Why You Should Never Rescue Stray Demons Chapter 17

**KACIA**

I know that I don’t know Oz all that well yet. It’s been, what? Twenty four hours, give or take, since I dragged his half dead self out of a basement. That’s not exactly best friend territory. But I don’t need to be a genius to see that something’s wrong. He’s still throwing out ridiculous pet names like ‘sweetheart’ and ‘princess’ like they’re punctuation. Still strutting around like he owns every square foot of personal space he enters. Still smirking like he’s getting paid by the eyebrow raise. But underneath all that, he’s... Tense. His shoulders are too stiff. His hands keep flexing and tightening like he’s trying to keep them from shaking. And earlier, before he tucked it away again, his tail was lashing around him like an angry cat that’s barely keeping it together. So yeah. He’s not fine. Then again, after the week he’s had, I wouldn’t be either. But the thing is, I barely know him. We’re friendly, sure. We’ve been joking around and we risked our lives together. I guess that makes us... Sort of friends? But not the kind of friends where I get to say, ‘Hey, are you okay?’ without it feeling like I’m crossing a line. And I don’t want to make him talk. I know that feeling too well, the pressure of someone watching you closely, waiting for you to open up. Sometimes it makes it worse. So instead, I’ve been doing my best to seem… Available to talk. Approachable. Not pushing him, but there. Letting him take up space. Letting him have silence when he needs it and dumb banter when he doesn’t. I don’t know if it’s working. He’s not talking about anything important, but he hasn’t walked away either. That counts for something, I guess. When that doesn’t seem to help, I swap to distraction. I don’t know what’s bothering him, so I can’t exactly tailor a solution. All I can do is keep moving forward and hope that giving him something else to focus on might help pull him out of whatever shadow he's stuck in. So I drive us to the bar. No pep talk. No unnecessary conversation. Just music low in the background and the quiet hum of tires on asphalt. I just hope, whatever’s weighing on him... This won’t make it worse.

The bar is a real dump. A place called Carl’s, because of course it is. I’ve never been here before, and honestly? That was a completely intentional choice. The place looks like the set of a crime drama that didn’t get picked up for a second season. To be fair, I HAVE heard of it. Mostly in the context of ‘don’t go there unless you want to get stabbed.’ It’s known as a supernatural bar, humans aren’t welcome. Not because of speciesist gatekeeping or anything like that. It’s just... Most humans don’t know the supernatural world exists. So some places put up magical wards that quietly repel them. Nudge them away, give them a headache, make them think they forgot something in their car, just enough interference to keep them from ever making it to the door. Places like this are important. Especially for supernaturals who don’t blend in well. The ones who can’t exactly pass for human. Who don’t want to hide their horns or claws or extra rows of teeth. Unlike me, who spends most of her life pretending to be someone she’s not. Or Oz, who just glamours his way through public interactions. We step inside, and the door creaks in a way that definitely wasn’t necessary. Seriously, it’s like it’s auditioning to be haunted. Immediately, I feel out of place for several reasons. The most obvious of which is that I’m definitely the only woman in here right now. Also, I think I might be the only person present who looks like they’ve eaten a vegetable this decade or exercised without being chased, well, other than Oz that is. He’s in great shape. Damn him. The crowd here is... Rough. Shadowy and scruffy in a way that suggests most of them are here because they can’t go anywhere else. Which makes it the perfect place for blood draining creeps to hang out. The bar is exactly what you’d expect from the outside, old furniture that’s seen better centuries, wallpaper that’s peeling like it’s trying to escape, and a general air of decay clinging to every surface like a second skin. But here’s the weird part. Despite the ruin, the place is IMMACULATE. The floor’s been swept. The sticky layer that should be coating every surface in a place like this? Gone. I can’t even spot a single cobweb up in the top corners of the room. It’s unsettling. Like seeing someone put a lace doily over a pile of trash. Someone here is clearly fighting a one man war to keep this place clean. Which immediately begs the question, who is doing that? And why are they here? This is the kind of bar you come to if you're trying to disappear, pick a fight, or trade black market spell components, not polish coasters and sanitize grimy corners. I find myself scanning the room, suddenly very interested in meeting the poor soul trying to keep this place from collapsing under the weight of its own filth and misery. Because either they’re an absolute saint... Or they’re the most dangerous person in here.

I immediately rule out the bartender as the mystery cleaner. He’s wearing a grey t shirt with some kind of suspicious brownish stain that looks like it’s been through multiple life cycles, coffee? Blood? Something that died with regrets? Whatever it is, it doesn’t scream ‘meticulous hygiene enthusiast.’ Pretty sure the man hasn’t wiped a bar in months unless it was with the same rag he uses to wipe his sweaty forehead. I glance at Oz. He’s giving the bartender a similarly unimpressed look. Yeah. Not our guy. I don’t think we will be ordering drinks here either. But SOMEONE here is doing the work. The floors are clean, the surfaces are polished. That’s not accidental. And it’s bothering me more than it should. There’s a story here, and I want to find it, if only because anyone who works this hard to keep a place like this from falling into full blown chaos might just be my personal hero. It isn’t until a drunk at the bar knocks over an empty glass and it shatters on the floor that I get my answer. A small man darts out from the back like he was summoned, short, wiry, moving with the anxious urgency of someone who lives life on the edge of a panic attack. He mutters under his breath as he drops to his knees and begins collecting shards with his bare hands, not even flinching. He looks maybe forty, with a lined face and grey tinged hair, but I’d bet money he’s much, much older than he looks. That’s how it is with most of the older supernaturals. They stop tracking their birthdays around century three. I frown. He has no gloves. No care for his hands. Just frantic movements and that endless muttering. I crouch down beside him.

“Hey, relax. It’s just a glass. You don’t have to rush.” I say gently, trying not to startle him. 

“I have to clean it.” He insists immediately, eyes wide.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.” I say, firmer now, as I spot a thin line of red already forming on one of his fingertips. Before I can stop him, or convince him to slow down, Oz leans past me. He doesn’t say anything, just scoops up the last few shards with a scrap of old rag he must’ve picked up from one of the tables. He walks calmly to a small bin tucked near the corner and drops the whole bundle inside like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Apparently he decided it would be faster to just remove the hazard than to reason with this guy. Oz glances back at me and shrugs. I smile up at him, quietly grateful. For someone who throws around sarcasm like throwing stars, Oz is, when he wants to be, deeply decent. The small man rises shakily to his feet, still jittery, and rushes back into the side room. He returns seconds later with another cloth and immediately starts scrubbing at the tiny splash of beer left behind by the shattered glass. Every drop. Every streak. His shoulders only begin to relax once the last drip is gone. And that’s when it clicks. He’s a brownie. One of the rare kinds of fae who actually seek out the company of others. Or, well, tolerate it. Created by the original fae to serve as in house caretakers, they’re drawn to places that need cleaning, compelled to restore order in whatever way they can. They don’t just like cleaning, they’re bound to it. I’ve heard they can sense dirt and disorder like a psychic itch under the skin. That explains a lot. The immaculate bar, the tension, the haunted look on his face when that glass hit the floor. He didn’t clean because it was messy. He cleaned because he HAD to. Poor guy. In a place like this, that compulsion must feel like punishment. Hell it’s practically torture. Which raises the question, why the hell is he still here?