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“You never had to sign anything. The pact was sealed just as soon as you agreed to do me a favor. It’s that simple. And if you violate that pact? Well, there are consequences.”
“Like what?”
I shouldn’t have said that. Belphegor grinned, then snapped her fi
ngers. A spark leapt from her left hand to the right, consuming the contract in a wreath of flames.
“All I did was send it back to my study, mind you. I didn’t burn our pact.” Her smile stretched wider, her fangs wet, and her bangs shifted just then, revealing that horrible crimson eye that hid on her forehead. “In fact, you might say that I just reinforced it.”
Florian clutched his head, then screamed. My heart thumped as I ran towards him, as the veins in his neck bulged from the agony. I wished there was something I could do stop him from feeling whatever pain was burning him from the inside – but then I felt it, too.
I fell to my knees, my eyes bulging out of my skull as an ember began to sear me from inside of my brain. I clawed at my skin, knowing that I couldn’t rake my brain out of my skull, yet still believing in my panicked delirium that it was the only way to make the torture stop.
Despite the screaming agony I still noticed Priscilla shrieking, thumping her chest, then taking off into the trees towards her kitchens. Raziel was suddenly in possession of a massive golden spear, his teeth bared as he poised to strike just feet away from the demon. Artemis’s posture was deathly still as she kept her arrow trained on Belphegor’s face.
“Make it stop,” Artemis commanded. “Or I’ll send you back to your hell in a matchbox.”
Belphegor rolled her eyes. “Ugh. You’re no fun.” She snapped her fingers again.
And just as the pain had come, so did it fade, quick as a flash. I was on all fours, my palms pressed into the ground, my entire body slick with sweat. Florian staggered over to the river nearby, retching and heaving.
“Honor the pact,” Belphegor said, unfazed by the sharp, deadly things pointed at her face and her heart. “Or suffer further consequences. I’ll send instructions to the two of you for how to access my domicile. In the mean time, rest well. You’ll need all your strength for the challenges ahead.”
My fingers dug into the earth, the underside of my nails filling with soil. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
“How charming.” Belphegor chuckled, then turned her head towards the trees. “Ah. There’s my signal to depart.”
She spun in place, her body bursting into a column of crimson flames that dissipated as she faded out of reality. A second explosion erupted at the spot where she had stood, this one coming from an angry, sputtering ball of fire that rocketed from the direction of the trees where Priscilla kept her kitchens. Raziel yelped and dived out of the way, his spear disappearing as it fell from his hands.
Priscilla yowled in fury, the ground thundering as she loped hurriedly towards us. In her hand was a long, gnarled branch. Its tip glowed like an ember, issuing wisps of black smoke. The earth reverberated as she slammed the end of her staff into the ground one final time. Ouch. I felt that in my bones.
“It’s too late, Priscilla.” Artemis disengaged her bow and returned her arrow to her quiver. “Sloth is gone.”
And again, in spite of my suffering and the fact that my body was still rocking with spasms from Belphegor’s psychic assault, I couldn’t control my curiosity. I raised one shaking finger at the wooden pole in Priscilla’s grasp.
“What the hell is that?” I croaked.
“Staff of fireballs,” Artemis said. “Priscilla loves magical weapons. What, where do you think her salary goes?”
3
I pressed the wet towel harder against my forehead, willing the cool compress to work better at wicking away the residual ache of Belphegor’s brain-fire surprise. Seriously, what a huge jerk. My foot dangled off the edge of my bed and I sighed, wishing the world would be just a little bit cooler. Creatio ex nihilo powers be damned, I still couldn’t do a single thing about chilling the air around me.
Belphegor was right about one thing. Artemis’s domicile was pretty hot most hours of the day, set at that sort of tropical climate she liked to maintain, something about how it suited the animals. More like how it suited her, truthfully. It’s like that thing of how an old married couple bickers about the thermostat all day long, except in our case, we were all married to Artemis, and she won the argument, every time.
“Okay, boy,” I said, one hand still damp from pressing the towel to my brow, the other holding my phone out towards the little wooden chest sitting on the floor. “Do like this. Copy this.”
The box creaked as it tilted sideways, stretching and warping, then making a low whimper, very much like a dog.
“It’s okay, boy.” I sighed, dropped my phone onto my chest, then patted the box on its – well, where its head would be. It whined again, this time making a somewhat happier noise. It was hard to tell with Box.
Super creative, I know, but that was the name I settled on for the mimic who wanted to come home with us, that night out at the warehouse. And so far, so good. The thing hadn’t tried to eat parts of my body in the night, though he did enjoy a steadily omnivorous diet.
Actually, that might be slightly inaccurate. Box liked raw meat, and berries, and nuts – and planks of wood, and crumpled paper, and basically everything else I tried to feed him. You couldn’t really tell from a casual glance, but Box’s mouth was precisely at the seam where his lid opened. Inside were just rows and rows of enormous, wickedly sharp teeth.
As for why it was a him – I don’t know. It just felt right. He seemed to respond really well to “Good boy,” but then again, he also really liked the name Box, so maybe it was something about the B sound.
Box had permanently taken the shape of a wooden chest, too, just like Artemis’s field guide said. It could have been some kind of genetic memory, based on what mimics were known for doing historically, which was to hang out in the dungeons, cellars, and studies of especially cruel and creative wizards. There they would wait in disguise, eager to eat the fingers and hands off of reckless thieves – maybe even entire bodies, if they were lucky.
