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tilted slightly. Zurael’s chest tightened as he imagined himself caught in her web. Dark eyes bored into his, unblinking, the thoughts behind them completely hidden.
    There was always a price to pay for coming to the House of the Spider. At the moment, his debt was canceled by the information he’d provided about the summoning.
    Zurael forced himself to lift the teacup to his lips with a steady hand and drain it of its contents. When he set it on the table, Malahel said, “I will read the stones on your behalf if you will accept a task.”
    “What task?”
    Malahel’s eyes flicked to Iyar. Iyar said, “The dark priest you killed was trying to summon an entity from the ghostlands and bind it to a human form. The sigils on the eyes, mouth, the palms and the soles of the feet are meant to give the priest complete control of the being. This is not the first time such a thing has happened in the recent past. There are Djinn lost to us, cursed to wander the human spiritlands because their souls are tainted by the ones they killed, making them ifrit . Their names are unspoken, crossed out in the Book of the Djinn. The House of the Raven would not have them summoned again, bound and used again by the humans.”
    “Nor would I,” Zurael said.
    “We believe the black mass you interrupted is proof a human is in possession of an ancient stone tablet we thought lost,” Malahel said. “Find whoever is in possession of this knowledge and kill them, then bring the tablet to us without delay.”
    Zurael’s eyebrows drew together in consternation and confusion. To accept the task was to remain at risk of being summoned and bound by the human female. “The House of the Scorpion is full of assassins capable of doing what you ask.”
    Malahel’s hands left her knees to float over the table in an all-encompassing gesture. “What you say is true, but none of them were summoned as you were. None of them were brought to the House of the Spider by their destinies.”
    A bow of his head, a gracious acknowledgment of the tea and the company, and Zurael would be free to escape with his question unanswered. But he couldn’t deny the strangeness of finding himself in a place he had rarely visited in centuries of existence.
    “We believe the tablet is in Oakland,” Iyar said. “The city you were summoned to.”
    So he would be near the human female, Zurael thought. “I will accept the task,” he said.
    Malahel clapped her hands. Immediately the door slid open. The male Djinn who’d ushered Zurael into the room stepped through the doorway followed by two females who were also wearing the white clothing that marked a student. Without speaking they doused the charcoal and removed the brazier as well as the table before closing the door behind them.
    Zurael leaned forward to study the slab of clear phantom quartz that had been hidden by the table. It shimmered with secrets, ghost crystals trapped in the larger one. The surface was etched with spider lines, their design a spiral of interweaving patterns he found impossible to untangle.
    Next to the slab was a ceramic bowl with tiny stones, each one polished and perfectly round, their colors mixed. He could fit a hundred of them in his cupped hand. A second bowl contained larger stones, half the size of his smallest fingernail. They were round and polished as well. It was this bowl Malahel picked up.
    She held it out to him. “Choose the stone that will go by your name. When you have found it, place it in the bowl with the ones you will cast.”
    Zurael dipped his hand into the bowl and let the stones flow through his fingers like water. He recognized many of the stones and knew what they signified in the teachings of his own house, but he didn’t make the mistake of thinking they would hold the same meaning in this house. He closed his eyes so the stones would whisper and guide him to the one that would represent him. At the bottom of the bowl he found what he sought and captured it.
    He