The term “demon” is a sloppy one. Most practitioners in the city will use it as shorthand for “cross-dimensional nuisance,” but it’s important to note that some people are more specific. Magda, my ex-, is a hard one to read right. Her pages are…taut.<\/p>\n
Focus. Yes. “What kind of things are we really talking about?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Certainly not about our relationship again,” she taunted. Looking at her, I can remember why I was attracted to her. Listening to her, I was rarely tempted to try again, and often curious as to how we lasted so long together.<\/p>\n
One of the places those books of myth are seriously lacking is an organizational system. Modern media has it right; we ought to have some index so we can refer to things like a “Type Five, Multilimbed, Soul Splitter, with Extra Fire Magic for that Just Barbecued Feeling.”<\/p>\n
By the way, I’ve seen one of those go down, and they’re not kidding about the “Crispy Corpses You Can Bag Yourself!” giveaway. I still have a scar on the back of my right hand from it.<\/p>\n
Let’s not kid ourselves. Magic is dangerous. Magical healing is virtually unknown; some of the tough guys (the wizards, people like that) can tap into their own resources and accelerate or otherwise make the processes more efficient, but I’ve never heard of a real healing potion, or someone laying on hands and making everything better.<\/p>\n
I thought about Maggie’s hands. Let me amend that.<\/p>\n
So when we get something really nasty, I run.<\/p>\n
Let me amend that, too. See, some of my favourite heroes, they talk about working out and learning to run so that they’re just faster than the monsters. I’m, um… well. I’m not a couch potato. I’m even attractive to the wrong sort of woman. I certainly do get up more than to change the game in my Xbox, but I really ought to go and start a routine for that.<\/p>\n
I have to work smarter, not harder. I run way in advance sometimes. I call people. When I think I’m out of my league, I don’t go to the party at all… if I can avoid it.<\/p>\n
I’m not a coward. I’m a specialist. The tough guys can do what I do, too. Maybe not with the same panache, but I’m not a fighter. I can’t throw fireballs or, heck, knives. I once threw a potted plant at something, but it was what was handy. One of my colleagues in the business is convinced I could probably learn to do exorcisms, and I agree, but I haven’t gotten that under my belt yet, so to speak. But these aren’t aggressive get-out-and-kick-some-demon-butt kinds of magic, so, to bring this whole digression around, I was needing to know what I was up against.<\/p>\n
She leaned back and sipped from my ice cubes. “I think you can handle it.”<\/p>\n
I rolled my eyes and moved my drink back pointedly closer to me. “You’re leaving me a choice of bad or gross. Since you’re smarter than to enlist my help except as cannon fodder for `bad’ and by the way, I’m smarter than that, too, it has to be gross.”<\/p>\n
“It has been a busy season for Nyquil.”<\/p>\n
“Oh man. Snot demons.”<\/p>\n
She laughed. “No, not Phlegmnauts.” See? Even between the talented there’s no consensus of what to call things. “Besides, they’re a myth.”<\/p>\n
Shows what she knows.<\/p>\n
I sneezed. And winked…’cause that’s the kind of guy I am.<\/p>\n
“No, I thought you’d like this one. Incubi.”<\/p>\n
I groaned. “You know I don’t have a girlfriend, right?”<\/p>\n
She smiled. It would have been a pretty smile if it didn’t show so many teeth. “As much as I’d like to remind you that I don’t inquire into your personal life, yes.” She slid off the stool, showing off those legs again. “You know, dear, you don’t actually have to sleep with them.”<\/p>\n
Since calling them up requires some somnambulistic tendencies, I would tend to disagree. But she was right. She usually was. Except for her thinking she broke up with me… it was totally the other way around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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