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He reaches out and pries my wrist from the cat with firm, undeniable, and devastatingly solid grip. He lifts my limp hand and presses it flat against the center of his chest, right over the pink butterfly. A sensation between fever and frostbite courses through my veins, burning and numbing at the same time, alongside the steady, thunderous thump of a heartbeat that’s far too strong to be anything but real.
“—you wouldn’t feel that.”
The silence that follows is deafening, and that’s when the sickening realization finally completes its transit through my gut.
The ritual worked.
But it didn’t bring back the man who used to leave coffee on my nightstand. It brought me this. A creature of silver and fire and brimstone who is currently wearing my clothes and eating my bread.
I’m not just a grieving girl who’s hallucinating. I’m an idiot who accidentally opened a door to Hell instead of one to bring Matthew back.
He releases my hand, letting it fall into my lap.
My head swims, every single part of last night flitting through my mind at a million miles an hour. I don’t know how I could’ve fucked up. I don’t know where I could’ve gone wrong…
“So—I… what do you want from me?” I squeeze my eyes shut, barely resisting the urge to scream. “Demons want things. You want—I don’t know—blood? Souls? Do you need—goats? People sacrifice goats, right? I don’t have any goats, by the way—I live in an apartment, but you already know that—oh, God—don’t hurt Vesper—”
A sharp snap of fingers sounds right in front of my nose. ”Hey. No. Look at me.”
My eyelids burst open.
“Good,” he murmurs, his gaze pinning me in place. “There’s that little brain cell finally checking back into work. Now focus. First of all—goats?” He clicks his tongue, shaking his head with a look of genuine distaste. “I don’t do livestock. They scream constantly and shit wherever they please. I have standards.”
“But I—I just—”
He reaches out and delivers a sharp jab to my leg with two fingers.
“Ow!” I yelp, jumping in the seat, the sudden movement causing Vesper to dig her claws in deeper to my shoulder.
“There we go. Pain means you’re back in the room. Congratulations. Now. Since you’re clearly determined to catastrophize yourself into a medical emergency, let me spell this out for you in very small, very mortal-friendly words. You are not being eaten. And I’m not here for your soul, your blood, or your theoretical apartment goat.”
I press a fist to my sternum, my shoulders sagging as my breathing finally peters out into something manageable. “So… you’re not going to hurt me?”
He blinks slowly. “That is literally what I just said. Do you listen? Or do the words just get slurped up by that mashed-potato brain of yours and congeal there like leftovers?”
He leans back against the counter, the pink butterfly stretching over his chest as he watches. He’s waiting for a response—I think—but his presence is filling the kitchen, leaving no room for me to breathe, let alone form coherent thoughts.
“Alright,” he says, clapping his hands once with a sound like a gunshot. “We’re moving on. New topic before I spontaneously combust from second-hand embarrassment.”
I stare at him, my mouth dry. The sharp sting on my leg where he jabbed me, and the pin-prick marks from Vesper’s claws the only things keeping me from drifting back into the panic.
He takes a step closer, looming over me. “Seeing as I’m the new guy and you’re my lovely, if slightly unstable, host, let’s try something radical. What do you mortals do for fun? Besides weeping into your tea and summoning things you can’t control?”
My brow furrows. My brain is trying to bridge the gap between eternal damnation and weekend recreation, and the gears are grinding. “Fun?” I whisper. “I—I read? And I cook? I don’t know, I haven’t really been in a hobby headspace since—”
“Reading,” he echoes flatly. “Cooking? Astounding. Be still, my eternal heart.”
He lifts Vesper from my lap, tucking her under one arm. “No recreational disembowelment? No light torture? No midnight hunts? No dancing around the remains of your enemies?”
I shake my head, feeling the last of the blood drain from my face.
“Unbelievable.” He turns and saunters into the living room. “I cross a literal dimension for you, and you’re just a domestic gerbil with a library card.”
I follow him on liquid legs, my knees knocking together. I try to protest, but he’s already waving me off, plonking Vesper onto his lap, propping his silver feet on my coffee table. He grabs the remote and begins cycling through the channels with idle disdain before stopping on a reality dating show.
He leans back, the pink butterfly wings on his chest stretching dangerously wide as he pats the cushion beside him with a little tap. “We are studying your species’ courtship rituals. This is anthropology. Come. Sit. Let’s bond, little summoner.”
I’m about to argue—to tell him exactly where he can shove his anthropology—when a sharp rap against wood echoes through the mindless drone of the TV.
