Having Connie on my side did so much to set my mind at ease, even if the process of rebuilding the circle was slow going. We moved in sets of two, always staying next to each other as we did our level best to repaint the runes properly. Every now and again Constance would reach over and show me how to fix something I was stumped on, and I could only think to myself how lucky I was to be close to somebody who actually knew what she was doing.

Constance used her magic to manifest a speaker and some lights for the gymnasium, which beat the hell out of working in the still silence of a dimly lit room. Being alone with my thoughts right now sounded completely and totally unappealing, so I was grateful for the company, as well as the distraction. My alien anatomy was slowly becoming more familiar as I moved my way around the circle. My wings and tail began to behave themselves once I figured out what it felt like to make them move; at least, when I was concentrating on them.

“Holly, your tail keeps hitting me.” Connie smirked at me, picking up my tail and moving it behind me. “It’s real cute and all, but I’m working.”

“Sorry! I’m still getting the hang of this thing.” Even before I got my new body, I always felt I had to be moving something; bouncing my leg, tapping my fingers, chewing my tongue, something. Now that I had a body part that felt tailor made for moving mindlessly, it made it all the harder not to use it.

“Here, let me help.” For the second time tonight, Connie snaked her own tail around mine and squeezed. Was holding tails just a thing demons did? My face grew warm, and I pushed myself back into working on my rune.

“Thanks, Connie.”  I had to be the most awkward individual on the face of the planet. This body was everything I ever wanted, and I was still heating up like a lava lamp any time I was touched. I glanced over to Connie to find her already looking at me with that shit-eating grin of hers, and I quickly moved my eyes back to the work at hand. Why did the people I surrounded myself with love watching me writhe? “Maybe we could like… talk about something?”

“What’s on your mind, babe?” Connie's eyes bored holes in me whether I was looking at her or not. Somehow, even facing down at the sigils on the gymnasium floor, I knew she was smirking at me with a mouth full of fangs. Neat. I swallowed hard. Asking to talk had been a flimsy excuse to move things along, but there were certainly some things I still wanted to know.

“You said you were born a demon. How?”

“Well, you see, when two demons love each other very much…”

“You know what I mean,” I huffed. “It’s not like you summoned yourself, right?”

“Nah. Marcus is my summoner.” She said it so casually, like she hadn’t just blown my world apart. Everything I’d been taught said that only women were permitted to summon demons.

“But… Marcus is a guy.”

“Sure is. Gender essentialism in magic is just church rhetoric, and it’s grade-A bullshit.” Without warning, Connie breathed a small stream of fire onto one of her runes, sealing it into place. “The move to only allow women into summoner schools was made way before the Second Summoning, and only because shit was lawless back then. It’s just classic misogyny, girl. If somebody was gonna risk getting their soul eaten, they wanted it to be somebody expendable.”

Today was really not going great for the stability of my worldview. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? I’d never met a summoner who was a guy before, not that I’d really met many summoners period. Connie had been the first ‘summoner’ I’d ever gotten close to, and she always spoke in riddles and half-formed statements. Why did it seem like my whole world had been built on lies? Was my adulthood doomed to be constantly undoing the tangled knot of half-truths and manipulation that was my childhood?

“Holly, come on. I know that face.” Constance placed her brush back in well of ink and turned to face me. “We weren’t trying to hurt you. Marcus and I have both watched you unlearn so much of the shit they filled your head with. We’re really proud of you for that.” She scooted closer to me, plopping down next to me just outside the circle. “I’m sorry. We both love the hell out of you, but the people you come from, they’re…”

“Scary.” I shrunk in place.

“Yeah, babe.” Constance let her hand come to rest on my thigh. “We took it too slow, maybe. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, we both trust you. Marcus figured you were right on the edge of some major self discovery. We tried not to complicate that by systematically deconstructing your universe for you.”

“I don’t want to be like this forever.” I put my brush next to Constance’s. They’d been scared of me, or at the very least what I represented. I didn’t blame them. The more layers I peeled back about the beliefs I’d been so graciously gifted growing up, the more I realized how positively fucked up they all were. “I don’t want to be somebody you have to be afraid of, Connie.”

“I’m not! We’re not, Holly. I promise.” Connie flashed me a pained expression. “Maybe at first? Not now. Listen-” Again, she scooted closer to me. I folded my arms. The last thing I wanted was touch at a time like this. I felt like a villain, the enemy of every good thing in my life. I’d traded one manufactured worldview for another, only now it was my closest friends hiding their lives from me. The worst part about it was, how could I blame them? Criers had thoroughly ruined my life, and there was no denying they had the power to do the same for my loved ones if they made themselves enough of a target. I had been a risk, and a heavy one at that.

“Holly, you are kind, gentle, clever, and brave, all in spite of what they tried to make you.” Connie’s tail squeezed mine again, and I jumped just a bit. “Sorry. It’s instinct, I guess. Marcus and I don’t love you out of obligation or pity, Holly. We love you because you are a wonderful person who’s been there for us both at our lowest. Neither of us want to imagine a life without you.” I stared at the ground, my now pointed ears hot and rosy. “C’mon, Holly. Please don’t make me spell it out.”

“I… don’t want a life without you two, either. I just wish I didn’t come with so much baggage.” I finally took Constance’s hand in my own, turning only briefly to look at her.

“Girl, you think we don’t have baggage? You gotta be kidding.” With what seemed like very little effort, Connie pulled me over onto her lap.

“W-what are you doing?” I pulled my hair out of the way just in time for my head to hit Constance’s lap. Oh, okay, so this was happening. Her thighs were too soft to be real.

“When I was growing up, my mother taught me that all humans were self-centered pricks that had no concern for anybody but themselves. I grew up believing that any human I encountered would only be out for my magic, and that it was my job to make sure they got as little as possible.” Connie ran her palm over my head, trailing feather-light touches with her claws along my scalp. I melted. “I trained day in and day out, readying myself for a time when I’d have to come up against some gross little creature that would just as soon see me dead as in chains.”

“So, what happened?” I was lucky to get the words out through the series of shivers I was currently experiencing.

“I got Marcus.” The smile that lit up her face was brilliant and genuine. “He didn’t want any of my power; none of it. All he asked was that I fix his body.” I froze in place. What had Connie meant when she’d said I was just like Marcus? “I was suspicious, of course, but I did it for him. Once our contract was signed, it was over. A whole childhood of training out the window, just like that. Marcus said he never liked the idea of being a summoner. He’d hated the summoner’s academy his family had sent him to, and continuing the family lineage was the last thing on his mind.”

“Connie, is Marcus…” I paused. I knew what I was, but how was I supposed to…

“Like you? Yeah, Marcus is trans, babe.” Connie leaned over, her eyes scanning my face for a reaction. I twisted my hair around my fingers. There was a word for people who were like me?

“Am I… trans?”

“I mean, my ass is just guessing from the new body, but do you like being a girl, Holly?” Constance brushed my hair out of my face, and I could see her eyes shine above me. “This body more comfortable than the last one?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I just thought…” I knew what I thought. If it was anything like any of the rest of my previous belief system, it was probably hot trash that needed to be thrown out. How did I just stop thinking about myself in the way I’d done my entire life? “I thought I was broken? I thought I was a mistake, or a pervert, or just weak maybe. Whatever I was, I wasn’t able to stop feeling the way I did.”

“Because that’s just you, Holly, just like Marcus is just him. There’s not a damn thing wrong with it. You’re transgender, and you’re not even close to the only one.” Connie’s smile almost broke me right there. I didn’t know how badly I needed somebody to say those words to me until Connie said them. “Not everybody summons a demon to fix their gender dysphoria, though. That one’s between you and Marcus.”

“What’s gender dysphoria?”

***

The rest of the night flew by in a blur of ink and sigils, the two of us hitting a real rhythm once we caught our second winds. Connie conjured us up a pot of coffee and we worked well into the night, doing our damnedest to meticulously reconstruct each rune. We finished up refurbishing the last bit of the circle right around three AM. We stopped for just a few to double check our work and rest. The main challenge was right around the corner.

“Okay, Holly. Let’s go over it one more time.” Connie pulled her leather jacket off and tossed it aside. “Neither of us has a crystal, so there’s no charging this thing. Instead, I’m gonna hold the circle open for you while you get her out of there. That means?”

“In and out. The contract gets signed, and that’s the end of it.”

“Good. What else?”

“No time shenanigans. If Mara freezes time, it cuts off the power supply to the circle and the whole thing crumbles.”

“Bingo. What else?” Connie waited intently for my answer, her tail tracing a figure eight over and over again. “What did you promise me?”

“She signs my contract, not the other way around.”

“That’s it. She agrees to your terms, or no dice.” Connie cracked her knuckles, sending echoes through the empty gymnasium. “Show me how you summon your contract.” I did it again, just the way Connie had shown me. It was just like absorbing ambient magic when I was back in the circle, but this time it came from within me. I felt energy welling up in my gut; a warm, rising feeling. I envisioned my contract, the one I had written myself only a few minutes ago. With a snap of my fingers, the parchment appeared in my hand. “Good girl. Great fucking job, Holly.”

I let my contract dissipate into the ether. It was now or never, I guessed. I nodded to Connie and trotted my way back into the center of the circle. “Alright, Connie. Ready.”

Constance gave me a thumbs up. I watched as her brilliant, crimson wings unfurled to their full length. Her hands shook as she drummed up the energy, each of our hand-painted runes lighting up one after another. Her voice became a deep guttural growl, almost as if she was carrying something that kept getting heavier and heavier as she tried to lift it. Even as she strained, I watched her crack a smile at me.

“If you die,” Connie slipped out between grunts. “I’m gonna fucking kill you. Good luck, Holly.”