Taming Demons for Beginners (The Guild Codex Demonized #1) - Annette Marie Page 0,25
caught on so fast. “Exactly. It’s tricky, though. Not nearly as simple as drawing or etching a cantrip.” She tossed the fabric onto the table and twisted her blond hair into a bun. “My dad thinks it’s a waste of time.”
I glanced at the books threatening to collapse her desk. “Because it takes away from your summoning apprenticeship?”
“I don’t know how he expects me to study ten hours a day when I already spend every morning with my language tutor,” she complained. Grabbing a fabric pencil off the table, she stuck it through her bun to hold the hair in place. “So, what do you want to know?”
I hesitated, then sat on the edge of her unmade bed. “On his way up from the library, I heard Uncle Jack talking about a breaking point. Do you know what that means?”
“Oh yeah, that’s basic stuff.” She held a hanky-sized sample of patterned cotton up to the sunlight streaming through the window. “Usually, demons agree to a contract within a few weeks, but sometimes, you’ll get one that refuses to take a contract for whatever reason. So we wait.”
She returned the cotton square to the pile. “Once a demon is summoned into a circle, it gets weaker as time passes. At around nine or ten weeks, almost every demon caves and agrees to a contract. That’s the breaking point.”
“What happens if Uncle Jack misses it?”
“The demon dies.” Amalia reorganized a few thread spools on the rack. “They can’t survive in those circles indefinitely. You have to catch them right before that, when they’re most desperate. They usually give in. Demons have a strong survival drive.”
My stomach twisted strangely. “So … you’re saying … summoners call demons into this world, imprison them in a circle for weeks on end, force them to accept a contract, and if they don’t, you let them die?”
Amalia shot me a scathing look. “Good god, how much of a bleeding heart are you? They’re demons, Robin. You saw the one under the greenhouse. It’d kill us all in a heartbeat. Yeah, we let them die. We can’t set them free—they’d massacre the entire neighborhood in the time it took the MPD to put out an alert.”
“Why not send the demons back?”
“Summoning is a one-way ticket, and even if it wasn’t, why would we send them back? If we did, no demon would ever agree to a contract.”
“What does a contract involve, exactly?”
She studied me for a long moment, then answered with chilling simplicity. “Complete surrender.”
She pushed to her feet and walked to her desk. After rooting around among the books, she tossed something to me. I caught it, fumbling the long silver chain. It was a round, flat pendant the size of my palm, with runes engraved over its surface.
“That,” Amalia said, dropping into her chair, “is an infernus. It’s the key to a demon contract. Assuming we’re talking legal, MPD-sanctioned ones, a contract is pretty simple. The demon gives up its autonomy. Its spirit is bound to the infernus and the contractor’s will. The contractor controls the demon like a puppet.”
I stared at the silver pendant.
“Allow the demon any free will, and it’ll find a way to kill its contractor.”
“Why would a demon ever agree to that?” I whispered.
“Because of the slim chance they’ll outlive their contractor and make it back home.”
“How do they—”
“Amalia!” Kathy’s buzzard call echoed up the stairs. “Travis! Dinner is ready.”
Amalia plucked the infernus out of my hands and chucked it onto her desk. “Let’s go eat.”
I followed her out of the room, feeling numb. Zylas’s vicious snarl replayed in my head. Tell them my bones will turn to dust in this cage, because I will never submit.
No wonder he refused to so much as speak to his summoners. I was surprised he’d spoken to me; I was a human, just like the ones who’d torn him from his home and were forcing him to choose between enslavement and death.
Standing on my tiptoes, I watched the car’s taillights retreat up the long drive to the front gate. Uncle Jack, Claude, and Travis had loaded into the car before it set out. They probably wouldn’t be gone long—Uncle Jack wouldn’t want to miss Zylas’s “breaking point”—but it would be long enough. I hoped.
I backed away from the window, scooted across the luxurious bathroom, and peeked out the door. On the main level, a TV talk show echoed from the family room. Kathy commented on something, and Amalia’s softer voice replied. Good.