She dips her fingers into a tin of herbs. Rosemary, sage, thyme. Smells like pot roast, she thinks as she wipes her hand against her jacket and plucks chalk from her pocket.
The remnants of magic - old, inactive - lingers in the air; the metallic tang of Weiss' alchemy, the gunpowder and ozone of Ruby's magecraft. Magic is an ideal anchor for summoning; her location's not the best, but it will have to do.
Weiss would disapprove of her working environment, Yang thinks grimly. "Lousy alchemists and their lousy precision," she says and kicks the trailing edge of the carpet further away from the border of her pentacle, as though that will help. The string she used to trace the circumference of the summoning circles joins the carpet-tassels, weaving into the fibres in a tangled snarl.
In theory, it's simple enough. Yang licks her teeth and crouches on her haunches; she eyes the circle drawn over the whorls and knots of her wooden floorboards, and sketches a few sigils. Best to add some fire-guards, just in case. Demons are a finicky lot; a penchant for theatrics, if Nora is to be believed. The last thing Yang wants is to add a permanent sulphur-and-brimstone scorch-mark to the room décor.
She glances back at the grimoire, lying where she left it. There's something almost accusatory about the way it's spilled open, pages rustling in the breeze from her window. She picks it up guiltily, and does her best to smooth out the wrinkled spine; she can hear Weiss' tirade already, a lengthy spiel on Yang's lack of respect for the Old Works.
The candle-wicks gutter and she nearly drops the book. Long shadows flicker on the wall, stretching to the ceiling. There are shapes moving in the smoke; a capnomancer's wet dream, she's sure. Whatever.
Maybe she's nervous. Sure, it's one thing to have the technique and protocol memorised. It's not that hard. Not that hard when practised in a controlled environment.
The whole demon-summoning business isn't as glamorous as she thought it would be. Very eye of newt and skin of toad in the way magecraft was, only with a lot more geometry involved. The only difference was in the use of the offerings; a lot of blood and bone, to bind and command. How melodramatic, she thinks and shuts her window. She'll have to finish quick; dinner's soon and the room gets stuffy fast.
Yang sets down a handful of Grimm teeth - angular incisors, slim canines, lumpy carnassials; they rattle across the floorboards, aged wood spotted by hundreds of years of prentices blowing things up. Well, at least she'll live up to that legacy. Hopefully she won't singe the curtains too badly, at least. Not after Ruby went to all that effort to put them up.
Today's summoning offerings are a hodgepodge of materials - panthera claws and ursa teeth; a summoning manuscript, glyphs inked on the vellum with tyrian purple; topaz and tiger's eye; an ounce of silky ash. Well. The manuscript is more of a safeguard, really; reinforcement for protective spells, set in place for hypothetical just-in-cases.
And - blood, for the binding, she thinks as she shucks her gloves and cuts a thin line across her palm with a silver knife. The porcelain of her crucible tints pink; Yang clenches her fingers into a fist and opens them out again, feeling her pulse throbbing in her palm. With her free hand she picks up the first of the bells by her knee, and flicks. It has a sharp, high-pitched chime; she almost drops it in her haste to reach for the next in the row.
She settles back into place at the centre of her pentacle, wrapped in concentric circles bound by sigils. The grimoire's open on her lap, balanced on the crook of her knee. The air is very still; the candles surrounding her pentacles cast wavering shadows of herself, tenfold, on the walls.
Theoretically, the summoning is supposed to begin when she gives the blood offering and rings the seven bells. She sags a little in her place, the straightness of her spine loosening into a slouch. So much for that.
She feels it only when the echoes of the seventh bell have faded from the air, when the silence starts to press against her once more. It reverberates in her shoulderblades, rumbles in the curves of her ribs, at the base of her skull; a deeper sound, a clarion call like heavy church bells.
Something presses along the edges of her circles; she watches their outlines distort, faintly, pushing inwards towards her. Her fingers clench around Ruby's good-luck charm; she's grateful for the weight of the silver, cold and soothing in her fingers.
"C'mon," Yang spits from between her teeth as she holds it up. "Do your worst!"
Blood seeps into the recesses of the ornately-carved rose. "Aw, shit," she says and thinks, momentarily, of wiping her hand on the floorboards.
The circles hold; the runes along their edges are slightly squashed and glow faintly, the wards and safe-guards reinforcing the chalk. Good, that's good.
Something brushes against her arm. She jumps. Thoughts press against her mind, alien, invasive; seeking a way in. She's starting to wish she read Weiss' notes on mental fortification. Barriers against the mind tricks of demons hunting for a weakness.
"C'mon," Yang prompts again, willing her voice into steadiness. "You're curious, aren't you?"
Maybe. The word brushes against the fringes of her thoughts.
The curtains rustle; smoke pools and puddles around the smaller circle linked to Yang's, diffusing sluggishly into place like plumes of ink through water. The demon wavers, as though deciding on a shape, and settles into something human-shaped and indistinct.
Its edges sharpen, defining into the figure of a girl. She has amber eyes, slit-pupiled like a cat's. Oddly enough, the demon chooses to accessorise with a bow in her hair. The effect is disconcerting.
"A human?" Yang asks. "Of all the forms you shapeshifting riftdemons can take and you choose another person? Gee, frightening. I'm so terrified."
"Well, why not?" the demon replies. She has a quiet voice, husky along the edges. "The last time I showed up as an ursa the summoner didn't even have anything to say." She raises a hand, and adjusts the bow perched on her head. "It's working," she says, pleased, when she takes in Yang's expression.
The demon crosses her legs, mirroring Yang. They regard each other for several minutes; the demon's guise is flawless, and all the more unnerving for it.
Yang has heard tell of demons taking on the guises of the dead, and wonders who this girl she's looking at really is. Whether she's been gone a year, a thousand.
The devil is in the details, she thinks. The demon has long lashes and straight, narrow brows; there are pale scars along her knuckles, loose threads in the frayed edges of her bow.
Someone bangs on the door. Yang starts, tearing her eyes away from the demon's. "What?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the demon following her gaze. A tame guise it may wear, but the eyes are far from human - drawing in all light, yet reflecting none; a monster's eyes, the energies of the Rift glimmering in its stare.
"Dinner in ten minutes," Weiss shouts through the wood. "I'd come down soon if I were you, before your sister inhales everything. Don't complain tonight if you're hungry, it's not my problem if you dawdled on your overdue homework again!"
"Your concern is always appreciated," Yang replies, ramming her fist into the floorboards for emphasis. She winces as her knuckles creak. When she opens her palm the cut's oozing again, gummy and coagulating.
The demon watches through their exchange, eyes narrowing in amusement. She waits until Weiss' footsteps have faded away to speak again. "Humans are curious creatures."
"Yes, and this human is curious as to who you are and what's for dinner," Yang says. She raises her hands, gingerly spreading her fingers. The cut on her palm stings. "Let's seal this contract and get a bite, all this summoning mumbo-jumbo works up an appetite."
"Ladies first," the demon says, eyes following the motion of Yang's hands.
"Nuh-uh, I'm not falling for the oldest trick in the book," Yang says. The demon looks hurt; her brow furrows.
Yang folds her arms over her chest. "To know someone's name is to hold them," she says. "No summoner worth their salt gives a demon their name!"
The demon tilts her head. "Incorrect," she says. "To hold someone or something close is to let it hold you. I wasn't asking for a true name, anyway."
"Whatever, close enough. Well, what should I call you?"
"Names are but another alien concept imposed upon us," the demon replies. "Another way of forcing us to define ourselves; when we enter your world, we have to mould ourselves to a shape. Likewise, when we are summoned we are given a name; we are no longer unknown and infinite. What would you humans do without your constant need to define and set boundaries?"
What, indeed. Yang frowns. "I asked for a name, not a lecture."
The demon purses her lips, thoughtful. "Blake," she says at last.
Maybe it was some other summoner's name, once. Yang smiles nervously and leans forward. Did Blake kill her last summoner? Is she mocking a memory? Maybe that's what happens to unpractised summoners.
Yang slips her fingers into her pocket, running her thumbnail against the carvings on Ruby's charm. Her heart's racing again, pulse thundering in her ears. She wonders if the demon will take on her name and appearance too, when she's dead somewhere down the line.
"Well then, Blake," she says, and beckons. Blake extends her hand; Yang cuts across her palm with the knife, and the demon hisses in pain.
"You summoners are barbarians," she says. Something cool and fluid seeps from the cut in her palm; it congeals rapidly, viscous and dark as an oil slick.
Blood for the binding, silver for the sealing. Yang daubs sigils with ash on the backs of their hands. The symbols are wobbly, distorted across the curves of too-human skin. Demon-ichor burns, smearing with the blood on her palm. "Let us seal the contract."
They lock fingers. Yang gazes at her hand, at the jut of her knuckles. The demon's claws dig into the back of Yang's hand.
Around them, the circle of candles flicker and extinguish. The room fills with the heady perfume of summoning herbs and magical wards, smoke from burnt wicks trailing spirals through the air.