The demon snapped his gaze back to me, a growl rumbling in his throat, then to my utter relief he lowered his head in acquiescence. “I will abide by your desire, summoner, and will not harm the kiraknikahl while he is under your protection.”
The what? I glanced at Ryan with a questioning look, and he gave me a baffled shrug in response. I had no idea what the word meant, but there was only so much I could bargain for in this summoning, and demons—especially reyza—tended to be pretty stingy about imparting information. Everything had its price, and I had other questions that were far more pressing at this time. Such as, did I screw up in my dismissal of the ilius, and could it have attacked Brian’s essence?
But, more than anything, I needed to get into Tessa’s library, and that alone was going to take every bit of negotiating I had, debt or not.
I mentally filed the word away for later research. Maybe once I got into the library I could find out for sure.
“Kehlirik, I have need of your aid this night—specifically, your skill with wardings and protections.”
The demon tilted his head. “I am quite skilled in such.”
I smiled. Flattery would get you everywhere. “I know. Tessa Pazhel is my aunt, and I have need to enter and access all portions of her library and the contents therein, as well as her summoning chamber.”
He stood, the tips of his horns nearly brushing the ceiling of the basement. “I accept the task and terms as payment of the debt.”
I exhaled and released the bindings, then closed and grounded the portal energy. Kehlirik ascended the basement stairs with a speed and grace at odds with his size. As soon as he was out of sight, I turned to Ryan’s circle and lowered the protections, then looked up at him.
“Okay, possibly stupid question here, but have you ever encountered Kehlirik before? And what the hell is a kiraknikahl?”
He gave me an exasperated shrug as he stepped out of the circle. “How the fuck should I know?” Then his eyes widened. “Holy shit, I do know that demon!”
“You do?”
“Yeah, he was over at my house to watch the Super Bowl,” he said, not bothering to hide his grin. “We shared a coupla brewskies. He’s like my best bro!”
I rolled my eyes and headed up the stairs, though I couldn’t help but smile. “Never mind,” I said over my shoulder. “Kiraknikahl obviously means asshole.”
THE CAB OF THE U-HAUL REEKED OF CIGARETTE smoke, but since the air conditioner was nonfunctional it meant we had to drive with the windows down anyway. Fortunately, it was a warm night, and the open windows made for an almost pleasant ride.
Kehlirik had been surprisingly willing to be toted like cargo in the back of the truck, apparently looking upon the whole thing as one more unusual experience that he could relate to his demonkind buddies. I knew that experience in other realms helped demons gain status, so I had to guess that riding in a truck counted. In fact, he’d almost looked excited, which for a twelfth-level demon was utterly unheard-of.
Unfortunately, the U-Haul had been the best idea I could come up with for transporting the demon, since, as Ryan had pointed out so cleverly, there was no way in creation that he would fit into my Taurus. I wasn’t even sure he’d fit into an SUV, which I could have probably rented as well. He would have been cramped—especially with his wings—but, more important than that, I really didn’t want to risk anyone seeing that I had a big horking demon riding in the back of my car.
Not that the reyza was a demon-from-hell kind of demon. The creatures I summoned had been named thousands of years ago, long before any of the world’s religions had designated “demons” as agents of evil and residents of hell. I wasn’t enough of a theologian to know how that had all come about, but my demons resided in a different sphere of existence that converged with this one, and they were no more evil than a gun was. Powerful, dangerous, and deadly, yes. Evil incarnate, no.
It was a thirty-minute drive from my secluded house in the sticks to my aunt’s house on the lakefront. St. Long Parish was small and quiet, mostly rural, in comfortable driving distance of New Orleans. Beaulac, the parish seat, was barely big enough to be defined as a city, and the only reason Beaulac had as large a population as it did was because of Lake Pearl. The city curved around the lake as if hugging it possessively, and Beaulac took great pains to make sure that the lake and its environs were clean and attractive. Tourism, hunting, and fishing were the main attractions of Beaulac, but there was also a cadre of über-rich who lived in the area, mostly on the lakefront. These were people who had no need to commute anywhere—either retired from lucrative careers or independently wealthy.
My aunt Tessa had been fortunate enough to inherit her house from a distant great-aunt shortly after my mother died. The inside of her house was beautifully decorated and maintained, and aside from a few modifications that she’d made, it would have fit right in with any of the other museum-quality houses in the area.