‘Shall I go on?’

His whisper cut through the night, made it scream, growing faint from pain. Victoria opened her eyes.

‘No. I gotta go…’

The girl grasped her head and with horror she remembered her doing. Kharon didn’t control her. He was silent, folded his arms and watched the girl. He didn’t understand her. But what? If there was a great desire, then why didn’t she want to satisfy it? Why didn’t she want to pay and then to get what had been driving her crazy every night?

‘Where’s my shoe?’ the girl asked in a big hallway.

Kharon appeared in the doorway and smiled, languidly gazing at Vic.

‘Shoe?’

‘Yes!’

‘The one that you’ve lost in the bushes?’

‘In the bushes?’ Vic looked in the demon’s eyes in surprise. ‘You couldn’t have taken it with you, could you? How am I supposed to go now?’

An unexpected complaint struck down Kharon. He gave the slightest twitch of one eyebrow, astonishingly looked at her olive coloured eyes.

‘What am I supposed to do, Kharon?’

The empathic voice cut into the head. The demon was silent, with no stopping burning the girl with his amber eyes.

‘You aren’t supposed to leave today…’ he said finally.

‘It’s perfect and wonderful but you didn’t answer my question. How am I supposed to go in on shoe? How couldn’t you have guessed that I’d need both of them? People usually use both. Simultaneously! On both feet! Moreover, you saw it in the bushes! I don’t understand was it really so hard to take it with you?’

Kharon was black as sin and there was a reason for. Women had never ever talked to him in such a way. Dream always obfuscated the reality that all of them were ready and said the only word “yes”. That’s all. They didn’t need to talk further. Then the body language and mind-blowing games came into reality at the forefront of catharsis. But to blow up Kharon for the lost shoe…It was a nonsense!

‘Fine.’ Vic took a sigh, being in a shoe. ‘You have to bring me home. I don’t know how you do this, but I have to be at home.’

‘Are you sure about “I have”?’ the demon boiled over when his mind was slowly coming back.

‘Absolutely. I can’t go barefooted. And I’m barefooted by the merit of you.’

‘Okay!’ the demon snapped his fingers before the girl’s nose and between one breath and another they both turned to be at Vic’s small room. ‘You’re at home.’ Kharon confirmed the obvious fact.

Vic looked round, trying to get all that surrounded her was real or it was a made-up world where the demon put her into.

Evert thing was in its place. It was all still there. There were piles of pencils and paints, album pages and map papers. Her mother was coughing in the bed behind the wall. Not a hint that the reality was made-up.

‘Is these all real?’ Vic asked in a whisper.

‘The price is the same. When you calm down your passion collywobbles and it stops irritating beneath your stomach, call me and I shall remember you how it could have been, if you had paid.’

Kharon disappeared and Victoria, failed to manage her feelings, burst into crying.

What was she supposed to do? She fell in love with a monster, completely forgotten that it didn’t have any definitions of a human life. The creature, in love to whom the girl was bogged down in, suggested to have a deal and to all horror Victoria got that if she saw him once again, if he touched her once again, and if his velvet voice sounded in her ears again, she wouldn’t be able to say that impossibly sick word “no”. Damn it for a night Kharon would belong to her and only to her. The girl was almost ready to cry “yes”, when an idea came across his mind.

‘I’ve come, mum’ Vic said quietly looking into her mum’s room.

‘Vic? Is that you?’ half-awake Olga Vladimirovna didn’t understand what was going on. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s early. Sleep. I’m going to bed.’

When Victoria opened her eyes, the day was running under the pressure of the evening. The girl jumped from the bed and went to freshen up, have breakfast and tell her mum what was at the exam and what happened after.

‘What’s your next exam?’

‘That’s all. It was the last one. Then I’ll have a critical design review and voila I am a licentiate and you’ll be happy for me.’

‘When’s the review?’ her mum was drinking coffee.

‘In two weeks and a half. I’m ready for it. That’s not a philosophy.’

‘Fine, then I gotta go to work.’

‘Now?’

‘Sveta’s ill, I’m covering her. And our chief of department is leaving, and his position will be opened. I want to try.’

‘Sure, mum, you’ll get there. Look how many different rewards and recognitions you have. I think you the best resuscitationist!’

‘It’s very cool when you’re supported!’ Olga Vladimirovna kissed her daughter on cheek and went to gather.

Victoria went to her room under colour of preparation to the project review. As soon as the door was closed and her mum left for work, the girl started to make ritual.

She was going to call for Lucifer and went balls to the wall. If Kharon refused then Lucifer would help.

Everything was ready except an agreement and time. The hands of the clock have to point to three am. It was an important condition described in the book. If there was no problem with time, all she needed just to wait, but agreement problems were indeed.

Firstly, Victoria thought of the agreement content. Could it be any legal one? Maybe just a text? Table format? How should it look like?

Secondly, the price. What could she suggest to Lucifer in charge for his services? Victoria couldn’t give her soul. If she gave him her soul it meant she would die and wouldn’t be able to be with Kharon. Then what?

Two questions which the girl was thinking over the whole evening and a half of the night. Finally, she decided to prepare a formless agreement. She just took two pieces of paper and wrote that she would give her voice for Lucifer’s services.

Victoria decided to give her voice to The Lord of Hell. She couldn’t give her ear because she wanted to listen to tender words which Kharon would be whispering to her. To give her eyes was out of the question. Victoria was going crazy just because of looking at the man. She had nothing else of value.

The girl knocked out a simple agreement, pricked her finger and sealed her fingerprint with her blood. She read the text several times, calculated appropriate time to read the spell and three minutes to three am she switched off the light.

There was a burning candle in the middle of the room. There was a pentacle, symbolizing Lucifer and the agreement, enveloped in a thick cloth in the centre of a drawn equilateral cross.

Vic was very nervous, her body became clenched like the universe before big bang, looking forward to meeting the great person. Fear wasn’t far also. To call Lucifer to home and stay calm with no fear would be an impudent lie. If Vic could pretend that Morningstar were her childhood friend, then she couldn’t hide inner panic.

The girl finished reading the spell at three am sharp. She turned around. There was nobody at home. The last candle died out in a second and the room immersed into impenetrable darkness, lightened with barely visible night light from the window.

It was silence.

Vic seemed that an unfeeling wind and some shadows crawled across her room. Steps, a sigh… The girl was turning like a humming top seeking for the invited Lord…

Nobody appeared in ten minutes, in fifteen minutes and even in a half of an hour. Vitoria was alone in her room.

Within three hours, she tried to make the ritual, read the spells with different times and stresses, lighted and extinguished the candles. But nothing happened, nobody appeared. It was about 6 am. Vic was sitting on the floor and looking nowhere. She couldn’t no longer conceal that she was too upset and couldn’t hold back her tears. There was only one question: why didn’t he come? Then another one: what should she do to make him come?