Name of demon
Type of demon
What the ritual says
What the ritual does
How to reverse it
What Shepard was thinking
What Shepard is EVER thinking
“Right now I’m thinking that you’d make an excellent prosecuting attorney.” Shepard’s sprawled out on the sofa, all long legs and orange corduroy.
“That sounds like a compliment,” I say, surveying my lists. “Thank you.” I turn back to him—and to the demonic ritual which he’s taken from his pocket and spread out on my coffee table.
At least it isn’t the actual ritual. This is just a phonetic transcription, written in purple ink on a piece of notebook paper. I start to read it out loud, and Shepard jumps off the sofa to cover my mouth. “Don’t do that,” he says softly, hand still pressed over my lips.
I nod. I suppose he’s right.
He slowly takes his hand away, and we both exhale.
“Is that it how it happened?” I ask. “You just read it out loud?”
He sits back down. “No, there was more. I drew a doorway on the floor.”
“Not a pentagram?”
“No, it was a door—there was a diagram for how to draw it. I think the door worked like a metaphor. Like it was the idea of a door, and then it became a door.”
I flop down on the sofa, wiping chalk on my skirt. “So it was only a metaphorical summoning.”
“Why not?” He’s still smiling. （One nice thing about talking to Shepard is that I don’t even have to pretend not to be patronizing. It rolls right off of him.） “After all,” he says, “your magic is based on clichés…”
I wince. “I think you mean that we use the power of language to harness the world’s magic in a way that you can only contemplate. But go on, you drew a door … Where?”
“In my bedroom.” Shepard cracks open another boxed sandwich.
Coronation chicken this time.
After an hour of list-making, I let him take a break to get dinner. With all the sandwiches on the coffee table right now, it’s like Simon never left. （It’s very much like Simon left. I can hear him—and Baz—not saying anything, not here, not wanting to be here. It’s like giant gongs of silence. Shepard’s constant chatter does nothing to crowd it out.） I’m crushing the end of my chalk with my nail. “So, you created a door to hell, in the room where you sleep…”
He finishes his bite. “Oh,” he says. “It’s curry. I wasn’t expecting that. The queen was coronated with curry chicken salad?”
“Shepard. Focus. ”
He tilts his head. “I’m focusing, focusing … I like the raisins.”
I groan, and wipe some chalk on his leg. He pulls his thigh away, laughing.
“What’s your surname?” I ask.
“Is it that hard calling me ‘Shepard’？”
“It’s awfully familiar,” I grouse.
He laughs some more. He’s very good at smiling and laughing while he eats. It isn’t even a little disgusting. “It’s Love.”
I frown and pull away from him. “It’s not—”
“My last name. It’s Love.”
“You’re joking.”
He takes another bite, still smiling. “I am not. Feel free to call me that if it feels less familiar.”
“Ugh, you’re inherently impossible.”
“Untrue, I’m Normal. I’m utterly possible.”
“Tell me more about the door,” I say. “Why’d you do this in your bedroom?”
Shepard’s smile falls a notch. He looks down at his lap. “Well, I didn’t want to do it in anyone else’s space—and I don’t think demons live in hell, by the way. I think they’re more like beings from other dimensions.”
“What did you use to draw the door?”
He sets down the sandwich, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Blood, soil, water, ash, and milk.”
“Your own blood?”
He licks his bottom lip. “It had to be my own blood. The guy who sold me the ritual was very clear.”
“How much did the ritual cost?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Nothing?”
“Is that an answer or a question?”
He shrugs and looks back at his lap, brushing off some crumbs. “It’s one of those ‘we don’t get paid unless you get paid’ situations…”
I have a bad feeling about this. I almost don’t want to push him for a real answer. “What did it cost?”