Spoiler warning for Dipper's real name!
Dipper waited a long time for Bill to continue.
'But Dipper'. But Dipper what? But Dipper, don't overreach yourself? Very feasible. Likely, even, although Dipper guessed shrewdly it would be some more vulgar variant. But Dipper, you can do anything you set your mind to, like his mother always said? Hah! Yeah, right.
Dipper had ached to find out, so he'd waited, until it became clear that Bill, while breathing, was no longer receiving on any wavelength Dipper could reach. Dipper tested his hypothesis, tentatively patting Bill's cheek again, then pulling a little on his shoulder, shaking him gently; the demon's head just lolled on the ground, and Dipper realized suddenly that the lee of the dead willow, which had improbably become a cozy little nest, was growing cold and uncomfortable, the forgotten rain slashing in on a savage diagonal.
Oh no, Dipper thought, dismayed; then, aloud, he repeated, "Oh no. Bill? Bill? Oh, darn it—" He wished, passionately, that he could swear. The fact that there was no longer anyone out here who could hear and scold him for his language never occurred to him.
He'd watched Bill, usually in his completely non-human demonic form, teleport around dozens of times, and it didn't appear there was anything to it. Of course, if he hadn't known better, he could also have said that for, say, laser surgery or operating Great-Uncle Ford's inter-dimensional portal. It had looked as natural as breathing, and Dipper now had the undesirable objective of mechanically recreating respiration.
Shivering, Dipper huddled closer to Bill's motionless form and weighed the pros and cons of just closing his eyes, snapping his fingers, and visualizing his and Mabel's room in the attic—or Grunkle Stan's TV room—the gift shop—or even the front yard, on the off-chance that structures possessed some kind of natural shielding … frustration swelled in his gut like an acid belch. That was one of the critical difficulties with this whole venture, he decided: he had to play the game, he didn't have any other choice, but he didn't know the rules.
The only magic he'd ever worked before were simple spells, read verbatim from Great-Uncle Ford's journal, and even those had gone spectacularly badly (though he allowed, with a certain amount of pride, that that, at least, was not entirely his fault: he'd performed them well enough, as far as he knew, but the spells themselves were singularly ill-chosen, for one reason or another).
Did it matter if this wasn't magic, per se, so much as a magical ability? Dipper worried about staking his life—and Bill's, for that matter, although it felt weird to think of Bill's life, or whatever, being subject to anything short of the spaghettification of all existence—on so fine a distinction.
The realization that he was dithering did nothing whatsoever to instill Dipper with confidence.
He plucked nervously at his vest, trying to spread it to greater purpose over Bill's chest, cursing himself for not having worn a coat. Preferably one of the insulated winter ones currently home in Piedmont. The wind shifted, spattering Dipper and his demon with rain and turning what had been the lee of the dead willow to its broadside. Rationally speaking, Dipper knew it was highly unlikely for the temperature to have plummeted to below freezing, but it sure as heck felt like it had.
There wasn't any point in risking everything for no significant gain. Dipper was twelve, sure, and small—that hadn't changed. But even apart from the fact that he was Dipper's guardian and therefore, in a twisty way, Dipper's responsibility, Bill was the only one who knew how to reverse the, the whatever-it-was that he'd done to get them into this situation in the first place. If Dipper ever wanted to trust himself around Mabel again—if he wanted to be himself again—it would be through Bill's magic and knowledge, or at the very least Bill's magic and substantially-more-educated-than-Dipper's guess.
He'd just worked his shoulder under Bill's left arm, and was bracing himself for the demon's mortal weight, as yet unguessed-at, when the unremitting hiss of the rain suddenly stopped. Dipper wrestled, briefly, with the attractive impulse to just keep his head down and not look. He wasn't sure how much more he could take today … then there came the sound of an androgynous throat clearing itself politely, and Dipper's sinuses made a valiant attempt to suck up the interior of his nostrils.
Dipper opened his mouth, but all that came out were thick consonantal sounds. He edged gently out from beneath Bill, moving to stand a little between him and the newcomer, and half-raising his hands in a gesture he dearly hoped conveyed tentative, if not outright casual, goodwill and didn't show his slight anxious tremula to too much disadvantage.
Standing before him, outlined by a silvery halo and untouched by the rain, stood either a slim, almost pretty man, or a handsome and particularly determined woman. His—her—its clothing gave no clues: a black turtleneck, close-fitting jeans, strange garb for a demon in semi-human form but not, he supposed, any weirder than outdated formalwear.
The face reminded Dipper rather of Bill's semi-demonic visage, but there the similarities ended. Instead of the eye of Providence, this demon's design was based upon an odd, multi-jointed, rectangular beast, stylized to appear snarling, looping back on itself to form a solid plate, the economical design oddly familiar to Dipper. The symbol itself was greenish in color, almost black in the stormy light—except for the eye of the beast, which appeared faceted like a gemstone, glowing a poisonous green. It didn't appear to have pupils.
The familiarity nagged and needled, chewing on the back of Dipper's mind, but he couldn't place it. He couldn't even place where he might have seen it before, although he thought if he could get away somewhere to think about it for half a minute …
"Gh," said Dipper; then, more coherently, "Please leave us alone." This new demon hadn't made any hostile overtures, but Dipper hadn't survived his summer in Gravity Falls by taking such things on faith. He started to say, My guardian's hurt, I have to get him out of here, then remembered what Bill had said about Duane's unswerving dedication to regulations … oh gosh, could this some kind of enforcer? Will I have to fight it? He didn't feel equal to fighting his way out of a wet paper sack.
And Bill …
Well, he hadn't known Bill to be afraid of anything, but he'd sounded almost respectful of Duane, which was scary all on its own, for all sorts of reasons.
Dipper felt ridiculously out of his league. Why can't anything ever go according to plan?
The demon tipped its angular head to Dipper, almost a genuflection, and replied in a voice like reeds fluting in the wind, "Most things proceed according to some plan. Just not yours, at this moment."
"How did you know what I was thinking?" Dipper demanded.
The narrow shoulders lifted in a noncommittal shrug.
"Get out of my head!"
Pale hands spread like daylilies in a gesture of acquiescence. "As you wish. May I suggest, however, that our transaction will progress much more smoothly if only you allow me to … ?"
"What transaction?" Dipper narrowed his eyes. Without realizing it, he'd squared his stance, standing much more protectively in front of Bill. The fact that he had to look up—and up—at the stranger didn't much signify just now. "Who are you? What do you want?" When there came no answer, Dipper growled, "You'd better start answering me, buddy, or … !" Or what? He wished Grunkle Stan were here; no one could bluff like his Grunkle Stan. Dipper, on the other hand, had never once won a game of poker, even against Mabel after she'd broken her arm in third grade and was strung out on pain meds.
In spite of its stony absence of expression, Dipper got the feeling that this new demon was very much interested in what might have followed that 'or', but it only shook its head regretfully, intoning, "I am very sorry to have startled you, Mason Pines. I only thought you might require my … "
"How do you know my name?" Dipper gasped. Only two people here did know that Dipper wasn't his real given name—his sister, Mabel, and his Great-Uncle Ford. Grunkle Stan, he recalled, had even remarked on how much his parents must have hated him, saddling him with a name like that. Mabel had kept her expression carefully neutral. Had she or Great-Uncle Ford told someone?
Or had the demon plucked it out of his subconscious? It certainly wasn't there at the forefront of his mind; he sometimes forgot entirely. The thought of this freaky animal-statue-headed weirdo pawing grubbily through his head made him want to take a shower. A nice, long, hot one.
The demon's voice was even, surrendering nothing. "I know many things."
"Sure," Dipper said. He was proud that his voice didn't quaver much. "Bill said that, too. Seems to be you guys' way of making yourselves feel better, holding all your endless knowledge over us poor little mortals' heads."
"Not entirely mortal, I don't think," the demon said thoughtfully. Its eye flickered from toxic green to a cool, luminous blue as it swiveled its head in the opposite direction, toward its left shoulder now, like a dog trying to get a bead on a strange sound. "What happened to you, child?"
All of a sudden, Dipper's newfound abilities felt entirely inadequate to this situation. Bill, I wish you'd wake up and help me out here. Better yet, I wish you'd let me get squashed. "I don't know what you're talking about," he growled.
"You lie badly," the demon remarked, a smile in its voice. Dipper suppressed a shiver. "Never mind. It's interesting, but … I imagine it has something to do with dear William's regrettable lack of forethought. Never mind," it repeated, then seemed to gaze meditatively into Dipper's soul. It was giving him a serious case of the willies, but at least it was keeping the rain off: its forcefield, or aura, or whatever, had extended to cover the better part of the little shelter, although the ground was still wet, and it was still bitterly cold.
On the off-chance all that drivel about the eyes being the windows to the soul contained some grain of truth, and Dipper's unrestrained staring had only been assisting the demon in reading on the back of Dipper's eyeballs things it had no right to know, Dipper crouched to rest his hand on Bill's shoulder; the flesh beneath was cold, and when he touched the backs of his fingers lightly to Bill's face, he realized that what he'd taken for droplets of rain water was in fact sweat.
Dipper's gut clenched. Were those awful bloody wounds already infected? And if they were, could he or the others do anything about it? Do antibiotics work on demons?
"I can help you," the demon enticed. "You can save him." Its voice was nearly lyrical with the subtle force of its persuasion.
Without looking up, Dipper made a sound down in his throat, neither outright receptive nor overtly discouraging.
"You will, however, incur a debt to me, which you may pay at a later time." Could a faceless entity smirk? Dipper had spent entirely too much time with Bill to be able to maintain the luxurious delusion of believing otherwise. He was discovering, however, that there were less predictable creatures than Bill, who was so reliably twisty that he'd somehow come out the other side into a sort of weird trustworthiness. "Though that time will be, of course, my choice."
"Of course," Dipper echoed scathingly. He stroked Bill's high cheekbone, gingerly, as he would pet a sleeping cat. Bill was so cold … what would he have done if Dipper had been the one bleeding? No, wait—there wasn't any point to that line of self-inquiry. Bill knew his own powers. He wouldn't have had to rely on some, some damn deus ex machina. Dipper sighed, raking his fingers through his hair.
Finally, he asked, without inflection, "What do I have to do? Do we shake?"
The demon's eye lit as though from within, flickering between the radioactive green glow and an excited sort of amber, not unlike, Dipper thought disparagingly, the dashboard of a car in serious distress. "Oh, no," the demon replied, its voice still modulated to neat neutrality, but the breathiness of its tone betraying its excitement. "Your word will be enough. The spirit is in the breath; whatever you agree aloud, in what terms, is as binding as a contract. More, in some places, some periods."
"Okay, then." Dipper took a deep breath. "Get us home—make Bill well again—and I'll owe you."
"I can't heal your guardian," the demon answered, with a show of regret that Dipper might have once believed. "But the other … that I can do."
"Then do it," Dipper snapped. He gripped Bill's shoulder tightly, between both hands, just in case. Demons had a tendency to interpret perfectly clear commands in the worst way possible. "Deal already!"
"Deal, Dipper Pines." In the moment before the dead willow twinkled prettily out of existence, Dipper realized where he'd seen that strange demon's symbol before.
It looked, he thought, an awful lot like the old Chinese stonemasons' depictions of demon-gods, half-animal, half-man, and all crazy. Or, worse, like the ancient, mysterious Mayan gods, drenched in blood and thriving on sacrifice.
