The Demon I Accidentally Summoned

# Chapter One: This Was Supposed to Be a Prank

Malaki had four tabs open.

One was a forum post called “i summoned something and i need help NOW (not clickbait).” It had forty replies and zero actual advice. One was a PDF called “Beginner’s Grimoire Vol. 2,” which he was pretty sure was just someone’s D&D homework. One was his bank app. He’d closed that one fast, because looking at it made his chest hurt. And one was a video of a guy with a British accent explaining how to draw a summoning circle “the right way, unlike most YouTubers.”

It was 11:47 p.m. on a Tuesday. He had work at six a.m.

He’d also just gotten home from a shift where Connor Petrakis, captain of the swim team and owner of a jawline Malaki had once, stupidly, called “unfair” out loud, threw a used napkin at him in front of four other people. Called him “barista boy.” Like it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said.

So. Revenge summoning. Totally normal Tuesday plan.

He’d found the ritual on Reddit, in a thread that had since been deleted, which in hindsight should have told him something. Some user had posted a string of words she called “Old Infernal.” The instructions were simple. Draw the circle. Say the words. Say the name of the person you wanted to mess with. A small, harmless demon would show up and make that person’s life annoying for about a week. Steal their wifi. Hide one shoe. Nothing worse than that.

Malaki had typed *Connor Petrakis* into the search bar three times just to feel something.

He pushed his desk chair against the wall. Rolled up the rug his old roommate left behind when she moved out. Used a dying purple Sharpie to draw the circle on the floor. It looked less like ancient magic and more like something a kid would draw if you asked them to spell “pretzel.” He lit the one candle he owned, a vanilla one that was mostly used up, and sat down cross-legged in front of it like this was a totally normal way to spend a Tuesday night.

He read the words off his phone. Got most of them wrong, probably.

“Connor Petrakis,” he said out loud, and immediately felt dumb for saying a guy’s full name to a candle.

Nothing happened. Four seconds went by. That felt like plenty of time to feel embarrassed and just go to bed.

Then the candle went out. Not flickered, went out, all at once, like someone had pinched it, except nobody was there. The Sharpie lines lit up a dull red that didn’t look like it belonged in his apartment, or in this century. The air felt heavier. Like the room had suddenly remembered it was three floors up.

“Oh no,” Malaki said, in the calm voice of someone who has just made a terrible mistake and is watching it happen in real time. “Oh no, no, no.”

Something landed in the middle of the circle.

Not appeared. Landed, like it had fallen from somewhere high up. One knee on the floor, one hand braced flat, black hair falling forward over his face.

For a second nothing moved. Malaki didn’t move either. He was doing the thing where you’re so scared your brain just stops working for a second.

Then the guy lifted his head, and Malaki’s first real thought was, *he’s hot,* which was such a useless thing for his brain to say right now that he almost said it out loud by mistake.

His second thought was that this was not Connor Petrakis.

Whoever this was had skin too pale, eyes too dark, and two horns curling back through his hair. His clothes looked wrong for Malaki’s living room, the way a museum piece looks wrong sitting next to a beanbag chair. Heavy. Dark. Expensive looking, if that word even meant anything wherever he was from.

He knelt there a moment, breathing hard, like he’d just run a long way.

“Hey,” Malaki said, voice shaking. “Hey, can you, um. Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

The man’s head turned, slow, like it took effort. His eyes landed on Malaki and stayed there. Up close they weren’t just dark, they were black all the way through, no white at all, which should have been the scariest part and somehow wasn’t.

He didn’t say anything.

“Okay,” Malaki said, scooting back until he hit his desk. “Okay, that’s fine, you’re probably just, I don’t know, in shock, or something got lost in translation, or you’re not actually able to understand me, which, honestly, at this point I would take.”

Still nothing. Just that flat, heavy stare.

The man tried to stand. He got about halfway up before his legs gave out and he dropped hard onto one hip, catching himself on the floor with a sharp breath through his teeth. For a second the scary horned stranger looked less like something out of a nightmare and more like someone who’d gotten out of a hospital bed way too early.

“Whoa, hey.” Malaki’s hands came up before he could think about it. “You okay?”

No answer. The man’s jaw was tight, and one hand pressed flat against his own chest, like he was checking something was still there.

“Right. You can’t understand me. Cool. Great. Love that for both of us.” Malaki’s own hands were shaking so hard he sat on them. “Can you, I don’t know, go back? To wherever you came from? ’Cause I think there’s been some kind of mix-up.”

The man just looked at him. Not confused exactly. More like he was thinking about something far away and Malaki wasn’t part of it.

Malaki looked around his living room. At the beanbag chair. At the ring light he used for the one TikTok he’d ever made that got any views. At his whole tiny, painfully normal apartment, which apparently now had a second resident who was maybe a thousand years old and definitely not from around here.

“So you’re telling me,” he said slowly, mostly to himself, since it didn’t seem like anyone else in the room was listening, “I’ve accidentally adopted a demon.”

The man’s eyes flicked, just for a second, to the messy purple circle on the floor. Something crossed his face, gone almost as fast as it came. If Malaki didn’t know better he’d have called it annoyed.

“You get that I said that, but not the rest?” Malaki asked. “That’s, okay, that’s a weird amount of understanding to have.”

No response.

He sat back against the coffee table, horns and all, breathing slow and careful, watching Malaki the way you’d watch a door you weren’t sure was locked. He didn’t look angry anymore. He looked tired, and a little unsteady, like the effort of sitting up was using something he didn’t have a lot of.

Malaki’s brain was doing about six things at once. Call someone. Don’t call anyone, because who would he even call. Run. Don’t run, because his legs didn’t seem interested in that plan. Ask more questions, even though the guy clearly wasn’t going to answer any of them.

“Okay,” he said finally, out loud, more to hear a voice than anything else. “Okay. New plan. I’m gonna go slow. I’m Malaki.” He pointed at himself, feeling ridiculous. “Malaki.”

The man watched his hand. Didn’t repeat the gesture. Didn’t say a word.

“Great talk,” Malaki muttered.

Somewhere three floors down, a car alarm went off. Neither of them moved.

Malaki looked at the horned, silent, definitely-not-human man sitting in his living room, who was either too hurt to talk, too far from home to understand a word of English, or just choosing not to bother, and realized he had absolutely no plan for any of those options.

“Rent’s due Friday,” he said, mostly to fill the silence. “Just so you know what you’re walking into. Not that you know what I’m saying. Whatever.”

The man didn’t answer. He just kept watching him, quiet and still, like he was waiting for something Malaki hadn’t figured out yet.