Page 73 of Caught in the Devil’s Hand

Vallen and Oka scrubbed the floor of old chalk markings. Rosuke cleaned the altar and table, draping both with heavy black ceremonial cloths that hadn’t been used for nearly two hundred years, but that remained as serviceable as the day they’d been made.

The remaining chores included replacing the paper in the sliding doors and the candles throughout the room. After new chalk was placed on the table, all that was left was to wake the witch to perform the ritual.

“Shumei?” Oka whispered, kneeling on the edge of her bed to shake her shoulder.

“Is it already time?” she asked sleepily, turning languidly toward his voice. “Are they in the bath now?”

“Yeah. Rosuke said they wanted to ‘look pretty’ for you,” Oka said with a laugh. “Are you really going to see them naked? Is it because they’ll transform?”

She groaned in embarrassment, cheeks lighting up. Now was one of those moments when she wished her brother were entirely the mature adult he sometimes seemed to be.

“All you need to know is that Vallen and Rosuke were once human and will be again soon,” she said, soft but firm. She ruffled his feathery blond hair.

Oka pouted but nodded. “I’ll be back before dark, but I’ll go straight to my room until someone comes for me.” He stood and went to the door.

“Be careful,” she called, sitting up.

After rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she gingerly moved off the bed. She was still wearing her goldfish dress but carefully removed it and put it back in the cabinet. Wondering what she should choose to wear for the ceremony, she pawed through the dozen or so choices hanging in the cabinet. The spell did not specify any particular outfit, but considering the ritual component she had to obtain, she took one look at the nearly see-through robe she’d been wearing that morning and smiled.

Rosuke and Vallen waited in ritual room, twiddling their thumbs impatiently.

“I’m nervous,” Rosuke admitted, flashing a smile at Vallen. “Sitting naked on an altar like this reminds me of that night.”

“It should. We’re going to reverse what happened back then.”

“Do you think we’ll get our magic back?”

“I want to hope we will, but the reversal spell didn’t say for certain,” Vallen answered, gut aching. As a fully charged sex demon, he had far more strength and stamina at his disposal for protecting Shumei than a mundane human did. If his magic were restored, the situation would be completely different, but no one could predict whether the Divine One would grant such a gift again.

“Good evening,” a soft voice called.

Both demons twisted their heads toward the door, where a young, black-haired witch stood wearing a robe so thin and sheer that she seemed clothed only in a thin veil of mist. It was the robe they had dressed her in earlier, and which had left Vallen’s cock straining against his pants as they’d tucked her into bed.

Shumei smiled coyly as both demons quickly grew erect. Rosuke lightly stroked himself and stared at her openmouthed.

“No need to get ahead of ourselves, Rosuke,” she chided, closing the door behind her. He swallowed hard and took his hand away.

“You remember all the steps?” Vallen asked, mouth dry. Shumei’s breasts bounced lightly as she walked to the preparation table, her raspberry nipples teasing him behind their veil of cream-tinted cloth. She looked like a forbidden dessert.

“Of course. The first step—placing the subjects on the altar—is already complete.” She smiled at them over her shoulder. “The next step is the circle. It must be completed within an hour once started, with the same writing instrument, and must be used within three hours.”

The night Vallen and Rosuke had been cursed, the noblewoman had completed the circle and had covered it with a large rug before luring them away from a party. The altar had simply been a table laden with food and drink, where they had finished off several bottles of rice wine. She had flirted with all of them, and none of them had balked when she had pulled at the ties of their pants.

She had begun with Vallen, who had been too drunk to care who was pleasuring him, and only when he felt something wet swiped across his stomach did he begin to suspect. He had lifted his head and had seen blood on his skin—her blood. But before he could do anything, she had already completed the short invocation, and the excruciating pain had started. The noblewoman’s cackle had haunted him for decades.

Shumei gingerly picked up the chalk on the preparation table and approached the altar. Rosuke and Vallen watched anxiously, but she didn’t let it affect her concentration. She was determined to make this work.

Legs bent and eyes closed, she touched the chalk to the wooden floor and began to draw, moving her arm in wide sweeps and zipping around the corners of the inner array of shapes. She stepped carefully as she formed the circle, wary of smudging any lines, and was halfway around the room in only five minutes. She heard whispers from the altar, but ignored them, continuing until she reached the spot where she’d started. With one final flourish of her hand, she finished.

When she opened her eyes, she discovered only a small piece of her chalk was left. She breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t run out. Other circles required even more detail than this one.

“Wow,” Rosuke breathed as he stared unabashedly at her breasts.

“Looks perfect to me,” Vallen said gruffly, also staring.

“So is the circle,” she said with a chuckle as she stood. “Or is that what you were referring to?”

“Of course not,” Rosuke said, writhing with impatience. Smiling, she walked the short distance to the side of the altar where her two subjects sat.