He flexed his hands, puzzlement flickering in his eyes. “I’m freezing. In Louisiana. And sweating. Weird.” He shook them out. “What did you do?”
“Oh, I tried to call up your past lives,” I said with a casual wave of my hand.
Ryan laughed. “You are such a liar.” He started to say more, but his face abruptly took on an I’m gonna barf look. I let out a curse as he rolled from cross-legged to hands and knees, and I shifted away barely in time to avoid the splatter of lasagna and who knew what else.
“Shit, Ryan.” I moved to his side—avoiding the barf—as he subsided into dry heaves. I rubbed his back as he barfed again, though it was little more than bile at this point.
After about a minute he shakily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then grimaced and scrubbed the hand on the tarp before shifting away from the splatters to sit again. “Well,” he croaked, “I’m not a fan of whatever you did.”
“Sorry.” I winced. “It was, um, an aversion, but it wasn’t supposed to do that.”
A streak of blue caught my eye, and a heartbeat later Jekki zipped up to Ryan with a tumbler of tunjen in his hand.
“You’re the best, Jekki,” I said fervently. “Drink that, Ryan. It’ll help.”
He took the tumbler and gave the contents a dubious sniff. “What is it? And yes, before you give me a smartass answer, I know it’s fruit juice.” He gave me a crooked grin. “Something exotic?”
“It’s a demon realm version of the ultimate sports drink,” I told him.
He took a careful sip, blinked. “That’s good.” He quickly drained the glass.
“Told you.” I smiled, relieved to see his color return. “Better?”
“I feel fine now,” he said, getting to his feet. “But you get to hose down the tarp.”
“Only fair,” I admitted. “It was my fault, after all.”
“Glad my puke could be of service,” he said, then gave me a weak grin and returned inside.
After I hosed down the tarp and set it out to dry, I took the sketch pad, went in search of Paul, and found him dozing on the couch with his tablet on his chest. Nearby, Bryce sat in the comfy chair and fervently vaporized aliens with the sound muted.
Paul looked so damn adorable it seemed a crime to wake him. “Hey, Bryce?” I said quietly. “You think Paul will be awake soon?”
Bryce paused the game. “Only to stumble to his futon.” At my questioning look, he continued, “He keeps weird hours. Usually sleeps from about five or six in the morning until afternoon. He says that’s what feels normal to him, and makes it easy for him to connect with his contacts on the other side of the world.”
I controlled my disappointment with effort. A few more hours wouldn’t make a difference, right?
Bryce saw right through it, and his eyes dropped to the pad. “If you have something for him, he’d want you to wake him up.”
Well, Bryce knew him better than anyone, and I didn’t need any more encouragement. “Hey, Paul?” I touched him on the shoulder.
He startled enough to send a wisp of guilt through me, then gave me a sleepy smile and stretched like a waking kitten. “Hey, Kara. You need the couch?”
Somehow I managed to control the D’awwwwww, you’re so darn cute sappy smile. “No, but I do have something for the Idris hunt,” I said. “Sorry to wake you, but Bryce said you’d want to see it.”
Paul pushed himself up to sit, curiosity winning out over a desire for more sleep. “Yeah? Whatcha got?”
I opened the pad up to the final drawing of the ring, carefully tore out the page and handed it to him. “What about this? Can you do something with this?”
He set his tablet aside and took the sheet, eyes widening in surprise at the quality of the drawing. “Wow. I can totally work with this.” He looked up at me, incredulous. “You did this?”
I laughed. “Are you kidding? No, someone else did, but it’s best not to ask too many questions about that.”
“That’s cool,” he said with a grin. “I’m used to not asking questions.” He stood and started toward the office with page and tablet in hand. “I’ll see what I can come up with.”
“You’re wonderful,” I said fervently, then flopped down in the place he’d vacated. Jekki whooshed in and put a plate of mini-pancakes and bacon on the coffee table.
Bryce thanked him and tossed the second controller to me. “Bet you a dollar Paul will have something in ten minutes.”
I took the controller, raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ll take that bet. No one’s that good.”
Bryce opened his mouth for a comeback, but Jekki beat him too it. “No doubting the Paul-dude!” he exclaimed then zoomed back to the kitchen.
Bryce and I burst out laughing. He lifted his controller. “You heard Jekki. We only have ten minutes. Let’s do this thing.”
And we did. I sucked at video games in general, but even with my crappy skills, I still found something deeply satisfying in a recreation where I knew exactly who my enemies were and could then blast them into messy bits.
“Hey, Kara?” Paul shouted from the office a little later.
“What?” I hollered back, eyes still glued to the screen. These aliens weren’t going to kill themselves.
“I think I have something on the ring!”
Bryce laughed and put out his hand. “Pay up!”
I paused the game, then gave a mock-scowl and made a show of looking at my watch. “Damn. That took him a whole six minutes,” I muttered. “Freakin’ geniuses.”
“Never doubt the Paul-dude,” Bryce said with a sage nod.
My brain and experience told me there was no way Paul had found anything of significance so quickly, but I unfolded my legs, stood, and proceeded to the office. Bryce followed and leaned against the doorframe.
“Show me,” I said.
“I don’t know if it’s the same one,” Paul said as he beckoned me over to where he sat at the desk, laptop with mouse in front of him, and my old monitor to the side displaying a screen full of rapidly changing numbers. “But it looks pretty close to the drawing.”
Every possible doubt I had of his skill evaporated as I peered at the picture on his laptop screen. A faded color close-up photo of a woman in her early thirties or so seated at a picnic table and flanked by a smiling boy and girl about five or six years old. Twins perhaps? All appeared to be of middle-Eastern descent and each held up a paper cup as though for a toast. The trunk of a humongous redwood tree dominated the background. But the detail that drew my eye was the woman’s right hand and the ring on her middle finger, clearly visible against the white of the cup.
“That sure looks like it,” I murmured. I took in the features of the unusual ring and allowed myself a mental sigh of disappointment that we didn’t instantly have our guy. The hand I’d seen had definitely been a man’s. “Can you zoom in?” Paul clicked the mouse a few times, and the ring obligingly grew larger, though fuzzy.
“It’s a scan of an older photo, which is why it’s pixilated,” he explained. “It was scanned about a decade ago, but I think the photo itself is about forty years old judging by the clothing style.”
“I can see the ring well enough,” I said. “Zoom back out, please?” He obliged. I tried to see if anyone in the picture looked familiar, but came up empty.
“It’s either the same ring or one exactly like it,” I said.
“This is the only image I felt,” he told me, “which means that if there are more like it, it’s unlikely there are pictures of them anywhere online.”
I blinked. “That you felt?”
Paul ducked his head and hunched his shoulders. “Um, yeah.” He fidgeted. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Mzatal told me you use the computers as a way to connect to the Earth flows.” I gave him a reassuring smile. “Is that what you mean?”
His face brightened. “Yeah. I didn’t know that’s what it was until I met Lord Mzatal. I, um, don’t usually talk about it.” He glanced beyond me to Bryc
e as though for reassurance, then brought his gaze back to me.
“Trust me, this is a safe place for talking about weird shit,” I said with a laugh. “Is that how you found an obscure photo of the ring so quickly?”
“Pretty much.” Then he rolled his eyes. “If I’d used conventional methods alone it would have taken ages, or I might not have found it at all.”
“And it’s exactly what I was looking for.” I lifted my chin toward the screen. “However, it wasn’t on a female hand when I saw it. Can you find out who this woman is?”
Paul smiled. “Way ahead of you. It was easy to link to the photo. I’ll show you the name. Better than me trying to pronounce it.” He changed screens so I could read it for myself.
I straightened. “I know that name. She’s a summoner.” Rasha Hassan Jalal al-Khouri. This was the woman who’d summoned Jekki’s partner, Faruk, during the Christmas celebration while I was in the demon realm. According to Mzatal, it was the first time she’d summoned in almost a decade. I looked back toward the door. “Jekki!”
Bryce smiled at Paul. “Good job, kid.”
A streak of blue flashed past Bryce’s legs. “Kara Gillian!”
I grinned at the demon’s exuberance. “Jekki, we have a lead. Can you please go tell Mzatal I need him here?”
“Kri! Kri! Kri!” He spun and zipped out of the room, down the hall and out the back door like a little blue whirlwind.
Paul’s face held a pleased smile. “It’s probably the right ring then?”
“It’s a really good possibility,” I said, more than a little pleased myself. “You rock. I don’t suppose you can get a current address on her?”
He let out a dismissive snort. “Seriously? Give me something hard to do.” His screen shifted to something full of commands and code and who the hell knew what else, but Paul seemed utterly at home with it. His fingers flew across the keyboard, and about ten seconds later the printer hummed and spat out a sheet.
“That’s her current address, along with her vital statistics,” he informed us with a tilt of his head toward the printer. “Born in Egypt in 1934. Married in 1952 to a man named Sapar, who died October 31, 1956 in the Suez Crisis. She and her two children, twins born in 1955, emigrated to the U.S. in 1958. Has four grandchildren and two great grandchildren now as well.” He changed screens again. “And here are some more recent pics.” He leaned back to allow us to see better.
Several photos showed the same woman, looking quite hale in her sixties and perhaps seventies, but I didn’t recognize anyone else in any of the pics.
I plucked the sheet from the printer, skimmed the info and the address. “Austin! Hot fucking damn.”
Bryce gave me a questioning look.
“The phone call I got from Idris was made northwest of Austin on a phone stolen there,” I explained. “Plus, Mzatal detected the aftereffects of an event from a few days ago that disrupted the flows in a wide area around Austin. He felt Idris’s signature, but couldn’t pinpoint the source. I don’t think any of it’s a coincidence, and now we have an address.”
Bryce peered at the photos on the screen. “She’s not exactly a spring chicken now. You suspect she’s directly connected?”
I gave a humorless laugh. “I’ve learned that age is simply a matter of who you know. Katashi is over a hundred years old, and that bastard is going strong.” I tapped the paper. “She’s worn the ring, and she’s in Austin. That’s enough to keep her on my list of potential baddies until I find out otherwise.”
“Guilty until proven innocent,” Bryce said.
“When I’m dealing with the Mraztur and summoners, hell yeah.”
Bryce let out a snort of agreement. His gaze returned to Paul’s screen, then he frowned and jabbed a finger at one of the pics. “Paul, that one. I need to see that one bigger.” Paul tapped a key and the thumbnail enlarged to show Rasha much older, with an utterly gorgeous young woman at her side. Perfectly styled long black hair, medium dark complexion, full lips with a deep rose color, and a voluptuous body.
“I know that girl,” Bryce murmured. “I’ve seen her before.”
“That’s her granddaughter, Jade,” Paul said. The printer hummed again.
“Where have you seen her, Bryce?” I asked.
“At the compound. The Farouche Plantation.” He tapped his chin. “I know I’ve seen her there.”
My eyes narrowed. “The granddaughter of a known summoner is associated with your ex-boss? Is she a summoner too? What was she doing there?”
A grimace flickered across his face. “No idea. I saw her in his wing of the house a few times this past year. She came and went with . . .” He trailed off, blinked. “Mystery Man Twenty-two. The guy who was last off the plane with Idris in Amarillo. Fucking hell, she came with Mystery Man Twenty-two!”
Paul made a frustrated noise. “Why did I give B.M. my secrets?” He spun the chair to face us. “I can’t pull archive surveillance vid to show you, ’cause Big Mack followed my instructions and installed the firewall of doom on his servers plus took surveillance vids offline. I couldn’t even leave a back door for myself because, well—”
“That’s acting against his interests which triggers the fear,” I said with a nod of understanding.
“Exactly.” Paul scowled. “Trust me, I tried. Once.”
I heard footsteps on the back porch. Bryce drew a sharp breath. “Damn,” he murmured. “You can really feel when Mzatal gets close, can’t you? Wasn’t as noticeable in the demon realm, but here, wow.”
“I’ve grown used to it,” I confessed, though now that I focused on it I knew exactly what Bryce meant. Like an invisible pressure wave that grew more and more tangible as the demonic lord approached.
Mzatal stepped through the doorway. Instantly the feel of the office shifted from roomy to cramped broom closet. Yep, he certainly does have the whammy, I thought wryly.
He went still for the span of a heartbeat—reading and assessing the current status and the discovery of the ring’s bearer—before leveling his full attention onto me.
“You believe Rasha consorts with Farouche,” he stated.
“It’s very possible,” I said. “Her granddaughter certainly does. However, the ring wasn’t on a woman’s hand, so I want to find out who has it now and who Bryce saw with Jade.”
“It is possible she passed the ring to her offspring, or a student,” Mzatal pointed out.
“True. Either way, it’s worth checking.” I lifted the paper. “We have an address for her. In Austin.”
“Excellent,” he said brusquely. “We will proceed there, and I will assess her.” He announced it as though it was no more of a challenge than walking to the neighbor’s house.
“I need to talk to you before we make any plans,” I told him, taking his hand. After a quick excuse us to Bryce and Paul, I led Mzatal to the front porch and closed the door.
“You do realize that most of the means of travel in this world involve getting into a metal container of some sort for several hours?” I asked him. “Rasha lives in Austin. That’s either an eight to nine hour drive, or a flight involving airports and security and lots of interaction with people. Which, pretty much means we have to drive. In a car.”
Mzatal lifted my hand and kissed it. “It is as it is, zharkat,” he murmured. “I will manage it.”
I gave his hand a squeeze. He knew I worried about him. “Next question. Can you, um, turn down your mojo at all?”
“It is minimal now,” he informed me. “What preparations must be made?”
Fine, I’d let him dodge the subject. For now. “First, we decide who’s going,” I said as we returned inside. “Zack and Ryan need to remain here to hold down the fort. They can handle any weird crises that come up, and help Steeev watch over Jill.” I entered the office and considered Bryce and Paul. Both of them would be pretty damn useful. The only hitch would be finding a way to sneak them out of town without any of the bad guys knowing. “Y’all up for a road trip?” I asked t
hem.
Paul drew in a pleased breath and flicked a hopeful glance to Bryce, face brightening as the older man gave a nod.
“Austin? Sure,” Bryce said as Paul swiveled back to the computer to resume typing. “What do we need to do to prep?”
“We’ll probably want an SUV so we aren’t too cramped,” I said. It would be hard enough for Mzatal to be enclosed in a vehicle for several hours, so might as well get something big. “Eilahn can follow on the motorcycle.”
“I can help with the driving,” Bryce pointed out, and I gave him a grateful nod.
“When will this SUV be acquired?” Mzatal asked.
“We’ll rent one,” I said, then shifted my attention to Paul. “Can you find a company that will deliver one here within the next few hours?”
A grin spread across his face. “I’m working on it. Unless I’m completely wrong—which I’m not—I can get an Escalade here in an hour and a half. Two hours at the outside. You guys gonna wager on whether or not I can set it all up in under five minutes?”
I shook my head, smiled. “One of these days I’ll remember how good you really are. No way am I betting against you again.”
Paul simply grinned.
“Wait,” I said. “How are you going to pay for it?”
He gave me an unmistakably withering look while Bryce choked on a laugh.
I lifted my hands in surrender. “Forget I asked. Holy shit, but I’m glad you’re on our side,” I said, then a slow smile spread over my face as a plan came together in my head. “Hang on.” I scribbled an address on a sticky note and gave it to Paul. “Have it delivered there instead of here.”
I quickly laid out my clever, and actually quite simple, plan to sneak Bryce and Paul away. We’d have the SUV delivered to the back lot of an out-of-business furniture store, which was a five mile drive from my house via the highway, but only about a half mile trek through woods beyond the back fence of my property. I had no gate or driveway there, and the woods were heavy enough I figured the chances were exceedingly slim that Farouche would have people watching along the fence line.
Bryce listened carefully, then had Paul call up a satellite photo of the area. “You’re right,” he said as he noted the clever shortcut. “He wouldn’t have people watching the middle of the woods. That should work.” To my relief, no one else found any glaring problems with the ruse either.