I laughed. “Ya think?”

He gave a wry smile. “No, I mean, you … we … can’t be honest about what we saw, which means that we can’t get help trying to find who sent it after us.”

“Yeah. That definitely sucks.” I rubbed at my face with my left hand. “A little extra manpower would be damn useful right about now.” The summoner would be tired, I knew, and a little shaky from having his summoned creature sent back. He was fucking vulnerable, and there was nothing I could do about it.

But that wasn’t what had me so unsettled. “He wasn’t trying to kill us.”

Ryan arched an eyebrow at me. “Oh? He was doing a damn fine imitation.”

“No. If we were meant to be dead, we’d most likely be dead.” I could hear the wail of sirens grow closer. We probably had less than a minute until the backup units arrived.

Ryan’s brows drew together. “So what was it doing?”

“I think … it was assessing me.” I fought back a shiver. “It grabbed me—just for a heartbeat—and then let me go. And right before it ‘died’ here, it called me ‘summoner.’”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he said, voice nearly a growl.

“Me neither, but a few things make sense now. The bodies being dumped where we could find them, the sigils around Greg’s body—I think all of that was to see if I was a summoner.”

“Then why send the demon?”

I rubbed my arms. “To see how strong I am, I think.”

“I’m pretty damn uneasy about why he might want to know that.” He gave me a grim look.

The backup units came screeching up then, and the next several minutes were a barely ordered maelstrom of questions and shouted commands. Somehow we both managed to stick to a vaguely consistent story. I gave a fictional description of the perps, which I prayed didn’t resemble anyone who might actually be in the area, and about a minute later the K9 unit rolled up.

“So, how many of them were there, Kara?”

I raised my good arm in a gesture of helplessness. “Sarge, I’m sorry. I think there were three, but it happened so fucking fast. We rolled up on them just as the brick got pitched through the window. We got into a fight, then a chase, one of them fired on us, we both fired on them, but it was so crazy that I don’t know if any were hit. I didn’t even realize that I’d been cut during the fight until Ryan saw me bleeding.” Damn, but I was pretty good at lying!

The road sergeant glared at me. “Why the fuck didn’t you call it in when you saw it?”

“I did!” I exclaimed with what I hoped was believable fervor. “But my radio got knocked out of my hand during the fight.”

He frowned. “Nothing came over the air.”

“Damn cheap radio system,” I said, adding a scowl for good measure.

He nodded in agreement. “Yeah. It sucks ass. Maybe after someone gets killed, the voters will give us the tax that we need to buy new equipment.”

The one time I can be glad that our budget is so damn low, I thought with vague relief.

A din suddenly erupted from the K9 unit’s vehicle, drawing everyone’s attention. The dog yelped and whined, refusing to get out of the car. His officer was clearly baffled as to why the animal was acting so oddly.

It smells the demon, I thought. And it doesn’t want any part of it. “I think they had a car near,” I said aloud, beginning to despise the need for fiction. “I don’t think there’s a point in doing a track with the K9.”

The sergeant’s gaze was still on the dog. “Yeah. Probably a good thing. Man, I have never seen that dog act like that.” He walked over to the vehicle, and I could hear him telling the K9 officer not to bother. The dog’s yelping subsided instantly once the door was shut again.

“Yep. This sucks,” I agreed in a low voice to Ryan.

CHAPTER 20

We were both grimly silent as Ryan drove to the ER. He pulled up to the emergency entrance, but to my surprise he made no move to get out.

“I’m sorry,” he said when I gave him a perplexed look. “I need to go take care of some things and write up the report of my involvement.”

“It can’t wait?” I said, realizing after I said it that I was being a weenie. I didn’t need him to stay and hold my hand.

An embarrassed look crossed his face. “Okay, I fucking hate hospitals. I mean, if you’d been shot or something, then, yeah, I’d go in there. But since it’s just stitches, I’m going to be a fucking candyass.”

I had to grin at his honesty. “Fine. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

He smiled in relief. “Deal.”

It ended up being nearly five hours before I finally, wearily, called him to pick me up. First it had been the usual interminable wait to get stitched up, then I had to stay and endure a thorough debriefing by my captain. The only thing that saved me from having to write up my report right then and there was the fact that I’d been hurt and couldn’t type and had been out all night besides, which meant I was able to beg off at least until I could get some sleep.

It was well after nine by the time we made it back to my house. My aunt was gone, thankfully. I did not want to deal with her reaction to the attack. I went into my bedroom and gingerly changed into a clean shirt, then came back out to the kitchen. My shoulder and arm throbbed annoyingly as I sat down at my kitchen table, propping my chin on my good hand.

Ryan frowned at me. “You need to get to bed.”

“I know,” I said with a deep sigh. “I just can’t help but wonder if that phone call was a total setup from the start. I mean, was she really afraid that someone was after her, or had she already been snatched and forced to make the call?”

Ryan began opening kitchen cupboards. “What kind of vibe did you get?”

“It sounded real enough to me at the time. I mean, she sounded terrified, but I didn’t think she was being forced to talk. Then again, when she called I wasn’t even thinking that it might have been a setup.” I couldn’t escape the ache of worry. “He must have already taken her.”

Ryan pulled milk out of the fridge and a pot from beneath the counter. “You don’t know that. She still might be safe. I think that you’re sensitive enough to trust your instincts, and the large majority of the time your instincts are going to steer you right.” He poured the milk into the pot and set it to heat on the stove. “You have plenty of real-world experience and, from what I’ve seen, you’re good at dealing with people.”

“Maybe,” I replied, secretly tickled at the compliments. “But I wonder if I’ve become too caught up in all of this since everything has moved so quickly.” I flexed my hand, feeling the answering dull ache in my stitched shoulder. “I keep feeling as if I’m missing something, and if I just had time to step back a bit, I’d get it. But every time things seem to slow down, something else gets thrown our way.”

Ryan was silent as he slowly stirred the milk. “Don’t forget that you do have other people to rely on,” he said after a moment. He added cocoa powder to the milk and then glanced my way. “I know that it’s hard for you since you’re the one who has the knowledge of the arcane, and it’s even harder for you since you can’t share the fact that you possess that knowledge. But you’re smart enough to tell what you know without blowing your secret identity.” He grinned as he drawled out the last two words.

I stifled a yawn and smiled. “You’re being awfully nice to me. What do you want?”

He laughed. “Hey, I just can’t get over the fact that, after all this time—after all the stories my grandmother told me—I actually got to see a demon tonight.” He lifted the pot from the stove and poured the hot cocoa into two mugs. “Okay, so I would have preferred if it had not been diving at us with claws extended, but once you get over that small detail, it was just darn cool.” His eyes crinkled in amusement as he handed the mug over to me.