“Have a seat!” Greg said before I had a chance to examine any of the drawings on the wall closely. He picked up a stack of notebooks from a chair and dumped them onto the floor. I sat carefully as he perched on the edge of his work chair and looked at me expectantly.
I took a deep breath. This was where it was going to get weird. “Okay, this is going to sound kind of … out there,” I began. I pulled out the picture that I’d printed from the website. “Who is this?” I pointed to the drawing of the character that so resembled Rhyzkahl.
Greg went still, looking down at the drawing. I watched him closely as his animated face shuttered and withdrew, color fading in it like a dress left in a store window for too long. He gave the casual shrug that I was expecting. “It’s just a drawing. I mean, all my stuff is fictional.” He looked up at me, an expression of puzzlement on his face, but after seeing the true animation of before, I could see how this expression was a pale copy of his true emotions. He shrugged again, one shoulder twitching up on command. “It’s no one. Why?”
I touched the image lightly with my forefinger. “I don’t think this is no one.” I looked up at him with a small smile. “I think this is someone you met once.”
He swallowed visibly but gave another shrug. Each time he performed the gesture it became more and more twitchy and awkward, as if descending down a slope of unbelievability. Could he really be this ingenuous? If not, he was a fucking good actor.
“You can’t really be serious,” he said, shaking his head in a quick vibration. “It’s no one. Just something I thought of.”
I leaned forward, lowering my voice to make him work to hear me. “No, it’s not just something you thought of. I need to know when and where you met him.”
He paled completely this time, color draining away. “I … don’t know what—”
“Yes. You do,” I said softly. “You know his name. You’ve seen him.”
A bead of sweat formed on his forehead, and I watched in morbid fascination as it began to make its way down the side of his face.
“You don’t know,” he said, voice cracking. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looked at me with fear in his eyes, and I suddenly realized that it was not the usual fear that the public has for the police but a fear that I was something more. Well, I am, I thought.
I turned the piece of paper around so that he could see the drawing fully. “His name is Rhyzkahl, isn’t it?”
He let out a strangled moan and rose from the chair. I stood as well, not certain if he was about to bolt.
“How … Oh, dear God, how do you know that?” He looked at me with terror forming in his eyes.
I let out a breath, relieved. I’d been a little worried that perhaps I was making myself look like a total idiot with this insistence that this was Rhyzkahl. With Tessa’s help, of course. Tessa had led me on many other wild chases that had proved embarrassing and fruitless. It was strangely refreshing to find that this one might actually pan out.
But right now Greg Cerise was terrified of me. Well, maybe he could stay terrified of me, at least a little. I drew myself up. “Because I’ve called him to me.”
To my shock and dismay, he laughed and relaxed. “Oh, right. You called Rhyzkahl. You? Who are you?”
I blinked. “I’m a summoner.”
He sat down again, this time leaning all the way back in his chair and looking up at me. “Okay, I can maybe buy that. Maybe.” He shook his head. “But there’s no way that you called Rhyzkahl.”
I scowled and sat, feeling myself losing ground quickly in this questioning. “Then how do I know that you know him?”
He shrugged, a true gesture this time. “A picture? Someone told you?” He leaned forward. “So, if you’re a summoner, who’s your mentor?”
I suppressed a sigh. I’d definitely blown this interview. “How do you know about mentors? You’re a summoner, too, aren’t you?” I said, struggling to regain control of the conversation.
He laughed. “Hell, no. That’s not my path.” He reached over to the table, shook a cigarette out of a pack, and stuck it in his mouth. He tilted the pack toward me, offering, then lit the cigarette when I shook my head. “I’ve just been around some who are.”
I tilted my head. “Oh? Who?”
He gave me a smile that was back to being nice. “What was your name again?”
I didn’t bother to hold back the sigh this time. “Kara Gillian.”
He laughed. “Oh, man. I wasn’t paying attention when you introduced yourself at my door. I don’t usually pay attention to names. I mean, not on purpose. But I’m kinda ADD, and names tend to slide right by me. Two seconds after someone introduces themself I have to ask their name again.” He grinned at me. “Is Tessa your aunt?”
Oh, jeez. “Yeah,” I said, resisting the desire to slouch. “Tessa Pazhel is my aunt.”
He nodded. “All right, then. I believe that you can summon.” He took a long drag off the cigarette and shook his head. “But trying to say that you summoned Rhyzkahl?” He rolled his eyes. “That’s a stretch to believe for anyone with any clue.”
I was quickly going from liking the guy to finding him intensely aggravating. I leaned back in the chair, away from the smoke, and folded my arms over my chest. “And why is that?” My voice was calm, but there was certainly challenge in it.
Greg looked at me, pausing with the cigarette halfway to his mouth. “Because you can’t just summon Rhyzkahl. Not and survive. He’s a Demonic Lord.” He snorted in a way that reminded me way too much of my aunt. “So either you’re a completely clueless summoner—and those don’t stay alive very long—or,” he pointed at me with the cigarette, “you’re fucking with me and trying to get me to say something.” He took a drag off the cigarette and then leaned forward and stubbed it out on the arm of the chair. “You don’t need to fuck with me.” He gave me a smile that was back to being normal and friendly. “Just tell me what you need to know.”
I put on a sweet smile. “I would very much like to know how you know what Rhyzkahl looks like.”
Greg sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Your aunt knows. I mean, we were there together.”
I frowned. “You two are friends?” Tessa had never mentioned him.
He spread his hands, regret tingeing his expression. “We were friends when we were young and even dated awhile when we were teenagers. But even the best of friendships grow apart. We went our separate ways a long time ago. I don’t get out all that much. I like what I do, and I don’t like people all that much.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I can understand that.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “You probably do. You get to see the worst that humanity has to offer. That’s one of the things I like about a small town. Fewer people to avoid.” He grinned. “I went to New York for a few years, trying to do the whole artist-in-New-York thing, but I couldn’t take the whole big-city attitude and could barely afford to live. Then, this past December, I found an investor for the comic, so I moved back down here in January. And sales have been picking up every month.”
“That’s terrific,” I said, since I knew that was expected. But that wasn’t what I was interested in. “Can you tell me how you saw Rhyzkahl?”
He pulled another cigarette out of the pack but didn’t light it. “It was almost thirty years ago. Tessa and I had both just turned seventeen.” He grimaced. “My father was a summoner.” He slowly tapped the cigarette against the pack. “Tess and I used to spend a lot of time together. Even when we were little, you know, back in the days when kids actually went outside and played instead of the crap now where they sit inside and play video games—”
“Or read comic books?” I couldn’t keep myself from interjecting.
Greg gave a small bark of laughter. “Oh, no, they had comics back then, and we read plenty of ’em. But then we’d go outside and pretend that we were those superheroes and bad guys.” He smiled, a reminiscing look on his face. “We had long complex stories …” He shook his head. “Then when we got older we moved on to other interests. Anyway. My father was a summoner, as was Tessa’s mother.”
I couldn’t completely keep my face still as that bit of information sent a shock through me. Fortunately, Greg wasn’t looking at me and didn’t seem to notice my reaction. My grandmother?
Greg let out a heavy breath. “My father was pretty well skilled. He had no problems calling the minor demons and even called high-level demons fairly regularly.” Greg’s expression grew brooding. “Then my mother became ill. Cancer. I took her to the doctor, but …” He shook his head as if to dislodge an unpleasant memory. “My father decided that he needed the level of … assistance that could be gained only from a Demonic Lord.” He crumpled the cigarette in his hand, watching the flakes of tobacco drift to the floor. “My mother and Tess’s mother, Gracie, were the best of friends, and so Gracie assisted my father in his plan to summon a lord. There were a total of six summoners there—my father, Gracie, a husband and wife from here in town, and then two solo summoners from New Orleans. And, of course, my mother, though not in the circle itself. They all wanted this chance to perform such a major summoning.”
I tried to breathe silently, not wanting to do or say anything that could distract from the tale.
“I knew that my father was planning this summoning. He’d decided he would try to summon Szerain, a minor lord who supposedly was more open to this sort of assistance with the proper callings and terms. I … didn’t agree with my father’s decision. I told him so, several times.” Old pain flickered in his eyes. “I knew when they were going to attempt the summoning and I didn’t want to be alone, so I asked Tess over. Tess and I … well, we used to go down to the basement to fuck.” His mouth quirked in a boyish smile, while I tried not to show my surprise at the frank admission. Then shame flickered briefly across his face. “I didn’t tell her why I wanted her to come over. Just let her assume … Anyway, that night we were going at it hot and heavy when we heard people coming down the stairs, so we hid and watched.”
He took a dragging breath. “I have no idea what went wrong—whether it was the way the call went out or the way it was received out in the other sphere. Tessa told me later that she believes that when one summons a lord, there are different forms and protections and terms that have to be used.” He shrugged. “I’m not a summoner, so I didn’t really know what she was talking about.”
I swallowed and said nothing.
“Anyway, the circle made the call to Szerain,” he continued after a moment, “and something came through. Only it wasn’t Szerain.”
“Rhyzkahl,” I murmured, forgetting my desire to stay silent.
Greg nodded. “They invoked the bindings, but …” He shuddered. “They didn’t realize what they’d done. Didn’t realize at first that it wasn’t Szerain—that they’d summoned a lord who was not amenable to such things.” He rubbed his arms. “They didn’t realize how dangerous and powerful he is. He’s so …”
“Beautiful.”
He looked up at me. “You have seen him.”
I just nodded.
“Damn,” he breathed. “Someday I want to hear how that happened.”
“Finish your story, please?” I urged.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “He was … angry, God almighty, so angry. I could feel it, like a smothering blanket. The bindings that they had were useless. Rhyzkahl scattered them and …” He paled, his hands beginning to shake.
I leaned forward. “What happened?”
Greg clenched his hands together. “I don’t remember everything. But what I do remember is that he knew that Tess and I were there. I don’t know why he didn’t destroy us like the others, but he knew we were there.”
“How do you know?”
He looked up at me. “Because he said so. Pointed right at us while his hands were still—” His voice faltered. “His hands were still covered with my mother’s blood.” He gave a low moan and dropped his head into his hands. “My father asked him to remove her cancer. And he did. God almighty, he did. Every bit of it. Ripped it all from her. It’s been almost thirty years and I still remember that. My father lying dead at his feet, and my mother …” He shook his head, unwilling or unable to say anything more.
I was silent for a moment, then risked touching his knee. “Was everyone else killed?”
Greg took in a heaving breath. “Yeah. It was a slaughter. A fucking slaughter. As soon as Rhyzkahl finished and left, Tess grabbed my hand and dragged me out of there.” He scrubbed at his face. “She kept her head, I’ll give her that. I was totally hysterical, nearly catatonic. She got me away and to a safe place, then she went back and dumped every can of gasoline we had down the stairs and started a fire. Covered it all up.” He sighed, and I could see him pushing the memories back down. “Her mother had been killed, too, but she held it in until it was all over.”
Suddenly so much about my aunt made sense. What a hideous burden to hold for all those years. I felt an odd twinge of guilt for some of the unkind things I’d thought about Tessa. And there was a small part of me that wanted to deny, to refuse to believe that it could have been the same Rhyzkahl, the same Demonic Lord that had killed all those people, but deep down I knew that it was true, knew that he was capable of wreaking that sort of vengeance to satisfy his honor. I’d felt that same rage coming from him, that same capacity for slaughter, before he inexplicably changed his mind and decided to seduce me instead.