You had come to view human faces as truly odd works of art.

In many ways they were quite plain. A thing sculpted by bone and muscle and flesh and a hundred subtly adjusted genes, with eyes and ears and hair. They were barely different from other primates, and it was only when you squinted that you could tell apart the faces of humans from their closest relatives.

It was in the most academic of senses that you understood what humans found attractive about one another. Though specific ideals may change with the times and with the evolution of the dominant culture, to make a universally and sublimely heavenly face was child's play. This was, unfortunately, as far as your understanding of human faces truly went.

Take for example your current customer. She was an older woman, her whitened hair dyed a shade of blonde to give it the illusion of youth. Her teeth were yellowed and her gums another decade from rotting away entirely, their abysmal state visible through the smile she gave you as you handed her a box full of steaming goods.

"Oh, thank you Candace. Happy holidays, whatever it is you celebrate!" She cheerily paid. Her face bore the illusions of youth, where sags and wrinkles had not yet claimed it. She bore your newest name with a familiarity that suggested you should recognize her.

"You too, young miss." You smile through your mask. It should be visible at the edges of your cheeks. The woman staggers a little as she scoops up the box you'd handed her, swaying just a little as she finds her footing.

"You charmer!" She laughs. Where once her face might have crinkled and eyes sparkled you merely see the outline of her jaws. It is merely another senesced face. "Give Barry my best wishes, will you?" she winked.

You nod, waving and laughing as the woman makes her way out of the shop. She shoves the front door open with her elbows, turning around to face you once more as she makes her way to her car.

You understood her face. You would remember neither it or the woman's name. They were simply too ordinary.

"Was that Miss Henderson?!?" your summoner shouts from the kitchens. Metallic clanging rings through the shop as he likely takes something out of the ovens.

"Probably." You suggest. You hadn't remembered, merely asking for a reminder of what she'd ordered and hunting it down from among all the other things prepared already.

"Ah, damn. I forgot to put a Christmas card in her box. I wanted to give it to her myself." Your summoner wipes his brow as he pokes his head out of the kitchens. Hundreds of greeting cards were tucked into his apron. They remained there solely through the use of dark and demented magics.

Your summoner was another excellent example of how you understood but did not appreciate human faces. His was a well-built face, one not yet showing the stresses of senescence save for faint smile lines. A good deal of his facial features were hidden behind a small but scraggly beard, which muddled any attempt at guessing his age. It felt new every time you looked at it. It was as plain as the old woman's, but undeniably more attractive than a normal man's.

This is how it would remain until he proved he was worth remembering the name of.

"You're a Dark Mage yet you celebrate Christmas?" You idly wonder aloud. He had been closely guarded on the matter of his own religious beliefs. It would have been much easier to needle him if he wasn’t so guarded about that topic alone.

"Not like it isn't a rebranded Pagan holiday." Your summoner shrugs. His gaze is drawn to the clock hung on the wall across from the counter. It reads 4:07. "Huh. You're staying a bit later than normal." He blinks in surprise.

"The many holidays of winter approach, do they not? I see no reason not to help." You suggest. That you intended to work longer hours than him was information that merely gave your voice an amused lilt.

Greed was the first of the vices you were trying to test your summoner against. All just to get them to pay you less than they should that their soul might be forfeit.

"Well alright! I'm not going to protest if you want to work overtime. Just make sure you record when you leave so I pay you appropriately, okay?" he's not satisfied until you nod back at him. "If you're staying late, do you mind helping me put fresh buns out?" he suggests.

Of course you do. "Of course not." You tilt your head.

An additional two hours of menial labor and customer service ultimately does little to disrupt your daily schedule. After all, it was merely two hours more to wear away at your summoner. Whether that meant making a believable show of 'clumsily' dropping the baked goods he had just made on the floor in front of him, never quite 'remembering' they had to be thrown away, or frustrating his attempts at teaching you his craft via a lack of passion did not matter.

What did matter, however, was your summoner's strict adherence to your contract. At the end of that first day, as you were packing away the warm buns that your summoner had just taken out of the oven and had to know he couldn't sell, he had pulled out his checkbook and began scribbling in it right beside you.

Tearing the check out, he holds it out towards your hands."Here, Candace. Your overtime pay." He clarifies when you simply stare at the check. This was very fair, as otherwise you likely wouldn't have understood it to be yours. Cautiously taking the check, you begin to read over it in the vain hope he's attempted to pay you less than you owed.

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"I'm not meant to be paid for another three days." You frown. He hadn't just paid you thrice your normal wages in overtime, but added the day's wages to the check as well. He'd already begun paying you more than he’d paid his normal employees.

"So? It may not be in the contract, but that doesn't mean I'm in the habit of stiffing my employees when they work overtime. You work overtime, you get paid overtime. That's the deal." He shakes his head. It wasn't a gesture meant for you, but rather something larger.

"How quaint." you smile.

In the weeks that followed that your summoner had yet to break his word, and therefore, had yet to try to stiff you of what you were owed. Each day you worked overtime, and each day he wrote out a check for what you were owed. It was irksome. His pocket had to be feeling the loss, and yet he had even taken the time each Saturday to begin paying you a bonus.

'For your dedication and helpfulness. Thank you, Candace. :)' He wrote in the margins.

You nearly tore apart that check there and then.

It was perhaps at that point where you began to acknowledge that you would be spending longer with your summoner than you expected. Whether he was genuinely altruistic or merely held the proper self-preservation instincts to never let what he owed a Demon accumulate interest, your summoner was unintentionally placing you in his debt. You had no use for his unprompted bonus pay, and you couldn't merely let an extra kindness go unpaid.

Demons did not owe favors that they could not pay back. They especially did not let the favor they owed others accumulate like debt.

To that end you began to actually cash the checks you were written. Rather, you had always been checking them the same day they were written - you understood that a check you sat upon was merely the promise of money and not the taking of it. But you had simply been letting the bills pile up in your pockets until you had placed them all into a savings account you had made many decades ago.

For the ends of repaying what your Summoner was now owed, you began to look for small ways to repay him. The most cost effective method was sacrificing a tactic which seemed to have lacked any real punch - the coffee you bought each morning - by purchasing one for him as well.

"Hm? Thanks, but you don't have to get me coffee, you know?" your summoner tried to to wave away the offered cup of coffee. He still took it.

"It's fine. Don't pretend you don't eye mine every morning." You snort.

Your summoner hadn't managed a response to that, simply taking his coffee and quickly nursing it throughout the morning. This tactic even proved itself more effective than simply taunting him with coffee, since you nursed yours over multiple hours instead of a few minutes.

He'd spared many glances for your coffee after he finished his, the taste of caffeine no doubt still on his tongue. He also paid you back at the end of the week for every coffee you'd bought him, including taxes, by including it in your paycheck.

"Thanks for the coffee! Don't feel you owe me anything for paying you back, you hear?" he wrote.

Your summoner's constant thwarting of the many small ways you intend to trip them up and make them break their contract begin to grow less frustrating than they are amusing. It is, you think, a simple matter of challenge. Very rare is the summoner cannot be made to fall victim to their own vices, yet here is one who obliges your contract so closely that you were your own worst enemy.

When one becomes their own worst enemy, they need merely think outside the box, and become more observant than their foe.

It is for this reason that you decide that merely working overtime for a scant few weeks is not enough to test your Summoner's greed. You had thought it the easy route, when he was so desperate as to summon a Demon for him. So it is on one normal night, while you are cleaning the counter and your summoner is pulling the last of his goods out of the oven, that you truly take the appropriate steps to rid yourself of the debts of his kindness.

"I cannot help but notice, oh Summoner mine, that you have a habit of baking goods shortly before closing that you must know you cannot sell." You hold one of the steaming bread rolls that had just been removed from the oven up to the light, rolling it back and forth in your fingers.

"You can't help but notice, hm?" He pauses where he stands to look at you. "I don't know what to tell you. It sounds like you've figured it out." He chuckles. Plucking the bread roll out of your hand, he begins to hum a song to himself as he packs his perishables away.

"I see. Well, then. If you're going to make more than you can sell, then surely it's my duty as your employee to help you carry this wherever you do each night." You nod, reaching beneath the counter to pull out a tray full of tarts and other desserts.

"Hm? You're under no obligation to do that, you know." Your summoner blinks. You've already begun to neatly wrap up the desserts in wax paper and stack them in a separate box.

"It's fine. I'm still working, after all. If it makes you feel better just consider this more overtime on my part. You certainly pay me like I'm working an additional 12 hours a week." You shrug. So long as you help him while you're off the clock, then you will maintain a favor neutrality, while putting yourself in a position to better understand your summoner and tempt him into breaking your contract.

He doesn't offer another word to protest your help when you help him load the goods into the back of his car, merely offering you a seat. He simply flips through radio channels, quietly asking you about your taste in music while he drives to the small, local church whose pantry runs the program he donates his goods to.

You enter it without trouble as you help him move boxes. The small church is ordained, certainly, but no church can keep you from it's gates unless you bear intent to harm. The process is done in barely ten minutes.

"I can drive you to wherever you're staying, if you'd like." He offers. You turn him down with a wave and begin your walk to the local library in the dark, a smile on your face as you begin to write off Greed as a true method of tempting your summoner. You will keep working overtime, and keep trying to drain his wallet; yet it no longer seems like the vice which will tempt him until he begins to feel his pockets truly lighten.

The next morning, he passes you your paycheck for the hour of overtime you'd apparently worked helping him pack and move his donations. You have never been gladder that your face is hidden beneath a simple facemask.

It wouldn't do if somebody mistook your fuming rage for a blush, after all.