FSE

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Happy Halloween, everyone.

The night that Clara first encountered her demon, she went to bed with a book and a cup of chamomile tea. This was on advice from a coworker at the library, who had ensured her that there was nothing more likely to get her right to sleep. In truth Clara had not expected this to work, but she still felt a peculiar sense of disappointment when she lay back, turned off her bedside lamp and stared at the ceiling for the next hour, very tired but still stubbornly awake.

It wasn't that she was uncomfortable. She'd piled blankets onto herself, as befitted a chilly autumn night, and felt very snug. Her pillows were fluffed exactly right and the night outside her window was silent but for the gentle rustle of wind-blown leaves. Above her, tiny streaks of moonlight cut palely across the ceiling, hemmed in on all sides by banks of deepest shadow. But for the quiet whir of the refrigerator in the kitchen, and the occasional grumble from the pipes, which were very old and probably needed replacing, everything was dead silent inside of the house.

Clara shut her eyes and tried counting backwards from one hundred, interspacing each number with a long, deep breath (this was another thing she'd been told to do by the same coworker), but she got bored by fifty and opened her eyes again, feeling discontented.

For a moment she felt quite lonely, lying there by herself, engulfed by blankets and taking up only a portion of her bed. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark by now and she found them drifting to the middle drawer of the big wooden dresser that sat at the foot of her bed. There, in a special bag, she kept a pink vibrator with a soft plastic head.

Clara squirmed for a moment, contemplating. One paw slid nearly between her legs, fingertips touching the hem of her sensible white panties, then she felt abruptly disappointed with herself and sat quickly up, blue-white runnels of static prickling down her arms and along the length of her tail.

"Oh for goodness sake." Clara muttered under her breath.

Clara was a wolf, small and covered all over with shaggy black fur that she had never quite been able to tame. Her ears sat crooked and her long, fluffy brush of a tail got caught up in the blankets for a moment before she was able to tug it free.

Still grumbling, she groped for her glasses and fixed them to her muzzle before standing up and stretching, working the last of the static from her fur. It cast a strange, sourceless luminescence in the dark, tracing the outer boundaries of her form in tiny blue arcs. Even so, she got shocked quite badly when trying to turn on her lamp.

Clara kept her room in the very back of her house; a small, almost den-like space that just barely contained her bed, a nightstand and a badly overcrowded bookshelf. Clothes overflowed from the little closet and heaps of books were stacked atop the shelf, which had begun to noticeably sag beneath the weight.

She looked once more to the dresser, but felt even less inclination to go collect its lewd contents.

"Not today, Satan." Clara said.

Instead, she collected her empty tea mug and brought it to the kitchen sink. Her house was small and very old, with tinplate ceilings and squeaky wooden floors. The doors were all Victorian vintage, with round brass knobs and huge keyholes that could be peeked through if one so wished. It was not difficult to imagine old fashioned dramas playing out in some of the rooms ("did you know that so-and-so's daughter was caught sneaking away with the servant boy? How scandalous!").

Clara quite liked it.

Returning to the back of the house, Clara gave a moment's consideration to going back to bed, as she knew would be prudent, but the thought of sitting, staring up at the ceiling and simply waiting for her body to succumb to fatigue held no charms.

Next to her bedroom, Clara kept an office. This was the larger of the two rooms, though it was no less cramped and cluttered. Clara had paneled two of the walls with floor to ceiling bookshelves and jammed an enormous desk into the corner between the others. It was presently covered with book restoring equipment; brushes and blocks for pressing pages flat, magnifying glasses and glue and fine silk thread for suturing bindings.

At the moment she was trying to restore a crumbling leather-bound copy of One Thousand and One Nights. It wasn't very old or especially valuable, but sometimes Clara simply fixed things for the sake of it. She'd removed the binding and shaved away the glue, but it would be some time before the book was ready to be reassembled.

Looking over the stacks of pages and the deteriorating leather cover with its faded gilt inscriptions, Clara felt newly at peace. She sat down and took up a scalpel. No matter how tired she felt, it was always soothing to do some restoration work. This way she could distract herself for a little bit.

Clara thought about listening to music, but set to humming instead, singing little fragments of songs that she couldn't quite remember the lyrics to. For a second she felt slightly embarrassed, but of course there was nobody around to hear her. Clara paused in her work and could not stop from sighing.

It wasn't that she felt lonely. Not really. She had friends at the library and spent a fair amount of time being social, even if crowds made her nervous and she had no real capacity for small-talk. What was truly the matter, Clara knew (and did not like to admit, even to herself) was that she longed for companionship of an entirely different sort.

A thought came, tingly and alluring. There was nothing stopping her from walking downtown, to where there were bars and clubs lit by neon. Or looking at the handful of dating apps on her phone that she had installed and then become too nervous to actually use.

Clara had dated before, of course, but it had been a while since her last attempt. She shut her eyes for a moment and pictured the dim interior of a club. The thump of music and the attentions of men who were patient, handsome and not likely to hurt her unless she asked them very nicely.

But that wasn't typically how things went in real life. She would need to find a friend to accompany her, or let people know where she was going and with who, and she'd need to always keep one eye on her drink and try not to attract the attentions of anyone nasty or potentially dangerous. And if she did...

Ugh.

The whole exercise suddenly seemed dismal and hopeless. Far too much work and risk for a distinctly speculative prize.

Clara slumped back in her chair, a breath hissing through sharp canine teeth.

"You'll be thirty in January," she said sternly, looking to where she could see a distorted reflection of herself in the nearest magnifying glass. "If you never even try, you will die alone. What do you think of that?"

Her reflection gave no answer. Clara groaned and then forced herself to sit straight once more, though the intricacies of the work had lost their charm. She trimmed a few pages and lifted stains with oxalic acid, but her mind was distracted and the thoughts which emerged intact swung wildly between hopeful aspirations and terrible self pity.

A heavy blanket of fatigue hung over everything.

Perhaps she would meet somebody at work, on friendly ground where she knew everything was safe and stable. New people came into the library all the time; students, intellectuals and researchers who asked to see the archives. The next time she escorted someone down there, she could start a conversation...

Clara drifted, a haze settling over her like a warm, dry mist.

She could only have been asleep for a moment, but when Clara next opened her eyes, the office was dark. She'd slumped back in her chair and swiveled a little bit to the side, so that she was looking past the edge of her desk and into the far corner of the office. A few thoughts blearily emerged; the power had gone out, or the lamp's bulb had lost its filament, or...

She couldn't move.

With that realization everything else fell away, all of the fatigue swept aside in an instant. Clara felt wholly awake and alert, her heart thumping and each strand of fur on her whole body standing perfectly straight. Yet, though every instinct demanded that she bolt upright, none of that translated into action. It was as though she were staring out through a stranger's eyes.

She blinked hard (this was about the only movement she could still make), once and then twice, as though it might free her from whatever had just happened, but all of her muscles remained stubbornly locked.

A few panicky thoughts registered. The most prominent was that she must have paralyzed herself by sleeping in a strange position. Her spinal cord had been pinched or...something. But that couldn't be right. She could still feel everything, from head to toe, but nothing would move. Even her tail, ordinarily prone to wagging and swishing at the slightest excuse, hung limp.

Again she squeezed her eyes shut and stubbornly willed herself to move. Nothing. She tried again. Blink. Dark. In a moment's time, everything would be back to normal.

She opened her eyes as quickly as she could.

There was somebody standing in the corner of her office.

Though she could not flinch or scream, Clara still felt a terrible numb shock roll through her, as though she had just seized hold of a live wire. Her heart skipped a beat and she felt her nerves, already overloaded, fizz like a shaken seltzer.

A tiny, frightened wheeze leaked from between her teeth.

She couldn't make out anything more than a silhouette, but Clara thought that the figure was a man, tall and sleek, staring directly at her. She couldn't figure out how he had walked over the squeaky floorboards without waking her up, or why he was standing so still. The only thing that seemed certain was a terrible sense that he was responsible for this. His gaze transfixed her.

Clara stared, petrified. In the corner, she saw the figure stir. His shoulders rose and she saw one foot lift, as though he might be about to take a step forward. She--

The table side lamp kicked on and Clara jolted upright, knocking over her chair and nearly throwing herself into the back wall. She stared wildly around, vision dazzled, and then snatched up a scalpel from the desk.

"You--" She began to snarl, then found that she could speak no more.

The office was empty.

Jittering with nerves, Clara checked the rest of the house. She moved cautiously, scalpel held out before her like a sword, but none of the shadows held anything sinister. The doors and windows were still locked. She could not see anyone when she peered into her back garden. Even the new-fallen leaves were undisturbed.

In the kitchen, the digital clock on her stove was blinking 12:00. Slowly, Clara reset it. She was still trembling and could not make herself breathe evenly, but the danger seemed to be past...if it had ever existed in the first place.

"Did I imagine that?" She asked out loud, but though the rational forefront of her mind was quick in supplying explanations (a lucid dream, or a waking nightmare that was now past), she could not entirely put the shadowy figure out of her mind.

This time she went right back to bed and pulled the covers up to her nose. Sleep did not come, but at least she felt slightly safer.

The next day was a long one. Clara got up and made it to the library on time, then drank coffee until she jittered. This didn't make her feel any less tired, of course, but at least she wasn't likely to start drowsing in the aisles.

As she re-shelved the daily returns, Clara found herself joined by her friend Robin. Robin was a bunny, small even for her species and unfailingly energetic. The first hints of her white winter coat were starting to come in and Robin kept plucking absentmindedly at her fur. When they neared the front of the library, which had been filled with spooky Halloween related literature, Clara related her encounter with the shadowy figure. She spoke around the odd paralysis; even thinking about it made her throat feel tight.

"Sounds like you were visited by a ghost," said Robin, rather more seriously than Clara had expected. "Is your house haunted? Has anyone died there?"

"Probably." Clara said.

"I don't think I could live in a haunted house," Robin paused to ride out a shiver, seeming genuinely distressed by the idea. "...You know, last night I asked my boyfriend if he would fight a ghost, like it was coming to get us. He said he would grab me and run away. Can you believe that?"

"I'm not sure anyone could fight a ghost." Clara said, kneeling to place some books back onto the bottom shelf of a bookcase.

Robin huffed.

"That's what he said. 'Cause they're made of vapor. I just think he's afraid. You'd fight a ghost, right, Clara?"

"I don't believe in ghosts."

"Really?" Robin's long ears fluttered. "C'mon, you just got the shit haunted out of you last night. How do you explain that?"

"I dreamt it, or hallucinated. Something. Look, I didn't really sleep much."

At this, Robin gave her a sympathetic look.

"Did the chamomile not help?" She asked.

Clara shrugged. Robin became newly contemplative.

"How about you try burning a bunch of scented candles and running a hot bath. That always puts me out like a light."

"Thanks, Robin." Clara said. They'd re-shelved all of the daily returns (or, more accurately, she had), so Clara took her leave and went downstairs. The bottom floor of the library was divided between the general archives and then a special climate controlled vault which held the library's private collection. It always gave Clara a special sense of pride to unlock the big steel door that led to the collection.

It was cold in the collection room, the air kept cool and dry in order to preserve the delicate condition of the rarer tomes. Clara had to wear special white cotton gloves even to touch any of the books. It was a great deal more serious than her little hobby room at home.

Yet, though she tried her hardest, it was impossible to really focus on work. Her mind kept drifting and every so often she had to really commit to her tiredness and yawn. There were certainly no handsome strangers wandering around, needing help finding archival documents or...other things.

Clara was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she nearly missed the advancing clop of hooves on the linoleum floor. A moment later, a key turned in the collection room's door. Clara didn't need to look in order to know that it was Ms. Kurtz, her boss.

Ms. Kurtz was a doe, thin and with white speckles in her brown fur that spoke of long decades spent working in the library. She always wore a green knitted shawl around her shoulders and, as seemed obligatory for librarians of a certain age, a pair of half moon spectacles with gold rims. A hint of lavender perfume hung around her at all times.

"Robin tells me you had a spectral visitor yesterday." Ms. Kurtz said, pulling on her own cotton gloves.

Clara glanced back, caught momentarily off guard. It took her poor, tired mind an embarrassingly long time to put together what exactly was being discussed.

"No, or..." She sighed. "Just had a weird night. That's all."

Ms. Kurtz looked over the repair queue for the day, which had barely been touched.

"Are you alright, dear?" She asked, reaching out to touch Clara's forehead. Clara ducked down, feeling a little bit bad for flinching away from her boss's concern. Assurances spilled from between her lips but Ms. Kurtz's gaze held, the doe looking less than convinced.

"Still not sleeping?" She asked.

"I slept a little bit," Clara said. "But..." She hesitated, looked once more at her boss, then caved and told the whole story; the strange paralysis, the shadowy figure, and how suddenly everything had returned to normal

Ms. Kurtz listened attentively and then, to Clara's surprise, simply nodded and began polishing her glasses.

"Ah." She said.

"...Ah?"

"Sleep paralysis," said the doe, her voice warm and sure. "It's not pleasant, certainly, but you're not in any danger."

Though she had guessed as much, having a definite label to throw upon the strange events of the previous night made Clara feel slightly better.

"Good." She said.

"If it reoccurs, do your best to take deep breaths and remember that it will pass in a few minutes."

Clara thought for a moment about asking after the shadow, but then felt silly. It had been nothing more than a figment conjured up by her frightened mind.

"Of course, if it really is a ghost, remember to be nice," said Ms. Kurtz, as though the old doe had read her thoughts. "After all, ghosts are...were people too."

Clara smiled and promised that she would. Though she felt no less drained, a certain weight had lifted from her shoulders.

The end of the day crept up with surprising speed and Clara left the library having done almost nothing of any real use.

"Poor thing, maybe you should take a sick day tomorrow." Robin suggested as they clocked out, but Clara was quick to shake her head.

"I'll be okay," she assured the bunny. "Just need some rest."

She walked home along a familiar path, eyelids drooping and whiskers askew. The world always felt small and foggy when she was this exhausted, as though the whole universe simply stopped existing when it passed beyond her direct eyeshot. Clara tried to think of what she needed to prepare for the coming days; there were books in the collection that would need a special spool of silk thread that she kept at home, so...

Wait.

Clara stopped and looked up, shocked back to alertness. At some point she had passed off of her normal route back home and was instead standing in the middle of a narrow cobbled lane, high brick buildings rising on either side of her. It was dead quiet but for the distant noise of traffic, not a soul to be seen.

She turned a circle in place, feeling anxious, but then caught sight of a street sign and realized where she was. She had wandered a few blocks past her neighborhood and into the middle of the old historical district.

Clara sighed and began to turn back towards her street, but found her attention caught by something. Off to her left, snugged into a shadowy alcove between a barbershop and an empty storefront with a red FOR RENT sign across its front, Clara could see a tiny bookshop, its front window piled high with faded, invitingly ancient looking volumes. One particular book, bound in ink-black leather, caught her eye. Its jacket was cracked and the binding had begun to tear away, Clara could see clumps of pages sticking out at uneven angles, like a mouth full of crooked teeth. There was something strangely inviting about it, a sense of weight and power even past the decrepitude.

Clara opened the door and stepped inside, the jingle of a brass bell announcing her entrance. The interior of the bookshop was dim, lit only by a row of glass sheathed sconces on the near wall. Below them, a proprietary desk had been all but swallowed by heaps of books and broadsheets. Everything smelled of paper, ink and glue.

Looking around, Clara wondered how she had never come to hear of the shop, packed as it was with promising candidates for the library's special collection. Even beyond its contents, the shop had a strange air of potential that made her feel slightly more energized and awake.

Clara looked to the window display and found the curious black book where it had been set off to one side. Now that she was closer, she could see symbols etched into its cover; stars, crescent moons and strange forked sigils.

"A very interesting selection." A voice sounded.

Clara jolted, caught by surprise. An old white fox had appeared noiselessly at her elbow. He showed no reaction to her startlement, only reached out and picked up the book with practiced delicacy. He wore an ink stained smock and delicate cotton gloves. This had to be the shop's owner.

"My apologies for surprising you, I was doing some work in the back." Said the fox. Clara realized, with a vague hint of worry, that she could not actually see the back wall of the shop, though the space the bookshop occupied had appeared very small from the outside. It was like looking at a matte painting under low light, everything simply dissolved into an amber-hued blur.

An optical illusion, she assured herself, and focused her attention instead upon the crumbling black book.

"No worries," Clara said quickly. "Um, I saw it from the street."

The fox smiled.

"There are very few books of this sort made today," he said, sounding both wistful and deeply reverent. "Would you like to hold it?"

Clara began to demur, as she had no cotton gloves with her, but found the volume passed quite willingly into her paws. The black book felt dry and, despite its poor condition, surprisingly sturdy. At each corner of the cover were brass studs, dark with corrosion and age.

She read its title with some difficulty. Most of the gilding had flaked away and the font was strange to her eyes.

"Demonology," she said out loud. "...As written by King James?"

"Oh no," said the fox. "It shares a title...but this volume takes a very different attitude towards the Master's servants."

"I'm not well versed on occult writings."

"Are you a book collector?" The fox asked.

"No...or, not the way you mean," Clara said. It was surprisingly hard to tear her eyes away and look back to the fox. "I work for the city library."

"An admirable collection of rare volumes," the fox said approvingly. "I was about to make tea. Would you care to join me for a cup?"

Clara hesitated for a moment, then supposed that there could be no harm in it. She had no pressing errands to run and the fox seemed perfectly pleasant.

"Thank you." She said, and allowed herself to be escorted further into the shop, past a set of shelves filled with silk jacketed books and to a little wooden table. Against the near wall a huge, brightly enameled samovar bubbled pleasantly away. Along its sides, dizzying helixes of flowers had been painted, spiraling out and along, traced on all asides by flocks of golden birds.

"It is rare that I am able to spend time with another professional," said the fox, fetching a pair of mugs from a cabinet next to the samovar. "Especially one who knows how to repair books."

Clara blinked, caught off guard.

"How did you...?" She began to ask, but the fox was already looking to her paws and the tiny ink stains dappling her fur.

"I am fortunate to have all of these books," he said, nodding to the nearer shelves. "But so many are timeworn that I cannot hope to repair them all."

Clara traced a delicate finger across the cover of her book (how easy it was to call it hers, even though she had not bought it yet...), feeling both sympathetic and somehow mournful. Before her, the fox poured golden tea from the samovar, plumes of steam rising like mist from the bottom of a waterfall. It smelled of licorice and ginger, like strong medicine. He set the smaller mug before her and took a deep draught from his, unbothered by the heat.

For a time they sat and talked, discussing favorite tools and methods. The fox used gut for thread instead of silk and always read each book he repaired, no matter how esoteric or unusual.

Clara listened with interest, her fatigue all but forgotten.

"Do you run this place all by yourself?" She asked, testing her tea once again. It was nearly cool enough to drink.

The fox nodded with unhidden pride.

"Indeed," he said. "And I live here as well. In the back." Again he indicated the strange, feverish place deeper into the shop, where the light seemed to break down.

Clara blinked and tried to put her thoughts back into rational order. She sipped her tea, which tasted at once astringent and syrupy sweet. Swirling at the bottom of her mug were small crimson flecks, fragments of flower petals.

"I break my solitude only occasionally," said the fox, giving her a meaningful look. "Every other moment I must devote to my books. Do you live alone? Is this how you tend your books?"

Clara began to nod, then hesitated.

"I don't know if I could live like this," she said, then wondered if that had been rude. "...Being alone might not be good for me, I mean. I used to like it, but now it just feels strange, like I've trained myself into acting a specific way no matter how I actually feel."

She looked across the table, feeling slightly embarrassed, but the fox wore a sympathetic expression.

"It is a good thing you have found this book." He said, tapping the inky black cover with one finger.

Clara wanted to ask what that meant, how an old volume about demons could possibly hold any relevance to her life...but something told her that the fox would not answer. Indeed, he finished his tea and stood up.

"We will be closing in a few minutes." He said.

Light from the gathering sunset must have been coming in through the shop's windows, for now everything held a deep, saturated yellowy hue. Clara thought about finishing her tea, the last sweet dregs of which still swirled invitingly at the bottom of the mug, but then supposed that she ought to get out of the fox's way.

She looked around herself, at the strange light and the stranger way it sat upon the contours of the bookshop, each shadow so deep and dark that it might as well have been drawn in ink. How long had she sat there chatting with the fox?

"How much do I owe you?" Clara began to ask, but the fox shook his head.

"Nothing at all," he said, then smiled at the look on her face. "...I would not dare put a price on what draws books and people together. All I require is a promise that you will treat your acquisition with care."

"Of course," said Clara. "I promise. Thank you so much." She stood and hugged the book to her chest. It felt warm, like a piece of machinery newly at rest.

Still marveling over her good fortune, she stepped away from the table and looked first one direction and then the other, along rows of shelves lit a burnt, somehow ravenous amber. Walking to the table from the front of the shop had taken only a moment, but now she could not make out the front window, or perhaps that was where the light was coming from, except...

"The door is this way." Said the fox.

Clara blinked, snapped from whatever strange loop her mind had become stuck in. Even so it took her a moment to find the fox where he was standing next to one of the nearer shelves. He regarded her with a patient smile, but his eyes kept flashing over her shoulder, to the shop beyond.

She wanted to say something, a thank you, but the air felt heavy and even walking took a peculiar effort. Clara met the fox and he extended a paw, showing her the way forward past dark shelves and cloistered avenues where the air fumed yellow.

Surely just a trick of the light.

The fox never quite took her by the arm or physically guided her along, but he stayed very close for the rest of the walk, still wearing the same smile and occasionally glancing back, though Clara never knew at what. She saw the shop window and dying red sunset-light drooling in from outside, forming shapes like jigsaw pieces past the dark heaps of books piled there. The shop door was open. Clara could feel cold air curling in around her, ruffling her fur.

She took a step forward. The doorway shrank, or she thought it did. For an instant it felt as though she were standing not on a flat surface but rather upon a gradually steepening slope with the walls around her beginning to ripple and contract. Then she felt a paw between her shoulder blades and suddenly she was standing in the doorway itself, the book still hugged to her chest and autumn chill prickling through her fur.

Clara looked to the fox, then past him and to the dim confines of the shop, but something unknowable repulsed her gaze and she took an instinctive step backwards, placing herself onto grimy cobbles, out past the reach (reach?) of the shop.

"Do enjoy your book." Said the fox, then shut the door. A little placard emerged a moment later, reading CLOSED. Clara realized that her heart was racing but could not wholly determine why, her memory of the past few moments was already coming apart like wet tissue paper. She looked down at the book she held, bound in leather and brass, and then let out a slow breath, feeling trembly.

The lights had gone out within the shop. Clara turned and left the narrow lane, returning herself to familiar streets. On the far horizon, the sunset had nearly burnt itself out, a line of red above which the first stars were beginning to appear.

"I had another waking dream." Clara said to herself and felt about halfway convinced by this. Her mind was already starting to turn towards home; tea and a hot bath and maybe she could skim through the first pages of the black book.

"Robin would love this sort of thing," she said, then winced. "...Stop talking to yourself. No wonder you keep hallucinating."

She made it home without further incident, locked the door and put her new book in the office. It made a strange bedfellow for One Thousand and One Nights, Clara supposed, then succumbed to curiosity and carefully opened the black leather cover.

Immediately, she felt a strange resistance. Crouching down, Clara peered past the binding and into a hollow space where something thin twinkled dully from out of the darkness. A small, velvet lined sheath had been built into the book's spine. Time had twisted it ever so slightly, just enough to distort the binding.

The strange glittering thing turned out to be a candle, thin and made from glass instead of wax. A frayed cotton wick protruded from the tip, leading down to an internal reservoir still halfway filled with yellowy oil. Etched around the candle's base in tiny font (Clara had to fetch her magnifying glass to read it) was a simple, if vague, statement:

'for the unsticking of spirits'

Whatever that meant.

Clara set the glass candle aside and investigated the rest of the book (no more hidden compartments, alas). It was written in a heady snarl of Latin and old English, listing all of the great demons who ruled in Hell.

She stifled a yawn and stood back up. Darkness had begun to fall outside and once more her eyelids were drooping.

"Bath." She instructed herself. It would take longer than a shower, but the walk home had been chilly enough that the mere idea of a soak was already putting little frisson tingles up her spine. Besides, Robin would definitely ask about it the next time they saw each other.

What else had the bunny recommended? Oh right, scented candles.

Clara made a cursory search through her drawers while the bath ran, found nothing, and was just beginning to grumble when she had a thought. The glass candle wasn't scented, but it looked to be in working order.

Indeed, when she lit the wick, the candle burned with a low, orange flame that shot spirals of light all down its transparent length. Setting it at the foot of the bathtub (contained in a shallow dish, just in case), Clara stripped naked and got into the bath. She'd run it slightly too hot and so spent the first few minutes shuffling around and wincing. Finally, once she acclimated, Clara lay back, up to her chin in hot, soapy water, and watched the glass candle burn.

She couldn't help but wonder what the people who'd written the black book would have thought seeing their spooky candle used like this.

"Happy Halloween." Clara said, and couldn't help but laugh.

She emerged from her soak feeling warm and relaxed, but still stubbornly awake. Distantly, she thought about the old fox and his bookshop. She would need to go back at some point, perhaps with some tea as a gift. She wanted to take a closer look at the rest of his inventory. Just so long as it wasn't located too deep into the shop itself.

"Something very strange about the light in there." Clara mumbled, then felt silly for even saying that.

She'd go in the morning next time, when the daylight was cool and clear.

Clara made a cursory effort to brush her fur, which had sprung up in spiky clumps all over her body, then figured that it could wait until morning. Besides, the mussiness made her look agreeably shaggy and fierce, like her primeval ancestors must have been. She bared her teeth at the mirror and even summoned a snarl, though it wasn't terribly intimidating.

"Maybe that's how you get a date," Clara said, stifling a yawn. "Chase him down so he knows who the boss is."

This sounded fun enough, in a purely jokey, hypothetical way, but Clara couldn't help imagining the reverse happening; some terrible predator springing from the shadows and pinning her to the ground, his teeth tightening over her throat.

She shivered, an unexpected rush of warmth reddening the insides of her ears and making her stomach clench. Clara turned off the bathroom light and made for her bedroom. Her eyes went to the dresser drawer, but she didn't much like the idea of listening to the vibrator's incessant buzz. Not when her thoughts had suddenly become so interesting.

The lights in her room were off and she sprawled back onto her bed in darkness, paws striking static from her fur as she pushed them between her legs. Once more, Clara could see the outlines of her own body, traced in flickery blue as she shifted and shuffled. The tip of her tail had begun to wag.

She spread her legs wide and stroked one paw through the velvety fur on the insides of her thighs, the other rising to squeeze her throat. All of this was well practiced, the sort of thing she'd done almost every night for...

...Well, there was no point in thinking about how long it had been since she'd last had sex. That way led to madness, or at least a protracted spell of lonely sulking.

Clara supposed that she was good looking; her fur thick and soft, covering a lean, well toned frame. It had surprised some people in the past, sinking their paws through soft fluff only to come up against firm muscle. Clara thought that this made pinning her down more of a reward, especially once her thighs had been levered open and the incessant waggle of her tail momentarily tamed.

She stroked a pair of fingers over the lips of her pussy. God, she was already soaked, hips making presumptive, eager little bucks at each hint of contact. Clara let a breath whistle through her teeth, realizing with a hint of delighted embarrassment that she was actually trembling. _ When she pushed into herself she made a little canine _wuff, only in the back of her throat but still enough to put some heat into her cheeks.

"Such a slut." She muttered shakily, then lay back and fingered herself, thumb rubbing insistent circles over the firm little button of her clit. At the bottom of her vision, Clara could see lines of static rising from where her tail was sweeping across the comforter.

Still, past all of the immediate physical sensation, Clara could not rid herself of a nagging emptiness. For all the attention she paid to herself, it really was just her in the room, as it had been for...

Shit.

Clara blinked hard, ears pinning. She shook her head and tried to focus again on pushing a third finger into herself, but some critical element had drained from the moment and now she just felt dissatisfied and vaguely bored. She pumped away for a while longer, but knew even as she did that it was a lost cause.

"Goodness sake..." Clara sighed, staring up at the ceiling, then stood and shuffled to the sink to wash her paws. In the bathroom mirror she looked a great deal less fierce, just a disheveled little wolf with lonely eyes.

Flopping back onto her bed, Clara thought for a moment about getting under the covers but could not summon the motivation. She lay, crookedly spread-eagled, and tried to think optimistic thoughts, but found her mind derailed by other wants. It was tough to keep herself focused on any one topic for very long.

After a while, much to Clara's own relief, she began to drowse.

Though she had halfway expected it, somewhere in the back of her mind, Clara still nearly yelped when she awoke to find that she could not move. A confused tangle of impulses all passed impotently through her limbs and Clara felt her heart skip a pair of beats. In the far corner of her room, where the shadows were darkest, the vague shape of a figure stood. His stance was different now, and the weight of his terrible gaze no longer felt so direct.

Clara trembled for a moment longer, then slowly forced herself to take a breath. None of this was real. She was dreaming. And though the insistence did not cut through the jangle of terror which had tied her stomach into knots, the rational forefront of her brain slowly cleared.

Even when the figure in the corner of her room took a delicate step forward, she did not panic. His paws made no noise upon the floorboards, so clearly this was just another part of the dream.

Before her, the figure looked around. Freed from the deeper darkness, new details arose. A long, sinuous tail swished behind him and when he turned to one side, as though examining the contents of her room, Clara saw a short, blunt feline muzzle, complete with long whiskers. A pair of eyes opened, luminous and amber. They glowed like lighthouse beacons.

"What a relief," said the figure. "I was beginning to forget what the world felt like."

This, out of everything, startled Clara the most. She blinked and tried to say something back, but her mouth would not move. She produced instead a sharp, surprised exhalation. It did not seem at all correct for a dream monster to speak, or for its voice to sound so...normal. The only element that set it apart was the influence of an underlying purr, so rough and filled with satisfaction that it put a strange shiver all through Clara's middle. Her fur, already disheveled, had begun to stand on end.

The figure's gaze settled more definitely upon her. Clara shivered, though the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. It felt nearly as though she'd sat in a too-hot bath and was waiting for her nerves to stop jangling.

"I suppose I should thank you," said the figure. "I'm not much use without a beholder. And...you've pictured me as a cat. Interesting." He sounded strangely amused.

Clara managed once more to take a deep, even breath, realizing as she did that her jaws had fallen open and her legs were shifting, a slow, syrupy semblance of motion restored to her frozen body. She drew in her legs and sat partially upright, propped on her elbows. No words came. It was always so hard to speak in dreams.

Before she could think any further, the cat slipped onto the bed with her, moving with effortless feline grace. Her mattress did not shift, as it would have if another person had put their weight onto it, but still Clara felt all the pressure and warmth of a body against hers.

She took a sharp breath but still did not feel afraid, even when the cat's paws slid up her legs, sparks of static swallowed instantly by the blackness of his...not fur, it didn't feel soft like fur. Clara couldn't entirely put together what the cat's touch reminded her of. It was not smooth like skin or scales, not rough like the leather of paw-pads. It felt instead like how wind did, when it was blowing just fast enough to press clothing against skin.

He was coming to get her, she realized, to pin her to the bed and do with her what he pleased. For a moment longer there was still some space between them, an opportunity to wriggle off the bed and make for the door. She considered this option in some frightened little corner at the back of her mind, one which had still not assimilated the notion of a purring feline beast emerging seamlessly from empty shadows, but Clara could not bring herself to accept these fears. It was all a dream, after all; warm, lucid and filled with the dominating presence of somebody who wanted to use her.

The cat pushed her legs up and then apart, spreading them wide. For an instant Clara thought of putting some tension into herself, so he would need to work at pushing her down, but there was such effortless strength in the cat's paws that she melted like butter and simply fell onto her back, tail wagging madly back and forth.

She felt at once delighted and a bit embarrassed. It wasn't very proper simply to give herself up in such a manner, especially to someone she had only laid eyes on a few moments before. Someone who had been in the shadows of her home, watching from alien vantages. Had he seen her trying and failing to pleasure herself? Was he now coming to show her how it was done?

Though she knew that she ought to have felt alarmed by this, Clara could not suppress a huge, shamefully heated tremor which ran through her from head to tail. The cat pushed himself between her thighs, taking her wrists and holding them flat against the bed, parallel with her shoulders. Clara wondered if the cat could hear just how quickly her heart was beating. She squirmed, just a little bit, and was pressed immediately back down, the cat leaning in to frame her throat with his teeth. The move was so smooth and perfectly predatory that Clara felt her hips buck against the cat's. Something hard and slick pressed impatiently against the inside of her thigh for a moment, then was grinding more deliberately against the sodden lips of her sex. She could feel rows of firm, rubbery barbs and then a pulse of pre that wet the puff of fur just above her slit.

The cat didn't bite her quite hard enough to break skin, but his teeth parted fur and suddenly there was a sting of pain and enough pressure to put little black spots into the corners of Clara's vision. Her mouth fell open and she felt her tongue loll out, such a tremendous fizzy shiver of fear, shock and delight transfixing her that she could hardly stand it. A high, needy whine leaked from the back of her throat and she passed herself even further into the cat's control, legs wide and her throat left vulnerable and open.

A low, rumbly purr poured from the bottom of the cat's throat, hot eager puffs of breath warming Clara's skin. She made a plaintive little noise when his teeth slipped away, but then he was looking directly at her, so close that their noses nearly touched.

"Good girl." The cat said, his eyes aglow. Clara shivered, caught between embarrassment and purest lust. How appropriate it felt, to be on her back with her legs spread and both arms pinned, tail swishing away, free only to transmit her pleasure.

She bucked her hips against the cat's, burning with desperate need, but he only smiled at her and then pushed her paws above her head, pinning her even more totally in place.

"Please..." Clara began to say, but knew by the look the cat gave her that this was not how he wanted her to beg. She hesitated for a moment, blushing, but all her thoughts could focus on was the teasing pressure of the cat's cock between her legs. Embarrassment curled in the pit of her stomach, but though her ears pinned and Clara squirmed, it proved easy to whine, to show her throat and beg like a beast. Clara saw a shiver animate the cat, clumps of fur rising along his arms and between his shoulders. Some element of his self control seemed to splinter and he shoved roughly forward with a growl, hilting himself into her with a pair of hard, messy thrusts.

It didn't hurt, not exactly, but Clara still cried out and squirmed in place, legs shooting straight for a startled instant before wrapping tight around the cat's hips, locking him into her. She felt almost uncomfortably full, the cat's girth forcing countless tiny muscles to ripple and stretch.

The cat kissed her throat, on top of the tingly ache where he had bitten her, then pushed his tongue into her mouth. Clara moaned and squirmed, breath coming in high, tiny gasps. Every bit of her felt tense and tight, heat burning between her legs and rising to fill her chest.

She clenched down hard upon the cat's length, his barbs striking sparks of pleasure where they rubbed deep inside of her, and could not suppress a sharp, nearly feral yip of delight. Immediately, Clara blushed, but the cat only laughed and then kissed her again.

"Such a needy little wolf," he purred. "Do you roll over and beg like this for everyone, or just me?"

Clara squirmed, embarrassed by the instinctive tingle that the cat's voice ignited within her. She tried to shake her head, to explain that this was just a dream, but only a moan came from between her lips. The cat's pace was getting faster, his teeth nipping once more at her neck. To speak, even to string thoughts together, felt impossible.

Her legs, still wrapped tight around the cat's hips, shivered as he ground into her, savoring the completeness of an especially deep thrust. It felt as though she were spilling out from beyond the bounds of her own self, all worry and fatigue erased, replaced by an all consuming ecstatic heat.

Clara came with a moan, then the rising wail of a lupine howl that she just barely caught between her teeth. The cat thrust hard, once and then again, grinding his full length into the velvety heat of her lupine cunt. Clara bucked and cried out, delighted by her own helplessness and the weight of the cat's affections.

"Was that a howl I almost heard?" The cat teased, and then released her wrists, his paws falling instead to the thick ruff of fur which hid her breasts. Though she knew what was coming, Clara still jumped when the cat pinched her nipples, a nearly painful ripple of purest sensation passing through her, forcing her pussy to clench tight against his throbbing cock. High little noises escaped her lips, but not quite a howl. That would have simply been too much.

"Don't hold back now," the cat chided. "You were being so good."

He straightened her shivery legs and pulled out of her. Clara whined, worried for a moment that the cat would simply end things there, but then strong paws found her hips and she was flipped unceremoniously onto her front. The cat took her by the base of the tail and tugged upwards until she scrambled to get her legs under herself, presenting her wet slit. Like a good girl.

Clara tried to look behind herself, simultaneously alarmed and embarrassed by the way her tail wriggled in the cat's grip. The insides of her thighs were slick with moisture, her pussy appallingly empty. It was all she could do not to push herself backwards like a bitch in heat.

The cat positioned himself behind her, paws framing the toned roundness of her fluffy rear. A finger traced the virgin pucker of her tail-hole for an instant, long enough that Clara's heart leapt in her chest, then she felt the familiar heat of the cat's cock at her slit and met his first thrust with an open moan and a spasm of tail-wagging.

Though she knew that she ought to have remained on all fours for better leverage, Clara's arms gave way and she flopped onto her front, panting helplessly into the pillows, static frothing over her fur as the cat pounded her cunt. A feline paw found the back of her head and took hold of a soft handful of black fur, pressing her face into the bedspread. Clara moaned, the noises of her pleasure muffled but unmistakable, if the constant buck of her hips and the wag of her tail wasn't already.

The cat was rougher now, growling low in his throat as he fucked her, his free paw gripping hard to the base of her tail so he could more effectively hold her in place. Clara gasped at each new thrust, legs quivering and her center once more filling with fire. She tried to look back but the cat's grip on her hair tightened and he pushed into her even harder, balls slapping against the lust sodden fur lining her thighs.

A new, shivery tension had begun to animate the cat now, Clara could feel it in the way he pinned her, in the impatient push of his hips and the rough snarl that accompanied his breathing. She pushed her hips back against him and was gratified when the cat's next thrust was even rougher, a burning spurt of pre splashing into her.

"Cum for me," the cat panted, a rumbly purr edging his demand. "Let me hear how much you love this."

This time Clara couldn't have held back given all the effort in the world. The lust within her boiled over, white hot, and she let out a shameless, yipping howl, legs gone completely to jelly and her tail still wagging frantically away. Around her, the world fizzed to static and though she wondered for a fractured instant if her neighbors had just heard her, it was impossible to maintain focus on anything but how impossibly, almost painfully good this felt. A rush of fractured thoughts peppered the front of her mind, ecstasy and a hint of embarrassment and then, more than anything, sureness that she would do anything more that the cat asked, just so long as he kept fucking her just like this.

As though reading her thoughts, the cat leaned forward, both paws planted between her shoulder blades, and put his whole weight into a last flurry of hard, quick thrusts. Clara felt her knees lifted from the bed and cried out, clenching down on the cat's throbbing cock as he flooded her with hot spurts of feline seed.

Her legs collapsed and she went down onto her front, the cat molded tight to her back. His arms went around her chest and Clara felt a huff of hot breath ruffle her fur before sharp teeth closed at the join between her shoulder and neck, the cat purring as he overflowed her womb. It seemed to take entire minutes before Clara stopped feeling new pulses of cum within her. She rolled her hips against the cat's, feeling pleasantly warm and full.

"Good girl," he murmured into her ear. "Such a good girl..."

Though Clara knew that they could not stay like this forever, she still could not suppress a disappointed whine when the cat released his embrace and pulled out of her, his cock slipping free with a muted pop and then a gush of seed that soaked Clara's thighs.

Clara let out a slow, shivery breath, then found herself being turned onto her back, the cat straddling her chest. Her legs, still trembling, were splayed awkwardly open, tail still swishing jaggedly away. The cat's paws framed her face and Clara felt the hard press of his cock against her cheek, cum smeared into her fur and over her whiskers. Then she opened her mouth and allowed him to slide in, filling her muzzle with a single slow thrust.

The cat was careful not to completely gag her, though sometimes Clara had to time her breathing, her sips of air flavored with iron and salt. He tasted strong; salty and bitter with an intriguingly sweet edge to his seed. Clara allowed her eyes to slide halfway shut, feeling shivery and content. At the height of each gentle thrust she found her nose pressed into a tangled tuft of soft, inky fur.

She wanted to tell the cat that he now felt very real indeed, that the dream was much more vivid than any of the others she'd ever experienced, but there was really no point...even if her mouth had been free.

As though sensing her distraction, the cat reached back and pushed a pair of fingers into her messy, oversensitive slit, making Clara buck and squirm. She whimpered, ears folding back and mouth falling fully open for a moment, leaving her to moan helplessly around his cock. Threads of drool ran from the corners of her mouth.

"I hope you don't mind if I keep this up for a while longer," said the cat. "It's not every day that I find myself such a cute, eager wolf to play with."

Clara blinked, momentarily astonished by the cat's stamina, but then he drew a finger over her clit and all conscious thoughts fizzed immediately to pleasure, so sharp and intense that it almost hurt. Again she cried out, and again the cat met her moans with an eager push of his cock, filling the back of her throat with a slow, constant drool of slick, salty pre. She could feel an impatient eagerness building within him, adding insistence to each new thrust.

Somewhere within her, down where coherent thought still existed, Clara felt a hint of worry. She was already utterly drained, limbs jittery and weak. How could she hope to keep up with the cat's voracious demands?

Yet, none of this truly registered. When the cat hilted into her mouth next Clara heard her tail thump against the bedspread and felt her thighs clamp tight around the cat's paw, helping push his fingers ever deeper into her. She could see him looking down at her, amber eyes glowing brighter than ever, white teeth curved into a smile.

At this some sense of restraint seemed to fall away and Clara felt the cat shift himself forward, pushing his cock ever further down her throat. She gagged, her air entirely cut off for a startling moment, but her tail was still wagging and her heart leapt at the height of each thrust.

The cat let out a shivery, delighted breath and grabbed her headboard with his free paw, as if to physically pull himself forward into her eager maw. Clara could hear his claws digging into the wood as he fucked her mouth, grinding his hips against her muzzle with feral intensity. She could feel the tautness of his body and the eager churn of his balls against her chin, still heavy and astonishingly full, as though he hadn't drained them into her only a few minutes earlier.

He spoke as he fucked her; low, lewd compliments punctuated by purrs and heavy, ecstatic exhalations. Her mouth was perfect and her cunt still begging for use, clenched tight and eager around his fingers. Within herself, Clara could feel a familiar rising ripple of heat, wringing moans from her well fucked mouth.

She looked up at him, begging with her eyes, and something about the nature of her gaze seemed to send the cat over the edge. He bucked hard against her muzzle, shaft jerking. Clara had just enough time to take a deep breath before the first thick pulse of feline seed splashed into the back of her throat. Though she'd halfway anticipated the cat's volume, she still found her eyes widening as her mouth overflowed, little splashes of white drooling down the sides of her face. She swallowed, once and then again, but it barely made a difference. Her tail swished madly and her hips bucked, the space between her legs gone white hot. But when she tried to cry out at the wondrousness of her own climax, she could not.

Thankfully, the cat pulled back, his cock slipping from her mouth. Clara lay back, gasping for breath, her fur slicked with seed. The cat stroked one paw along the length of his shaft, splashing Clara's throat and chest with the last of his load.

Clara blinked. It was surprisingly hard to close her mouth, the corners of her jaws ached and all she could taste was the salty-sweetness of the cat's load. Casually, still purring low in his throat, the cat lay down beside her. He nuzzled close, mindless of the mess, and only then seemed to notice her exhaustion, and the aimless jitters which still had not left her legs.

"Poor thing, I've fucked you to pieces," he said with mingled sympathy and pride. "I'll give you some time to rest."

But though Clara half expected the cat's paws to roam somewhere lewd, he simply lay alongside her, acting as the big spoon. His breathing had settled and she could feel his heartbeat, slow and strong. She put a paw against his chest, marveling that she could now feel fur and flesh, and was met by a kiss in return, the cat pressing her onto her back with equal measures care and strength. Exhausted as she was, Clara felt a trembly thrill suffuse her and wanted, for an instant, to be mounted and fucked ragged all over again. Then her fatigue closed in and she simply smiled as the cat broke the kiss.

"Go to sleep." He ordered, with gentle sternness.

"I already am." Clara tried to say, but was already fading from consciousness. For the first time in far too long, the world entirely fell away and she was caught by the velvety black of a deep, dreamless slumber.

Clara awoke to the blare of her alarm, feeling at once bleary and deeply sore. She sat up, wincing at a strange ache in the side of her neck. It took her a moment to put together the topography of her room, she felt badly disoriented. Even finding her alarm clock and finding the correct button to shut it off was a deeply confusing process. It was light out, gray morning sunshine passing through her curtains.

For a moment Clara simply sat, squinting into the unexpected glare, then her thoughts caught up and she quickly glanced around herself, heart leaping in her chest. The room was empty, of course, and when she looked at the bedspread and her own fur, nothing appeared to be amiss. She touched her face but found no sticky patches in her fur, nor anything but a vague tenderness between her legs...which was clearly from her pitiful attempt at masturbation the previous night.

Just a dream.

But...goodness, how vivid it had been. Clara looked to the corner where the cat had come from and then laughed to herself, feeling at once warm and a little bit embarrassed. Some of the details she'd come up with had been...

Well. No point dwelling on them now. Not when there were more important things to note. Namely, she had actually _slept. _

Clara stood, wincing at a strange soreness which crackled along her thighs and up through her middle. It felt nearly as though she'd been doing ab crunches all night. And her neck felt funny as well.

"Shouldn't sleep in such weird positions." She said to herself, then got out of bed. The morning was here and she needed to get ready for work. But as she turned to straighten her blankets, Clara's eyes caught on the headboard. Interrupting the wood were several deep scratches, sharp and clearly fresh. Flakes of varnish still clung to the edges.

She paused for a moment, blinked, and then let out a small breath.

"I must have done that in the night." Clara said, but could not erase a note of uncertainty even from her own voice. A strong internal voice told her simply to turn away and ignore the scratches. They were nothing, just a little mark on the furniture. If she didn't think about them for a while then she would forget that they were ever there, and so normal life would carry on.

Clara very nearly did exactly that, but something in the pit of her stomach curdled at the idea. She knelt on the bed and examined them closely, then examined her own claws. Too blunt and broad. It was as though the marks had been made by the blade of a knife.

Or the claws of a cat.

Clara got back up, a strange, numb tide of unreality falling in around her. She touched the side of her neck, but the tenderness no longer felt like a muscle pull or anything quite so ordinary. Indeed, probing through her fur, she found a little ring of welts and bruises forming roughly the shape of an eager feline mouth.

Clara went and checked the windows and doors, but all of them were locked. She had the only key to the house, there were no spares, and all of the windows locked from the inside. Besides, she had seen the cat manifest directly from the shadows. It felt ridiculous to say that, even to herself, but he couldn't have walked into the room without her hearing him come from somewhere else.

She turned a circle in the center of her living room, feeling badly confused. This was at once impossible, potentially dangerous and absolutely new.

Picking up her phone, Clara called Ms. Kurtz. At first she couldn't speak, even after her boss picked up.

"Clara? Hello?" The doe asked.

"...I...um," Clara had to take a deep breath and try again. The swimmy unreal feeling had still not gone away. "I'm really sorry to ask this on such short notice..."

"Has something happened?"

Clara hesitated. She didn't want to lie to her boss, but the idea of being put in a psychiatric ward also wasn't terribly appealing.

"I had another sleep paralysis episode last night." She said carefully, supposing that this was at least technically true.

"Poor dear," Ms. Kurtz said with a sigh. "You work too hard. Take today for yourself and then call me tonight so I can know how you're doing."

Clara began to ask after her responsibilities, purely on reflex, but again Ms. Kurtz gently interjected.

"Robin can pick up the slack," the doe assured her. "Lord knows that girl needs to brush up on her organizational handiwork. As for you; go get some rest. Watch something terrible on Netflix. Don't think about work."

Clara ended the call feeling simultaneously guilty and relieved. She glanced around herself, eyes catching upon each individual shadow, but of course the house was empty apart from her.

Slowly, she edged into her office, regarding the black box and its accompanying glass candle with uneasy suspicion.

"There must be a reasonable explanation." Clara mumbled, but did not believe herself for a second.

In the end she packed up the black book and the glass candle, then set off to the old historical district at a brisk trot. Surely the old fox would know something...and she'd been intending to go back anyway, just to say thanks.

Clara was so deep into her own thoughts that she nearly missed the entrance to the narrow, shadowy lane she'd ended up in the previous evening. Perhaps, once the fox had finished giving his explanation (which would be entirely illuminating and rational, of course), she could look for another book. This one would definitely go to the library, in order to make up for her missing work.

She took a deep breath and stepped off the street, looking to the left where the bookshop was unaccountably not.

Clara furrowed her brow, wondering for a moment if she had made a wrong turn, but knew deep down that this wasn't the case. There was the barbershop, with its old fashioned candy-striped pole, and there was the closed storefront with the FOR RENT sign. But now they were right next to one another, with no sign of the shadowy alcove which had held the strange bookshop.

Clara took a step forward, hesitated, then stepped back. A sense of wrongness began to curdle in the pit of her stomach. She looked quickly down to the black book, as though it might vanish as well, but it remained stubbornly present, the crookedness of its binding seeming to present a mocking grin.

Clara shivered, her fur puffing up in uneven spikes, and then hurried back home, feeling deeply uneasy.

Again the urge came to put the black book away, to go straight to bed and insist to herself until she believed it that all of this was only a strange series of coincidences and waking dreams. Nothing more. Normalcy could be preserved, boring and safe and lonely--

She shook her head, newly distressed.

There seemed to be only one thing left to do. Fetching a lighter, Clara got out the glass candle and set it on a countertop in the kitchen. This was the part of the house with the most open space, so Clara figured that she would be better able to run for it if something scary started to happen.

Still, she hesitated for a long moment, thumb on the lighter's flint, wondering if this was such a good idea. The cat had seemed to be friendly, in his own specific sort of way, but--

"You don't need the candle anymore." A voice sounded.

Clara yelped and jumped back, fur standing on end. At the other end of the kitchen, a familiar feline figure stepped from the corner of the room, where a pale bank of shadows had gathered. Clara hadn't shut any of the curtains, but the cat didn't seem bothered by the sunlight. If anything the light only emphasized just how black his fur was, like the space between stars. His eyes were just as bright as they'd been the previous night, seeming to emit their own peculiar glow.

He took a step forward, over a floorboard that Clara knew was squeaky, yet there was no noise. She stayed where she was, though her heart kept skipping beats and every strand of fur on her body had stood upright. It was a struggle to keep her eyes from flicking down between the cat's legs. He wore no clothes and she could make out a hint of his sheath, firm and thick. Her mind kept throwing out little splinters of the previous night; the sting of his teeth on her neck and--

Not now.

"Listen," she said, unable to keep a tremor out of her voice. "I don't know who you are, or--"

"You don't?" The cat interrupted, and gave her such a look of total bemusement that Clara felt confused in turn. For a strange moment they simply stared, the two of them caught in an awkward silence. At last, the cat cleared his throat, the noise delicate.

"I presumed, because you acquired that book and its corresponding candle, that you were making an attempt to summon me. Is that not the case?" He looked to her, awaiting an answer. His tail swished back and forth across the kitchen floor, nearly in time with Clara's.

"No...?" She said, voice distressingly near to a squeak. Her confusion had not gone away. If anything, it was worse. Still, she tried again to speak. "Listen, if you could tell me about your relation to this house, or who you were when you were alive, I might be able to help." Distantly, she wondered if perhaps Robin would be better suited for this sort of thing.

The cat blinked, broken from his own thoughts. For a moment he seemed flummoxed, then his teeth showed in a huge, wide curve and he began to laugh.

"Oh dear," the cat chuckled. "I'm not a ghost."

Before Clara could ask what that meant, the cat raised one paw, almost like a person taking an oath, and unsheathed his claws. They glittered like slivers of polished obsidian. Around them, the light seemed to bend and beams of sunshine grew immediately taut and dull. In only a moment the cat was holding a gilt crown, its band emblazoned with peculiar sigils and patterns of dancing figures.

He placed it atop his own head, where the gold glowed like the open mouth of a foundry, flickering with tongues of pale, heatless flame. Suddenly, all else in the kitchen--in the world--seemed dull and tawdry. Even the lightless void of the cat's fur was vibrant beyond all description. In some distant corner of her mind Clara realized that she was only beholding a tiny fraction of what the cat truly was, like someone seeing the tip of an iceberg poking from stormy seas. Even his form, which seemed immutable to her eyes, was only that which she could be allowed to behold. Anything more and she would be reduced to smoke in an ecstatic instant.

She sank to her knees, overcome by horror and reverence. Tears welled up in her eyes, but still she could see the golden glow of the cat's crown and the perfect blackness of his fur. An urge rose, to crawl over and throw herself at his feet, but she had just enough wherewithal to remain exactly where she was.

When at last she felt steady enough to look up from the floor, Clara saw that the cat was holding her black book. It shone with restored radiance, the brass studs upon its cover newly burnished and all of the pages made straight and neat.

Clara understood.

"A demon." She said, and felt herself shiver with simultaneous wonder and fear. Once more everything felt small and terribly fragile, the skin of the universe peeled away to reveal the eldritch workings of impossible machinery. Though she had gone to church as a child and knew the basic cosmological workings of good and evil, Clara couldn't quite make all of that align with what she saw before her.

"Have I just sold myself to the devil?" She asked, the question driven by a small, squirmy tide of fear.

"Would you like to?" The cat--the demon--asked.

This was not what Clara had been expecting and she hesitated for a moment before shaking her head. At this, the cat knelt and framed her face with his paws, drawing her straight so that she was looking directly at him and the restless flames which enveloped his crown. His touch was gentle. Clara had to work in order to stop herself from relaxing into it.

"Be not afraid," said the demon. "And keep in mind your own desires. You shall not be compelled to do anything against your own will."

"What about my soul?" Clara asked, the question coming as a whisper.

"It belongs to you. To do with as you wish."

He kissed her. Clara shivered, afraid that she would be burned, or blown to atoms by the contact of unfathomable things, but all she felt was the touch of the cat's lips against hers, warm and soft.

She managed to laugh, the noise driven both by nervousness and a huge flood of relief.

"What do I call you?" Clara asked. "What is your name?"

The demon only smiled and looked to the black book, which had returned in an instant to its original position on the kitchen counter. Once more it was ragged and in poor repair. Clara felt momentarily disappointed, then supposed that there would be more pleasure in restoring it herself.

"There's a certain irony in a librarian asking questions which can be answered through reading." The cat teased.

"I don't know how to read Latin." Clara said, though this was hardly an insurmountable problem. The truth of the matter, she supposed, was that she wanted to hear the demon say it himself.

And yet, he only smiled and stood back up.

"Perhaps you aren't a librarian right now," he said. "...Knelt on the floor like that, you're really more of a puppy."

Clara blinked, feeling immediately flustered. She began to stand, buoyed by embarrassment, but then hesitated. The cat watched and said nothing, his bearing casual. One of his paws rested on the black book, fingers drumming upon the cover.

But...it was hardly even about the book, the demon's name, or any sort of knowledge she might glean. As he had said earlier, this concerned the nature of what she wanted; whether it was to stand and be his equal, or kneel and be used.

A shiver ran down her spine, coupled by a hot blush that Clara was sure showed right through her fur. Slowly, feeling halfway mortified even as she gave in to her own desires, Clara sank back down to the floor. The cat smiled and stepped closer, stroking her ears.

"Good girl," he purred. "Now take off your clothes."

Clara undid the buttons on her blouse with trembling fingers and then had to be reminded not to stand in order to remove her pants. Only bad puppies got up onto their hind legs.

She bared herself before the demon, fur crackling with static and the tip of her tail frantically wagging. Clara looked up at the demon, at his crown and his golden eyes, slitted with satisfaction and fixed directly upon her. It felt wonderful to be held in such a gaze, and to know that the demon liked what he was seeing. Though Clara had never really believed in anything greater than herself before, and was still processing the true implications of the demon's existence, at once she understood the appeal of divine benevolence. Of being small and vulnerable before something powerful and feeling no fear of punishment or disfavor. No matter what she did, Clara knew, the demon would not hurt her unless she asked him to.

A strange, ecstatic noise shivered from between her lips and she cast herself forward, desiring nothing more than to throw herself upon the demon, so she could hold him close and feel the strength of his body and the softness of his fur. Yet the demon only held up a warning finger and Clara froze, shivering with dismay, both at the demon for so cooly rebuffing her reverence...and at herself for forgetting her chosen role.

"Down." The demon ordered, finger curling to point at the floor.

Clara went, letting out a slow breath. Her paws touched the kitchen floor, but the demon's gaze did not leave her and when she looked back up at him he raised one foot and placed it atop her head, pressing her down until she was prostrated upon the floor, chin touching hardwood.

The demon kept his foot upon her head, the pressure light but insistent. He barely needed to exert any effort to bend her to his will. Clara voiced a shaky little whine, burning with a desire to reach both paws back between her legs and finger herself until she came. God, she was soaked. _ It was only the persistence of the demon's gaze that stilled her more rebellious urges. It would be bad to disobey, to _disappoint him.

"Much better." Said the demon, and removed his foot from her head. Clara remained as she was, gaze fixed upon the floor. A moment later he was behind her, a pair of fingers stroking up the center of her back and to the base of her tail.

Clara had to bite her lip to stifle a frantic plea that he use her right there on the kitchen floor. She was so perfectly positioned, small and submissive, ass in the air and tail raised to show the ebony lips of her lust drenched slit. Yet, the demon's touch vanished and she was left horribly alone for what felt like a small eternity, shivering with the desire to look around, or to spring up and demand that he sate her needs.

Yet, that was not her role, and in a strange way the waiting seemed gratifying all on its own, her mind aflame with degenerate possibilities. She had to work harder than ever to keep her paws pressed flat to the floor and her thighs apart.

"Good girl. You can get up now." Said the demon at last, and Clara actually jolted at the sound of his voice. He was further away now, behind her and on the other side of the living room.

Clara sat up, but the moment her paws left the floor she remembered her role and immediately sank back down, flashing a guilty look to the demon. He'd settled in an armchair before the hearth, which was suddenly filled with orange, crackling flames. He smiled, seeming to forgive her momentary transgression, then crooked a finger, beckoning her forward.

She crawled obediently forward, face burning and stomach knotted, but her tail still swishing in a shameless wag. The fire in the hearth was warm and full, crackling over a pair of logs that glowed white at the heart of the blaze. Distantly, Clara reflected that she had not yet gotten any firewood for the coming winter then supposed that it didn't matter. Illusion or not, the warmth felt wonderful. She could even hear pine knots crackling in the fire.

The demon bade her to kneel before him, and for an instant Clara thought that the cozy, battered old armchair transformed instead to a throne made of ivory and finest velvet. Again she had to restrain a shivery, wonderful urge to throw herself upon him. His legs were open and Clara's eyes fixed upon his sheath. When the demon took her by one ear and guided her forward she all but melted into this new gesture, a tingle of frisson making her shiver from head to toe.

She nuzzled eagerly between the demon's legs, her nose pressed into the inky tangle of fur just above his sheath. The very tip of his shaft had begun to poke out and she put her mouth over it, lavishing his barbed shaft with long, wet laps of her tongue. Once again she wished badly to finger herself, anything to relieve the unbearable heat throbbing between her legs, but when her paws trended in that direction the demon shook his head and stroked patiently behind her ears.

"Bad puppy." He scolded, hilting his cock down her throat. Clara squirmed, tears springing to the corners of her eyes and a strangled moan shivering from between her lips. She put her paws back to the edge of the armchair, away from the temptation of her needy sex, and then pushed her face even further forward, gagging herself on the demon's cock until spots swarmed in the corners of her vision.

A hot spurt of salty-sweet pre splashed against the back of her throat and the demon groaned low in his throat, sinuous feline tail swishing contentedly off to the side. But though Clara looked to him with begging eyes, he took his time to fuck her mouth and paid no attention whatsoever to her drooling slit, aside from occasional teasing swipes from his tail. Even when she dared to whine, he only smiled and then gagged her once more, one leg curling behind her head to keep her locked in place.

Clara squirmed, her air entirely cut off but for what the cat allowed her; occasional tiny sips scented by musk and pre. She felt as if she were going to swoon, warm all over and intoxicatingly light headed, every bit of her bound to the demon's will. Ecstatic words bubbled up, but even if her mouth had not been stretched wide around her master's length, it was not a puppy's place to talk. Especially not a naughty puppy who needed to be taught a lesson.

Instead, she melted into the demon's embrace, her nose pressed to his groin and her tongue lashing desperately across the underside of his barbed shaft. Clara shivered with delight when she felt the demon's balls jerk and the first hot spurts of seed overflow her mouth.

She looked up to him, his golden eyes slitted with pleasure and his crown wreathed with smokeless flame, and even when he let her go she kept the whole of his length hilted down her throat, until at least she grew too lightheaded and was forced to fall back. She coughed and cleared her throat, heart pounding and lust boiling ravenously within her.

The cat slipped from his throne and joined her on the floor, purring his pleasure as he stroked her ears.

"Roll over, puppy," he ordered. "You've earned a reward."

Clara laid down, all the hesitancy gone from her movements. It was easy to act like a puppy now, to roll onto her back and bare her belly. To spread her legs when the demon asked. He knelt between her thighs and then bent low, hot breath warming her slit. Clara watched with mingled surprise and gratification, then felt the cat's tongue press into her. It was a proper feline organ, short and strong, with just a hint of roughness to it that made her legs squirm and sharp, delighted yelps well up in the bottom of her throat.

Clara caught the noises for a self conscious moment, but even thinking about doing that only distracted her from what it felt like to be the recipient of such luxuriant attention. To be rewarded for her submission. The cat pushed his tongue even deeper into her sex and at this Clara abandoned all reservations and produced a happy canine wuff, then a whine that ratcheted upwards into a short, high howl.

The cat smiled, eyes flashing briefly up to meet hers, then he redoubled his efforts and it was as though the center of her body went nova and there was nothing but a fizz of overloaded nerves and then a wondrous contraction of muscles that demanded she close her legs around the demon so he would never stop what he was doing.

He licked and lapped, anything to make her squirm and yelp, until she was only a panting puddle of black fur on the floor, her legs twitching and every bit of her still trembly and weak.

Casually, the demon stood and licked his lips, then wiped the moisture from his whiskers. It took Clara a moment to remember how her legs worked. Staring up at the ceiling, panting for breath, she realized that her living room had changed. The ceiling was higher, adorned with gilt moldings over white plaster. When she moved, her fur brushed over soft red velvet. Sigils and stars had been sewn into it with golden thread. Tall windows of stained amber glass lined the walls, letting in a sunset haze of yellowy light.

Slowly, Clara sat up and only just barely remembered to stay on all fours. She could still see her kitchen and the rest of her house off to the side, but it all seemed pale and illusory, like a child's drawing tacked roughly to the edge of the world.

"Where am I?" She asked, forgetting the rules of her submission. The demon considered her breach for a moment, then reached to the nearest strands of light and produced something from them; a rose-gold collar with a silver ring at the throat, attached to a slender crimson leash.

"A new place," said the demon, seeming to enjoy his own vagueness. "Perhaps we shall take a walk through it."

Clara let out a breath. She was being offered a choice, whether to retreat back to her own world or press forward to the demon's vision of things. She looked to the hearth, which was now paneled with marble instead of brick. The flames leapt high and white above a bed of shattered crystal.

Apprehension rose within her, but so did curiosity, and a sense of lewd duty beyond even that. She didn't want to stand back up quite so soon. It was...good to be a puppy.

She crawled to the demon's side, over soft velvet and the muted whisper of sigils. Horns played behind the air, so distant that they could barely be heard, something triumphant in their clamor.

Clara knelt before her master and showed her throat, receiving the collar with a thankful shiver. It fit snugly around her throat, the metal cool and vaguely flexible. She felt calm wearing it, assured of the demon's favor in this game they were playing.

Her eyes followed the red silk lead up to her master's paw and she nuzzled against it before she could think not to, overcome by a swell of affection. The demon stroked behind her ears and whispered complimentary things, then bid her to return to all fours. An added vibrancy suffused him now, the flames upon his crown burning a little bit brighter.

There was a door of black oak and white platinum before them, patterned with oak leaves and wreathes of holly berries. An autumnal chill hung at the edge of the air, filled with the sting of coming frost.

For an instant Clara felt apprehensive, wondering if perhaps they would be going to a place with other people, but again she looked to the demon and felt her worries vanish. What did it matter if anyone saw her leashed and naked? One look to her master and they would know why she held herself in such eager submission.

The door hissed open upon silent hinges and they passed through it, Clara's vision overwhelmed for a moment by a bloom of purest golden light. She looked up, wondering if they were still beneath the same sun, but now the sky was a pale saffron, huge and uninterrupted but for V-shaped flocks of distant golden birds. Again Clara heard the call of horns, spiraling down from lonely heights.

Before her stretched a long expanse of autumn parkland; silver pathways lined by iron black trees, all of their leaves blood red and faintly luminous. A stony brook rushed by to the left, while open fields of wildflowers stretched off to her right. Clara could see buildings in the distance, what looked to be a walker's chalet flanked by an elegant glass dome. It sparkled in the strange perpetual sunset that hung over the demon's world.

Yet, though she looked all around herself, Clara could not see or hear any people. No birdsong but for the strange trumpets echoing from above. Not even the rustle of leaves.

The park was very pretty, and perfectly orderly in every way, but those same aspects made it feel sterile and imitative. The demon strolled along the silver pathway, moving at a sedate enough pace that she could look around herself. The stone they walked upon was cool, but not unpleasantly so, and Clara thought that she could smell the flowers in their fields, but only vaguely. When she looked to the grass there were no fallen twigs or weeds or patches of mud. Curious, she took hold of a green blade, but the grass felt soft and fuzzy. It was fabric, she realized, and immediately the illusion of the place fell apart.

Clara stopped, caught entirely off guard. Now that she looked more closely, the seams and signs of artificial manufacture were everywhere. The trees were metal and their leaves bright jewels, the stones lining the brook were cracked blocks of polished marble, glittering with seams of quartz. Even the birds above were animated not by flesh and blood, but rather springs and clockwork gears.

"What is this place?" Clara asked, her bewilderment winning out over the rules.

The demon looked down at her but offered no chastisement.

"This is where demons live," he said. "Though not so many of us anyone."

Clara looked out across the lonely expanse, a strange feeling percolating within her. Every tree and hill and pathway had been placed exactly right. It all felt wonderful to behold, but the perfection was superficial. Fake.

"We're in Hell." She said quietly, uncomprehendingly.

"If you'd like to call it that," the demon offered a tiny shrug. "It's the furthest thing from the world, your world. There are no problems here, no wants or struggle..."

At this the demon produced a flat piece of marble from thin air and skipped it onto the brook. The stone skipped pleasingly upon the water, then curved in midair and continued to skip until it was out of sight.

Clara noticed, for the first time, that she could not graze her knees or stub her fingers on the pathway even if she tried. Pain was impossible. Desperately, she tried to draw comparisons to the few other inexplicable things she had seen. The white fox and his bookshop that had only reluctantly given up the black book.

The demon listened with quiet, faintly melancholic interest.

"Even without power, people will most often cloister themselves into what they are used to doing already. You are very fortunate to have been let go."

Clara shivered, her gaze returning to the park.

"...And why are you showing me this?" She asked.

The demon continued to walk, giving a gentle tug on her leash. Clara hurried along after him, her stomach in knots. She didn't feel afraid, exactly, because the demon was clearly able to come and go as he pleased, but the false perfection which surrounded her became more and more off-putting the deeper they went.

"Your world is chaos in comparison to this place," the demon said at last, turning off of the path and beneath the arch of a willow tree laden with jade leaves. "But for all of the suffering that causes, it's impossible not to be drawn to the people who live there."

They skirted the edge of a stone lined pond, past stands of reeds and up the brow of a shallow hill to a clear place where everything was soft and quiet, suffused with warm yellow light. The demon sat and motioned for her to join him.

"Out of everybody, why me? Glass candle aside, I can't be that special." Clara asked.

The demon smiled and stroked her behind the ears, inspiring a shivery thump from her tail. As Clara watched, he removed the crown from atop his head and turned it over, unbothered by the flames licking over his paws.

"You knelt," he said. "And you stayed, even knowing truly what I am. That's very special."

With that, he placed the crown atop her head. Clara went very still, a tiny flash of fear squeezing her heart. For an instant she felt a cool, prickly sensation as flames licked her ears, but then the weight of the demon's crown settled and she felt a sensation of calm and unsurpassable strength.

The demon appraised her with a look of quiet satisfaction.

"Also," he said. "You make an excellent puppy."

Clara kissed him, the world flashing bright around them, all of the artificial vestiges of Hell gone pale and immaterial before the face of what she felt. They were wreathed in flame.

She lay down in the soft grass before the demon. He still had the leash in one paw and held it so she could feel a tiny hint of tension at her throat. Clara bit back an urge to beg and instead let her legs fall open.

There was no teasing this time, the demon pushed into her with a single, eager buck of his hips, teeth coming to nip at the side of her neck and then one sensitive, fluttery ear. Clara squirmed and laughed, feeling instantly, wonderfully full.

The demon's pace was slower and gentler this time, but still no less dominant. Clara could feel that in his weight and the stern, full completion of each new thrust.

"Saleos." He said.

"Hmm?"

"My name," the demon repeated, tickling her ear with one clever finger. Clara laughed and ducked her head back, not so accidentally baring her throat. She wanted to ask if the demon was a great lord or king, as she knew the demonology grimoires might say, then figured that it could not possibly matter. She wore his crown and was subject to all of his fiercest, most perfect attentions.

His teeth fell around her throat and Clara felt soft flesh tickled by the demon's purring. He hilted into her and lingered for a moment, barbs rubbing against the sensitive walls of her tight canine slit. A whining, eager wuff leaked from between her lips, but this time she did not feel embarrassed at all.

It was surprising just how efficiently he was able to make her legs tremble and the whole architecture of her middle come undone. Already she could feel hot, persistent tingles shooting off air all directions within her, like the flames which came off of Fourth of July sparklers.

Above her, the uniform saffron of the hellish sky had begun to fall away in streamers and once more Clara could see her own ceiling and the topography of her own home. She wrapped her arms tight around the demon, holding him close.

"I'm yours," she gasped, a high, needy whine edging her words. Between her legs she felt the demon shiver, just barely holding back his own climax. "Make me _yours." _

He came on the very next thrust, snarling low in his throat as he hilted into her. Clara squirmed, panting with delight. Once more she was lying on wooden floorboards, fully back where she belonged. Heatless flames dripped from her fur and when the demon removed his teeth from her neck she could see sparks dripping from his whiskers, brightening the lust in his eyes.

He kissed her, tongue pushing hers to the back of her mouth almost in time with one last heavy thrust that seemed designed to soak her womb in demonic seed. She shivered, overcome by a pleasant surge of nearly electrical tingles. The whole of her middle felt sore once again, but that would be a problem for later.

"Saleos?" She asked, once the demon broke his kiss. She liked the feel of his name, ancient and powerful.

He looked down at her, golden eyes aglow. The flames on his fur were beginning to fade, turning to hosts of tiny red embers.

"...Can other people see you?" Clara asked at last. "Or are you just here for me?"

The demon's eyes became halfway lidded and he sank down atop her, emitting a low, pleasant purr.

"You did acquire a big book filled with information about my kind." He said, more than a little teasingly.

Clara smiled.

"But if I just read the book, you wouldn't fuck me silly every time I asked a question." She countered.

At this the demon chuckled and kissed her on the tip of the nose.

"It is your choice the degree to which I appear in your world," he said. "But do be careful, and consult me before making any decisions. I'm not the only one of my kind out there, as well you know by now."

Clara shivered, some of the warmth draining from the moment, yet the demon did not appear very worried and she took comfort in that.

Slowly, almost teasingly, the demon pulled out of her and Clara shivered, feeling warm and satisfied. A persistent heat lingered between her legs and when she touched the lips of her sex, Clara could feel a slow drool of sticky cum.

She tried to sit up, but felt too sore and tired to manage it. The demon regarded her helplessness with mingled pride and amusement.

"You may need to carry me to the shower," Clara said, a bloom of heat reddening her ears. "...My legs aren't working right now."

Saleos scooped her up into an effortless fireman's carry.

"Shall I join you?" He asked, the fingers of one paw dipping between her legs to tease the virgin pucker of her tail-hole.

Clara could not have stilled the wag of her tail given all the effort in the world.

She nodded, a bit shyly, and was whisked away, all thoughts about work and life and the degree to which she ought to let anyone else know about the demon entirely abandoned.

By the time the water heated up she was able to stand on her own (though leaning against the demon did help, for this and other reasons). He guided her under the spray and then joined after a moment's consideration of the shower-head. The water seemed to roll right off of him, not wetting a single strand of fur. Clara touched him, just to make sure, and then was pulled into a kiss, the demon's paws sliding down to squeeze her rear.

Clara still had her questions of course, whole legions of them, but she allowed her curiosities to be washed away and then her paws bound before her by a special silk cord that the demon produced from thin air. He pressed her to the shower wall, barbed shaft throbbing at the base of her tail. Clara pushed back against him, eager to begin.

The rest of the day was all hers, worries, problems and queries relegated until later. And she intended to spend that time wisely.