Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Demons — Demon who traffics in lost memories
Three drinks in, and a familiar figure sinks onto the next barstool, trades nods with Sam behind the bar, and shoots you a sideways look.
Admittedly, you're not at your best tonight, and probably look like shit.
There are those who hunt the things in the night out of some sense of principle, or for simple revenge, or hatred. You're not any of those; you're an assassin. You're the thing the monsters hire, when one of their own is too far out of line for their own standards to tolerate.
Most of them would honestly prefer to drink with a crazed lone-wolf monster hunter.
"Fuck you want?" you say, looking into drink number four.
Esha's a Mnemptor. Merchant demon, of a sort. Long and lean and eyes an unnatural blue, but not the conspicuous electric shades that the flashier types go for, a restrained navy. Silken dark hair in a curtain over half her face. Dangerous.
"You look down," she says.
"Fuck off."
Sam puts her glass of white wine in front of her. She doesn't fuck off. She doesn't talk for a minute or two, either, though.
"Ran into someone I used to know," you say, and it hurts to say it like that. Which is why you did it. Cauterise her out with someone, and used to.
Dangerous game to play with a memory demon on you like a cat on something tiny and running. Esha runs her thumb idly up and down the stem of the wineglass.
"Someone you loved," she says.
"Did I?"
You don't need to look to know she's looking at you. "Quickthorn," she says quietly, "I'm not taunting you."
"What are you doing?"
She sips her wine and makes a noise, noncommittal.
The answer is, of course, that she can smell it on you. Memories. Good ones turned hurtful, rotting you from inside. She could taste them, if you let her. Eat them entirely, or just take them away to savour for herself. But you're not going to, and all she can do is hover and enjoy the fucking bouquet on you.
"Fuck you," you say, and grip your fourth gin and tonic a little too tight.
"I'm not enjoying you hurting," she says, which is probably true, even if the distinction from what she is enjoying is pretty damn fine, and between the gin and the corrosive feelings in your gut and your annoyance at being badgered, you say something bitter and stupid:
"I don't even remember why I fell in love with her."
And Esha's still for just a second, and then she says, soft and low: "Would you like to?"
"Fuck off." You taste bile at the back of your throat. "I don't want to do trade."
"No," she says, and makes an abortive movement, as if she nearly reaches for your arm. "Quickthorn, I'm not — a gift, if you wanted it. Just that."
You look at her, then, and a cracked laugh worms its way out of you.
"Great," you say. "That's great. I'm the most reviled scumsucker in this joint, and the demon memory-thief feels sorry for me, that's how pathetic I am."
Esha pulls her shoulders in, lifts her chin, and stands up. "Well, fuck you," she says, and clicks away on kitten heels in a beeline for the ladies' room.