Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(46)

“You want the heat on? It’s kind of chilly out here today. Overcast.”

“Uh, sure.”

He punched something into a panel on the stone wall near the sliding door, then sat down next to me and poured us each a cup of tea without asking if I wanted any.

“Jupe at school?” I asked.

“Yeah. Mrs. Holiday picks him up.”

“Who’s Mrs. Holiday?”

“Housekeeper … half of the elderly couple I told you about that works for me.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“They live in a small house down the cliff over there.” He pointed toward the side of the house where the trees thickened. “Check this out,” he said, doling out cigarettes. “I’ve been poking around since you dropped Jupe off last night and mentioned Father Carrow’s fairy tale. He might have been right.” He slid a small book toward me. Liber Demonica III. Paper pages. It mustn’t have been too valuable for him to have brought it out from the confines of his library. I allowed him to light my valrivia while I turned to the page marked with one of his little blue pieces of paper.

The entry was titled “Rules of Possession.” I began reading, then skipped ahead when Lon guided me forward several paragraphs. I read out loud.

“If the summoner desires Prime Possession of the Entity, and all the privileges of its special talents, He must secure a Kieyda by using the following formula to calculate a Secondary Circle that should connect to the apex of the binding triangle, as shown in figure 171. The Entity should be tricked to cross over into the Secondary Circle using the one of the methods listed within table 54—”

“Some of those methods are barbaric,” Lon mumbled.

“—then the desired Kieyda should be removed quickly. Banish immediately after removal with the full Greater Banishing Ritual. The Primary desirable Kieydas are as follows: Horn, Tooth, Bone, Talon, Tip of Tail, Boney Crest. Please keep in mind that neither Skin nor Scale holds sufficient power for Kieydas.”

I held my cigarette away from the table and looked at Lon.

“Kieyda?”

“A kind of amulet derived from the body of an Æthyric demon.

“It goes on to say here”—he pointed at text on the following page—“that the summoner needs to have possession of the Kieyda when the demon’s seal and name are used for summoning. If the Kieyda is lost, the demon can’t be summoned to earth again until it’s found. Drink your tea. It’s jasmine.”

I glanced down at it with feigned suspicion. “Just jasmine?”

“Cross my heart,” he said with a sly smile.

I inhaled the tea and sipped it cautiously. It was wonderful.

“Give me a second,” I said, collecting my thoughts.

He looked at me curiously but stayed silent, which I appreciated. After a minute or so, I sighed and put the tea down. “Why are my feet warm?” I ducked to peer under the table.

“Heated floor. I asked you if you wanted it on.”

“Ah. Fancy.”

“Convenient,” he corrected. “It gets brutal out here at night in the winter. I like to be able to use the patio year-round. Hate being trapped indoors.” He plucked a stray valrivia leaf from the tip of his tongue, transferred from the open end of the hand-rolled cigarette.

I nodded, then dropped my head and spoke into my half-empty teacup. “If the Tamlins are right about the albino demon … we have to find the summoning name, the demon class, and the damn talon. That’s impossible. It’s all over. Done. Doomed.”

“Why?”

“Because the talon—or glass knife, or whatever they’re calling it—is in police evidence in Portland.”

“Portland? I thought they recovered it in San Diego?”

“The local FBI in Portland was working on Magus Dempsey’s murder. I guess they sent it up there for the investigation. Besides, it doesn’t matter where it is. We can’t just walk in and ask to check it out like a library book.”

Several seconds ticked by. “Are you sure about that?” he asked, a glint in his eye.

“I’m pretty f*cking sure, Lon.”

He sat back in his chair with his leg crossed over the opposite knee in a lazy figure-four shape. “And I’m pretty f*cking sure I know someone who owes me a big favor.”

“What kind of favor?” I asked as my heart rate shifted from resigned to intrigued.

“Big enough. His son works for the Morella PD.”

Correct that, intrigued to excited.

“I can’t promise anything, but I’ll call him tonight. In theory, you might be able to use the talon with a servitor. Program the servitor to find the summoning name of the demon it belongs to. Like a bloodhound following a scent. I’m not positive, but it stands to reason.”

He was right. I’d used other objects as tracers for servitors in the past. Theoretically, there was no reason I couldn’t program one to find the book with the albino demon’s information if I had the talon.

“So let’s stay calm but hopeful, okay?” He lowered his eyes and gave me a serious look.

I pressed the warm sole of my shoe against the edge of his chair and tried to push him away. “Calm but hopeful, huh? No fair using your empathic hoodoo on me, you jerk. Move back.” I strained to push with my leg, but broke into a laugh when his chair wouldn’t budge. “Dammit!” He grabbed my ankle and threw me off, laughing with me as we engaged in a brief hand-and-foot wrestling match.