Zack met his eyes, a strange expression on his face. “You’ll take care of the rest?”
Ryan’s face went stony and bleak, and he gave a stiff nod. Zack slipped out the back door.
What the hell was that about?
Ryan stepped over to the table the waitress was hiding under and crouched in front of her. He placed a hand on hers and I thought he was going to help her out from under the table, but instead she went very still and quiet when her eyes met his. I watched the bizarre tableau, perplexed, as Ryan continued to hold the woman’s hand, eyes fixed on hers while a strange and terrible smile curved his lips.
After perhaps half a minute, he took a breath and looked away. The waitress blinked, then gave Ryan a smile as he gripped her hand more firmly and helped her out from under the table.
“Here you go, ma’am,” Ryan said. “The dogs are all gone now.”
The woman let out a normal chuckle that completely unnerved me, considering what she’d just witnessed. “Oh, I knew they’d get in here someday, the way Tommy likes to feed those darn strays! Thank you for chasing them off, darlin’.”
“It was no trouble,” Ryan replied, giving her a charming smile. His eyes flicked to me and he gave a slight motion of his head toward the door. I glanced over to see Zack coming back inside.
“Ryan, the boy was bitten, but he’ll be all right.” He gave Ryan the strange look again. “You’ll see to him?”
Ryan’s face could have been carved from iron. He didn’t nod, just stepped past Zack and walked outside, returning less than a minute later supporting a limping Tommy. “Ya gotta be careful of those feral dogs, kid. You never know when one might take a snap at you.” He eased the boy down to a chair. “You gonna be all right?”
The boy bit his lip, clearly doing everything he could to be manly and not cry about the wound in his leg. It wasn’t gaping or anything, but it was big, and I knew that the kid was going to need some serious stitching. How anyone could think that a stray dog with a normal-size jaw had made that injury was beyond me.
But at the moment there were many things that I felt I wasn’t quite grasping.
“Ryan—” I began.
He jerked his hand up in a keep quiet gesture, eyes unfocused. I wanted to shriek, but I forced myself to hold it in. About a dozen heartbeats later, he blinked and looked back at Zack.
“Okay, the cook is the only other one in the place, and he wears an iPod turned up loud enough to drown out a nuclear explosion.” He scrubbed at his face, hand shaking slightly, then his eyes met mine. “Some stray dogs got in the back door and caused a big mess. That’s … that’s what they remember.”
I could only stare at him for several heartbeats. “What did you just do?” It came out much more calmly than I had expected.
An expression of true pain flickered across his face, then was gone. He gave me a smile that looked terribly sad, then gripped me by the shoulders, eyes quickly scanning me up and down. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No,” I said, voice strangled. “What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.” He squeezed my shoulders and then released me. “Okay, go now. Go back to work.” He turned and walked to the front door of the restaurant. I watched him through the front window as he climbed into his car and drove off, then I turned to Zack, who was carefully picking up casings.
He didn’t give me a chance to speak. “Kara, don’t. Please.” His eyes were troubled as he straightened. “There’s a lot about Ryan that’s … complicated.”
“Complicated?” The word nearly exploded from me. “Those people just forgot about everything that happened! How often does he do this? How does he do this?”
“He doesn’t do it often at all.” Zack looked miserable, but I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic at the moment. “No one else knows he can do this. Not even the FBI.” He paused. “Especially not the FBI.” He shook his head. “I know only because I’ve seen him do it before … when there was no other choice.”
I had to tighten my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “How much do you know about him?”
“Not enough. Please, Kara. If we cause a scene here, it will undo everything he did. Please. Just go back to work.”
He turned away from me and started walking toward the front door.
I did the only thing I could think to do, and let him go.
Chapter 18
I DROVE AWAY FROM THE RESTAURANT, HANDS TIGHTENING on the steering wheel at every crackle of the radio, knowing that at any second there would be an alert tone and a dispatch reporting shots fired at the old Ice House restaurant, but the radio traffic remained stubbornly boring. A complaint about a barking dog. A report of a car break-in. Nothing about a few dozen shots fired in a public place.
A chill ran over my skin. The waitress had gone from hysterical to calm in the span of a heartbeat, seeming to forget everything that had happened. My stomach churned unpleasantly, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the poor meal or from what I’d witnessed. Was it something Ryan was conscious of or just some sort of effect that surrounded him? And has it ever been used on me?
There was no way I was going to return to the office. If anyone asked me, I’d plead some sort of work in the field. Boudreaux and Pellini get away with it all the time, right? Besides, it was Friday. Most of the rank would be gone anyway.
A shiver ran through me. Boudreaux and Pellini. Ryan had done something at the funeral to make them stop being dicks. I didn’t even have to wonder about that. There was no way that their change of heart had occurred naturally.
So had he ever done something like that to me?
I drove to my aunt’s house, passing through the wards and parking in the garage. It was a tight squeeze, but I didn’t want to advertise the fact that I was skipping out on work. After I shut the engine off and punched the button on the remote to close the garage door, I stayed in the car and leaned my forehead on the steering wheel, listening to the muted creak of the cooling engine.
My mood swung wildly between confusion and terror. I wanted badly to give Ryan the benefit of the doubt, but it wasn’t easy. The incident at the restaurant suddenly threw a dozen other things into a new and disturbing light. He’d obviously done something at the funeral. And Kehlirik had called him a kiraknikahl. Too bad I had no fucking idea what that was, but I had to wonder if it had something to do with this ability of his to make people forget things.
And Rhyzkahl said that Ryan wasn’t completely aware of himself. If Ryan can fuck with people’s memories as he is now, what would he be capable of if he knew what he was doing?
I finally got out of the car and went into the silent house, thoughts still tumbling. I had no idea which of us the dog-thing had been after. Maybe it was connected to the consumed essences. Or perhaps it had something to do with Rhyzkahl’s interest in me. Or maybe it was unrelated to any of that.
I took a deep breath. Enough thinking about what had happened; I had plenty else to worry about. I fingered the folded piece of paper in my pocket with my list of questions. There was still plenty more I needed to know.
Like what the fuck happened today?
I gave myself a mental smackdown. Forget that for now. First I wanted to focus on finding anything to do with creatures that could consume essence. I needed to figure out what I was up against, then work out how to stop it. And after that, I wanted to find out as much as I could about summoners allying with demons. The Symbol Man had formed some sort of alliance with a reyza, but I had the feeling that had been more of an arrangement where the reyza was able to stay longer or did not require negotiations for each summoning—perhaps something like the adjustment of the anchor points that Kehlirik had shown me how to do.
But Rhyzkahl was asking for something else entirely. He wanted me to basically guarantee that I would summon him on a regular basis, with the payoff being that I wouldn’t have to risk being slaughtered. Yeah, nice bonus.
I couldn’t deny that having access to his knowledge and ab
ilities was extraordinarily tempting, but having Rhyzkahl around was by no means the same as having a reyza on the string. Rhyzkahl wanted everything I could give him and more. And I wasn’t sure just how much I’d be able to control him.
Okay, not at all was probably the answer to that. Plus, what would I be risking—to both myself and this sphere—by granting him increased access?
I walked down the hall to Tessa’s library, reminding myself that I needed to put some of the library wards back—something that would hopefully suffice until the full moon, when I could summon a demon to do it properly. But first I was going to try to find what I needed, and that wasn’t going to be easy. Tessa’s library was a nightmare of disorganization—at least to me. Shelves covered every inch of the walls, even above the door, and every one was crammed full of books, papers, scrolls, and other odds and ends that defied description. The floor was a maelstrom of tumbled books, and the large oak table in the center of the room was stacked so high that the books were nearly touching the large chandelier that hung in the middle of the room—a crystal monstrosity that looked like it should be in a ballroom.
I sighed. I had no idea how Kehlirik had managed to maneuver in here at all. I set my notebook down on top of a pile of papers on the table and pulled a book off a shelf at random, praying that there was some sort of system to my aunt’s madness.
I WOKE UP with a cramp in my neck and a dry mouth. Blinking to get my bearings, I realized that I’d fallen asleep in one of the chairs, and a glance at my watch showed me that it was five a.m. It was a tribute to my level of exhaustion that I’d passed out so thoroughly. I’d probably managed about four hours of reading and research before falling asleep, and in that time I’d barely scratched the surface of the books and papers in the room, coming to the conclusion that there was no discernible system whatsoever in this library.
After a quick shower and clothing change from the stash I had here, I dug my MP3 player out of my car, stuffed the buds into my ears, then jammed to the Dixie Chicks and Faith Hill while I puttered around the kitchen in a nearly fruitless attempt to locate food. I finally found and consumed some granola bars of indeterminate age, then felt ready to return to the library to make an assessment of what progress I’d made.
Not much was the best answer. I’d set aside a few books for later reading, but I hadn’t found anything that came right out and told me what I wanted to know. Kind of like Aunt Tessa, I thought with a glower.
I couldn’t call it wasted time, though. I’d always loved libraries, and while Tessa’s collection was quite specialized, I still adored sitting on the floor and poring through the musty books and leather-clad tomes. When I was a kid, my parents had owned an old set of encyclopedias—the printed kind with a different volume for each letter of the alphabet. I would spend hours curled up on the couch leafing through the pages, not looking up anything in particular but just absorbing what there was to know. I hadn’t seen printed encyclopedias in years. Such things now came in complete sets on CD. But I always told myself that if I ever had kids, I’d find a set of the printed volumes, because you couldn’t leaf through on a CD in the same way.
I felt the same in Tessa’s library, reading through random volumes and finding all sorts of fascinating nuggets of information. It was almost painful to have to close a book once I knew that it didn’t have the information I needed, and I found myself making a personal promise to come back and browse when I didn’t have such an urgent agenda.
Unfortunately, several more hours of browsing failed to turn up anything concrete, and I’d churned through Reba McEntire, Taylor Swift, Kellie Pickler, and Carrie Underwood on my MP3 player. I found plenty on essences and souls but nothing specific on how to remove or restore an essence. And since there was no rhyme or reason that I could discern to Tessa’s library cataloging system—if there was one at all—I was basically looking for everything on my list in every book I opened. It wasn’t exactly an efficient system. I couldn’t find anything on what could suck out an essence, no more than a stray sentence or two about the relationship between summoner and demon, and nothing at all on what a kiraknikahl was.
I heard an odd sound in the space between songs, and I pulled the earbuds off to locate the source of it, discovering to my chagrin that it was my cell phone, vibrating and ringing on the oak table. I turned the player off, an unfamiliar frisson of nervousness tightening my chest when I saw Ryan’s number on the caller ID. I hesitated, a tiny part of me wanting to let it roll to voice mail. Don’t be an idiot, I berated myself as I pressed the talk button. He wouldn’t hurt me. No matter what else I was unsure of, I felt certain of that.
“Hi, Ryan,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage. Pretend nothing happened. Everything is normal. Denial is so lovely.
“Kara, would you please unlock the door and let me in?” He sounded aggrieved. “I’ve been knocking.”
“Sorry. I had my tunes on loud. I’ll be right there.” I closed my phone and stood up, brushing dust off my pants, then froze, looking down at a book that was open on the floor. I didn’t remember getting the book off the shelf, and I glanced up, wondering whether it had fallen. It was certainly possible, considering the haphazard way that Tessa had the books stuffed onto the shelves, but what were the chances that a random book would fall in front of me and open to that page?
A wave of goose bumps crawled over my skin as I crouched and picked up the book. For there on the page was a full treatise on summoners forming alliances with demons. I cradled the volume almost tenderly as I quickly scanned the page. It didn’t specifically mention alliances with demonic lords, but it sure seemed to be referring to the same sort of thing. Ryan would shit if he caught sight of this.
Ryan! I marked my place in the book and shoved it into my bag, then hurried to the door. I yanked it open to see Ryan standing on the walk, the troubled expression on his face clearing when he saw me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I suddenly found something I was looking for and didn’t want to lose my place. Come on in.”
The tension on his face faded as he came up the steps, and I realized that he’d probably been apprehensive that I wouldn’t speak to him again after what had happened at the restaurant. “What were you looking for?”
“Oh, I have a laundry list,” I said, evading the question. “But going through Tessa’s library is an adventure in disorganization. How did you know I was here?”
“You weren’t at your house or at the station, so I figured you’d be here.”
My car was in the garage, but he’d known I was here. When he called he hadn’t asked where I was; he said that he’d been knocking. He would never hurt me, I reminded myself, somewhat surprised at how certain I was of this. I turned and headed down the hall, hoping I wasn’t being hopelessly naïve. Just because I felt safe with him didn’t mean it was actually safe to be with him—either physically or emotionally.
“I’m finally able to get into her library,” I said over my shoulder, “so I figured I’d do as much research as I could.”
An awkward silence settled around us as I gathered my stuff up. It seemed like both of us wanted to pretend that the weirdness of yesterday hadn’t happened, which was fine with me, but now it felt like we were in a strange conversational limbo.
I cleared my throat, seeking to fill the void with any noise. “I never thanked you for coming to the funeral with me the other day. I’m … not sure I could have handled it alone.”
He shook his head, looking briefly haggard. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
I shrugged, picking up the stack of books that I wanted to read more carefully. “So what are you up to now?” I wanted to ask him why he was here, why he’d wanted to track me down so badly, but I was a bit afraid of the answer. Or, rather, I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer. Chickenshit.
“Oh, well …” I could see him hurriedly thinking of a response. “I was thinking of raising my cholesterol level at Lake o’ Lard and was wonderi
ng if you wanted to get something too. Part of my Kara-needs-to-eat plan.” He flashed a grin, but I could sense the faint edge to it.
I gave him the smile he was expecting. “Can we have a devil-dog-free meal this time?”
He laughed. “What, you didn’t like the entertainment?”
I suddenly didn’t want to play games anymore. I met his eyes. “Are you going to tell me why that thing attacked us?”
His smile faded. “I can’t … truly can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” I challenged.
“Can’t. I promise! I honestly don’t know.”
I exhaled and nodded, but a knock out front stopped me from asking my next question, which would have been something on the order of How the fuck are you able to change memories?
“Hi, guys!” Jill’s perky voice chirped from the porch. Ryan stepped out into the hallway with me following, as Jill walked in through the open front door. “There’s a party and no one invited me?”
Ryan gave her a grin. “My God, what were we thinking?”
“Ryan thinks I’m too skinny,” I told her. “We’re going to forage for food. Wanna come?”
Her eyes flashed mischievously. “I don’t want to intrude on y’all’s date.”
“It’s not a date,” we both said simultaneously, then turned to scowl at each other. I looked hastily away, absurdly put out that he’d been so quick to deny the possibility that lunch with me could be considered a date. It was beside the point that I’d leaped to deny it as well.
Jill let out a snort. “Oooookay, I can see that now. Sure, I’m up for food.”
I set my stack of books down on the porch and dug in my pocket for the key, oddly conflicted that Jill would be joining us. There was still a strange tension between Ryan and me, and I couldn’t decide if having Jill there would get us past what had happened in the past couple of days or if I would continue to react like a jealous third-grader every time Ryan looked her way. How about if I stop being an insecure idiot? If he decides he likes her more than he likes me, then … more power to them. They’re both my friends. I can be a grown-up about this.
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