Devil's Advocate

"So let me get this straight," sighed the exhausted magistrate, rubbing his temples as the courtroom erupted in giggles, "you summoned a lust demon by accident ... during a library book club meeting?" The defendant—a flustered, bespectacled archivist named Edwin—adjusted his askew cravat while the aforementioned demon, currently lounging atop a stack of legal tomes, licked jam off their claws and winked at the jury. "In my defense," Edwin squeaked, "the summoning circle was very poorly drawn in the margi—" "Oh sweet mortal," purred the demon, stretching luxuriously, "you keep using that word 'accident.' I do love a man who plays hard to get." The magistrate’s gavel came down with a crack that did nothing to silence the tittering audience. A juror in the back row fanned herself dramatically as the demon—now sprawled across Edwin’s lap like an oversized, mischievous housecat—traced a claw along the archivist’s trembling thigh. "Your Honor," Edwin pleaded, voice climbing an octave, "I swear, I was just annotating a recipe book —" "A recipe for disaster, perhaps," the demon murmured, plucking Edwin’s glasses off his face and balancing them on their own horns. Edwin made a strangled noise. The magistrate pinched the bridge of his nose. "Bailiff," he groaned, "fetch me the exorcism paperwork. And somebody open a window." The courtroom's heavy oak door burst open before the bailiff could move, revealing a frazzled nun brandishing a smoking censer like a battleaxe. "I knew I smelled sulfur near the theology section!" she bellowed, stomping inside as the demon rolled their eyes. Edwin seized the moment to lunge for his glasses, only for the demon to snatch them mid-air with their tail—prompting an audible gasp from the jury forewoman, who promptly dropped her knitting. The magistrate sighed into his hands. "Sister Agatha," he muttered, "we appreciate your... vigilance, but this is a legal exorcism—" "Oh, spare me the bureaucracy," the nun spat, swinging the censer in a wide arc that sent priests and clerks alike ducking for cover. "That hussy demon ate three pages from my illuminated manuscript last Tuesday!" The demon, now perched on the witness stand, licked their lips and smirked. "And they tasted divine ." Edwin, sensing his last chance for dignity slipping away like an improperly shelved grimoire, suddenly stood up—only for the demon’s tail to wrap around his waist and yank him backward into their lap with a thump . "Darling," the demon crooned, plucking a quill from behind Edwin’s ear and twirling it between their fingers, "you really should’ve read the fine print ." The quill burst into harmless but dramatic purple flames, revealing the words "By reading this footnote, the party of the first part hereby consents to eternal companionship (terms may include spontaneous seduction, minor hexes, and/or the occasional soul-related brunch)" scrawled in Edwin’s own handwriting. The magistrate squinted. The nun cursed. Edwin whimpered. And the demon, with a grin sharp enough to cut through legal precedent, whispered, "Told you it wasn’t an accident." The magistrate's quill snapped mid-air as he threw his hands up. "That's it—case dismissed on grounds of incurable idiocy ," he barked, while Sister Agatha lunged forward with her censer, only to trip over the demon's conveniently outstretched tail. Edwin yelped as the nun crashed into him, sending them both tumbling onto the demon's lap in a heap of robes, scattered legal documents, and one very smug infernal being. "Oh good," the demon purred, wrapping both arms around their new mortal sandwich, "we're all consenting now." The jury erupted into applause. Somewhere in the back, a law student fainted. And Edwin, pressed between a furious nun and a grinning demon who was definitely nibbling his earlobe, realized two things simultaneously: one, he should've stuck to cataloguing tax records, and two—god help him—he was enjoying this.