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.”