“Okay, let me get this straight. The demon spirits who are going to inhabit the skeleton have resumes?” Jacob asked incredulously as Tom flipped through a sheaf of aged papyrus with the demon’s vital statistics, cost in soul-pulses, and work history.

“Apparently,” Tom said, flipping to the next one.

Eighteen hundred years of work experience, faithfully guarded a hallway for thirty years, successfully defended the tower of Miandri from invaders, heroically saved the princess of…

Tom quickly compared this Outsider’s length of work experience to others and realized this particular one must either suck at their job or be terrible with cash to have worked that long and still lack a corporeal form.

“Why are they in English?” Jacob asked over his shoulder. “And not Latin or something?”

“They’re not,” Tom said, snapping a quick picture with his phone and showing Jacob the meaningless scribbles.

“That makes my brain hurt,” Jacob said, scratching his head.

“It’s these symbols on either side of the words,” Tom said, pointing. “They’re some kind of universal translator.”

Tom ran his thumb through the hundreds of resumes he had remaining, and glanced up at Jacob. “You wanna take half?”

Jacob shrugged and took half, sitting across from him.

In a matter of minutes, they’d narrowed their choices down to one. The tipping factor was that this particular spirit seemed to perform extra well in animal skeletons, and since Tom didn’t see himself getting a human skeleton any time soon, that put it right on top.

Now they just needed an animal skeleton.

It only took a couple minutes to find out that yes, there were at least four official taxidermists in Chicago.

“Alright, let’s go see what this guy has on tap,” Tom said, picking up his coat before glancing up at the locked and barred basement door. The safe was pressed up against the basement window so nobody could shoot into the underground section of the house with impunity, but Tom couldn’t see through the thing, either.

If someone was waiting outside to pop whoever walked through the door first, Tom would have no idea.

“Hey Jacob,” Tom said, limbering up the thirty-eight.

“Yeah?”

“You go first.”

Jacob snorted and shook his head in amusement before heading up the stairs, popping his head out the door before walking into the living room, seemingly without a care in the world.

Tom knew he wasn’t supposed to admire cokeheads, but goddamn, Jacob was stupid brave.

They climbed in Jacob’s truck and headed for the closest taxidermist. They didn’t have what Tom was looking for, but they referred him to someone who might.

At the next shop, it was just a matter of paying another five hundred dollars from Tom’s dwindling college education, and he walked away the proud owner of a complete mountain lion skeleton.

Some rich dude paid the taxidermist five grand to stuff a large male, but the bones themselves were just kind of in the way after the skin was removed. The taxidermist admitted that there was always a way to make a couple extra bucks off the stuffing byproduct, whether that be fertilizer or people who wanted to buy skeletons, like Tom.

“Is that common?” Tom asked, frowning.

“Eh, usually it’s a goth girl who wants a big skeleton cat in their living room, or for Halloween,” the slightly overweight taxidermist said, scratching his chin and shrugging.

Huh, learn something new every day.

“I can pose it for you, if you want.”

“Thanks, but I wanna do this myself.”

“Understood. You need any supplies? Wire? Bone screws, preservative?”

Tom opened his mouth and considered lying about it and trying to carry on a conversation about preserving dead animals, but he found that he didn’t care enough to make the effort.

“No.”

“Alright, good luck kid.” The owner tipped his hat and Tom was out the door with a cardboard box filled with bones.

“Well, that was easy,” Jacob said as he climbed back into the cab.

******

“Okay…” Tom said, double-checking Eighty-nine’s hand-written note on the familiar summoning scroll.

In order to summon the familiar, write your name in blood at the bottom of the scroll. The repayment schedule is sixty soul pulses a month for five years. If you forfeit on your payment, the Familiar will immediately be repossessed, its contract terminated. Should the familiar no longer exist, such as being erased by divine magic, you will still be required to repay the loan. Should you fail, your soul will be claimed as payment and fed through the Infinite Spectrum to recoup the loss.

Controlling a familiar and linking them to your soul engine is entirely intuitive, so don’t worry. Although, since your soul is completely virgin ground, you may feel a slight…tearing sensation.

Ah, and make sure to give her a good name. Some people might not like being named their species, followed by a number for the rest of their lives.

Good luck! —Ilspeth 89 -Kiss Emoji-

Tom sucked in a breath when he realized the loan repayment was triple the previous one.

That’s like two dead people per day, at minimum! Jesus! For five years!

Although, if I got a better engine, the profit margin would start to work in my favor… Which requires more debt to purchase. Let’s just work with what we have, right now.

Thankfully, Tom had been thinking in advance, and he had saved some of his blood in a bottle for this exact moment. Using a quill, Tom scratched his name onto the contract in his own blood. It was misshapen, splotchy and weird, because Tom had virtually no experience writing with a quill pen, but it was legible, and that was what counted.

The runes stamped across the paper then began marching down to fuse with Tom’s signature, disappearing one by one with an inaudible popping sensation. Gradually, Tom’s signature exploded outward as he began to feel heat rise in his chest.

It was the same pain he’d felt when he’d tried to put on Carol’s control ring, only much, much weaker. It felt more like he’d just taken a shot of whisky than anything. Gradually, his signature formed a circle, the interior of which leaked a greenish light.

From the widening hole, Tom could smell water and growing things. It smelled like the time he’d gone camping with Grampa and they’d gotten lost near a lake. He could faintly hear the chirping sounds of insects, too.

A moment later, something blocked the light from the portal as a green webbed foot emerged, grasping the edge of the scroll for purchase.

Crack!

There was a sound, and the green foot was wrenched out of the circle, followed by a short scuffle and a hissing sound.

“Is this normal?” Jacob asked, glancing at Tom.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Tom shrugged.

“Because! I’m in your house summoning demons; I thought you had some experience with this.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Tom lied.

Just then, a slightly bigger purple webbed foot grabbed the edge of the circle, then a froggy-face poked through, squeezing desperately to fit its horns through the small circle.

It was almost comical, the way it thrashed, tugged and wriggled, desperately trying to make it through a hole that was a couple sizes too small for it.

It would be comical if it weren’t magic and capable of stealing souls. God, I hope this thing is the intended target and we’re not about to get eaten by some kind of infinitely growing demon-frog.

Eventually, the creature made it all the way out of the hole and collapsed onto the floor, panting with exertion. It was about the size of a dog, purple-skinned, with eyes like a goat, irises bright green.

As a matter of fact, Tom had a hard time looking away from the creature’s eyes. They dominated his attention, seeming to draw him in. Tom’s jaw was beginning to turn slack when the burning sensation ruffled inside, like a bird adjusting its feathers.

Suddenly he was struck by a thought, not his own.

Name.

Is that the familiar? Are you talking to me?

Name.

“You want a name?”

NAME, the thought repeated emphatically.

Okay, that’s a yes. She said it’s a girl, right? So, umm…

Names with biblical and demonic significance flickered into his mind and were dismissed just as quickly. Lillith? No, that’s too close for comfort to Lily. Tom did not want to start calling his demon familiar by the same name as his dead girlfriend. That was just crazy-town.

Something suitably demonic? Gomorrah? Can’t do Sodom, it’s a little too butt-sex-y. You know what, forget the biblical names. It’s not like these Outsiders have any relation to Christian demons.

Mary? No, not only is that boring, it’s still a biblical name!

Tom blinked as the perfect name settled on him. A girl he’d had a crush on years ago.

“Suzie!”

Oh fuck, I ruined Suzie’s life! I take it back! Tom didn’t wanna be constantly haunted by his guilty conscience for—

Am Suzie. The thought rolled over him, as the toad the size of a pit bull wiggled from side to side in apparent happiness.

Tom let out a long, slow breath, chalking up another offense against Suzie Collins. Giving her name to a demon-frog was really just icing on the cake, at this point.

Whatever. Let’s not overthink it.

“Alright, Suzie, I’m going to take you to the University of Chicago Medical Center once the sun goes down, but for now, just stand by the wall. I’m going to animate a skeleton.

Suzie stared at him.

He stared at Suzie.

“Please?”

Suzie made a few short hops off to the side and settled onto her haunches, ignoring Jacob’s stares.

“Dude, you just fucking summoned a demon,” Jacob said.

“Yeah?”

“That is so unbelievably tight. Can I have one?” Jacob asked. “Like a flaming tiger, or a living motorcycle, or…” His eyes slid off to the side. “Or maybe hot demon chicks that like human men. Short, skinny human men.”

“Oh, they have those,” Tom said, thinking back to a specific dog-eared page of The Unified Theory of Soul Magic.

“Seriously?”

Tom felt like teasing Jacob a little bit.

“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s multiple entire universes, and they’re not exactly prudes. With the sheer infinite quantity of species available, there exist Outsiders who want nothing more than to please men and make them a sandwich afterwards.”

Jacob grabbed him by the shoulders, the cokehead staring straight into his eyes. Tom resisted the urge to bust out laughing.

“Dial one up. Dial one up right now.”

“If I default on the loan, they repossess my soul. So no, I’m not summoning a succubus analogue for you.”

“Fine.” Jacob let go of him. “For the sake of your soul, I will put a pin in this, but this conversation isn’t over.”

“Summon your own pleasure demon,” Tom muttered, kneeling to use the string with the caulk gun, drawing a perfect circle on the concrete floor.

To animate a skeleton, perform these steps:

1: Draw a circle in ash/fat ink. Caulk guns work wonders.

2: Draw a larger circle around that one.

3: Write the spirit’s IP address between the two circles. Use the fine tip.

4: Dump the bones in the circle.

5: Juice the circle with thirty-five soul pulses, plus the spirit’s fee. In this case, another twelve.

REMEMBER: Bring the soul pulses into your body first, or the skeleton will be uncontrolled and simply attack everything that it sees.

Tom double- and triple-checked his work, then sat down with the engine in his hands.

He’d thought it felt like a live wire before, but he had no idea how wrong he’d been. Just touching the thing made Tom’s guts feel violently effervescent. Tom tapped the tip of the gauge to the engine, and watched the needle climb halfway up the little meter.

200.2

Okay, I just need to drain a quarter of this thing and dump it into the circle…. How do I do that? The book was somewhat vague on the subject, seeming to imply it would work if you just willed it to be so.

Well, I’ll give it a shot. Tom closed his eyes and visualized the soul pulses moving from the engine into his body. There was something there, in the dark recesses of Tom’s mind. It felt like something was supposed to flow, but it was plugged up and stiff, barely budging when he poked at it.

But it did budge.

Tom poked at it harder.

“Are you alright? You look…constipated.”

Tom opened his eyes and glanced up at Jacob’s concerned face.

“I’m fine. I think I’m making progress. This could take a while, though.”

“The day’s wages, milord?” Jacob asked, bowing with an impish flourish.

“Here.” Tom counted out a grand and passed it to his accomplice.

“Sweet.” Jacob pocketed the cash and sat down in front of the TV they’d pulled down into the basement, turning on the local news.

Alright, you sonofabitch, Tom thought, reorienting on the sensation inside him, picking at it like a scab, pushing at it like a clogged drain.

Half an hour later, the floodgates dropped with the distinctive tearing sensation that Tom had come to associate with choosing his own direction during a dream.

A moment later, he didn’t have the attention to examine it, as the bubbling sensation magnified tenfold and was accompanied by a burning—a burning, fizzing sensation that seemed to be trying to scour away his insides.

He felt like a grape filled with carbonated acid, his skin one fraction of a second away from bursting from the inside.

Fuck that!

Tom hastily shoved the sensation back out his other hand, lightly touching the circle. It snapped on, blindingly bright against the concrete floor as a plume of smoke emerged from the floor.

“Whoa, cool!” Jacob said, his attention drawn away from sports.

The black smoke swirled around the cleaned animal bones, reassembling the skeleton in front of them as each bone found its neighbors, coming together from their memory of life. Soul pulses were a form of life energy, and shoving them into a corpse allowed it to remember what it was like to be alive.

A moment later, there was a skeletal cougar standing in the center of the circle, held together by bands of invisible muscle. A moment later, the black smoke condensed, swirling into the skull until it vanished entirely. A flickering blue light emerged from the empty eye sockets, and the skeleton turned its head, looking at him.

It was aware.

“Whooooa.” Jacob’s jaw dropped, expressing exactly how Tom felt.

Muscle and skin erupted from the joints, covering the bones in squirming flesh in the blink of an eye. Last, a coating of fuzz emerged from the skin, coating the cougar in fur.

“Ummm, what?” Tom said, frowning, matching the creature’s gaze. Its eyes looked like a normal mountain lion’s save for a blue inner flicker. “That…wasn’t supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be a skeleton.”

In the meantime, the big cat had been inspecting its front paws, unsheathing and sheathing its claws. Seemingly satisfied with its body, it walked out of the circle and began sniffing around curiously.

“You may have thought this cougar was alive,” Jacob said with a chuckle. “Nope. Chuck Testa.”

Frowning, Tom glanced down at the gauge pressed against the engine in his hand.

“Oh, crap.”

0.0

“This is so fucking cool!” Jacob said, petting the otherworldly demon inhabiting a lethal predator’s body with zero regard for the safety of his limbs.

“My soul’s gonna get repossessed!” Tom shouted, scrambling to his feet. “Get off your ass, we’re going to the hospital to monetize some dead people.”

“But—”

“Right now!”

Jacob cocked his head. “You smell smoke?”