Summoning the Night (33 page)

A sense of well-being flooded me, and for the first time all night, I felt relaxed and calm. I knew I shouldn't, but I believed him. Trusted him. He was just a little old man who'd been bested by a demon. I almost felt sorry for him.

“Maybe we should all leave now. That sounds like a good idea, yes?”

Yes, it did. It sounded like a good idea. I wanted to leave. My head suddenly didn't feel very good.

Lon nodded. “Two hours. We'll meet you at your hotel.”

Something pushed against my back. The restroom door. “Lon!”

Releasing Merrin, he shifted down into his human form while someone knocked, trying to get inside the restroom. Merrin buttoned up his shirt, covering up the army tattoo. When the coast was clear, I opened the door. A man entered, eying me warily as Merrin passed between us.

“Sorry, dear,” he said, bumping into me as he headed into the restaurant hallway. “See you in a couple of hours.”

We followed Merrin out the front door, then immediately lost him in the crowd. Loud whoops and laughter echoed off the glass windows of the restaurant as drunken revelers galloped down the sidewalk.

“Damn, my head is killing me,” I complained as we made our way back to the float. “I feel like I've forgotten something. Do think it was safe to let him go like that? He was telling the truth, right?”

“I guess.”

“What do you mean, ‘I guess?' You don't know?”

“I couldn't hear his emotions sometimes. I could at first, but later it was off and on. And his thoughts were muffled. I could catch glimpses of things, but I—”

This alarmed me. “Why didn't you say something?”

“Sometimes I can't hear certain people very well.”

“But you didn't have problems hearing him in the Silent Temple.”

“I don't think so, but I was pissed, and he was panicked.”

“Wait, wait, wait—does that mean your persuasive emotional thing was working on him or not, Lon?”

“I think so.” Doubt clouded his eyes. Embarrassment, too.

Dear God, my head!
Blood pulsed in my temples. What had I forgotten? My mind fastened on a single detail: the tattoo on Merrin's chest, the one peeking out of the top of his shirt. It was awfully dark for an old military tattoo. And that was no army eagle, it was the top of an Egyptian symbol for strength, and it wasn't lined in blue ink, it was charged with Heka.

Shit! He'd constructed some sort of magical seal to ward himself, either from Lon's ability in particular, or from Earthbound knacks in general. Anxiety cleared a path through my fuzzy head.

“What?” Lon asked, suddenly panicking right along with me.

“My weird headache . . . Jesus, Lon. We just let Merrin go. He's not going to help us. He tricked us! He—”

“He was using my knack.”

I glanced around. Thousands of paradegoers were swarming the streets. How would we find him now?

“You took his invisibility talisman,” Lon said.

I patted my pocket, then thrust my hand inside. Empty. “Oh, no . . . He bumped into me on the way out. He . . .” I didn't bother finishing. Lon made a miserable sound. “How much of what he'd told us was true? Was he under your influence at all? Did he tell us enough to shut us up? Or—” I fished out my cell and ducked into an alcove to get away from the crowds.

“What are you doing?” Lon asked.

“Looking up Hotel Guinevere. Have you ever heard of it?”

His blank expression told me that he hadn't. I hadn't either. Not that I knew every hotel in the city. A million people lived here. “Hotel Guinevere,” I said, reading from my phone's web browser, “closed in 1990. It was one of the oldest hotels in the city.”

Lon's eyelids fluttered in disbelief. “How did I not know?”

“How did
I
not know? This must be what it feels like to be on the receiving end of Jupe's knack.” My head still throbbed. “I wonder if he was lying about the possession details? He wasn't possessed himself—we'd know, right?”

“I wasn't touching him the entire time,” Lon said despondently.

“Yeah, that's when I started trusting him—when he touched me.”

“I think he was telling the truth at the beginning. Before his thoughts became muddled to me. But I don't know . . . I just don't know.”

My mind flipped through everything he told us, then I suddenly remembered what had caught my attention before the magical explosion stole it. “Mark Dare.”

Lon grunted.

“He jumped off the float less than a minute before Merrin's explosion.”

Another grunt.

“He was at the carnival the night that the third kid was taken.”

That got his attention.

“Mark and his father don't get along. Dare said they'd recently reconciled, but he'd also called his own son a prick—maybe Mark feels the same way about Dare.”

“There's bad blood between them,” Lon confirmed. “But enough for Mark to team up with Merrin?”

“They must know each other—if Merrin remembered you, then surely he remembered Mark, too. And teaming up certainly would allow Mark to get revenge on Daddy, by making it appear that Dare couldn't protect his own cubs from predators. If members were scared and pissed off, it might even get Dare impeached from the Hellfire Club and put Mark at the helm.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Cady.”

“You were right to begin with—Merrin set that fire as a distraction. And it wasn't for the Halloween protesters. That was a load of crap.”

Lon didn't answer. He just pulled me back into the moving crowd, and we plowed our way through to the float.

Police lights flashed red and blue on the parade route where the fire truck had been parked. But not all of the police were investigating the Little Red Riding Hood crime scene—several surrounded the Dare Energy float. A fresh rush of panic swept over me as I quickly inspected the area. The kids were all huddled at the front of the float with two police officers. Adults were being questions by other cops. I was searching for Mark Dare when his father stepped into our path.

“Where the hell have you two been?” Dare snapped. His face was red. His halo was bright and big, practically crackling. He wasn't happy.

Lon was unfazed. “Chasing after Merrin.”

Dare was momentarily confused.

“I told one of your guards when we left,” Lon added. “The fire on the float was magical—not real. Merrin's spellwork. We saw him and chased him down.”

“Well, where is he then?”

Lon didn't answer.

“You fucking let him get away—
again
?”

“He used magick,” I said. “He turned Lon's knack around on us.”

Lon quickly explained what happened with Merrin, but his eyes were on the float the entire time, watching the cops. He finally stopped midsentence. “What's going on here?”

“Juanita and Ben's kid got taken right off the fucking float.”

“No,” I said weakly.

“That's right,” Dare said, barely containing his anger. “Fifteen minutes ago, while you two imbeciles were being bamboozled by Merrin.”

“But the guards . . .” Lon said. “How?”

“Everyone was watching the damn fire truck and the damn police cars and the exodus of the people from the Little Red Riding Hood float. The boy was standing near the back of the float. One of the guards felt movement behind him. By the time he turned around, the boy was gone.
Right under our noses!
”

I wanted to throw up. My voice was almost a whisper. “It wasn't Merrin, then.”

“Where's your son, Ambrose?” Lon's voice was even and cool as ice.

Dare stared at him, not answering.

“I asked you a question. Where's Mark?”

“He was at the carnival the night the third teen was taken,” I said quickly. “He slipped off this float right before the explosion. Merrin told us that back in the eighties, Duke Chora only possessed him for short periods of time. The person possessed this time around . . . you might not even realize . . .” I faltered as I watched Mark Dare approaching us.

“One of the police signaled him off the float,” Dare said slowly. “He was asking about our weapons permits for the guards when the explosion happened. He returned immediately, and helped the guards search the barricades with the
help of the police when the kid was snatched. My son has been right here the whole time, Ms. Bell.”

My heart sank as Mark stopped in front of me, all blond hair and blue halo. He didn't look possessed. He looked royally pissed. Like he hated my guts.

“It was a logical leap,” Lon said. “It looked suspicious. So let's all calm down and figure things out. No one saw the kid being dragged into the crowd? No one at all?”

For a moment, Mark continued to stare at me like I was trash, then he finally spoke. “Not a damn thing. It's as if the child just disappeared. No one spotted anyone with mismatched eyes, if that's what you're thinking.”

Lon shook his head. “We chased down Merrin. It couldn't have been him.”

“Tell me what happened. In detail, if you would,” Dare said.

Lon doesn't do detail well. I listened to him recite a bare-bones account of what happened and had to stop myself from interrupting to add things, but the Dares got the gist of it well enough. Lon tried to pinpoint the exact points in Merrin's interrogation that he had trouble “hearing” him.

I thought about it, trying to make sense of it all.

If we assumed that the beginning of Merrin's story was at least half true, then maybe Merrin really
hadn't
been aware of the duke's final plans for the “vessels” when he was puppeted into snatching the kids for the demon. But Merrin was a talented magician; an experienced magician. And he'd snooped around after the
Buné
spell failed, asking other Æthyric demons what the duke was up to. He found out that the veil had been pierced by the spell, and knew that the duke could come back in thirty years to try again.

And if
I
were unscrupulous and egotistical, like Merrin,
and an Æthyric demon had not only used me to kill a bunch of kids but had also nearly killed me from the inside out after it was over,
I
would want revenge against the duke. I would do whatever it took to kill the duke, or at the very least, banish him permanently. I would
want
me and Lon to track him down and help me get rid of the demon.

So why didn't Merrin?

He had to be working with the duke again. It was the only thing that made sense. He set the magical fire on the float to divert attention away from the Dare float. He was helping whoever was possessed. The getaway driver, so to speak.

I knew damn well that I didn't trust that asshole the moment Lon pulled him out of the restroom stall. I should've trusted my instinct and used Moonchild right then. But I didn't. And now look what happened. Another kid gone.

Dare's fury-laden voice plowed over Lon's account of what transpired with Merrin in the restaurant. “What you're telling me, then, is that you don't know jack shit. Merrin may or may not have lied the entire time.”

I'll admit, Lon's account sounded pretty dubious even to me. And I could see that it was killing him to lay the whole messy thing out in front of Dare. It was killing me, too. But all I could think about—what repeated over and over in my head—was that another kid was taken. This was my idea, bringing the kids here. It could've been Mark Dare's kid here tonight; could've been Jupe. In the end, the kid who was taken tonight was innocent, just like the others, but this time it was my fault. I forced Dare into the baiting plan. Me.

Tears welled. I couldn't stop them. I was shaky and
exhausted and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. But I couldn't. I had to fix things. I needed to get home, or someplace private, where I could try to summon Duke Chora again. If he was riding someone right now, and if Bishop had been telling the truth about the possessions being timed and temporary, then maybe I could summon him in a few hours. At dawn. A long shot, but it was all I had.

“This is a disaster,” Dare said, looking between me and Lon. “And tomorrow is Halloween night, so let me tell you what's going to happen. All of the remaining kids are going to be locked up in a room inside my house at noon. I'm putting a hundred armed guards inside and outside that room. And tomorrow night, I'm going to send a hundred more people to patrol the streets of La Sirena. The two of you are going to help them. And you're not going to sleep until you bring me back every single one of the missing kids, and Merrin's head on a fucking pike.”

Lon and I said nothing. Mark Dare turned and shook his head as he walked back to the police officers near the float. His father marched toward me until he stood an inch away. I tried to step back, but he got in my face and spoke in an angry whisper—“I am not happy”—so close I could feel his hot breath on my face. “You have failed me, and you are now mine. I own you. You will spend the rest of your life repaying me for the lives that have been stolen from my community under your watch.”