The only obstacle to being able to get Timothy to help her was that Ixxy had no idea where he was. She’d arrived via spellplate summoning and had left via the same process. There was no way she could replicate that, so she would have to track him down the old-fashioned way.

There was an art to finding someone in a city the size of Grailmane. Keen instincts, streetwise savvy and a healthy dose of luck were all critical if you wanted to stand a chance.

Ixxy had none of those. Instead, she had a clue.

Timothy studied contract magic and lived in a dorm. That meant, logically, that he was a student. And where was the biggest collection of students in Grailmane? That’s right. The Academy for the Study of the Forbidden Arts.

It just so happened that the Forbidden A had a Contracts department on a satellite campus, so that was where she decided to start her search. Even if he wasn’t there, she figured, the students there would be bound to know where else in the city she could find Contract Magic students.

It was quite a walk. The campus was at the lower edge of the city, almost on the complete opposite side of the Academy District. There were definitely fewer demons around than there had been in the Diabolist District, but there weren’t none. A large Heggelox demon shuffled behind a distracted looking wizard, looking like a mound of meat with a single eye and long, clawed arms coming out of its sides.

It was a thinker-demon. Kind of like a giant brain that just memorized, processed and learned from whatever information it was provided with.

It was the most boring thing Ixxy could think of. It took a special kind of demon to be able to handle the sheer boredom of such a job.

The Academy District itself seemed pretty up-market. Not wealthy per se, but definitely not a slum. Very few labourers and other blue-collar workers, but many, many students and mages of a wide range of ages.

What was cool, though, was the sheer amount of magic on display! People hovered down the street on panes of blueish glass, were carried by packs of what looked to be rodents with bundles of wires in their heads, teleported short distances, and any of a hundred other conveyance methods that she could see, almost no two exactly alike.

And of course there were also carriages, clattering along the smooth, stone roads. Some had horses, some did not. Some were drawn by altogether more esoteric beings, such as ghostly, floating jellyfish or pieces of furniture on teeny, tiny legs.

She drew a number odd glances from passers-by and a few of the more senior looking mages she passed gave her stern looks, but she just smiled broadly and waved cheekily at them. She’d heard that soliciting was frowned upon in the Academy District, but as long as she kept moving like she had someplace to be and didn’t enter the Academy grounds itself, nobody stopped her.

By the time she finally reached the wrought-iron fence surrounding what had to be Contracts department, she’d grown inured to the odd sights. As interesting as they were, at the end of the day it was just magic, after all.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste as she got her first look at where she was headed.

After the wonder of the Academy District proper, the place was ugly, in a boring, monotonous way. The two largest buildings were the same dark stone as most of the rest of Grailmane, but it appeared someone had attempted to add their own ‘style’ to them.

With the first they’d shaping grooves into the smooth stone to make it appear to be built out of large stone blocks instead of single, contiguous, magically-shaped stone. Unfortunately, they must have made such a hash of it, with skew, uneven lines and irregular sizes, that someone had probably told them to just stop halfway through, because the other half of the building was smooth stone.

The second building just looked old and saggy and just a little bit melted at the edges. Ixxy guessed that that was where the classrooms were.

There were a few people wandering around the grounds, and Ixxy pondered how to best get inside unnoticed. She’d gotten plenty of odd looks and had received the distinct impression that while her presence was tolerated in the district, it wasn’t exactly welcomed. And a demon walking around freely on a campus dedicated to Contract Magic might give the wrong impression. Not that she gave an impling’s arse what a bunch of mortals thought, but they might just kick her out which, would make finding Timmy-boy that much harder.

She could shapeshift, of course, but unfortunately, according to the Grand Contract, demons weren’t allowed to impersonate mortals. It seems that at some point someone had realized that allowing shapeshifters to freely pretend to be anyone they wanted was probably a bad idea.

In fact, the wording on it was so strict, she wasn’t even allowed to hide that she was a demon!

She scowled in frustration and wondered why she’d been so excited about the whole shapeshifting thing when the rep had sold her on the body. Half the time she couldn’t even use it properly and the other half some sick fucking gorilla was throttling her, pretending she was his ex…

Ixxy took a deep breath. That as in the past. It was over. She was over it.

Wait a second. She was being an idiot. Obviously she was allowed to shapeshift in the pursuit of executing a contract… which was exactly what she was doing. She still had an open contract with Timothy, one which she was trying her best to complete. Summoning a pleasure devil for sexual gratification was ‘not socially acceptable’ or something. Obviously he wouldn’t want her to come traipsing over to where he studied all red-skinned and pointy-horned, right?

Yeah! It totally made sense that she pretended to be human! For discretion and shit!

Ducking out of sight between two buildings, she focused for a moment and felt her horns fold back, sinking partially into her skull so that they were covered by her hair, which she made just a little thicker than before. At the same time, she felt her skin tingle as the pigmentation changed from a bright, healthy red to the sickly, pale, creamish-white that humans seemed to like so much.

She briefly checked herself over before doing a small leap of triumph. It worked! She could trick the runes as long as she pretended…

Inside her mind, she felt the runes start to glow ominously.

No she totally wasn’t pretending she really was doing this to complete her contract honest!

The glow faded.

Okay, phew. It seemed that she could… get the runes to agree as long as she legitimately wanted to work towards completing her contract. Yeah, that was what she was doing. Totally.

After checking that the immediate coast was clear, she grabbed the top of the head-height fence and hopped over, before heading towards the big, ugly, half-bricked building. Hopefully, it was the dorms.

Knock knock knock.

“Yeah, I’m comin’!”

Ixxy sighed inwardly as she prepared her best and brightest smile. Hopefully, this guy would be able to help her. So far, none of the others had.

Three of them had apologized for not knowing anyone named Timothy and then tried to chat her up anyway. The fourth had just stared, speechless, frozen in terror at the prospect of a hot female actually talking to him.

Honestly, she’d thought being her normal hot self, if slightly discoloured, would help her charm her way in. But now she was seriously considering toning it down a nudge, perhaps. A little less ‘bombshell’ and a little more ‘cluster munition’, you know?

The dorm room door in front of her opened, revealing a chubby young man straining to fit inside a stained sweat-shirt.

“Hey! Sorry to bother you,” she said in the most chipper voice she could muster, like a cheerleader on happy-pills, “but I’m looking for my brother, Timothy. He told me what room he was in but I’m such a clutz, I completely forgot which one it was! You wouldn’t happen to know if his room is around here, would you?” she asked sweetly, doing her best to ignore the way he stared at her chest.

Geez, she thought the others had been bad, but this guy didn’t even try to pretend he was staring anywhere but her boobs.

After she’d sweet-talked the guy watching the door into letting her in - she’d caught him staring at her ass as she headed towards the men’s side of the dorms - she’d started knocking on doors pretty much at random, hitting the guys who answered with pretty much the same spiel. She was looking for her brother, but had forgotten his room number like a ditzy blonde.

“You mean the Twig?” the knucklehead in front of her asked after staring at her breasts for an uncomfortably long time, until Ixxy pointed covered them with her arms. “You’re his sister? You don’t look nothin’ like him.”

Score! Luckily she’d prepared for exactly this eventuality. “Step-sister,” she replied with a fake giggle that made her cringe inwardly. “Dad had what doctors called a ‘wandering penis’.”

“Eh?”

Seriously? And these were supposed to be the intelligentsia of Grailmane? Ixxy weeped for the future of diabolism.

“Look, don’t worry about it. Do you know where his room is?” she asked.

“Yeah, he’s three doors that way. Seriously, you’re his sister? But you’re… hot!” the numbskull replied.

“Yes, I know,” Ixxy replied in a strained voice. “Thank you very much for your help, goodbye!” Then she turned and darted over to the door the guy had indicated.

“You won’t find him there now, though,” he added just as she raised her hand to knock. “He’s in class right now, over in the Candle.”

Ixxy turned to face him. “The what?” she asked carefully.

Bonehead gestured towards the direction of the other large building through the window behind him, the one that looked old and saggy. “The Candle. Candlekeep Hall, where all our classes are. He should be finished soon, though he usually goes to the study hall afterwards. But if you wait by the main doors you’ll probably catch him.”

“Oh… thank you very much! I think I’ll do that!”

She turned and headed back down to the entrance.

“I’m Alvin, by the way!” he shouted after her, but she ignored him.

Like she cared what his name was.

“Hey Stranger, fancy seeing you here.”

It was funny to see Timothy jump as she tapped him on his shoulder.

She’d been waiting for him, leaning against the wall next to the main doors of the ‘Candle’ as the students apparently called the droopy-looking building containing all of the Contracts faculty’s lecture halls and classrooms. She’d drawn a couple of appraising looks from students passing by, both male and female, but she’d ignored them. All of the attention was starting to annoy her.

It totally wasn’t that the idea of everyone staring her suddenly creeped her out, don’t be ridiculous. She loved it when people stared at her like they were undressing her with their eyes.

The other students coming out of their classes flowing around them as if they were rocks in a stream as he turned to face her, a confused frown on his face.

“I… I’m sorry?” he stammered. “I don’t think…” He stopped, before looked her up and down more carefully. His eyes widened. “Y…you!”

“Me!” she agreed, giggling at the look of horror on his face as he glanced around in panic. She’d forgotten how much fun he was to tease.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed. “You can’t be here!”

“Nuh uh, I totally can,” she grinned back at him, before explaining. “Your fences are way too low.”

“You climbed over the fence??”

Ixxy shrugged. “If you can even call that a climb. It was more of a short hop, really.” Then she tapped Timothy’s chest with her forefinger. “You never called.”

“Umm… I… I… I didn’t know your name…” he stammered weakly.

Ixxy stared at him incredulously. “And you didn’t think to just read it off the contract?”

“Have you tried to read your handwriting?”

“Are you insulting my handwriting!?”

“Shhhh!”

Timothy glanced around. By this time, most of the other students had moved on, but a few were dawdling, their attention drawn by either the scene or the tight t-shirt and shorts that covered Ixxy’s figure.

“Not here!” He grabbed her by the hand and she let him drag her along behind him.

The area around Grailmane was rather desolate, with mostly barren, stony soil with only a few spiky shrubs and hardy grasses clinging to life here and there. But someone had at some point tried to inflict actual gardening on the Contract Campus grounds, to mixed success. Several trees were scattered throughout the area, though to call them ‘thriving’ would have been a bit of a stretch.

Timothy led her around the dorm building, behind a small copse of half-dead trees off to the side. It wasn’t exactly private; anybody from one of the lower floors of the dorm could see that they were there, but at least it shielded them from some scrutiny.

Once they had obtained what privacy they could, Timothy shook his head. “Okay look, whatever your name is, you can’t just show up at my classes…”

“My name’s Ixxy. And I need your help,” Ixxy interrupted him, all trace of playfulness suddenly gone from her voice.

“… and expect… what did you say?” Timothy asked.

“I said,” Ixxy replied, grinding her teeth just a little, “that I screwed up and I need your help.”

Timothy just blinked at her stupidly, caught off guard by the sudden change in attitude. “From me?” he finally asked disbelievingly.

“No, the tree,” Ixxy replied sarcastically. “Of course you, Numb-nuts.”

Timothy’s eyes narrowed cautiously. “Is this some kind of trick?”

Ixxy rolled her eyes. That was such a stupid question. If it was, she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him. While she did have a contract with Timothy, there was nothing in it about being truthful, something she’d conveniently neglected to mention to him the first time around.

“No, it’s not. Look, just read this contract,” she said, holding the thick stack of documents out to him that suddenly appeared in her hand, but Timothy took a step back, holding his hands up defensively.

“Woah, I’m not signing anything else,” he said.

“This isn’t for you to sign, idiot, this is a contract that I signed that I shouldn’t have,” Ixxy explained wearily.

“Wait, you signed a bad contract? You? A demon?” Timothy asked, incredulous.

“I didn’t read it as carefully as I should have,” Ixxy admitted. “For… reasons.” Reasons he did not need to know, lest it gave him ideas.

His eyes flicked to the contract as he licked his lips and Ixxy could almost smell the curiousity wafting off of him. It probably wasn’t every day that a contract mage got to take a look at a contract that tricked a demon.

“And what exactly is it that you want from me?”

She held out the contract to him again. “I want you to read this and help me beat it.”

As he took it out of her hands, she gave him the brief synopsis; she received an automatic loan of one soul every week, but couldn’t sign any new contracts that weren’t from them. Since no contracts meant no income, she could never pay off her loans.

“What’s the one soul a week for?” Timothy asked, skimming through the contract after she’d finished.

“Expenses,” Ixxy replied cryptically. “Suffice to say, that soul is gone.”

Timothy grunted noncommittally and kept flipping through the thick stack of pages. As the silence stretched longer and longer, Ixxy caught herself starting to fidget nervously with her hands.

“Look,” Timothy eventually said, “this is… incredibly complex. If you couldn’t figure out a way out of this, I have no idea how you think I’m going to be able to.”

Ixxy took a deep breath. “Timothy,” she said earnestly, clasping her hands in front of her chest and subjecting him to her best puppy-dog impression. “I’ve been staring at this stupid contract for hours, days, and I am stuck. Trapped. I simply can’t see a way out. Please. You are my only hope. I will literally get on my knees and beg you if that is what you want. And if you want, while I am down there, if you figure it out, I will literally suck your…”

“Okay! I get it!” Timothy exclaimed, suddenly quite red in the face. “Enough with the melodrama! I’ll take a look, but I can’t promise anything, okay?”

“Oh, thank you!” Ixxy threw her arms around him, pulling him into a hug, while making sure to smush his head into her chest as much as she could. It was all about rewarding desired behaviour. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Calm down, calm down!” Timothy protested, extricating himself from Ixxy’s grip. “I haven’t done anything and I won’t if you smother me!” He dusted himself off, trying to surreptitiously adjust his robe. “But I’m serious. Please don’t get your hopes up. I’m just a student.”

She gave him a broad smile. “Don’t worry, I believe in you,” she said with a broad smile on her face.

“Well then,” Timothy replied awkwardly, blushing all over again. “No point standing around here. Shall we go back up to my dorm room and do some case-studying?”

Ixxy giggled and nodded. Even if this all went sideways, at least it was fun teasing the little nerd. He was so adorable when he blushed.