you to Hell. This was the reason most folks did not care to play with demons. They did not play fair, and you never knew who might show up if you mispronounced an ‘e’.
She stood and held her book against the moonlight coming through her window. The pages nearly glowed, and she could read the words easily.
She was careful to draw out the vowels and to sing them loudly. She was careful to roll the r’s. She was careful to keep one eye on her chalk circle.
“Not careful enough.”
The voice was heard before she could see the demon. It did not materialize in her circle, but on her bed. She snapped the book shut. The voice was wrong.
This demon was in the form of a woman. Victoria looked again. A harpy. Not a woman. This demon had leathery black wings that protruded from each shoulder blade, and when the demon smiled, her lips were black and her teeth pointed. She crouched on the end of her bed, perched like a cat on a limb, her long black hair hung down over each naked breast.
Victoria sniffed delicately. The harpy smelled like rotten eggs being burned on the stove. She tried to smile back. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I am a beginner at this.”
“Obviously”
“I am looking for someone. He is hard to find.”
“I know.”
Victoria brightened. “You do?”
The harpy nodded as she looked around Victoria’s bedroom. The leather wings slowly unfurled, and though the harpy did not fly, she used the wings to move herself from the bed to the floor with one flap. Victoria stood.
The harpy opened one of her drawers and pulled out a nightgown. She shook it with her taloned fingers and examined it with interest. She put it down and fingered the perfume bottles on the dresser, then moved to the closet with little click sounds of claws on wood and began to rummage through Victoria’s shoes.
Victoria cleared her throat. “Uhm. Well. I am looking for him. I don’t exactly know how to find him.”
The harpy did not turn around. A silver pump flew over her shoulder and landed on the rug, followed by another. “You have to know his name,” came the muffled reply.
“I know,” Victoria sighed. “It once was ‘John’ and ‘Jack’ and ‘Marcus’ and …I don’t know. He was a Viking. Maybe ‘Thor’ or something.”
The harpy cried, “Ah!” and stood up straight. Her wings unfurled again in pleasure and she held up Victoria’s old pair of red trainers. “This is the price!”
Victoria couldn’t help but glance at the demon’s feet. The harpy’s legs ended in birdlike claws. Hardly the kind of feet to fit into athletic shoes.
“Well?” The harpy looked at her with eagle eyes.
“Of course,” Victoria agreed. “They are yours.”
The harpy did a little birdlike happy-dance on her talon feet and hugged the dirty gym shoes to her breasts. Then she bent down and put them on. The talons became human feet and she slid them into the shoes without socks. The harpy tied the limp laces and stood straight, admiring them. She lifted them one and then the other. Victoria could not help but think that now the harpy would not be able to land on any trees.
When the harpy was finished, she looked straight at Victoria and said, “If you do not know his name, you cannot summon him. You have to go look for him.”
Victoria opened her mouth and closed it again. “Go?” She asked.
The harpy pointed a sharp finger at the chalk circle. “You want him?”
Victoria did not hesitate. She had already weighed the possibilities. She thought the blacksmith and the Roman, not the fiery ram horns. She thought of the sad Viking with scar on his neck. She thought of how he looked at her when she was a slave girl and how tenderly he touched the small of her back when they watched Jack and Maggie on their wedding night. She remembered every shuddering orgasm. She remembered the way his voice sounded when he called her ‘Maggs’. She remembered how he had said, “help me”. She stepped into the circle.
The harpy had her by the upper arm and jerked her painfully away from the yawning canyon that opened at her feet. “That one often gets the newbies,” she said. “It’s good to have a harpy or other winged demon to help at first.” She nodded meaningfully at the chasm.
Victoria took a deep breath and looked around. Hell appeared exactly as she imagined, like parts of Arizona. There was