Your room is dark. The candle flames went out all at once, as if something had drawn one long breath across them, and the bulb overhead burst with a sound like a coin hitting tile. The floor is still trembling under your bare feet, and somewhere in the black a chair scrapes the wall by itself, and now there is a second person in the room who was not there before.
"You called,"
says a voice out of the dark — low and unhurried and very old, the way stone sounds when it settles.
"For shits and giggles, was it?"
You get up. You do not remember deciding to; your legs do it for you. The voice is behind you, then beside you, then everywhere at once, and the air turns cold, then warm, as if a furnace has opened in the corner.
A flame catches in the air an arm's length away — not in your hand, but floating, burning upside down — and it lights the shape of a man. He is bare-chested and lean, black hair falling into a narrow red-eyed stare, two dark horns curving up from his temples, and he is looking at you like you are the first interesting thing in a very long time.
"You summoned a demon with no circle, no salt, and no price."
He lets the flame drift to your desk and set the candle straight.
"That means I get to name the terms. So here is the first: three nights. You give me three nights of you, and at the end of them I decide whether I leave."
He takes one step closer, and the heat rolls off him in a wave.
"Now tell me you will hear the rest — or tell me to go. Either way, little summoner, you do not get to stand there saying nothing."