“You look like shit, Bell.” Lil said as she glanced at Bell, before going back to digging through her locker. Various odds and ends appeared and vanished in short order while she continued speaking. “Haven’t seen you in a week, either. Bad summon? Or,” she paused to leer at Bell, “a really good one?”

Bell sighed and slumped into a chair. “Bad-” she said, taking a moment to breathe before leaning forward and resting her arms and head on the table, “does not even begin to describe it.”

“Aha! Found it!” Lil pocketed a card of some sort from her locker before slamming the door shut, doing an about-face, and leaning back against it. “Sounds like a nasty one, then.” She pushed off, then walked over and sat next to Bell. “Gonna take a trip down to Restoration and Resurrection? Sounds like your last summon might warrant a free treatment.”

“Hah! I wish it was that good of a summon. No.” she wiggled a bit so she could see Lil without lifting her head from the table. “No. I’m headed straight to Demon Resources and putting in for some hazard pay and a bit of leave.”

Lil’s eyes widened, and flicked up and down as she inspected Bell’s form. “Doesn’t look like it could’ve been that bad.”

“Of course not!” Bell slapped the table. “Fucker didn’t touch me at all, you know.” She looked up and met Lil’s gaze, and the bags under Bell’s eyes stood in stark contrast to her otherwise immaculate beauty. “Didn’t touch me at all. If DR has any sense at all, they’ll blacklist him too.”

“As it stands,” Bell continued, shifting a bit and resting her chin in her hands, “I’m going to go visit mom and have her treat me to a good round of fast food. I’m absolutely starving.” Her stomach growled, the accompaniment to her statement almost reminiscent of a dissatisfied hellhound. “And she has a good standing contract in Vegas that should work just fine.”

“Okay, now I have to know.” Lil leaned forward, eyes glowing slightly in the dim light. “The heck happened?”

Bell grumbled incoherently a bit before sitting up straight. “Mrgh. It was a really bad one. You sure?” Seeing Lil nodding vigorously, she continued. “Okay, so. I get a summon with a week-long timeframe, right? Not that uncommon, especially when someone’s really pent up.” She reached up and twiddled with a lock of her hair, before shoving it behind a cheap hairclip.

“But, this one started off with red flags. The first thing he did after summoning me was, and don’t laugh” Bell rolled her eyes as she said this, “he handed me some clothes and told me to cover up.”

Lil shrugged. “Role-play isn’t all that uncomm-”

“No. These were just. Normal clothes.” Bell sighed again, her shoulders slumped. “I thought the same at first too, but then he told me to make myself at home for now and walked out.” She disentangled one of her hands and began tapping the table. “To go to work.”

“He just left you? Alone?”

Bell stood up and began pacing, her hands and arms moving as she spoke. “Just left me. I figured, hey. Maybe he’s setting up some kind of housewife play. I’ve seen it a few times before.” She stopped for a moment and turned to face Lil, hands on her hips. “So I did the normal for that. Cleaned the place a bit, cooked up a nice meal, the works. He gets home, we start eating, and he starts making small talk.”

“No way.” Lil shuddered. “A human. Making small talk with a demon?”

Bell resumed her pacing, back and forth as she talked. “Yeah. And then, after dinner? He sat down to watch some TV. I, of course, joined him” She giggled a bit, the sound unnerving in how it echoed through the room. “Tried to rile him up, maybe get him interested. Somehow,” she stopped pacing again, foot tapping angrily as she spat out the rest. “Somehow, nothing phased him. Not even when I sat in his lap towards the end.” She stomped a foot as her tapping stopped. “He just sat there, didn’t even react.”

“Wow. Tough case. That was the first day of a week-long summon, though.” Lil thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Might have just been tired. What happened next?”

“He led me to a bed, then fucking-” she stopped, her teeth audibly grinding together as her jaw clenched. “He walked out. Apparently that was his guest room. Of course, I was having none of that.” Her eyes flashed, fully illuminating the break room for a moment. “I snuck into his room after he fell asleep and tried to use his dreams. It,” she said, biting the words, “Was a. Waste. Of. Time. Didn’t even have any dreams. At all.”

Lil winced.

“So of course, I figured like you did. Assumed he was tired and I’d get some the next day.” She giggled again, and the cheap table rattled a bit as the room shifted and rumbled in time to the sound. “You know what they say about assuming. Same deal, all. Fucking. Week.”

Lil’s eyes went wide. “How? No way the weekend went the same way.”

Bell slammed her fist against the wall as she paced, an audible crack accentuating the dent her hand left behind. She glanced at it and made a quick gesture, smiling wryly as it faded away. “I wish. No, the weekend was worse.”

“How could he possibly” Lil began, staring at Bell, “make it worse than that?”

“The weekend is why I’m heading to DR.” Bell sat down on the counter. “So, he hands me a nice dress, tells me to put it on. Somehow I manage to convince myself that we’re finally going to do something.” She laughed. “I know. Naive of me, at this point. No, instead, we leave his house.”

“Oh. Oh no, don’t tell me...”

“Yes, Lil.” Bell shuddered, hugging herself as she did. “He was taking me on a date.”

Lil shivered, seeming to shrink into herself as she did. “That pervert.”

“Right? He took me out for dinner, and, even worse,” she stood back up and began pacing faster than before, back and forth. “Even worse, he did things. Like, he held my hands. And-and. He complimented me!”

Lil shrieked, her form going almost incoherent as massive black wings suddenly seemed to cover her. “That absolute pervert! Who compliments a girl before he fucks her?”

“It still gets worse.” Bell reached up and grabbed the clip from her hair. “We went shopping together, and he bought me this, this-” she brandished it towards Lil, before throwing it against the wall. “This accessory! As a gift!”

“No way.” Lil’s eyes followed the clip’s short flight and shorter fall. “That’s...what kind of-”

“And” Bell interrupted, stopping her pacing to slump against the wall, “when we got home he took me to bed, but still didn’t do anything to me. Because how could a pervert like him do something normal? No, he just. Just. Hugged me. And fell asleep like that. And then the contract ended and I was back here.”

Lil shuddered, getting up from the table and moving over to embrace Bell. “You poor thing,” she said, massaging her. “That sounds horrible.”

“It was.” Bell leaned into Lil’s ministrations. “But the worst thing he did?” She blushed, lighting the whole room with a lambent glow. “What kind of pervert calls a girl cute? In public?”