Devdan Manor Read Online Free PDF Page A

reach. He didn’t have any strength left. He dropped to his knees.
    A shadow covered him. Ryse, Uryl and Nuall stood over him.
    “Where have you been? I said we would meet back here in three hour.”
    He needed a moment. They had no right to be angry with him for not knowing the time. He couldn’t think of a way tell them this.
    “What?” he managed to roll out.
    “We’ve been back for ages waiting for you,” Nuall said.
    “How am I supposed to tell time if I can’t see or smell outside? I can’t have been gone that long.”
    “Long enough to scare Ryse,” Uryl snapped. “She said there were a lot of strange noises, whispers and screaming from the direction you went. Where do you go? I went through that hallway and didn’t find you.”
    That couldn’t be right. The other end of the hall was the kitchen, which led to a pantry. He hadn’t gone that far. They should’ve found him.
    He struggled to his feet. He needed to see what was on the other side of that tunnel again. Only, Ryse would kill him if he left her.
    “Where did you search for me?”
    “The lounge. Then a series of, what looked like, guest bedrooms,” Nuall answered in a tart voice.
    That was wrong.
    “I followed that tunnel into the kitchen and a pantry.” He held up the jar. “This followed me out.”
    “What nonsense are you spewing?” Nuall asked. “The kitchen is that way.” She pointed to the left wing.
    The jar left his hand. Ryse had taken it.
    “There is a demon trapped in here.”
    She turned the jar over, examining it.
    “I thought so. Those symbols are wards to keep demons in. Probably, old powerful demons have been imprisoned in here,” Cyl said.
    She passed the jar from in hand to the other.
    “It’s warm,” she continued. “They aren’t evil.”
    His sister was amazing. He wished, though, she would spend more time with other demons and less time alone in the library listening to the books talk to her.
    “Let’s see this kitchen,” Uryl said.

    There was no kitchen. They had walked through the passageway. It opened to a lounge surrounded by floor to ceiling empty wooden bookcases and couches fit for only one person. A fireplace large enough to sleep in sat at the back of the room. A cornered off area that looked like a bar stood off to the side. The light fixtures were as lethal looking—like the previous owners were hoping guests would fall and impale themselves. He had never known a period of architecture were people enjoyed pointed and spiked fixtures.
    He knew this place. For some reason, he remembered everything in red.
    “This room is famous.” Nuall said as she walked to the fireplace. “You remember the story in our books. Humans have had the habit of summoning and ensnaring demons for centuries. Somehow, a group of humans managed to get the name of a high-ranking demon and ripped her from her home into a room in the human’s world. She wasn’t happy about it. She returned home but vanished two days later along with her entire household—nine siblings, two parents, a host of servants and some visiting relatives. According to the story, she wasn’t someone who could or would disappear. We still don’t know what happened to her. There are two versions of the story. This room was where the humans had summoned her. In another, this was the last place her family had gathered. ”
    School books taught Valent Devdan’s story as a way of making students practice warding against humans summoning them. The Antuns never had this problem because anti-summoning wards were built into the family mark. Nuall used to become incorporeal for no reason several times a week due to human summoning. She got tired of the interruptions and had a ward tattooed across her back. Wards were expensive. Most people, when they felt themselves being summoned, would start chanting- some used their hands to create protection symbols.
    The Devdan family disappearance was the reason demons started anti-summoning practices.
    Uryl