Page 15

Almost Got Sucked In

H elena blinked at him, completely surprised. “How… you could hear me from all the way in the kitchen?”

He threw a hand at her. “This is why you should never have summoned me to begin with, for hell’s sake! You have no idea what you’re freaking doing. Of course I can hear you. I can hear your voice anywhere in the universe; that’s how you can summon me. You call for me, and I have to come trotting like a good little show pony and make you tea and crumpets while you bleed your damn soul out for something as stupid as a g ood meal!”

“I… I don’t even know what a crumpet is,” Helena said in a sma ll voice.

“That’s not my freaki ng point!”

Helena held up a hand. “Okay, what I’m hearing is you want to go back?” she said carefully.

“Wh at?! No!”

“Then why are you screami ng at me?”

“I don’t want to go back!” he said, pacing back and forth in front of the door to th e kitchen.

“Okay, then… what are you saying?” she said, struggling to stay calm.

“You’re not stupid. I can see that you aren’t stupid, so why are you acting so damned stupid?” he growled, pressing his fists into his temples.

“Rafferty, stop pacing,” Helena ordered, realizing s omething.

He stopped mid-pace, his body calming as he obeyed her command. He wasn’t happy, but there seemed to be a “rightness” to his expression, like he was a little bit relieved that she had finally figured out s omething.

“Okay, please don’t get mad while I work this out,” Helena said. “Alright?”

His eyes slid over to her so he was looking at her askance. Then he crossed his arms and grunted.

“Am I correct in saying that when a person summons a demon, that demon must obey whatever commands they are given by the summoner, including rules about what they can or c annot do?”

“Yes. Or they incur more cos mic debt.”

The implications of that rang out for Helena and why so many people would be tempted into doing what she initially had done acci dentally.

“So… are there people who just summon demons for the power trip of having someone else under their control?”

He dropped his gaze, basically confi rming it.

“Wow, demon magic is m essed up.”

“Exactly what I have been trying to establish with you since the moment we met,” he said, now lifting his eyes as if invoking the higher powers to give him strength. Though since such a thing was probably not possible, Helena assumed it was an old habit of his from when he had be en human.

“See, this is why you are so confusing,” Helena said, pulling out one of her dining room chairs so she could sit down. “You’re a demon—I get that. Your job is to try to rob me of soul, life energy, and whatever the third thing you said was so you can improve your own situation. I get that. But then you keep trying to save me from all this, even though it is completely against your best interests, and as a demon, you seem to be insisting that a ‘demon’ would never do such a thing.”

He paused for a moment, then pointed out, “Unless that was part of my scheme to get you to actually trust me, by making a big show of trying to save you and then definitely skin you for all you’r e worth.”

God, she hoped he was being metaphorical. “Is that what you’ re doing?”

“No,” he turned and started a slower version of his pacing. “But that is also what I would say, right? You can’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust me. I’m a demon.”

“Like I said, you don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“You know, I could say the same thing about you,” he shot back. “Look, if you knew a tenth of the horrible things I’ve done as a human, never mind as a demon, you would not be this ki nd to me.”

Helena scrunched up her nose at that. “Why would the things you’ve done have any bearing on how I choose to t reat you?”

Rafferty’s mouth dropped open at that question. “What are you? A freaki ng saint?”

Sighing, Helena shook her head. “I’m just trying to help you, and you’re making it really di fficult.”

“You can’t help me. No one can,” Rafferty snarked and pulled out a dining chair for himself to sit down upon. He let his gaze drift over the myriad of dishes, then picked something off of one of the plates, a piece of pie crust on what looked like a kind of pot pie and put it in h is mouth.

Curious, Helena asked, “What does it tas te like?”

“Ashes,” he muttered.

“And that’s everything you eat? Ashes a nd dirt?”

He shook his head. “Just ashes. Dirt actually tastes like something and not all of it bad.”

She lifted her han d to him.

He eyed it suspiciously. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

“Why not? You can taste it if you do,” she said.

His lips thinned again. She waggled her fingers at him, temptingly. “Come on. You know you want to,” she pushed with a wicked gleam in her eye.

Finally, he grasped her hand, his larger fingers lacing between hers, and they both picked up a fork from the small pile of silverware he’d stuck amongst the dishes. As soon as the bite hit her mouth, Helena squealed. And t hen spit.

“Oh my God! That is so awful!” she declared, her horror amplified because of her expectation that it was going to ta ste good.

“Oh yes,” Rafferty said, chuckling as he chewed. “That is some nasty shit.” He cut another bite and stuck it into his mouth. “Oh that is perfect ly awful.”

“Then why are you still eating it?” Helena cried, releasing his hand to go to her kitchen to get something to drink.

“Because it’s not ashes,” he said, laughing, and stuck the fork in again.

“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to have some more of that French Toast sandwich.”

“I think I added too much of something, but I can’t put my finger on what yet. Definitely not enough salt,” he added.

Helena shook her head unable to suppress a smile as she ducked her head into the fridge to grab a cold can of bubble water. As she turned, she spotted her cat, Pooka, whom she hadn’t really seen in days. The little thing was crouched down on the ground, staring while her tail flicked slowly back and forth, her yellow-green eyes wide.

“Hey Pooka, what’s wrong?” Helena asked. Then, just on the edge of her hearing, Helena thought she heard whispers. Shutting the fridge and cracking the can, she looked all around, trying to pinpoint what it was she heard. Taking a step back, the circle burst to life beneath her feet. The black lines reappeared and began to emit a stinging smoke. Helena got a big whiff of it into her lungs and immediately started to cough. The whispering became louder and painfully insistent, making her wince as she dropped her nearly full can of water so she could press both hands against her ears. It didn’t help though. The whispers still got through, drowning out all othe r sounds.

Rafferty burst through the door as Pooka yowled past, running away for all she was worth, and stopped just on the outside edge of the circle. It affected him too as he flickered back to his demonic self. The closeness of him to the circle was like adding lighter fluid to an already burning flame. Helena couldn’t stand any more. The world around them felt like it had tilted and just wouldn’t right itself. Losing her balance, she fell over. Curling down onto her side, she tried to close eyes against what was happening, but nothing she did stopped it. The whispers gre w louder.

“I pay the debt!” Raffer ty barked.

Instantly, the whispering and pain stopped. Everything was impossibly quiet after all that noise. The pain was gone, and Helena could lift her head again. She felt exhausted, like she had been drinking all night. The circle still burned in the tile, but it had stopped smoking, leaving only a bad taste in the back of h er throat.

Beside her, a pair of knees hit th e ground.

She jumped, making a small yip sound.

A hand dropped next to the knees, and a wing appeared over her.

Rafferty panted, fully back in his demo nic form.

“What happened? What did you do?” she croaked out, her tongue feeling large in h er mouth.

“I paid the cosmic debt,” he ground out, voice full of pain. “You’re going to be alright now.” Then he leaned forward, resting his forehead and the curved bend of his backward sweeping horns on the ground before laying his wings over himself, like he was trying to hide.

Helena pushed herself back up to sitting, wrapping her arms around her legs. The wrongness feeling was back, but she didn’t pay it any mind. She knew it was just Rafferty. She stared at his form as it pulsed with hi s breath.

“Are you alright?” she made her self ask.

“No,” he growled.

Her vision became cloudy, and Helena rubbed the grit from her eyes. “I don’t understand. How did you pay the debt?”

“If, for whatever reason, a demon cannot get someone else to take the debt for them, the cosmic imbalance will burn us away instead. Permanently. We have no bodies, no memories… all we have left is souls.”

Helena’s eyes went wide as she realized what that meant. “And when that is all gone…”

His wings tightened around his body ref lexively.

“But Rafferty… why did you do that?” Hele na asked.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.