Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(84)

It floated back down.

My heart pounded.

Hovering near the tops of the bookcases, it glided in front of the fireplace, past Lon’s small sealed cabinet of stolen rarities, behind the desk, bobbed in place for a few seconds, and like a birthday balloon with a slow leak, it lazily dropped and floated to me, filtering back into the clay doll.

I had the servitor retrieval spell neatly prepared on one of Lon’s blue paper markers. Spitting on the drawing, I whispered the incantation and smashed the clay doll against it.

It was off-putting to be in the same room as the transmission image. I could see myself and Lon through its vision, the shelf of books it had spotted, and the particular book it singled out. A fat, red leather binding. “There!” I said, pointing as the image disintegrated.

The transmission acted like a magical decongestant; loosened Heka seethed inside me. Head swimming, I swayed, dropped to my knees, and fell onto my back with a loud thump. Closing my eyes momentarily, I waited until the nausea subsided. Lon’s knees hit the rug beside me. I squinted one eye open as a red leather-bound tome was dangled in front of my face.

“Is this it?”

Goetia Demonica Muliebris, read the worn gilded title on the front cover.

I laughed. “Yep.”

“Goddammit,” he murmured, sitting back on his heels. “I never would’ve thought to look in here.” Cracking it open on my extended legs, he hunched over and began hurriedly skimming the entries.

“Why not?” I pushed myself up into a sitting position.

“Because,” Lon explained, fanning carefully through crackling vellum pages, “I just assumed from what you said that the demon was male.”

“That’s what the caliph told me.”

“This is an encyclopedia of female demons.”

Well, damn. I watched him flip through the goetia, carefully turning each page. Then he stopped. I moved closer to read the text along with him.

Next to the simple relief of a woodcut demon, the border of which was illuminated in flaking silver, was the name of the primordial being: Nivella Krustallos Daemonia.

“Not male, and not an albino either,” Lon said with wonder. “A White Ice Demon.”

I’d never heard of this class, but now that I knew it, I could look up the correct summoning seal.

Lon read the text out loud:

“NIVELLA THE WHITE. The sixty-fourth spirit is called Nivella Kurstallos Daemonia, or Nivella the White. She is a Grand Duchess, and appeareth in the Form of a Beautiful White Beast with pink eyes, horns, and four arms bearing four crystalline talons. Her Office is to teach the Mysteries of the Occult Arts perfectly within the Æthyric tribes. Her wisdom was sought in Olde Ægypt and Ancient Greece. She can be forced to answer those questions regarding the Harvesting of Æthyric energy, which the querent may wish to put to her, if desired. She is partly of the Order of Thrones, and partly that of the Seraphim Angels. She ruleth 10 Legions of Spirits.”

I silently reread the entry twice before Lon spoke in a soft voice. “Well, there it is.”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Harvesting of Æthyric energy?’ Maybe she teaches how to kindle Heka. Doesn’t sound like much of a bloodthirsty hunter, but I guess a demon can be forced into doing whatever they’ve been commanded to do by the magician.”

I nodded my head and swallowed. “Pretty much.”

“Well, do you want to summon her and ask?”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

“Before, when we didn’t know if we had the right one, I was going to summon any of the demons you researched to find out if they were present during the killings. Now I know it was Nivella, and to ask who originally summoned her, well, some Æthyric demons, especially the primordial ones—”

“They’re only obligated to answer truthfully one time.”

I nodded. “I don’t want to waste my only shot if I don’t have an audience. The Luxe Order isn’t just gonna take my word for it. I need them to witness it.”

He studied me quietly. “When are you going?”

“Tomorrow. Midday, I guess. It’s a seven-hour drive to San Diego.”

“I’ll make arrangements for Mr. and Mrs. Holiday to watch Jupe.”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to do this by myself. If something goes wrong, you can’t be in the middle of it—Jupe depends on you.”

His protest was interrupted by a soft crackling noise. A fine network of blue lines formed along the floor, walls, bookshelves …

“What’s going on?”

Lon sprang to his feet. “The house ward.”

The air distorted in front of us. Bits of smashed shards from the servitor’s clay doll crunched under my feet as Lon hauled me off the floor.

A soft white light appeared before us, one that quickly manifested into a wispy, floating figure. For the shortest moment, my heart leapt when I thought it was Priya, somehow miraculously reborn. Before disappointment fell, though, I realized that the being was familiar to me, even if I hadn’t seen it for a few years … my mother’s guardian.

“Scivina!” I cried out. “It’s okay, Lon. It’s just a projection from the Æthyr.”

Fragile, closed wings skimmed the shoulder tops of the Hermeneus spirit. Like Priya, Scivina was birdlike in the face, and vaguely human below. But where Priya had carried the face of a young owl with pointed ears and big eyes, Scivina’s was a hawk, fierce and proud. As projected images that never fully materialized on earth, they were both a translucent milky color, lacking color and definition.