Her eyes darkened with sympathy. “You were not in the car?”
I shook my head. “My dad got a call from a client who needed some papers notarized. He was a lawyer,” I explained. “He knew he was only going to be a few minutes, so he left me at home while he went to meet the guy.…” I’d been so pleased that he thought that, at the ripe age of eleven, I was old enough to stay home by myself. When he still hadn’t come home after two hours, I’d been worried sick and terrified to call the police because I thought I’d be getting him into trouble. It had been another hour before the knock on the door came.
“And then your aunt had the care of you,” Eilahn murmured. “Which is how you learned to summon.”
“Yep.” I took another sip of coffee to give me a few more seconds to push the unpleasant memories back. “Not the way I would have planned it, given a choice.”
“A tragic path indeed,” she agreed, brow faintly furrowed. Then she spread her hands on the table and looked out the window. “And now these two people who did you harm both die on the day a demon attacked you.”
“Oh, and I used to date the witness who found the first body,” I added.
“Interesting.”
I let out a small bark of laughter. “That’s one word for it. I was thinking of a description more along the lines of ‘fucking shit damn it all to hell this is a confusing mess plus it means there’s another summoner who’s trying to fuck my life up.’?” The last time I’d been looking for another summoner had been during my investigation of the Symbol Man murders, and that case had not exactly been wrapped up nice and neatly. Sure, the Symbol Man had been stopped, but I’d ended up dead for a while, and my aunt had ended up in an arcane coma that had taken me weeks to get her out of.
Her full lips twitched. “?‘Interesting’ is more concise.”
“Stick with me a few more weeks, and I’ll have you cursing like a pro.” Then I made a face. “Do you know of an easy way to find a summoner?” I asked, looking over at her with undisguised hope. “Are there any demons who can, um, sniff them out or something?”
She raised one dark eyebrow at me as amusement flashed in her eyes. “No.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her firm answer, even though it dashed my briefly shining hopes. “Okay,” I pressed, “is there a way to ask other demons who’s been summoning them?”
She pursed her lips, appearing to seriously consider the question. “In theory, yes, but in practice, it is nigh impossible,” she said. “The demons are divided into numerous factions. It is a constantly shifting dynamic, affected by a number of factors, including which lord they serve. Simply answering a question would require payment on your part.”
I winced at that. Summoning a demon wasn’t like calling forth a genie who’d be at your beck and call no matter what the request. A summoning was a contest and a contract—first to show you were worthy to even call the demon by the level of skill used to create the portal and maintain the protections, and then to negotiate the terms of whatever service the summoner desired of the demon. Everything had a price and failure to abide by the terms—for either party—was a terrible breach of honor. If the summoner was the erring party, they usually ended up dead. There were no bad demons—only poorly worded contracts.
“So, I guess there aren’t too many pollsters in the demon realm,” I said glumly.
A smile curved her lips. “It is possible that you could pose the question and accept free response. However, that has its own drawback.”
“I might tip off this summoner that I’m looking for him or her.”
“Precisely.”
I let out a sigh. I didn’t know of any other summoners in the area, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. As far as I knew there were only a few hundred in the world, but even that was simply a slightly educated guess. We tended to be pretty private about our activities, for obvious reasons.
“Maybe the presence of the demon had nothing to do with the two deaths.” I paused in consideration. “Maybe it’s all a giant coincidence.”