I watched as the demon's face tightened and twisted, fear and anger and irritation writing themselves in the fine lines creasing his skin, and I muttered, "What...what do you mean by complicated?"

"Those words. Repeat them again. Just once."

Brow furrowed, I did as asked—or, rather, as ordered. "Forsuile...val...val—as? F-farath, Balth—."

The final word hadn't entirely left my lips before the demon crossed the room and clapped a hand over my mouth. Startled by his speed, I could only stare up at him as he, in turn, stared at the window, dark eyes flicking ever so slightly as thoughts whirled through his head.

"And a man appeared, you said? Taller than me, brown hair, green-eyed?"

I nodded.

"It can't be," he whispered.

Pulling back from his hand, I asked, "It can't be what?"

The demon's arm recoiled, and he glared before turning, the motion whip-sharp, and he strode from the room. Though my body protested any extraneous movement, I levered myself out of the bed and followed him through the door, one hand braced on the wall for balance and the other held to my throbbing side. Blood stained the paint where I'd dragged my shoulder the last time I ventured from my sick bed.

"Wh-what do mean by complicated?" I demanded again. My voice cracked with pain, dry and brittle as old paper left too long in the sun, and yet I found a form of stubborn strength in my growing irritation when the demon paced my living room and refused to answer.

Bastard, I seethed in my thoughts before soldiering on. "Those words—do you know what they are? What language? And that man. Who...what was he?"

"I can't be sure, can I?" the demon retorted, the flat black of his gaze hard and hateful when it found my own. "What with your erudite observation skills."

"I was being murdered. Sorry for not paying more attention."

He scoffed and resumed pacing.

Something in that wretched chant had set the creature off. Individually, the words made no sense; they blurred together in my thoughts like running paint, and yet some ingrained intuition of mine could imagine how the syllables might form on a native tongue, sharp diphthongs and rolling phonemes, breaths stolen between words like a singer preparing for their next set.

One word, in particular stood out, both because the demon clearly wished for me not to say it, and because it sounded like a name: Balthier. If I wasn't mistaken, that was a diminutive for Balthazar, a biblical moniker. Catching my breath, I inquired, "Is that what he's called? That name? Balth—."

The demon shifted, moved like water had replaced his bones, and my back hit the wall a moment before the flat of his hand did, the resulting bang shaking the house to its foundation. "Don't say it, you stupid girl!"

"Don't presume to call me stupid in my own house," I retorted, pain and grief giving me energy I didn't otherwise feel. "I asked you what it meant, and you ignored me. What is it? What does it mean?"

"Stop asking questions."

"No." The creature loomed, and yet I held onto my indignation, let it sow steel in my spine and tamp down the agony pulsing through my ribs as I met his glower. Would he kill me if I pushed too far? I couldn't say—and I couldn't say I cared either, because continuing in ignorance chaffed worse than potential death. "Tell me."

He leaned nearer and showed his teeth, color again threading the blacks of his irises as a chill raced along my spine. I began to realize the cold came from him. Somehow, the demon seemed to suck the very warmth out of the air with his presence, and when his eyes flashed red as they did now, the cold only worsened.

I was more afraid than I'd admit, and yet, when I spoke, I put deliberate weight behind each word. "What does it mean?"

The demon didn't hesitate, but he did deliberate his response, cold gaze seeming to catalog my features anew, assessing what he knew. "It is a summons," he said in a low, apathetic drawl. The apathy contrasted sharply with the anxiety carving lines in his otherwise unyielding face. There was fear there, fine as a spider's thread, buried under callous regard and simmering contempt. "Spoken in the fin'thirn mir Vallan'a."

"What is that?"

He leaned back. "None of your concern." The demon straightened to his full height and his eyes, again, returned to their flat, nacreous black hue. Early afternoon light streamed between us, growing gravid at the front window, and he appeared less ghoulish with the soft, yellow glow ghosting over his cheekbones and long arms.

Then, I glanced at his bloodied chest and again remembered what I was dealing with.

"Ask the rest of your insipid questions," the demon said. "I may or may not answer."

"How does he—that man, how does he complicate things?" I swallowed, and my tongue flicked over my dry lips. "Is he...is he like you?"

A dark brow quirked. "You mean a demon? Then yes, he is like me."

"And they...summoned him? Who is he?"

"You said it yourself, even if you didn't understand the words; the Farirrath mir Ridmal." The demon's lip curled and, as I expected, the language slid like liquid from the tongue of a fluent speaker. "The Sin of Envy."

"What is a sin of envy?"

He said nothing.

"Is that what you are, too?"

"No," he spat, tone sharp.

"Why can't I say his name, then? That is his name, I'm guessing?" Balthier. I said it in my head and wondered if the demon knew telepathy, because his expression became thunderous as if he'd heard.

"If you've any sense of self-preservation, you won't say it. Humans never think before they speak; they never consider what or who might be listening, and what might...answer."

I swallowed again, my tongue heavy and awkward in my mouth as I shivered under the demon's scrutiny. "And he complicates things. How?"

The demon retreated a step and his attention swung away.

"How?" I snapped, louder still. "You said—you said you'd kill them all, and didn't care a wit! How does he change things?"

"He changes nothing. Mind your tone, insolent fool," the demon retorted with a cutting glance. "I said I would do it, and I will."

"Can you?"

I hadn't meant to question his ability in such a manner, and yet nevertheless the words slipped out, and I couldn't take them back. The demon's drawn breath rattled in his chest as he turned, slowly, to regard me again, and the cold crawled from my feet to my knees to my chest, body shaking with weakness and chill. Inside the walls, the wooden supports groaned in the abrupt temperature shift. The shadows themselves appeared to ooze from every crevice and rise like thick, murky water, smothering the daylight.

"Inquisitive, aren't you?" the demon whispered, and the softness of the words peculated dread in a way his snapping and snarling couldn't. "Be wary of what you ask, especially when you might not like my answers. Humans can be so...intolerable." He leaned nearer, hand touching the wall, fingers splayed close enough to my ear for me to hear the drywall protest his weight. "Am I capable of killing an entire cult? Yes. Easily."

He peered into my eyes, and though I still felt fear, I shoved the emotion down into the pit of my stomach, where it rested leaden and poisonous, my jaw set against its escape. Fear would be pointless; already I was so uncertain, so confused and rattled, giving in to fear would perfect the horrid trifecta, and I'd never be able to dig myself out from despair's plunging hole.

"Why did you come to me?" My voice was breathy despite my resolve. "I didn't—I don't know your name. I didn't summon you—couldn't have—not like they summoned him."

No answer came; at least, no answer I wished for. Instead, the creature cocked his head, a move reminiscent of a hawk sighting an exposed field mouse, and the chill receded when he opened his mouth. "The things I have been offered in return for my services would astound you. Women have prostrated themselves, have laid their first-born sons at my feet like blinded lambs waiting for the knife. Humans whisper in my ear and they ask for money, for love—for me to kill their neighbors, kill their sons and daughters, wives, husbands, lovers, parents, gods. They have asked me to deliver the world into their grasping hands.

"Your kind beg and scream and steal everything they can to seal a contract with a being like me, and in my ancient life, I have heard every tale of woe, every hardship, every sad, miserable story. There is no end to the bargains I have considered, the deals entreated, the wealth I have been anointed in from every coffer of this dying realm. One and all, I find it boring."

I flinched when he caught my hair between his thumb and forefinger, then glowered as the demon smiled. He looked human, and yet, when he smiled as he did, I recognized him as anything but. No person could mirror that naked, alien savagery.

"But not you. You've no wealth to offer, have lain no sacrifices before me. You give no white goats, and yet you demand I save your life, that I answer your stupid questions, tolerate your presence, and kill all in the name of your vengeance. You reached out to a demon in your darkest hour and demanded I hear your voice. That's quite revealing, you know; you sent out not prayers to God or cries for angels; you grabbed onto a demon and did not let go. I told you humans never consider what might be listening and are never prepared for what might answer."

He bumped his knuckles against the underside of my jaw, the force, slight as it was, driving my teeth into my tongue.

"And you offer me nothing aside from your soul and maybe, just maybe, a taste of your vindication. Such arrogance. You didn't need to know my name; I was—am—intrigued...at least for now."

I jerked from his hold, hair sliding against his fingertips.

"I am not arrogant."

"And I am not a dog to be called. The arrogant rarely understand that they are, in fact, arrogant. You and I have that in common, if you can believe we have any similarities at all. You have sin in your soul, girl."

He moved away at last, and only then did I take in a relieved breath as cold sweat sprung to my brow and my legs threatened to give out. The demon's proximity crowded the very molecules in the air and replaced sweet oxygen with his own sharp-edged element, and it bled into my lungs and veins like a perfidious mist. It drowned me.

Inhaling again, I blinked and watched the demon pace the living room once more in a tight, succinct circle, his face steel-like in its passivity, before he went to my sofa and snatched up a brown leather jacket tossed on the back. He shrugged it over his wiry arms and pulled the zipper up, hiding the gory mess smeared on his shirt and chest from sight. He headed toward the door.

"Where—where are you going?" Was he leaving? Was he going to abandon me to my vengeance alone?

"I've arrangements to see to, and soon enough, a cult to hunt."

"You never told me why it's become more complicated."

The sun flashed across his teeth and dark eyes when he opened the door and stepped past the threshold. The demon sucked air through his teeth in clear dismissal as the door came thundering closed once more. A picture on the mantel teetered, then fell.

Gathering myself, I stumbled to the window and let loose a cloud of dust when my trembling fingers pried open the metal blinds. The tired, drought-stricken yard stood empty of demons or any other passersby, and I couldn't see where the red-eyed devil had gone.

Only then did I realize my oversight; in all my inexorable questioning, I'd forgotten to ask his name.