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Step 1: Draw your symbol of choice, preferably on a flat surface.
Shirayuki drew the Star of Chaos, eight arrows extending from a singular point of origin, on her bedroom floor with some chalk and a compass. She’d never had an artist’s hand, but she’d aced every test in geometry her sophomore year. This was simple math.
The Book wasn’t specific about which demon she should summon, so she’d googled what she hoped might be the least destructive one and had landed on a fan-made Dungeons & Dragons character summary page for a demon of chaos. Not the most theologically official source, sure, but time was of the essence, and this wasn’t the first time deadlines had driven Shirayuki to desperate measures, no doubt it would not be the last.
Step 2: Light candles at the four cardinal points surrounding your symbol.
North, West, East and South, she lit small, coffee-scented candles in cute little jars. If she was going to go to questionable lengths to summon this demon anyway, she may as well make her room smell nice. Shirayuki didn’t usually light candles in her room, so it felt a bit like she was treating herself, like it was a special occasion.
She eyed the fire extinguisher in the corner of her room she’d bought at the grocery store after school earlier that day, just in case.
Step 3: Create the sealing circle.
She’d taken some salt from the kitchen. Her grandparents regularly bought bulk cases of those salt containers depicting a little girl with a big umbrella; they’d never notice some… 42000mg had gone missing.
Step 4: Begin reciting the incantation.
Why was it always Latin? They didn’t offer any Latin classes at her high school.
Not that that had stopped her from learning. Root words, and all that. It just… really made a person wonder.
She garbled through the unfamiliar words until they sounded natural coming out of her mouth, then looked to the last step.
Step 5: Blood sacrifice.
Shirayuki opened the sturdy plastic bag containing the rotisserie chicken she’d also picked up from the store. It was seasoned with lemon pepper and very, very greasy, but Oma always said that butter and grease are the lifeblood of the bar, and Opa was always saying “from Oma’s lips to God’s ears”, so it must hold some truth, right?
The Book was also unspecific on the details of how exactly the blood sacrifice should go down (Shirayuki began to wonder if this would really even work), so she just used a spoon to ladle some juices from the bottom of the bag and artfully drizzle it over her carefully drawn Symbol of Chaos like she was plating a five-star Michelin dish.
The grease looked glossy under the candlelight, flattening and oozing into the floorboards. Shirayuki tried not to cringe.
She told herself she’d clean it up later. She already had olive oil and a paper towel on standby; hopefully it didn’t sit and marinate for too long.
She took a step back from her setup, knees hitting the side of her mattress, to recite the incantation one more time with as little error and as much gravitas as she could manage.
.
.
.
Nothing happened.
Maybe she’d missed something? The Book hadn’t once steered her wrong in her four years as a high school student; surely, she’d missed a step somewhere-
Air whooshed through her room, violent and sudden; her homework sheets were sent flying around the room, books were ripped off their alphabetized, color-coordinated shelves, and Shirayuki was thrown back against her bed hard enough that the wind got knocked out of her lungs. She fumbled and struggled against her bedsheets tangling around her.
When she at last gained control over both her unruly bedsheets and windblown hair, the vortex hadn’t stopped, but it hadn’t gotten stronger either. Everything seemed to revolve around the symbol she’d drawn on her floor, like a nearly invisible tornado, save for her homework still whipping around in a miniature cyclone. She hoped her AP Lit paper survived the night, otherwise it was another fifty cents and a time-consuming bike ride to the library to reprint it.
Shirayuki was starting to wonder how the candles hadn’t gone out yet when the tornado – it started talking.
“Raj, please,” the exasperated groan tickled her ears, wind carrying the words like an echo around her small bedroom, “I’m not a frickin’ genie, I can’t make anyone fall in lo-“
Glowing, golden cat-like eyes blinked into existence, taking her in with surprise.
“Oh.”
The rest of the disembodied voice began to materialize, and as it turned out, the demon of Chaos looked an awful lot like a regular, human, twenty-something age male.
He was all angles, lean muscles covered in scars and about as tall as her bookcases. He wore harem pants with knives at the waist and littered with symbols and writing that even Shirayuki couldn’t identify, a thin halter vest with only one sleeve and some converse sneakers that looked strangely modern paired with the rest of his outfit. Only one shoe was untied. And he wasn’t wearing socks.
His spiky black hair stuck out in all directions, almost but not quite covering up tiny obsidian kudu horns above his temples that curled in opposite directions. Upon closer inspection, his pupils really were vertical like cat’s eyes, and they shined like they were backlit, validating her initial evaluation. He had a little scar above one eyebrow that just completed the look at this point, but Shirayuki was most fascinated by his gleaming, sharp teeth curved into a dangerous smile, aimed right at her.
“Hello, Miss.” This time his voice was a gentle purr, and the whirlwind finally calmed to a gentle breeze before dying altogether. Her essay fell scattered to the floor, the staple ripped out by turbulence. The demon set a hand on his hip, the picture of nonchalance.
He was perfect.
Perfectly humanoid.
Getting him to pass for a highschooler would be a cinch; this plan was way more doable than Shirayuki could have hoped for. Some contacts, a rental outfit, maybe they could even get away with some sort of hat-
“Now I know you’ve never summoned me before. I would remember that, for sure.” He appraised her about as closely as she’d sized him up a moment ago, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, Shirayuki suddenly felt a bit self-conscious about her oversized ‘plant puns are so ferny’ shirt and rubber duck pajama shorts.
He noticed. His eyes caught on her shorts and his smile turned impish. “Just a bit of chaos before bed? A witch after my own heart.” He batted his eyelashes at her and she willed her face not to heat up with deep breaths and self-affirmations. He’s in trapped in a sealing circle, you’re the one in control here. Focus on the goal, there’s a deadline to meet. Also, the duck shorts are cute and you deserve to be comfortable and it’s your room -
She shrugged, gaze aimed her wind-torn bookcase.
The demon stretched his hands in front of him, loudly cracking his knuckles. “Straight to business then. I respect that. So, whose life would you like me to throw into disarray?” He looked a bit too enthusiastic for the gravity that statement held. “A professor, school rival, ex- “
“Um, nobody’s.” She waves her hands in panic like an indecisive aircraft marshal, stopping that line of possibilities as fast as possible lest he get too excited and start down a path she couldn’t fix. “Just, ah, give me a moment please.”
He raised his eyebrows, but remained silent as Shirayuki began pulling apart her already disaster-torn room searching high and low for-
Yes- there it is. She pulled a single, short-stemmed rose from her hamper as gently as she could, sighing with relief to see it hadn’t been damaged in the summoning.
She stepped up to the circle and faced the demon’s amused expression. He watched her like one might a puppy flopping on its tummy, or a fawn figuring out how legs work.
“You’ve stripped its thorns.” His lips twitched, and she couldn’t tell if it was discomfort or barely contained laughter.
“So that it doesn’t prick me. Or you.”
His head adopted a curious tilt and Shirayuki cleared her throat, psyching herself up. She could do this. She’d written a script. One line and seven words. Efficiency was key to any time crunch.
She offered the rose, careful to keep her hand outside the parameter of the sealing circle.
“Will you go to prom with me?”
His eyes lit up, first in shock, then in pure glee. “Miss, it would be my greatest honor.” He accepted the rose, tucking it behind his ear like a maiden in a romance novel.
“Not to brag, but I’ve upended many a prom in my time.” He laughed into a sigh, far off in nostalgia land while Shirayuki was thinking ten steps ahead, already explaining to her classmates that they’d never met her mysterious prom date because he was from another high school. Outside their county. In another state. Halfway across the country -
“I’m sure a witch as capable as you already has some ideas, but hear me out? What if every limo company in a 100 mile radius has inexplicable car troubles the night of the big dance. Boom, a bunch of highschoolers suddenly have to figure out carpooling, good luck with that.”
The horns were definitely a speedbump. They could say it was a headband, but all’s it took was one clown on enough cups of ‘punch’ to test boundaries and there went that excuse. No, they’d have to find him a hat. A top hat was for sure the way to go, like she’d initially thought when she’d seen them. If she could just find one fancy enough, a real one, at just the right price -
“Imagine: A night under the stars. Except there’s a power outage, and everyone has to go outside to appreciate a real night under the stars, high heels and seasonal allergies be damned.”
The biggest hurdle would be her grandparents. If she could get past their initial suspicion, there was still the matter of photos. Did demons show up in photographs? Or was it more like a vampire thing, where they didn’t have reflections and therefore couldn’t show up in a photo -
“I went to a house party recently and looped the music on “Everytime We Touch” by Cascada. You could argue that it was more sadism than chaos, but it did yield some interesting results.”
Wait, wait no. The demon’s words finally caught up with Shirayuki’s brain, and all of his suggestions were horribly concerning.
“No-no, no chaos. Or, um, Cascada. Just a regular date please.”
He blinked. “Miss, that would be a gross underuse of my power. You know I’m a greater demon of chaos right?” He grabbed the rose from behind his ear, inspecting it with new eyes. “Why would you call me here if you didn’t need me to…” he trailed off, looking up at her once more. Shirayuki had a gut feeling that the realization in his eyes did not bode well for her.
“Hold on, is this your first summoning ever?” He turned in a little circle within his symbol, searching her room for clues she couldn’t begin to guess at.
“Wait, don’t tell me this is another rotisserie chicken summoning? I don’t know why so many people have been doing that lately, every witch worth her salt knows you can’t do a real blood sacrifice without any blood.” His eyes landed on the bag by her feet. He folded his arms and gave her the most unimpressed expression she’d seen on him so far. She almost felt guilty. Almost.
“Umm,” she slowly nudged the bag of chicken under her bed with one foot, hoping he would look past her refusal to spill real blood. Even to summon a demon. They could move past this.
She hoped.
“Uggghh Miss, do you know how much paperwork that’s going to cost me back at the office? The billing department is going to have my head, not to mention the scolding I’ll get when Master finds out. It’s this whole thing.” He rubbed at his temples and made a familiar, disapproving grunt noise like the way Opa did at customers who stayed past closing time.
Ok, maybe she did feel a little guilty.
“In my defense, I’m not actually a witch,” she muttered, kneading at the fabric of her shirt as an excuse not to look at the product of her own actions. Apparently, even demons felt stress. Good to know.
“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have been able to summon me here. It would’ve been like yelling at a closed door; we can hear it, but we don’t have to answer.” He tugged at his shoulder, phantom pain clear on his face. Yeah, she definitely felt guilty now.
“Did it hurt?”
He looked up in surprise, like he’d forgotten she was there for a moment. “What?”
“The summoning. Did I hurt you?” It sounded like she had, but she still hoped it wasn’t true. She didn’t need a date badly enough to hurt anybody, not even a demon. Nothing was worth that much.
Just like that, his playful demeanor was back, teasing and mischief and general chaos. “If I said yes, would you let me out? Ask me where it hurts so you can kiss it better?”
“Only if you were telling the truth.”
“I never lie.” He squinted at her, then down at the line of salt he couldn’t cross even as she watched him test the invisible boundary, to no avail. “How did you know how to summon me, if you say you’re not a witch?”
“I don’t lie either.” She rebutted his concealed accusation and grabbed her Book off the floor under her desk, where it had flown during his grand entrance to her bedroom. “It was all here in this book.” She held its worn leather binding up for him to read the title: ‘The Book of Survival: High School 101’.
Much to Shirayuki’s confusion, he started giggling.
“Book of Survival? More like Book of Shadows,” he gasped between laughs, much more amused than Shirayuki thought her treasured Book called for. “Miss, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’ve been swindled.”
“Swindled? But this Book has helped me through my entire high school career.” She scrunched her eyebrows, nostalgia and appreciation flooding her as she flipped through the page titles; Get Rid of Acne, Cram For a Test the Night Before, Winning Sports For the Non-Athletic –
“Where did you get it?” The way he asked, it sounded like a test.
She still didn’t get it. “One of the seniors sold it to me when I was a freshman.”
The most popular senior at her high school, in fact. Everyone knew her name, she was as close to a legend as it got in their little rural town. Valedictorian, Volleyball Captain (who brought her team to victory at the national level), and founder of their high school’s founding scientists club. Like most students, Shirayuki found herself looking up to her as a role model, a standard to live by.
When she’d approached Shirayuki with some advice and an offer to buy “her own personal guidebook”, Shirayuki had been so starstruck that she hadn’t even managed to ask how she knew her name.
“Garack Gazelt — “
“Woah, woah! Don’t say that name!” He yelped, trying to back up but bumping into the seal instead, putting his hands on solid air behind him.
“What? Why?” Shirayuki didn’t think she had ever reached this level of confusion in her life. First, her Book was some sort of nefarious trick despite its record of usefulness over the course of four years. Now, her idol and mentor was under attack? No, something wasn’t right. Perhaps the demon knew a different Garack—
“Please, don’t make me talk about it, don’t even mention that lady’s name in my presence. I don’t need any more scary blondes in my life. One is barely manageable as it is.”
Actually, it was probably the same Garack.
“She’s probably already watching us…” He shivered, looking around her room for listening devices like they were in some sort of spy movie. The ridiculousness of the notion brought her back to reality, back to business. They were wasting time, now.
“Right, well, in any case, here’s the deal Mister…. Um.” Wow, she’d forgotten to ask his name. Oma hadn’t raised her to be a rude hostess. Maybe, in her haste, she’d made some mistakes. Feeling her stomach twist a bit, she decided to make an effort to be kinder to her demon.
After a raised eyebrow and careful consideration, he ended her floundering.
“You can call me Obi.”
“Obi.” She tested out the name, surprisingly simple to pronounce. She’d expected something Latin-adjacent, like the incantation, but Obi was short and easy to remember. She liked it.
“My name is Shirayuki, by the way. I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” Her attempt at an apology was met with barely concealed mirth, and she would try to shake the glint out of his eyes if she wasn’t so horribly enchanted by it.
“Whatever you say, Miss.” Horrible. Horrible.
She took a deep breath.
“Well, Obi, I made a final semester checklist.” She pulled it from a built-in pocket in her Book, a faded, ruffled sheet of paper with many boxes, nearly all crossed out with satisfyingly even lines.
“Yeah?” He raised his tone and eyebrows suggestively, but she wouldn’t be swayed, not in list mode. Lists helped her focus. Lists made sense.
“As you can see,” she diligently pointed to each line as she narrated, “I’ve finished all my work for the semester, gotten a letter of acceptance from my first-choice college, completed required volunteer hours, finished elections for next year’s founding scientists club, and helped organize the entirety of our senior prom as Vice President of the Prom Committee. The venue, the food, the photos, the decorations; it’s all perfect. I bought the perfect dress,” she points to a green ballroom number hanging from her closet door, very proud of it and all its fifty-five-dollar, thrifted glory, “I have the shoes, the tickets, the boutonniere, the limo—"
She lifted her hands into the air, trying to end her explanation, but they just fell into a defeated shrug.
“But I forgot to get a date.” The one item, halfway up her list, left unchecked. Honestly, that was more disappointing to her than her lack of prospects. Items were made to be checked off and here this one was, mocking her.
“Miss, I find it hard to believe that no one’s asked you already.” He deadpanned, hands on his hips.
“It’s true, one guy did. But from the sound of it, you’re already acquainted with Raj Shenazod.”
He grimaced, a dead giveaway that she had heard him right, when he’d arrived in a blustering gale, but there would be oodles of time to ask about Raj’s shenanigans later.
“Right. So, let’s just say, there was no one eligible I could think to ask, especially not on such short notice.” Her pool of choices wasn’t huge to begin with, but Shirayuki knew that wasn’t the only factor here.
He idly twirled the rose in his hand. “Why do you want to go so badly?”
She blanked. “Um, it’s a rite of passage?
He snorted. Rude. “Once more, with feeling.”
“Am I wrong?” She tapped her foot, frustrated with her own inability to answer the question. Why did she want to go?
“Not in an anthropological sense.” He looked at the leatherbound book in her grasp, slowly raising his amber gaze to her verdant eyes, and Shirayuki couldn’t help but shrink a little under his stare. He saw her, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. “But are you sure that’s all?”
She wrung her hands, caught. It wasn’t a lie when she said she didn’t lie, so she decided to be painfully honest.
“I’ve kind of, thrown myself into school.” To a worrying degree, really. “I have one good friend, and she’s awesome, and very understanding even though I don’t make time to hang out with her as often as I should.” Kihal was stubborn and kind and Shirayuki loved her with all her heart, but Kihal already had a date, and had just assumed that Shirayuki had already found one, too. She hadn’t had the heart to tell her friend that her only offer was from a guy who thought her hair color was her whole personality.
“Needless to say, I haven’t focused much on having a life beyond the ACT. But I helped organize it, so I should get to go, right?” Shirayuki did not whine. But she did pout, just a little, when the occasion called for it.
“I just want to have fun with everyone. Like a normal teenager, for once.” She muttered the last part, reaching her peak embarrassment quota for the night. Hopefully, that was enough of an answer for her demon.
Obi looked up to the ceiling, clenching and unclenching his hands into fists, like he was steeling himself for an arduous task.
“Miss, I can’t promise that I won’t encourage any chaos—"
“Well, you technically can promise—"
“And I can’t tell you whether I’ll show up in the photos or not, because I legitimately have never tried.”
“I guess that’s fair.” Wait, had she asked that out loud? Or in her head? “We can test it later.”
His fingers rubbed at the indents in the stem of the rose, feeling for phantom thorns. “With all of that in mind, I would still be honored to be your date, if you’ll have me.”
Ah, she felt fifty pounds lighter at his offer. It was somehow different than the first confirmation; they knew each other a little better now, it felt like – more. “Yes, thank goodness, I didn’t think I would find someone in time –“
“Right, about that,” he interrupted, putting the rose back behind his ear the way he’d originally had it. “When is this thing anyway?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” He practically shouted, coughing the shock off like he could beat his voice into a more casual pitch and lowering the tone of his next words. “Like tomorrow—tomorrow? Like, within 24 hours.”
“Yep. Which means I have even less time than that to turn you into a normal, high school-looking guy.” About 18 hours. She wasn’t worried. She’d written a ten-page research paper in less time than that.
She backtracked at his rounded eyes, closing the gap between them to assuage his fears. “Oh, but don’t worry! I’m actually really good at finding deals and getting creative. Immigrant grandparents and all, you know?” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, only for one on the other side to come loose anyway.
He blinked a couple times before he unfroze with a shoulder-quaking chuckle, and for the first time that night, she found relief in his laughter. “Miss, I’m along for whatever plan that brain of yours has cooked up.” They shared a soft smile, and he reached out, as if to brush back the strand of her hair she’d upset. They both jumped when his hand bounced off the air like it was a spotless glass door.
He smirked. “I can only go so far as you’ll let me, you know. As of right now, that’s about two feet.”
Right, they'd come to an agreement, so it should've been safe to release him. She touched the orange jasper in the pocket of her shorts for reassurance. The Book said it would protect her and bind her to her demon for as long as she needed. She toed a little break in the salt barrier sealing Obi to his symbol.
He stepped out and stretched, dramatic and showy.
“Right. You do the planning, and I’ll be back in the morning. I can hear drunk people downstairs, and I see some geese sitting by that pond out back that I think could really make some peoples’ nights. Or ruin their nights. It’s all in the perception, yeah?” He gave her a quick salute and promptly hopped out of her bedroom window. In the attic of their two-story home. To go catch some geese.
She looked around the mess of her room and felt a bit uncertain. It was an unfamiliar twinge in her chest, and she wondered if maybe, this time, she’d gone a little too far.
Soft amber eyes floated through her mind’s eye, and a gentle expression that seemed contrary to his impish nature. I would still be honored to be your date, if you’ll have me.
Well… it would probably be fine.
After all, it was only for one night. Right?