Demons and Magic

CHAPTER 2: Make a Wish

Alastair burst out laughing as she gazed at Nathan’s ashen face. By the time he realized that Alastair was not here to actually kill him, tears had already raced down his cheeks as he murmured some kind of prayer, calling out to a thousand different saints in one incoherent mumbling.

He looked like he’s seen a ghost — and in this case, he might as well be. He was sweating so hard and his every breath was caught in his throat that it almost seemed like he would pass out at any second.

Alastair was still laughing profusely, finally letting the lights turn on.

“You should’ve seen your face,” she said in between breaths and laughed again, her voice ringing through the cramped room. “Priceless.”

Nathan braved himself to gaze up at the face of his perpetrator, getting all tongue-tied as she gazed back at him with the ghost of a lopsided smile.

“What? Cat’s got your tongue?”

‘British accent,’ Nathan made a mental note and swallowed hard, his fear lifting a fraction when his eyes met hers.

It was gray. Stormy gray. Like the kind of eyes you’d see when you look up at a fearsome tyrant with the looks of a god. She’s fearsome. But she looks angelic, nonetheless. He had never seen such perfect features on a human before, much less on someone from their part of the city.

Sure, there were cute girls in his school. But she seemed different. There was something off about her.

Something … not all the way human.

Alastair clicked her fingers in front of him and he snapped out of his trance, blinking hard as the heat rose to his cheeks.

Crying and begging for his life in front of her was already embarrassing enough. He didn’t need to be caught getting all mesmerized as well.

“Do you have a command of some sort?” she asked in a bored tone and pushed herself up, scanning the place with another look now that everything’s been lit.

It was official. This has got to be a dumpster. No way a person could fathom living in this filth.

“W— what command?” Nathan stuttered and cleared his throat, sniffing as he got up.

Alastair ignored his words and sat on his chair that squeaked under her weight, tilting it to cross her legs on top of the table. “Do you have any wish of some kind?”

He stared at her for a moment, unsure how he should answer the question exactly, and cleared his throat. “Answer my questions first.”

“Which one?”

“All of it.” He pulled another chair from his small kitchen counter and dragged it across the floor. “Who are you and what are you doing in my room?”

Alastair rolled her eyes for what seemed like the millionth time since that day and crossed her arms. “I told you, the name’s Alastair. And you summoned me, so why the hell are you asking?”

“What do you mean by summoned? I—”

“The summoning ritual. The one you did with that green-haired friend of yours,” she said in a matter-of-factly tone and rocked herself back and forth, her eyes piercing through the mortal as though she were trying to read his mind.

And she was. It’s just that she can’t seem to read anything off of him. Either there was something blocking it, or his mind was just incredibly blank.

“Oh.” Understanding dawned on Nathan’s face but he still looked a bit skeptical, his eyes now wandering towards her clothes that seemed a little awkward to be seen outside of a cosplay convention.

She was wearing a black hooded cloak that covered only half of her upper body, most of it just running down one side of her back. She looked like one of those characters in the Assassin’s Creed with the way she wore her clothes, her left wrist covered in a hand wrap and the other seemingly laced with a tattoo of some kind.

“Are you one of those … anime girls?” Nathan finally asked as he surveyed her with a look.

She doesn’t appear to be wearing make-up. But with hair as platinum blonde as hers, he doubts she didn’t get anything done. He’s never seen anything quite like her before. You could say that she’s just breathtakingly beautiful.

“Earth to Nathan!” Alastair snapped and let her chair fall on the floor with a loud clatter as she got up.

Nathan flinched and almost looked panicked as he gazed at the door, afraid that they’d wake up the other tenants. Mrs. Pratchett, his landlady for three years already, was the understanding type. But he doubts that the other two sleeping across from his room were the same.

“Will you be silent?” he hissed at her as she walked around in circles for what seemed like minutes, running her finger on the counter, staring at it, and then frowning up at him. “Are you bored—”

“YES!” she answered before he could even finish and whirled around with blazing eyes.

Intimidating. Except, Nathan doesn’t seem as scared of her as before and just blinked like a stunned possum, clearing his throat. “Are you hungry?”

Alastair frowned. “Do I look hungry?”

“Well—”

“Just give me a damn wish already so I can go.”

“A wish? What wish?”

“Are you a bloody i***t?!”

Now, she’s being aggressive. Nathan simply understood that as an effect of being hungry. She must be.

“Let’s go eat, okay? You can calm down, now.” This is good. If they go out, find a restaurant that’s at least a little crowded and has CCTVs, the chances of her killing him would be lesser.

Significantly lesser. Women tend to be really scary people when they’re hungry. He had come to an understanding of that quite a long time ago.

Alastair frowned even further and cornered him on his chair, her face now inches away from his as she gripped the sides of his seat with a rather surprising strength. “Make. A. Wish,” she said with finality and inched even closer, making Nathan gulp.

“Ah … w— what?” the dumb one says and she smiles at him, the kind of smile that would’ve made someone piss their pants if it were from Al Capone.

“A wish, mortal. Or do I need to slap you with a dictionary for you to understand?”

“Why would I make a wish?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because it’s your birthday?” Alastair said sarcastically, but Nathan’s eyes widened, shocked by the fact that she was right.

“You knew?” he looked like he was gonna be touched now any second, but Alastair just gazed down at him with pure contempt, thinking to herself that he was probably just being sarcastic back.

“You know, you make it so hard not to set you on fire,” she sneered at him and stood back, eyeing the clock on the far side corner of the room. “If you’re not making a wish, I’ll get going, then.”

“Wait!”

Alastair groaned. “Are you ready to make a wish?”

“What kind of wish?”

“Anything. Just not immortality or bringing someone back from the dead. Trust me, that doesn’t always go as planned.”

“What?”

“The dead don’t usually come back looking like themselves. Mostly, their bones are all sticking out.”

Nathan swallowed again, horror glazing his eyes as he imagined all of those zombie movies he’d watched as a kid.

By now, he was already wondering what kind of nonsensical show Alastair was trying to put on. She must be on drugs. Because to be perfectly frank, no normal human being would come out dressing like a ninja turtle, breaking on other people’s houses, and asking for a wish.

‘What the hell is she? A genie?’ he thought to himself, only then realizing that he had actually said the words.

“No,” Alastair simply answered and kicked away Nathan’s indoor slippers. “On the contrary, I’m an agent of the Seven Princes of Hell. But my duties are largely ceremonial.”

“What?” he said that more out of confusion rather than disbelief.

Alastair rolled her eyes and leaned towards him, slowing down her words as if she were talking to a three-year-old. “I am a demon. You know, the one with the wings and all those fancy stuff.”

Nathan just blinked. He seem to do that a lot. “Is this a prank?”

In a matter of seconds, Nathan’s eyes grew wide when he saw her rise into the air, her once gray eyes now turning a mesmerizing shade of gold.

“You think of me as a mere joke, human?” she hissed under her breath and a large shadow of what looks like a huge pair of wings sprung out from behind her, engulfing them both as Nathan felt himself rise into the air with her.

“What the … ” He had no chance to finish his sentence before she pulled him by the collar, the both of them surging through the ceiling.

He braised himself for the undoubtedly painful impact of getting his head bashed in with the fibre-cement ceiling he’s been staring at for years before he goes to sleep. That would’ve been tragic — and quite fascinating, too, if people were to know the cause of his death.

Imagine infuriating a Celestial being to the point of getting yourself tossed up into the ceiling.

But instead of that all too familiar sound of the breaking of the ceiling, and quite possibly of bones too, all he heard was the unmistakable whistle of the cold wind as they flew up into the air.

When he opened his eyes, the angel— or rather, the demon was still gripping him by the collar of his shirt, sending him up into the sky, away from the bustle of the streets.

“AAHH!” he shouted again, much louder than he did the first time and reached for Alastair. “Don’t drop me, please! I’m sorry. This is not a prank. I’m sorry!”

“Do you still think of me as a joke, you feeble mortal?”

“No! No, I don’t!” He was now crying again, his arms outstretched as though to hug Alastair. “Don’t drop me, please. I’m begging you. Don’t.”

She simply narrowed her eyes at him, gazing down at the shadow of Mrs. Pratchett’s house that now only looked like a spectacularly small box from where they were.

Her eyes narrowed a fraction. Nathan was really considering hugging her now that she looks like she was contemplating hard enough to see if Nathan would look good as a red paste on the street.

“Please, don’t,” Nathan whispered, but Alastair only ignored him, her eyes growing wide with clear fascination as she pointed at something from just above them.

“What a huge bird,” she noted, nodding with satisfaction as she turned around, nearly letting Nathan slip off of her grip as she followed the huge metallic aircraft gliding away from them with a look.

“T— that’s not a bird,” Nathan corrected, his voice still shaking as he tried to keep himself as still as possible. He doesn’t know when exactly his shirt was gonna give in and let him fall on the surface of the Earth half-naked.

Either way, he needed to correct Alastair.

“It isn’t?” She furrowed her eyebrows. “Then I suppose that was a bat?”

“No. It’s an airplane,” Nathan said and slowly held Alastair by the wrist, growing a bit sure that he’d at least have some kind of grip before he falls off to his death.

Alastair nodded, not understanding, but simply not just caring. She’d seen far more fascinating creatures than that before Noah sailed his ark. Too bad the old man didn’t bring one of those dinosaurs back.

They used to make bets before about who’d win between a T-rex and an Allosaurus. That was the first gambling in history.

“Now, are you ready to make a wish?”