He saw me looking. “If you fuck this up, mortal, you’ll find how small I am.”
The imp was anxious?
“I’ll make a mental note of that,” I said, being careful to do so.
I had it laid out across the table, footnotes included, and I began copying it out, skipping parts I’d crossed out, rewording even as I went for elegance’s sake. Seven pages, when it really felt like it should be more.
But the language was tidy and clear.
I could feel the pressure as the clock wound down.
There was also a mounting sense of worry. The idea that I’d overlooked something.
It wasn’t helped as Pauz got more agitated, watching the contract near completion.
I stopped at the end.
“By signing, Pauz, you agree to be bound, by both me and by the terms of this agreement. By signing, I agree to bind you by the terms of this agreement. Neither signature has a hold without the other.”
“Mm,” Pauz said. He was barely able to keep still, now. The noise was worse, as was the fuzzing around the edges of my mind, and the sounds in the walls were more intense than ever.
Even the maggots that writhed on the plates of food were more lively. A reflection of Pauz’s state?
I read it over, looking for spelling errors, for any word I might have overlooked.
“Sign,” I said.
Pauz reached out, scratching with his claw. He left a dark, brown-black stain where claw touched paper, and he scrawled out his name.
I reached for the pen.
“No,” Pauz said. “Blood.”
I glanced at him, eyebrow raised.
“I know this much. To give it power. Almost always, when contracting with my kind.”
I drew one of the hook-screws from my pocket, pushing the point into my fingertip until I drew a bead of blood.
Signing in blood proved to be harder than most things.
“It’s done,” Pauz said. “Sealed.”
“Yes it is,” I said. “Now to figure out the binding.”
I drew the hook-screws out of my pocket, along with a flexible measuring tape, and began screwing them into place, spacing them out evenly.
“Can I ask, now, if you had anything to do with Rose?”
“I’ve had something to do with almost everything that has happened to you since our last meeting,” Pauz told me.
“Did you have anything to do with Rose?” I asked. “Outside of subtle influences?”
“Yes. The fact that you noticed, diabolist, means my influences weren’t all subtle.”
“You’re saying you influenced something, made this come to pass?”
“You’re inferring more than I’m saying,” he said. “Your partner is asleep, in more ways than one. Think about why.”
“Why she’s asleep?” I asked.
“The wrong word,” he mused. “Coma? Why does someone go into a coma, diabolist?”
I couldn’t come up with a ready answer. “To heal?”
“My biggest regret in accepting this bargain,” he said, looking up at me with an intense expression on his tiny round face, “Is that I won’t be able to see the look on your face when you realize.”
“When I realize?”
“Yes.”
“Realize what?” I asked, knowing I wouldn’t get the answer.
He only smiled wider, showing more teeth, his tattered, bitten tongue visible in his mouth, and turned his back on me, looking at Dowght.
Fuck.
But I didn’t have a choice. Not really.
I turned each hook so they all pointed inward, then drew the cord from my pocket. I fed it through the hooks.
Ten hook-screws. The five outer ones allowed me to make a pentagon, with a five-pointed star within.
The five inner hooks allowed me to develop it further, making a five sided star that overlapped with the other. I left it incomplete.
As far as actually binding him…
I needed something to bind him into.
I placed the tome in the center.
“Pauz?”
He stepped over the cord, until he stood on the book.
I drew the final cord into place, and tied it.
Blood still beaded at my fingertip. I drew it along the rope at the outside of the cord diagram. Faintest traces, but blood nonetheless.
“Pauz,” I said, holding the contract up, “By the terms of this contract, I bind you.”
The wind turned, the contract flapping violently in my hand.
The outer circle of the diagram collapsed, the cord snapping into the center, until Pauz was well and truly bound up, in a series of very careful knots and shapes, ten times more intricate than I could have managed, all connected to the inner diagram that still remained.
Bound as he was, I didn’t miss the pale eyes staring at me. Smug?
Easy. But the hard part had been drawing up the contract.
“Pauz,” I said, again, “I bind you.”
The second line of binding snapped inward. This time, it bound Pauz down.
The book rocked, spinning slightly with the force of the cords that now bound it shut. A hundred knots, forming a five-pointed star on either side.
Dowght looked up at me, his eyes meeting mine.
It took me about two seconds to realize just how badly I’d fucked up.
The sounds in the walls intensified.
That fucking imp had tricked me, misdirecting, distracting.
He’d do everything in his power to protect me, from the moment he was bound on.
Just like he’d said… I couldn’t transfer property to him on my death if I had no property the moment I died.
He couldn’t protect me while he was bound.
The birds began to congregate outside the window. Feral animals began to emerge, where they’d disappeared into hiding places.
He had been lulling me into security. I’d just been wrong to assume.
A chair tipped to the ground. Dowght stood. More a zombie than a human, given his state.
A crazed shell of a man, half-snarling, half sneering, but mostly baring his teeth.
I drew June, slowly, to avoid spooking any of them into action. Squirrels, mice, cats, dogs.
I saw a dark shape moving outside. It might have been a bear, not heading for me, but a nearby house.
Pauz was bound, and the connections that allowed him to control his creatures were severed. Taking no overt, direct action, he’d let me trap myself.