between the shadow and the soul - english edition

Chapter 7 - the possibilities of witchcraft

»I know. Love you, mom«, Jasper smiled.

»Love you too. Keep me up to date, alright?«

»Will do.« The call ended and Jasper put away his laptop, slowly standing up. He'd told his mom not to worry, because she couldn't really help him and he didn't want her to worry, even though Jasper himself was getting nervous. He's now been two full days without an accident and Jasper was starting to get paranoid about that. As if the more time passed without anything happening to him, the more negative energy will accumulate and get released in a big, epic clusterfuck that will probably finally kill him.

»Are you coming?«, Aristes called from the front door making Jasper stop for a moment.

»To the Underworld?«

»If you want. We'll be faster if two are searching.«

»So, I'll be able to read anything?«, Jasper asked and Aristes shrugged.

»Probably not. But I wouldn't mind some company.« Jasper blinked in surprise, before he grabbed his crutches.

»Alright.«

Batest made a point of taking a look at the visitor pass, Jasper still had in the pocket of his jacket, before waving them through when they entered the glass building once again.

Jasper assumed that they exited the elevator on a different level than last time, even though the hallway itself looked identical. It was only when Aristes stood before an empty wall, pressing his index finger against the blank stones, that a door opened, letting them into Underworld's archive.
The room was nearly as high as the library had been, filled with rows after rows of unoriginal metal shelves filled with registers and records, sloppily marked and sorted. The air smelled dusty and stale.

»Underworld is not really a fan of the whole digitization thing, is it?«, Jasper asked.

»I think some demons are just really paranoid. If they can't find shit, no one else will either«, Aristes answered while looking around to find the right shelf. »We're looking for the recent records about formed contracts. I told you I had to register you as my contracting party, when we had our agreement. After our contract finishes, the file gets stored down here.«

»How do you know all that?«, Jasper asked, curious about how anyone could find their way through this mess of files. Aristes grimaced.

»I had to help out and sort files for a decade as punishment for losing my paperwork all the time. Ah, see, there it is.« Aristes stood in front of a big wall full of drawers that were sorted alphabetically. »Here you'll find every demon, currently working on earth. Let's start searching through their recent contract records.« Aristes pulled up a ladder on rolls, so he could reach the highest drawers while Jasper started at the bottom, pulling out one register after another, searching through the latest files in hopes that the next one would mention a failed contract with a witch. The files were a hotchpotch of mostly english and with bits of demonic language peppered in so Jasper was actually able to help. They were searching mostly in silence, flicking through file after file.

»Hey, I think I found something, Jasper said, pulling the paper file out of the drawer to get a better look. Inside was a single sheet of paper. It was the contract form, filled out with a name and a sentence about the content of the contract. Next to the name were the words ›Human‹ and ›Witch‹ noted in brackets. Underneath was a red stamp and a note in runes. Aristes looked over Jaspers shoulder and read aloud.

»Contract terminated without completion due to unforeseen complications concerning the witches soul. For more details, see records in the handbook about human souls.« Jasper and Aristes looked at each other.