Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex: Demonized #1)(14)

“Seriously? How stupid do you think I am?”

“They didn’t,” I insisted, blinking rapidly. “They weren’t summoners.”

She shot me a scathing look. “We’re all summoners.”

“My parents weren’t.” I resumed stirring the batter with jerky movements. “They didn’t practice magic at all. Neither do I. I’ve never even seen a demon.” That brief glimpse in the library didn’t count.

I finished folding the batter and shakily poured it into a tube pan. My eyes were stinging—typical Robin, tearing up at the first sign of scary, scary confrontation. As I smoothed the batter into the pan, Amalia stepped back from the counter.

“Come with me,” she said.

“Come … where?”

“You’ll see.”

I slid the pan into the oven, set a timer on my phone, then followed her across the kitchen. She pulled on a pair of sandals and pushed through the French doors. Her long legs carried her across the sprawling deck and onto the lawn. I stuck my feet into someone’s oversized flipflops and trotted after her on my much shorter legs, shivering in the October air, its chill resisting the afternoon sun’s warmth.

A large greenhouse was nestled among shrubbery near a high white fence, and Amalia swept into the humid interior. Confused, I peered at the rows of plants as she opened a storage cupboard dominated by a rack of gardening tools.

Then she swung that open, revealing a hidden staircase leading underground.

My pulse throbbed in my ears as I cautiously followed her down the dim stairs. She wouldn’t hurt me, would she? Hostile or not, she didn’t seem like the type who’d chop me up and use my decomposing bones to fertilize the greenhouse.

She halted at the closed door at the bottom and checked I was right behind her. With a cold smirk, she shoved the door open and stepped aside to give me an unobstructed view of what lay beyond.

Dimly lit by a single bare bulb in the ceiling, the forty-square-foot room was windowless and damp. Water stains streaked the cinderblock walls and unfinished concrete floor, and in the center of the cold, ugly square, a ten-foot-diameter circle shone silver. Lines, arches, intersecting shapes, and hundreds of runes spiraled over the ring, weaving in and out of its interior. I knew exactly what it was.

A summoning circle. A second one. Unlike the library’s circle, this one held no darkness … but it wasn’t empty.

A demon crouched inside it. Four long horns rose off its head, a pair protruding from each temple and curving upward. Enormous wings were folded against its broad back, and a thick tail lay on the concrete behind it, ending in a mace-like scale plate. Heavily muscled shoulders supported its large head and those huge horns.

Even crouched, it was massive. Standing, it would be seven feet tall and built like a linebacker. Dark, reddish-brown skin stretched across bulging muscle.

Deep-set eyes fixed on me. They glowed like lava, but instead of heat, they radiated primal hatred and zealous bloodlust. Its need to kill, to rip and tear and spill my blood across the floor, hung in the air like a poisonous miasma.

I didn’t realize I’d moved until my heel caught on something. I fell back into the stairs, slamming my elbows into the concrete.

Amalia swung the door shut, concealing the circle and beast behind it. She stood over me, a dark shadow under the weak light of the bare bulb overhead.

“You weren’t lying,” she murmured. “You’ve never seen a demon before.”

I sat up. My limbs were shaking, my teeth chattering. My stomach twisted, threatening to jump out of my body, and air whistled through my teeth. Fear more intense than I’d ever felt before coursed inside me.

The definition of evil is an apt description of the demonic psyche. Now I understood. I no longer doubted those words in the slightest. The winged beast in that circle wanted to kill me—me and every other human it could lay its hands on. If not for the invisible barrier holding it in that circle, it would’ve already murdered us.

“If you aren’t a summoner, why are you here?” Amalia asked.

“M-m-my p-parents’ will,” I chattered as I wrapped my arms around myself to stop their shaking. “Uncle Jack is the executor.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I h-haven’t gotten my inheritance yet.” I peered up into her shadowed face. “It’s been six months, but Uncle Jack keeps making excuses. Then he sold my house and kept the money, so I came here to … to try to …” I trailed off hopelessly.

“Aw shit,” she muttered. She held out her hand.

I stared, shocked, then reached up. She pulled me to my feet and ascended the stairs.

“You really aren’t training as a summoner?” she asked over her shoulder. “But your parents were summoners. Why didn’t they teach you?”

“My parents aren’t—weren’t—” Pain slashed me as I corrected my error in verb tense. “They weren’t summoners.”

“I thought they were. Dad used to complain about how your mom sabotaged his career and forced him to start summoning from scratch.”

We exited the greenhouse, but the golden sunlight did little to warm the shivery cold inside me.

“My parents never mentioned demon summoning,” I said quietly. “Not once. I didn’t know Uncle Jack was a summoner until I got here.”