So You Summoned a Soulmate

Chapter 5 - Mercy

“I was known as ?.” Still leaning against the wall I watch him scoot the chair closer to the table with the effectiveness of a cat wrangler. Examining the flex and flow of his arms as he begins to eat I notice for the first time that his coarsely curled brown hair is cropped very short. Indicating the chair at the table across from him, he grins a surprisingly charming toothy question at me, “I hope you like bacon.” How could I not, it smells divine. The ache in the pit of my stomach begged me to sit and eat, I was starving.

Crunching with gusto his long sharp fingers grip the fork gingerly as he groans inwardly in approval. Studying him in silence for a few moments as he eats in what is clearly unadulterated joy I find that the hunger I have found requires more than supremely charred bacon. Glancing up at me with wide, deeply black eyes he gives me a goofy grin when I slide into the chair across the table.

My brain seems to have gone on break. Nothing is making a lick of sense right now and I have abandoned forcing it into submission. So there is a demon in my kitchen, who has kindly made me breakfast. Whom I definitely accidentally summoned with a simple manifestation spell that could not have possibly done that, or so I thought.

Determination lit me up like a bonfire. No way in hell had that spell become a summoning. I hadn’t been completely certain what I had been doing but it was in no way the kind of conquering that would be needed to bring a being from another world. Yet here he was, all seven foot something of the carmine-skinned demon with a dimple crunching on bacon in my kitchen. What was I going to do with this mess?

Smacking the knife on the table I make determined eye contact with him as I begin to formulate an answer to this situation. I will just have to send him back. Somehow. I know how to do a summoning and the opposite of that will be a banishing. It makes sense in my mind, I’m just piecing together the logistics like supplies.

“Oh, come on what are you going to do? Stab me?” Black eyebrows arch as he inclines his head to the side in question. The twisted spikes of his horns framed his face as they curved downwardly inward, almost like a frame. “Do I look stab-able? Is that a word? Stab-able?” His toothy smirk is so wide he looks like a demonic clown. The dark pits of his eyes are just so unnerving. Pupils swirling with a grey smoke I recognize the heat radiating from him as the same melting through my core.

“Yeah, you look totally stab-able.” I admonish as I pluck my fork off the faux granite tabletop. Crunching into the bacon I poke the eggs to check for shells as I double down. “Completely stab worthy.” Leaving the knife in full view I munch on it with gusto as the conversation winds effortlessly between us.

“Do you knife all of your guests?” Leaning forward in question, his trapezius muscle allows the little dip at his collarbone to deepen and steal all my concentration. What would his skin feel like? Would it be warm and soft? Are his muscles as hard as they appear to be? Should I take the chance to find out? Elbow on the table his question lingers between us with widening tension as I gawk openly at his naked form.

“You are hardly a guest!” My scoff could have been misconstrued as too abrasive but I could not be too concerned with offending an infernal. Raking my hands through my tousled and unbrushed hair I realized for the first time that I was wearing the same leggings and oversized shirt I had fallen asleep in, which had been what I was wearing all day yesterday. Not going for any self-care awards lately, are we Mercy?

“Of course I am, you summoned me!” Had I? The statement stretched between us as the number of questions I was compiling seemed to grow in alarming comparison with the warmth in the pit of my stomach. Stabbing into his eggs I watched as P deftly scooped up a pile of surprisingly un-shell-ridden eggs. Marking question number one hundred and one, how does he know how to cook?

“No no, what I summoned was a date.” I corrected with a false gusto. “A partner. Maybe a husband. I definitely did not mean to pull a prison guard from another dimension.” My assertion was all bravado. I had not done any of that. I drunkenly lit a manifestation spell. Hadn’t I? Questions mounted as he leans in and asks with a sincerity I would have said yesterday was impossible.

“Date?” Raising a questioning brow I watched as he placed his fork on his empty plate and rose to place it in the sink. How does he know any of this? I highly doubt they have sinks in hell.

“Uh yeah, a date. This bacon is actually pretty good.” Munching on the charred pork I positioned myself to begin a round of twenty questions, beginning with how in the hell do you know how to cook?

“Can a ???????? be a date?” Back to me, he places his hands on the counter slumping his shoulders in a surprising show of confusion.

“A what now?” Brain dulled with the effects of a hangover and confusion the translation bounces around between my ears while words fail me.

“????????, it means…” slowly angling his face toward me his previously terrifying features fail to mask the exposed yet hopeful cast to the smoky grey in his eyes.

“No, I know what it means,” my words rush out to reassure him, though of what I have no clue. “I understand basic infernal, what I don’t get is where you got soulmate from?”