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The house Rong Changqing left him stands alone at a crossroads in a pair of lonesome dusty roads, and Ye Baiyi knows just from looking it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth. Unfortunately, something in him rankles at the idea of selling off Changqing’s house, and even if he could do that, he isn’t sure he could live with kicking the problem down the road to the next poor schmuck, so he rolls up his sleeves and roasts a chicken instead.
The kitchen is in pretty good shape. Changqing must have arranged for someone to clean it before Ye Baiyi got here, or maybe his widow did. There’s an antique oven, cast iron and enamel and in excellent shape for its age, that was clearly ignored by the last occupants in favour of the flashy new electric four-burner stove. Ye Baiyi wipes the dust off and gets it heating before he starts unloading his groceries.
There’s no food in the house except for what he brings himself, but Changqing left behind a whole set of almost untouched cookware to which Ye Baiyi helps himself to without shame. By the time the oven is hot enough, he’s cleaned and butterflied and seasoned the chicken. He also has the makings of a half-decent Vieux Carre plundered from the half-finished bottles in Changqing’s liquor cabinet. He gets the bird in the oven and, drink in hand, wanders onto the veranda out the back.
The sun sinks down slow, turns the sky dreamy purple. Long golden clouds streak towards the horizon like rows of heavenly wheat. The drink warms Ye Baiyi even as the air turns chilly and the breeze picks up. The smoke of the rye, the herbal golden sweetness of the Benedictine. Changqing always knew how to make a hell of a cocktail; Baiyi couldn’t help but pick up a thing or two here and there.
He takes his time with the drink, watching the sun go down, the purple intensifying into night blue. About the time the chicken starts to smell good, there’s a predictable knock at the front door.
Ye Baiyi finishes his drink and tries his best to look like an unthreatening old hippy. It’s not too hard; that’s exactly what he is to most people. He’s not quite prepared to open the door and see a boy with the sharpest damn cheekbones Ye Baiyi’s ever seen standing there, but he’s not mad about it either.
“Hello,” the boy says. “You must be the new neighbour.”
Ye Baiyi looks to the left, then to the right. The road stretches out in either direction. There’s a faint glimmer of lights visible at the gas station a few clicks east, but otherwise, no buildings to be seen. Almost all the land belongs to this house. “Long distance neighbour,” he says, and looks the boy over. “You didn’t walk here, did you?”
“I like walking,” the boy says. He smiles, wide-eyed and sweet and – fucking hell, everything Ye Baiyi likes, wrapped up in a goth package with that soft pouty mouth like a pretty pink bow on top. Rude of him. “And I thought I should say hello.”
Ye Baiyi adopts a more casual stance, leaning his shoulder into the door frame and crossing one ankle behind himself. The way he might if this was something other than it is. If he was flirting with the boy. Which he definitely isn’t. “How neighbourly of you. Hello.” He offers his hand.
The boy’s eyes flick to the sovereign ring on Ye Baiyi’s index finger, but the gold must calm him, because he accepts the handshake without any sign of hesitation.
Ye Baiyi makes sure the inner surface of the ring presses right into the tips of the boy’s fingers as their hands touch. The boy’s eyes go bright red from edge to edge. He hisses like a viper and yanks his hand back. Ye Baiyi tilts his palm over to show him the inelegant lump of pure moonstruck silver soldered onto the band.
“This your crossroads?” he asks.
The crossroads devil scowls at him and sticks his stung fingers in his mouth, like a little kid who’s touched a hotplate to find out if it was hot. “You’re an exorcist,” he accuses when he pulls his fingers free.
“Do I look like a fucking Catholic,” Ye Baiyi says. He’s a little insulted, actually. Maybe he needs to grow his hair out again. No one ever thought he was Catholic when he had the hippy hair.
“Whatever.” The devil doesn’t currently have pupils or irises, but he still gives the impression of rolling his eyes. “A wushi, then. A jitong.” He stills, fixing Ye Baiyi with a suspicious glare. “You’re not an immortal.”
“Well,” Ye Baiyi says, and hesitates, long enough for the demon’s wariness to approach outright terror before he laughs. “I just know a few things.”
“Ugh,” the devil says.
He folds his arms. Ye Baiyi doesn’t miss the way he’s still subtly flexing his fingers. Poor kid. For it to have stung him that hard, he can’t be that far out from his first summoning. That might still make him Ye Baiyi’s age, but devils measure this sort of thing in strange ways.
“I don’t suppose there’s something you’d sell your soul for,” the devil says. He tilts his head and cocks a hip and for a moment he’s doubled in Ye Baiyi’s sight, the pretty human skin and the thing underneath it. Still pretty, but in a glossy hard-shelled sort of way, black and gold and venomous.
“What makes you think my soul’s worth anything?” Ye Baiyi asks, instead of doing anything with the knowledge that apparently he would indeed fuck a weird spidery demon boy, as long as he has a smile like that.
“I can tell.” The boy – human again, his sharp edges retreating – gives Ye Baiyi elevator eyes, lingering somewhere around his lower dantian. Where Ye Baiyi’s golden core is. “I can sense it.”
“That’s just my dick,” Ye Baiyi says, dismissive, and ignores the cute little choked-off laugh that gets him. No. Down boy. Do not get fresh with a crossroads devil. “Look, not to be unfriendly, but I don’t usually like letting your type hang out in the material realm, much less on my doorstep, so—”
“All right, all right,” the devil says, stiff and irritable. “No need to banish me. I can see myself out.”
“Are you sure?” Ye Baiyi asks. “Because if you’re going to be throwing demonic bullshit around, we’ll have a problem sooner or later.”
The devil looks him over again, a much more focused version of those elevator eyes. Laser-like. Ye Baiyi looks back and waits for him to finish.
“How about a bargain, then?” The devil tilts his head to one side. “I promise not to do anything too devilish where you’ll find out about it, and you don’t try to banish me back to my ex-boyfriend.”
Ye Baiyi raises an eyebrow. “Your ex-boyfriend is in hell?”
“He certainly is now.” The devil smiles, with far too many teeth – no, wait. Ye Baiyi lets his eyes unfocus a little. Yep, those are mandibles, under the smile.
He must be nervous. He would’ve been able to keep the pretty human smile going, otherwise.
“All right,” Ye Baiyi says. “But I want a working definition of too devilish before I commit to that.” Behind him, his oven timer beeps, loud and annoying. “You reckon you can avoid starting shit until after we’ve eaten?”
“I’ve resisted this long, in spite of your charming personality,” the demon says. Then he pauses. Blinks, despite not needing to. The red fades out of his eyes. “Wait, what?”
“I’m not going to talk business on my doorstep like some kind of salesman,” Ye Baiyi says. “You can call me Ye Baiyi. Qianbei, if you’re nasty.”
It’s been a few centuries since knowing his true name was enough to hurt Ye Baiyi, but the devil doesn’t know that; his eyes go all glittering, like there’s a puzzle he wants to solve. This is what Ye Baiyi gets for theming his outfits after his name.
“You can call me Xie,” the devil says.
The hard shell and the mandibles make a little more sense, now, but it also means the name is somewhat on the nose.
“All right, Xie.” Ye Baiyi steps back and holds out an arm, gesturing towards the kitchen. “You might as well come in.”