I called the demon to my workshop (actually the second bedroom of my flat). And of course, he was drunk again.
“Why do you continue to summon me?” The Wholly Evil and Repugnant Dark One, Izealinadi, groaned. It so happens that he also went by Steve. Steve was only about two feet tall, brownish-green, with small stubby wings made of leather on his back, and the wide mouth of a pit bull. His eyes were covered by a reasonably ginormous forehead ridge that would make a Neanderthal mommy proud.
“Why do you continue to do what I ask?” I replied.
“Because you continue to summon me!” He replied angrily. “How did you learn my name in the first place?”
“A little bird told me.” I smirked.
“Again and again with the little bird! IF I EVER FIND THAT BIRD, I WILL RIP ITS HEAD OFF.” He spit. He tore his hands apart imitating ripping a bird limb from limb.
“Now, now. Steve.” I smiled beatifically. “Focus on the problem at hand.”
“And what problem is that, MMMMMMaster?” Getting the word out of his mouth really took some effort. If I ever released Steve he would be gunning for me for eternity. So I guess I will have to try to make him a bud or something.
“The problem, my dear Steve, is that I am completely out of beer.” I waved nonchalantly at the empty six pack carrier on my work table.
“And what can I do about that, MMMMMMaster?”
“I knew that when I met you for the first time, that you really knew what makes a great drink. And that being such a powerful demon, you must get some really good beer.” I said. He eyed me carefully, unsure if he should take it as a compliment.
“Hmmm, maybe.” He admitted.
“And if you were to go fetch me some of that awesome brew, I might be willing to open the circle and let you watch some reality television.”
“Really?!” Steve’s eyes went wide. I could just read the anticipation drip from his ugly comic countenance. You would think Hell would have all the reality TV you could stand to watch (being as horrible as it is), but for some strange reason they were still stuck on mid-1980’s WWF matches down there. I hadn’t the heart to tell any of them that Andre the Giant had died.
“Absolutely. What do you say?”
“How much beer do I need to fetch? Can I drink some by your leave if I do? And how long do I get with the TV?”
“Before you were a demon, you were a lawyer, weren’t you?” I smiled. “Fetch two cases of the finest beer you can. You may have one entire case for your evening, and you can enjoy two hours of any dreck you want to watch while I work. Once the two hours are up, we can renegotiate.”
“Hmmm. I will bring you two cases of the finest beer I can. I get one case and I watch TV for three hours. No renegotiating at the end.”
“Oh, Steve, you dirty haggler of a demon. Two cases, three and a half hours, but renegotiation stays. Final offer.” I wanted the beer, but the renegotiation was what I needed. Tonight I was working on a spell that I needed to stick.
“Fine, fine. Laura Samson, as always, I will honor our agreement. Break the circle.”
I put my toe out and dragged my toenail through the salt. “And do mind the couch, I just had it cleaned.”
He glared at me and with a snort popped out of existence. In hardly any time at all, he popped back with a case of Belgian beer in each hand.
“One for you. One for me.”
“Thank you, my dear. Remote is on the couch. Have fun.”
He grinned like a school boy and flew out to the living room (also my front office) with his case of beer. In a few moments, I heard the TV click on and the soft murmurs of Toddlers and Tiaras. I cracked open a beer of newly acquired Belgian brew, and it was delicious. Steve really knew booze, and this beer was awesome. Back to work.
I slid by my table to the sorting shelves and grabbed another papyrus sheet. It took a lot of hand made papyrus to make a proper cocoon spell. Thankfully, I did not have to learn how to make papyrus, I just had to know a guy (which I did). The cocoon spell was a trick because I had to have three components (easy), two gifts (not easy, but not hard), and one sacrifice (way hard). I did not like just killing things to make my magic work, but that is where Steve would come in. He was a trickster. Being a trickster demon means that the laws of magic where his to bend when he needed to bend them. I laid the papyrus down in the semblance of a square, with a sheet on each side. In the open space in the middle, I put a silver chalice to carry the essence, and four small clippings of nails that I was certain belonged to the werewolf I has hunting. That took care of the components.
Next I opened a small vial of fresh blood from a friend of mine (she was psychic and unfortunately, a heroin addict as well). Psychic blood has a potential energy that I have always loved to use, it made things much simpler. You see, most people think magic is like a recipe or science. You add this to this, eye of frog, finger of newt, some mad cackling over a boiling cauldron, and boom, results! But that was not the case. It was as much art as it was luck. Magic relies on things. Lots of things. So if one little thing is wrong, or missing, or just plain off, your spell is nothing more than another mess to clean up of the worktable. I murmured my binding words over the vial of blood, linking it to the chalice, and the four pieces of paper. I did each one very carefully, not wanting to lessen the power of the bindings by taking shortcuts. You don’t take shortcuts with werewolves.
They are powerful at their weakest, and crazy strong the rest of the time. I underestimated a werewolf once, and it had killed a friend. A mistake that I would not repeat twice. The werewolf that I was hunting had the distinction of being a morgue assistant down at the city medical examiners office. Poor Freddy Howards was in a bad spot, had taken a bite, and now was licking his nether regions every full moon and howling over cat carcasses in the local parks. Not good for tourism for sure.
The cocoon spell was a bit of a gamble. It would form a ball of papyrus that would look like a mummified racquetball. I would have to take said ball and find said werewolf, put my life on the line, and hope that my throwing arm was good enough that I hit poor Freddy before he jumped and made me a meal.
The last gift was a little more tricky since it was old. But I hoped it would work since it had been given to me by the last werewolf. You know, the one that had killed Mary. I had loved Mary like a sister. Well actually more like a girlfriend, but love was tricky. It didn’t know that Mary was going to die, and I didn’t know that love was such an insipid asshole. Once I had tracked down the wolf, and had pumped enough bullets into it to slow it down, it had realized its mistake. As the poor beast laid there dying on the tar roof of his former apartment building, he licked my face to say he was sorry. I had saved that saliva, mixed with my own tears, for a moment like this.
When I could get to the werewolf before he did something really bad. And took the love away from someone else. I poured the concoction into the chalice and said my final binding.
I heard the tv click off and a very drunk Steve fluttered back into my workroom, bumping into the walls. So I was wrong before, he was just mildly inebriated when he arrived, not drunk. Now he was definitely drunk.
“I l… (hic)… love that chubby little girl with the little chubby attitude. She will make a per… (hic)… perfect little chubby demon herself someday.” Steve said.
“Perfect timing, Steve. Now if you please… I would like to renegotiate.”
“Ok. Can I sit down?”
“Of course.”
He fluttered up a few feet and unceremoniously plopped down on the edge of my worktable. Thankfully nothing spilled or moved from their positions. Of course, they wouldn’t, the table was hundreds of pounds of solid ancient Atlantian woodwork. It would outlast me and this demon, most likely.
“I would like you to contribute to this spell.” I waved at the papers and the chalice.
“Ahhhh, cocoon, eh? Looking to trap something big then? Change it to what?” He sniffed.
“A werewolf. Back into a person.” I frowned, watching the demon mentally criticize my handiwork.
“Clever use. I have never heard of that approach before, but then again, I am not that old.”
“How old is not old?” My eyebrow went up.
“I am still a youngling, only a couple thousand years. The chalice has what in it? Smells very tasty.”
“None of your business. But the cocoon requires the final piece.”
Steve nodded and looked me in the eye. “You need a death.”
“I am not going to kill something just to save something. I could just shoot the werewolf in the back of the head and be done with it. I need you to help the last binding.”
“Eh. Going to have to use something. Like that stuff in the chalice. It smells great.” He grinned wickedly, his front incisors come out of his smile.
“No, you have to use something else.” I said sternly.
“Fine. Do you have anything preserved in here? Like a mandrake or something exotic?”
“Um. Yes. Yes I do. Hold on.” I shuffled through a few boxes under the table. I plopped a heavy glass mason jar down in front of him. “Will this work?”
His beady black eyes looked through the jar. “A gryphon fetus. Nice.”
“Yeah, not useful for much though. Don’t know why I have held onto it.”
“For a day like today.” Steve smiled. “It will work. Ready?”
“Ready.” I said.
Steve put the glass jar in the middle next to the chalice, sniffed the tears one more time, touched the four pieces of paper with the drops of blood spattered on them, and I felt the pressure of his own bindings over the top of my own. He looked me in the eye, and I spoke the final binding for death. He spoke his more subtle tricky binding for not-dead, but close.
The result? Everything folded up very nicely, and in a mere moment, there was nothing but a smoking mummified ball sitting on top of an empty silver chalice with an empty mason jar next to it.
“It is done.” Steve grunted. “Now if you will dismiss me, I would like to go pass out.”
I bent over to the salt circle and pulled the candle out. “See you later, Stevie.”
I blew. With the evercandle out, Steve popped out of existence again. He was going to be downright pissed when he wakes up and remembers doing the spell, but not negotiating the terms.
Sucker.