Kindling the Moon (19 page)

“Yeah. Mrs. Holiday picks him up.”

“Who's Mrs. Holiday?”

“Housekeeper … half of the elderly couple I told you about that works for me.”

“Oh, that's right.”

“They live in a small house down the cliff over there.” He pointed toward the side of the house where the trees thickened. “Check this out,” he said, doling out cigarettes. “I've been poking around since you dropped Jupe off last night and mentioned Father Carrow's fairy tale. He might have been right.” He slid a small book toward me.
Liber Demonica III
. Paper pages. It mustn't have been too valuable for him to have brought it out from the confines of his library. I allowed him to light my valrivia while I turned to the page marked with one of his little blue pieces of paper.

The entry was titled “Rules of Possession.” I began reading, then skipped ahead when Lon guided me forward several paragraphs. I read out loud.

“
If the summoner desires Prime Possession of the Entity, and all the privileges of its special talents, He must secure a Kieyda by using the following formula to calculate a Secondary Circle that should connect to the apex of the binding triangle, as shown in figure
171. The Entity should be tricked to cross over into the Secondary Circle using the one of the methods listed within table 54—
”

“Some of those methods are barbaric,” Lon mumbled.

“
—then the desired Kieyda should be removed quickly. Banish immediately after removal with the full Greater Banishing Ritual. The Primary desirable Kieydas are as follows: Horn, Tooth, Bone, Talon, Tip of Tail, Boney Crest. Please keep in mind that neither Skin nor Scale holds sufficient power for Kieydas.
”

I held my cigarette away from the table and looked at Lon.

“Kieyda?”

“A kind of amulet derived from the body of an Æthyric demon.

“It goes on to say here”—he pointed at text on the following page—“that the summoner needs to have possession of the Kieyda when the demon's seal and name are used for summoning. If the Kieyda is lost, the demon can't be summoned to earth again until it's found. Drink your tea. It's jasmine.”

I glanced down at it with feigned suspicion. “
Just
jasmine?”

“Cross my heart,” he said with a sly smile.

I inhaled the tea and sipped it cautiously. It was wonderful.

“Give me a second,” I said, collecting my thoughts.

He looked at me curiously but stayed silent, which I appreciated. After a minute or so, I sighed and put the tea down. “Why are my feet warm?” I ducked to peer under the table.

“Heated floor. I asked you if you wanted it on.”

“Ah. Fancy.”

“Convenient,” he corrected. “It gets brutal out here at night in the winter. I like to be able to use the patio year-round. Hate being trapped indoors.” He plucked a stray valrivia leaf from the tip of his tongue, transferred from the open end of the hand-rolled cigarette.

I nodded, then dropped my head and spoke into my half-empty teacup. “If the Tamlins are right about the albino demon … we have to find the summoning name, the demon class,
and
the damn talon. That's impossible. It's all over. Done. Doomed.”

“Why?”

“Because the talon—or glass knife, or whatever they're calling it—is in police evidence in Portland.”

“Portland? I thought they recovered it in San Diego?”

“The local FBI in Portland was working on Magus Dempsey's murder. I guess they sent it up there for the investigation. Besides, it doesn't matter where it is. We can't just walk in and ask to check it out like a library book.”

Several seconds ticked by. “Are you sure about that?” he asked, a glint in his eye.

“I'm pretty fucking sure, Lon.”

He sat back in his chair with his leg crossed over the opposite knee in a lazy figure-four shape. “And I'm pretty fucking sure I know someone who owes me a big favor.”

“What kind of favor?” I asked as my heart rate shifted from resigned to intrigued.

“Big enough. His son works for the Morella PD.”

Correct that, intrigued to excited.

“I can't promise anything, but I'll call him tonight. In theory, you might be able to use the talon with a servitor. Program the servitor to find the summoning name of the demon it belongs to. Like a bloodhound following a scent. I'm not positive, but it stands to reason.”

He was right. I'd used other objects as tracers for servitors in the past. Theoretically, there was no reason I couldn't program one to find the book with the albino demon's information if I had the talon.

“So let's stay calm but hopeful, okay?” He lowered his eyes and gave me a serious look.

I pressed the warm sole of my shoe against the edge of his chair and tried to push him away. “Calm but hopeful, huh? No fair using your empathic hoodoo on me, you jerk. Move back.” I strained to push with my leg, but broke into a laugh when his chair wouldn't budge. “Dammit!” He grabbed my ankle and threw me off, laughing with me as we engaged in a brief hand-and-foot wrestling match.

While we finished our tea and cigarettes, he asked me what I was going to do about Riley Cooper; I had no idea. I'd spent hours trying to find her on the internet and had called every magician I knew even tangentially whom I could trust, but no one had heard of her.

Then I told him about Caliph Superior disappearing off to San Diego.

“He must be dedicated to your parents to go through so much trouble to protect them all these years and put himself in danger now. That's above and beyond.”

“My family has been in the E∴E∴ for generations, at least on my mom's side, back when the order used to be headquartered in France.”

Lon sipped his tea. “You look a little French. Something in your mouth.”

“I look just like my mom. Only, she's taller and more … elegant. Less hip-y.”

His eyes dropped to my hips in evaluation; I couldn't tell by his expression whether he liked what he saw or not. My mind floated back to last night's embarrassment over his date—or colleague, or whatever he claimed she was. Tall and slender. I wondered if that's what Lon preferred; his ex-wife was built the same way.

This was not the time to conjure up unwanted emotions, not when he could sense them. Best to keep talking and distract both of us. “My mother spent her childhood in Paris before moving to the States. My father was American, but his family was from Marseilles. It was one of the things that originally drew my parents together,
la connexion française
. That's what my mom always said.”

“
Parles-tu français
?” Lon asked brightly.

I shook my head, slightly embarrassed that I didn't. “A few words here and there. You speak it?”

“I pick up languages pretty easily.”

“My parents used to speak French when they were arguing or discussing something private.” And by private, that usually meant it involved sex. My parents weren't shy about their affection for each other. They were always sharing intimate glances, kissing, holding hands. I used to joke that they were like Morticia and Gomez from
The Addams Family
.

We didn't speak for several moments, then Lon's brow furrowed. “Did your parents ever tell you about the albino demon when they were charged with the murders?”

“A little. They'd flown to San Diego to meet with the head of Luxe and a few officers from the orders whose leaders had been murdered. By that point, the media had already latched onto the whole ‘Black Lodge' angle, and everyone was concerned about the organizations coming under fire, getting a bad rap. My parents went to represent the E∴E∴ and mediate talks. They flew back a day early and told me all hell had broken loose, and that the meeting was a trap—that Luxe was trying to pin the murders on them.”

“And they told you about the albino demon?”

“They said someone had summoned an Æthyric demon for the killings, but they never gave me details. I was too
young and they were overprotective. I never knew what the demon looked like until Caliph Superior told me last week.”

“Don't you think it's strange that he helped your parents look for this demon for seven years, and he'd forget a detail like that?”

“Maybe my parents were under the same confusion spell that the Tamlins claimed.”

“Definitely a possibility. But your parents saw the demon a month later, when the Luxe leader was attacked in San Diego. That's what they told you before you faked your deaths.”

“Yes. What are you trying to get at?”

“Well, on one hand, if that mysterious man the Tamlins saw running away from the third scene was the murderer, and he cast confusion spells on everyone at that time … What was to stop him from casting the same spell again on the witnesses of the fourth attack? Maybe that's why your parents didn't tell the Caliph about the glass talon detail. Maybe they didn't remember it.”

“It's possible. But you said ‘on one hand.' What's the other possibility?”

He paused. “How much do you trust Caliph Superior?” We looked at each other. I bit my lip. “He's my godfather,” I said slowly. “I grew up seeing him almost every day.”

“But?”

“But I hadn't seen him in seven years until last week. I don't know. I—”

Lon held his hand up. “I don't want to jump to conclusions. But maybe it's good that you can't contact him right now.”

Crap. Lon was just confirming something that had been eating at me since I'd talked to the Tamlins. I'd known the caliph all my life. He was a good person. A peaceful man. He couldn't be connected with the murders. Why would he? And
what was the motive? He was leader of a prestigious occult order and had everything he wanted—money, power, a loving family. It just didn't make sense. And yet, something wasn't quite right.

I let out a slow breath and put my elbow on the table, leaning my head in my hand. “I've had this nagging memory of my parents talking to him privately before the fourth murder attempt on the Luxe head. My mom was upset and scared. Something I heard, but I can't quite … They were all speaking in French—the caliph is fluent. I don't know. Maybe I just didn't understand what he was saying. I've tried to remember it for years, but I think the trauma of going into hiding blocked some of my memories during that time.”

“If so, that's understandable. You were just a kid. You don't go through something like that without a few battle scars. Ever gone to counseling?”

“Um, no.”

He shrugged. “Hypnosis sometimes restores memories.”

“Again, no. I have no guarantee that the person doing the hypnosis wouldn't turn me into the cops.”

“You trusted me.”

“You drugged me!”

He grinned. “Yeah, I did.”

“Do you know how to hypnotize someone?”

“No, but I have a book of memory spells. Some remove memories, some restore them.”

I sat up straight. “Really? Have you tried any of them?”

“On myself, no. They're tandem spells. Most memory spells are.”

“Huh? Tandem spells?”

“You have to perform it on someone else. You can't perform them on yourself—you can't erase your own memories.”

“I've never heard of such a thing.”

He smiled triumphantly. “Interesting … the novice knows something that the master doesn't.” He hooked his finger around the handles of our cups and gathered the teapot in his other hand. “Bring that book. I think we should take a peek at the memory spells in my library.”

“I need to leave in about forty-five minutes to get to work,” I warned.

“We're just looking.”

Just looking, but I was very, very curious.

I perused the bookshelves behind Lon while he sat with his feet propped up on the desk and thumbed through his tandem memory spells, reading the descriptions aloud to me.

“
Memory Erase by Time Period: designate a length of time to eradicate thoughts.
”

“Nope.”

“
Memory Erase by Subject: designate a subject to remove from subject's memory.
”

“No, but you should keep that one marked. That could come in handy.”

He plopped a blue marker in the crease, then flipped to the next entry. “
Complete Memory Erase: wipe out all memories of events, places, names, times.
Jesus, that's dangerous. Remind me to put this book in the locked cabinet. If Jupe got a hold of this … Okay, hold on.
Memory Restoring.
” He flipped through several pages then started reading to himself in low mumble, taking his feet off the desk.

“What? Did you find one? Memory Restore by Time Period?”

“I found it.”

“So? What's the spell? Does it need kindled Heka?” I leaned over his shoulder and read. “
Memory Restore, otherwise known as ‘The Wheel.' Push and pull magical energies to ignite slow memory restoration gently.
That sounds like an overnight laxative.” I grinned at him.

“Ha, ha,” he said dourly, getting up from his seat to stand.

“Lighten up.” I elbowed him in the shoulder, then continued reading. “ ‘
Magick for The Wheel must be charged with fluids from sexual arousal
…' ” My voice tapered off. “Oh.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I read the rest of the entry to myself. The person doing the tandem spell—that would be Lon—had to receive Heka-rich sexual fluids from the recipient of the spell, me, to jump-start a series of lost memories. A magical sigil and incantation were provided.

It wasn't the first time I'd run across sex spells: they were just as common as electricity-kindled spells. They just aren't convenient for your average on-the-go magical needs.

“Do all the memory spells require that?” I asked.