Shit. I needed that library available to me. I looked back at the reyza. “Honored Kehlirik, your gift is precious to me, and it will not be forgotten.” He inclined his head gravely as I controlled the urge to sigh. I had no idea if I’d just screwed up colossally by accepting it, but rejecting it seemed like a quick ticket to an insulted retaliation.
Whatever. I didn’t feel like worrying about it at that moment. I had plenty to worry about already. And normally I would have loved to stay and watch the demon work and perhaps learn some new techniques and skills, but, despite my earlier nap, fatigue dragged at me. Summonings of reyza were exhausting affairs. “Kehlirik, do you need me to stay here with you while you work?”
The demon shook his head, already beginning to tease layers of arcane energy apart. “No, summoner. But you will need to adjust the anchors holding me in this realm to permit me to stay through the day.”
Now I felt like an idiot. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that the task I’d set him might take more than a few hours. I’d summoned him and bound him to this sphere with lunar potency. When day came, those bindings would unravel and he’d be drawn back to his own sphere. Moreover, since being drawn back like that wasn’t a proper dismissal, it was supposedly quite painful for the demon.
I had only one problem. I’d never had any need to adjust anchors and had absolutely zero clue how to do it—and I highly doubted that he was going to teach me for free. I cleared my throat. “Honored one, I do not know this skill. I will be in your debt if you would teach me.”
Kehlirik peered down at me, silent for long enough that I had to fight the urge to hang my head in shame. Then he turned to me fully, spreading his wings, or at least as far as he could spread them in the width of the hallway. He folded his heavily muscled arms across his chest. “I accept your admission of debt, Kara Gillian. We will negotiate the terms on your next summoning of me.”
My neck was getting a crick in it from looking up at him. “Yes, honored one.”
“I would also speak with you at length”—his gaze flicked to Ryan and then back to me—“in private, before you dismiss me back to my own world.”
Hunh. Did he want to tell me something about Ryan? Or did he just not want Ryan hearing whatever it was he had to tell me? Either way, the comment left an unpleasant churning in my gut. “Agreed,” I said, doing my best not to show how much the request unnerved me.
Kehlirik rumbled, looking again at Ryan. I thought the demon was going to hiss and growl, since the expression on his face was certainly malevolent enough, but he did neither. He snorted, nostrils flaring, then unfolded his arms and returned his attention to me. I saw Ryan roll his eyes and flip the demon off behind his back—something that would have made me laugh out loud a few minutes ago, but now I had too much uncertainty roiling through me. For a brief instant I hated the demon for stealing away the companionable ease I’d felt with Ryan, but I knew I couldn’t put all that on Kehlirik. Rhyzkahl had seeded doubts already with his insinuations that I didn’t know all there was to know about Ryan. Kehlirik had merely brought all of that out into the open with his obvious antipathy. And why the fuck would any of the demons know who Ryan is anyway?
“Abide closely, then,” the demon said, yanking me out of my tortured musings, “and I will show you how to re-anchor.”
The lesson was a quick one, though it still left me sweating. It wasn’t a difficult procedure, but it was oddly complex. Still, Kehlirik seemed pleased enough with my grasp of it and carefully walked me through the procedure.
I stepped back when I finished and looked at the revised bindings. Now when the night turned to day and the potencies shifted from lunar to solar, the anchors would re-form around us both. It was an interesting piece of work, and I thought I could see something else about it, but, again, I was tired and on edge and didn’t have the energy to delve too deeply into it.
But another thought occurred to me during the lesson. If it had been my ilius that had consumed Brian’s essence, then I was looking at an isolated event, since the demon would have been drawn back to its own sphere at sunrise. I despised the thought that I could be at fault, but it was better than thinking that there was some other essence-eating creature on the loose.
The demon gave an approving nod. “You grasp the concepts quickly. Very well, I will remain here and work.”
“I’ll secure the house and close all the curtains and stuff,” I said. “If anyone comes to the house … just stay away from the door.”