I forgot Evan. I forgot to protect Evan. Or, more precisely, I thought he would be protected by campus wards, Bluestar cops, Newbury Tower regents, and a hundred other things I didn’t even understand yet.

And if he had been on campus the night Baalphezar made his move, I would have been right. But Evan wasn’t on campus. Evan was all the way down in Longwood, south of the Zone, fetching personal items for one of his graduate students who had to leave school abruptly and go back home.

Evan was packing clothes in a plastic bin when Evelyn’s voice popped into his head. Evelyn just shouted, “Jump!” and Evan immediately jumped out the fourth-floor window of the dorm, seconds ahead of a literal fireball that exploded in the dead center of the room he’d just left.

Having a companion who got precognitive flashes was usually just a pain in the ass. Nobody could see the absolute future, but certain witches could see into alternate dimensions that were running a few minutes, or a few hours ahead of the one they were standing in. No one could guarantee that events would unfold in this universe the way they had unfolded in any particular alternate, but big events tended to happen the same way across multiple dimensions, creating a stronger “signal” an oracle could latch on to.

Eve was scrupulous about using her power, and Evan had learned from long experience which warnings to heed and which ones he could ignore. So, if Evelyn was seeing an event strong enough and close enough that she was willing to give a command like that, she had probably just seen his death.

So, thanks to her warning, instead of dying in a room-sized fireball, Evan drifted down to the street and found himself face to face with a seven-foot-tall plume of living flame, sporting a parody of arms and a demon face.

Evan barely got a protection spell up as he countered the next blast, instinctively running away from the dorm, away from people, trying to make it to a small clump of trees nearby.

The demon got two more fireballs off before Evan made it to the tree line. He extended his protective spell to include the foliage and ran for the first tree. Evan had been packing and labeling boxes when he jumped, so he still had a black marker in his front pocket.

Evan whipped out the marker and drew a quick rune of magic on the tree, before running, awkwardly to the next one, deploying a quick counterspell to intercept the next fireball.

Azael was inordinately impressed with this as I watched the attack in his mirror, explaining that it would take an extraordinary level of mastery to cast a counter like that with one hand while running for your life.

The pattern continued. Fireball. Counter. Fireball. Counter, as Evan ran from tree to tree. He finished drawing a rune on the fifth one and positioned himself in the center of the marked trees. One more counter, then Evan Coleridge made it rain. A huge rain cloud appeared above the demon’s head and started flooding the area. Not enough to extinguish it, just enough to shut down its ranged attacks and piss it off.

The demon roared and charged Evan, and as soon as it crossed into the tiny grove of trees, Evan stepped back, leaving it isolated in the middle of the five symbols he just drew. Bright golden lines formed a lopsided pentagram between the trees.

Evan took the lid off his marker and started to chant.

Destroying its physical form was not the quickest way to “kill” a demon. The most reliable way to dispatch one was to imprison it in something, catch it in a circle and suck its soul out. The demon soul had to be stored in a container, but just about any kind of container would do.

The flaming demon thrashed and roared and bashed itself against the golden lines. Not completely mindless, just smart enough to follow simple instructions like, “Kill this guy and burn everything in this area until something stops you.”

Sirens were blaring from the dorm as a pair of campus cops landed on their little scooters and pulled out their useless guns. Evan yelled, “Don’t shoot, I’ve got it!” before the cops could break containment with a stream of bullets.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The demon got smaller and smaller as Evan chanted. It was considered vulgar for a mage of Evan’s caliber to show his aura in the visible spectrum, but he was glowing a rich, churning burgundy by the time he finished his spell, and sucked the demon into the marker. He popped the lid on and returned the Sharpie to his pocket as the cops walked up.

Evan apparently knew their names, because he said, “Rodney, I would appreciate it if you kept this part out of your report. Please don’t tell anyone I can do that. My ancestors burned for it.”

* * *

Thank god nobody died. The blast was contained to the room Evan was in, and Evan himself assisted with putting the fire out, as soon as the demon was contained. A lot of students had to move away from the smoke damage, but at least my negligence didn’t kill anybody that time.

Evan stayed on scene to coordinate search and rescue, and to make damn sure that police report said exactly what he wanted it to say. He told the Newbury regents it was a prank gone wrong, probably a group of young wizards who summoned the demon by accident and could only hold it in our dimension for a few minutes before it disappeared.

Evan promised a full investigation, knowing full well that the incident would be forgotten in a few months, after he was mysteriously unable to find the perpetrators. Evan spent the night helping with cleanup and relocation, then called me in the morning.

* * *

“Mister Kovak,” Evan said, after his third call woke me up. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

Uh oh.

“An incendiary demon tried to kill me last night, and ended up causing quite a bit of property damage before I got him contained. I can think of a few reasons why a demon would want to kill me, and yet, somehow, I am inclined to think this one was you.”

I had Jeeves secure the line and made sure Evan was alone in his office. Then I told him everything. Maybe not everything. I didn’t tell him about Taltorak, or the fact that I was the first mage in history to digitize a spellbook. I tried to keep it simple, in terms he would understand.

It was a rite of passage for young male wizards above a certain power level to have a succubus encounter when they were young. So, Evan was not particularly surprised when I told him I had one, and that I had pissed off her Master bad enough to have a serious, serious problem.

I told him my plan to confront Baalphezar and begged him not to call the police. I thought the whole plan might be ruined now that I’d told an authority figure, but Evan just said, “Meet me in my office. I need to see your containment spell. Bring your vessel.”

* * *

Of all the things Evan did for me, the most surprising, and the thing I’m most grateful for, is how he reacted when I told him my plan to fight a demon prince in the Zone. First, he never told me not to do it. He didn’t call me crazy. He didn’t call me stupid. He didn’t say one word about portals or angels or police. He was obviously smarter than me, but he didn’t try to change my plan, and he didn’t try to replace it with his own. He just… helped me. Just immediately jumped in and started checking my work.

I didn’t want to reveal Taltorak, so I told him this succubus had given me some scrolls with spells on them, trying to recruit me to fight some rival demons for her Master. Then I pretended I had them all memorized, as I carefully copied Jacob’s containment spell and protective circle onto big sheets of fireproof paper.

Evan gaped at them. “A random succubus gave you these?”

“Well, I don’t think she was random,” I squirmed. “Her horns were almost black, so I think she was pretty high rank, specifically chosen to seduce guys like me.” Another not quite lie that could quickly lead to me telling him too much.

“This circle is a masterpiece,” Evan said. “It’s even… what’s the word computer-people use? It’s fault tolerant. You can put these symbols in any order, and as long as they’re all there, it’s still valid. Some of these runes… I haven’t seen some of these runes since…”

Evan stopped himself abruptly, indicating that I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets tonight.

“And you have the vessel?” Evan asked. “Preferably something with emotional resonance, intimately connected to you.”

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a small black box; the box my mother’s engagement ring came in. The ring she never got to wear, since dad sold it for money while she was in the hospital. He promised to buy her another one when she got out, but she never got out. There was no reason for him to keep the box. There was no reason for me to keep the box. But here it was.

Evan approved. “Your magic is based on emotion, so your connection to this object should make the containment more powerful, once you get him in there.”

I nodded again.

“I won’t add to your troubles, Mister Kovak, and it’s not my place to discourage you. You already know the odds are against you here. But I have learned firsthand that a smart man can beat the odds with determination, perseverance, and attention to detail. It doesn’t matter if the odds against you are a thousand to one, if you are brave enough to be that one.”

Evan gave me his personal number and encouraged me to call if I needed help.