Page 10

It Got Weird

H elena stared at her to-do list in frustration. She had a dozen caterers waiting for her to make calls and start setting up tastings, but she had been avoiding this task the most. She looked at their portfolios, flipped through their websites, and checked out their online videos. Perfect credentials and prideful mission st atements.

And there on her kitchen counter next to where she had propped up her computer sat her grandmother’s cookbook.

She hadn’t been able to make herself put it away, nor could she dare to cook anything else out of it. Like she had a dozen times before, she laid her hand on the stained cover. After a minute of that, she flipped it open slowly and fingered her way to the back pages. There in her grandmother’s script was the spell to summon Rafferty.

Don’t ever summon me again. She could practically hear his stern voice war ning her.

She closed the book firmly and picked up h er phone.

“You’re just setting up appointments. It’s no big deal,” she assured herself. Yet, she only got three numbers in before she canceled the call.

Moving so she didn’t have time to stop herself, Helena picked up the book, turning to face the middle of her kitchen. It had been two weeks since she had first summoned the demon. Two weeks of washing her floor according to his instructions with the vinegar, lemon, allspice, and soda. There wasn’t a trace of the summoning circle left that the naked eye could see. There was no way this wo uld work.

“Stir once and tap three times, spin widdershins, and spit your tongue, take a deep breath, and say three times, ‘Tribblespins, tribblespins, tribblespin…” She waited with a hel d breath.

Nothing happened.

“Okay, I suppose I needed to do the things in the poem, too? I think I did bite my tongue the first time…” she said, looking down at t he pages.

The smell hit her first, then a crackling sound called her attention back to the floor. To her amazement, the blackened lines of the circle re-emerged from the floor, burning upward as if someone was holding a million cigarettes to a piece of paper all at once, reburning a pentagram and other symbols into her tile. Soft, eerie whispers seemed to dance among the hissing crackle and then the whole thing flared. Helena wasn’t sure what happened next because she had to close her eyes and look away, but then the overwhelming burning was gone. Slowly, she lifted her face from the crook of her arm where she had shielded her eyes and looked at the uncanny form kneeling in th e circle.

Oh crap. She did it again.

Immediately, she felt revulsion for the thing there. Everything about it felt wrong, but she ignored the feelings. She knew what she was doing, and it was too late for reg rets now.

Slowly, the creature lifted his head. His eyes seemed to struggle to focus on her at first, but then they narrowed to hardness before closing entirely. The creature sighed and flexed his wings in a show of irritation. “How can I serve you, mistress?”

“I’m so sorry about this. I know what you told me, but—”

“How can I serve you, mistress?” he growled out, his eyes flashing hot with anger. Then he closed them, his face going still, as if he were mastering himself. “How may I serve you, my mistress? State what you desire me to do, and I will state the price for that service.”

“I… I don’t want anything from you,” He lena said.

He wafted his wings in irritation. “It is pointless to demur now. Just state what you want.”

“I… Well, I wanted to t hank you.”

“You would have thanked me best by never summoning me again.”

“I know that’s what you said, but I mean, just hear me out, okay? I was just sitting here, and I’m supposed to call all these caterers for this new job I have, and I kept thinking—”

“That you want me to cater this big important event for you. Yes, I see,” Rafferty said, clearly exa sperated.

“No!” Helena held up her hands. “No, I don’t want you to do that. I can hire another caterer. It’ll be fine, seriously. But I just… I just kept thinking about you still in hell, and here I’m sitting with everything I’ve ever wanted in the world—all because of you. What you did for me was a miracle.”

He stood there stunned a moment, his hands loose at his sides and his face relaxed as he took in what she was saying. “I’m not a good … being, Helena. I deserve to be wh ere I am.”

“Yeah, but … can’t you take a v acation?”

The sound that came out of him alarmed Helena at first; it sounded like gravel grinding in a blender. Then she realized it was laughter. He lifted his great hands tipped with black nails and covered his face as if he couldn’t bear the hu mor of it.

She chuckled herself a li ttle bit.

Finally, the noise died down as he dropped to sit on the ground, his wrists resting on his upturned knees, his apron covering exactly enough. “A vacation? F rom hell?”

“Yes,” she said, latching on to his opening. She sat down on the floor as well, crisscrossing her legs. It was only when she settled that she realized that she had dropped just outside his circle. She didn’t know if that meant anything, but she i gnored it.

He leaned forward to fold his thin, long legs underneath himself, mirroring her. “I can’t stay here. Even just being summoned comes with a cost. It’s just often baked into our final price of service.”

“Well, okay, how much does it cost to have you here?” Helena asked. “We can work this out.”

He leaned forward and dropped his face into his hand. “Why are humans always such idiots? You always think you can just trick the system. The system is designed for your tricks. It counts on you believing you are smarter than it.”

“Will you just answer the question?” Helena was getting exa sperated.

He reached his opposite finger and tapped his nail against his head. “This takes energy to maintain.”

“What does?” she asked, getting fr ustrated.

“My body!” he growled. “This body on th is plane –”

She held up her hand. “Wait, slow down. Your body… why would your body cost anything to be here?”

“I’m trying to tell you!”

“You’re not explaining it v ery well!”

“It’s because… because…” He flicked his wings out, and she wondered why this was such a struggle for him to talk about. “The dead are not supposed to return to this world once they’ve died. It’s a fundamental law of this plane of existence, and my very presence violates it. In order for me to be here, this circle made a body for me to inhabit, and it’s a twisted one from one like yours that was created n aturally.”

Helena blinked at the implications of t hat idea.

“So you’re … actua lly dead?”

“When I became a demon, yes, my mortal body died.” Raffer ty nodded.

Helena blinked at that. “You we re a man?”

“I was an idiot who thought he could trick the demon he made a deal with, and now I am one of the infernal creatures, which is why I didn’t want you to get involved.”

“But I’m not involved,” Helena protested. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to help you.”

“Look you want the whole laid out truth—here it is.” He leaned forward to look her directly in the eyes. The fire in them hypnotized her, and she couldn’t move. They were like pools opening up to swallow her, and the eerie, wrong feeling crawled along her skin, urging her to tear it off to stop it. “The only way you can keep me here for any extended amount of time is to make a contract with me. What I’m supposed to do then is get you to sign away yourself to me in exchange for something you think will make you happy, and then when I do that, I pull you down into hell with me, in order to move up in the demonic hierarchy. Okay? Then you get unleashed to do the same, all the while suffering for your sins here on earth. Is that what you want , Helena?”

Helena wanted t o scream.

She could feel every horror he described, the deep terror of an existence that was nothing but pain, nothing but unreality. If only she cou ld scream!

He closed his eyes, finally releasing her from his hold. She found that she could move again. Terrified, she pushed away from him, sliding across the floor until her back hit the front of her oven. Desperately she rubbed at her arms to chase away the creepy crawling sensation. For a moment, she thought she would throw up.

“What did… did you do to me?” she choked out, her tongue feeling t oo thick.

“Gave you a taste of what you’re asking for because apparently you need the point spelled out. Now send me back and don’t ever summon me again.” He settled back from her and pulled his knees up against his chest. His wings framed his form, making him seem like a dark shadow sitting in the middle of he r kitchen.

She felt a powerful urge to attack him. To destroy this unholy thing that had violated her. It was terrifying, and she knew he was there to harm her.

The primal instincts dragged her to her feet, and she scrambled for the dirty frying pan she had left on her stove from breakfast. She lifted it up, feeling mighty and righteous with her weapon, prepared to smash it down onto the demon be fore her.

The demon closed its eyes an d waited.

Helena battled with herself. It would be so easy to give into it. She wanted to so badly, and it would feel so good to hit him with h er weapon.

“This isn’t… no!” she shouted and threw the pan. It soared through the air and crashed through the glass doors leading out to her ba ck porch.

She dropped to her knees, panting, struggling to make sense of what had just happened. “That’s not who I am!” she shouted.