“Absolutely not,” I said. I started to push myself away from the table, but before I could move, I felt something grasp tightly to my wrist. “I do not make deals with demons.” Despite never having met any demons myself, I knew as well as anyone that making a deal with a demon was a recipe for disaster. The deals were always advantageous toward them in some way, and this demon was strong enough that I wanted to make sure they got as few advantages as possible. Having me in here with them was already way more of an advantage than I wanted to deal with.

  “Awfully hasty, aren’t you?” Liam said, tapping his fingertips against the table as he spoke. His face was perfectly blank, as though we were discussing the weather rather than debating if he was going to kill me. “You don’t even want to hear what I’m offering?”

  “Whatever you’re offering can’t be worth my life,” I said, pulling my arm against the invisible force holding me there. I felt my skin slide under it, like it was a shackle more than a hand, but I couldn’t break through it. I was trapped there as long as the demon wanted me.

  “Who said anything about your life?” he said, his voice more seductive than I’d ever heard Liam’s. “No offense, but I’ve seen your life. Going around dodgy buildings trying to find ghosts doesn’t seem like a great time to me. But I know your gift is important to you - that’s why I took it away. To get your attention. But you can get it back - plus you can go back to what you consider to be a life.”

  I stopped trying to pull my hand away from the force holding it - it wasn’t working anyway. What was the demon talking about? There had to be something I was missing, but from my angle, it seemed like a good trade to me. “And if I get all that,” I said slowly, carefully thinking over each word as it left my mouth, “then what exactly do you get out of the deal?”

  Liam’s distorted mouth curled into a sort of smile that I barely recognized as human. “Well that, my dear, is what we’re here to discuss.” He gestured toward the empty chair next to me. “Care to sit down and talk, or are you going to try to escape again?” Reluctantly, I sat down. “Good,” he nearly whispered. “Not that it matters anyway - there’s nowhere you could run to get away from me in here. I alone control this place.” As if to demonstrate the fact in that, he held up a hand and curled his finger toward himself, and my chair scooted me closer to the table.

  “If you can control everything, then why do you need me to agree to anything,” I asked.

  “Would you want to live here for the rest of eternity?” he asked, gesturing around him. “I want to be free to do as I wish in the world, without the limitation of being stuck here. That’s why I chose you - if there was anyone who could help free me, it would be the person who has freed countless spirits before me.”

  I started shaking my head halfway through his explanation. I couldn’t free him - I couldn’t be the reason why there was a demon free to run amok in the world. He nodded, his eyes seemingly lightly sad about it. “I would think about it more carefully were I you,” he said, warning in his tone. “If we can’t come to an agreement, I’m afraid we’ll have to fight, and as you well know, if we fight in here, I distinctly have the upper hand.” As if to emphasize his point, I felt the clamp around my hand grow tighter around my wrist, until the pressure was almost painful. “If we fight, you will lose.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I nodded slowly. “I get that, but I just can’t let a demon run free. I can’t be responsible for the destruction you’ll cause.”

  “Who’s to say I’ll cause any destruction?” he asked. “Yes, I’ve hurt you in here,” he said with a shrug, “but there was really no other way to get you to stop for long enough to have a conversation with me. When I’m free in the world, though, I would never do such a thing. I just want the same taste of freedom that you’ve been allowed for so long.” He reached up and lightly brushed his hand against my cheek, and I fought to keep myself from shying away from the touch.

  “So you’re saying that if you got free, you wouldn’t cause any problems for anyone?”

  “I wouldn’t,” he promised. “Ideally, if you can figure out how to help me into a physical body, I wouldn’t even have the option to. I’m not a god, after all.”

  I paused for a moment, digesting the information. “So you promise not to cause any issues.”

  “Obviously,” he said, the uncanny grin returning to his face. I felt the restraint against my wrist loosen and then break free as he extended his hand out to me. “It sounds like we have a deal, don’t we?” I nodded. “Shake on it?”

  I shook out my wrist for a moment, allowing the feeling to come back to my fingers. Then, quicker than I’d ever moved before, and quicker than I think would be possible in my human body, I grabbed the chair leg and, using all of the strength I had left, whacked it against the side of his head.

  I was expecting resistance. I was expecting him to see me moving and kill me, or for it to bounce off the side of his head with no damage whatsoever. But as I felt the impact of the wood on his head, heard the thunk, and smelled the coppery tinge of blood as he was shoved sideways, I realized that all of that preparation that Circe made me do had actually worked.

  Liam cursed, his hand springing to the side of his head. “You bitch!” he yelled, his other hand starting to reach out to me, but I reared back and hit his again, this time knocking him to the ground. “We had a deal!” he yelled his time, and I hit him again, this time feeling splatters of wetness hit my face.

  After the third time, he no longer responded to me, and I reared up to hit him again, but he blinked out of existence, only to reappear halfway across the room, as though his power were failing him. I didn’t stop to think as I sprinted across the room, hitting him again with all of my strength. I could tell that I was starting to lose momentum, as my hits kept getting weaker and weaker, but so did he. He blinked out of existence for another moment, but this time was only able to travel about a foot away. After a few more hits, he stopped moving altogether, but I didn’t stop hitting him until my arms physically gave out. But that time, he had stopped moving ages ago, and all that was left of what was Liam’s head was a pile of mush on the floor.

  I dropped the chair leg, my fingers no longer even having the strength to hold it up, and I walked backward until I hit a wall, never once taking my eyes off the body. I slowly slide down the wall, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs, feeling like it was made of pure flame. I wasn’t sure what to do now. I wasn’t sure I could even get back on my own. But it didn’t matter - all that mattered was that this demon that had been plaguing us for so long had been sent back to whatever hell it came from. Even if it damned me to be stuck here in my own type of hell forever, it was worth it.

  I stared at the corpse for what had to be a couple of hours, just waiting for it to spring back to life, but after enough time, I had to admit to myself that it seemed well and truly gone. My pulse and breathing had gone back to normal forever ago, and as I finally felt my exhaustion taking hold over me, all I could think was that I was so happy that it was finally over, and I could go back to my regular old life.