The evening sun was on my side so long as I moved quick enough. It’s not like I hadn’t broken into the old Solomon Middle School building before; there really wasn’t a lot to stop me, frankly. Gaping holes in the chain link fences made for easy entry for anybody willing to risk potentially brushing up against poison ivy in the undergrowth. The only line of defense the poor thing had was, shockingly, a functioning security alarm that blasted a sad, worn out old screech that never really attracted anyone or anything. Still, I’d set it off enough times to remember to disable the little bastard on my way in this time. Solomon was three floors of broken promises and crushed dreams for the families that lived in the surrounding ten mile radius, and I wasn’t about to let it ruin me so easily.

The school was a zombie; a half-hearted attempt at a resurrection. The original school, Spirit of Samuel Middle, had been just begging for the nickname practically every student had given it when it was apparent it could no longer hide its financial struggles: “S.O.S. Middle.” The school died and the building decayed until the local city council got the wise idea to renovate the thing. Solomon Middle was named to bring wisdom to people breaking their backs on the project, but by the time anyone got their hands on it, the damage to the building was so severe that nobody could afford to fix it all at once. Classes resumed in the half of the building that managed to get the funds for a makeover, and the other half was left to rot. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before the floor fell out from beneath the project - literally.

If I hadn’t been a student of Solomon, I’m sure I would have been more afraid. It had been over a year since I wriggled my way inside the place, but I still knew my route like the back of my hand - providing it wasn’t destroyed by now. The renovated side of the building had held up remarkably well over the years for how rough the facade was looking these days. It always caught me off guard to be wandering the halls and find a small area that was still somehow receiving power after everything. A single spinning fan in an empty room or the occasional humming vending machine in the dim hallways always made the place feel like it was haunted, and this was the nice part of the building.

My footsteps echoed off the hallway walls as I jogged my way towards the worn yellow caution tape. Even in its best days, the effort the admin put up against kids trying to scope out the decaying second face of the school was inadequate, but now it was just sad. It was obvious where the money had dripped dry; the shift in atmosphere was abrupt and sudden. The air here was stagnant, with water damage turning the walls and ceiling to wet mush and warping the wood flooring into unholy shapes. It always looked to me as if something was trying to burst through the floorboards, the material swelling and bowing as if one more good bash from some beast a floor below would break it clean in two. Now I was less worried about imagined monsters and more concerned with falling through a rotten spot and ending up face first on the concrete floor of the school’s basement.

Despite a minor scare or two at the integrity of the floor, I was at least nailing the “getting there” part of this. It was no time before I reached the rusted-out metal doors that sealed the entrance to the school’s gymnasium. I leaned my whole shoulder into that gross piece of scrap metal and gritted my teeth as the edge of it scraped hard against the floor. Despite time and rot and countless storms that had absolutely torn a good fourth of the roof off the place, it was still here; Whitney Valeo’s summoning circle. No matter how many times I saw it, it never got any less weird or wonderful. What little was left of the evening sun flowed down from the crumbling roof, illuminating dancing dust particles that made everything feel ethereal.

I was in fourth grade when word spread around the school that it was Whitney who had caused whatever it was that had permanently shut down the gym. At that point the school was already a week away from closing, so nobody really cared enough to try to clean up the mess. Years of malfunctioning halogen lights and sun bleaching from the open roof had left Whitney’s circle permanently burnt into the hardwood flooring, a new set of rules alongside the basketball court and the foursquare lines. I only ever knew Whitney in passing since she was a full three grades ahead of me, but I had her to thank for handing me the key to solving an impossible problem. I was twenty-eight years old and here I was about to copy a seventh grader’s homework.

I inhaled deeply and let the air flow slowly out of my lungs. It was time to get to work. There were six-hundred and sixty-six runes on a demonic summoning circle, as best as I could figure. I only had Whitney's work to go on, but I studied it plenty before I stopped coming around so nobody would suspect I was up to shenanigans. The number was a bit on the nose, but I wasn't about to look the Lord of Hell in the face and tell the guy he could be more creative with his presentation. I grabbed my bottle of ink and set about the task of dusting off and retouching all the runes. Some of them honestly looked perfect, but for others it was a guessing game with deadly stakes. For any rune I was unsure of, I would find a similar symbol somewhere else on the circle and copy its shape.

It took me hours to finish refurbishing the circle. I was pretty proud of my handiwork, even if the warping wood of the gym floor made me more than a little nervous about the integrity of my freshly painted shapes. It didn't matter; I was never going to get another chance like this. Whatever happened, I was moving forward with the plan. Once the ink had dried, it was finally time to prove my hard work wasn’t in vain. I stepped softly and carefully around the circle, gently placing a capsule on each of the circle’s runes. If I was right about my suspicions, each rune should be able to absorb the leftover magic from one of the capsules. They were, after all, the remnant magic from failed summonings, so the pieces of the puzzle should still be in place. I did my best not to think too hard about the fact that there were so many of these things floating around the town, and I tried even harder to not think about the idea of becoming a supplier of remnant magic.

Midnight had come and gone before my setup was completed. Once I had finished all my preparations, I steeled myself and made my way into the center of Whitney’s circle. What… exactly was I supposed to do now? I had kind of thought it would just make sense once I had all the pieces in place, but this was nothing like the first time I got a rune to absorb remnant magic. It’s not like I could go around the circle and crack each of the spells individually, I’d never-

“Hawley, where the fuck have you been?” My hair stood on end. I turned slowly to see a figure heading straight for me from the gymnasium entrance. She was just a silhouette in the light of the moon, but I knew that voice anywhere.

“Uh, hi Constance!” I slowly tried to stand up but my limbs were shaking. This was not part of the plan. How the hell did she find me?

“Don’t you “Hi, Constance” me, you little shit! You’ve had us worried sick! You don’t answer your phone all day, you’re not in your apartment and now you’re in pitch dark in an abandoned building just, what? Sitting? Sitting in the dark?” Oh God, she was pissed. Constance was storming towards my circle and I was stammering, doing my best to get the words to exit my mouth before she undid all my hard work by accident.

“CONNIE STOP!” I put one hand out to block her path, and with the other I pointed down at the circle beneath my feet. She skidded to a halt. Well, that had done it.

“...What?” Constance’s eyes traced over the arcane markings on the gymnasium floor. “Hawley, what… is this?” She glanced back and forth, finally spying the results of my many, many prize hauls from the last year of our hanging out together. She paused and stood there in silence. I tried to force the words but all I could do was ease myself towards her. When I finally got near enough to the outside of the circle, she slid down unceremoniously onto the gymnasium floor. Her eyes trained on mine in the dim light streaming from the broken rooftop.

“It was all for this, huh?” I stepped lightly and quickly, doing my damndest not to damage the markings beneath my feet. I sat my shaking body down next to Connie’s, reaching a hand out to touch her before I thought better of it.

“...Yeah.” I couldn’t manage much more than that. My heart was in my throat. I hadn’t planned to ever see her again, and certainly not like this. “How… did you find me?” She sighed and chuckled a bit. Thank God. She was terrifying when she was angry. She raised her hand slowly and pointed at the bracelet on my wrist.

“Tracking spell, dipshit. You’ve been getting more and more reckless with yourself lately. Marcus and I weren’t about to let you wander off in the woods somewhere just because you’ve been feeling some type of way.” Huh. Well that made sense, I guess.

“...Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘Oh’ is right. What were you trying to do, moron? Summon a demon?” I looked away in shame. This wasn’t going anywhere near the way I had planned it. “What would you have done if it had worked? These binding runes look like shit, babe. You’d be all alone out here with nobody to help you. You don’t know dick about demonic negotiations. You could have been eaten alive. You could have traded your soul away! You could have been possessed or supplanted!”

With each word she was getting closer and closer to my face. I’d never seen her this angry in all my time knowing her. I winced and backpedaled, but even in my panic I made efforts to avoid fucking up the circle as I scrambled back into it. Constance’s shoulders slumped and her face softened; she must’ve realized how I was being affected, because she lowered her voice and crouched near the edge of the circle like someone trying to coax a wounded animal out of hiding.

“...Hawley, sweetheart, you’re not subtle. Something’s been eating you for a while now and neither of us really knew how to help.” Constance lowered her knee to the ground and leaned over the circle. My pulse was racing out of my control. “We’ve been trying to let you figure shit out on your own, but you’ve been so goddamn self-destructive. These toys can’t even do anything, love. It’s…” She reached a hand down for one of the capsules and my body moved on instinct, my hand shooting out to grasp it as well. This was all of my work, and it was all coming apart at the seams before my eyes. I loved her, but she couldn’t understand.

It would be hard for me to tell you exactly what happened in the moments after the flash. I knew our hands met on the capsule, and I remembered pressure and force, but it was cacophony after that. Constance was tumbling backwards halfway across the room, tossed like a deer in the path of a truck. One by one each of the capsules I had so carefully placed lit up and then dissipated into what looked like a glowing powder that flowed into the symbols beneath them. Now was the worst possible time for my plan to come to fruition. Everything had gone sideways, and Connie’s impassioned speech had only served to rekindle my fears about all the worst possibilities.

The light surrounded me now, every line of the intricate circle glowing a brilliant, eerie blue. Constance’s mouth was moving, but she was too far away or not loud enough. I couldn’t make out a word of it over the crackle of ambient magic breaking the air around me into bits. For a moment, everything tasted like copper and my vision blurred, the blue light reaching an intensity I had never experienced in my twenty-eight years on this remarkably fucked up planet. When it began to dull, I did all I could to get my bearings again, surveying the gym through ringing ears and eyes that strained to focus. 

As the figure came into focus, I knew my plan had worked now whether I wanted it to or not. The demon struggled to stand in the wake of everything, her cherry red tail flailing to try and latch on to some semblance of balance. Her wings flared out and flapped once, pushing her upper body back into its upright position to where I could get a good look at her. She wore a leather jacket with short hair, dyed a dark red. She covered her face with her hand as if she was in pain, but the second her eyes locked onto mine, the recognition set in.

“I can explain!” Her clawed hand reached out desperately towards me.

“...Constance?”  I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Still disoriented from everything mere moments ago, I-

“Wrong direction, cutie.” The warm sensation of a hand on my shoulder sent shivers down my spine. I spun around to find myself face to face with the unmistakable form of a demon.

A different demon.