Sins of the Demon by Diana Rowland Page A

considered the various things I could possibly ask Rhyzkahl. I was limited to two questions per summoning. And I was obligated to summon him no less than once a month.
But there’s nothing that says I can’t summon him more often than that.
    I mused on that as I changed into the gray silk shirt and pants that I wore for summonings. There were only two problems with the simplistic math of summon-the-demonic-lord-more-often-and-get-more-questions-answered option. First was that summonings took power. The simplest and most common source of power was the natural potency that filled the world—strongest and easiest to draw during the full moon. I’d learned of a way to store that potency, which gave me more flexibility as to when I could summon, but even that had limitations.
    The second problem was that once I summoned the demonic lord to this sphere, he was most certainly not under my control except for the terms of our agreement. One of the reasons my summonings of him were easier was because I didn’t bother attempting to maintain the sort of bindings and protections that could hold a being of his power. Our deal was that he would stay no longer than half a day and would abide by the same judicial laws of this sphere that applied to me.
    That still gave him a shitload of wiggle room, and I didn’t want to push my luck any further than I had to.
    Maybe that was why they used six summoners…to bind Szerain?
But if they’d truly had sufficient protections in place, then how was it that Rhyzkahl had been able to break through the bindings and slaughter them? He’d caught them with their guard down, which seemed to indicate that there’d been no major protections—which would mean that their goal had
not
been to bind Szerain. So, what was it?
    I had plenty of questions for the demonic lord. Most of the time he was the best—and often only—source of information, as long as I knew how to phrase the question. I always had the option to wade through the unorganized nightmare that was my aunt’s library, but right now I had a resource that was, if not at my beck and call, at least available to me—and I’d be a moron not to try and tap it as much as possible while I could.
    And then there was the other reason to summon Rhyzkahl.
    The sex.
    Holy hells, but the sex was fantastic. My usual pattern was to angst over the fact that I had this “demon with benefits” relationship, but a tough talk from Jill not too long ago had managed to shift my thinking on that somewhat. I was a grown-up. I was allowed to enjoy sex. And I damn well intended to.
    Pausing at the door to the basement, I took off my robe and folded it carefully by the door. One of my many quirks was my superstition about changing into my summoning garb: I always walked naked down the basement stairs and got dressed at the bottom. The few times I’d dared to mix it up something had gone wrong with the ritual. It was a damn chilly walk into the frigid basement tonight, but I wasn’t about to start making changes to my routine.
    At the bottom of the stairs, I quickly pulled on the grey silk pants and shirt and, as soon as I was dressed, immediately moved to the other end of the basement to get a fire going in the fireplace. I breathed a sigh of reliefas the warmth began to spread throughout the room then moved on to the task of setting out my implements and lighting the candles. Even though my storage diagram was close to being full of power, I intended to do this the “old school” way and use the natural available potency of the full moon. No sense wasting what was stored, and this way I still had plenty of power in reserve in case I needed to summon another demon in the next few days.
    And with everything that had happened today, I had a feeling I’d be wanting to do just that.
    I didn’t need to make any significant changes to the large diagram that dominated the center of the room. Still, I checked it carefully to make sure the symbols were crisp and