Chapter Text
Ben’s eyes were the widest she’d ever seen them when they entered the Central Austin Public Library downtown.
The coffee did make Rey feel better, and once she was properly caffeinated and kolaches had been obtained (Ben ate an entire box by himself. Good god, feeding him was going to get expensive), they’d determined that more information was necessary. He’d also insisted on bringing her laptop with him, and it was currently tucked safely in a messenger bag slung across his chest.
But he wouldn’t tell her what he needed it for.
“Do you have a library I can visit? I need to learn more about this world, and fast,” Ben had said between bites of the pastries in the car as Rey changed directions, heading for downtown instead of home.
“Wasn’t the internet enough?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “I saw that you learned how to type overnight. That was impressive.”
Another one disappeared down his throat, that one swallowed almost entirely in one bite. Rey envied his wide mouth for that ability; she’d inhale food that quickly too if she’d been born with the equipment for it.
But Ben still shook his head. “I prefer books to your internet. As to the typing, I got frustrated with how long it took me to find the letters, and I wanted to do it like you did. So I used Google the way you showed me to find tutorials and practiced while you were asleep.” He gave her a wry look. “Or not asleep.”
She ignored that. “What were you doing on my laptop this morning anyway? What were you writing?”
Another kolache disappeared, and he held a finger up to his lips as he chewed. “That’ll be a surprise,” he finally said once he’d swallowed.
“And where do you put all that food?”
“I put it in my mouth. Obviously.” He splayed his hands out in front of him and furrowed his brow, looking at her like she was clearly an idiot. “Rey, I have seen you eat multiple times now, I know you know where to put food. I’ve even seen you hide it between your brea—”
“No, that’s not—” Rey sighed and shook her head, resisting the sudden urge to bash it on the steering wheel. “What I mean is…Ben, how can you eat this much? That is a lot, any normal person would gain weight eventually, but you—”
“Are you asking if I need to relieve myself?”
They both got very quiet at his not-quite-accusatory question.
“Maybe,” Rey finally muttered, turning into the library’s parking garage. At least he put what she was thinking much more politely than she had in her own mind.
He stared at her over the top of the empty box of kolaches. “Do you honestly want to know the answer to that question?”
“No.”
Yes.
Yes, she did.
Desperately.
But he didn’t volunteer any additional information, and she couldn’t quite screw up enough courage to ask, despite suddenly wanting to know everything she could about magical demon physiology.
Maybe she’d get lucky and find a book on it here.
As soon as they entered the central atrium and Ben spied the five levels of stacks crammed full of books, she had to thrust out a hand and grab him by the back of the shirt to keep him from sprinting away.
“Rey, this is almost like the Library of Alexandria!” he whispered, his expression full of reverence. “It isn’t nearly as big or as full, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything comparable!”
“First of all,” she said, reaching over and grabbing a map of the library from a table of pamphlets to thrust into his hands, “you really owe me a long, extended storytime. I’m going to need you to recount everything you can remember before you showed up in my apartment.”
“Easily done.” He nodded sagely. “I would love to regale you with—”
“Second of all, I’m not going to be able to keep up with you here and I already know it.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes again. The coffee had helped, but not as much as she was hoping it would. “But I also don’t want to lose you in this big building. You don’t have a phone. How am I going to find you?”
“You won’t need to.” Ben grabbed her hand and held it up, spreading her fingers wide and showing off her half-drawn binding in the light. “I’ll always be able to find you. You did the work of tying us together, so now I’ll be able to seek you out and follow our link. That much feels the same as when I have a soul contract with someone.”
“Will you know when I want you to come find me?”
“I think so, yes.” He glanced around and pointed to a table just on the edge of the romance section. “But just to be safe, how about we meet over there in—” he pointed next to the clock above the elevators, “—one hour?”
“Is that enough time for you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But either way, I don’t like being separated from you for long.”
“Fine. One hour.” She nodded at him and he bounded across the library at a quick clip, studying the map and disappearing into the stacks like some feral animal eagerly escaping into the woods. All she needed was a blurry photo of him from a cryptozoologist to convince anyone he was a Sasquatch, what with the way he moved and how big he was.
At least he loved books.
That was both an admirable, and, frankly, rare quality in a man. Especially since he seemed to like fiction so much. What was it with straight guys and nonfiction, anyway? Why were they always reading the worst shit? Didn’t they need to escape from—?
Oh.
No, probably not quite as much, no.
Rey shook her head to clear it and pulled out her phone, navigating to the Austin Public Library’s website. She logged into her account—dormant and untouched since she moved here five years ago and her optimism hadn’t yet been strangled by reality—and pulled up the search page.
“‘Demonology,’” she muttered to herself as she typed the word into the engine and hovered awkwardly in the atrium. Even though librarians were some of the best people on the planet, risking one of them asking too many questions about her interest in that particular topic wasn’t something Rey wanted to chance.
She chewed on the tip of her thumb while she waited for the page to load, but the results weren’t at all what she was looking for. It was mostly a list of YA novels and trashy romance titles that likely had to do with fucking demons, but none of them were the sort of reference or nonfiction she was hoping to find. She bookmarked a few titles to save to her account for later and typed in something else.
“Demons” had the same result, and she pursed her lips as she stared at her phone. She’d sort of forgotten this was Texas: while Austin was weird and liberal as all hell, the rest of the state outside of major metropolitan areas probably wouldn’t look too kindly on the sort of books she was looking for right now, especially given the easy access for kids here. A university library might have been a better choice for more scholarly resources, and that was what she needed. She needed to know more about what she was dealing with.
If any of the blue-haired church ladies who insisted on hanging around and volunteering near the capitol caught wind of what she was searching for, they’d probably call her a witch.
Hold on.
Witch.
That was the answer—or at least the right direction. Witchcraft could be considered a religion, and they had to have at least a few books on that here. And weren’t witches notorious for summoning demons or devils or whatever? Supposedly?
Rey typed in “witchcraft” next and pulled up a whole host of books, all found on the first floor. She made her way downstairs and navigated the stacks to the sections on nonfiction and religion, running her hands along the out-turned spines, just like she used to do when she worked in the library during college. She pulled a few tomes off the shelves here and there, but mostly she wasn’t finding what she was looking for. This wasn’t the type of witchcraft she was interested in, and she inevitably put every book back.
There were books on herbology, crystals, tarot, mediumship. Some titles referenced witchcraft that sounded more like self-help, like how to manifest strength within yourself and other hokey new-age-psychological bullshit. That was all fine and dandy for some people, but she was really looking for more of the classical variety. The thing that used to get women hung, or occasionally burned and drowned.
You know, the good stuff.
The actual soul-selling stuff.
The stuff she may or may not have performed accidentally a few days ago.
Rey put the last book back on the shelf (Witchery: Embrace the Witch Within by Juliet Diaz) and drew in a deep, frustrated breath. What sort of books would Faust (or Johann, as Ben kept referring to him) have used to summon theirs? That was what she needed to find. She tapped her foot and thought furiously, a vague sense of unease rising into her chest.
And the longer she stood there, the more upset she felt.
At first she didn’t know why—until it hit her all at once. It was the smell that made her heart ache. She’d missed the scent of paper and binding, of cloth and leather and stories, and the books here reminded her of her days working in the library with Dr. Holdo. Why couldn’t things have stayed that way? Being a student wasn’t any sort of picnic, but in hindsight, it was a whole helluva lot better than the life she had now. She’d only been able to afford ramen, but she was happy. She’d been happy. The smell of old books and dusty shelves reminded her of when she felt herself.
When was the last time she felt that?
When was the last time she’d really smiled? Really, and truly, with her whole body?
Or when was the last time she’d felt at peace?
There were some moments with Rose where they laughed so hard her stomach hurt. But those moments were fleeting. They never lasted, not in the way that mattered. As soon as Rey went home alone, a weight always descended upon her chest, holding her down, drowning her in her own sense of insignificance. Nothing ever felt right. Nowhere had ever truly felt like home.
Rey took a step forward, waffled on her feet, and then backed up again, her agitation growing. Why? Why were things like this? Why did she feel so damn uncomfortable everywhere? Why hadn’t she ever truly fit in anywhere?
Why was she so miserable?
Was it her fault?
Was it the world?
Why was it so empty, so pointless?
Why had her parents abandoned her?
Why hadn’t she ever been chosen?
Why did she have to work like this, breaking her back and her spirit for pennies, wasting her days and nights on thankless tasks that blew away on the wind as soon as the quarter was over with no real lasting impact? She wasn’t helping anyone. She wasn’t making the world better. She wasn’t even really making her own life better.
Why was she wasting it all away?
Why was she so alone?
Why couldn’t she be happy?
And then another thought crept in behind that last one:
What if she just gave up entirely?
It wasn’t the first time she’d had that thought—she was contemplating it again only a few days ago. But now she knew that if she did, according to Ben, she’d just be reborn and have to do it all over again from scratch.
Rey sped up as she started searching frantically through the stacks, the shelves around her closing in the more she thought about it. She couldn’t seem to focus on any of the titles, their covers all blurring together into one indistinguishable, multicolored mass.
Maybe she hadn’t lost her soul recently.
Maybe she’d lost ownership of it a long time ago.
Would it be better to just start over?
Wipe the slate clean?
Or would it turn out worse if she simply ended this life early?
Could it be worse?
It could.
That realization rattled through Rey and she paused, her hand stilling on the spine of a book that hadn’t quite been placed all the way back into the stacks.
It could be worse. It could be much worse.
Because while she didn’t have ownership of her soul anymore, at least she had Ben.
At least she had someone who’d sworn to actually stick by her and help her for once.
It was perhaps the first time she really had someone who meant what he’d told her.
A tear coursed down her cheek, and she sniffed and wiped it away. Thank god no one was in these stacks today—no one else was hovering in the religion section to watch her cry. Then she was reminded again of yesterday, when Ben had broken the news to her and she’d broken in turn, and he’d held her so carefully, so fully. And then she’d snapped at him earlier like that.
She was a bitch.
A bitter, disillusioned bitch.
More tears rolled down her cheeks, and she sniffed again as she scanned the shelves in front of her. The book she’d stopped on stood out, and she plucked it away from the shelf halfheartedly, peeling it away and staring at the odd words in front of her.
She stilled when she saw the arcane symbols etched onto the cover.
They were awfully familiar.
Some of them were even twisting along the fingers holding the book.
“Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis: The Lesser Key of Solomon,” she whispered. “What is this? Are you going to help me figure out what the hell is going on?” Curiosity overtook her, and she wiped her face on the back of her sleeve before flipping to a section towards the beginning.
She gasped.
Holy shit.
The answer she’d been looking for was right there on the page, staring straight up at her.
Rey had inadvertently asked the book a question—and then flipped to a page that felt right. She’d just practiced the same sort of bibliomancy that she used to in the library.
And just like always, the book had answered her question.
“Ars Goetia: The Book of Demonic Spirits,” she read softly to herself. “The first part, called GOETIA, showing a list of the Lords of Hell and how to summon and bind them.” She turned to the beginning and read the note from the publisher.
It was an odd book, claiming to be a modern printing of a seventeenth-century grimoire compiled from materials several centuries older: the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, the De praestigiis daemonum, the Liber Officiorum Spirituum, and the Livre des Esperitz, among other equally-esoteric-sounding old books. According to the modern preface, these texts all influenced the publication of The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, which may have even shaped Shakespeare’s characterization of the witches in Macbeth.
Rey turned back to the spot she’d initially found, and her eyes grew wide when she saw the list inscribed in that section.
It was of nine demon lords, each one with a description beneath their name, and each with a sigil to call them forth to this realm. The first seven she’d never seen or heard of before: Ap’lek, Albrekh, Cardo, Trudgen, Ushar, Kuruk, and Vicrul.
The eighth name on the list was one she knew.
“Ben,” she whispered, tracing a finger along the sweeping curves and angles of his sigil.
She couldn’t remember exactly what had been inscribed on the piece of parchment from the old copy of Paradise Lost, and while this did look very similar, it was much less than what she had seen, simple and stripped bare. Her incantation and sigil had been much more intricate, much more complex, with other arcane symbols sweeping around the edges of what she saw here now. And there was no Latin phrase written here.
Instead, it just had his name:
Kylo Ren.
The Eighth Spirit in this Order is KYLO REN, a great Lord, and obedient only to SNOKE. He appeareth in the form of a Great Man, tall and wide and of fair mien, with eyes like Flames and a Crown of black horns upon his head. He hath a deep voice, and his speech is such as becomes the Summoner once bound together. This Spirit can learn and teach all Arts and Sciences, and other secret things, and bestow gifts upon his Summoner. He can discover unto thee what the Memory is, and where it lies, or any other thing thou mayest desire, for the price of thine own immortal soul upon thy death.
She turned the page.
There was nothing else about him.
“That’s—that’s it?!” She flipped the page back and forth, scanning the list and tabbing through the rest of the book. The text was obscure and opaque, and the rest of it was detailed magical instructions on how to practice and call up the demons listed there, but she hadn’t needed any of the things the book said she did. She hadn’t done a sacrifice, she hadn’t used purified water (and certainly had never purified her body as instructed here). There were no silver knives, no hawthorn wands, no facing certain directions, no spices or special ingredients (unless salty goldfish cracker crumbs and M&Ms counted as offerings). She hadn’t needed any of that, and now here she was, saddled with her own clingy giant of a supernatural being.
Rey reached the end of the book and went back to the passage written about Ben. Compared to the other demons in the list, he was portrayed the kindest by far and was written about the most favorably. None of the others were referred to as fair, and he sounded positively benevolent in comparison to the first seven, who would bring death and rot and ruin if insulted—or if they simply felt like it.
But who was this Snoke he was supposedly obedient to?
She turned to his entry.
The Ninth Spirit in this Order is SNOKE, the Eldest Lord of Hell. He appeareth in the form of an Old Man, withered and Wizened, mighty and Terrible, and speaketh with a hoarse voice like rolling thunder. He is very furious at his first appearance. He causes Diseases and cureths them, gives Life and taketh it. He may bestow Great Wealth to the Summoner, if bargained for sufficiently. He is Not to be Summoned unless by the moste desperate of Men, for his price is High, and thou wilt pay for it both in Life and in Death. Thou must solely summon Him within the Circle, and then command him into it by the Bonds and Charges of Spirits as hereafter followeth.
The information ended there. No general instructions about what to do with a demon once you had one, no seventeenth-century wisdom on their physiology when they were in human form, no advice on what to do if you were bonded to one but unable to sign a soul contract to either get rid of him or let him make all your wildest wishes and dreams come true—like debt relief and not having to cook anymore and being able to sleep for a full eight hours every night. But at the very least, it had confirmed what Ben told her. He’d been truthful.
It was oddly reassuring.
“Rey?”
She jumped at his voice when her demon turned the corner into the stacks where she stood, and she put her hand over her heart to try to slow its beating.
Speak of the devil.
“Oh my god, Ben. What are you doing here? You scared me.”
“Sorry about that.” He walked up to her with a pile of books in his hands. “You didn’t show up at the table, so I came looking for you.”
Rey checked her phone. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. It’s been over an hour already?” She glanced back up at him with a frown. “I must have lost track of time.”
But he was too busy staring at the book she held to respond, his eyes gradually widening. He reached out and plucked it away with one large hand, and he barked a sudden loud laugh when he turned to the title page.
“Ha! Wow,” he breathed, his face breaking out into a crooked grin. “Oh, I haven’t seen this text in centuries, not since Johann called for me. His was in Latin, though.” He snorted and handed it back to her. “And it’s still terribly inaccurate. Magic doesn’t depend on material objects—it’s immaterial. You can only work with intangible components, like energy. Intention. And souls, of course.”
He shook his head and huffed in amusement. “I can’t believe humans still think they need all that ceremonial stuff to call up a demon. You just need the right magic, words, and vision, not all that other junk.” Then his face grew dark. “And I still can’t believe Johann never amended that text before he died like I told him to. I am not obedient to Snoke. Not anymore. That information’s outdated by at least a millennium. Maybe more.” Ben tapped the page angrily and then turned on his heel, heading towards an empty table.
Rey trotted after him. “Wait, wait, wait—this other demon is real?”
“Of course he is.” Ben dropped his stack of books on the table and sat down heavily. “They all are. I told you there were nine of us.” He indicated the book she held with a nod of his head. “That list is accurate. A version of the Ars Goetia was around when I was last summoned, and whoever wrote the original text definitely knew their way around proper magic more than most. Either they had called up some of us to talk or bargain, or they were working through a list from someone else who had. But I don’t know who actually wrote it. Could have been any of the men who’ve summoned me over the centuries. Or none.”
“How many times have you been summoned?” She slid into the seat next to him. It was around lunchtime and most of the other library patrons were probably over by the cafe grabbing food and coffee or up on the rooftop gardens. It was a good thing they were alone in this section.
Ben stopped and thought for a moment, tapping a finger against his plush bottom lip. “I don’t exactly know—eighty-one, I think? Not including you.”
“Eighty-one?!”
That felt like an awful lot of souls.
But Ben didn’t seem to notice her dismay. “I was called a lot more often a long time ago. People used magic more back then, before what you’d call the Dark Ages.” He gave her a smirk and held up a book on medieval European history and flipped idly through it. “They weren’t all that dark, actually. That’s a misnomer—or maybe more of a deliberate obfuscation.”
He put the book down and picked up another, glancing at its pages while he spoke. “They just lost a lot of the records from that time prior to the nineteenth century. And the spread of Christianity did sort of put a damper on the more…interesting spiritual practices of other, already-existing religions. I was summoned more before the Church was so widespread.” His smirk faded. “I wonder why I haven’t been summoned since Johann? There are always outliers and heretics.”
“Well, I mean…maybe demon-summoning just sort of fell out of fashion? It can’t have been that easy to figure out how.” He gave her a heavy look and raised an eyebrow, and Rey bit her lip. “Okay, fine, maybe it was easy for me, but it was also an accident. Someone else did all the hard work and I just stumbled into it.”
“I’m glad you did,” he mumbled as he pulled another book from his stack and opened it, flipping through it and reading it at lightspeed, just like all the others.
“What’s Hell like?”
“About what you might expect.” He considered her with a tilt of his head. “Actually, given the fact that you referenced fire and brimstone, maybe not.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully and ran his hands longingly over the cover of his next literary victim. “It’s cold and dim, barren and desolate, a wide, sweeping wasteland. The silence is deafening. It would be enough to make any human go mad.”
“Did you go mad?”
Ben’s dark gaze slowly rose to meet hers. “Do I seem mad to you? Or human?”
“No. You seem more reasonable than most people, actually. All things considered, I mean.”
“Well, there you go.” He turned back to his stack. “But Hell’s not exactly a party. It’s not a nice place. Your stories don’t lie about that.”
“Did you ever interact with the other demons there?”
He paused and blinked, staring out across the wide seating area around them with his eyes suddenly out of focus. “No,” he finally responded. “No, not really. We can’t cross into each other’s circles. We can speak with one another through the void, but I cut out the others’ voices long ago. I do not wish to hear their torment. My own pain is heavy enough to bear.”
He quieted and went back to reading. Rey watched his eyes dart across the words, the strong profile of his nose and the white slash of the old scar cutting across his face highlighted under the bright lights of the beautiful library, and she wondered again at how lonely he must have been.
How lost, and forgotten.
Ben finished another book and put it aside on his growing stack, and she plucked it away, flipping curiously through its pages. It was a complex, technical breakdown of twenty-first-century economics—and it was just one among many, mixed in between more classical literature and pulp romance titles. She frowned.
“Why did you pull these particular books from the shelves?”
He chewed on his bottom lip but didn’t look up at her. “A librarian approached me asking if I needed help, and I decided to try to look like I wasn’t reading the way I was. She was very helpful, though—pointed me in the direction of some of her favorites.” He slid one out from the bottom of the stack and handed it to Rey. It was a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice. “She was right. I loved that one.”
Rey clamped her hand over her mouth. Jane Austen was her favorite, and the only reason she didn’t have a copy of Pride and Prejudice on her own shelves anymore was that she’d read hers so many times, it had fallen apart. And she’d still never gotten around to replacing it, not since her own life had begun to disintegrate.
She looked back over at Ben to find him watching her curiously. He reached into his pocket and slid a little piece of plastic over to her. “And the librarian also got me some identification.” He tapped on the little picture of him there in the corner, and Rey took it between her fingers. “The library is part of your government, correct? So this is a government ID? You said I needed it to get a job.”
She looked down at the little card he’d passed her. Ben was half-smiling in the tiny photo, small and crooked, with one dimple partially carved into his cheek. Only a hint of uncertainty lurked behind his eyes.
A demon with a library card.
She couldn’t help but smile back at it.
And then she checked the name and birthdate there. “‘Benjamin Solo?’ Born on November 19, 1983?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “First of all, why? And second of all, you still have to have proof of government ID and an address to get one of these.” She froze. “Wait. That’s my address. How did you—?!”
“Solo is from the Latin ‘solus,’ or to be alone.” He took the ID card from her and slid it back into his pocket. “It seemed fitting. As did a Scorpio sun birthday.” An eyebrow quirked right back at her. “You think I don’t know my astrology? I’m extremely well-versed in the sciences, you know.”
Astrology as a science.
Of course.
The book did say that he was a scholar.
Or a nerd, more like.
“Thirty-nine, though? And my address? Really?”
He shrugged. “Felt more plausible than two thousand.” Then, a snort, followed by a mischievous gleam in his eye. “And I do currently live at your address. It isn’t a lie.”
“Well, sure, but you would have had to be on the lease or have a bill in your name at my apartment to—”
He cut her off abruptly. “As for the rest, I still have some power to facilitate my own needs. I just can’t use it in direct service of you. Not yet, anyway.”
“You’re still going to need more than an enhanced library card if you want to get a job. And that’s notwithstanding passing muster during an interview process. It’s a lot harder to get a job these days than it was five hundred years ago, that I can promise you.”
“I know.” Ben leaned over and nudged her shoulder playfully with his, the corners of his lips tilting up into another smug grin. “I’m working on it. Have a little faith.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
“I’m not talking about faith in God, Rey. I’m talking about having faith in me,” he purred, his eyes heating as he studied her face.
But before she could say anything else, he turned back to his stack and disappeared into the pile of words he’d gathered there.
