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The first time a demon appeared in her train car, Tai had been so busy fighting with her mom via text that she didn't notice until the screaming got loud.
Like, really, really loud.
She'd looked up from the phone to see a pillar of dark flame.
People stampeded past her, but it was hard to pay attention to anything besides the fiery column that whirled its way towards her, emanating a burbling scream that turned her bowels to water. Tai sat paralyzed, phone clutched in sweaty hands, thumb hovering over the SEND button.
Then the train reached the 6th Ave station. The doors opened and the column of fire rushed out into the heart of downtown where, according to the news, it proceeded down Morrison, melting roads, shattering windows within a hundred feet of it, and exploding all the cars it passed. The mayhem lasted for three hours before it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
The next demon appeared during Tai's lunch break a week later. Tai was picking at lackluster tom yum in a park near work when her boss called. Heroku was down.
A giant ball of eyes popped into existence.
The wad of eyeballs, taller than a house, each individual eyeball three feet across, began to roll around the park, leaving a trail of vitreous fluid in its wake. Unlike the pillar of flame, it didn't set anything on fire or break the windows, many of which were still boarded up.
It did, however, cause people to descend into nightmarish hallucinations if they looked at it for longer than a second. The hallucinations were brief, lasting no more than 15 minutes, but it was still enough to cause hundreds of accidents and untold amounts of psychic damage.
The eyeballs, like the fire, disappeared after several hours, for no discernible reason, through no discernible method.
For months, more of these entities popped into existence at random times, in random places. Nobody knew what they were; there was no distinguishable pattern. There was, among others, a giant flying eel, a blob of corrosive jelly, and a swarm of sentient wasps—that one was actually the worst.
And then one day, six months after the pillar of fire first showed up in a train car, Tai came home to a gorgeous woman lounging on her couch.
Dressed in a severely tailored suit, she looked like a 50s star in drag—like if Veronica Lake were Chinese and decided she wanted to upstage Cary Grant just to fuck with him. Black hair cascaded over one side of her face in glossy satin waves. She held a gold-topped cane in one hand.
"Hey, Tai," she said casually, her voice smoke and spices. "It took me forever to find you." She paused. "Actually, it took zero time to find you, but it did take me forever figure out who was ripping all those holes in reality and yanking my demons out of Hell."
Tai felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice over her. "I…what?"
"You heard me," said the woman, who, upon closer examination, was probably not, strictly speaking, a woman. She stood up, walked over, and placed an elegant fingertip on Tai's chin. "Darling, please stop."
The not-woman's fingertip felt almost unpleasantly hot, as if a live coal smoldered underneath. Tai blinked and flinched.
"I don't know what you're talking about. Stop what?"
The not-woman cocked her head; her black eyes narrowed. Tai got the distinct feeling that she had been pinned and dissected, and the not-woman was now rummaging around her insides. It was not a comfortable sensation.
"Could you possibly not know you're a summoner?" she asked.
"All signs point to no? What's a summoner? Why do you think I'm one? You really have the wrong person, lady."
"Lord," said the not-woman absently, fingers tapping the cane. "Technically, my lord. Or Your Lordship, if you wish."
Tai clutched her head. "I'm sorry—who are you?"
The not-woman leaned back and put a hand to her chest. "Oh, how rude of me; beg pardon. I'm Baal, one of the four Lords of Hell. I don't care about my pronouns, but you may address me as Lord Baal, my lord, Your Lordship, or, if you're feeling especially subby, Your Dread Grace."
Tai gulped. "Hi, I'm Tai?" she said. "But you knew that already."
It all felt like a dream. Tai figured she'd just roll with it until Lord Baal left, she woke up, or one of those manifestations—demons?—appeared and ate her. She wasn't picky about which.
And then it got worse. Because Logan came home.
He came through the door, said "Hey babe," saw Lord Baal, and immediately stopped. He turned to Tai, eyes hard, and said, "So, who's this?"
Tai felt her entire body clench. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lord Baal make a flicking gesture.
"This is, uh," said Tai.
"I'm Lord Baal." Lord Baal stepped up to Logan, smiling at him. "And you have an important errand to run. Out by the outer suburbs. Better be quick or you'll miss the train; the next one's not for another hour." She touched a fingertip to his forehead.
"Right, shit," said Logan, his eyes going blank and dazed. "I um. Have to go. Train to catch!" He turned around, lurched like a badly-puppeted marionette, and scampered out the door.
"He has a car," Tai said stupidly.
"He prefers the train tonight," said Lord Baal serenely. "So," she continued, "what's going on with you two?"
Tai jammed her hands in her pockets and glared at the ceiling. "Logan has…a jealousy thing."
Lord Baal raised her eyebrows. "A jealousy thing."
"He, uh. Doesn't think you can just be friends with people you're attracted to."
Lord Baal's eyebrows climbed higher.
"Actually, he doesn't think it's possible that you can just be friends with anyone who belongs to a gender you're attracted to."
"Ah, the Harry Burns fallacy, yes," said Lord Baal. "We use it to great effect in Hell, actually."
"So yeah, Logan is always a pain when I'm making a new friend or whatever because I'm bi and he has trust issues, but he does settle down eventually, can we please stop talking about my boyfriend?"
Lord Baal smiled. It was not a reassuring smile. "Sure," she said. "Except."
"Except?" said Tai.
"Except I mended three interdimensional tears during the, what, two minutes of interaction you had with him?"
Tai digested this in silence for a minute. "Are you telling me," she said slowly, "that I almost summoned three demons when Logan came home?"
"Oh, no almost about it," said Lord Baal. "You did it. Ripped a big old hole, started sucking a demon through. Good thing I was here, or your living room would be a lot more crowded. Or possibly not exist anymore."
The urge to bash her head against the wall overcame Tai.
"Interesting," said Lord Baal. "I can feel another weak spot forming right now, as I speak."
Tai bit back a scream of frustration.
"Aand there it goes." Lord Baal made a gesture. Nothing happened—which, Tai supposed, was the point. Her living room lived to see another day.
It was all too much. Tai sat on the floor and put her face between her knees. A warm presence settled down next to her, the heat soothing despite being, well, a bit blast furnace-y. The silence was not exactly comfortable, but it also wasn't as excruciating as it could've been.
"I think I've figured it out," said Lord Baal. "When in extremis, your latent summoner powers activate, creating an interdimensional rift and pulling a demon through."
"I do what now?"
"You're so stressed out you're ripping holes in reality and summoning demons, darling."
Tai raised her head. "That makes no sense. I've always been this stressed, and I didn't use to summon demons."
"Some summoners bloom late," said Lord Baal, shrugging. "Regardless of the why, the fact is, it's happening now, and my poor demons are being ripped from their homes."
Tai scrubbed a hand over her face. "Ripped? From their homes?"
Lord Baal leveled a gently scathing look. "What, you think demons enjoy being topside? They hate it here. Every time you summon—kidnap, really—one of them, I can hear their screams of distress all the way down."
"Oh my God," moaned Tai.
"Until you can control your powers, it's my duty to keep an eye on you and seal off those rips before they fully open."
"No. Oh my fuck. What is happening to my life?"
"It's not so much going to Hell," said Lord Baal, "as you're bringing Hell to you."
And this was how Tai ended up breaking up with her boyfriend of three years ("I knew it!" Logan had screamed at her until Lord Baal gave him another errand to run, this time in the next state over) and moved in with a Lord of Hell, the literal hottest demon she had ever known.
###
Living with a Lord of Hell wasn't, well, as hellish at Tai thought it'd be.
Sure, the house sometimes reeked of sulfur. And yes, there was the occasional spate of eldritch chanting.
But Lord Baal didn't steal her food (not needing to eat helped), make passive-aggressive remarks about her bodice ripper collection, or make a mess. In fact, the house stayed unnervingly clean. Tai wasn't sure if it was magic, or if dust was too terrified to settle around Baal.
She accompanied Tai everywhere, including work. Nobody else seemed to notice her, their eyes sliding right off her presence. She stayed quiet, mostly.
After a week, Lord Baal said, "Your daily stand-ups are an inspiration to me," which wasn't exactly reassuring.
After two more weeks, Lord Baal sat Tai down and told her calmly, clinically, that after extensive study, she had found the definitive sources of Tai's stress, and they were:
- Work
2. Tai's mother
3. Logan, thankfully gone now
4. Tai's utter lack of self-worth
"Not much I can do about your self-worth," said Lord Baal, "but the others I can help with. How would you like me to kill your boss, your CTO, and your CEO? I'm proficient in all forms of murder and torture, so please don't feel constrained by the limits of corporeality."
When Tai realized Lord Baal was serious, a wave of panic the likes of which she had never known overcame her. Lord Baal made several flicking gestures.
"Hmm," said Lord Baal, "that was a new record. Six rifts in ten seconds! Fine, no murder or maiming. How about banishing them?"
"Banish where?"
"Hell has several pocket dimensions going unused. I could disappear them there."
"No!"
Lord Baal sighed, narrowing her eyes. "Ugh, you're difficult. Well then, what about your mother?"
"No!"
"You're absolutely sure? Your life would be so much better."
"No," said Tai firmly. "No murder, maiming, or disappearing people into pocket dimensions."
"Well then," said Lord Baal, "you leave me no choice.
And that was how Tai finally started going to therapy after years of thinking "Wow, I probably should go to therapy." It took a Lord of Hell literally standing next to her while she looked up therapists and booked an appointment, but whatever.
One night, after a night out with old friends, Lord Baal sat down at her bedside, looked her in the eye, and said "You need to stop talking to Jan."
Tai frowned. "Wait, what? Why?"
Lord Baal raised an eyebrow. "They're not at making-you-want-to-rip-holes-in-reality yet, but they're very, very close. Haven't you noticed how they make you feel bad about yourself, all the time, because it makes them feel better about themself?"
"I can't ditch Jan," said Tai. "We've been friends since middle school!"
"That's a terrible reason to keep friends around."
Tai frowned. "You just don't understand human friendship."
Lord Baal shrugged. "All I know is, you have so many friends who don't make you want to cry."
Two weeks later, after a conversation with Jan made Tai want to walk into the ocean, she turned to Lord Baal, sitting quietly next to her. Lord Baal merely arched an eyebrow and made a flicking gesture with her fingers.
Tai stopped talking to Jan.
Time passed. One day, as Tai struggled with the fourth new ticketing workflow in as many months, Lord Baal said, voice casual, "Have you considered looking for a new job?"
Tai looked up at Lord Baal. "How many rips in reality are you prepared to close at a time?"
"I've had to close two in the past half hour alone," said Lord Baal.
"That'll be nothing compared to how many you'll need to do when I start updating my resume and my LinkedIn—and that's before we get to the actual business of jobhunting and interviews."
"Humor me anyway," said Lord Baal. "You won't allow me to disappear your boss into a pocket dimension and he makes my teeth ache."
For the next few months, Lord Baal helped Tai look for a new job. After the first week, Tai asked her how many rips she'd had to close.
"I don't know," said Lord Baal. "I lost count after I hit four figures."
Tai's eyes bugged out.
"I jest," said Lord Baal. "Allow this old demon a moment of comic hyperbole."
But that was when Tai realized: she genuinely had no idea how many rips she created.
"Hey," said Tai. "You know, next time I start opening a rip in reality, could you…poke me, maybe? So I can I get a sense of how many I'm creating, and also what it feels like when I start doing it. And who knows, maybe it'll pull me out of my spirals."
"Sure," said Lord Baal.
The first poke happened at the worst conceivable time: during a fight at a family dinner. Tai's mother had misgendered her yet again.
"It's so hard for me to remember, OK?" her mother said.
"Mom, it's been six years."
"What's six compared to twenty-eight?"
A jab to her side.
Tai turned to Lord Baal, wild-eyed. Lord Baal, face stony, flicked her fingers twice in rapid succession.
Tai took a deep breath.
"Tai, can't you even look at your mother anymore while we're talking? And you think I'm disrespecting you!"
Lord Baal flicked her fingers again.
Months passed. Tai eventually learned to isolate the sensation of a hole being torn into hell; it felt like a queasy tug at the base of her gut that she had always associated with panic. Turned out it was more than an incipient panic attack, after all.
She found a new job.
After a catastrophic fight with her mother, she made the decision to go no-contact; to her surprise, her brother joined her.
It sucked, at first. It was the most painful decision she had made in her life. But having her brother helped. Her mother had the unique gift of making Tai feel like she was the irrational one. An undutiful child. Ungrateful. It took her time to realize how hard it had been to think clearly when somebody constantly insisted she was wrong—not merely about the facts, but at her core.
The separation grew easier with time, especially after she blocked every family member who pressured her into resuming contact. Lord Baal observed her process with interest.
"So what you're doing," said Lord Baal, "is sending these people into digital pocket dimensions."
Tai shrugged. "I guess."
Lord Baal made a dainty snort of disdain. "My dear, we have so many pocket dimensions in Hell lying around unused. It'd be so much more efficient to banish them there than this arcane, exceedingly tedious procedure."
"No. Banishing," said Tai.
Time passed. Months. Years. One day, while Tai hunted around for a missing a jigsaw puzzle piece, Lord Baal said, idly, "You know, I haven't had to close a rip in ages."
Tai popped up from under the dining room table, bashing her head on the corner.
"Ow!" she said. Then: "Oh."
"My dear," said Lord Baal, "I don't think my presence is necessary any longer."
"Oh," said Tai, again.
"Pray do not cry."
"You know that doesn't work, right?"
Lord Baal sighed. "Fine, tarnish me with your disgusting bodily fluids, if you must."
Tai cried. Lord Baal held her. It felt like being hugged by a very small, very soft furnace that smelled of smoke and spices, with a faint undercurrent of sulfur.
"So I guess you're going?"
"It's past time I went back," said Lord Baal. "I stayed a little longer to make sure you were good."
"How much longer?" asked Tai.
Lord Baal hummed. "Oh, reckoning in human time is pointless and strange."
"Stop dodging the goddamn question."
Lord Baal snorted. "Fine. Two years."
Tai squeaked. "You stayed two years longer than you had to?"
Lord Baal shrugged. "I had to make sure you weren't going to go down a bad spiral and drag my poor demons back to the surface. And I really needed to see how they were going to wrap up the final season of Succession."
Tai laughed, then cried some more.
Lord Baal said, her voice uncharacteristically tender, "Look, I promise to visit, every year."
Tai sniffled. "You better."
"If I failed to come, I imagine you know exactly how to get me here."
Tai gave a crack of laughter. "That's right."
Lord Baal kissed Tai on her forehead.
"You'll do just fine," said Lord Baal. "Better than fine. And I'll see you in a year."
"See you in a year." Tai stepped back, and watched as Lord Baal stepped forward, and between one step and the next, disappeared from sight.
###
Decades passed. Tai fell in love; married; was widowed. Her brother had children; the children grew, and had children of their own. The world grew better in some ways; worse in others. She grew frail. She grew wrinkled. She grew tired.
Every year, Lord Baal visited.
The day after Tai's 93rd birthday, while she lay in bed and tried to summon the energy to shuffle out of it, she smelled smoke and sulfur and spices. Lord Baal appeared by Tai's bedside.
"Hey you," said Tai. Then: "Wait, has it been a year?"
"No," said Lord Baal. "But this visit is special. It's the last time I'll be coming here."
Tai stared. "Why?"
Lord Baal gave her a chiding look. "You know why."
Tai sighed. "Yeah. Shit, I knew I should've murdered someone while I had the energy and strength."
Lord Baal cleared her throat delicately. "About that," she said.
"What? The murder I finally regret not committing?"
"Sort of. If you squint. So normally, a person your caliber does not belong in Hell. But." She cleared her throat again. "I, um. Received special dispensation. Not as one of our regular, ah, residents," Lord Baal clarified hastily. "But as one of my companions. That is, if you're interested."
"Friend," said Tai, "I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend eternity with than you."
"Ha, you say that now," said Lord Baal.
A soft silence fell. Tai looked at Lord Baal. Everything was strangely dim. Murky. She blinked. The only clear thing in the room was the Lord of Hell standing next to her.
"You ready?" asked Lord Baal.
Tai sighed. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I am."
Lord Baal held out a hand.
She stepped up. She felt so light! And strong. She hadn't felt this good in a very, very long time.
Lord Baal took her hand. It still felt hot, like there was a burning coal trapped just underneath. But the heat didn't hurt. It felt comforting.
"Mind the gap," Lord Baal said.
They stepped forward, Tai's hand in Lord Baal's, and between one step and the next, Tai tumbled into a space just beyond sight that flared and glowed with uncanny light, her heart light and ready for the next adventure, with the best fiend she had ever known by her side.