I shifted out of othersight and peered at my watch using my flashlight. Four a.m. We’d been at this for nearly an hour and were barely halfway around the Beaulac PD building. But Eilahn had been adamant that the places I spent the most time should be protected—at least as much as was reasonable. She was a syraza, an eleventh-level demon, assigned—gifted? loaned?—to me by the demonic lord Rhyzkahl after it had become clear that someone or something in the demon realm wasn’t thrilled about my association with him. And Eilahn took her job damn seriously.
The wards on my house had been beefed up into intense and powerful protections, with an outer layer of aversions that would hopefully make intruders lose their desire to continue into my home. Needless to say it wasn’t practical or desirable to have that sort of thing on the Police Department building. Instead, these protections were the sort that would make it highly difficult for me to be summoned while I was inside them—necessary since someone in the demon realm seemed to be intent on doing just that.
The wards were undetectable by anyone without arcane abilities. At least I sure hoped so. But even though they couldn’t be seen by the naked eye, the process of laying them down looked pretty damn weird. Hence the reason we were out at oh-fuck o’clock in the morning—after the bars closed and before the sun came up.
I sighed and cast a longing glance across the street at the dark and closed coffee shop that had recently opened up next to the city administration building. Grounds For Arrest. The painting of a steaming coffee cup on the window seemed to taunt me.
Eilahn softly cleared her throat, and I dragged my attention back to the matter at hand. Slipping back into othersight, I let the sensations wash over me as I checked for gaps or weak spots in the chain of sigils. Even incomplete, the patterns buzzed against my senses pleasantly, like a flow of warm water over my skin. If any part of the sequence had been wrong or poorly scribed, I’d feel it like a vibration in the back of my teeth. But no, it was clear that this demon knew what she was doing.
“You there!”
I straightened and turned at the male shout from behind me, squinting in the sudden light shone into my eyes. Beyond the glare of the flashlight I could see it was someone in a Beaulac PD uniform. Crap.
“What’s going on here?” the officer demanded.
I lifted a hand to shield my eyes. “Could you lower the light please? I’m Detective Gillian. Who’re you?”
The officer obligingly lowered the flashlight. I tried to blink away the spots that now swam in my vision. “Oh, hey, Kara. It’s me, Tim Daniels. Sorry. Y’all looked like you were doing some serious skulking.” He gave a small chuckle.
I returned the chuckle. Luckily we’d already come up with a hopefully believable fiction for why we were tromping around the PD in the middle of the night. “Nope, nothing nefarious. I was bringing my cat to the vet earlier and it got away from me, so my roommate” —I gave a vague gesture toward Eilahn— “and I are trying to see if we can find it now that there aren’t a lot of people and cars around to scare it.”
His gaze shifted to Eilahn and lingered there. I couldn’t really blame him. The form she’d taken after I summoned her was female. Or, to be more specific, smokin’ hot chick. Tall and athletic, with violet eyes and sleek dark hair that flowed past her shoulders, she somehow managed to look Asian, Jewish, Indian, Swedish, and black all at once. Right now she was dressed in jeans, low-heeled boots, and a snug-fitting long-sleeved black shirt. Yeah, I’d have stared too if it was my first time meeting her. I tried not to think about the contrast between us. I was about three inches shorter, with boring gray eyes, poker-straight mud-brown hair that was more fly-away than sleek, and, while I wasn’t pudgy, I sure as hell didn’t have anything resembling an athletic build.
“I just got off shift,” he said, gaze not leaving Eilahn. “I’d be glad to help you look. What’s your cat’s name?”
Eilahn shot me a glance, and I masked a grimace. Crap. We hadn’t counted on anyone actually wanting to help us look for a cat in the middle of the night. “Erm, its name is Fuzzykins.”
The demon’s expression didn’t change a whit, but I could feel the withering Fuzzykins? That’s the best you can do? as clearly as if we’d shared a telepathic bond. Damn good thing we didn’t. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to know what she was thinking most of the time.
“Fuzzykins,” the officer repeated, grinning. “I love it. I’m Tim, by the way,” he said to the demon. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Eilahn,” she replied with an easy smile.
“Nice to meet you, Ellen,” he said. I bit back a smile as her eyes narrowed at his mispronunciation. “So, what’s this cat look like?”
Her eyes flicked back to me. Damn it. I was on the hook again. “It’s, um, a calico.” Those were sort of rare, weren’t they? “Without a tail.”
“A calico Manx. Well,