Page 197 of Sigils & Spells

I narrowed my eyes and met her burning gaze. “Because I would rather die of starvation than give myself over to you. You’ll just have to watch me slowly die, knowing the entire time that you lost to a human. And then even after I die, maybe it will make you feel better for a while, but you’ll never forget that I beat you.”

Her rage boiled in her skull, and there was literal smoke rising from her chest and I could see in her eyes that she was trying to come up with a response. Check mate, I thought.

“Unless,” I grinned at her, “you hear my proposition.”

She shrank back down a little and narrowed her eyes at me. “What is your proposition?”

“I challenge you to a game.”

Her eyes widened and she shrunk all the way back down to the size she’d been when she first entered the room. Her chest still smoked, but her body had calmed. She was intrigued. When she spoke, her voice was somewhere between the layered horror voices and the lilting gentle one. “A game?”

“Yes. I challenge you to a game. You win, I’ll eat the apple, no complaints or questions asked.”

Her eyes narrowed further until they were barely more than slits. “And if you win?”

“If I win,” I swallowed. “If I win, you let me go. You free me from the enslavement entirely and send me home unharmed just as I was. You can never hurt me again, and you can’t look for my friends. You include absolutely anyone under your command. You can’t send anyone after us and you can’t use any kind of magic to hurt and or mildly inconvenience us.”

“So much minutiae.” she lilted. “How will we remember it all?”

“I wrote a contract.” I stepped away from the table and motioned to the paper that lay there. I’d written a contract on the back of Maeve’s letter. I’d seen movies, I knew that when you made a wish you had to be hella specific, so I imagined the same was true when dealing with fairies. If she signed this contract, she’d have to follow it to the letter. To stray would be to lie. Every detail of the deal was on the contract, and I’d excluded any loophole I could think of she might find with wording. I even wrote out the rules for the game.

I stepped out of her way and motioned for her to read it. The Fae glared at me and approached the table, bending down and resting her hands, which I hadn’t noticed until this moment were made of branches with long fingers that ended in points like talons. As she read her fingers tapped on the wood, one finger at a time. Lyrei had her bow pointed at me, ready to shrink in case I decided to take advantage of Maeve’s distraction and jump her. A long handful of moments passed before she looked at me again. Her eyes were unreadable.

“I agree to the terms.” she hissed.

“Amazing!” I smiled at her brightly, and proffered the ball point pen that was still in my hand.

Maeve looked at it with disgust and said “No need.”

She waved her hand over the paper and I watched her name scrawl itself across the line I’d drawn with a red fey magic that stayed and kept glowing on the page. I stared at it for a second before drawing my gaze back to the Fae. I extended the pen again.

“Sign it both ways.”

Maeve sneered and snatched the pen from my hand. The pen looked so weird in her hand. She was so fantastical, so clearly bursting with magic and the pen was so real, so mundane. Maeve signed. It was the same handwriting but much, much sloppier in the physical pen.

She dropped the pen back on the table like it had a disease on it and motion to me. “Your turn.”

I signed the paper under her name. I scanned the words I’d written again nervously, but none of the words seemed to stick in my brain this time.

“It’s done.” I said and smiled. I extended my hand to her for a shake, something that always seemed to seal deals between mafia bosses. Though we were more similar to a betta fish and its owner than two mafia bosses alike in power. As John Mulaney once said, she had her kingdom of fairy people and terrifying, awe inspiring powers, and me, I had all these fucking markers.

She wrapped her needle like fingers around my hand and we shook once before she snatched her hand back.

“Deal’s made.” I said.

“Fine.” Maeve seethed, her silk voice dripping with vitriol and scorn. “What is the name of this game you’ve chosen, Julian Sanchez?”

BEER PONG: TO THE DEATH

There were five rules.

Rule number one: it had to be human beer

Rule number two: Maeve could not use any magic during the game.

Rule number Three: no one can help her from outside the game.

Rule number four: she had to completely respect the rules of Beer pong.

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