I hunched my shoulders unconsciously under the verbal barrage. “Sorry. I was thinking that the demon was keeping us there long enough for Belle to be grabbed.”

Ryan swore under his breath again and jammed his fingers through his hair. “Yeah. Okay. But, next time, fucking tell me. I mean, give me some warning other than ‘Cover me!’ I was fucking reloading!”

I winced. “Sorry. I’m not used to this partner thing. You’re right.”

He blew out his breath. “No. No, it’s cool. I’m sorry I yelled. Its full attention was on you, which made it possible for me to shoot it. We need to get you looked at, though, and see if our girl is still here.”

“We’re probably gonna have help in a few minutes,” I said, as I retrieved my gun and holstered it. “I’m sure someone around here will call in the fact that they heard gunfire.”

Ryan scanned the street, then looked back at me. “How are we going to explain this?” he wondered aloud. Then he let out a colorful oath. “You’re bleeding pretty badly. Where’s your radio?” He took me bodily and pushed me down to the curb.

“I’m all right. It just got me with a claw.” Now, as the adrenaline wore off, I was starting to feel it more. I could also feel what would soon be a bruise on my wrist where it had grabbed me. It grabbed me and then let me go. It had what it needed. “Radio’s in the car,” I said. Then I gave a rough laugh. “Good place for it, huh? Though I don’t know how I would have called this one in. ‘Officer needs assistance, under attack from demon.’”

“That would go over well,” he replied dryly. He reached inside the car and grabbed my radio out of the charger and a T-shirt out of my gym bag.

“I need to call something in, quick,” I fretted. “Something to explain why I got hurt and why we fired shots.”

“Got it covered,” he said with a smirk as he lifted the radio. “Agent Kristoff, Dispatch. Unit 723 and myself in foot pursuit of burglary suspects, headed down”—he paused, glancing at the street sign on the corner—“Vaughn Street at Alfred Drive, southbound. Shots have been fired.” He spoke in an unbearably calm voice, eyes on me. Then he lowered the radio, picked up a brick from the gutter, and heaved it through the diner window.

I groaned and dropped my head. “I cannot believe you just did that.”

“You want to tell them we were fighting a demon?”

I shook my head, laughing. “You’d just better hope that there’s no video surveillance on any of the businesses on this street.”

“Oh, shit,” he said, suddenly chagrined. He glanced up and down the street, then relaxed. “I don’t see any. Probably why he chose this spot. Wouldn’t want his demon to get caught on tape.” He gave me a quick grin, then keyed up again. “Agent Kristoff, Dispatch. We’ve discontinued foot pursuit. Officer in need of assistance. Subjects last seen headed southbound.

“Before all the troops arrive,” he said, as the sound of sirens became audible, “can we expect any more of these nasties?” He handed me the radio and pressed the shirt from my gym bag to the bleeding wound on my shoulder.

“Highly doubtful. It’s almost impossible to summon and hold more than one demon at a time.”

He sat down beside me on the curb, holding the shirt to my shoulder. “You know, this kind of sucks ass,” he said, tone jarringly conversational.

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.

I yawned again as I took the mug. “You are too silly.”

“I know. But that’s why you put up with me.”

“Maybe I put up with you because you’re a very effective stalker.” I sipped at the cocoa—perfectly chocolated and warm enough to be perfectly drinkable. He’d known exactly what kind of comfort food I needed. I’d have worried that he could somehow sense my thoughts, except for the fact that chocolate was pretty universal in its comfort factor. It didn’t take a psychic to figure that much out. Though he does seem to know his way around my kitchen fairly well…. I looked up at him through half-lidded eyes. I wanted to think about that a bit more, but my mind just didn’t want to hold on to any coherent thought. No wonder, silly woman. You’ve been awake for only a million hours. So much for getting my sleep cycle back on track.

I dragged my attention back to Ryan when I realized that he was speaking. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Whadja say?”

He gave me a wry smile. “It doesn’t matter. You’re totally wiped and you need to go to bed. Do you have any of the pain pills?”

I fought to keep my eyes open. “Dunno; ’sokay,” I slurred. “Too sleepy to hurt right now.”

I heard him laugh, then he took the mug out of my hand and pulled my good arm over his shoulder, dragging me up out of the chair.

“Come on, Kara,” he said, walking me down the hall to my bedroom.

“I can walk.” I tried to protest, but he didn’t seem to care. He brought me into my bedroom and gently pushed me down onto the bed, then tugged my shoes and socks off and pulled the comforter over me.

“Go to sleep,” he said, or at least that’s what I thought he said, before I lost the battle to fatigue.

“I frightened you. It was not my desire to do so.”

I knew that voice, that unmatchable resonance. The memory of my last encounter with him rose again at his words—that taste of unchecked rage, the overwhelming terror, and the glimpse into how powerful a creature he truly was. He sounded deeply sincere, but after the day I’d had, I wasn’t sure I had it in me right now to deal with him. I pulled the pillow over my head. “It’s cool. It’s fine,” I mumbled through the pillow. “Apology accepted. I’m tired.”