Banishing the Dark
Page 76

“You think he could be mad at me?” Jupe asked.
“Hermeneus spirits are servants. They don’t get mad. If their owner calls, they come every time. Well, I take that back. My grandma called her guardian a couple of years ago, and it never came, so that’s how she later found out it had died in the Æthyr.”
Died? “Oh . . . shit.” A terrible fear pricked at Jupe’s nerves. He pretty much hated Priya’s guts, but that didn’t mean he wanted the guy dead. Cady would freak out, and she already had enough on her plate. Last night, after the big talk, Dad had told him the memory magick was still active, so she still didn’t remember she was pregnant or that she and Dad were practically engaged.
On top of all that, if Priya died, who would keep tabs on Cady’s mom in the Æthyr?
He took out his phone and started to text his dad but remembered that he had specifically told him not to bother them, that they wouldn’t answer his texts. They’d only been gone, what, a half hour? They weren’t starting until the Holidays called to confirm they were all safe inside the house, so Jupe still had about thirty minutes.
He pocketed his phone and Priya’s card. “We need to go find my dad and Cady right now. This definitely qualifies as an emergency. Come on.”
They rushed out into the night air, Foxglove at their heels, and he showed Leticia the back road the pickup truck had taken. If she hadn’t been with him, he would have run, but he didn’t want her to think he was freaking out as much as he actually was. After a couple of minutes, the Holidays’ cabin came into sight, the windows glowing with warm yellow light. “Stay on the other side of the road, and if they spot us, I’ll do the talking.”
But they didn’t come out. And once Jupe and Leticia began hiking down the next switchback turn in the road, more lights shone in the distance. The shed. A metal wall hid the inside from view, but Jupe could just make out his dad’s pickup truck parked in the dirt driveway that looped around back. Thank God.
Foxglove started running toward the shed before Jupe broke down and did the same, his sense of urgency outweighing his eagerness to rack up coolness points with Leticia. Then the damn dog started barking, and Jupe couldn’t shut her up. No sense trying to hide things anymore; Cady and Dad would definitely know they were coming now.
“Jupe!” Leticia called out, just behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw her pointing up at the sky, then swung back around to follow the direction of her finger. He saw it, too: a black shape falling like a torpedo. It was too big to be a person, too dark to be a falling star. A gigantic boulder? Crap, maybe it was a meteor! Foxglove was going nuts now, heading straight for it.
Jupe saw the light inside the shed, and his mind registered Cady and his dad standing under the utility light that shone down from the roof. But as the falling thing rocketed past the tops of the trees, he realized what he was seeing, and he couldn’t stop himself from crying out.
The summoning circle was fully charged. Everything was ready. We’d wait until the Holidays called to confirm that they were safe inside the house with Jupe, and then all I had to do was call down my mother.
Lon had swapped the Lupara for a full shotgun. We’d both already transmutated. “Whatever you do, don’t use your moon power until she’s inside the binding,” he warned. “Don’t give her any opportunity to connect with you during the summoning, or she might end up outside the trap.”
“I know,” I said testily. We’d gone over this a million times. I’d call her into the circle, and the second she manifested, Lon would shoot her. If for some reason he missed, I would burn her to a crisp, just as I’d burned Dare. Brutal, but what else could I do? She was beyond redemption and a threat to everyone around me. A rabid dog who should have been put down a long time ago. I wanted to skip the shotgun and do the deed myself, but Lon said a child should never have to kill her own parent.
“You already have enough blood on your hands,” he said, reading my second thoughts. “You don’t kill. I kill for you.”
“How can I ask you to do that?”
“You don’t have to. I’m volunteering. Besides, you don’t even know how to use a gun, and now’s not the time to learn. You summon, I execute. This is just like that green Pareba demon that chased you down the cliff the first night you came to my house. Just call her. I’ll do the rest. I can’t say I’ll take pleasure in it, but I won’t be lying awake regretting it, either. So don’t worry about me.”
I flicked my tail and exhaled slowly. No use pretending that I wasn’t worried, because I was, and he knew it. My own empathic ability was gone when I awoke from the too few hours of sleep we had managed earlier in the day. I missed that connection to Lon, but at the same time, I already had enough crazy emotions jumping around inside me, so I supposed I didn’t need his, too.
And I definitely didn’t need another random knack to replace the empathy, so thank God I hadn’t noticed one.
“It all seems too easy,” I said, checking the summoning circle one last time. Even though she’d be coming from the Æthyr, she wasn’t a demon, so I seriously doubted I could trap her in a binding triangle. But I charged one inside the circle, just in case. “I don’t trust it.”
Lon didn’t, either, but he remained silent.
A distant sound caught my attention outside the workshop. Something approaching? The road leading up to Lon’s house was heavily wooded, so it could be any number of animals—foxes, rabbits, deer. Lon said he’d even seen a bobcat on his property a couple of years ago. But we were outside the house ward, and I was already in freak-out mode, so when the sound changed from something approaching to something racing, I rushed out of the shed to see it.