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“Aunt Tessa, why?”
“I could feel the ritual, feel the opening of the portal.” Her voice was low, thready. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a summoning, and I could instantly feel that it was something I could do.” Her shoulders slumped. “And without knowing what I was doing, without thinking, I sat in my hiding place behind that bookcase and I reached out mentally to that portal as it opened.”
“Oh, shit,” I breathed.
“Yes. I altered the forming of it, changed the structure just enough …”
“And Rhyzkahl was pulled through.”
Tessa’s hands were white-knuckled on the rim of the sink. “Yes. Completely unwilling and without any warning. And because it was an imperfect portal, it was probably quite painful for him as well.”
I shivered. The memory of his unshielded fury came back to me.
“He … he’s beautiful, as you know. Angelic. There was a moment, a perfect small moment, when all everyone could see was that beauty, and everyone thought that the summoning had gone as pla
“I’ve felt it,” I said softly.
Tessa gave a single jerky nod. “It was a bloodbath, a slaughter, but I’ll grant him this: He took his vengeance but did not revel in the suffering. Only enough to satisfy his honor.” A shudder rippled through her. “But it was still a horror to watch. He killed two of the men first, literally ripped them apart. He broke the necks of two women.” Tessa took a deep breath. “The only summoners left were my mother and Peter Cerise. They were both pi
I realized that my hands were clenched into tight fists under the table, nails digging into my palms.
Tessa dragged a hand across her face. “And then he gathered his power and was gone, leaving the blood and the slaughter.” She made a breathy sound that I realized was meant to be a laugh. “It’s fu
“Aunt Tessa! You can’t blame yourself like that.”
Tessa turned back to me. “Oh, I know. I was so very young. But Rhyzkahl was merely acting on his nature after being dragged unwillingly through the portal. He took the vengeance he needed to satisfy his honor. Greg’s mother … it was hideous what Rhyzkahl did to her, but … I could see her face. I don’t think she felt any of it. I think Rhyzkahl did it solely to further torment Peter Cerise.”
I struggled to grasp how my aunt could be so accepting of the Demonic Lord’s actions. “What happened after he was gone?”
Tessa took a deep breath, begi
“Greg told me,” I said gently. “Told me that you burned the house down to cover up what had happened.”
“He didn’t tell you everything. He didn’t tell you what he didn’t see.” Tessa’s voice was flat.
“What didn’t he see?”
“I dumped the gas down into the basement, then lit a towel off the stove and threw that down as well.” She looked at me. “I stayed there long enough to make sure that the place was going to catch fire. I stayed long enough to make sure that the stairs had caught, so that Peter Cerise couldn’t get out.”
I felt as if I’d been punched. “What? I thought he’d been killed by Rhyzkahl.”
“No. He was alive. Rhyzkahl broke his legs and left him to watch it all. He knew that it was a greater revenge to make Cerise live with the memory, the guilt.” Tessa gave her head a sharp shake. “I wasn’t thinking that elegantly. I just wanted him dead.”
I stood. “Aunt Tessa. Are you sure he died in the fire?”
Her thin eyebrows drew together. “When they finally put the fire out, the basement was a mess. And since we never saw him again, I …” She smacked her hand to her forehead. “I never even thought of him!”
“Basements usually have windows or doors, other ways out in case there is a fire,” I breathed. “He’s alive. He’s alive, and he wants to summon Rhyzkahl. It makes sense. That explains how he knew Greg.” I grabbed my aunt by her shoulders. “Aunt Tessa, do you know what he looks like? Do you have old pictures of him? Anything?”
Tessa shook her head. “No, sweets, nothing like that. And if he stayed around here, he must have changed his appearance, because Greg always thought he was dead too.”
“Aunt Tessa, I have to go,” I said, as I snatched up my cell phone and took off for the door. This was almost worse than not knowing. I knew who the Symbol Man was now, but I had no idea how to find him.
I had my cell-phone headset jammed into my ear even before I got the car started. I punched Ryan’s number in as I backed out of my aunt’s driveway. “Come, on, Ryan. Pick up!” I muttered.
“Good morning, Kara,” Ryan said as he answered.
“Ryan! I know who the Symbol Man is,” I said in a rush. “It’s Greg Cerise’s dad, Peter Cerise, who was supposedly killed in a summoning, but I think he wasn’t killed after all. And now he wants revenge on Rhyzkahl and everyone else for letting his wife die, even though it was his own damn fault to begin with!”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down. Okay, it’s Greg’s dad. So where is he now?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what he looks like or what he’s doing.”
I heard him mutter a curse. “All right. Well, it’s a start, at least. I can go back and do some legwork and see if he had any prints on file or anything like that.”
“I bet Greg had photos of his dad.”
“Mr. Greg Cerise is quite dead, and the search warrant on that residence is no longer valid.”
“Details, details!” I retorted. “I’ll find you a damn photo.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
The search warrantwas expired, but at this point I really didn’t give a shit. I called dispatch and got the number for the owner of the house, Greg’s erstwhile landlady, a Ms. Dana Sebastian. I dialed as I drove to the house.
A woman answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hello, this is Detective Gillian with the Beaulac Police Department. Is this Dana Sebastian?”
“Yes … yes, it is. Is this about the murder?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m the lead investigator on the Symbol Man murders. Look, I know the search warrant has expired, but I really need to get back into your rental house and look for something.”
“Oh, damn, I’ve already had a crew come through to fix the door and scrub the place down, and I packed all of Greg’s stuff up. It’s all still there in boxes, though. I really don’t know what to do with any of it, to be honest. I don’t know if he has any family.”
“I can’t help you there,” I said. The only next of kin I knew of wasn’t likely to step forward just to claim some boxes of junk. “Is there any way you can come by to let me in and let me look through the stuff?”