner?” Hey, a girl could dream.

“Nooo, not one on every corner.” He laughed, though not unkindly. “Not even close. But even so, to get enough power to pull a human, it’d take at least two skilled summoners,” Idris said. “Probably three to be sure. All summonings from this end take both a summoner and a lord working together.”

Hope dashed. Other than Katashi, I didn’t know if Tessa knew any other summoners. And with her avoidance of summoning and summoning topics, there’d been no chance to teach her the nifty storage diagram I’d developed, which might have given her the potency needed to do it alone. Double crap.

Idris seemed pretty cozy, not at all like he was under duress or anything. Here he was talking about doing arcane Research and Development with Mzatal as if it was normal everyday business. What the hell was he doing here with that dickwad? “How long have you been here with Mzatal?”

“Just under four months,” he replied. “It goes fast.”

“And how long have you been summoning?”

His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Since I was sixteen. Almost four years now.”

I stared at him. “Only four years? Holy shit. I’ve been doing it close to a decade, and I don’t think I know a tenth of what you do.”

“Well, I learned a lot from Master Katashi,” Idris said. “And now that I’m here,” his face filled with awe, “every single day is just…wow.”

Another summoner trained by Katashi. So, why the hell didn’t I learn anything worth a shit while I was with him? “Okay, please don’t take this the wrong way, but how does your family handle you being here?”

He let out a soft chuckle. “Well, they don’t know I’m here,” he said, copying my emphasis. “They think I’m in Japan on a special foreign school program. Master Katashi takes care of all that.”

“They don’t expect emails or phone calls?” I asked somewhat dubiously.

“Yeah, well, Master Katashi told me not to worry about it.” He shrugged again, smiled. “He said everything would be taken care of.”

Holy crap, but this kid sure seemed way too naive and trusting to be dealing with demonic lords. “Don’t you miss your family?” I hid a grimace, oddly bothered by the idea of him being in the demon realm without his parents’ knowledge. Yeah, sure, he was a legal adult, but it still seemed weird.

He exhaled, gave me a smile tinged with sadness. “Don’t get me wrong, my family’s great. But I’ve only been with them since I was about fourteen.”

“Something happened to your natural family?” I winced and shook my head. “I’m sorry. I have a habit of being too nosy sometimes. It’s none of my business.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” he replied. “Actually I was adopted twice. The first couple got me when I was a baby.” A fond smile crossed his face, and it was clear that he’d enjoyed a good childhood. But then his smile slipped. “There was a car accident. A truck crossed the center line and they died. I was in the backseat.” He exhaled. “I was lucky—I got adopted almost immediately by another really great couple.” The smile returned to his face. “Turned out that the guy who lived across the street from my new family was a summoner. One day he caught me peering at his wards, and that was the start of all this.” He gestured to encompass the demon realm. Safar gave a low snort from his perch on the wall.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” I said quietly. “My mom died of cancer when I was eight, and my dad was killed by a drunk driver three years later. My aunt raised me. She’s a summoner,” I added. Tracy’s comment rose in my mind. We don’t have a choice. They make sure we become summoners. I pushed it away for now.

“Do you learn a lot with Mzatal?” I asked in a ruthless change of subject. By the relief on his face it was clear he was just as glad of it.

“Yeah,” he said, making a face like a glazed-eyed goldfish. “Holy shit, there’s always more.”

“Do you…like him?” I asked doubtfully.

A somewhat pained grimace came over his face. “Well, um, he’s an awesome teacher.”

“It’s cool,” I said, grinning. “I get it.” Likeable wasn’t a necessary requirement for a good teacher.

He cocked his head to one side. “I mean, it’s hard to explain. He’s always about ten steps ahead of me, so I really really have to stay on my toes.” Then he shrugged. “He always tells me when I’m doing it wrong, but he always tells me when I’m doing it right, too. And he’s never stepped outside of our agreement, that’s for sure.”

I pursed my lips, considering that. He did sound like a good teacher, but I’d probably think more kindly of him if I wasn’t constantly worried about him killing me. “Agreement? Some sort of official contract?”

Idris nodded. “Yeah. Katashi’s already Mzatal’s sworn summoner, so anyone else the lord works with would have an official agreement with the terms laid out.”

My rising questions derailed as an odd vibration went though the tower. I started to ask Idris if he felt it too, but the frown on his face told me he did.

“Shit,” he murmured. His eyes widened as a much stronger vibration shook the tower. “Holy shit!”

I reached for the wall. “What the hell was that?” I asked. “Earthquake?”

In the span of a heartbeat his face shifted from insecure teen to intense and serious arcane practitioner, far closer to how he was in the midst of the purification ritual. “Anomaly,” he said, intaking breath at the sharp sound of cracking rock. “Not safe here. Safar! Take her up!”