Page 5 of Hexes From Exes

Zed sighed and shook his head. “Alright alright, have you seen a mage about it?”

“No, I don’t want it getting back to Herschel,” Rick admitted. Trusted mages who employed discretion were hard to come by, but that’s how it was in Anathamea. You needed leverage to get to the top, and if you weren’t at the top, you were at the bottom. Anyone - mage or otherwise - would die to have bad information on one of the revenge demons to leverage. It was a tricky hierarchy that was probably explaining why each generation of demon was weaker than the one before. It used to be that a demon could live to be a few hundred years old, even some of the originals were around for thousands of years. Now? Rick would be lucky to make it to one hundred.

“Fair,” Zed conceded. “Just…maybe after this case take a little vacation? A week, two tops. Go to somewhere tropical, really refresh and unload. I worry about you, man. Someone has to. You’re not taking care of yourself.”

“I’m doing just fine,” Rick said without enthusiasm. Maybe he did need a vacation. Work was becoming more of a stressor than a release like it used to be. Even collecting his magical payment wasn’t sparking his interest like it used to. He was one of the highest earners in the office and was well on the way to replace Herschel should he ever retire. None of it brought him joy, not like it used to. Before he was saving up so that he and Cass could get a nice place, raise a few little demon babies, maybe retire in a few years. Now? What was the fucking point?

“I’ll take your advice, though,” Rick said as he stood, patting Zed on the shoulder. “But I really gotta go, I have work to do.”

Rick slipped from the office, heading the direction of the portal. At the last minute, he adjusted courses, heading instead to his condo where he face planted onto his bed to take another four hour nap.

Chapter Three

Stephanie Porter’s alarm clock went off at 5:30am.

At 5:52am, she was in her car and on the road.

At 6:15am, she was at the yoga studio she frequented, arriving early enough to get a good spot in the room, but late enough not to be stuck talking to the early morning crowd.

At 7:35am, she was back in her car and on her way home.

By 8:45am, she’d showered, eaten breakfast, packed her lunch and snacks and was on her way to her office.

At 9:05am, she sat down at her desk and started her long day of work.

At 12:05pm, she took her first break for a snack - seven double stuffed Oreos and water and realized she hadn’t had any water since she arrived.

At 3pm, she realized she hadn’t had lunch and scarfed down her sandwich while her pasta was heating up in the microwave. She proceeded to burn her mouth on the pasta because she didn’t wait for it to cool down. This altered her mood greatly, because she wanted to swing by her favorite dessert place on the way home to get a cake, and she wouldn’t be able to taste it as well with burnt tastebuds. It was even more frustrating because her sandwich was a little soggy, so the last thing she really tasted was a turkey sandwich on rye bread with mustard and cheddar cheese. Not horrible, but not her creamy pasta with butternut squash sauce.

At 5:05pm, most of the office started to clear out, but she still had the R&D reports to pour through before the presentation tomorrow. She was expected to come to some sort of conclusion about the products and help to tailor the company in which direction to proceed. Did they want to dive down the rabbit hole of liquid collagen, opening them up to a market the team called “internal beauty” - supplements meant to make your outsides beautiful by working on your insides. Or was this too much of a pivot, another market they’d need to corner that would be outside of their niche? Should they instead focus on bringing old ingredient profiles up to date, maybe focus on reworking their proprietary blend for quicker results?

At 7:05pm, she realized she wasn’t going to leave the office in time to get the cake anyway and considered if she should order it to be delivered or just abandon it.

At 8:25pm, she heard a noise that made her look up.

Then she did a double take.

She hadn’t heard her office door open, but she’d been so consumed by her work it was likely she’d tuned it out. It wasn’t a new problem - if someone was speaking to her while she was reading, she couldn’t process both. She also couldn’t listen to music and participate in a conversation at the same time, though that wasn’t as much of an issue in her line of work.

The double take was because there was a tall horned man thing sitting in the chair across from her, his skin a dark red with reptilian scales.

“The cosplay convention is across the street,” she said, once she realized what she was looking at. Her office was in downtown Phoenix and wasn’t too far from the convention center, where a ton of fandom events took place over the year. She’d seen the hordes of people dressed up as various characters and monsters as they headed for the center, she just couldn’t recall if there was one today or not. She didn’t really even know what day of the week it was.

“The what?” said the horned man, looking perplexed at her words.

“The convention center, it’s across the street. I’m not sure how you got all the way up here, but that’s probably what you’re looking for.”

“I’m not a cosplay,” said the horned man, now sounding annoyed. The way he said the word ‘cosplay’ made her think he’d never heard it before. She thought that was the universal term for it, maybe it was now an insult? She’d have to ask one of her younger employees, she was sure they’d know.

“Oh, well, you’re clearly lost,” she said. She considered calling security, because if this guy was dressed as some horned demon thing and he’d managed to get into her office and was sitting there all calm he may be dangerous. What normal person would go to the wrong place, be told they were in the wrong place, and instead of apologizing and leaving, just sit there and stare? His contacts were kinda creepy too - yellow eyes that had slits like a goat. It must be from a comic book, or a video game. Stephanie hadn’t been to any movies lately, so she supposed it could be from some new superhero movie…

“I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” he said confidently, leaning back in his seat.

“You’re not, so I’m going to call security,” she said. For the first time she felt a bit panicked.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Stephanie,” said the horned man. Her hand paused in midair, which had been on the way to grab her phone to page security. She supposed it wasn’t weird that he knew her name. He was in her office, her name was on the damn door.

“What do you want?” she asked, leaning back in her seat. He wasn’t the first pushy man she’d ever dealt with, unfortunately she doubted he’d be the last. If he tried something she had a stun gun in her purse, and she’d gone to a self-defense class a few years ago. She was sure she could remember something or another from it.