Summoning the Night (27 page)

“What's his name?” Lon asked.

“It would translate loosely as ‘Grand Duke Chora, Commander of Two Legions.'”

Never heard of him. “Two legions? Don't most of the dukes command like fifty legions or something?”

“I don't follow politics,” Voxhele said as he inspected his fingernails.

Lon's face remained stoic. I couldn't tell if he recognized the name or not. I certainly didn't. There are, it is said, hundreds upon thousands of Æthyric demons, and only a smattering of those were cataloged in goetic texts and grimoires over the last century; when they were, many were listed with conflicting summoning names and half of them were dead.

“Do you know anything about this Grand Duke Chora?” I asked.

“I serviced a Duke Corelia last week,” Voxhele said with a sly smile. “He was more than a mouthful, and let me just say—”

“Voxhele, please.”

He sighed, great and long-suffering. “Chora commands a notorious battalion of Dragoons.”

I glanced at Lon and wrinkled my nose. “Dragoons?”

“Mounted infantry,” he clarified.

“They ride horses?”

A dark, slow smile lifted Voxhele's face. “Not exactly horses, no, but they are beasts of a kind. . . .”

“Anything else?”

“He's missing.”

“From where?”

“From his command. Some say he's dead, but there are rumors that he's on assignment.”

“What kind of assignment?”

“No one knows.”

Huh. Looks like we just identified Merrin's demon. I elbowed Lon, requesting the mandala printouts. “What about the writing around these? Are they names too?”

Voxhele stood up, leaning close to the border of the binding, and studied each printout. “Yes, they're names.”

“Who?”

“Not who. What. They're names of stars. At least I think so. This isn't a subject I've studied, Mother.”

Stars. Interesting. We asked him which stars, but the answers he rattled off were foreign. He admitted that he didn't know their translation in English or in Latin. He also wasn't familiar with the old language used on the scroll inside the silver tube. Maybe it hadn't been the best idea to summon an incubus for assistance. I should've known that damn favor was worthless.

“What class of magick is this?” Lon insisted, referring to the mandalas.

“I'm afraid that goes beyond my simple knowledge. Only higher-level demons have been trained to wield magical talent. I'm not very savvy about such things, being the lowly prostitute that I am.” He licked the corner of his mouth with a forked tongue while ogling Lon, who popped his jaw to the side in annoyance.

“What's this mean here?” I asked, pointing to an Æthyric word that was repeated on each of the mandalas.

“That means ‘door.'”

“Door,” I repeated, looking at Lon. Finally, something useful.

He stared at the photos thoughtfully. “Stars that open doors.”

Oh, I
really
didn't like the sound of that.

GRAND DUKE CHORA

A clever and sly thinker, this Grand Duke uncovereth Hidden Paths and knoweth High Magics to Trap and Snare Enemies. He will maketh pacts with the Summoner to share his Wisdom, but will require Severe and High payments in trade. The Secret Science of War is etched upon his skin. He governeth two great Legions of the West with one thousand winged Dragoons. He appeareth from above as a Goodly Knight with a Cloak of Red Velvet.

—Ceremoniall Magics, John Gundye, 1498

The entry in Lon's goetic demon encyclopedia included a small etching of the demon, drawn as a handsome soldier riding a devilish-looking flying beast, something between an evil Pegasus and a dragon. And if the medieval magician who cataloged this entry was even partially correct—
He will maketh pacts with the Summoner to share his Wisdom, but will require Severe and High payments in trade
—then it would stand to reason that Merrin made a pact with Chora to learn Æthryic magick. The pink magick in the cannery and at the putt-putt course would definitely qualify as magick to “trap and snare enemies.”

But what about the Æthyric spell in the tube? And the mandalas in the cannery—stars that opened doors? What doors, and who wanted them open—Merrin or Chora?

It won't end. If he's not successful this time, he'll just keep trying. Thirty years are nothing to him.

Chora definitely wanted something out of the bargain that he hadn't gotten yet, and if a new batch of children was being taken, then it stood to reason that he was the one who wanted these doors opened—not Merrin.

Merrin wasn't the only magician who could summon Æthyric demons. Chora's seal was listed in the goetic entry, so I figured I'd go straight to the source. But when I attempted to summon the demon later that night after dinner, he didn't appear.

There was a very short list of reasons why he wouldn't come when I summoned. So, assuming everything was executed correctly on my end—which it was—that meant the incubus was right when he said that Duke Chora was either dead, or here on earth.

We knew he wasn't dead, because Merrin suggested that he'd keep coming back until he was successful. But if he was alive on earth, he hadn't been just walking around, enjoying dips in the ocean, and sipping fruity drinks for thirty years. Æthyric beings can't survive on earth for long periods, certainly not for thirty years. If he was on this plane for a substantial stay, he had to be riding someone—and by that I mean old-school demonic possession, as depicted in the movie that inspired Frater Merrin's name . . . minus the green vomit.

Merrin showed no signs of possession when we found him at the Silent Temple. But if Chora was riding someone else, Merrin might know about it.

No getting around it: we had to track Merrin down again.

Once more I considered sending out a servitor, but it was just too dangerous. I toyed with the idea of reinforcing the Servitor Launch spell with wards, but magical experimentation could take days—or weeks. Plus, even with added protections embedded into a servitor, I still wasn't confident that someone like Merrin with more knowledge and skill than me couldn't reverse the spell, like Riley Cooper when she used my servitor to kidnap Jupe. I wasn't stupid enough to risk luring a child snatcher to a child.

There had to be another way to track Merrin down without using Jupe as bait, but for the life of me, I couldn't think of one. My mind just kept churning up spells that weren't viable, dead ends. It wasn't just frustrating, it was utterly dispiriting.

A small, selfish part of me wanted to just admit defeat. Hole up with Jupe in Lon's house and surround ourselves with extra warding magick and weapons. Ride things out until Halloween was over. I mean, I didn't know any of these families—why should I have to be the one to save more kids from being taken? Everyone knew the danger by now; Earthbound parents would be fools to allow their kids to be unsupervised after dark at this point.

I was contemplating this ugly thought as I emerged from the Tambuku kitchen the night after the incubus summoning. My leg still ached from the magical earthquake at the putt-putt course. Maybe being forced to stand on it through my shift was making me grumpier than normal. A normal person would take something for the pain, but I was trying to hold out. When I ducked behind the bar, a familiar face greeted me, but it wasn't Bob's.

Ambrose Dare sat on a barstool in an expensive suit, bald
head gleaming under the hanging strands of white lights that filtered through his green halo.

“Hello, Ms. Bell. Forgive me for barging in here without a warning.” Funny, because he didn't really sound all that sorry. “I needed to discuss a couple of things with you, and I was in the area.”

I glanced nervously around Tambuku. The backup bartender was serving a customer at the other end of the bar. A few booths were occupied, but we were slow tonight. No one seemed to notice that one of the most powerful Earthbounds in the area was sitting at the bar. I busied myself with shelving newly washed tiki mugs.

He tapped his fingers on the bar top. A few liver spots freckled over the bones in his hand. “A fourth child went missing tonight.”

A mug nearly slipped out of my hand.

“She was taken two hours ago. It's not just Hellfire children that are being abducted, Ms. Bell. It's descendants of members who've undergone the transmutation spell.”

“Oh . . . God.”

“I might've been wrong at the beginning when I thought that Bishop was doing this, but I wasn't wrong about the motivation of revenge. Frater Karras—or Merrin, as he's calling himself now—was the magician who performed the transmutation spells on club members thirty years ago. I don't care what you and Lon found connecting Merrin with an Æthyric demon. Bargain or no bargain, that man is now going after the descendants of those members. This means my grandson and little Jupiter are now prime targets.”

My stomach flipped. I forced panicked thoughts to quiet and considered the news rationally. “How many descendants of transmutated members are in their early teens?”

“Including both children and grandchildren, seventeen.”

Seventeen? That seemed like a small and large number all at the same time. “Does Lon know?”

“My son, Mark, is parked outside, discussing this with Lon on the phone right now.”

“Why did you come here to tell me in person?”

“Because I want to know what the hell you plan to do about all this.”

You would think someone needing a favor would want to ask a little nicer. Indignation brought warmth to my cheeks, but I slid another mug into place and did my best to manage a calm tone. “This all centers on the bargain that Merrin made with the demon Chora.”

“That's fine and dandy, but how is knowing this going to keep my kids safe?”

“If we can figure out why the spell—”

He interrupted me, raising his voice. “How is
this
going to bring the four children back home?”

I met his furious gaze and held it, listening to the tropical music and quiet conversations floating around the bar. “We need to find a way to track Merrin down again,” I finally answered.

“I agree.”

“Your people are still watching the Silent Temple?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“I'm assuming they've seen nothing suspicious.”

Dare made no comment, just studied my face like an artist memorizing shapes. I felt extremely uncomfortable. After a few seconds, he casually reached into his jacket on the chair next to him and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

“They are tracking every person who goes in and out of
the temple. So far this has proved fruitless. However, that's not the only tracking I've been doing. You'll forgive me, but I had someone do a little checking up on you after the incident in the Hellfire caves last month.” He unfolded the paper and slid it across the table. “Magicians have a tendency to be loose wires. Imagine my surprise when we discovered an odd discrepancy in your origins.”

My hand shook as I set down a mug. The paper was a photocopy of a handwritten birth certificate.
Arcadia Anne Bell. Born 1905.
Dare removed a second piece of paper. A copy of my modern birth certificate using her name. Forged, of course.

My pulse doubled . . . then tripled.

“It was old newspaper articles from the 1950s that got our attention. Cady Anne Bell, winner of several equestrian trophies. She was a fine rider. Only one of the articles listed her as Arcadia. That's the one that tipped us off, of course. We dug up the old certificate from a hospital warehouse outside Kirkland, Washington.”

Airtight. That's what the caliph had told me about the identity years ago, before I started college. Something warm trickled down from my nose. I tasted copper. One watery, crimson drop fell and splashed on the bartop.

“Oh, my,” Dare said, reaching across the table to hand me a paper napkin.

On instinct, I tilted my head back, then remembered that was wrong. Never back. The blood would slide down my throat and I'd vomit. I held my nose closed with the napkin and leaned forward, breathing hard through my mouth. I hadn't had a nosebleed since I was . . . I didn't know when. I tried to remember. A child? No. A teenager. When I parted ways with my parents. Breath was coming too fast, and my
temples were throbbing. I was going to rupture more than a few vessels in my nose if I didn't calm down.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“No,” I answered honestly. Brimming tears stung my eyes.

“I didn't mean to frighten you.” He picked up the photocopies, stacked them together and refolded them, then slid them back into his jacket. “I've had problems with magicians in the past, Merrin being a prime example. If he is, indeed, the Snatcher, and if he gets away with it again, I'll never forgive myself. Never. The children's lives are my responsibility. I hired Merrin. He ate dinner in my home with me and my wife, and I never suspected anything. I blamed poor, stupid Bishop. And why? Because of a ridiculous argument.”