Page 5

The Conversation Turns to Demons

“O h my gosh, I’m so full. I’m stuffed!” Cindy declared to everyone else’s cheers and agreements. Various empty plates were pushed back, and more than one belly was being rubbed with sat isfaction.

“Okay, spill it. Did you sell your soul for your caterer tonight?” Chri s laughed.

“Oh for God’s sake, Chris! That is not appropriate,” Charlie chided, slapping his husband with the end of a napkin.

“Do people even do that anymore?” one of Helena’s office workers, whose name was completely escaping her at the momen t, asked.

Helena felt like she would throw up at an y minute.

“I knew a guy from high school who apparently summoned a demon so he could get a promotion at work,” Charlie said to which Chris laughed. “It’s not funny. He went to jail and everything just for attempting to su mmon one.”

“Yeah, but that’s like going to jail for marijuana use or something. I mean, sure it’s illegal, but everyone does it, right? I mean, in college?” another office work er asked.

“And now we all know more about Cheryl than we did before,” someone said, and the table laugh ed again.

“We sometimes get people in the ER for demon summoning,” Cindy said soberly. “It is very serious. All kinds of things can go wrong, not just with the summoning itself which usually involves blood, but if you don’t bind the demon correctly… people have died from being disemboweled. It’s horrendous.” She took a sip of her wine.

Helena couldn’t help but glance over at her kitchen door. Binding? She hadn’t done anything of the sort, and she felt sweat at the lower part of her back tickling. An image flashed through her mind of the demon bursting forth through the door, picking Cindy up by the neck, and chopping her head off with an enormous cleaver.

It didn’t happen, and the conversation pulled her atten tion back.

“So you’ve really seen someone who’s been attacked by a demon?” someone was ask ing Cindy.

She nodded. “Yes. Some asshole summoned one to get revenge on his girlfriend who dumped him for another man. It killed both her and the new boyfriend, then turned on the guy. Tore his arm off before it could be sent back. Guy died on the table from shock and bl ood loss.”

A pall fell over the table.

“Well, that was a scintillating conversation. Let’s never speak of it again!” Charlie intervened, and this time everybody listene d to him.

“Sorry, Helena. I didn’t mean to imply that you would do such a thing. The caterer seems very nice and very human,” Chris amended, nodding towa rd Helena.

“Oh! No, it’s fine. It was just a compliment, right?” Helena agreed, relieved to be getting off the subject.

“I saw a de mon once.”

The statement froze the table, and all eyes slid over to Scarlet. Yosef sitting next to her paused as well, his wine glass halfway to his mouth before he dropped his head and shook it in despair.

Scarlet didn’t seem to notice or care if she did. With a tricky, conspiratorial smile, she leaned her elbows onto the table, lacing her fingers together in front of her. “He was gorgeous.”

There was an intake of breath around the table. “An incubus?” a voice aske d in awe.

“The most dangerous demon known to woman, yes,” Scarlet said, relishing her command of the room. Her eyes grew distant as she stared into the past. “And he was everything they say. Tall, dark, otherworldly. ‘Beautiful’ wouldn’t capture what he was. Still a man in shape. In every shape. And he smelled…” Then Scarlet seemed to wake up from the dream she was building, seeing her captive, breathless audience. “There is a reason incubi and succubi are the most commonly summoned of all the demonspawn,” s he purred.

Chris licked his lips. “And … what was he like?”

Scarlet blinked onc e. “Like?”

Chris shifted in his seat and Charlie planted his head in his hand.

“Yeah,” Chriscontinued since no one was going to bail him out. “ You know.”

Scarlet smiled predatorily, looking a bit demonish herself. “Why dear boy, I wasn’t the one who summoned him, of course. But let me assure you, demonic sex is just as tragic as the rest of it. It robs your self of the energy of life, and nothing is ever right again. Nothing ever tastes right, touch from normal humans feels like numb pawing, and it spoils any other delight the world has to offer. All the victims are left with an insatiable craving for their lover, and they will do anything t o get it.”

“Like having sex on ecstasy?”

“Worse,” Scarlet assured. “They destroy everything you were and everything you could be and leave a hollow shell screaming out for a memory of what they had done. Incubi kill just as effectively if not more cruelly.”

Just then the kitchen door opened as the demon caterer backed into the room, carrying a tray laid out with several bowls of chocolate mousse cake. He paused when he encountered the tension in the room.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Did something happen with the food?”

“No! The food was delicious,” Helena said, jumping in and chorused by her guests, who also agreed with her sentiment, all worried they had offended him. “That’s the… uh problem. We all thought it was too good to be … earthly made,” she said adequately, if a wkwardly.

The demon sniffed at that, the human face he wore truly hiding his secret be neath it.

Just imagine he’s real. Just imagine he’s human. He’s human. He’s human, Helena repeated in her mind as she stood up and came over to him as natural as if he had been human. Because he was. He was human .Totally.

“Let me help you with that,” she offered and took up two of the small bowls with cake upon it. They were beautiful sculptures, chocolate cake layered with mousse cream, each cut into different shapes. They were all proportionally the same size and topped with lattices of chocolate that were already sweating cond ensation.

“These are beautiful,” Cindy chimed as Helena set plates before her and Scarlet simultaneously. Her friend turned back to the demon. “Really, this is just gorgeous. It just got us talking about demons and demon summoning, you know, because your food is honestly too good to be true.”

Again, the demon sniffed at that. “Demon summoning is a stupid practice,” he declared.

Helena almost dropped a plate of cake on to Chris.

“Yes, I think that is the conclusion we have all reached this night,” Scarlet declared and everyone nodded. Yosef held up his glass for more wine, and everyone dug into the dessert, turning the conversation to safe r topics.

The conversations lingered long after the plates were cleared and the last sip of wine w as drunk.

“Well, I don’t know about you youngsters, but while I have had a lovely evening, I must be the first to make a graceful exit,” Scarlet declared, standing up from the table. All the males leapt to their feet in a surprising show of old-fashioned manners, and Yosef came around to offer his arm to his employer, which she took with the grace of a Duchess. “All of you, sit, sit! Enjoy the rest of your evening. Our host seeing me out is more tha n enough.”

Everyone offered good-byes and platitudes. Chris even raised his empty glass in salute and Helena did just that: escorted her guest of honor to the door. Yosef went and fetched the arm crutches she had brought from next to Helena’s coat rack while Scarlet turned to Helena, setting her hand on the younger wom an’s arm.

“Come talk to me in the morning,” Scarlet said softly. “I have an idea I’d like to discuss with you.”

A flutter of excitement tickled inside Helena’s chest. Was this it? Were “big things” going to happen for her at t he office?

“Absolutely, I would love to,” she said ef fusively.

Scarlet nodded, satisfied by her barely contained reaction. “You did good tonight, my girl. I’ve had my eye on you awhile, and I think it’s time we did something useful with you.”

She gracefully took her crutches then and turned as Yosef opened the door for her, exiting without anything further. Yosef, for his part offered Helena a wink and a brief, “Thank you for dinner,” and then he was gone right behind her, reshouldering his bag of mysterious things. She made sure the door was shut beh ind them.

Helena floated all the way back to the table.

“Well?” Cindy asked as soon as she came into sight. All the faces turned to Helena exp ectantly.

“I think I can … cautiously say,” she paused for her own dramatic effect, letting the smile take over her face, “that my first dinner was a success.”

Cheering went up around the table, and Helena let herself giggle for the first time that evening.

Shortly after, everyone else left, the dam already broken by Scarlet. Her coworkers didn’t seem jealous, only speculative about what the meeting with their mutual boss could be about. Charlie dragged Chris out, who didn’t seem to really feel the effects of the wine he’d consumed until he stood up and it all went to his head. Cindy lingered the longest, insisting on helping with the dishes, but the demon had already whisked them away to the kitchen and so a quick argument about how tired she really was after doing so many shifts without a weekend convinced her to g et going.

The quiet felt thunderous as soon as the door shut behind her friend and her du ffle bag.

The night was over, but it wasn’t over yet.