I had no idea where to look. I wanted answers, but I couldn’t tell whether I should seek them from the book in my lap or the fretting man fidgeting in front of me.

“Demons?” I echoed, deciding the peculiar ink drawing of Marquis Faenyx was much simpler company right now and turning my attention back to the book. “I…can’t say I do, no.”

Angels, demons, ghosts, dragons…all of them had interested me on an artistic level, of course. I had drawn and painted my fair share of mythical beings across my years of study, and naturally these entities had interested me as representations of human imagination. Our past attempts to explain what could not yet be measured, our innate desire for something more than human. Something beyond the mundane and more interesting than the day-to-day grind selling our time for money.

But not once had I ever entertained the idea they were real, for several concrete reasons that formed a wall in my mind against what Magnus was hinting at.

Magnus had stopped shuffling around the room now, though he was equally unable to catch my eye. I noticed his hand at the edge of my vision and watched as he scooped up a sketchbook that I had left lying on the dresser. He began flicking through it, and I didn’t protest. Something unusual settled in his face as he brooded over my work—something I had seen in other artists who looked at my drawings.

Jealousy.

“And if I told you I do,” Magnus finally replied, still sourly fascinated at my sketches. “What would you think?”

I inhaled, my breath shuddering into my lungs as I tried to quell the voices in my head yelling how utterly insane this conversation was. It riled against every steadfast logic I had built in my mind, the shield of an utter atheist. But before I was an atheist, I was a seeker. I yearned for answers, and I would not dismiss one just because I was not yet convinced of it. I would ask for more information without ridicule, and if it were strong enough, I would allow it to change my opinion. How else would I learn anything?

“I would wonder why.” I set the book down on the table next to me and selected my words carefully. “I would want to know what made you so sure when so many of us have never seen anything that would act as concrete proof of the existence of demons. I would want to see evidence for myself.”

This sparked a short laugh that broke through Magnus’ worry-frozen face, lighting him up and softening the edges of his taut discomfort.

“Haven’t you already?” He smiled over to me with a touch of shame dampening the mischief that usually glittered in his eyes. “Taste for blood, orange eyes, shadows in the mirror…?”

That was…? I could only acknowledge that his answer did indeed tie the threads of insanity that had dangled in front of me over the last twenty-four hours. But right now, my first question wasn’t whether Magnus seriously expected me to believe he was a demon.

“I never told you that.” I narrowed my eyes at him, tilting my head to the side as he leant back on the dresser, my sketchbook still in hand. “About the mirror. How did you know?”

“How do you think I know?”

A muscle in my jaw trembled, but I reminded myself Magnus wasn’t toying with me here. He was playing to my strengths—if I came to the conclusion on my own, I would be less resistant to accepting its truth. He was offering me the pieces, but he wasn’t forcing me to put them together if I didn’t want to see the picture it made.

I looked at the mirror then, as though it would offer me any sort of help.

“…Because that was you in the mirror.” I got to my feet and began to wander over to the mirror. “You knew I had seen it because it was you.”

“Not quite.”

Magnus put the sketchbook down and looked at me, and though agitation stopped his lips from curling into their usual grin, he didn’t seem as fraught as before. Still, it wasn’t a pleasant calmness that settled over him—he had all the look of a man that had realised he had been swept out to sea and had resigned himself to drowning without flailing and panicking in his last moments. “I’m not a demon, Stella. I can’t do things like wander as a shadow or hide in mirrors. But he can.”

Magnus nodded down at the book I had left on the dresser. “Faenyx can.”

To find my answer, I would have to entertain the idea that Faenyx, the demon from the book, was real. I shifted uncomfortably into this mindset and pressed on, my heart racing at the idea of turning this stone over.

“Then…I saw Faenyx in the mirror,” I adjusted my answer, wrapping my arms around my torso and moving away from the mirror towards Magnus again. “And if I didn’t tell you, the only other person who knew…was Faenyx. So…he…told you?”

Magnus nodded.

“Faenyx told me,” he confirmed in a trembling voice. “Stella…when I said it wasn’t me eating that rat…it wasn’t me who fought back against those guys in the alleyway…I wasn’t lying. What you saw…was a demon. Who you saw…was Marquis Faenyx.”

I had my answer.

I finally had my answer.

Magnus Claymore, the lead singer of the Silent Swansong and worldwide heartthrob, was possessed by the Great Marquis of Hell.

I allowed myself a few deep, shuddering breaths.

“W-well,” I stammered in an awkward attempt to figure out what to do next, as I adjusted my bathrobe a little tighter around my waist. “That was definitely a conversation I should have been wearing pants for.”

***