"C-Come Frimost!" I cried, my grip tightening around the elderwood wand in my hand.

There was a stillness and all I could hear was my heavy breathing. I stood holding the wand, my vision trained on the skrying mirror.

I waited for Lord Frimost to appear, looking around my reflection for a figure to arrive in the candlelight behind or before me. I listened to the room, but there was only an oppressive silence that hung over the night. I had heard that the demons could be sluggish or unpleasantly dramatic in their debut, so I continued to remain stoically fixed on the mirror.

I waited. And I waited. And I waited.

I decided to call upon Frimost again, though I took care that my calling should strike the balance between respectful and authoritative.

I tapped the hazel staff on the ground and called again: "Lord Frimost, I beseech you to appear now, before me!"

I waited expectantly for a few moments... and continued to wait. My legs were tired and the Verum had stressed that Frimost must be called upon while standing, but now shaking in exhaustion, I finally sat down in lotus pose in the center of the circle and continued to wait. I looked upon the burning candle, but only saw it waiver softly.

My eyes became tired, and I knew if Lord Frimost were to appear he would do something to arrest my attention. I decided to sit there and meditate, and perhaps as I lay in deep concentration he would come to my awareness.

Well, at least I tried to meditate, but too much doubt and exhaustion swirled in my mind and I became wrapped up in worry and disappointment.

This was so stupid. I dress up my fantasies in academic erudition and historicism, but this whole project was as desperate and naive as a tween waiting on their acceptance letter from Hogwarts, only worse. I was too old not to know better. I'd seen too much. There is no enchantment to the world, only constant excuses for 'might makes right' and all the mechanisms to glibly obscure it.

I opened my eyes and looked around the room. The candle had melted out onto the altar cloth, and the light was beginning to fade out. I looked again over the bookshelves of my father's collection. All the literature, psychology, biology, physics, history that he'd been able to get his hands on as a professor, all printed in glorious sixties and seventies paperbacks. My dad had spent his life striving towards rationality and understanding, and here was his daughter, spurning those gifts for superstition and irrationality.

But it didn't matter at this point. The bank would foreclose on the house. I'd have to quit my job and move in with my mom in the deep suburbs. Eventually I'd just fade away under the weight of my student loans and perpetual loserdom. I wondered when exactly I'd get around to finally killing myself. How much longer would the skipping record of my life repeat?

I got up and left the circle and opened the door to the guest bedroom down the hall. Artie emerged from the darkness to pur and rub against my feet. I went to join her in bed and fell asleep crying in self pity with the one creature that I knew loved me unconditionally snuggled in my arms.