Chapter 1

One

Beel watched the dark-haired, pale-skinned girl who twisted and contorted herself as she crawled out of the tv screen. Watching someone crawl out of a tv on a tv—Beel appreciated the irony of it. At least he thought it was irony. Despite spending about twenty years with Gabe, who had majored in English and now taught it in high school, he still wasn't quite certain about the whole irony thing.

A popcorn kernel appeared in front of his mouth, and he flicked his tongue out to catch it. Mmmmm, lots of butter and salt.

Gabe really did make the best popcorn.

He chose some pretty decent horror movies too. This one almost made Beel homesick. He had known plenty of demons who moved in just that jerky, awkward way because they thought it scared humans.

Obviously the director, or the writer, or someone on the developmental team of this movie had managed to see a demon in action at some point.

He finished crunching and gave a little croak, at which point another popcorn kernel appeared in front of his mouth. He gobbled it up and then settled in for a finger gently rubbing his back.

It wasn't that the underworld was all bad. He did often feel a little homesick. Beel did have friends down there, but he was very much a lesser demon. A verylesser demon. So sometimes the other demons ended up using him as an errand demon. That was fine, really, but running errands for higher-ups for a few centuries got old. He hardly ever got to do anything fun, like torture evil souls or go topside to cause mayhem.

Even when they played Hellfire and Humans, one of his favorite demonic pastimes, the other demons always ended up sacrificing his character during their quests. And he never got to be Hellfire Master. So even HH had lost some of its fun.

Then he'd been summoned. As a frog, of all things.

He'd been super grumpy about it at first, he could admit that.

When he'd realized that Grams was actually Lilith, he figured that would be quite the story to tell when he ended up back in the underworld. He'd get a few decades of notoriety out of being summoned by the legendary woman. If he left out that he had been summoned as a frog, well, who could blame him?

Then there was Gabe. Even as a little kid, he was just so damn sweet. Beel found himself getting attached. He'd gotten some good treats out of it, and they watched some pretty good shows and movies, and he got an awesome set-up to bask in warmth and heat. It was sort of nice after being an errand-demon for so long to just kick back and laze about.

The family was also not without some excitement, either.

He'd kind of enjoyed being a frog after the first few days of grumpiness, but when he felt the summoning spell snap a few months after he'd arrived, he'd figured that he had fulfilled his duties as a pet. He was set to head back to the underworld, leaving a frog corpse behind, when Gabe had stormed into his room crying about a fight he'd gotten into with his best friend. He poured his heart out to Beel, and Beel croaked and ribbitted in all the right places.

Gabe had then told him that he was the best pet a kid could ever ask for and that he loved him.

How was Beel supposed to leave after that? Gabe clearly needed him. Also, Beel had never been loved before. If he had to stay a frog to be loved by someone, well, life was pretty awesome as Gabe's pet. He figured he would wait until Gabe outgrew him and then head back to the underworld.

By the time Gabe was in college, Beel and his aquarium carted along to the dorm room, he realized he was probably never leaving Gabe. His human was never going to outgrow Mr. Frog, and Beel accepted that he would be Gabe's pet for the duration of the man's life.

He tried really hard not to think about Gabe dying, either. He couldn't imagine not having his human around confessing all his secrets, using him as a sounding board for ideas, and enjoying horror nights together.

So here he was, 7,536 days later, watching a pretty decent horror movie, getting buttery, salty popcorn, and getting back rubs.

Life was pretty good.