Kimerion smiled. “You’ve inherited Asmondai’s head for politics. He must be pleased. Yes, the exposure of supernaturals would cause trouble. But there’s trouble, and then there’s trouble. If all demons would love to see it happen, it would have happened already.”

“So you’re voting nay?” I said.

“Asmondai is.”

“And you don’t disagree enough to vote against your party platform.”

“It’s not so much a matter of party politics as personal politics,” Adam interceded. “You have more to gain personally by helping me stop a campaign that Asmondai would like to see stopped. Which brings us right back to Savannah’s original point. You have something to gain by setting us on the trail of these people. So why should we believe you?”

“The house is equipped, as you saw, with security cameras. Walter’s killers were clever enough to disable most, but there’s one they missed. You’ll find the recording device in Walter’s bedroom.”

Adam nodded. “Okay, we’ll get that later. Right now, I’m more interested in which demon the activists wanted to summon.”

“If Alston went through all that”—I pointed at the mutilated corpse—“he really didn’t want to summon him.”

“More likely he couldn’t,” Adam said. “No matter how pissed off a summoned demon might be, he isn’t going to do anything worse to him than that.” He walked over to the books scattered on the floor and picked up a journal. “So which demon wasn’t Alston skilled enough to summon?”

“You could ask me,” Kimerion said.

“For a price.” Adam leafed through the journal. “I’ll limit my questions to you, thanks.”

“In general a wise practice, but I’m inclined to be helpful here. Walter was an expert. If a demon can be summoned, he could do it. Some are more difficult—and dangerous—than others but, as you pointed out, at a certain point during his torture, I’m sure he would have tried. And it doesn’t appear that he did.”

“But if he could summon any demon . . . ,” I said.

Adam shook his head. “Any demon that can be summoned. That was the problem. They wanted him to summon the unsummonable. That’s why he set an impossible price on the job. He couldn’t do it, but he didn’t want to admit it. Bad for business.”

“What demon is—?” I stopped. “Lucifer. They wanted Lucifer.”

Contrary to Christian mythology, Lucifer is not the king of the demons. He’s just another lord demon, like Asmondai, Balaam, and Satan. But Lucifer is, as the story goes, a fallen angel, and that makes him unique. For one thing, he can’t be summoned.

“That might be why Hope’s having weird visions,” I said. “If someone’s trying to contact her father, she could be catching the signals.”

“Lucifer’s daughter is having unusual visions?” Kimerion said. “Of what?”

Adam told a little and withheld a lot, which is the best way to deal with demons. Show them a card, but not your whole hand. The last card that he did reveal surprised me.

“Savannah,” he said. “She’s having visions of Savannah.”

Kimerion hesitated. Then he said, “She strongly resembles her mother. I believe it was Eve Levine that Lucifer’s daughter was seeing. Was there any . . . associated imagery? Possibly . . . celestial?”

I thought of the sword.

Adam shook his head. “No, it was definitely Savannah. Hope knows her. So why would she be dreaming of Savannah?”

“There are possibilities. I can say no more than that right now, but I will also say that I’m quite certain she is mistaken. There is a role for Eve Levine in this, and if Lucifer’s daughter is seeing her, that may confirm a suspicion.”

“What suspicion?”

This he wouldn’t answer. Just deflected until Adam switched gears and asked why the activists would be trying to contact Lucifer.

Again, Kimerion only circled the question. He knew something. He wasn’t telling us. Adam didn’t pursue it, and I was wondering what the hell he was doing when he said, “One last thing. Savannah’s magic has disappeared.”

That got Kimerion’s attention. “Disappeared?”

Adam told him the whole story, leaving nothing out, then asked, “Do you know who’s responsible?”

“No.”

“I’ll pay for an answer.”

I protested, but Adam cut me off, and repeated the offer.

“Then that is an answer I wish I had,” Kimerion said. “A chit from Asmondai’s son would be most useful. Will the offer stand if I return with the solution?”

“No,” I said. “We’re not—”

“The offer stands,” Adam said. “But I’m not making any bargain before you have the answer. Come back when you do, and we’ll negotiate.”

Kimerion smiled. “Excellent. I would suggest, though, that the question to consider is not who took the girl’s powers but why they were taken.”

A blast of hot wind, and Alston’s body slumped again as the demi-demon disappeared.

When Kimerion was gone, Adam bent to untie Alston’s legs.

“That was really dumb,” I said.

Adam glanced up. “Excuse me?”

“What you just did. He knew something about my mother and he knew why these guys were trying to summon Lucifer, and you didn’t press him on either, because you were saving up your influence to ask about my powers. I don’t know whether to hug you or smack you. I’m leaning toward the latter, though. Something big is going on here. In the overall picture, my spells—”

“—are the least important issue. However, that was the only matter he was going to help with.” Adam stood. “He stonewalled on the other two. Yes, I could have used my father’s name and pushed him, but he won’t give good answers if he doesn’t want to. Did you see how he reacted when I said your powers are gone? That interests him. That’s what he’ll investigate for us, because it’ll satisfy his own curiosity and earn my favor. As for the rest, we need more before we’ll get anything out of him.” He looked at me. “I do know how to deal with demons, Savannah.”