"Eek! Spider!!!"

"KILL IT!!! GODS, JAKE, KILL IT!!!"

"What the hell?! Gah, why do I have to?!"

"KIIIILLLLL ITTTT!!!"

SPLAT!!

This was me, one week ago. I was sitting beside my friend worrying about a huge, now dead, spider that we'd forced my adorable older brother to smash underneath his slipper. I know they always say how it's amazing what can change in the span of a week, and it probably sounds over-used, but... It's pretty true. This would be the point where I go and explain what happened after the huge arachnid episode. Which I will do. But first... I have to tell you about something.

Demons. They're real. And most of them are pretty fucking sexy, but that's not really the point. Demons aren't actually hell-spawn-ish creatures that fell with Lucifer. Actually, they're a race of humanoid creatures with abilities and powers that far surpass our own. And they're not really called 'demons'; though, we've dubbed them so. Demons are actually called Sanctusahria Diablosorros. A mouthful, I know. Trust me.

There are also loads of other creatures that exist, but I guess that's a story for another time. For now, I will start explaining the things that happened in the week since the Arachnid Episode. I hate spiders.

"There," Jake, my adorable - adopted - older brother muttered, frowning faintly at me. "Mir, you're such a pain in the ass, you know that?" He made a face at me, reaching forward to flick a clump of my dark-chocolate brown hair over my eyes.

I sputtered indignantly and swiped the hair out of my face, glaring at the raven-haired boy. He only smirked, but my attention was already being dragged away as Clarissa gagged over the disgusting stain on her new blouse from the French Fry fight we'd had previous to the spider incident. "I think it might be a mutant," my little brother Alex commented, poking at the dead spider with a cue-tip.

"Don't touch it!" Clare and I shrieked, which brought my mother up the stairs to throw out Jake's slippers and kick both boys out of my room. She shook her head and told us to go to bed, visibly amused. As soon as she was gone, we closed and locked the door, and I climbed onto my bed and leaned out the window after opening it. I snickered at David's pathetic state, clinging to the shingles of the roof sloping down outside of the window with snow clinging to his half-frozen body.

The poor boy looked about to cry.

"Is he okay?" Clare stage-whispered from the middle of the room.

"I think we've got ourselves a frozen David," I replied with a little giggle, reaching out to grab his hand and help him back inside.

He sighed. "Does your brother have bad timing or what?" he asked, letting Clare wrap a thick quilt around his shoulders as he shivered. Baby blue eyes glanced at Clare and he offered her a small smile, apparently forgetting that I was there. I didn't mind, though. These two were totally cute together.

"Terrible timing," Clare agreed, words little more than a breath as she leaned forward.

Shaking my head, I slipped out of the room to leave them alone and grinned sheepishly at my mother, who stood out in the hall with a questioning brow raised. "Hi," I whispered, grabbing her elbow and tugging her down the hall before I talked normally. "Leave 'em be. They're really uber cute, you know."

Mom sighed and patted my shoulder, smiling vaguely. "Alright. Would you like to help me make cookies?"

"Would I!" I exclaimed happily, grinning.

The next twenty minutes were spent making the dough for a monstrous amount of chocolate chip cookies, putting them out on cookie sheets and sticking those in the oven, and occasionally throwing globs of dough at each other in our never-ending quest to catch it in our mouths.

Needless to say, Mom and I both had notoriously bad aim. Seriously, I'm not kidding. This was the stuff you could make an Olympic sport out of, we were that bad.

"Mir! Think fast!" my mom said suddenly from behind me. I whipped around, arm instinctively reaching up and snatching a glob of said dough from the air. My mother quirked an eye-brow, and we both burst into laughter. "Lucky catch," Mom jibed, grinning.

I was sort of inclined to agree. But still, I argued for the sake of it.

"Bah, you're just jealous of my greatness," I retorted, sticking my nose up into the air.

"Right," my mother said dryly, rolling some of the dough into a ball before pressing it into place on the cookie sheet before her. "Your greatness shines like chrome," she added with a small laugh.

Puzzled, I climbed off my high horse long enough to ask her, "Chrome?" with a bemused smile.

"JAKE!!! I SMELL COOKIES!!!"

The two of us laughed at the shout from upstairs, in Alex's voice. This proclamation was followed by a heard of elephants as four excited people (Clare had apparently figured out that Mom knew David was here, as she was dragging her boyfriend along with her) raced to the kitchen. I watched in amusement as the kitchen door burst open, Clare and Jake racing for first place. Even though she was bogged down by David's weight as she pulled him behind her, Clare emerged victorious by tripping Jake. He scowled and Alex walked over him.

"Good God," Mom said, laughing. "A group of hooligans have taken over the house. Since when were cookies this big a deal?" A dark brown brow quirked, looking first at Clare, then Alex and finally Jake.

Clare rolled her eyes and replied, "Well, you guys hardly ever cook together, so it's gotta be good," in a voice that clearly stated 'duh, you should know this'.

"Yeah," Alex added, giving his little ten-year old head a firm, knowledgeable nod. "She's really right."

xXx

I listened to the soft, barely audible scuffle of my tennis shoes on the asphalt beneath me, holding my new library book to my chest and wondering when I'd get up off my ass and accept someone's offer to a date anytime soon. It was hard to, though. None of the boys I ever talked to seemed to actually look at me. I was just the popular girl in school; the one with money, looks and just about anything material I wanted. And every single one of them wanted a piece of my paradise.

I wasn't very inclined to give it to them. Whenever a boy told me he was in love with me, all I could think of was the time when I sputtered out a confession to some guy I barely knew in Jr. High and he told me to get lost. It was like the roles had reversed, and I now knew why the guy had told me to leave. I hadn't really loved him; just his image. Nothing else. I hadn't known a thing about him, and they didn't know me. They just wanted my paradise...

Sighing, I paused when it got darker than the full-moon night shoulder be. "Huh?" Looking up, I realized I'd stepped under the roof of the pedestrian's bridge over the river that separated the 'good part of town' from the 'bad part of town'. Smiling slightly, I went to the four-foot high railing and peered over it to the fast-running water far below. I gulped and peered upward. Was that the Little Dipper? Curiously, I leaned out further, and in irritation - I still couldn't see it! - I ducked underneath the top bar, holding tightly to the bar about a foot beneath it as I stared up at the dipper.

But instead of the Little Dipper, I saw something I so didn't ever expect to see. Or want to, for that matter. I saw Jake, laying sprawled on a cement floor - the basement - his face too-pale and a pool of blood surrounding him. It was spreading outward, devouring the surface of the floor. He wasn't breathing, and I was falling. Screaming.

Actually, I slipped. On a patch of ice, dropping my book instinctively as I latched fearfully onto the bar I'd been holding before. Here I was, dangling about five hundred feet over dark, scary waters, staring at the opened book resting innocently a few feet from my face. It had opened to a random page, and I cringed at the ironic wording at the bottom of the page; '...said I was doomed. Who was he kidding? I wasn't at all going to take that, so with determination...'

"Well, fuck a goddamn duck," I groused, trying to pull myself up to no avail. The pack hanging by two thick straps on my back was weighing me down. To make matters worse, there was no one around this late at night. Go figure the one day I accept a group invitation to go out for dinner and a movie - with like six other people - I decide that I'm close enough to home to walk there safely.

"Why am I so stupid?" I whined to no one in particular, feeling tears prick my eyes.

Of course, it totally escaped me at the time that I was also probably going insane. Seriously, who has a vision and then falls off a bridge? At least, I was pretty sure it was a vision anyway. Not that I was thinking about it.

I blinked rapidly to push the tears back and sniffled. My body was starting to hurt, and my hands were slipping, inch by inch. They were also numb from holding onto a cold bar. Oh, God, why me? Entirely without my consent, I started crying. Loud, desperate sobs that would probably annoy as many people as it would make them rush to see what was wrong. Too bad no one was around to hear me. I tried pulling myself up again, but one hand slipped and my heart leaped into my throat as I scrambled to hold on. I was successful. Barely.

Miranda, do you want to live?

Oh, wow. I was pretty sure I was going crazy now. Laughing loudly through my tears, I looked around just to make sure I wasn't imagining the voice in my head. No one was near, so it was definitely in my head. "Sure, why not?" I replied sarcastically. "I mean, I could probably just... I dunno, hang around a little longer. What's a few more minutes?"

There was no answer. Had I imagined it? For some reason, I was sort of hoping I hadn't. "Hello? I... I'm sorry. Please. Don't go."

I haven't gone anywhere, Miranda. There was a pause then, as if he - okay, so the 'voice' in my head didn't actually sound like a he, but as I'm trying not to believe I'm completely insane at this point, I dubbed it a he - were hesitating. You have to Summon me.

"Okay... Are you a demon?" I don't know why I asked it. I had a bizarre mental flash of hearing about people summoning demons to exact revenge or save themselves or something like that. I didn't know if this was the case, but as I was hanging from a bridge over painful-looking waters and talking to a voice in my head, I decided it wasn't an unreasonable question to ask.

Did he just sigh at me? I'm pretty sure he just sighed, though it was only a feeling, as he was, I feel the need to point out for the fifth time, just a voice in my head. And I still wasn't sure he was male. Perhaps we could discuss this when your life isn't in danger, hm?

Oh. That was a really good idea, I thought distractedly. The cold must have been getting to me. But wait... "'Cause if you are, I don't want something weird to happen, like you claiming my soul or something. Yanno. 'Cause I like my soul. It's very comfortable right where it is. As mine."
He definitely sighed that time. At least, I think he did. Okay, so I wasn't sure but- you know what? Screw it. "How do I Summon you?"

You have to say the words. You know them, Miranda. They're instinctive.

Sighing, I resignedly wracked my brain (still a little nervous about losing my soul) and just said the first thing that sounded entirely right. "My life is in your hands, Yoru-Ssori." Um... Okay. Where'd the name come from? To keep myself from feeling incredibly corny, I added a sheepish, "So, please save me... Yeah. I'm totally stupid."

I didn't have time to ponder the strange appearance of his name, or the fact that I was officially (to me) a moron. In the next moment, a man seemingly materialized on top of the bridge and reached out, grabbing my arm and dragging me over. I fell to my knees and stared wide-eyed at the book. The top line was taunting me. 'He scoffed and grabbed my arm. "You think it matters, girl? The king will kill you! He'll cut off your head!" he proclaimed, gnarled fingers squeezing my arm...' I decided right then that I was exchanging this book for a new one.

"Miranda?" The man that had saved me knelt beside me and touched my arm gently, face expressionless as he stared down into my now upturned face. Oh... my... God. Surely I've died. The voice in my head was an uber-cute Asian guy! Stunning!

I mean, seriously though, who has blue hair? It was like someone had missed a memo somewhere and decided that his hair should be the shade of the night sky. And of course, the eerily glowing melted-gold eyes staring down at me were just as unnatural, framed both by a pale, very youthful face and a fringe of bangs that barely stopped above his eyebrows. Which were also sapphire-blue, just so you know.

Somehow, though, it all fit. In some disconnected, I'm-not-really-sure-what-the-hell-I'm-talking-about way, I couldn't imagine his hair actually being any other color. Like when you see some old family member that you don't really remember and haven't seen since you were five, but you just got the feeling that they looked exactly the way they did then. This, oddly, was comforting.

However, my earlier worry surfaced and I grimaced, mentally pushing away any other thoughts on his appearance. "Are you going to take my soul now?"

He smacked his forehead with the base of a palm, surprising me with the motion that I couldn't exactly imagine as something he'd do - not that I was expert on the things that he did, but still - and shook his head. "Miranda..." But he trailed off and stood, reaching out with yet another sigh. "Perhaps we should get you home, hm?"

Wow, he was just full of ideas tonight, huh? And all good ones! But... "That means my soul is safe, right?" I persisted as he scooped up my book before nudging me forward, in the direction of my house. He didn't answer. "Right?" Silence. "Dammit, answer me!"

He rolled his eyes and nodded, quirking a brow at me. "Yes, Miranda. Your soul is quite safe. Rest assured."

And, silly me, I did. For some reason, I just knew that he was telling the truth. It was this little feeling deep in my heart that told me I was safer with him than with anyone I knew. In that moment, I felt it very necessary to tell him this. To let him know. I didn't know why, but I think he needed to hear it. Probably a pretty stupid notion, but... He looked... sad. Desolate, even. Like his mother had died or something.

Of course, how I picked this up is beyond me, since he didn't show any outward sign of depression and I was pretty sure he was built with the slender muscles of an Olympic swimmer. But still. Reaching out, I grabbed my book, opening my mouth to say something - God, I can't even remember what it was now - but froze as my fingers briefly brushed his and I was overcome by a cacophony of images and sensations so powerful and going by so fast that I barely had time to register one before it was moving on to the next.

Gods, this is ridiculous... "I challenge you, dear cousin!" "Fucking DIE, bastard!!!" Crying. No, no... Aoh... No. He's coming at me. Dodge. Strike. Bastard. "You can ask me directly, Accersoro," I murmured idly. A lily. It's for you, Aoh. No. Hand through my chest, blood coming out. "Who the fuck?" No, don't let him die. Not for me. "Aoh-Hari!! No!!" BASTARD!! It fucking HURTS! That damn Rah-Veen. I'll kill him. "My Lord? He's waiting..." Maybe just this once. Maybe once. Amazing. I can feel... My Summoner.

Suddenly, I found myself shoved down onto my butt, Yoru-Ssori a few feet away, gasping as if out of breath and holding either side of his head. Feeling tears welling up at the lingering sense of remorse that was now fading, I crawled over to where he crouched and paused. Genlty, I touched his bowed head. He flinched and glanced up, eyes wild and pained for a moment. But then the emotion in his eyes was gone, shuttered, and he was reaching forward. He snagged my wrist, jerking me to him to hug me tightly as if I would suddenly disappear should he not.

"Forgive me, Miranda," he whispered, squeezing me tightly enough to chase my breath away. Not that I was complaining. "I... I am so sorry. I did not mean to-"

"It's... um... okay," I reassured him, a little confused. "What... What was that, anyway?"

He mumbled something in a language I was pretty sure wasn't my own, but shifted his weight so that he was able to lower himself to a seated position, pulling me into his lap. Woah. "I don't... I don't quite know. You touched me and my memories... They..." He trailed off, swallowing hard and obviously shaken. "It's like you pulled them to the surface. I don't know. I'll... I'll have to see. Perhaps Ahm-Aya knows."

I contemplated asking who Ahm-Aya was, but decided that they weren't important at the moment. Yoru-Ssori was. "Are you okay? I'm really sorry. I didn't know I would do that..."

He gave me a strange look, but shook his head. "I'm fine. Just... Startled, is all." He grimaced, and I got the feeling he didn't like admitting to any sort of weakness, even something like that. I could sympathize.

"Okay. So... Home? Are you..." Oh, I hadn't even thought of this. What would my mother say to my bringing home tall, demonic and gorgeous? Or at least, I was sure he was demonic. Good thing my soul was intact. "Are you staying... with... um... me?" And no, you're hearing things. My voice was not that squeaky. Not in any way was my voice that squeaky.

Yoru-Ssori's eyelids lowered, his body tensing slightly as if setting himself up for a disappointment. "Unless you wish otherwise, of course," he responded dully, voice casual and uncaring, even as he stared at me as if waiting for me to drop the bomb.

Ouch. Poor 'Ssori thought I'd tell someone as beautiful as him 'no, you can't live at my house'. "Oh... Okay, well um... Let's get going?" I asked, standing up and dusting myself off. I shifted uncomfortably as he stared up at me, realizing after a moment that I probably wasn't very clear on things. "Oh... Just... don't let my mom see you. As long as she doesn't see you, then it's, um, okay if you stay. With me, 'cause.... Er... Yeah. Let's go." I turned around, very aware of the blush on my cheeks, and couldn't help but think that I was taking things rather well. Especially considering I was being followed by an uber-gorgeous Asian guy.

That I was still convinced had to be a demon.