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Title: What Not To Do When Summoning a Demon
Recipient Name: alumi
Rating: G
(No Pairings)
Warnings: Some occult scariness
Summary: Crowley finds himself summoned by a group of teenagers playing a school prank. Summoning demons can be dangerous, so he decides to teach them a lesson they won’t forget.

What Not To Do When Summoning a Demon

Everything was grey; the stone building that made up the school, the evening sky, and the dead grass were all greyness broken only by three dark blotches moving across the ground towards the shack by the edge of the forest. It was where the school kept its sports equipment. The students snuck towards it with hushed laughter and anxious shushes.

“If they catch us in the middle of this,” said one of the girls, the primary shusher, “it’s going to be really difficult to explain.”

“If they catch us in the middle of this,” said the boy, who was carrying a book and some chalk, “they’ll be screaming before they can say anything.”

The third student, another girl who had an armful of candles, just laughed delightedly.

They reached the equipment shack and hid themselves inside. After lighting a few candles, they got to work. They scribbled complicated patterns and large circles in chalk all over the floor, then they added words, referring to the book every now and then and sometimes arguing. Eventually they were done. They sat back and looked at their handiwork with satisfaction, and, from one of them, some unease.

“Now we read it,” the boy said.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?”

“You’re such a worrywart, Jackie,” said the other girl.

“We’re talking about actual Hell, Mia.”

“Nah,” said Eli. “Actual Hell is fifth period with Rowbotom.”

Mia cackled and Jackie rolled her eyes.

“What if it—y’know—works?”

“That’s the point.”

“But—”

“It’d serve Stanford right, setting our curfew at seven-thirty.” Eli let out a vicious laugh.

“So we’re doing black magic to get back at our annoying housemaster. Great.”

“We set it up so we’d be safe,” Mia said.

“Yeah,” Jackie said, reluctant.

“C’mon, Mia. You’re the best at pronouncing Latin.”

Mia put her hair behind her shoulders and smiled. She picked up the book and began to read.

The night outside grew darker to the tune of the words.

Jackie bit her lip and Eli stared at the floor, his eyes glowing in the light of the flames. As Mia read on, they started to hear a rumbling. At first it sounded like thunder, but there hadn’t been any clouds. Then it grew. Eventually it almost drowned out Mia’s voice. She read on until she had read every word on the page.

The rumbling stopped when she did. And then….

When a demon is summoned, the floor almost invariably bursts into flame. Most assume this is because the demon is being dragged from Hell, which is notorious for its fiery depths. Not all demons, however, reside in Hell permanently. Some have vacation homes. Crowley had been living in his ‘vacation home’ for approximately six-thousand years, so when the summoning spell picked him at random, he had been strolling by the River Thames. The flames were a result of friction and heat buildup from him having been dragged a hundred miles instantaneously.

They erupted, high and blinding, and the kids fell back, covering their burning faces with their arms. Eli squinted at the inferno with determination, but even he had to look away. The flames roared, and then they died. Jackie, from behind her arms, saw the dim light of embers casting strange shadows on the walls and ceiling. She almost didn’t dare to put her hands down and look, but then she decided not looking would be worse.

She glanced at Eli and Mia first. Eli was blinking like his eyes weren’t working right. Mia gaped at what was in front of her.

Reluctant, Jackie turned.

Rising out of the embers and the smoke was a man. His dark clothes sputtered as he shakily got to his feet and sparks fell from his hair. He stood, the fire beneath him making his shadow look terribly tall against the wall behind him. He looked down at them.

His eyes glowed red.

“Shitshitshit,” breathed Eli.

The demon grit his teeth together and glowered at them. The red glow was fading. Without it, his eyes were yellow—yellow with slit, snakelike pupils. They looked horribly angry.

And this is what Crowley was seeing:

They looked horribly frightened.

Kids, he thought. Not kids. Not this. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t just give them a good talking-to like he could with Satanists who had forgotten to be specific with their summonings. These weren’t people trained on how to deal with demons and negotiate with the forces of Hell. They were just kids! Summoning a random demon for a school prank.

They had gotten him. They could have gotten anybody.

They cowered on the floor, staring up at him like he was Frankenstein’s monster. They’d had no idea what they were doing, that much was clear. They probably hadn’t even expected it to work. Somehow, though, they’d gotten it right—mostly, anyway. He couldn’t just be what he really was with them: a guy they had really annoyed by interrupting his evening walk. He needed to make sure they never did this again. He needed to scare the crap out of them.

Well, they were already halfway there.

“YOU DARE DISTURB ME,” he roared, because ‘what the fuck, man?’ would have tarnished the verisimilitude of the scary-demon act.

The teenagers shook at his voice and two of them fell onto their backs. That wasn’t helpful; he needed them to be able to run, or else soon it would be awkward when they realized all he was going to do was yell at them from a safe distance.

“W-We have summoned you,” one of the kids said.

“Silence!” Crowley loomed over him. “You think you can summon me, a demon from Hell, and not face the consequences?”

“Y-You can’t hurt us,” said one of the girls. “We summoned you.”

“You have no power over me!” This was fun. It was almost like a movie. He’d always thought they were cheesy, and horribly inaccurate for the most part, but now he could see why the actors would want to do that with their voices. Cathartic. “I am the Serpent!”

“Th-the serpent?” stuttered the other girl. “Guys. I think we just summoned Satan.”

“Stay back, demon!” The boy had stood, giving a valiant effort at not trembling. “You—you will do our bidding! And then—then we’ll set you free!”

“Ssset me free?” Crowley grinned at him, and the three of them took another step back. They were pressed against the wall behind them now. Go the other way! Crowley thought. Towards the door, you idiots! “I don’t think I need to be sssset free. Why would I do the bidding of sssuch pesssky mortals as you?”

“It’s in the contract,” the boy said. “You have to do what we say! That’s what we summoned you for!”

Crowley peered at them.

He did something really weird with his tongue.

The kids’ knees shook so much it was a wonder they were still standing.

“You can’t hurt us!” said the third kid, the only one who had been edging towards the exit. “You’re trapped. We didn’t just summon you without trapping you, too. We’re not stupid.”

Crowley looked around, and then he saw what she meant. On the floor, written in chalk as part of the summoning circle, was a ring of words in Latin—a spell for trapping demons. His eyes skimmed over them, and then he smirked. He looked back at the teenagers and made his shadow grow a bit larger behind him, just for extra effect. He made sure the fingers of the shadow looked especially long and spindly. It was the details that counted.

“Hmm,” he said. “Yesss. Sso you did. But—” He touched one of the words with the toe of his snakeskin shoe. “You sspelled thisss one wrong.”

They stared at them.

A small voice said, “I knew it.”

He stepped over the ring.

The kids’ faces stretched into screams, and they turned and scrambled for the exit. Crowley gave a loud, crackling laugh—boy, that released a lot of endorphins. He really should do this more often. The kids ran out into the night, and Crowley gave them a few seconds head-start. One…two…three…teenagers ran fast, didn’t they? He grinned and followed.

The first step was obvious—two of them ran into the large stone building that looked like either a monastery or a school, so they would be easy enough to find later. The third, the tall girl, not the one to have brought up the trap, had run off into the surrounding woods. He would deal with her first or else she could disappear. Maybe he could do a loop around and herd her back toward the building, which he was pretty sure now was a boarding school and where she was supposed to be.

Crowley stalked through the woods, leaves crackling under his feet. It was a crisp autumn evening. The moon had just come out, and it was big and bright enough to make the sky silver above the bare branches of the trees. He disturbed an owl who hooted and flew away in a flurry of feathers. It’s a perfect night for a haunting, he thought, especially when you’re the one doing the haunt. He was all for spooky.

He had been following the signs of someone having run through the woods in terror, but they were starting to fade. He was just about to turn around when someone came barreling out of the trees beside him. It was the girl. It had nearly given him a heart attack, but apparently his grimace looked like a wicked grin enough, because she screamed and backed away. She was clutching something around her neck. When Crowley took a step forward, she held it out to him.

“Stay away!” she said, her voice only air rushing out in terror.

Crowley squinted at the object. It was the cross from her Rosary. “A Catholic boarding school?” he said. “And you’re summoning demons.”

“P-Please. Don’t hurt me.”

“Listen,” Crowley said. “When you summon demons, bad things happen.” His voice had been hovering between threatening and pragmatic. It settled on exasperated.

This was apparently good enough. The girl’s eyes widened and she seemed to forget to breathe.

“Don’t ever forget that.” He pointed a finger at her. She nodded frantically. She took a step back. Just one more and he would be able to lunge at her and realistically fall short.

He said, “Very bad things.”

She didn’t even wait to take another step. She simply turned and ran, this time running, thank Someone, for the school. Crowley clapped his hands together, satisfied, and followed with a much more casual stroll.

He reached the door to the school and found that it was locked. It was huge and made of a dark type of wood that looked heavy and positively forbidding. Of course, that was only for humans and those who had lived among them since the door had first been invented. If you were a demon straight from Hell you wouldn’t have known anything about the inherent suggestion of a huge dark wooden door, which was that you leave it alone. Crowley opened the lock with an imperious little hand gesture and sauntered inside.

It was a cold stone building with long halls and high ceilings. Torches still hung on the walls, and though the actual lighting was electric now, the place was so big and gloomy that it was still dim and full of strange shadows. It was the kind of place that would make your thoughts scream ‘This is a place for raising children!’ if you were the author of a young adult series or a person who had very strange ideas about what raising children should actually encompass. Crowley ran a hand along the cold stone wall as he walked and looked around skeptically.

There were entrances to several large halls, then he reached the back and discovered what he assumed must be the dormitories. There was a long hallway of doors, up and down, all with the lights off, not spaced far enough apart to be for religious ceremonies, but just close enough to be sleeping quarters. Every door was closed.

All except for one.

Crowley entered it. He found himself inside a small room with two shabby beds, one disheveled and one made, two end tables, one with the lamp on it still turned on, and two trunks, one which was pulled to the middle of the room and looked as though it had been rifled through in a hurry. Crowley walked around the room curiously. He smirked and unplugged both the boys’ phones, then messed up their alarms for the week. Then he went to the chest and looked inside. There were a lot of sweaters and books. There were some candles and a box of chalk that was half-empty. He looked at the titles of the books again.

There was the sound of rapid footsteps shuffling down the hall. Crowley grinned and followed them.

He had thought he’d heard two pairs of feet running, but he only saw the boy when he entered the chapel. He stood at the end, crouched and ready to run, not that there was anywhere he could run to. He just barely managed to make his terrified face look like a threatening glare.

“You can’t come in here,” he said. “This is hollowed ground.”

“Hallowed,” Crowley said.

“What?”

“It’s hallowe—look, never mind. I can come in. See?”

He stepped forward. The boy went pale and started to creep around the other end, toward the wall opposite the demon. He was trying to edge around him to get closer to the exit. Crowley was grateful; this one was a fighter, which would make Crowley letting him escape all the more plausible. He just had to make sure he kept his distance, because the kid also looked a bit like he might possibly punch him if he got too close.

“Look,” the kid said. “I only summoned you to do my bidding, and—and if you’re not going to do it, you might as well just leave.”

“Listen, kid,” Crowley sighed as they continued walking in their circle, the boy getting closer to the door every second. “Saying things like that is only going to make a demon angry.”

“I don’t care,” the kid said, and then he made a mad dash, way too early, and made it around Crowley only because the demon did not have the slightest inclination towards actually catching him. He made it out of the chapel and raced down the hall, telltale footsteps ringing through the night as he went. Crowley sighed and went to follow.

“Not so fast,” said a voice, and someone stepped between him and the exit.

It was the third member of the party who had summoned him. She was holding some sort of glitzy basin in her arms.

Crowley saw what was in it and staggered backward.

“Wait wait wait—”

“Holy water,” the girl said, her eyes flashing with victory as she saw the genuine fear on his face. “One more step and I’ll splash you with it!”

“Nonono,” Crowley said. “Shit. Wait. That stuff—listen, that will actually kill me.”

“Ha!” She took a few steps forward, standing in the entrance to the chapel so there was no chance of him getting past her. “Now surrender, unless you want to perish forever, you foul being of sin!”

“Lisssten,” Crowley said, and this time the hiss wasn’t for effect. It was something he couldn’t help when he was scared. “That—I’ll actually die. You don’t want to murder someone, do you? Not—Not really?”

“It’s not murder if it’s a demon,” the girl said, and at the same time Crowley could tell that her raised voice and determined expression were masking pure fear.

“No. No. I didn’t—I never—look, I didn’t hurt anyone, right? I didn’t kill anyone. You think I couldn’t’ve stopped him? I let him go!”

“See,” said the girl, raising the basin of water, “saying things like that to me just makes me angry.”

Crowley had his hands in the air. He took a few steps back, shaking. Is this how it ends? he thought. Is this really how it goes down? In a Catholic boarding school? His eyes flickered between the water, sloshing around in the girl’s quaking arms, and her face.

The girl frowned. “You’re really scared, aren’t you?”

She didn’t move. The water had stilled. Crowley carefully put his hands down and wrapped them around his sides, his shoulders hunched. He tried to stand up straight. “Look,” he said. “I only did all that stuff to scare you.”

“Why would you want to scare us?” she said. Then, with a frown and renewed anger that made her jerk forward, making some of the water slosh onto the ground, “Why wouldn’t you just want to kill us?”

“I’m not like other demons,” he said, and then he sighed. “They would just kill you. That’s why you shouldn’t be summoning us willy-nilly, like it’s no big deal! Like you have power over us. You don’t.”

The girl bit her lip, but her brow creased and her face was still dark.

“You got lucky it was me,” Crowley said. “Anyone else would have killed you in an instant, or possessed you, or wreaked havoc on you and your family for a hundred years, or—listen, it’s just not a very good idea.”

“But you’re different?” she said skeptically.

Crowley shrugged.

“You’re not dressed how I would’ve expected,” she admitted slowly. “And—and you don’t have any horns.”

“Nor a tail,” Crowley pointed out.

The girl’s frown was fading. “And you said willy-nilly.”

Crowley groaned. “That’s from hanging around an angel too much. He just says these things—eurgh, they get stuck in my head.”

“There are angels?”

“Oh, yeah. What, you believed in demons but weren’t sure about angels?”

The girl stared at him. “I’m just going to stay here,” she said. She adjusted the basin in her arms. They were obviously getting tired. “Until the housemaster gets here.”

“And that will be—?”

She wrinkled her nose. “We have curfew at seven-thirty. So…morning?”

Crowley sighed. “Great,” he said. “Not like I had any other plans.”

An hour or two passed. The girl eventually set down the basin, but she sat with her hand resting in the water, ready to splash it at him at any moment. Crowley sat criss-cross applesauce, slouched and grumpy. He had tried chatting a few times. It had never gone very well.

“What’s your name?” he asked, in spite of himself, because he was just too damn bored not to try.

She glared at him. “Like I would tell you. So then you could use it in black magic against me.”

“My name’s Crowley.”

She blinked at him. “Crowley.”

“Yep.”

She adjusted how she had been sitting to make herself more comfortable. Without thinking, she had taken her hand out of the water. She quickly put it back in. “I had a neighbor back home whose last name was Crowley.”

“No relation, I assure you.”

She peered at him suspiciously. “I’m Jackie.”

“Nice to meet you,” Crowley said. “I’d offer to shake your hand, but it’s covered in water that would melt me like acid.”

She sniffed.

“Nice thinking, by the way. You must’ve learned about holy water and demons in one of those books. Or were those yours? I thought that looked like a boy’s room.”

“Eli,” she said. “He was just reading them to be ‘edgy’. But then, well.” She paused, her expression distant. Then she shrugged. “Mia thought it was just a joke. Honestly, I just went with them because I knew they’d get into trouble. Not because I actually thought it would work—I just thought Stanford would catch us.”

“Well next time,” Crowley said, “don’t let them peer pressure you into misspelling a word of the spell. Or casting a summoning spell at all.”

“There won’t be a ‘next time’,” she said. “I’m not—”

She was cut off by a bloodcurdling scream. It sounded like it came from far away, but Crowley instantly stood up and looked around himself anyway. His skin crawled. “What was that?” He tried to look beyond the girl down the hall, but all he could see was the wall opposite him. Then he looked down at where she was sitting.

Jackie hadn’t moved. She was huddled on the ground, eyes staring blankly ahead, shivering.

“What the hell was that?” Crowley asked again.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t sound like she wanted to find out. She also didn’t sound surprised.

Crowley frowned at her. “What do you mean? You didn’t summon another demon before me, did you?”

Jackie wrapped her arms around her knees. The water sat beside her, forgotten.

Crowley walked over to her and crouched down in front of her. “What,” he said, “was that screaming noise? And why aren’t you, the only one smart enough to successfully stand up to me, trying to find out?”

“I have tried.”

Crowley looked closer at her face. She finally looked back at him. She didn’t seem half as afraid of him anymore. She still looked terrified of something.

“You seem like an intelligent girl, Jackie,” he said. “So tell me. Why would you do a crazy thing like summoning a demon?”

Jackie winced. Then she said, her voice hushed, “We needed help.”

Crowley stood up and stared at her. “Most people call on an angel,” he said. “Most people pray.”

“We pray all the time here,” she told him. “It hasn’t stopped the screaming.”

Crowley frowned. “What the heaven is going on here?”

“A kid disappeared. Some nights we hear screams. Some night we just hear banging.”

“And so you summoned a demon to try to make them do your bidding? So you could, what, use infernal powers to try to find out what’s going on?”

“We didn’t know what else to do. Eli—it was his roommate, Owen, who went missing—he said we could make a demon do whatever we wanted. We could use it as a weapon. To—to protect us.”

“Demons don’t protect people,” Crowley said, his voice harsher than he intended. “You put yourself in more danger. Don’t ever do that again! You can’t control demons, do you understand? We’re too bloody clever.” And too bloody vicious.

There was another scream. Jackie trembled.

Crowley looked past her down the darkened hallway. He tapped his hand against his side, then turned and crouched in front of her again.

“We didn’t know what to do,” Jackie said, her voice hollow. “We needed help.”

“You can’t force a demon to do what you want,” Crowley said.

“But—”

“But,” Crowley said. “If you need help—you could always—ask.”

Crowley and Jackie walked down the darkened halls. The girl had left the holy water behind—the basin was too heavy to carry far—but she kept her distance from the demon. She walked so close to the wall that she almost scraped against it, as though she was trying to hide from him in the shadows. When the screams rang out again, though, it was Crowley who jumped, and Jackie just kept walking, more determined than ever.

“The thing about giant, creepy stone buildings,” Crowley said irritably after having been startled yet again, “is that their acoustics are a mess. I can’t tell where the—sounds—are coming from.”

“That’s been our problem, too,” Jackie said. “That and, well, fear.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Crowley said. “Hold on. I think it’s coming from down here. ”

“That’s where the housemaster lives. If he catches us out past curfew—”

“You’ll what, end up missing and screaming in the hidden depths of the school? I think you’ve got some priorities to work out here.”

“Right,” Jackie said. “You’re right. We’ve been playing it safe for too long. We need to solve this, now.”

They crept down the hall. There were no lights on in this one, only one torch lit with real fire at the end of the hall. They walked toward it, and this time both of them stayed in the middle, as though the doors were more frightening than the empty walls had been.

There was the sound of banging behind them and a distant muffled cry.

“It’s coming from behind us,” Jackie said. “We’re going the wrong way.”

“Wait.”

Back in Tadfield, Crowley hadn’t been able to sense Adam’s love for the village. Aziraphale had called it something like ‘the opposite of spooky’. Demons were less attuned to that sort of thing than angels were, but he could feel something here. Crowley could sense spooky.

He held his arm out in front of Jackie, and when she stopped, he listened—that was the only way to describe it—he listened to whatever it was that was making his skin crawl.

He turned to his right and approached the door there. He jiggled the doorknob. He jiggled it harder, and it unlocked, miraculously, or whatever you would call it when done by a demon.

The door swung open.

“What the hell—”

Crowley nearly had a heart-attack as he swung around to face Jackie who had crept up behind him without him noticing. “Don’t do that!”

“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

Crowley turned and looked back into the room. He went pale. “Oh. Don’t do that.”

The room was lit with the dark red glow of flames. Candles sat on every surface including the floor, tall dripping ones and short fat ones, all burning with more heat than brightness. The room had been a bedroom, but the furniture was all pushed to the walls. On the floor drawn with something red was the most complicated spell Crowley had seen in ages. It reminded him of the things he would find in old monasteries in the dark ages, or in deep caverns, or in places that were only found by people who had given up on society, or had society give up on them. The pentagram was ringed with so many words they had to be written the size of a thumbnail. The delicate letters shimmered from the flickering candlelight. It was the kind of thing done by someone who knew what they were doing. It was the kind of thing done by someone doing something bad.

“What—” Jackie stammered. “What has Stanford been doing?”

Crowley walked around the ring of words, careful not to step into the pentagram. His face grew darker and darker.

“We should destroy it,” Jackie said.

“He’ll just make it again. Plus, then he’ll know someone’s found it.” Crowley carefully smudged one of the letters with his foot; just a little, just enough that it wasn’t noticeable, but that it was now the wrong letter and the word was misspelled. “It’ll take him ages to find that. That should buy us some time, at least.” To do what? And before then, the man would just search painstakingly until he found the mistake and then he would write the summoning spell all over again.

This spell was specific. This one knew which demon it was calling on. He was not a nice guy.

“He’s trying to summon Malphas,” Crowley said. “Oh no. No no no. This is not good.” Malphas was too powerful. Crowley would never be able to take him in a fight, much less would he be able to convince him to leave alone the people who had summoned him. He was known for outsmarting any human who tried to trap him, and for getting revenge. Crowley didn’t think he’d stop at one human, either, not when there was a whole building full of them.

He could get rid of Stanford. He could just snap his fingers, and something would happen to him—

Crowley hadn’t done that sort of thing in a while and he really, really didn’t miss it.

“Maybe Owen found this,” Jackie said. “And—and Stanford—”

Crowley looked at her. “I think it’s time we followed those screams.”

In the end the source of the screams found them. They had only gone halfway down the hall when they heard a murmuring voice and the sound of something heavy being dragged across the stone floor. Jackie grabbed Crowley’s arm and dragged him back inside, and Crowley stuffed them both behind a desk that had been pushed against the wall. The girl forgot her fear of the demon she had summoned herself and the two of them huddled together with baited breath as the sounds got closer.

After a moment the door, which they had thankfully thought to close, was thrown open. In walked a balding man looking to be about in his fifties wearing religious clothes and an irreligious expression. He was dragging two teenage boys along with him, one by the arm and the other by his shirt collar. The second boy was slumped. Stanford thrust him forward where he fell on the floor and did not get up.

Crowley recognized the other boy as the one who had summoned him, Eli. He was fighting against the housemaster’s grip, but with much less vigor than he’d had earlier. Stanford shoved him into the room. The boy had his arms tied and looked furious but exhausted.

“Then what?” Eli spat. “You expect he’ll give you some sort of power? What if he doesn’t do what you say? What if he attacks you instead?”

“You really think I’d be so stupid,” Stanford said with a sneer, “as to not take precautions? The demon will be well contained. That’s what I need your friend here for. He will serve as a sacrifice—”

“No!”

“—a body within which to contain Malphas. Then he will turn his powers towards whatever I ask of him. And at last I’ll be able to get the respect I deserve from this blasted school—and the rest of this accursed planet.”

“He says things like ‘accursed planet’?” Crowley whispered. “That can’t be good.”

“What do we do?” Jackie hissed.

“Just stay quiet, I’m thinking.”

Eli nudged the boy on the floor with his foot. “Owen.” The boy moved feebly but did not get up.

“Although,” Stanford said musingly, “I really don’t need two bodies for him to possess.”

Eli’s eyes widened and, still trying to stay between the housemaster and his friend, he took a few steps back. Crowley finally saw why—Stanford had a knife the size of a small sword. Jackie gripped his arm so tightly it hurt.

“Okay, forget what I said,” Crowley whispered. “Do something! Now!”

“Like what? You’re the supernatural one, you do something! He has a knife!”

“I’ll take care of that! You’ll be safe, I promise. Just get Owen and the other boy out of here. I’ll stay and deal with him.”

Jackie bit her lip, then, just as Stanford was about to spring at Eli, she leapt out from behind the desk and ran at them. The housemaster lunged at Eli and Jackie screamed. The knife bounced harmlessly off Eli’s arm—Crowley had turned it into plastic, just something subtle enough that Stanford might not notice anything had changed and think he had simply missed. Jackie had already dragged Eli out of the way of the snarling man. Crowley squinted at the ropes around the boy—just a little more room. It was enough. His energy renewed by the attack and the reappearance of Jackie, Eli struggled out of the ropes and helped his friend grab Owen. Stanford reached for them but Jackie punched him in the face. He was just stunned enough for Eli to knock the knife out of his hand and kick it across the room. Stanford swung the door closed and stood between it and them, breathing heavily, enraged. The kids, not counting Owen, who had not managed to stand, were two to one, but it was clear the housemaster wouldn’t let them out easily.

“Fine,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow. He grinned at them wickedly. “Fine. If it has come to this, then I will offer Malphas myself as a vessel.”

He whirled around the students and waved his hands over the pentagram, then he started speaking the words than ran around it in shimmering red. At once the candles flared, their flames reaching for the ceiling. Eli tried to move forward to stop him but Jackie held him back. Crowley bit his nails as he peeked out from behind the desk to watch. Stanford cackled, his eyes wild, holding his arms up higher and higher as he read the incantation.

But Crowley had smudged one of the words.

His heart skipped a beat when Stanford reached it—but, yes, he read it wrong. The spell would not work. The candles burned as before, but they were already growing dimmer. Stanford didn’t seem to notice, but he would soon enough. Malphas would not appear, and no matter how good that seemed, it was bound to make Stanford very angry. As far as he knew the kids were the only ones who could have altered his summoning circle. And he could always try again.

What could he do to stop him from trying again?

How could he convince him that it was a terrible idea?

Crowley looked around the room, at the horrified teenagers, one still on the ground, at the candles and the red liquid painted on the floor and the housemaster’s eyes gleaming with fervor. He didn’t know how to scare someone like that. If he tried what he had with the kids, showing them how monstrous demons could be, he would probably be glad, because that was exactly what he wanted. He was expecting the demon to be ruthless and evil, not….

Crowley had an idea.

He grinned. He stood up from behind the desk—no one was paying him any attention anyway—and softly blew onto his fingers.

Every candle went out.

“No,” Eli said, but Jackie held a hand over his mouth. Owen groaned.

It was too dark to see Stanford’s face, but coming from his direction, there was a low chuckling sound. It grew louder and more horrible. The kids backed away.

Crowley shook his head—humans were so dramatic—and snapped his fingers.

A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning. The candles were re-illuminated.

Crowley made the flames dance.

Stanford ran around his pentagram, rubbing his hands together in delight. Jackie looked over and saw Crowley. He smirked.

Lightning flashed again, this time so brightly that it was blinding.

When it subsided, Stanford found that there was a demon in his pentagram.

“Wh—” Eli said, but Jackie tightened her grip around his mouth.

Stanford crept closer to the circle of the incantation, careful not to step on the words. His eyes bulged. “Y—You!”

Crowley was standing at an angle to the housemaster, his hand stroking his chin. He turned his head and raised an eyebrow at him.

“M—Malphas!”

“Hmm,” said Crowley. “Who are you?”

Stanford fell onto his knees and bowed to him. Crowley adjusted his shirt collar, embarrassed. “Oh, great and powerful Malphas! I have called you here to make a bargain!”

Crowley sighed. “Have you?”

Stanford looked up at him. “Your Highness. I have released you, freed you to wreak havoc upon this world. All I ask in return is that you grant me power over men. Let me rule over those who are less worthy!”

“Huh. Not really much of a bargain for me, is it?”

Stanford blinked. “I—I beg your pardon?”

“See, the thing is,” Crowley said, “power isn’t so easy to grant these days. You can’t just kill a few nobles and make someone a king. No, these days power is all about influence, the social sphere. It’s a lot of hassle, and frankly, I don’t see what you’re giving me that makes it worth my time.”

The housemaster stuttered and looked around wildly. He pointed a shaking finger at the teenagers. “There! My first sacrifice! Three souls for the taking!”

“But they’re so innocent,” Crowley groaned. “All thoughts of justice and piety. Look, look, that one’s wearing a cross necklace!”

“But—but surely—” Stanford held a shaking hand to his mouth. “Surely you want to kill them? To revel in the destruction of humans?”

“It’s so messy, isn’t it? No, I prefer reveling in the destructions of souls that are already dead and in Hell. There’s much less cleanup.”

Stanford was having a bit of a crisis, so the students were sneaking towards the door. Eli still looked stunned, but he wasn’t trying to fight Jackie to get at the demon anymore, and Jackie was grinning. Even Owen was standing now; he didn’t look too badly injured, just weak from possibly not having eaten much in the past few days. He would be all right.

Crowley flicked his tongue out to distract the housemaster and reassure him that he was, in fact, a demon, complete with odd eyes and everything, while the teenagers snuck towards the door.

“Well,” Stanford said, “if you can’t grant me power, perhaps money?”

“Oh, I could give you that,” Crowley said. “Course, you’d lose most of it through gift taxes.”

“B—But surely, being a demon, the government wouldn’t—”

“From Hell, I mean.” Crowley grinned. “Just something we picked up from you people. Isn’t it great? Gift taxes. You lot are brilliant.”

Stanford was wringing his hands. “The school,” he said. “The whole school. I can offer you dozens of souls! You wouldn’t have to clean up anything! You could bring the whole place down!” His brow furrowed and his face grew wicked once again. “Just at least let me get revenge on those snotty kids and teachers who have disrespected me all these years.”

“Ooh,” Crowley said, with a wicked grin of his own. “I could give them all head lice!”

“Yyees,” Stanford said. “Or—”

“Or tempt them all into cheating on their tests. Or—this is a boarding school, isn’t it? Hormones are bound to be raging in this place. I could stir up some really good relationship drama.”

The kids had made it out the door. Stanford, who was slowly losing it, hadn’t even noticed. “See here, you—”

“Yes?” Crowley said menacingly. His eyes flashed and the housemaster took a step back. “Anything strike your fancy?”

Stanford put a hand to his brow and groaned. “I only wanted to bring destruction upon this wretched world!”

“Look,” Crowley said. “I get it. I really do. Anarchy, and all that. But things have changed, up here and in Hell. We’ve moved on. Honestly, I just can’t be bothered to get around to any destruction and chaos today. Not when accumulating human souls through minor temptations like telling Martha she should put lemon drops in the showerhead so Jem’s hair will get all sticky because she was flirting with Michael is so much easier.”

“But you’re a demon!” Stanford waved his hands in the air above his head. “You’re supposed to want this kind of—Look. I’ve got you trapped here, you see? I’ll not let you go until you grant me anything I ask!”

This time, Crowley yawned as he stepped out of the circle. It wasn’t as cathartic, but it was much more him.

“But—but the spell!”

“The spell?” Crowley smirked. “And where do you suppose that came from?” He stalked towards the housemaster, who was pushed farther and farther back into the room. “Spells to trap demons, eh? You can’t trap demons. Take it from me. If there’s something about a binding spell, or a conjuring incantation, or whatever, it was created by a demon to trap petty little men like you into exactly this situation. You’re a religious man, Stanford, or at least you’re dressed like one. What did the Bible tell you about people claiming to do magic? Didn’t you lisssten?”

Stanford tripped over one of the burnt-out candles and landed on his behind. He stared up at the demon, and something in his eyes looked broken. He was looking into the face of his greatest fear, but his greatest fear wasn’t a man who looked like Crowley. It was the discovery that all of his efforts had been in vain. It was the realization that he was all alone in his desire for devastation.

“Sssorry,” Crowley said with a shrug. “I know it must be a hell of a bummer.”

Shouting voices were approaching from down the hall. Stanford didn’t even flinch at them. He was staring into the distance, looking resigned. He wouldn’t be putting up a fight this time.

Crowley made it out the door just as Eli, Jackie, and three teachers they had gathered arrived. They ran right by him—he’d made himself as inconspicuous as possible, with a bit of infernal help—all except Jackie, who stopped.

“Did you do it?” she asked.

“Yep. Did you?”

“Owen’s already able to talk,” she said. “I think he’ll be all right once he gets some medical attention.”

“And you and Eli?”

“A bit shocked,” she said with a grin. She shrugged. “And our perceptions of religion might have changed a bit. I think next time, Eli will pray.”

“Better than summoning demons, anyway,” Crowley said. “And you?”

“I think I’ll remember asking for help. Thank you, by the way.” She smiled. “How did you get to be ‘not like other demons’, anyway? How did you end up—nice?”

“I’m not—” Crowley stopped. He looked at Jackie. It wasn’t like she was going to tell anyone about this, anyway. He said, “I’ve been around humans for the last six-thousand years.”

Jackie raised her eyebrows. “That’s—actually really nice to hear.”

“That’s also how the angel I told you about became more of an asshole, so don’t get too comfortable with yourselves.”

Crowley was walking home. The other teachers had taken care of Stanford. By now most of the red paint would have been scrubbed from the floors, the candles set aside for later use, for something much nicer.

Owen would be fine. Eli would be okay. Jackie would be great.

He whistled as he strolled through the dark woods. It was a bit of a ways back to London, but he had all the time in the world. It was a spooky night. Just the way he liked it.