2. Will
Chapter two
Will
I am not that kind of demon
A fter tossing the Tupperware from the fridge into the trash, I returned to my room and let the door click shut, blocking out the sounds of the shower running across the hall.
The painting from earlier sat drying on the easel in the corner of the room, and I felt my annoyance flare at the mere sight of it.
They were frustrating, these visions into the past, because I never understood what they meant. I was more interested in the future, not events that had already happened.
I couldn’t help but wonder why my nights were plagued with this nightmare over and over, but with every passing year, these glimpses into the past were occurring more often. And it was almost always the same one.
One filled with blood, death, and the man with golden hair.
It was never super clear what I saw as I watched the events unfold like a third-party spectator. Their faces were blurred, their words spoken in a garbled and muffled, foreign tongue. Even the scenery was faded and unfocused, like a photograph left too long in the sun.
Yet there was one person, one man, whose face was always clear.
Sometimes I Saw other things. Like a black cauldron glinting in a dark room or a large waterfall cascading into a natural pool. However, even though I occasionally Saw other visions, most of my paintings revolved around this blond-haired man. For years, notebooks, sticky pads, hell, even the backs of a few receipts, were filled with doodles of his face.
My family thought I had a problem. Had even staged an intervention a couple of years ago and told me I needed to stop hanging paintings and drawings of him all over the house.
Ha! I didn’t have a problem. I wasn’t obsessed with him or anything. I was just... curious. Because it definitely felt like Fate wanted me to see this man.
I just didn’t know why .
My paintings of visions of things yet to come didn’t seem to make much more sense than those of the past either.
On a canvas hung beside the door, I’d painted a lake so clear you could see deep into its depths and, if you looked closely, you could see a sword standing tall from a large stone at the bottom. In the lake’s center, the barest hint of an island rose from thick fog.
There was another painting of two men lying on a road. One with hair that was dark as the night surrounding them, his back to the viewer. The second man was the one from my visions, his blond hair long and unbound around his head like a halo. Lightning scorched the ground around them in a perfect circle, and its glow reflected in his green eyes as the two men stared at each other.
One painting just above my dresser showed the blurred silhouette of a man under a shower’s spray, hidden behind partially fogged glass. And pressed against the glass from the other side of the shower divide, a large palm crawling with glowing, red coils.
I turned away from the paintings and shoved some of the books off my bed, only adding to the ones already on the floor. I’d collected a bunch of texts on magic theory, spellcasting, demon summoning, and occult rituals over the years, though I rarely actually used any of the spells in there. My magic had always been different than the rest of my family’s. For one, I brimmed with power, able to cast spells without aid. My family, on the other hand, had the barest amount in their veins and the only way they were able to cast harder spells was with the assistance of other magical artifacts and spellbooks.
Still, even though I didn’t use the books all that often, I probably should have been a little more careful considering some of the texts in my room were hundreds of years old. Allegedly. They sure smelled like it.
Flopping down onto the bed, I sighed, twirling my mother’s ring around my finger.
It had three, connected silver swirls woven in a triangular pattern up its flared sides to a large, inky stone with striations across its unpolished surface. The ring had been enchanted to fit any wearer, big or small, something that had always fascinated me when I was younger. It was the one thing my father always insisted I wore every day growing up, saying my mother promised it would keep me safe and hidden.
One time when I was eight, I’d taken it off to shower in the morning before school and had forgotten to put it back on. While driving Otto and me to school, my dad realized I wasn’t wearing it and had driven us straight home.
He’d looked so... scared . More so than I’d ever seen.
After making sure I put on the ring, he’d made a few calls while he’d hurriedly packed up our belongings, using his magic to help speed the process along. Within a few hours, our house was entirely packed and loaded into our trailer and hitched to the back of his truck. We’d picked up Dorothy and Nana from their workplaces and then had driven far, far away from our little house.
All the while, my dad had watched out the windows, searching the roads and the skies for... Well, I didn’t know what.
But after that day, I never took the ring off again.
My family and I never stuck around long in any given place anyway, and we usually chose locations that were more isolated. That, in turn, made meeting other people, specifically other magic users, difficult. The few times we’d gone to a local conclave gathering in the town we’d moved to, they’d been welcoming until they discovered how unpredictable my magic could be.
And really, as sucky as it was to be cast out of a magic community over and over, I couldn’t honestly blame them.
If I’d had someone come to my conclave’s spell-practice group and then accidentally transform the top half of their practice partner’s head into an octopus, with no idea how to change them back to normal, I would have kicked them out too.
But that only happened twice! Give me a break.
While I wiggled around on my bed, getting comfortable, I removed Gerry’s business card from my pocket. With a roll of my eyes, I tossed it aside on top of the messy covers, not caring where it landed. I wouldn’t be summoning him anytime soon.
I was exhausted as I lay there, wondering if I could take a quick nap before food arrived.
But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t relax. It wasn’t just because those damn visions kept waking me every time I tried to sleep, either. No, between visions, practicing my magic, and job hunting, it was like my body couldn’t remember how to unwind.
My gaze lifted to the shower painting again, remembering the feelings I’d felt when I’d had the vision.
The rivaling feelings of hesitation and temptation. Of lust and curiosity.
Of want and need.
Sliding my hand down my stomach, my ring, still chilled from cleaning out the fridge, left a cool trail over my skin.
Slipping my hand under my waistband, I gripped my cock. I gently stroked it to hardness, taking care not to be too rough since I’d been too lazy to grab the lube from my nightstand.
My mind drifted to my usual go-to fantasies, ones where a muscled hunk absolutely demolished me. I pictured myself pinned to the wall, my legs wrapped around a man’s waist as he drove into me hard and fast. Because even though all the men I’d been with had been decent lays, they’d lacked the passion I craved.
As the fantasy played out, I let my hand glide up and down in slow movements, knowing I didn’t have the energy to drag this out. My palm twisted at the head of my cock, catching some of my precum there, and I groaned as I let my imagination wander, pretending it wasn’t my hand touching me but that of the blond stranger. As I, he , stroked faster, I imagined dirty words spoken to me. Filthy words of praise and lust.
My hand gripped harder and moved faster, and as heat sizzled at the base of my spine, I came on a gasp.
And that’s when I realized my careless mistake.
Because a boom sounded from beside me just before a cloud of smoke announced the arrival of—
“Aha! Once again, I have been chosen!” the all too familiar voice boomed, as out from the smoke rose a small, furry body looking like a mixture of scales and fur, just like he did on his business card on my bed. He was smaller than I’d expected, about the size of a house cat. Though, the scales across his legs and tip of his tail very clearly defined him as not entirely of this world. “Because of course! I am awesome, so why would I not be chosen! Human, what deed do you need my assistance with? Plagues? Murder? Famine—” Gerry’s voice cut off as he finally glanced down at me from the foot of my bed.
Mortified, I tried to yank my shirt down over me to hide the evidence of what I’d just done.
But it was no use.
Gerry looked scandalized, plastering one of his clawed hands over his furry chest as though clutching pearls. He shook his head, mouth spluttering. “Why I never! You! Y-you summoned me for... for this?!” He gestured down at me with his free hand. “For your exhibitionistic ways? Well, I will have you know that I am not that kind of demon!”
Cheeks flaming, I sat up and tried to discreetly wipe my hand off on the sheets. “No! I didn’t mean—I would never...”
And to make matters worse, my door flew open as Otto, dressed only in a threadbare towel, barged inside, a... plastic razor held out in front of himself.
His wet, lilac hair dripped down his face as his frantic gaze searched the room before landing on Gerry and me. Gerry, who had paused his rambling about how sick and twisted I was to eye Otto’s body with an appreciative once over.
Otto took one look at me, the dirty, cluttered bed, and then Gerry before he lowered the razor to his side. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “You know, when I said take care of the demon, I didn’t mean like this.”
“What? I didn’t mean to summon him again! I don’t know how it happened!”
Gerry rolled his eyes. “Blasphemy! You sprayed your bodily fluids all over my business card!” He sniffed indelicately. “I know it said in the summoning instructions to use your life essence, but I meant blood , not your foul seed .”
“I didn’t read the summoning instructions!”
“Lies! Who wouldn’t read instructions?”
A choked noise broke through our argument, and I glanced over to find Otto covering his mouth with a hand. He gaped at me, gobsmacked, and I thought this was the first time I’d ever seen my brother truly lost for words.
But then he crouched forward, dropping the razor and hugging his sides while his body shook.
At first, I thought he was crying and wondered if I’d actually broken him. But then his laughter met my ears as his guffaws rose in volume.
“Well,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes, “when you’re finished scandalizing that poor demon, the pizza’s almost here.”
Gerry stopped croaking on and on about his virtue, and his ears perked up. “Pizza?”
I groaned, ready for this day to be over with.
“Oh, and Will?” Otto asked, picking up his razor and pausing in the doorway.
“Yeah?”
“Mom and dad texted saying they’ll be home in a few hours.”
“Okay?”
“Since you didn’t respond to any of their texts, they wanted me to remind you it’s Friday.”
I groaned. Because Fridays meant family game night, and apparently, I wasn’t getting out of tonight’s.