Not much was the best answer. I’d set aside a few books for later reading, but I hadn’t found anything that came right out and told me what I wanted to know. Kind of like Aunt Tessa, I thought with a glower.
I couldn’t call it wasted time, though. I’d always loved libraries, and while Tessa’s collection was quite specialized, I still adored sitting on the floor and poring through the musty books and leather-clad tomes. When I was a kid, my parents had owned an old set of encyclopedias—the printed kind with a different volume for each letter of the alphabet. I would spend hours curled up on the couch leafing through the pages, not looking up anything in particular but just absorbing what there was to know. I hadn’t seen printed encyclopedias in years. Such things now came in complete sets on CD. But I always told myself that if I ever had kids, I’d find a set of the printed volumes, because you couldn’t leaf through on a CD in the same way.
I felt the same in Tessa’s library, reading through random volumes and finding all sorts of fascinating nuggets of information. It was almost painful to have to close a book once I knew that it didn’t have the information I needed, and I found myself making a personal promise to come back and browse when I didn’t have such an urgent agenda.
Unfortunately, several more hours of browsing failed to turn up anything concrete, and I’d churned through Reba McEntire, Taylor Swift, Kellie Pickler, and Carrie Underwood on my MP3 player. I found plenty on essences and souls but nothing specific on how to remove or restore an essence. And since there was no rhyme or reason that I could discern to Tessa’s library cataloging system—if there was one at all—I was basically looking for everything on my list in every book I opened. It wasn’t exactly an efficient system. I couldn’t find anything on what could suck out an essence, no more than a stray sentence or two about the relationship between summoner and demon, and nothing at all on what a kiraknikahl was.
I heard an odd sound in the space between songs, and I pulled the earbuds off to locate the source of it, discovering to my chagrin that it was my cell phone, vibrating and ringing on the oak table. I turned the player off, an unfamiliar frisson of nervousness tightening my chest when I saw Ryan’s number on the caller ID. I hesitated, a tiny part of me wanting to let it roll to voice mail. Don’t be an idiot, I berated myself as I pressed the talk button. He wouldn’t hurt me. No matter what else I was unsure of, I felt certain of that.
“Hi, Ryan,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage. Pretend nothing happened. Everything is normal. Denial is so lovely.
“Kara, would you please unlock the door and let me in?” He sounded aggrieved. “I’ve been knocking.”
“Sorry. I had my tunes on loud. I’ll be right there.” I closed my phone and stood up, brushing dust off my pants, then froze, looking down at a book that was open on the floor. I didn’t remember getting the book off the shelf, and I glanced up, wondering whether it had fallen. It was certainly possible, considering the haphazard way that Tessa had the books stuffed onto the shelves, but what were the chances that a random book would fall in front of me and open to that page?
A wave of goose bumps crawled over my skin as I crouched and picked up the book. For there on the page was a full treatise on summoners forming alliances with demons. I cradled the volume almost tenderly as I quickly scanned the page. It didn’t specifically mention alliances with demonic lords, but it sure seemed to be referring to the same sort of thing. Ryan would shit if he caught sight of this.
Ryan! I marked my place in the book and shoved it into my bag, then hurried to the door. I yanked it open to see Ryan standing on the walk, the troubled expression on his face clearing when he saw me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I suddenly found something I was looking for and didn’t want to lose my place. Come on in.”
The tension on his face faded as he came up the steps, and I realized that he’d probably been apprehensive that I wouldn’t speak to him again after what had happened at the restaurant. “What were you looking for?”
“Oh, I have a laundry list,” I said, evading the question. “But going through Tessa’s library is an adventure in disorganization. How did you know I was here?”
“You weren’t at your house or at the station, so I figured you’d be here.”
My car was in the garage, but he’d known I was here. When he called he hadn’t asked where I was; he said that he’d been knocking. He would never hurt me, I reminded myself, somewhat surprised at how certain I was of this. I turned and headed down the hall, hoping I wasn’t being hopelessly na?ve. Just because I felt safe with him didn’t mean it was actually safe to be with him—either physically or emotionally.