Why You Should Never Rescue Stray Demons Chapter 144

**OZ**

I am impressed and terrified in equal measure. Rope and tape? Sensible. Tactical. Good bones to a plan I will absolutely co-sign. But then Kacia veers down the craft aisle and starts scooping glitter like she’s feeding a dragon with a very specific diet. Fine glitter. Chunky glitter. Iridescent ‘cosmic’ glitter that looks like a threat. She doesn’t hesitate, she hunts. Flour follows, bags of it, stacked like soft bricks. Then a dozen cans of hairspray, which she tests by weighing them in her palm as if choosing a blade. Somewhere between ‘party strobe light’ and ‘six portable speakers,’ I realise I have no idea what she’s building or planning. It honestly makes no sense to me. This looks like we’re arming a birthday party to commit war crimes. Kacia is completely focussed on her task. She doesn’t explain. She just moves. Calm, certain and purposeful. It’s the purpose that gets me, sharp as a knife edge. The schemer in her has stepped to the front and I can’t look away. There’s a precision to it, a sort of out of the box kind of creativity I can’t help but appreciate. She’s turning a problem in her hands and laying out answers, and yes, it’s attractive. She is attractive when she decides which brand of super glue she wants to purchase. It lengthens her spine, steadies her mouth, lights her eyes. I could watch her plan all day and forget to breathe. We hit the deodorant aisle and she clears an entire shelf with professional efficiency, all the sprays, half a dozen sickly floral mists with names like ‘Candy Cloud’ and ‘Sugar Kiss.’ My nose tries to leave my face. To a demon, this is not a smell, it’s an assault.

“Why?” I manage, voice strained. I’m not sure if I’m asking what her plan is or why she has decided to end my life this way. It seems particularly cruel. 

“Later, It’ll be easier to show you than it is to tell you. But basically the goal is total sensory overload.” She says, absolutely unbothered. Right… I do not ask follow-up questions. I would like my sense of smell to survive this relationship.

We migrate through hardware next. Kacia yanks on nylon cord to test the give, tosses in carabiners, painter’s tape, duct tape, adhesive hooks, a handful of bells (ominous), batteries, and something labeled ‘multi-purpose mounting putty’ that feels particularly concerning. A few boxes of matches top off the pile. The strobe light she picked up earlier gets patted like a pet. 

“Mikey will help me with this part.” She mumbles to herself, it isn’t a question, she has already decided. By the time I add a trolley, we’ve already outgrown two baskets. She’s moving quickly, too quickly for this to be improvisation. Which is the part that unnerves me. How many contingency plans live behind her eyes, just waiting for a problem to fit them? We pass novelty junk. She scans for itching powder with a predator’s patience. No luck. She writes something on a scrap she’s palming and frowns at the shelf like it has personally failed a test. Only then do I realise she’s been ticking boxes, there’s a list, creased and ink-heavy, but I’ve been too busy hauling her choices to notice it till now. Of course there’s a list, but when did she even WRITE that list? I’m fairly sure she decided on all of this on the way here in her head. I suppose she’s been writing while we walk. We turn a corner and she freezes at a wall of spray paint. Her hand lifts like it’s on a string. Her thumb finds the button cap of a can and hovers. I feel her want from a foot away, the impulse to hissss and see colour bloom on blank air, to mark something just because she can. She breathes in, out. Lowers the can. Tucks it into the trolley.

“Not here.” She murmurs, half to herself. I nod, grateful for the restraint, because ‘here’ is a discount warehouse and we are probably already on several theoretical lists. Or we will be once someone looks at the weird purchases we’re making. She stacks a few more cans into the trolley. Next, we angle toward electronics. She stops in front of the speakers and narrows her eyes at our pile.

“Do we have enough speakers?” She asks.

“We have several speakers, a choir of speakers. An amphitheater of speakers. You could start a very loud religion.” I answer as I squint at the mountain. 

“Also, that’s a lot of speakers considering neither of us can actually use technology.” I point out. She shrugs. 

“Mikey can help set it all up.” She responds, then she adds one more anyway. Because of course she does.

Checkout is an experience. We unload rope and tape and glitter and flour and hairspray and strobe and speakers and the Great Deodorant Migration onto the belt. The teenage cashier watches our strange, shimmering avalanche with the blank heroism of retail. If I could read thought bubbles, his would say ‘these people are throwing a truly unhinged rave.’ When the fifth can of ‘Sugar Kiss’ rolls past, he glances at me like he’s trapped between concern and curiosity. I give him a neutral guy nod that translates to ‘yes, we are absolutely normal, you should not be concerned about this and are definitely not weaponising party supplies against a fae lord.’ Okay, so I doubt that is what he gets from it. But hopefully there is some kind of reassurance. The receipt prints long enough to be mistaken for a legal document. Kacia pays without blinking. I do a quick, private calculation and decide this costs more than I would really like to think about. We carry everything out in stages. Two trips become three. Plastic handles bite crescents into my fingers, the rope coil thumps against my thigh, the strobe box rides like a crown jewel on top of a bag bristling with aerosol nozzles. Out at the car she flips the boot and I finally get a clear look at the list, jammed under her elbow. Covered in cramped handwriting, ticks everywhere, a few open squares that say ‘5-6 bags of ice’, ‘itching powder (?)’, and, at the top, underlined twice, a title, ‘Total Sensory Overload.’ I swallow a laugh and a curse at the same time. Of course that’s the title. We pack with surgical care. Heavier items go deep and low. Speakers nestle in tight along the back wall, cable ends tucked where they won’t catch. Flour sacks lie flat, layered to keep from shifting. Glitter jars stand upright, lids checked and tightened, quarantined far from anything we would prefer not to sparkle for eternity. The strobe light gets its own padded corner. She slides coils of rope along the left, tapes along the right, deodorants stacked neatly. Every gap gets a battery pack, a hook card, a bell packet. Nothing rattles when she closes the boot, just the deep, satisfied click of a job done properly. I look at her over the roof of the car. Hair stuck to her temple, ink on her fingers, eyes bright with the kind of energy plans give to people who are born to make them. She’s breathing a little fast, I don’t think it’s the weight. It’s exhilaration. I steal one last look at the list. A few unchecked items linger at the bottom, but we have gotten a lot of it. She must be spending a fortune but she does not flinch. She has decided this is what the plan costs, and she’s paying it.

“We will go to Ulric’s next. After cake.” She says again, as if the universe needs reminding.

“After cake.” I echo. I didn’t realise that she was serious about that. Kacia falls into step beside me, eyes bright in a way that has nothing to do with the glitter and everything to do with momentum. We’re ridiculous. We’re prepared. We’re about to bribe a shopkeeper with dessert. And I am, against all better judgment, optimistic.