Asa fell through the energy field, curled around the heart of the demon, dropping through time and space like a stone in a pond. He squeezed his eyes shut, dizzy and nauseated from the shifting portal around him, and fervently hoped he landed somewhere soft. Asa tumbled through the air, falling down, and then falling up—until finally his body stilled.

  Asa felt cool, hard ground underneath him. When he opened his eyes, he saw the same intersection where he had first fallen into the pocket dimension. Pitch Street looked the same as it had before: the apartment buildings lining the street, the neon purple track lights that curbed the darkness of the Station, the graffiti, the sad little rock garden. But Asa couldn’t be too sure, especially after having wandered into another time-line without realizing it.

  The Station alarm had stopped.

  The sudden silence made his ears ring. Asa felt like a bug in a jar that had been shaken up, disoriented and trapped. PQ-9 made his soft musical rebooting sound for the third time, which made Asa wince—PQ-9 was going to be so cranky when he finished restarting. He started to shakily climb to his feet, when he realized his hands were still clenched together together. Asa opened his hands slowly, expecting—expecting—

  —except there was nothing there. His hands were empty. Asa frowned. He could have sworn he hadn’t let go of the demon’s heart, that he had kept it safe throughout all the upheaval of traveling through inter-dimensional space. Asa didn’t even know why he wanted it, except that he had felt drawn to it, compelled to hold it close to his body. Asa had wanted to—absorb it. He could almost taste it in his mouth, hot and full of energy. Asa touched his bare neck where he had worn the red jeweled collar since he was four years old. He had never once taken it off on his mother’s instruction. Now Asa didn’t have it, and he was in a strange time-line.

  “Ugh, this is why I hate humans,” someone complained loudly. Asa narrowed his eyebrows in confusion as he looked around for the voice before finally finding the source sitting on the ground. “They never want to let anyone have any fun,” the little demon grumbled and then fought his way through a yawn, little pointy white teeth on display. The demon was mint green, had a little pink nose, and looked like a cross between a cat and a fox. There were delicate little antennae in between his large, twitching ears.

  “Who—are you?” Asa said slowly, even though he had a bad feeling that he already knew the answer.

  “You steal my heart jewel, and you don’t even know who I am?” the demon said, sounding deeply offended.

  “I don’t have your heart jewel,” Asa said stupidly, showing the demon his empty hands.

  “Yes, you do,” the demon insisted. “Can’t you feel it?”

  Asa opened his mouth to protest, even as he took stock of his body, when he realized there was a warmth in his chest that wasn’t familiar to him at all. “Did I—swallow it?” he said, confused.

  “That would be the actual WORST, if you were stupid enough to EAT a demon’s heart jewel,” the demon complained. Then the demon started to look thoughtful. “Maybe then I’d get it back though….”

  “Well, I didn’t eat it, as far as I’m aware,” Asa said tartly, even as he touched his chest where the strange warmth was.

  “Your soul absorbed it,” the demon said, looking extremely grumpy.

  “No way,” Asa said, flabbergasted.

  When the House notarized demon contracts, the magic was tied to the paper contract itself, which was written in demon blood. Not many people could make actual soul bonds with demons—the military of the Eternal Crystal Imperium specially recruited these individuals with this ability to make soul contracts with demons because they were so much more powerful than contracts that were bound to paper. In return for giving the human power through a soul bond, the demon regularly consumed the life energy of the soldier. Many of the soldiers died from energy exhaustion, as opposed to war, although the empire didn’t seem to care.

  Asa unzipped the top of his purple jumpsuit and then pulled up his shirt to look down at his chest. Sure enough, a small demon contract had been inked onto his chest in bright red demonic dialect. “It’s so small,” Asa observed.

  “Hey, I’m going to grow!” the demon protested, putting his paws on Asa’s leg, digging in his claws a little. PQ-9 beeped loudly at the demon from behind Asa’s leg, alerting Asa that PQ-9 had finished restarting and that also PQ-9 was cranky as hell from his forced nap. “I’ll eat all your energy right now!”

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  “Uh, no,” Asa said, even as the demon reached through their soul-bond to nibble at his energy. It was unsettling to feel his energy escape from his body without his permission, as if there was a hole inside him with a leak. “That’s not happening.”

  “How are you going to stop me?” the demon said, digging his claws in tighter until they pricked Asa’s thigh.

  Madame Katusha had the ability to soul-bond with a demon, or she wouldn’t have been the madame of the House. She had taught Asa meditative exercises as part of his training in demonic contracts—how much energy to push into a contract, how much to subtract, how to bind energy to a contract like sewing a garment together. When Asa focused, he could push back against the soul of the demon, as if pushing away a cat that was trying to knock an ornament off a shelf.

  “Boo,” the demon said crankily, dropping to the ground to roll around in offense. “You’re really no fun at all.”

  “I didn’t even want a demon contract in the first place,” Asa snapped. He had seen many demon contracts go dangerously wrong when he had been Head Apprentice at the House. It wasn’t the life that Asa wanted for himself—to be trapped by anyone, by anything. “Is there any way to get rid of it?”

  “Now you don’t even want me?” the demon gasped, his fur puffing up.

  “Why would you want to be in a contract?” Asa said, crossing his arms. “Now I can do whatever I want with your heart jewel. Doesn’t that scare you?”

  “No, you won’t,” the demon chirped, starting to groom himself with an abnormally long pink tongue. “I can taste your soul. You’re not the kind to do that.” The demon began to look a little sly. “Are you sure you don’t think I can be useful?”

  PQ-9 chose this moment to venture beyond Asa’s ankle to start lecturing the demon in binary.

  “Hey, hey, I didn’t do anything to you,” the demon protested, swishing his tail, as PQ-9 stood nose-to-nose with him.

  “I thought that humans were full of germs,” Asa retorted.

  “That was before I tasted your energy,” the demon said cheerfully before using his tail to bully PQ-9, whose beeping went even more shrill in tone. “Come on, come on, what do you say?”

  Asa’s hand touched his bare neck again, reflexive. He had no idea what the girl wanted with his collar or where she had gone with it—she could be long gone in another time-line. His mother had placed her own protection magic on the collar, and her magical signature had always been comforting to him when he hadn’t been able to see her or talk to her. When he had broken his arm as a child, and he hadn’t been allowed to see her due to her work, at least he had felt her presence. Asa resisted the sense of acute loss that wanted to crash into him, like the shock of a pod racing accident.

  Asa sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Unless you can find that girl that I was chasing, I’m not interested,” he said shortly.

  “What if I could?” the demon said, rubbing up against Asa’s legs and leaving green fur on his black pants.

  Asa stared at the demon. “You could?” he said doubtfully. PQ-9 then turned and started lecturing Asa instead, which was exactly what his mother would be doing if she were here now.

  “I can sense a demonic energy signature,” the demon said, flipping his extremely fluffy tail into a giant question mark. “She must have her own demon contract.”

  “How do you know it’s her and not someone else?” Asa said carefully, ignoring PQ-9 as he beeped with indignance. Asa tried to tamp down on a rising sense of urgency that made him want to agree to the demon’s terms. This is what demons did. This is what they were good at: making bad contracts seem like a good idea. He had seen it happen at the House all the time.

  The demon tilted his head. “There’s no other demons in the area other than me right now,” he said. “The new time-line has settled.”

  “What do you want in return?” Asa said, guarded.

  “Oh, just a little energy,” the demon said with big, innocent eyes.

  Asa snorted. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “I’m not falling for that.”

  PQ-9 made a little whirring sound of relief.

  “You already soul-bonded with me,” the demon pointed out. “The contract is written. What do you have to lose?”

  Asa bit the inside of his cheek, hard. The demon had a point. What further harm could this do when he was already trapped? “You can only take a little energy,” Asa warned. PQ-9 made a sound of absolute outrage, tugging on Asa’s pant leg to get his attention. “It’s fine,” Asa said without looking at him. “I’ve got this under control."

  “Of course,” the demon said brightly.

  Demons lied as they breathed. Asa knew that. He knew the demon would exact a price as part of their contract, and that Asa would have to pay it. But—he couldn’t bear to lose the collar. If anything happened to his mother, that’s all that would be left of her. “Okay,” Asa said, feeling jittery, restless to move. He scooped up a deeply protesting PQ-9 in his arms. “Let’s go.”

  The demon grinned with all his teeth and then his body slowly morphed to become larger, taller, wider, as the demon siphoned energy from Asa in order to grow in mass. Now the demon’s back came up to Asa’s shoulders, and the demon’s teeth looked larger than ever.

  “Hop on,” the demon said cheerfully. Asa had a feeling this was only the beginning of the liberties the demon was going to take with Asa’s energy—and he was sure he would be paying for it directly out of his soul. But the damage had already been done in creating a soul-bond in the first place, and Asa was just--so fucking tired of losing what was important to him.

  Asa jumped on the demon’s back, and the demon moved.

  [Contract Established]

  Demon: ???

  Bond Rank: 1

  Skills Unlocked: ???