Secrets of the Demon

“I figured you’d have called earlier,” I said after I called him back.



“Don’t you go running in the mornings with Jill now?”



I frowned. Had I told him about that? I couldn’t remember. Not that it was a big secret or anything. “Yeah, my twice weekly dose of ‘let’s hang out with someone who makes me feel like an out-of-shape slob.’”



He laughed. “You’re far from a slob.”



“I notice you didn’t say that I’m far from out of shape,” I pointed out.



“You’re far from a slob,” he repeated.



“Asshole,” I grumbled, but I was smiling.



“Don’t compare yourself to Jill, fer crissakes. She was nearly an Olympian.”



“Huh?”



“Didn’t you know? She was a hotshot gymnast—expected to nail the trials and go to the Olympics ... um, ten years ago or so. Then she had a bad fall, hit her head, and dropped out of competition.”



“Oh,” I said, feeling oddly hot and cold at the same time. “No, I didn’t know that.” And how do you? I’m supposed to be her best friend, and yet you know these things?



“Find anything in your research?” he asked, pulling me out of my stupid little pity spiral.



My lips twitched. This was his way of asking if I’d found out anything from Rhyzkahl, but I knew he had no intention of mentioning the demonic lord. “Nope. Yesterday was pretty much a bust for getting any sort of useful info.” There. That covered the summoning, without saying it outright.



He muttered a curse. “Which means we’re pretty much at a standstill with this now. Any other cases at work that you can sink your teeth into?”



“Not really. Things are pretty slow right now.” Then I cringed.



There was a pause. “I can’t believe you said that,” Ryan said, voice low and ominous.



I laughed. “Me neither. Holy shit, I just totally jinxed myself.”



“Dork,” he said with a chuckle. “Okay, give me a call later on.”



“I’ll try to squeeze you into my busy schedule,” I promised.



The biggest drawback to starting my shift at ten was a distinct lack of parking places in the detectives’ parking lot. I scowled and circled the small lot twice in the misguided hope that a free space would magically appear, but my arcane powers failed me in spectacular fashion by refusing to vaporize any of the other vehicles in the lot and thus saving me the walk from the side parking lot.



Oh, whoopee. I could summon demons, but I couldn’t get a parking space.



I grudgingly drove around to the side parking lot and walked the extra hundred feet, refusing to feel any sort of shame for being all grudgingly about the walk. I’d gone running that morning. I should be exempt from any sort of additional exertion. Right?



I paused before entering the bureau, my eyes drawn to a blackened patch about fifty feet away, in the detective’s parking lot. That’s where the lightning struck the other day. My fingers prickled, an odd sense of familiarity tugging at me unpleasantly as I started slowly toward the spot. It wasn’t just a storm, the thought whispered through my head. I shifted into othersight as I reached it, even though I had a feeling I already knew what I would see.



I crouched, mouth dry as I looked at the star-shaped scar in the concrete and struggled to understand how my othersight could be showing me what were unmistakably arcane wards.



The lightning wasn’t random. But, why on earth was part of the parking lot warded? That didn’t make any sense. I wiped my sweating palms on the front of my pants as I deepened my sensing as far as I was able. A faint twinge of relief stole through me as I studied the wards. They were old and nothing I’d ever seen before, but the fact that they weren’t recently placed made it slightly less ominous. There was no way I was going to start poking at them, but my assessment revealed something important. The parking lot wasn’t warded. The lightning had broken through to the ground below the parking lot. That’s what was warded.



Confusion and unease tightened my gut. Why would the ground there have wards? And how long ago had they been placed? And had that lightning strike been directed, or had these wards somehow drawn it, like a lightning rod? And what did—



“Hey, Gillian, you lookin’ for your lost virginity?” An unpleasant nasal voice jerked me out of my careening thoughts. I gritted my teeth and stood, then plastered a pleasant smile onto my face as I pivoted to see Boudreaux regarding me with a snide smirk, Pellini standing beside him with his thumbs tucked into his belt. Not that I could see his belt since his belly extended well over it, but that’s where I assumed his thumbs were tucked. I didn’t want to consider any other possibilities. Boudreaux didn’t have to worry about large guts—he was about my height and so scrawny I had a suspicion I outweighed him. He looked like a meth-head to me, and I had a feeling that the only reason the Narcs didn’t use him for undercover work was because they didn’t trust him to not screw up.



“Hi, Boudreaux,” I replied in an overly sweet tone. “Were you offering to help me look? Or were you going to loan me yours, since you still have it?” I grinned, then turned to walk inside, more than a little surprised to hear a guffaw of laughter from Pellini. The two detectives had always been somewhat annoying, though there’d been a time not too long ago that annoying had been more along the lines of obnoxious, unpleasant, and insulting. Until Ryan had done ... something. I still wasn’t quite sure what, and I had zero proof that he had, but the two detectives had undergone an unbelievable change of attitude toward me in the span of a few minutes, going from openly hostile to warm and welcoming.



Seriously freaky.



The two hadn’t remained full of warm fuzzies, to my strange relief. I wasn’t sure I could handle the bizarro “nice” versions of Boudreaux and Pellini. However, they’d so far failed to completely revert back to the blistering assholes they’d once been, and had apparently settled into “annoying but not outright mean.” I could handle that.



There was a note on the door of my office telling me to go see the chief when I got in. I dropped my bag on my desk and then headed to the chief’s office, more curious than worried about the summons. Chief Robert Turnham had been the captain in charge of the Investigations Division before he’d been tapped to replace the previous chief of police. In fact, he’d been my supervisor during the Symbol Man investigation and had maintained a huge amount of faith in my ability to handle the case, for which I was still humbled and grateful.



His secretary gave me a smile as I entered the outer office. “Hi, Kara. You can go on in. He’s expecting you.”



Well, she wasn’t acting as if I was about to get a reprimand. I thanked her and continued on through, pausing to tap on the doorframe instead of barging on in. Even with the secretary’s go-ahead, I still wasn’t quite nervy enough to enter the chief’s office without permission.



Chief Turnham had worked for NOPD for fifteen years and had then spent the next ten years with Beaulac PD. A tall, slender black man with limbs that seemed too long for his torso, he gave an impression of being dour, but anyone who’d worked with him a while knew that he preferred to be a quiet observer until he knew precisely what he was facing. He was meticulous, and often anal-retentive, but he was also fair and dedicated. A far cry from his predecessor.



He looked up as I entered and gave me a warm smile. “Gillian. Come on in. Close the door behind you, please?”



The request to close the door sent a warning ping through me, but there was absolutely nothing in his expression or demeanor to indicate that anything untoward was about to happen. I complied, then took a seat in front of the desk. Little had changed in the office since I’d last been in here with the previous chief. The Beaulac PD seal was still painted on the wall behind his desk, and the shelves were still filled with books and various awards. But they were no longer arranged meticulously by height, and there were pictures of other people besides the chief. It was little things, but the general atmosphere seemed much less foreboding.



But some of my tension must have been evident. “Relax, Kara,” he said. “You’re not in any sort of trouble.” He leaned back in his chair, as if to emphasize that this was a casual meeting.



Right. Like any meeting in the chief’s office could ever be truly casual. But I forced down the sliver of worry and made myself relax into my chair. “Of course not, Chief. I never do anything that could get me into trouble.”



He let out a dry laugh. “If it doesn’t get caught on camera, it never happened, right?”



I maintained an innocent expression. He gave a soft snort of amusement, then leaned forward and laced his fingers loosely together on the desk in front of him. “I wanted to let you know that Ben Moran called me this morning.”



I frowned. “Oh?”



He gave a slight nod. “He wanted to let me know that he was worried for his niece and to inform me that he believed that the incident Saturday night was little more than a prank that got out of control.”



My frown deepened. “And why did he feel the need to call you with this theory?”



I could see his jaw tighten briefly. “He wanted to see if the investigation could be quietly dropped, and he expressed his concern that Lida would face possible fraud charges when it was discovered that the attack was merely a publicity stunt.”



I digested this for several seconds. Chief Turnham remained silent as he allowed me time to consider what he’d told me.



“I see,” I finally said, tamping down my annoyance at the entire situation. “What do you suggest I do, sir?” I steeled myself for the order to drop the case and look the other way.



“Do you believe it was a publicity stunt?” he asked, eyes intent upon me.



“It’s one possibility, sir,” I admitted. “But so is the possibility that Lida has a stalker. At this time I have nothing definitive to prove or disprove anything. Plus, the, uh, circumstances surrounding the incident in New Orleans were unusual enough that I wouldn’t be comfortable simply letting the whole thing drop. Not without Lida coming forward to admit it was a prank.”