I sighed as I walked in the door, locking it behind me. I made a beeline for the shower, shedding clothing as I walked. I paused as I pulled my shirt off. It smelled like Sebastian. I regretfully dropped it in the laundry basket before locking the bathroom door behind myself. My own reflection caught my attention.

Hot damn, I looked good. Way better than I remembered. My skin seemed to have cleared up a bit, and I no longer had dark circles under my eyes. It appeared that I had been getting more and more in shape, without even noticing, and I was sporting a toned and curvy body.

Was this what Sebastian had meant by having a pull on humans? I was sure I hadn't looked like this two days ago. Maybe this was a symptom of being in touch with my demon half.

I took a moment to wonder if I would keep looking like this after the remaining buzz of energy had faded, or if I would go back to looking so painfully human. I decided it didn't matter much. I looked good enough without any supernatural assistance.

I took a long shower, making sure I was entirely clean, and dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, pulling my hair back into a braid yet again. It seemed my looks had settled half-way between that kind of glowing aura that demons had about them and regular human features, a nice balance. I was pleased with that.

I spend the morning getting laundry started, doing dishes, and making a good breakfast for myself. I found myself still restless, and so I ended up scrubbing down the apartment from top to bottom, sweeping, vacuuming, scrubbing, and generally picking up around the place.

Finally, with everything clean, I found myself incessantly bothered by the current arrangement of the furniture in the living room. I dragged the couches around, arranging them in a new pattern that I felt fit much better with the space and lighting.

Excellent.

I checked my email and flipped through my books before I remembered that I had already finished my work. I frowned.

I had been hoping that these almost compulsive needs would fade. Apparently, I had been wrong. I still seemed to be a prisoner to what Ciel and Sebastian called, "a demon's aesthetic."

I settled on the couch with my laptop, flipping on the TV for background noise as I pulled up Google.

After all, if a human was able to summon Phenex, they had to get the information somewhere, right? And, Ciel may have found some old tomes or whatever floating around the human world, but I highly doubted that the random guy in his basement had access to anything that legitimate.

Internet, it was.

"Heeeyyyy," I grinned and bounced on the couch in excitement. "Find out anything yet?"

"What? No, it's only been a few hours," Ciel sounded rather annoyed on the other end of the phone. "Why are you calling?"

"Because I found out stuff!" I giggled. There was a pause.

"Are you serious?" Another pause as I let it sink in. "How?"

"You might be a century or two old, dear Ciel," I cackled, "but I'm a 21st-century kind of girl. I Googled that shit."

Silence. I heard Phenex laughing in the background. "Oh my god I can't believe we didn't think to do that," Ciel groaned. "What do you know?"

"Umm, well, there's a bunch of blogs for this kind of stuff, and most of it is angsty teens, but it looks like this might be legit," I said, fumbling a bit with my laptop. "There's inscriptions, pictures, and everything. It's like a DIY guide for getting a demon. But this one here says that you can trap them."

"That does sound promising. Can you get over here?"

"Umm..." I ran through a mental check list. "Yeah, be there in ten." With that, we hung up, and I gathered my laptop and a few pages that I had printed and called up my friend.

"Hey, can you get me a ride?"

"...To his house again?"

"...Yes. I wish I could tell you -"

"Hun, I've seen him. No explanation required."

I waved goodbye to my friend as Ciel came to the door to greet me. He nodded hello and led me to the dining room table, where there were several papers spread out, which Sebastian and Phenex seemed to be in the process of sifting through.

"Alright, nerds, make room for the genius," I declared grandly. They only sighed and moved some papers out of the way, where I could sit and pull out my laptop.

"So, Phenex, do these look like anything you saw?" I pulled out some pictures of markings that I had printed from various sources and handed them to him. He paused to look them over, and then he looked up in surprise.

"Not exactly these, but it was close. They had them painted all over the walls. What are they?"

"It's called the Gate of Cain," I explained, pulling up the tab on it that I had on my laptop. "Ummm... here it is. This says that the Gate of Cain was a sigil from the archangel Gabriel that was given to Cain's sister to protect her and the child that she was pregnant with. It apparently comes from a lost text that was never officially recognized by any church. The Smithsonian has a copy of it stored in their vault." I paused a bit. "I guess it was scanned and somehow made its way online."

"Gate of Cain?" Ciel frowned. "From an angel?"

"I hate technology," Phenex complained.

"It was designed to trap demons?" Ciel asked.

"Not exactly, from what I've read," I frowned. "Although, who knows how accurate this is anyways. Anyways, I think it was supposed to be a sign of protection more than anything else. Here, let me..." I clicked through links until I found a transcript.

I read aloud: "And thus, the Angel Gabriel, in His shining and glorious name, came unto her and told her: 'Fear ye not, for thy Lord protects His flock,' and gave unto her a stone tablet upon which was engraved a holy sigil. Gabriel instructed to paint the blessed symbol upon her floor, so that all who may tread their evil there would be imprisoned in thy Lord's grasp..." I trailed off.

"Interesting," Ciel frowned. "And someone thought to try and trap a summoned demon with it?"

"Well, it's not such a stretch," I explained. "There's a lot of forums about summoning demons, and some of it is pretty legitimate, as far as I know. And a lot of shows in pop culture now would tell you exactly how to use a symbol like that. I mean, Supernatural, for example, they have these things called Devil's traps in there. They're almost exactly the same concept, paint a symbol on the floor, and if a demon enters, they're trapped. I guess if someone was serious about this and had enough time and motivation, they could get themselves a pretty good set up," I concluded.

"I hate humans," Phenex declared.

"This is an annoying discovery. I guess we're lucky it wasn't too hard to find."

"Well, it wasn't exactly it, though," Phenex frowned. "I don't know if something like that could do anything to us, but the changes they made obviously did. I don't think it was what they wanted, though. I'm pretty sure they meant to force me into serving them without the price of a soul."

"Sebastian, you've been quiet about this," I cut in. "What do you make of it?"

"Well..." His brow furrowed and a focused look took him over. "I don't think we can say much for sure right now. It obviously took some time to find these things and determine the legitimacy. Without a direct connection to the occult, a regular human would have a hard time successfully doing anything along the lines of purposefully summoning us, let alone trapping us." He paused.

"Of course, for now, our best course of action is to continue researching this Gate of Cain and try to determine what changes were made to it. We also need to know how the Gate normally affects a demon, and why any changes at all were made."

"I agree," Ciel said.

"Cool. I can keep looking online and seeing what people said about this stuff. If this much was legitimate, there might be clues about rules governing the Gate that could be true, too," I added.

"I guess I should be trying to modify this and figure out what was different. That might give us a clue as to what we do to undo it," Phenex said.

"Then it's settled. Lydia, you did a good job finding this. It's a good starting point to go off of. We'll focus our research on this Gate of Cain and work from there, keeping an eye out for contracts. That still might be our best bet to get Phenex home." He cracked a sly grin. "I haven't had this much fun in... how many years has it been, Sebastian?"

"Oh, about a hundred, by now," he smirked.

"I'm glad my suffering is entertaining for you," Phenex whined.

"If it wasn't, we wouldn't be helping," I pointed out. He grimaced.

"Yeah."

We all set out to our respective tasks, Phenex retreating to his room with the pictures I had printed, Ciel retiring to his study, and Sebastian continuing to sift through the papers on the table, this time with a more focused kind of face. I found myself watching him comb through the pages, eyes flicking over the words quickly.

"So," I started with a grin, "impressed?" Sebastian paused and then smirked at me.

"Well, you seem to be the only other person who thought to search for answers online, so I guess some sort of praise is warranted. Only..." he trailed off in thought. "When I looked, I knew what kind of thing I was looking for. I'm much older than Phenex, so I've had some experience with things like this in the past. I knew we'd have to find some sort of symbol. I'm thoroughly impressed you identified a viable candidate so quickly." Then, he smiled at me. "What I'd expect from a top student."

I grinned at him and my cheeks heated a little. "You've known this whole time? Letting them flounder around?" He pressed a finger to his lips with a wink. I giggled at him. "Aww, that's almost mean! You'd tell them eventually, right?"

"If too much time passed," he tilted his head in amusement. "I would have been remiss if I'd let this opportunity for Ciel to learn about the world of demons pass by. Of course, I'm your teacher, too, so I'm not at all upset that you'd be the one to find this." He folded his hands under his chin.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Old enough," he simply said. I rolled my eyes.

"I have ways of finding out, Michealis. I can be very persuasive when I need." I crossed my arms close to my chest in a way that pushed up my cleavage. Sebastian's eyes remained locked on mine, though his jaw clenched the tiniest bit. He was making a point to not look.

Damn her, Sebastian thought. I've seen so many bodies, yet hers still tempts me in a way I have not felt since my younger days. Even worse... she knows.

"You will tell me one day," I met his eyes in challenge. He looked surprised for a moment before a wide smile stretched across his face.

"So I will. And you..." he leaned in a bit, and though my face heated to spectacular temperatures, I stayed my ground. "I'm going to see just what kind of demon you will become."

"Sebastian," I grinned, our faces now so close they almost touched, "don't you know? I'm one hell of a badass demon." He returned the grin and we both leaned back without another word, me returning to my laptop and him to his papers.

"Are they always like this?" Phenex grumbled to Ciel.

"They have been since I met her," he grumbled back. They were currently comparing the Gate of Cain to other sigils that they could find and marking down differences in Phenex's room.

"If they want each other so bad, why don't they just fuck and get it over with?" Huffed Phenex. "Well, I mean, even if she is half human, still..."

"I don't understand it either," Ciel simply sighed. "Let's just hope they entertain each other so that girl doesn't go off and cause trouble and he doesn't get bored."

"Yeah," Phenex agreed. "Yeah."