"She's been quiet for a while now," I commented as I scrolled through my social media feed. "It's been like a week and a half since we saved mom, and nothing else has come up right?"

Lily replied, "Like I said, I'm certain Verothilas was just playing with us. And my kind are rather long-lived, so ten days is the blink of an eye to us. She could well wait months or years before her next move."

I frowned, "That's kind of boring. Though I guess I'd rather be bored than dead. And I sure don't want my mom to go through anything like that again."

Eventually I closed that tab and went back to looking at the assignment from class for a while. I couldn't really focus on that either though, I was still thinking about our demonic enemy.

"Hey here's a question. So we know that there's power or whatever in a demon's name right? Now that we know who we're dealing with, we know her name, can we use that against her somehow?"

"That isn't her true name," Lily replied. I could picture her shaking her head as she spoke. She was lounging on the big leather sofa again, watching through the window at what I was looking at.

She continued, "Verothilas is the name she is known by, the way I was known as Lilith. And the other aliases she used, Vera, Professor Travoise, Solitare, those are all equivalent to you and Melissa calling me Lily. So unfortunately while we know her common name is Verothilas, even I do not know her true name. Nor does she know mine. In fact you are the only living being who knows my true name."

"Oh," I said as my shoulders slumped. "Ok that makes sense, I guess I should have thought of that before."

Lily replied, "It's ok Mara. Finding out the true name of demons is something some people work very hard on for a very long time, and usually without success."

"That implies that there are still some successes though right?" I asked. "So how do they do it?"

She suggested, "Come inside and I'll give you a quick lesson."

I grinned as I got comfortable in my chair, then closed my eyes. I'd gotten pretty good at it, and just a second or so later I was with her in her big posh apartment.

As usual she was in her natural demonic form, and as usual she was naked. Lily sat up on the sofa and motioned me to have a seat next to her as she began to explain.

"That mark on your ankle, the one that you saw on my amulet and that appeared on our pact, that represents my name. It's formed by drawing lines from letter to letter on a grid. But the grid itself is a secret, and duplicate letters are omitted. So without knowing how many letters are in my true name, and without knowing what the grid of letters looked like, there is no way to translate that glyph back into my true name."

I looked down at the tattoo on my ankle and nodded, "Ok I think I get it? So the start and the end and every corner or bend in the line is a letter?"

"Correct," Lily nodded. The circle is the last letter, the short flat line is the first letter, and every point or corner represents another new letter. That only adds up to seven letters, but that's because there are a lot of repeated letters in my true name."

She continued, "The grids are usually five by five, or twenty-five letters in total. Sometimes they're six by six, for thirty-six letters. And every grid is arranged differently, meaning what letter appears in what space. There's sometimes ways to guess or figure out what grid is connected to a certain demon, but that's too complicated for a quick explanation. Anyways, assuming you can figure out what grid to use, then you take the name-glyph and overlay it on the grid, and that gives you all the letters in the demon's true name. They're in the right order too, but you don't know how many duplicates are missing."

I ran my finger along the mark on my ankle and said, "A, z, t, h, o, l, i."

Then I looked up at her, "Ok I get it. So if we can get Verothilas's name glyph, that's like one third of the key. Then we need to figure out what her letter grid square looks like, and that will get us all the letters, in the right order... But we won't know if some are missing duplicates. Still, that gets us two-thirds of the way there. Then we have to guess what's missing to find her true name."

"Exactly," Lily replied with a smile. "I know what her name-glyph looks like."

She held out a large blue hand and conjured up a piece of paper with the glyph marked on it.

I took the page from her and stared at the elaborate glyph. "Crap this is way more complicated than yours. There's uh... twelve letters in this right? Start, end, and ten corners. Shit that's almost half the alphabet."

"Correct," Lily replied. "Assuming it's a twenty-five letter square and using the English alphabet. But the good news is with so many unique letters, there's a good chance she has fewer duplicate letters."

I was still staring at the glyph as I said "Verothilas has ten letters without any repeats. So we're only missing two."

Lily smiled again, "Well done. We're missing two unique letters, and an unknown number of duplicates. But we also don't know the order that the letters should be in."

"Can we get this out in the real world?" I asked, indicating the paper. "Maybe Melissa can work on it, she's pretty smart. And with the other stuff we know about Verothilas, maybe we can find her name."

My demon looked thoughtful, then nodded "Ok Mara. It's worth a try. I'll draw out Verothilas's name-glyph, then you can explain the problem to Melissa."

I stayed on the sofa while Lily stood up and moved to the dark window. A moment later she was gone and the window lit up with a view of my desk. I watched as she found a blank piece of paper and carefully drew out the name-glyph of our enemy.

Then the window went dark and Lily was back with me again on the sofa. I gave her a hug then said "I'll talk with Melissa, explain the problem, and see what she can figure out."

• • • • •

"I don't understand," Susan stated as she frowned at me. "Are you breaking up with me?"

I shook my head "No! I mean, I don't want to break up. That's not what I'm trying to do at all."

She continued frowning as she asked, "Then what are you trying to say?"

It was Thursday night, Melissa was out with some guy she ran into on campus this morning, and I was at a quiet little restaurant with Susan. It was supposed to be our third date, or fourth if you counted hooking up at the halloween party.

We'd already finished eating, and now I was trying to explain that I needed us to slow down a little, that things had come up in my life where I needed to devote some of that energy elsewhere. But I was doing a really bad job trying to explain it.

Part of the problem was like, how do you tell the hot girl you've just started dating that you might have to devote some emotional energy to your best friend because you've just found out the demon that lives in your head made your bestie part-succubus and you're literally the only person in the world your friend can have a relationship with that won't result in tragic death? I mean, without actually saying that, because it's a lot to take in all at once and half of it's secret, not to mention it's a mouthful and you'd need to stop somewhere for air.

And as usual I couldn't lie my way out of a wet paper bag, I couldn't even convince people of the truth half the time.

I took a deep breath then sighed. I decided to take a step back from that and start with something that was just as difficult but at least marginally less hard to explain.

"Ok.. So first off, somebody tried to kill my mom two weeks ago. She's ok, but it messed her up. And it messed me up, because my mom was only targeted because of my magical friend? Like someone wanted to annoy her, and figured killing my mom would upset me, and that would upset my friend."

Susan was still frowning, but now she also looked confused. "So did you go to the cops or something?"

"No," I sighed. "The someone behind it is magic too, and used magic to get to my mom. It's all uh, supernatural or whatever?"

"Ok," she stated. "I'm sorry and I hope your mom's ok, but what does that have to do with us breaking up?"

"I'm not trying to break up," I replied. I sighed again, "Susan I'm sorry, I'm sure you've figured out by now I'm not the smartest girl in college right? I have trouble trying to explain stuff like this. There's a bunch of complicated stuff and half of it I can't say in public and the other half I can't say at all. It's just, complicated stuff. My mom needs me, and now my roommate slash best-friend needs me too. Not that someone's trying to kill her, but it's more supernatural stuff that's just, well, complicated."

She kept her eyes on me as she asked, "Does this complicated stuff involve sleeping with your roommate slash best-friend?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "But we were doing that before anyways. Like just for fun, without any romantic emotional stuff?"

I couldn't even decipher the look on Susan's face now, but I had a growing feeling that this conversation was going to end in a break-up whether I wanted it or not.

"The problem is, I think she actually needs some of that romantic emotional stuff? And because of even more complicated supernatural reasons, I'm the only one who can help her with that. Plus we've been best friends for like six years now, and she's practically family, so I'd want to be there for her regardless."

Susan was quiet for a few more minutes, just staring at me and frowning. Finally she had a gulp of her cocktail and asked, "So let me guess. You and your roommate are both demons. You're here on Earth so you can have sex with the humans, but now your friend needs some companionship and you're the only other demon around who can provide that?"

I stared at her for a few seconds trying to figure out if she was serious or not, then responded "Uh... no? I mean yes there are demons involved, but me and Melissa are human. It's because of the demons... I can't say. But she needs someone, and for complicated magical reasons it has to be me."

Now she was looking at me as if she was trying to figure out if I was serious or not.

I added with a sigh, "Susan please don't tell anyone about this stuff? I probably shouldn't have said anything about Melissa to you at all, it's just... I didn't know what else to tell you. I suck at lies, but the truth is just as unbelievable."

Susan drained the rest of her drink then said "I won't say a word Mara. Because nobody would believe me."

She continued, "I have no idea what's up with you. You're fun and funny and a little bit wild half the time, and there's definitely supernatural stuff going on with you. But the rest of the time? I can't tell if you really believe this stuff in which case you need help, or if you're just messing around and lying for God knows whatever reason. And the last option, that everything you've said is the truth? That's just plain terrifying. So you needed some space? You've got it."

My stomach felt full of lead again, but I just sat there with my shoulders slumped. I sighed, "I'm sorry Susan. I understand how you feel, and I wish I could make it up to you."

She gave me one last sad look, then got up from the table. She picked up her purse and jacket and walked away.

I still wasn't entirely sure how it all happened, but I knew it had to be my fault. I only hoped Susan would be ok, that she wasn't too upset. I waited a few minutes, then left money on the table to cover the meal and drinks and a tip. Finally I wandered out of the restaurant and made my way home.

Most of the walk back to the apartment was just a dull blur. Then when I got home I slumped onto the sofa and stared at the floor.

I was still sitting there when Melissa got home a few hours later. She took one look at me then dropped her coat on the floor and sat down next to me.

She asked in a soft worried voice, "Mara what's wrong?"

"Susan and me broke up I think," I replied quietly. I shrugged and added, "It's because I'm so bad at explaining complicated stuff. It's ok though. I kind of figured it might happen."

Melissa slipped an arm around me and asked softly, "You broke up with her because of me, didn't you? You did it so you could be here for me."

I sighed as I leaned against her and whispered "Yeah, I did."

We were both quiet for a few minutes, then she gave me a kiss on the cheek. "I have to have a shower because, ugh. Then let's go to bed, ok? We can talk if you want, or just cuddle, or sleep. But I'm not going to leave you alone."

"Thanks Melissa."

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