Summoning the Night
Page 52

The summoning circle was set. Under the fire, it glowed with blue-white Heka, strong and stable.
Merrin whispered an incantation. An indistinct form solidified inside the circle. The temple was dark, and it was hard to see clearly, but what appeared in the circle was mostly human-looking. Male. Definitely male. His body was divine—perfectly sculpted, ropy muscle over long, pale limbs. A sleeveless white tunic clung to every hard curve. Long auburn hair was pulled back into a tight knot on the crown of his head, backlit by a dancing halo that took on a reddish hue in the firelight. At the front of his head were two gently curving horns, and from a slit in the back of the tunic, a long tail whipped back and forth, striking against the invisible circle walls.
He was startled . . . and very pissed off about being summoned.
A low buzz floated around the room as the congregation recited some ridiculous poetic nonsense at the trapped demon in the fire circle. Between their practiced lines, Frater Merrin was reading the summoned demon his Miranda rights, commanding it to obey. The demon didn’t respond. He just scanned the congregation, searching the faces in the dark. He stopped when his gaze connected with mine.
Uh-oh. The last few Æthyric demons with whom I’d chatted seem to recognize whatever it was that my parents had bred into me. And pretty-boy demon in the fire circle was now eyeballing me with his head tilted in curiosity. Not good. I slouched lower in my seat and shielded my face with my hand.
More hive-speak from the crowd. More commands from the magician to the silent demon, who prowled the summoning circle, looking for a way out and occasionally pinning me with an angry stare that made my skin clammy.
“Now, for the querent,” Merrin said to the crowd. “Brother Paolo won the query lottery this week. Where is Brother Paolo?”
A short Earthbound man raised his hand and stood. The congregation applauded. Brother Paolo walked to the fiery summoning circle and stood next to Merrin, who laid his hand on Paolo’s shoulder. “What is your question for the demon before us?”
The man cleared his throat. “I’d like to know if my brother will survive open-heart surgery next week.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. The demon standing in front of him didn’t have that kind of information. He wasn’t an oracle, for the love of Pete. I expected Merrin to tell poor, misguided Brother Paolo this. Instead, he was rephrasing the question in Latin. Did the demon even speak Latin? He seemed to be listening to Merrin. His tail flicked lazily, but he remained silent. Merrin pressed him for an answer.
“Pedicabo te,” came the demon’s reply in deep voice.
Merrin’s face tightened. Lon quietly snorted in amusement beside me.
“Yes,” Merrin said hurriedly. “He says your brother will survive.”
The congregation applauded.
“I don’t recognize that verb,” I whispered to Lon as Brother Paolo returned to his seat. He didn’t look all that happy about the news. Maybe he was hoping to inherit his brother’s bank account. “What did the demon say?”
“He threatened to sodomize the magician.”
Frater Merrin’s voice bellowed over the opera epic crackling from the speakers as he called out the banishing words to release the imprisoned demon, who immediately disappeared. A shame. I was starting to enjoy this ridiculous farce.
The altar girls poured black sand over the summoning circle, extinguishing the dwindling ring of fire. More applause erupted throughout the temple. A creepy hosanna-filled hymn followed. These people were one big, collective mess.
A potluck dinner, of all things, was announced. The congregation exited the temple into a room off the foyer. Lon and I stood up and hung to the side, nodding politely as people passed us. The last couple headed out of the beaded curtains. Lon tapped my arm. We strode to the front of the room, ignoring the weak protests of the altar girls, and marched up the set of stairs after the retreating figure of Frater Merrin, who climbed to a small loft room.
Stormy daylight filtered in through a window of glass bricks and cast a hazy light over a mussed up bed and a rack of clothes. An old theater makeup dresser stood against the wall, its mirror bordered with round light bulbs.
The magician turned around. “You’re not allowed up here,” he warned. Mismatched eyes—one blue, one brown. We were standing in front of the man who’d taken a big bite out of Cindy Brolin’s arm. I felt a little sick.
“Don’t remember me, Frater Karras?” Lon asked.
The elderly magician squinted, then picked up a pair of wire-rim glasses off the dresser, hooking the curved ends over his ears. “My goodness, is that Butler’s kid? Well, I’ll be damned . . . it’s been a long time since I’ve set eyes on you.”
“Since your ‘accident,’” Lon confirmed. “The one that caused you to hurt your back so badly, you couldn’t work for the Hellfire Club anymore. What year was that, again?”
“Oh, a long time ago, to be sure.”
“Around the time of the Sandpiper Park Snatcher,” Lon said, hand sliding inside his jacket.
I searched the magician’s face for some spark of guilt, but he simply nodded and smiled tightly. “Yes, sometime after that. How’s your father?”
“Dead.”
“Oh? I’m sorry to hear that.” The regret in his voice almost sounded genuine.
Lon unholstered the Lupara from inside his jacket.
The magician took a step back in alarm and held up his hands. “What is this?”