The interior of the shop dazzled the eye. Everything shone bright white beneath powerful incandescent bulbs. Teenaged employees in starched uniforms wore white disposable facemasks and white latex gloves. The total effect was a germophobe's Utopia. The coffee was only average, but I felt confident I wouldn't get sick from drinking it.
Nick and I sat at a table near the spotlessly clean front windows. I held a cup of hot black brew between my palms. He'd chosen not to get anything.
"I have a friend who owns a coffee shop. This kind of feels like cheating on him," I said.
"Is his shop around here?"
"No. It's on Verbena and Snyder."
"Well, that wouldn't have been a practical choice for a waiting place, would it?"
I sipped my coffee and refrained from commenting about how salamanders made him grouchy. "You told me to ask questions."
"I did," he agreed.
Staring at the table made it easier to think. That fact seemed like as good a place as any to let the questions begin, but I thought I might actually, literally die from embarrassment if I admitted out loud that his superpower was turning me on and he replied he didn't have that kind of superpower. So, I started by asking why the salamanders came after him while ignoring me completely.
"Salamanders are attracted to fire, to heat. My natural temperature is higher than yours and electricity is akin to flame."
"And you're electrified?" The longer I stared at the table, the harder my brain tried to make sense of the miniscule golden dots on the white surface. One particular grouping looked a bit like an otter. Another reminded me of a soft serve ice cream cone.
"Something like that," he said.
What are you? What is the power you have over me? Are there others like you? I couldn't quite manage any of those. "The fairies said they couldn't hurt you."
"Their magic has little hold over me," he said. "To be fair, most magic has little hold over me, though I am susceptible to some, of course."
"But their protective spell nearly knocked you out."
"Sometimes my essence creates," he paused for a moment as if searching for the right word. "Echoes. At times, the reverberating magic becomes somewhat overwhelming. One the echoes fade, I'm able to return to my senses."
I forgot why I was staring at the table and accidentally made eye contact. He was leaning back in his seat with his hands in his lap. His eyes shone bright blue, but not supernatural in any way, just in a dang-he's-adorable kind of way.
"I find you a bit overwhelming." Did I mean to say that? I was pretty certain I hadn't. Maybe I'd hit my head and damaged the part of my brain that was in charge of the filter.
"I understand," he said. "Overwhelming you is not intentional."
My mother's lectures on manners had not adequately prepared me for this conversation. I gulped down some coffee, and it scalded my throat and made my eyes water.
While I gasped for air, Nick took control of the conversation. "I find it curious that the fairies assumed you wanted to make a deal with Sathanas."
"That's a thing, though, isn't it? Making a deal with the devil?"
Nick picked up a sugar packet and twirled it between his fingers. "Sure, but Sathanas isn't the devil."
"Don't demons work for the devil?"
He sighed as if disappointed in me. "You mustn't believe every myth you've ever heard if you're going to succeed in this job."
Fair enough. Bracing myself, I met his gaze again. "How am I supposed to know which ones are true and which are false?"
A server with a long braid so blonde it blended in with her white uniform approached with coffee pot in hand. "Doing okay? Can I give you a warmup?"
She topped off my coffee, assuring that it would never cool off enough to drink. The interruption gave me time to think of something else I wanted to ask.
"Why aren't you supposed to pursue FTAs?" I asked after she walked away trailing glances over her shoulder at Nick.
He smiled.
My heart stopped beating in my chest and I died right there on the spot.
Not really, but at that moment, I wouldn't have cared if I did.
"Hunting is," he held one hand up in front of him as if to ask, what can I say? "My kind can get a bit carried away when we're in pursuit."
"Your kind?"
A horn honked outside the window. The Lexus sat idling at the curb. Another SUV, black of course, had pulled up next to it. Whoever had driven the Lexus ducked out of the driver's door and into the other car so quickly I couldn't make out who it was.
Nick was already on his feet.
"How'd they get it back so fast?" I asked.
"There's a tracker on it. No one steals from me."
A little shiver rippled across my skin. It was the first time I thought of him as dangerous to more than my good reputation. "Where do we go now?"
"Let's find out who's making deals and see what they know."
He directed me onto the highway and a few miles outside of town, told me to get off on an exit ramp so full of potholes I worried about breaking an axle.
"Take a left."
To the right, a roughly paved country road led toward what appeared to be a one-stop-light town in the distance.
To the left, dirt and gravel led toward darkness.
"You sure about that?" I asked.
His eyebrow inched upward, but he didn't answer, so I eased onto the Oregon Trail—or whatever the heck it was—and drove in the direction of a whole bunch of nothing.
Five minutes later, Nick told me to turn again on an equally rural trail, and a few minutes after that again until we were on two rutted lanes slicing through corn stubble.
"Slow down," he said.
The path was so uneven and hard to see I was only going twenty-five. I let the speedometer fall under twenty.
"Here. Stop."
I shifted the Lexus into park and leaned forward over the steering wheel to peer through the windshield at...
"What are we looking at?" I asked.
"A lonely crossroads," Nick said.
An accurate description, no doubt. I guess I'd asked the wrong question. "Why are we looking at this lonely crossroads?" I could think of a few good reasons to park in the middle of nowhere with Nick, but I didn't think they were the same as his reasons.
"You're going to summon a demon and see if they want to make a deal."
I leaned back in my seat and risked looking at him. "You're sure I'm going to do that?"
"It would be breaking too many rules for me to do it."
"How many is too many?" I asked.
"It's a fluid answer. Too many variables to pick one number."
His eyes twinkled with humor.
My heart fluttered, like I was a teenaged girl at a boy band concert. I cleared my throat. "So, I don't have a virgin to sacrifice. What do I need to do instead?"
"First you draw a trap." He fished a napkin and a pen out of the glove box and sketched a pentagram with alien-looking designs around the edges. "Best to make it from salt. There's a bag in a compartment under the back seat. After that, you offer a drop of your own blood and call upon the one you want."
"So... like... I just shout out, 'Hey Beelzebub, got a minute to talk?'"
"Beelzebub is a demon of the highest order. It would require much more to summon him."
"Right. I forgot. So, when they show up, what do I do?" I asked.
"Step out of the warded space the second you see them. Then see if you can find out about a high-level demon making deals around here."
"Right," I said again. Ignoring the voice of reason screaming in the back of my mind, I stepped out of the vehicle and set to work copying Nick's drawing in the center of the crossroads. Despite my hands shaking like the last of that year's leaves still clinging to the trees, I managed to make it about six feet wide from star-point to star-point. Big enough for two people to stand in if they stood a bit too close for comfort. When it was finished, I took the lancet Nick handed me, jabbed it into the pad of my thumb and squeezed a drop of blood onto the dirt.
Nick nodded his approval and handed me a second scribbled-on napkin. "Stay inside the warding while you read this but remember to get out the second you see him."
"Right." I was a woman of few words that night. I took the napkin and stood in the center of my salty artwork to read by the light of the Lexus's headlamps. "Conjuro, te, Gol'gol. Acepte—"
"Accipe," Nick corrected me.
"Accipe oblationem sanguinis mei, et deprecationem meam te ostende." Finished, I let my hands fall to my sides. Nothing happened. I spun in a slow circle. "I don't think he's com—"
Two arms, strong as steel bands, wrapped around me from behind and hot breath, stinking of sulfur, passed close to my ear. "You called?"