Ask anyone and they'll tell you that the first day on the job is unlike any other. You're not really sure what you're supposed to be doing, your co-workers all seem to have their own language, and the glances your boss throws your way feel deadlier than those of a basilisk.

  Of course, all of that only applies when you get the job normally and not as a result of an undead wizard's curse. If that's the case, you get to safely skip first-day anxiety and jump straight to total apathy.

  This allowed Gaius to sleep in. By the time he got up and put on his arcane artisan's outfit, the imp had already put up the proper sign and was busy servicing the first customers.

  Boxed in on all sides with problems, Gaius was far from cheerful that morning. But lucky for him, Siembrans were treating the imp as a fun novelty, not the soul-snatching beast that he was. It allowed Gaius to feel sorry for himself in peace.

  Once that got old, he started watching the fiend do his thing. The demon was rude and belligerent towards every customer, but his diminutive size, ill-fitting deep voice, and the bright jangly cap like that of a jester turned his ceaseless insults into hilarious crowd-pleasers.

  His first victim was a mother with a screaming gaggle of offspring who asked for a revitalizing draught. The imp offered her a cork instead.

  A group of middle-aged guys sporting nasty black eyes and missing teeth purchased a round of healing elixirs. They got a good deal on some running shoes.

  An old man with a glint in his eye bought a revitalizing draught as well, but one of a different nature than the mother. The demon spared that one any comments on account of it being too easy.

  Later on, there was a group of adventurers with only a passing interest in potions. They shot down the imp's many attempts at humor, haggled over every coin, and threw their names around like they were supposed to mean anything. Gaius was certain at least one of them nicked some easy to reach junk.

  Once the crowd thinned, Gaius asked, "Did we run a promotion I was not aware of? Maybe hired a wizard to rearrange the clouds into a message inviting everyone for the grand opening of Vasily's Emporium?"

  The imp, who at the moment was moving a few ornate and highly impractical swords closer to the display windows, stopped flapping his wings for a moment and hopped onto a shelf from where he had a good view of Gaius.

  "What are you on about? What grand opening? This was a potion store for who knows how long. It was closed for a few weeks, now it's open again. All the suckers that used to come here, come here again. And those hobo adventurer types? Well, they wander. Exploring is what they call it. They roll into town, set up camp, and start exploring like it's some strange new land and no one's been living here for ages. Eventually, they explore their way over here or any other store for that matter. Just a matter of time."

  The imp went back to prettying up the store. "Spending a single thought on promoting anything to those types is a waste. You give them a piece of paper with directions to the store, turn around, and there they are, trying to sell it back to you for spare change. Pah." The imp spat. Then, with a sigh, he grabbed a rag and started to work on cleaning the window that now had a smoking spot of dark-yellow bile on it.

  "You want to tell me we just sit here and wait for them to come to us?"

  "Yes. You just sit there. I've got work to do." The imp was clearly displeased with the arrangement.

  "Sucks to be you," Gaius shrugged before asking, "Hey, what do I call you, anyway? I was feeling Buddy, but you're not friendly enough for that. And something tells me we won't get along too well if I start calling you Capster."

  The imp grabbed the sides of his cap, and for a moment Gaius was certain he was going to send the thing straight to hell.

  Instead, the imp gritted his teeth and went on with his work. "Pah, what do you care," he said. "But if you have to know, my name is Azar'phometh."

  "Yeah, you may have the voice for it, but you're about seven feet too short to be an Azar-anything. What was it the old man called you? Bes? Think I'll call you Bes."

  "Great thinking, bozo. What if I called you Human?"

  Gaius shrugged. "Watch me care."

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  The day went on. More customers dropped by. With a few exceptions where the demon had to breathe out a little fire, as Gaius quietly sucked the light out of the store to make that display more impressive, things were going smooth.

  Gaius was taking notes for his future report when the door opened and a child walked in. The kid looked underfed, had long blond hair, and was wearing some vague leafy arrangement. Without saying a word, the kid walked up to a stand holding up a bunch of spears.

  The imp was busy with another customer, and Gaius didn't really want to expose a child to an agent of hell anyway. He wasn't entirely sure if demons had any age restrictions for trying to trick you out of your soul.

  When Gaius approached the kid, the first thing he noticed up close was a pair of long pointy ears. It was an elf.

  The elf heard Gaius' steps, because of course he did, and looked up. These borderline eternal forest dwellers always had this look in their eyes like they knew something no one else did.

  As a general rule, people didn't really enjoy being the butt of some unspoken joke, so elves weren't liked all that much across the human lands. The elves themselves didn't mind, as they preferred to stick to their trees anyway. In fact, the only humans who had any sort of regular contact with them were the druids.

  Having pretended to be a druid for a bit, Gaius was up to date on his elf facts. For example, he knew that they aged differently, meaning this kid could have easily been pushing sixty. And seeing how elves tried to avoid human settlements unless they had some important business there, Gaius had no reason to assume that an eight-year-old elf would be in any position to just stumble into his shop.

  Gaius put his hand on the spear stand. "These might be a bit too long for you, sir." He used what he considered to be his best salesman voice. "May I show you to our daggers instead?"

  "I'm not allowed to touch weapons." The elf somehow managed to sound both excited and bored at the same time.

  Gaius was beginning to regret his rash decision to help. At the same time, asking the imp to bail him out now would sting even more.

  "We have plenty of reagents and arcane implements, too," Gaius said. In his mind, the only reason someone wouldn't want a weapon was if they possessed some greater power.

  The elf responded with a blank stare.

  "Jewels? Trinkets? Artifacts?" Gaius pressed. "Give me something to work with here, man. This is my first day here. What are you looking for?"

  "I don't know," the elf said on the verge of crying.

  "You don't know." Gaius echoed the elf's words with a crazed grin on his face. "What are you doing here then?"

  "I don't know."

  Gaius saw where this was going. He stepped back and reminded himself to breathe.

  The store's doors opened and an elven woman in an almost but not quite see-through dress walked in. She was all hair and legs, with grace filling the space in-between. She used that grace to great effect while navigating herself over to Gaius.

  And though the air around her was buzzing with the signature elven aloofness, Gaius could tell by her narrow eyes she was not pleased.

  An elegant finger was pointed at Gaius. "Why is my child surrounded by weapons?"

  The child in question was not so much surrounded as he was in the general vicinity, but Gaius decided against pointing that out.

  "The better question is, what's your child doing in my store?" Gaius was quickly coming to the realization that he wasn't one of those "customer is always right" merchants.

  The elven woman's hands jumped to her hips, dangerously close to a pair of curved blades. "You want to tell me when human children wander in, you start pushing spears onto them too?"

  "When I see a human kid, I can generally tell it's an actual child and not someone old enough to be my grandpa," Gaius countered. "And what do you mean wander in?" He remembered his earlier conversation with the imp. "Adventurers wander. Kids stay home with their parents."

  "Maybe yours do. We trust our young to explore the world."

  Exploring and wandering. Perhaps this was why there were so few elven adventurers. They got all that nonsense out of their systems early.

  "Well why are you," Gaius wanted to say yelling, but the woman never so much as raised her voice, "angrily whispering at me then?"

  "Spirits forbid a human would take responsibility for his actions." The elf's nose did a thing that would normally be an angry snort, but in her interpretation somehow managed to be rather endearing. "This whole pilgrimage was a mistake."

  The woman was clearly not seeing the irony in her blaming Gaius for a lack of responsibility, so he approached it from a different angle.

  "What pilgrimage?" he asked.

  He must have caught her off guard, because the woman immediately replied, "We're traveling to Slavia, I want Elander to see their evergreen forests with his own eyes."

  "Ah, Slavia." Gaius caught onto a familiar thread. "Our head office is out there. If you ever see Vasily, you know this dark and brooding guy whose name is on the sign outside? Tell him Guy said hi."

  Despite hailing from an alien culture a human could never truly understand, the look the woman graced Gaius with was one he knew all too well. It usually preceded some combination of broken plates and clothes flying out of windows.

  The elven woman didn't disappoint. With an absentminded smile on her sharp and symmetrical face, she scattered the spears all over the floor and stormed out of the store, holding onto little Elander's hand.

  The imp, who observed all of this from a safe distance, said, "Great customer service, pal. Next time you let me do the talking and you just worry about standing there looking pretty."

  Gaius mumbled something less than polite and entirely unintelligible. Then, he picked all the spears up and went back behind the counter where he assumed his default bored position. From that vantage point, he saw the imp recoil away from the window.

  "I'll be in the back." The imp's voice creaked as his wings took him towards the kitchen.

  "What, did you see your ex-wife?" Gaius asked just to say something.

  This sent him down a maze of thoughts all converging at the simple question of whether or not demons got married.

  Story Facts - Chapter 7