My fourteenth birthday gift. “This,” my mother had said after I had opened it with a delighted gasp, “is all the magic you’ll ever need.”
The memory of her voice intensified my grief and doubt. I opened the book to a page with a large rune drawn in dotted lines. Cantrips were the most basic form of Arcana sorcery, and a paragraph of text described this one’s purpose, power, pronunciation, and the proper method of drawing it.
Slipping a pad of paper from the back of the textbook, I rooted around for a pen, then drew a swift but small rendition of the rune. Holding the paper up, I whispered, “Luce.”
The rune blazed white. It glowed for twenty seconds, then faded.
With the stroke of a pen and a short incantation, I’d created magic. That simple. That easy. Not all Arcana was easy. In fact, most of it was painfully intricate. I knew, because from my fourteenth birthday onward, I’d read every book on magic I could get my hands on. Yet, despite the years I’d spent learning about magic, I’d never used it.
Stay away from magic and it’ll stay away from you. My parents had etched that rule into my soul, had reinforced the fear of magic’s power again and again.
But why? If our family included a long line of sorcerers dedicated to demon summoning, why had my parents been afraid of magic? If she’d wanted nothing to do with summoning, why had my mom cherished and protected the grimoire?
My only claim to fame was being the biggest, dorkiest nerd I’d ever encountered, yet for all my reading and studying and nerding out, I knew nothing. I had no idea why my parents had feared magic. Whether my family was a line of summoners. How summoning even worked—aside from a now pedantic understanding of the nuances of summoning rituals. I didn’t even know what sort of contract Uncle Jack wanted to negotiate, or why Zylas was dead set against it.
Knowledge was power, and I needed more of it. I needed The Summoner’s Handbook from the library.
I laid the grimoire printout on the light cantrip description, then pulled the stolen MPD forms out of my pocket and set them on top, covering the faded sketch of Zylas’s doppelganger. I closed the cantrip textbook, the papers hidden inside, and stacked it with my other books.
One quick and silent trip through the house later, I entered the library, leaving the lights on their lowest setting. Ebony filled the summoning circle, nothing but silence inside it, and the soft thump of my socked feet was uncomfortably loud. Zylas didn’t speak as I crossed to the sitting area, but the back of my neck prickled, warning that a predator was observing me—hunting me.
I pulled The Summoner’s Handbook from under the coffee table, then said stiffly, “I can feel you watching me, Zylas. I’m not here to pester you. I’m just getting something.”
As I headed back to the door, his low voice slid out of the circle. “Getting what?”
I should’ve kept walking. Should’ve gone straight to my room with my prize. Instead, I returned to the inky dome and held out the book in answer.
The darkness swirled, then faded. Zylas sat in the circle’s center, looking bored. “A book?”
“A book about demons.” Crouching so we were at eye level, I tapped on the cover. “I’m learning how summoning and contracts work.”
He appraised me, suspicion creasing the corners of his mouth.
I lowered the book to peer more closely at him. His eyes were no longer what I’d call crimson—they were dark red, like cooling coals with only a hint of heat left. He watched me with dislike, but his snarling rage was gone. He seemed … tired.
“Um,” I whispered uncertainly. “Are you … okay?”
A muscle in his cheek twitched, a suppressed reaction to my question. He opened his mouth to reply, then his gaze shot past me to the door and darkness whooshed through the circle. I launched to my feet and spun around.
Uncle Jack and Claude walked into the library.
“… won’t wait much longer,” Uncle Jack was saying. He swiped at the switch and lights brightened throughout the room. “But it shouldn’t—”
He and Claude spotted me at the same time. I clutched the Demonica book, my brain frozen with panic.
“Robin?” Uncle Jack barked. “What are you doing in here? I told you to stay out!”
Claude’s pale eyes moved from my guilty face to the black dome. “Were you talking to the demon?”
“No!” I gasped. “I—I—I just wanted to borrow a book.”
Face reddening, Uncle Jack advanced on me. He wrenched the book out of my hands. When he flipped it open to read the title page, his eyes bulged.
“What are you doing with this? Have you read any of it?”
“N-no. I only just got it a minute ago—”
His fingers closed around my arm with bruising force. He dragged me across the room, shoving The Summoner’s Handbook at Claude on his way past, and propelled me toward the stairs. I stumbled and almost fell.
“You’re living under my roof,” he growled, a vein throbbing in his forehead. “I will not tolerate any lies. Have you come down here before?”
“No,” I whispered, staring at my feet as I twisted my hands together. “Not since you showed me the—the summoning circle. I wanted to learn more about Demonica so I came down just to … just to …”
He grabbed my upper arm again. “You don’t need to know anything about Demonica. Didn’t your parents forbid it? Stay out of the basement, Robin.” His hand tightened, fingers grinding into my flesh, and tears spilled down my cheeks. “If I catch you down here again, I’ll kick you out of my house in a heartbeat. Understood?”
“Yes,” I choked out.
The moment he released me, I bolted for the stairs. My socks slipped and I pitched forward, bashing my knee against a step. Lungs paralyzed by pain, I heard Claude’s say from the library, “I warned you about her.”
I shoved myself up and ran. I didn’t stop until I’d reached my room and slammed the door behind me.
Chapter Ten
I was getting good at sneaking around.
For three days I hid in my room to demonstrate my obedience. That was as long as I could stand my boredom and restlessness. When I ventured out again, it was with a plan: sneak into the library and steal The Summoner’s Handbook, or a similar book, without getting caught.
If Uncle Jack was determined to keep me away from Demonica and summoning, the information must be important. It could be he was afraid I’d realize he was breaking laws—as if I needed a book to tell me—or it could be more than that. I would find out.
Once I knew what I was dealing with, I’d devise a way to get my mother’s grimoire back from him.
Stealing the Demonica book should’ve been easy, except Uncle Jack and Claude had developed a new obsession with the library. In the three days I’d been cloistered in my room, he and his partner had upped their visits to the summoning circle from once a day to every hour or two, day and night. Claude wasn’t even going home—he was sleeping in a guest room between library sessions.
I’d been stalking them around the house for two days. They weren’t following a schedule, so I couldn’t guarantee a free window in which to sneak down there myself. Getting The Summoner’s Handbook was important, but not getting caught was more important.
Crouched at the top of the basement stairs, I listened to the muffled echo of Uncle Jack’s and Claude’s voices coming from the library. When light flooded the hallway from the door opening, I darted into the kitchen. Sliding onto a stool, I took a huge bite of the apple I’d gotten out earlier and pretended to read the mystery novel I’d left open on the breakfast bar.
Uncle Jack’s voice preceded him out of the basement, his tone frustrated and impatient. “Its breaking point should be any day now. We just have to keep checking.”
“It should have come days ago,” Claude replied.
“Which must mean the demon is exceptionally powerful.” Uncle Jack strode into view. “We can’t miss it or our last chance will be—”
Breaking off, he glared at me suspic
iously.
“Good afternoon,” I said politely, glancing up from my book.
He kept walking. Claude followed in silence, his mouth pressed in a thin line that pulled at the scar on his chin, and to my surprise, Travis trailed after them. I hadn’t realized he was down there too, but I supposed it made sense. Travis was Uncle Jack’s stepson, so why not train him alongside Amalia?
I listened to their passage through the house as I finished my apple, pondering my chances of making it downstairs and back again without getting caught. I was just thinking I should try when heels clacked down the hall.
Kathy swept into the kitchen. The way she glared in my direction before opening the oven to check on her casserole made me wonder if Uncle Jack had asked her to keep an eye on me.
I tossed out my apple core, washed my hands in the sink, grabbed my novel, and hastened out of the kitchen. As I stumped upstairs to my room, I mulled over what Uncle Jack had said. A “breaking point.” Did he think Zylas would crack soon? Based on my interactions with the demon, I doubted he’d ever give in, but maybe the summoners knew something I didn’t. Why hadn’t I read The Summoner’s Handbook from cover to cover while I’d had the chance?
My feet stopped of their own accord, and it took my distracted brain a moment to catch up. I was standing in front of Amalia’s bedroom door. I pursed my lips. She was out most mornings but returned for the afternoon. I hesitated, then knocked.
A rustle, followed by footsteps. The door cracked open. “Yes?”
I peered at the sliver of her face. “Can I ask you something?”
“About what?”
“Summoning.”
Her mouth twisted, then she stepped back. “Fine.”
She opened her door wide enough to invite me in. Every inch of wall space in her room was covered in large photographic prints of … cloth. Dizzying close-ups of woven fabric, colorful silk rippling in the wind, patterns and textures, stitching designs, color combinations, even zippers.
She’d shoved her queen-sized bed with a patchwork quilt into one corner, and two very different work areas dominated the rest of the room. Back by the closet door, a flimsy desk buckled under the weight of leather-bound textbooks with Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit on the spines. In the other corner, a long utilitarian table was positioned under the window. On it, two sewing machines sat beside tumbled heaps of fabric and a rack of colorful thread spools. A dress form stood nearby, pins sticking out of the headless female figure.
“You sew?” I asked, surprised.
Her mouth thinned. “Problem with that?”
“No.” I blinked, unsure how I’d offended her. “I think it’s awesome. Do you make clothes?”
“Yeah.” She dropped into the chair in front of the sewing machine and picked up a swatch of fabric. “I’m designing hex clothing.”
I stepped closer to see the fabric. Sewn into the floral pattern was a discreet cantrip. I recognized it—impello, the push spell.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “So this would be, like, a self-defense shirt?”
She grinned, pleased I’d caught on so fast. “Exactly. It’s tricky, though. Not nearly as simple as drawing or etching a cantrip.” She tossed the fabric onto the table and twisted her blond hair into a bun. “My dad thinks it’s a waste of time.”
I glanced at the books threatening to collapse her desk. “Because it takes away from your summoning apprenticeship?”
“I don’t know how he expects me to study ten hours a day when I already spend every morning with my language tutor,” she complained. Grabbing a fabric pencil off the table, she stuck it through her bun to hold the hair in place. “So, what do you want to know?”
I hesitated, then sat on the edge of her unmade bed. “On his way up from the library, I heard Uncle Jack talking about a breaking point. Do you know what that means?”
“Oh yeah, that’s basic stuff.” She held a hanky-sized sample of patterned cotton up to the sunlight streaming through the window. “Usually, demons agree to a contract within a few weeks, but sometimes, you’ll get one that refuses to take a contract for whatever reason. So we wait.”
She returned the cotton square to the pile. “Once a demon is summoned into a circle, it gets weaker as time passes. At around nine or ten weeks, almost every demon caves and agrees to a contract. That’s the breaking point.”
“What happens if Uncle Jack misses it?”
“The demon dies.” Amalia reorganized a few thread spools on the rack. “They can’t survive in those circles indefinitely. You have to catch them right before that, when they’re most desperate. They usually give in. Demons have a strong survival drive.”
My stomach twisted strangely. “So … you’re saying … summoners call demons into this world, imprison them in a circle for weeks on end, force them to accept a contract, and if they don’t, you let them die?”
Amalia shot me a scathing look. “Good god, how much of a bleeding heart are you? They’re demons, Robin. You saw the one under the greenhouse. It’d kill us all in a heartbeat. Yeah, we let them die. We can’t set them free—they’d massacre the entire neighborhood in the time it took the MPD to put out an alert.”
“Why not send the demons back?”
“Summoning is a one-way ticket, and even if it wasn’t, why would we send them back? If we did, no demon would ever agree to a contract.”
“What does a contract involve, exactly?”
She studied me for a long moment, then answered with chilling simplicity. “Complete surrender.”
She pushed to her feet and walked to her desk. After rooting around among the books, she tossed something to me. I caught it, fumbling the long silver chain. It was a round, flat pendant the size of my palm, with runes engraved over its surface.
“That,” Amalia said, dropping into her chair, “is an infernus. It’s the key to a demon contract. Assuming we’re talking legal, MPD-sanctioned ones, a contract is pretty simple. The demon gives up its autonomy. Its spirit is bound to the infernus and the contractor’s will. The contractor controls the demon like a puppet.”
I stared at the silver pendant.
“Allow the demon any free will, and it’ll find a way to kill its contractor.”
“Why would a demon ever agree to that?” I whispered.
“Because of the slim chance they’ll outlive their contractor and make it back home.”
“How do they—”
“Amalia!” Kathy’s buzzard call echoed up the stairs. “Travis! Dinner is ready.”
Amalia plucked the infernus out of my hands and chucked it onto her desk. “Let’s go eat.”
I followed her out of the room, feeling numb. Zylas’s vicious snarl replayed in my head. Tell them my bones will turn to dust in this cage, because I will never submit.
No wonder he refused to so much as speak to his summoners. I was surprised he’d spoken to me; I was a human, just like the ones who’d torn him from his home and were forcing him to choose between enslavement and death.
* * *
Standing on my tiptoes, I watched the car’s taillights retreat up the long drive to the front gate. Uncle Jack, Claude, and Travis had loaded into the car before it set out. They probably wouldn’t be gone long—Uncle Jack wouldn’t want to miss Zylas’s “breaking point”—but it would be long enough. I hoped.
I backed away from the window, scooted across the luxurious bathroom, and peeked out the door. On the main level, a TV talk show echoed from the family room. Kathy commented on something, and Amalia’s softer voice replied. Good.
I snuck the long way around—sometimes the sheer size of this house was a blessing—and trotted down the basement stairs. Turning the lights up enough to see, I entered the library.
The usual pitch darkness filled Zylas’s circle, and the room hadn’t changed in the five days since my last visit. I zipped around the silent dome and was already crouching in front of the bookshelf when I realized what I was seeing.
The lowest shelves, where all the De
monica books had been stacked, were empty. Frantically, I pawed through the other titles. Arcana, Spiritalis, Psychica, Elementaria. That was it. Not a single book related to Demonica remained.
My hands tightened into fists. Damn it! Uncle Jack must have moved them! What was I supposed to do now?
I growled under my breath. All this time wasted planning and waiting for a chance to sneak down here, and my uncle was way ahead of me. I should’ve realized he wouldn’t leave the books lying around. He’d beat me to this just as he’d beaten me to the grimoire.
Dropping onto my butt, I reluctantly scooted one-hundred-and-eighty degrees to face the black circle. “Zylas?”
As usual, he ignored me. In his mind, I was an enemy now.
“I have a question,” I said, tugging the sleeves of my sweater over my hands. It was always so cold in here. “If you answer, I’ll bring you something tomorrow night.”
Silence.
“Did you see who moved the books from this shelf and where they took them?”
I was hoping Uncle Jack had hidden the books somewhere else in the library. He was lazy enough to half-ass it like that, and if he had, Zylas would’ve witnessed it.
The demon continued to give me the silent treatment. He must really hate me now that he suspected I was in cahoots with Uncle Jack.
“I know you don’t trust me,” I tried, feeling like I was talking to a wall. “I just need this one answer. I won’t ask for anything else.”
Again, nothing. I heaved a frustrated sigh, but beneath my irritation, concern sparked. Demons got weaker the longer they were in the circle, and Zylas had just hit ten weeks. Five days ago, when I’d last seen him, he’d seemed tired and his eyes had been dull. Had he reached his breaking point?
Taming Demons for Beginners: The Guild Codex: Demonized / One Page 7