Page 1 of January Blues
January 1st
Toth
“Quezalintoth,hearmycall.Act as my agent. Do my bidding.
I fucking hated being summoned, especially by this shit stain of a witch. I mean, Basil? Who the fuck calls their kid Basil? Obviously, he came from a traditional witch family. They loved to give their kids nature related names. There were a half dozen Rains and Rivers out there in just the Northarbor area alone where this fuckwit was based, all of them cronies of Basil. Basically, Basil was the kind of witch that gave all witches a bad name. However, since the dickhead knew my true name and had performed the spell perfectly, I had no choice but to answer his call.
Leaving the demon realm was easier now than it used to be. Now that the humans knew all about the different realms and supernatural beings that occupied them, there wasn’t the same fear or protections. The witches that had closed the doors to us demons no longer bothered, and mostly we came and went as we wished. Mostly we didn’t bother. All that we needed was in our realm. Unless we had a contract, there was no reason to come to earth. Contracts were the bane of demonkin existence. Somewhere along the line, genius humans, mostly ones with witch blood, had also learned how to make doors and contracted demons into working for them. With a contract in place, we had no choice but to obey.
The human realm sucked. No one could tell me otherwise. I’d purposefully avoided getting into a contract with an employer to keep me away from the place. My real name had been kept secret for centuries until fucking Basil had come along and decided to wander around our realm looking for power boosters and artifacts to control demons. Once he had caught my real name? It was game over for me.
Rising up through the aether that separated our worlds, I spared a wish for my hellcat. I hoped that someone would notice I was gone and remember to feed her. They certainly didn’t want her getting loose again, like the last time Basil had summoned me.
I stopped abruptly in the spell circle, the motion jarring. Fucker did that on purpose. “You rang?” I snarled.
“Ah, there you are Toth–”
“No.”
“What?”
“Toth is what my friends call me. We aren’t friends.” It gave me some small amount of pleasure to see him squirm with embarrassment.
Basil, a small red-haired witch, had summoned me to a room I’d never seen before. It was decidedly run-down. Hardly up to the High Witch’s usual standard. I flicked a glance around the room before my gaze landed on the witch. Basil wasn’t looking as expensive as usual, either. He was usually decked out in a well-cut suit as befitting his position in the coven. His hair needed to be cut and his nails lacked their usual manicure. I kept my thoughts to myself as I observed him.
“Demon, you are here to fulfill a contract.” Basil snapped.
“Terms?”
A human emerged from the shadows, his dark clothing having helped him hide from me. I’d been too focused on the witch to scan for threats. This person stank of humanity and fear, though he was hiding that well. There was nothing in his blood to suggest a touch of the supernatural. He stood taller than Basil, which wasn’t difficult to do since Basil was short for a man. His hair was a dark brown and slicked back off his forehead. The man looked fake. Plastic.
“I want you to help me ruin someone’s life.” His words trembled slightly. His face didn’t move. Probably Botox. Humans were so vain.
His request was harsh, but not uncommon. “I cannot cause physical harm to any living thing without—“
“Fine, so you can’t hurt him physically. That’s not what I want. I’m not a monster.” The stranger sneered at me, his mouth pinched. Probably all the expression that he could muster. He looked me up and down. “I just want you to mess with him a little. Give him a case of the January blues so bad that he loses the promotion that should be mine. I worked hard for years for it. It’s my turn! He’s got no one, so it shouldn’t be hard.”
That was it? He got a witch to summon a demon just to get a human so depressed that he loses out on a job? How petty and far below my skills. I was an upper level demon. The males of my family were barons. I would have been one too, before Basil came into my life and ruined everything he touched.
I must have been showing my displeasure at the paltry task as he continued. “If that fails, I want you to seduce him and break his heart.”
The human doubted my skills? Basil better be paying me handsomely for this shit. I wanted some time taken out of my contract with him for this. I’d have to make sure this human had an “accident” at some point after I’d finished the job, too. I couldn’t let this insult lie. If I couldn’t do it, I’d ask one of my brothers to do it. Now that he’d contracted with a demon, he was vulnerable to us. The no harm rule didn’t apply to him any longer, unless he’d worked it into the contract.
“There’s a problem with that,” I told him.
“Problem?” The human glared at me and then Basil. “Why can’t he do it? Getting Cody out of the way should be simple.”
“If it was so simple, you wouldn’t have come to me, Austin. The hit you put out didn’t work.” Basil reminded him. It was clear to see Basil’s patience fraying. Guaranteed, he’d “forgotten” to remind Austin to put in the protection clause in the contract.
“The hitman fell in love with him!” The human, Austin, exclaimed.
That caught my attention. “You sent a hitman after this guy and the hitman fell in love with him?” I couldn’t help but ask. So he wasn’t a monster, but had sent someone to kill his rival? Humans made no sense.
“Yes! Cody doesn’t return Damon’s feelings, but now they’re best friends!” Austin sounded at the end of his rope. It gave me a wonderful mental image of his red-purple face as he swung from a noose. That. That was what I wanted for him. After this was done. He tugged on his hair. “What’s the problem with seducing him?” he finally asked.
I gestured down the length of my seven-foot body covered with deep purple-colored skin. My dark purple bat-like wings flared. I let my tail flick out. My long, pointed ears twitched. Trying to stand to my full height caused my curled horns to scrape the ceiling.
“Right. That could be a problem. Poor delicate Cody would pee his pants if he saw you. Don’t suppose you can turn invisible.” I scoffed. “Right, that’s not really a thing, is it?” I didn’t want to tell him it could be done with potions or very draining magic. Not something I could pull off for any length of time, despite my status in my realm. I shook my head, compelled to answer his question now I knew the contract was with him. “Do you have another form?”
