Never Summon a Demon, chapter 3 (Patreon)

When sunlight poured through the window, Logan cursed himself for not closing the damn curtains. That was the worst problem he had until it occurred to him that his habit of doodling had summoned a demon or his poor choices had led to a drug-induced trip. He was betting on the second.

Rubbing a hand over his face, he sat up and promptly shrieked. Bob sat on the arm of the couch looking weirdly normal now that he had enough water. His coloring made him look like he had a grandparent who was Native or Italian or Arab or something that wasn’t white, but it was hard to tell what they ancestry might be. Every time Logan looked at him, it was like Bob’s features had shifted subtly. He had a square chin and a straight nose, but one second his short hair looked like it had a wave and the next it was perfectly straight and then Logan blinked and it was graying at the sides.

Worse, because the apartment was postage-stamp tiny, the space between the couch and the bed felt way too small. Way too small. And the way the demon watched him with a terrifying intensity—he looked like a lion from a vegan circus who had just spotted a hamburger. Not good.

Logan looked away, deeply uncomfortable with evidence that Bob wasn’t human.

“Why are you still here?”

“You summoned me.”

Logan swallowed an urge to shoot back with “Did not.” He wasn’t actually five, so he knew that sort of fight didn’t have any winners. Instead he fell out of bed and used the momentum to lurch toward the bathroom. “Feel free to leave.”

“Okay.”

Weird. Bob was just weird. Worse, he was the sort of weird that followed and then leaned against the bathroom door jamb so Logan couldn’t close the door without getting into a shoving match that he probably wouldn’t win. Logan wanted a shower, but getting naked in front of a demon was more fun in fantasy than reality, so he settled for a quick swipe of a washcloth across the sweatiest parts of him. “How long are you staying?” Logan watched the demon in the mirror.

Bob shrugged and for one second, Logan could imagine he was one of Jack’s weirdo friends that came over for a party and refused to leave until someone made not-so-subtle comments about he police. Logan. Logan always had to make those comments because Jack refused to ever put them first. Which explained why there wasn’t a them anymore. He stumbled out of the bathroom and headed for the couch and the video game controllers. Maybe if he lost himself in a game, Bob would get bored. Unfortunately, he stepped in the same mess from last night.

It wasn’t like the room was big, so he wasn’t surprised to step in it, but he stared down at the white ish squishing up between his toes and fought his gag reflex.

“I can clean that,” Bob offered.

“I don’t need your help,” Logan snapped. If he was going to sell his soul, he would charge a hell of a lot more than cleaning services. Hell, he hadn’t give his virginity away without dinner first and he was almost sure his soul was worth more than that.

“I should let you vomit on yourself and see if you remain as stubborn, sorcerer of mine.” Bob crossed his arms, and then the mess swirled, the gunk turning into a white stream that flowed over the floor, gathering the debris of normal life. The empty pizza box, the fast-food bag he’d crumpled and thrown at the garbage, only to miss, the dust and cobwebs and paper strips that tore off when he opened bags of frozen foods all joined the flood rolling across the floor, and then the objects began to dissolve. The pizza box lasted longest, strips of wet cardboard swirling until it joined the nebulous gray waters.

Bob walked over to the sink and turned the water on. No water appeared. Right. He was absorbing it. Meanwhile, the grayish-brown water flowed up to the sink and then vanished down the drain, leaving behind a perfectly clean apartment. The apartment was never clean. Never. Logan was a little freaked out over how it smelled without the remains of old food or stale sex staining the… okay, staining everything. Jack was not only creative but he had enough strength in his forearms to support some rather athletic sexual hi-jinx, but now the last evidence of Jack was gone.

And Logan had absolute evidence that his mother had been right about him living like a pig because even he couldn’t escape the stark difference in smell. Stupid demon. It was too fucking early for revelations.

He walked over to his desk and pulled out his computer. For long minutes, he stared at it, his fingers resting against the silver surface and his body unnaturally still.

They watched their divinatore, waiting to see if he appreciated the power in their magic. The dissolving of solids was a familiar and easy trick. It was the nature of water to absorb that which fell in it, but to roll that water against the pull of gravity in order to release it into the sink… they were proud such a complex bit of magic. Instead of expressing gratitude or the appropriate awe, their sorcerer retained his expression of obduracy. Never had they encountered such a stubborn human. True, the rock that holds firm against the river, the boulder than maintains strength as it rolls downhill, the formation that never yields to storm or cracks when great Poseidon shakes the earth was equally stubborn, but even that daemon yielded given enough time. This human persisted in the face of their power.

It was annoying. They were not wakened only to be ignored. Banished? Sure. Lots of sorcerers had done that. He’d been cursed at, accused of murder, begged for impossible boons and had his charmed crushed under the boots of inquisitors trying to destroy the older superstitions. He’d been dammed, polluted, corrupted, and diverted; however, he would not stand for being ignored.

“It’s too early for this,” the sorcerer said without specifying the “this” to which he referred. How could they impress him if they did not know what he wanted? Perhaps he wanted to curse the one he had sworn at but he feared expressing it. Maybe sorcerers feared inflicting others with sickness because they believed the sickness would then infect them, but magic did not work that way. Magic, like the world, cared nothing for fairness. This sorcerer was powerful and he could curse Jack without fear of enduring the same the way a weaker sorcerer might.

So they simply had to find a way to reassure Logan. And then they could complete their task, reach the final destination for this stream of action and return to their slumber.

Logan settled at the desk and opened his laptop. The universe had changed so much since they had last seen it that they could almost believe this was some new form of sorcery, but they were awake now so they knew what the average person knew, and this was no magic. It only mimicked those forms of power. Logan opened a website and Latin appeared on the screen. It took a minute or so for them to realize what Logan was doing. When he went to choose his next selection, they pointed at the screen. “That is the correct form.”

“What?”

“The selection you are making has the noun going away from the subject when it is being received by the subject. You much change the ending of the noun. Your selection makes no sense until you are two years old and speaking in such incorrect forms that adults are amused at your foolishness.”

Logan turned in his chair and glared. “Excuse me?”

“You do not require an excuse, although your ignorance of the language makes your ability to craft a magical spell rather miraculous.”

Logan gritted his teeth until the muscle on the side of his jaw bulged. Given that Logan had a slight frame and delicate features, the gesture was particularly noticeable. “I didn’t craft a spell,” he said.

“Yes, you did.” They understood that the summoning had been unintentional, an act which they might have called impossible except that over millennium, it was inevitable that even the near-impossible would happen at least once.

Logan turned his back and returned to his quiz. He opened the next set of options and his mouse arrow hovered near one.

“That is still the incorrect form. You want puellae, not puella.”

“I don’t need to cheat.” Logan’s words were clipped, angry.

“Clearly you do if you cannot construct a sentence with a girl walking to a stream. And since that sentence refers to my domain, I have cause to take offense where I did not on the last atrociously constructed sentence you chose.”

Logan burst up from his chair, his hands flying into the air. “Latin is not my best language. Fine. I get it. I didn’t even want to take the damn class, but everyone insisted that I would understand Romance languages better once I had the foundations, but I specialize in Asian languages. I speak Mandarin and Cantonese and Hunanese. I can muddle my way through Gan and Wu and I kick ass at Malay. I don’t know why I should even care about fucking Latin.” He collapsed onto the couch. “I hate Latin. I can’t pull up a Latin soap opera and lose myself. I can’t read an online story in Latin about a girl who gets sucked into her favorite story and has to learn her lesson before she dies. And I definitely can’t pretend I am that girl as the prince falls in love with her.” Logan sighed heavily before jabbing a finger in their direction. “Do not make a self-insertion joke here.”

“What joke might I make?”

“Oh no. Nope. If you don’t have a dirty mind, I’m not helping you develop one.”

“I do not understand.”

“Good.”

Logan excelled at inspiring annoyance. They flowed into a new subject. “If you do not like Latin and do not wish to learn languages that are the children of Latin, why do you persist in writing and reading the language? Are you mentally impaired in some way that’s not immediately obvious?”

“I can’t afford to fail a class. My scholarships keep me in the lap of luxury.” He gestured at the apartment. At one end was the door to the hallway next to a few inches of counter, the stove and the refrigerator, which was currently making a rattling noise. On the opposite end was the bed and a dresser and between was the couch and television along with the door to the small bathroom.

“Is this luxury? Have I misinterpreted information about the state of the world?” They had first thought this room luxurious only because it compared favorably to a hovel with a dirt floor, but compared to what he now understood of the world, this did not compare favorably to most living conditions within river’s distance of this place.

“You have misinterpreted sarcasm.”

“Oh. I do that,” they admitted. They were familiar with how words could shift the way light bend when it entered a pond, but sarcasm had always been harder for them than it was for others, like Twilight.

“You are a strange demon.”

“All daemon follow their nature. I am not strange in that I do the same. Would you like me to assist you with Latin?” Teaching was not a familiar task, but they were powerful. The abundance of water and the strength of Logan’s magic had given them an ability to do more than they had been capable of during the last few awakenings.

Logan held a finger up in the air in a ‘stop’ gesture. “I am not making any wishes or deals.”

“You are annoying in your persistence. I do not want your soul. My own soul is thousands of years old. What use would I have for yours?”

Logan narrowed his eyes. “Are you suggesting my soul is inferior?”

“Young and less developed, perhaps.” That answer did not please Logan, and they tried to find other words to state the obvious. They had none. “You are infuriating, confusing, and oddly endearing in that I want to make your life better because you obviously struggle to live your own life successfully. Very sad.”

Logan’s tone was dark when he asked, “Can demons get wedgies?” Logan snatched up his video controller and turned the volume on the animated violence up to a level that discouraged discussion.

Very infuriating, exceptionally confusing, and still annoying endearing.

They sat in a chair that wobbled slightly and considered the television. They knew many stories from the minor ludi celebrations that existed in no memory. They knew the Latin words Logan wished to have in his memory. If he complained that he did not have the ability to study as best fit his nature, they had sympathy. Any creature forced outside their nature struggled. He could offer that as a gift. Perhaps if he offered rather than waiting for Logan to decide what he wanted, they could both find completion more quickly.

Humans. Such annoying little bundles of magic wrapped in meat envelopes.

Someone knocked on the door and Logan shrieked and threw his controller into the air. A second later, his game avatar died with an accompanying dirge. The knocking returned.

“Quick. Hide,” Logan said.

“Where?” They could see the entirety of the apartment at once, and they would not hide in the bathroom with the door closed. Not even cleaning had removed all the stench that rose from the pipes.

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Leave the apartment. Vanish. Something.”

With a sigh, they release enough water that they became transparent again.

“What is that?” Logan asked, his voice a low hiss. “I can still see you.”

“You are a sorcerer. You would be a poor divinatore if you could not see a daemon. Unless your guest is also a sorcerer, he will not notice me. Unless he walks through me, and I would prefer he not. Humans would only get a little moist, but they would have more droplets stolen away if that happened.

“But… What if…” Logan sighed loudly. “If you get seen, you’re doing the explaining, buddy.”

Buddy. They liked that thought. They would be buddies with Logan if only because he clearly needed someone to be his buddy and prevent him from making poor choices on his Latin quiz. With one last less-than-buddy glare, Logan headed for the door. They watched, curious about who might be visiting their newest divinatore. The state of the apartment’s cleanliness had been such that most people would have avoided it, so they wondered who liked Logan well enough to risk communicable diseases by coming into his home.