1. Gabriel

Grams was brewing something in the kitchen again.

Gabe had stopped by after he finished teaching his last class; he'd needed a little dose of Grams to get him through the rest of the week. School politics and troubled students weighed on his mind, and the woman who raised him was always good for cheering him up.

When he'd walked into the kitchen, however, he'd seen the farmhouse table strewn with herbs and plants and random things he didn't want to look too closely at (he thought there might have been a small bowl of dead flies, and possibly a bag of toenail clippings), and he'd looked toward the stove to see the giant stock pot on it.

Gabe thought he might have PTSD from that stock pot.

So he'd given Grams a kiss on the cheek and hightailed it out the back door to the garden, where he was currently kneeling on a pink flowered cushion and pulling weeds (he hoped they were weeds, anyway—he was kind of hopeless at gardening).

He was not going to ask what she was doing. Nothing good ever came of Grams working in the kitchen.

"Gabey, honey, can you come help me in the kitchen?" her voice called out. Grams had a lovely voice, sweet and melodic and cheery. Gabe shuddered nonetheless. He dragged himself to his feet, turning toward the kitchen like a man about to walk to the gallows.

Those words never ended well for the person ‘helping.' By eight years old he had already known that the stock pot was trouble—they'd already had the thing living in the basement for almost a year at that point—but he'd also enjoyed some of the babysitters Grams had cooked up into watching them.

But when he was in third grade, he had come home from school dejected and sullen, claiming that he didn't have any friends. He was being melodramatic after being left out of a playground game, whining about how he wasn't popular and his life was miserable. So Grams had started cooking, asking him to help as she did. Nothing much seemed to happen, and he was a bit disappointed in the lack of fire (they had three extinguishers), smoke, or crazy, horrible smells (they'd once had to stay in a hotel for three days).

Then he'd gone to school the next day. Everyone had been super nice to him all morning. It had been great. Until the playground. Jack B and Marty had literally gotten into a fist fight over who was his best friend, Carly and Jessica had both been sobbing because he wasn't playing with them, and Donny had held onto his clothes and refused to let go, eventually tearing his shirt and scratching him up.

Grams had picked him up early, tsked at the wreck he was, and they'd cooked again when they'd gotten home (he definitely had to be persuaded).

All she'd said after was, "Sometimes a wish is a curse."

He wasn't sure if teaching him a lesson was her goal all along or if she was actually trying to make him popular. Either way, he was cautious after that.

Then there was the frog. That was fourth grade, he thought? Everyone got to take home the class pet, and he'd been thrilled. But he had bemoaned the frog's plain, boring features, and Grams had worked in the kitchen, and he had a bright orange and blue frog (which he had thought was totally cool). But his teacher of course refused to take it back, claiming it was NOT the original frog, and he would not send some "poisonous prank" to the next person watching the pet. So they'd gone to the pet store and bought a replacement for class, and he'd kept the colorful version.

Mr. Frog (he had been nine—originality was not his forte) was still alive. Twenty years later and he figured it probably shouldn't be, but he just kept feeding it, and maybe they had the occasional movie night together (Mr. Frog loved horror movies). If it ever did die (which Gabe kinda doubted would happen at this point), he'd be pretty devastated.

But the thing living in the basement aside, and the really bad babysitter that had hosted the house party aside (RIP to all their pet fish), he still hadn't been totally ruined by Grams in the kitchen.

It was the chicken that did that.

Try having a headless chicken running around your backyard for three days.

THREE DAYS.

He still couldn't eat chicken if he thought about it too much. He'd gone vegetarian for a year after that, as had his brother and sister. His sister, Seraphina, had stuck with it, but he and Michael eventually ate meat again. Sometimes, though, he'd think about that chicken… and yeah, he had some definite food issues.

The list went on from there, but he and his siblings had all been more than a little traumatized after that.

But asking Grams not to brew something up was like asking the rain not to fall. It was going to happen eventually no matter what you did, so you might as well just try and plan for it and hope you didn't get stuck in the downpour.

"Gabey? Honey?" she called out the kitchen window. He was woolgathering, and he reluctantly dragged his feet the rest of the way into the house, stepping just inside the back door and no further. He was staying far away from the stove and the stock pot if he could help it.

She turned toward him. She looked like she belonged on a baking show. A short (at least to him), slightly plump (in that perfect grandma kinda way), white-haired woman with laugh lines and a face full of sunshine. She even had an apron on that said, "Many Have Eaten Here, Few Have Died." He kind of snorted when he saw it, because Grams did like to be witty.

He pointed to the apron. "I think the thing that was in the basement might disagree."

She tsked him. "It didn't die, honey. Honestly, no matter how many times I tell you kids, you insist on thinking the worst. When it tried to eat Seraphina's friend, I realized it may not have been the best pet to keep, but it's not like I sent it to the shelter to be euthanized. Of course I found it a good home."

Gabe merely nodded. It was like she was talking about a dog who had accidentally bit a guest in the house.

"Anyway," she added darkly, "that Chloe was a bad apple. I think it might have been on to something trying to bite her. Did you see she was just arrested again for selling crystal meth? A bad apple, that one." She tsked again before really looking at Gabe. He felt like she could see the day's stress on him.

She frowned a little, walked over, and gave him a pat on the arm. "Oh honey, you look tired. Those kids of yours giving you a hard time? You know I keep telling you that you need to get out more. Relieve some stress. You can't make your job your whole life. You need to find some nice young woman—or man—to get your mind off things."

She winked at him lasciviously, which was more than a little creepy. "You know I heard there's a sex club that opened up in the city. A nice little orgy might be just what you need."

"Grams," he groaned out.

"I'm just saying. Sex is healthy. Just make sure you use protection." She paused, thinking a moment. "And you kids might want to clear my browser history without looking at it when I'm gone. Just a heads up."

"You're never dying," he scoffed. "You're like a virus. You'll live forever, infecting people with your cheer and insane ideas."

"Oh, honey," she beamed, "you say the sweetest things. But," she continued, all business now, "I do need some help. This stock pot is simply too heavy, and it's a dud, so I need the contents disposed of, and I just can't lift it." And then she smiled at him.

Gabe did not trust that smile. Not even a little bit.

"I just need you to go pour it out in the backyard. Go out past the vegetables and away from the trees please. And make sure you pour it in a good circle to deactivate it. You remember what happened the last time it was poured out in a line."

Gabe shuddered. He had blocked out the locust incident until she brought it up. That had been Serphina's fault, because she'd been in her teenage phase of doing a half-assed job at everything, and they'd found the bugs all over for days. He squirmed a little thinking of them crawling into his clothes.

"A closed circle, Grams. I got it," he sighed out.

He went to grab the stock pot, but she put a hand up. "One more thing," she said, walking over to the table, writing something on a piece of parchment, and then walking over to drop it into the pot. She brushed her hands together. "All set!" she smiled.

He still didn't trust that smile.

She frowned at him. "I just had to deactivate it. Now go on. Don't keep it waiting. Never know what will happen if you do," she scolded.

So he grabbed the pot by the handles, which mysteriously always stayed cool to the touch. He studiously avoided looking at the contents. He did not want to know. It was heavy, but he kept in decent shape, and he managed to lug it out to the yard without spilling a drop. By the time he got to the back of the property, he was puffing a bit, but he stopped, rested the pot on the ground, and caught his breath.

Best not to rush these things.

He planned out the circle, picked up the pot, and started walking and pouring over the slight lip on the side of the pot, being careful not to splash it up onto himself. It was hard work with a full pot, but by halfway around the circle it was lighter and easier. He kept the same pace anyway, being sure not to say anything or even think too hard about anything other than forming a circle. The liquid was a red color, but he tried not to notice too much. Although it did smell really good. He couldn't figure out exactly like what, either. Sometimes it was like fresh baked cookies, sometimes he got a whiff of cinnamon, or vanilla, and even fresh rain and the smell of an autumn morning was in there.

He timed it perfectly to finish the circle with the last bit of liquid. He stepped back, put the pot on the ground, and admired the rather perfect circle he had poured out.

The rather perfect circle that was still clearly visible since the liquid was not seeping into the ground.

The rather perfect circle that was now shimmering slightly inside, and where there was no longer any grass, just dirt.

The rather perfect circle that quite suddenly had a man standing inside of it. He was tall, probably over six feet, with black hair, a sculpted, somewhat androgynous face that was all sharp angles, and a lean body. He appeared to be wearing leather pants, but he was barefoot with no shirt. Gabe could appreciate that the guy was aesthetically pleasing and beautiful, like a work of art.

The guy cocked his hip a little and was lazily smirking at Gabe. It was the sinful smirk that gave him away, because there were certainly no horns, or a tail, or the odd skin color.

"Grams," he yelled, "you've summoned a demon again."