Page 8 of Hellfire & Tinsel
The shadow was back again, something dark seeping into the air.
Beau scuffed his sock against the worn carpet on the floor for a moment. “Oh, um. It’s almost Christmas and I was waiting for the carolers and then they didn’t—I just… wanted someone around…”
Kassel didn’t really understand any part of that sentence. Humans summoned demons in centuries past usually only for a handful of reasons: death, destruction, power, pestilence. Beau hadn’t mentioned any of those buzzwords.
“So… you don’t want me to do anything?” Kassel checked. Beau shook his head, peeking at him with wide eyes and slightly pouting lips. “Don’t want me to scare someone? Or kill someone for you?”
“Why would I want you to kill someone?” Beau gasped.
Kassel frowned. “Why else would you summon a demon?”
Beau regarded him in complete bafflement, likeKasselwas the one not making sense. It was sort of insulting. He wasn’t the one summoning demons from the pits of Hell.
Honestly, this human was really… odd.
And not in the way he was used to with Oren. Kassel could taste innocence on the back of his tongue. It had a different flavor altogether. Not just an innocence of soul like Oren reeked of, but truly an innocence of spirit as well. Like a sin had never crossed his mind even though the stain of sin had touched his skin. Kassel could sense the mark of it. Marks not made by his own hand.
It was hard to pin down, but Kassel wasn’t in that line of work. That was for the higher-ups to decipher when he died. Even if the thought of leaving it alone niggled at his brain like a loose horn, ready to be torn out.
He shrugged off the discomfort and refocused. “I’m here now, so make use of it before I go back.”
Beau had perked up at the start of his sentence, before the ending sent him visibly folding into himself like a sinner after a century of torture. Kassel didn’t feel the satisfaction he usually got from seeing a human crushed so helplessly.
Beau scrambled up from the sofa, not looking at him anymore.
“You… don’t want to be here,” he said quietly, almost whisper-like.
Kassel didn’t bother responding. No demon wanted to be topside. It was unnatural at best.
“I‘m sorry,” Beau said, and Kassel swore he saw something glimmer down his cheek as he bent down to grab the summoning book from the floor. “I shouldn’t have called you here. I should have known you wouldn’t… I’m sorry.”
He muttered under his breath as he frantically flipped through the pages.
“Beau…” Kassel said his name, not sure why the sudden shift in Beau’s demeanor was irritating him.
“You should go back,” Beau said, sniffling. “I won’t keep you here.”
Kassel felt the strange urge to say he could stay. He had no idea why, pausing abruptly to examine the foreign impulse. How… strange. And warm. Before he could work it out, the tug in the middle of his chest started again and Beau’s living room flickered in front of him.
The meeting room reappeared in front of some of his eyes again. Just the peripheral ones at first, then shifting toward the middle, until his body was being pulled away.
The last thing he saw was two shiny sparks rushing down Beau’s cheeks.
3
Kassel
“You justleft?”
Kassel stared at Oren with all the eyes he could manage to focus on him. Something was still itching under his skin and he couldn’t tell what it was. Probably just the aftereffects of being topside again.
It had taken Oren exactly ten minutes to hear Kassel was back in Hell before he’d tracked him down to his room like the hellhound tight on his heels. Kassel had just been about to take his boots off and oil down his horns when Oren and Beast had burst into the room.
They’d been going in circles for what felt like a century ever since.
“He released me,” he repeated for the millionth time.
“Again, he can’t just release you. He just tried because you were rude to him, dismissive, and uninterested, so he said youcould leave. Your demonic ass took it as a summoning request from him and came here.” Oren flapped his hand around before settling it on his hip like a disappointed elder. Kassel did not feel like sitting there and being scolded by a pint-sized human being. “You’re not actually released.”
