“You’ve seen that before,” I said quietly. “It was in your safe in your garage, wasn’t it?”

“Where’s the rest of the letter?”

“Destroyed before I could read it. Where did it come from, Uncle Jack?”

“It was tucked in the front of the grimoire.” He stared down at the two pages of his sister’s handwriting. “I guess I’ll start from the beginning, so you can understand.”

“The beginning of what?”

“Demonica.”

Amalia and I exchanged bewildered looks.

“Your mother wrote it right here. We were the first … the first summoners.”

Silence settled across the room.

“Anthea Athanas.” He leaned back in his chair. “The very first sorceress to ever summon a demon, and the mother of all Demonica magic. Our family has carried the grimoire for millennia, recopying it every few centuries. All twelve demon names are from her original grimoire. All summoning rituals are based on her original spells.”

The first summoners … my ancestors were the original summoners? We had invented Demonica?

“Anthea trained her children and several apprentices in summoning and gave them each a demon name. Over the generations, her descendants spread Demonica to other sorcerers, revealing more names but keeping the best, most powerful names to themselves. These days, only a handful of summoners know the Second and Third House names, and the First House was lost in the early 1900s …”

“Until you got the grimoire,” I growled.

“The widespread use of the other names devalued them overtime—as much as a demon name can be devalued,” he continued as though I hadn’t spoken, “and acquiring the rare first three Houses became a Holy Grail for other summoners. The Athanas family was too famous, reputed to be the only summoners with all twelve names. The others hunted us, and the Athanas summoners began to die out.”

Those who covet power nearly wiped our family out of existence, my mother had written in her letter.

“By the second World War, the Athanas family was down to three. Diandra, your great-grandmother, fled Albania and dropped the Athanas name. She emigrated to North America, married a sorcerer, and decided the only way to hide the grimoire was to give up summoning entirely.”

“But you’re a summoner,” Amalia blurted. “And you want me to be one too.”

“By the time Sarah and I were born, our family had shifted away from not just Demonica, but Arcana too. Sarah could barely create a simple artifact and devoted her time to translating grimoires for other mythics.” He sat quietly, the seconds sliding into a full minute. “I wasn’t satisfied with that. I wanted to be a powerful summoner like our ancestors. I wanted riches and recognition, not obscurity. We didn’t need to bring back the Athanas name or flaunt all twelve Houses, but we could still become summoners.

“Our parents wouldn’t even consider it, but Sarah and I used to talk about it. She didn’t care about money, but she wanted to translate the entire grimoire—which hasn’t been done since before Diandra’s time—and learn our family’s history. We imagined summoning a demon from each House and being the first humans in centuries to see all twelve lines.”

My head spun, my mouth dry and heart thudding loudly.

“When your grandma died, Sarah inherited the grimoire. I was already secretly apprenticing with a summoner, and Sarah began translating it the day she got it.”

He let out a long breath. “I don’t know what changed her mind. A few months later, she told me we couldn’t use it. She said we couldn’t summon demons, any demons, and that we had to lie low and protect the grimoire.

“I was furious … this was my dream. I asked her to give me a name, any name, so I could start my career. She refused. She wouldn’t explain why, only that the grimoire was too dangerous and we couldn’t attract attention to ourselves. She switched to a sleeper guild a few weeks later and stopped practicing magic entirely.”

“You always told me she was a summoner and had cheated you out of your fair inheritance,” Amalia said accusingly.

“Every Athanas descendant is a summoner, whether they practice or not. And I did feel like I’d been cheated.” His guilty stare turned to me, and I frowned back at him—then realized why he looked so ashamed.

“You …” A sick feeling washed over me. “You kept my inheritance from me as revenge, didn’t you? You were punishing me for what you thought my mom had done to you.”

He cringed, then sighed bitterly. “Sarah and I were no older than you two girls are now when we went our separate ways. She said as long as I insisted on practicing Demonica, she couldn’t associate with me. I said as long as she refused to share the grimoire, I didn’t want anything to do with her. We went on with our lives for years and years, then …”

“Then you got her letter,” I guessed.

“And she died.” He rubbed a hand over his greasy forehead and stubbly hair. “The grimoire was finally mine. I could take my career to the next level and become a famous summoner like I’d always wanted. And, of course, I would protect the grimoire too. It would be safe with me …”

“You tried to sell the First House name to Red Rum,” I pointed out angrily. “How was that protecting the grimoire?”

“That was a mistake. A stupid, greedy mistake. Robin, I thought the grimoire had been forgotten. I never thought anyone would tie me and your mother to the legends.” He exhaled unsteadily. “But I’d already made my biggest mistake, long before I ever touched the grimoire.”

I stared at him coldly. “What was that?”

“Claude,” he whispered.

My heart felt like a block of lead, weighed down by sickening trepidation that had no outlet; the terrible consequences had already played out.

“I don’t know if he was already searching for us when he befriended me years ago, or if he heard me complain about my sister cheating me out of our family’s priceless Demonica grimoire.” He gripped the arms of his recliner, knuckles white. “He never asked about the grimoire or Sarah. How could I have guessed it? Even after … even after Sarah …”

Uncle Jack buried his face in his hands and a hoarse sob wheezed in his throat.

“He killed my parents, didn’t he?” My throat was so dry the words hurt. “Claude killed my parents.”

Uncle Jack lowered his hands from his face, his eyes damp and haunted. “I never suspected him, not until the demon escaped last month. He demanded the grimoire, and when I refused, he tried to force me to give it up.”

Amalia folded her hands together in her laps, fingers squeezing tightly. “I’m surprised he didn’t kill you.”

“He didn’t know where the grimoire was. I never let him near it, you see. I copied individual pages and sent them to him. He’s never seen the actual book.”

Well, at least Uncle Jack had been smart about one thing. I unclenched my jaw before my molars cracked, pain and grief and fury forming a maelstrom in my lungs.

“I’ve been hiding here ever since,” Uncle Jack said heavily. “I knew he’d be watching you, Amalia. I didn’t want to give him any reason to think you knew where to find me.”