Finance with a Devil

November's Patreon reward! Y'all voted for Symmarah - Fareeha summons demon Satya to help her with her taxes. Humor, awkward lesbian Fareeha, demon Satya, Teen+. 

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Paperwork was going to be the death of her. Give her a gun any day, push her alone into the middle of half a dozen enemies, she could deal. But paperwork? She’d rather take another bullet.

Taxes in particular were the worst. Helix was a shockingly well-organized company, but one thing they were truly lacking in were the sort of human resources workers who might be able to help her navigate the tangle of multilingual tax records that came from legally residing in one country, working for a company based in a different country, and technically owning property in another. And if they were competent, well, maybe she had run out of time to ask, because she had waited until the day they were due.

She was, of course, punctual nearly to a fault in every other aspect of her life, but maybe traveling constantly and routinely getting shot at were reasonable excuses for being distracted. There was no exemption or extension that she could find for these things, though. 

She shuffled through files she was not sure even mattered. When her vision began to blur at the most recent “Line 2C if this but Line 47Q if that” nonsense, she determined that a little caffeine would go a long way. With the deadline looming, it hardly seemed to matter if she took twenty minutes to run down to the coffee shop on the corner. 

On her way in, she encountered a frazzled-looking man who very nearly bumped into her in his panic. “Excuse me,” he said, “you haven’t seen a golden coin anywhere, have you?” Bewildered, she could only shake her head and watch him pester other customers. 

The rich shot of espresso she got alongside her foamy latte was enough to put it out of mind until, halfway back to her apartment, she saw a glint on the sidewalk. She blamed the panicked man — and her own paradoxical desire to procrastinate now that the deadline was imminent — that she bothered to pick it up at all. 

The coin gleamed as if it had never touched dirt or a grubby human hand. It hardly looked like a coin at all. It was nearly two inches across and inscribed with a symbol she had never seen before. She was conversational in a handful of languages, but she could not read the text that lined the edge of the coin; she was not sure she could have guessed at what the script was called. It nearly looked like Arabic, but there were too many odd shapes for it to be quite the same.

When she returned to the coffee shop, the man was gone. She supposed she could have left it with them in case he returned, but something in her gut told her not to trust the young man behind the cash register. A glance at the clock in the corner said she had wasted enough time, so she returned home, the coin sitting heavily in her pocket. It felt warm even through the pocket lining, but she wrote it off as an effect of her body heat on the metal.

Back to her paperwork. Or at least, that was the intention. What she did instead was stare intently at the coin. It still seemed too warm, and she could not decide what to make of the script, both familiar and unfamiliar as it was. She traced over it with her finger, following each letter in an unbroken circle. The reflected light seemed to chase her finger, and the whole coin seemed to flicker when she had completed the circle.

One moment, she was alone at the tiny desk shoved into the corner of her bedroom. The next, there was a woman standing in front of her. 

Or she looked vaguely woman-shaped, but her skin was a dark red with a lava-like glow emanating from the center of her body. A second glance showed that what Fareeha had mistaken for a headpiece was in fact part of her head, a ridged, scaled crown that ended in curving horns. Leathery wings wrapped around her waist in a funny approximation of a skirt, which was the only thing about her that seemed remotely modest. She was otherwise nude. 

Fareeha felt herself flush at the realization, but that paled in comparison with the shock of having her appear at all. 

“You summoned?” the woman asked. 

“Um,” Fareeha said.

Just beneath her forehead ridges, a sharp brow arched. Her lips pressed flat, and she made a thoughtful sound. Fareeha was a difficult woman to intimidate, but she felt herself shrinking back under the weight of her disapproval. Eventually, it seemed the woman took pity on her, because she said, “You are not the man who summoned me before. Is he dead?”

“What? No, I just— Why would he be dead?”

“My medallion does not often change hands without bloodshed.” She shrugged.

“I found it on the ground. Definitely no bloodshed.” 

The woman hummed thoughtfully again. “In any case, you have called me here. What did you need?”

Fareeha knew she was gawking. “I didn’t— Not on purpose.”

“A contract is a contract.” The woman sighed impatiently.

“What do you mean, contract? Are you some kind of—”

“If you say ‘genie,’ I will consider the contract terminated.”

Fareeha could not help herself; she giggled, although it was tinged with nerves. “Well, are you?”

“No. I do not grant wishes.”

“But you came when I rubbed the coin.”

“That medallion is my… calling card. You summoned me. Now we trade: a favor for a favor. If you wish to think of that as granting wishes, you may, but I am not your slave, and you must pay for my services.”

Fareeha did not know what to make of any of this. “Do you have a name?”

Shining yellow eyes swept over her. “You may call me Satya.”

“What if I don’t ask you for anything?”

“Then we have no contract. Many demons would kill you without the contract to bind them.”

That made the whole thing somehow more surreal. Made her heart jump to her throat. “And you?”

“I am feeling generous. But I may have to find someone else to unleash my displeasure on while I am in this world.” 

Fareeha gaped at her and then at the clock. It was growing late. The realization forced her to focus. “You seem really into this contract thing. So you’re good with paperwork?”

Satya let out a sound that could have been anything from a quiet laugh to a snooty hmph. “I excel at it.”

“What do I trade for you to do my taxes for me?” Quickly, she added, “Accurately, before the deadline.” She didn’t know anything about demons, but she thought it seemed safest, in case this one was going to honor their agreement to the letter.

Those yellow eyes took her in, a steady crawl from head to toe, and she suddenly had to suppress several deeply inappropriate thoughts. About a demon. Who had mentioned killing people.

“I will decide the payment later,” Satya said. Taking in Fareeha’s surprise, she gave the barest hint of a smile. “Do not worry. It won’t be violent.”

Which was how Fareeha, somehow, got her taxes finished before the deadline. Satya did not perform any magic that Fareeha could see — although she supposed she might not recognize magic if she saw it — but instead sat down at Fareeha’s desk and began to rifle through the paperwork she had gathered. She was still swift and efficient, claw-tipped fingers clacking against the keyboard.

At eleven forty-eight, she gave a final click of the mouse and declared the task complete. There may not have been any sorcery involved, but it still somehow felt miraculous.

“Thank you,” Fareeha breathed. “That was so fast. I bet you’d be a hit down at HQ.” Satya blinked at her, and Fareeha found herself distracted by her eyelashes. “That was a joke, not another deal. Um. Sorry. If that was confusing.”

Satya gave another hint of a smile. “I wasn’t confused.” 

“Great. So. Your payment?”

“You will make me dinner. I missed it when I was called so abruptly to your home.”

Fareeha did not gawk. Probably. “Dinner? That’s all?”

“That seems fair. A minor task for a minor task. Is there some other form of reciprocity you would suggest?”

There was not. It was surreal, but it also wasn’t anything heinous like selling her soul or finding a human sacrifice or… whatever it was demons actually got up to. Unfortunately for Satya, it was nearly midnight and Fareeha didn’t keep much in the house.

She made the demon the fanciest sandwich she could come up with: toasted bread, hummus spread, thin slices of smoked turkey (after politely asking whether the demon ate meat), a splash of herb-infused oil, and lettuce, tomato and avocado. She also placed some grapes on the plate. It was nice, for a sandwich, but it hardly seemed a fair offering to a demon. 

She knew she was blushing as she set it on the table. Satya made that half-amused hmph sound again, and she held the thing between thumb and forefinger, the others all daintily raised. She took small, tidy bites, and she wiped her mouth meticulously with her napkin when she was finished. All told, it was a surprisingly delicate affair for someone who looked as fearsome as she did.

“Thank you,” she said politely when she was finished.

“Is that all?” Fareeha asked. 

The demon looked at her again, and this time Fareeha was sure the blush it caused was not totally her own fault. She was a disaster, but her gut was pretty smart; she knew what that look meant, at least from normal, human women. “Our deal is concluded,” Satya said slowly. “However, if you were to summon me again, perhaps for tea and at a reasonable hour, I may find some other small way to… reciprocate.” 

Fareeha was not losing her mind. This was exactly what her instincts had told her it was. Her face was on fire. It was hard not to see what charms the demon held, though, given that she may have been fully nude if not for the scales that seemed carefully designed to make her look, well, not too nude. The horns and the leathery wings were not as off-putting as maybe they should be. “Sure. I can… I can do that.”

Satya made her hmph-laugh again, then she disappeared in a swirl of smoke. 

Fareeha stared dumbly at the place she had sat. Then she stared dumbly at the medallion. Then she stared at her kitchen, contemplating what sort of tea a demon might like best.