Rita felt sick.

Sadly, she was no stranger to having close brushes with death anymore, but that didn’t make the adrenaline crash afterwards any easier. Her hands were still shaking.

There was no feeling more horrible than having your soul slowly sliding out of your body, bit by bit, and she’d gone through it right after having a long, painful operation. She was tired.

Not physically, though she was certainly a bit exhausted physically as well, but mentally. Emotionally. The whole escapade had given her whiplash as she first experienced the joy of finally having Alice treated with something resembling professional care, only to be stabbed in the back by someone she’d thought she was becoming friends with.

Oh God, she hoped Ixxy had actually fixed Alice and hadn’t just lied about what she’d been doing!

After throwing on a shirt to cover her modesty, she’d ducked into her Mindspace — or was that Soulspace now? — to check on Alice, just in case. Nothing had visibly changed, the place still looked covered in a thin layer of silk and Alice still lay on the ground, cocooned in a fine mesh of web, though there was now a clear separation between the ground and Alice.

Did that mean Alice was okay now? She had no idea. She’d been half tempted to rip the cocoon open, but on the off chance that Ixxy’s warning had been truthful, she’d refrained. Leaving Alice there, as she’d been all along, was hardly likely to make things worse, and Alice could wait a few minutes more. There were more important things to deal with at that moment.

Such as everyone talking at once while the demon that had just attempted to perform grand theft soul was pinned to the floor in the middle of Gora’s living room downstairs.

“I knew it, you fucking cunt, I should have stopped this shit the moment you showed up,” Gora was snarling in Ixxy’s ear while she leaned on her back, holding her down.

“She is a risk. We should kill her now,” Samual was stating, his sword already drawn and seemingly eager to do the deed.

“I… I don’t understand…” Timothy was muttering to himself, frantically paging through the contract that the three of them — Rita, Ixxy and himself — had signed, while occasionally glancing over at the fuss over in the middle of the floor.

“You have any idea how hard it is to get demon-gunk out of the floor?” Gora growled at Samual. “I do. We’re not killing her in my house if we can help it.”

“So we do nothing? If she slips out, she could kill Rita with a touch,” Samual argued.

“She’s not going to slip out, I’ve got a firm grip on her,” Gora growled back.

“Until you don’t!” Samual said. “You can’t just hold on to her forever! Long term, our only options are to kill her or let her go!”

“If I kill her, she just comes back!” Gora yelled back. “Cuz, what’s the deal here? What happened?”

“I don’t know!” the young contract mage wailed. “I can’t find it! I don’t know! This should have been impossible!”

The only people who were quiet were Rita herself, who had just crawled quietly down the stairs and wasn’t really emotionally ready to participate, and Ixxy. The demoness was lying face-down on the floor, held firmly in place by Gora’s muscular arms.

She’d stopped fighting back. When Gora had been dragging her down the stairs, she’d been struggling like a cat on its way to the bath, screaming and squirming and fighting with all of her might. Not that it had done her a lot of good.

Her eyes locked onto Rita and Samual, who’d been watching her very carefully, glanced up.

“Rita,” he remarked grimly, stepping over to position himself between her and the pinned demon. “It might be safer for you if you wait upstairs.”

Rita shook her head. “If she gets loose I don’t think a staircase is going to protect me,” she said in a shaky voice.

This time, she was carrying her spear that she’d previously left upstairs in trembling hands. Whether it would be of any use in defending herself, she didn’t know, but just having it in her hands made her feel some small measure of security.

“Dammit, Timothy, give me something!” Gora snarled. “Samual’s right, I can’t keep her here forever!”

Timothy slapped the contract down on the desk in frustration. “I. Don’t. Know! This shouldn’t have been possible! Rita’s soul is clearly protected, right here.” He stabbed his finger into the page. “Black on white. It should be one hundred percent solid! I even copied the book exactly! It can’t be linguistic drift, there hasn’t been enough time for that, plus I checked it myself…”

“You know,” Ixxy’s voice rang out from where she was pinned to the floor, “you could always just ask.”

Gora cuffed her on the head. “Shut up you, the last thing we need is more of your lies.”

“You’re wasting your energy trying to hurt me, I’m not feeling any pain right now,” Ixxy said.

“Shut it!” Gora screamed. Then she turned to Timothy again. “We don’t need to know what went wrong, Cuz. Just how to fix it! Can’t we just kill the contract? Use the safe word?”

Timothy smacked his palm to his forehead. “Of course! The safe word! Why didn’t I think of that?”

He got up and turned to Rita, only to freeze, his eyes widening as they landed on her arachnid legs.

“Uhh…” he started, before clamping his hands over his eyes and swallowing his fear.

He was doing really well. If Rita had been in a better mental state, she would have been really impressed by how he was dealing with his phobia.

“Rita, you have to listen to me,” he said, voice shaking. “I need you to say the word ‘Dezelgebeborox’ while really wanting the contract between you and Ixxy to be gone.”

Rita blinked. “Dezelgebrox?”

“No, ‘DEZEL-GEBEB-BOROX’,” he sounded it out for her. “Just like that. That will nullify the contract.”

“Dezel… wait, just like that? The contract just ends?” Rita asked suspiciously.

That sounded too good to be true. What was the point of a contract that could just be terminated freely at any time? It meant nothing!

“You probably won’t be allowed to ever get another contract with a demon ever again, but somehow I don’t think that’s a problem, right?”

Rita hesitated. While it was true that she never wanted to go through this ever again, if Alice needed more medical attention, she might not have a choice. Non-demons couldn’t see or interact with souls.

She glanced over to where Ixxy was lying on the floor. The demoness seemed oddly calm, staring back at her with half-lidded eyes, either unconcerned with her contract getting nullified, or simply resigned to it.

“Rita, do it,” Gora called, shifting her arms for a better grip on Ixxy. “This kind of situation is why it exists.”

“I know, it’s just… I’m not sure…”

“Rita,” Samual spoke softly, cupping Rita’s face in a surprisingly gentle act for him. “Decisive action. Yes or no, make a choice. We’ll back you up whatever you choose, but you have to choose.”

Samual was right. Every moment Rita wasted time thinking about it, they were taking a risk that Ixxy somehow managed to free herself and attack her again. She had to make a choice.

“Dammit, Samual, don’t give her ideas, she needs to do it!” Gora growled. “Otherwise the moment I let this bitch go…”

If Alice needed a demon again… well, then Rita would make another plan. Or she’d just jump in there and do it herself. After all, there was one non-demon who could interact with her soul, apparently.

“Dezelgebeborox!” Rita exclaimed loudly.

A silence descended over the room.

She’d half expected Ixxy to burst into flames, screaming about how she’d be back and how they’d all regret crossing her, but nothing of the sort happened. She just lay there, still staring at Rita with half-lidded eyes.

“Is that it? Is it done?” Gora asked, still holding Ixxy down.

“Umm…” Timothy said, turning back to the table and blinking down at the paper on it. “No. The contract should have disintegrated or… something. It didn’t work. Rita, try again, maybe you didn’t say it correctly.”

“Dezélgebeborox! Dezelgébeborox! Dezelgebebórox!” Rita said, trying to every possible pronunciation she could think of.

“It’s not enough to just say the word,” Timothy explained when the contract remained stubbornly un-disintigrated. “You have to really want it to be stopped.”

“Believe me, I very much do! Dezelgebéborox!”

Another pause as they waited for something, anything to happen.

“What’s going on, Cuz?” Gora asked.

“I don’t get it,” Timothy said scratching his head. “This should be working. I couldn’t have accidentally waived the safe word. It’s embedded in the Grand Contract and there aren’t any waiving provisions. You can’t waive it.”

“I know why it doesn’t work…” Ixxy sang out from underneath Gora, a cheeky grin on her face. Everyone ignored her.

“Does the Grand Contract perhaps not apply to Rita?” Samual suggested. “She is, after all…”

“The Grand Contract applies to all sapient creatures. Anything a demon could make a contract with. If Rita was somehow exempt from it, she wouldn’t have been able to sign a contract,” Timothy explained. “And any demon could have snapped up her soul the moment they laid eyes on her.”

“Ye-es,” he replied carefully. “But considering her unique situation…”

“I know she’s a Nightmare Spawn,” Ixxy piped up, rolling her eyes.

“What? How?” Gora growled, glaring down at the demoness.

“We chatted, okay?” Ixxy replied nonchalantly.

“Rita?” Gora asked, ignoring the demon.

“Yes, but what does it really matter? Everyone in the Delver’s Guild already know…”

“Yes, it damn well does, Rita!” Gora replied. “It’s the difference between vague rumours about your existence and someone knowing exactly where to find you!”

Rita pursed her lips. She was tired. Exhausted. Emotionally drained. And now Gora was giving her grief. She was sick of it.

“Gora, wake up!” she shouted back. “I’m half a fucking spider! Nobody is going to have any doubt that I’m something weird! As crazy and diverse as this city is, anybody who expends even the smallest amount of effort is going to find me very quickly! What am I going to do? Just sit inside all day for the rest of my life? Sponge off Samual forever? I need to build a life here and that means people are going to know what I am. Thanks to the Delver’s Guild, that cat is most assuredly out of the bag.”

“And besides,” she continued, “it was necessary to treat Alice.”

“Well, technically…” Ixxy began, but a glare from Gora shut her up.

“Look, let’s stay focused,” Samual interjected, interrupting the brewing argument. “The safe word. Why isn’t it working?”

“I don’t know,” Timothy sighed miserably. “It should.”

“Was it something she did?” he asked again, pointing towards the demon still pinned to the floor.

“No, I don’t think so,” Timothy replied.

“Did you screw something up, Cuz?” Gora asked, a bit quieter.

“I could…” Ixxy tried again but Gora just pressed her head down harder.

“No! I don’t… I mean… I couldn’t have…”

“It’s okay, Timothy,” Rita added. “I know you did your best. I’m not blaming you. Please just be honest so we can figure this out.”

“But I don’t…” Timothy started, but this time Ixxy interrupted him.

“Because it’s not Rita’s contract, that’s why!”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have given away the game. It would certainly have been funny to watch Timothy, the Hunk and the idiot Cambion continue to run into a wall trying to figure out where all of their careful planning had come off the rails, but…

She just wasn’t feeling it.

The truth was, Ixxy wasn’t feeling particularly good about the whole situation. Chatting with Rita had been fun. She’d actually enjoyed the company. Sure, Rita was just a mortal, but that had been part of the appeal. Someone who thought about the world differently than her own kind. Someone who she didn’t have to keep watching her words so as to not either cause offense or incur a debt with. It had been nice.

And then the moment it looked like she was going to be unable to preserve her soul intact, she’d resorted to trying to rip it in pieces out of pure greed.

Despite Rita being just a mortal, something it still didn’t feel particularly good.

“What do you mean, it’s not Rita’s contract?” the Hunk, Samual, demanded.

He was hovering in front of Rita like a protective bodyguard, as if that would somehow prevent Ixxy from getting close to her. Hah. He was fast, there was no denying that, but he wasn’t that fast.

“Talk!” Gora growled, mashing Ixxy’s head against the ground once again, just like she’d been doing pretty much the whole time.

“Oh now you want me to talk?” Ixxy replied irritably, her cheek scraping against the stone floor.

“Stop playing games!” Gora roared.

“Oh shit…” Timothy muttered from the side.

Every eye in the room turned to him.

“Ask your ‘Cuz’,” Ixxy scoffed from below. “Sounds like he’s figured it out.”

Timothy was busy frantically scanning another single page document, one that was very familiar to Ixxy.

It was the addendum he and she had signed just before. The one that allowed her to route contracts through their primary contract as addendums.

He looked up to find everyone staring at him.

“What is she talking about, Cuz?” Gora asked. “What does she mean this isn’t Rita’s contract?”

Timothy suddenly got an incredibly guilty look on his face. He glanced down at the document in his hand, then quickly tucked it behind his back.

“Er…”

“Timothy!”

Timothy swallowed nervously. “Uh…” he began, looking around at everyone. “I may have overlooked something.”

“What?” Samual hissed menacingly, eyes narrowed.

“Ah… yes…” Timothy stammered, before clearing his throat. “So, she’s right. It’s not Rita’s contract. It’s… er… technically mine.”

He proceeded to provide a brief explanation of how Ixxy couldn’t create new contracts, and how, as a consequence, they’d agreed that she could route her contracts through his as addendums. How he’d asked her to help Rita as payment for this.

“So what exactly is this original contract the two of you have that’s still outstanding?” Gora demanded. It was the only part of the story that he’d glossed over.

“Oh, she has to sleep with him,” Rita answered on his behalf.

“What?” Gora thundered.

“You told her!” Timothy wailed, his face flushed bright red in embarrassment as he stared at Ixxy.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting that she was going to be able to talk, okay?” Ixxy muttered, causing Gora to smack her hard enough that her head bounced off the floor.

“Yes, she told me pretty much everything,” Rita confirmed.

“What the hell, Cuz!” Gora kept shouting, likely loud enough that all the neighbours could hear her. “You told me that your relationship was purely professional! That you hadn’t slept with her!”

“I haven’t!” he protested.

“We haven’t,” Ixxy agreed.

“He hasn’t,” Rita confirmed. “Ixxy really did tell me everything.”

Timothy’s face went from tomato red to deathly pale.

“And what exactly were you providing in exchange?” Samual asked suspiciously.

“Just s-soul!” Timothy stammered, the implication that he’d sold Rita out not lost on him. “And I’ve already paid! I don’t owe her anything!”

“Wait, you paid up front?” Gora asked, incredulous. “Are you an idiot?”

“Hey!” Ixxy protested, coming to his defence. “It was a complicated situation! It made sense at the time!”

“We’ll discuss this later, Cuz. But right now, we have this thing to deal with,” Gora growled, gesturing to Ixxy still pinned underneath her. “Just tell me, how does this help us fix this?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know yet,” Timothy admitted, “but this gives me a new direction for investigation to figure out where I’d slipped up…”

“Oh for fuck sakes,” Ixxy piped up. “I’ll just tell you! It’s the part that says I’m allowed to collect souls from subcontractees. It doesn’t say ‘as payment’. That’s what you missed, okay?”

Timothy quickly scanned to that section.

“But the Grand Contract would stop…” he began, then stopped. “Oh. Right.”

“What? I don’t get it,” Gora asked.

Down on the ground, Ixxy rolled her eyes. Of course the big lummock didn’t get it.

“I signed away my protection,” Rita interjected. “But why didn’t your stuff work? All the complicated things you put in there to replace it? You told me it would keep me safe.”

“Well, because I’d kinda accidentally stabbed myself in the foot,” Timothy admitted sheepishly. “In my section of the contract, I stated she could collect souls. Which contradicted all of the things I put in the part you saw that said she couldn’t collect yours. And since they were both in the same contract…”

“But I never even saw that part!” Rita complained.

“You signing things without reading them is hardly my problem,” Ixxy piped up from the ground.

“I’m sorry. This is all my fault,” Timothy said, seeming to sink in on himself as Gora gave the demon another smack.

Rita took a step forward and glared at Ixxy while Samual grabbed her shoulders to hold her back.

“Careful,” he cautioned. “Don’t get too close.”

“You! You could have taken my soul at any time, couldn’t you? From the moment I signed the contract?” Rita demanded, ignoring him.

“Yes,” Ixxy admitted quietly.

“Then why didn’t you?”

Because she had wanted her intact. Because she’d been curious and Rita had been interesting.

Because, by the end of it, she had actually been having fun.

And because it had felt really good to just have someone she could talk to about all her deepest insecurities without having to worry about anything she said ever coming out.

Oh shit, she’d told Rita everything!

“Nothing? You’re not going to say anything?” Rita asked.

“So if we kill the mage, does the contract disappear?” Samual asked.

“W-wait, k-kill?” Timothy blanched. “Hold on just a moment, we certainly don’t need to go that far!”

“Samual, if you raise your hand against my Cuz I swear I’m going to leave this demon right here and come rip it off, okay?” Gora growled menacingly.

“Nobody’s killing anyone,” Rita commanded. “At least nobody except her.”

“Very well. Mage, where does this leave us?” Samual asked.

“Well, the structure of the contract is kinda weird,” Timothy quickly explained, swallowing nervously. “Rita’s signed onto it, but she’s not the primary contractee, so she can’t nullify it with the safe word.”

“But you are?”

“Yes,” Timothy answered.

“Then why don’t you fix it?” Samual asked.

“Y-you mean… safeword it?” Timothy stammered, his eyes wide as he stared at Samual.

Samual nodded.

“I-I can’t!” Timothy stuttered. “I’m sorry, but I simply can’t afford to do that!”

“Why not?” Samual insisted, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “You said it yourself, this is all your fault. You can make it right. And then I won’t need to kill you.”

“Samual…” Gora growled.

“Because I’ll get blacklisted!” Timothy protested. “I’ll never be able to contract again! Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve studied, everything I’ve done will have been for nothing!”

Gora sighed. “Cuz, I know this will cost you a lot, but a life hangs in the balance…”

“No! I’m not going to ask him to flush his life down the tubes for my sake,” Rita interrupted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Rita, I don’t think you understand how serious this is,” Gora said solemnly. “If we let this contract remain open, that’s signing your death warrant. No matter how well we try to protect you, it’s going to be impossible to keep you safe when all this shitbag needs to end you is to touch you. Especially since she can keep trying over and over again, no matter what we do to her.”

“But what you’re asking your cousin is to functionally end his life!” Rita argued. “All of his hopes and dreams! It will kill him!”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Gora retorted. “It’s hardly that serious. There’s more work for a contract mage than just demons.”

“There is another option,” Ixxy mumbled from below. “You could just pay me.”

For once, Gora didn’t immediately smack her the moment she opened her mouth.

“I delivered my part of the contract,” Ixxy explained. “I performed the operation exactly as required. The only part of the contract still outstanding is my fee.”

“And how the fuck does paying you after you betrayed us help Rita?” Gora snarled.

“Because, Dum-dum,” Ixxy replied snidely, “as soon as our business is concluded, Rita gets all her protections under the Grand Contract back. I can’t touch her anymore.”

“Mage?” Samual asked, looking at Timothy. “Is that correct?”

“Uh, yes, I think it will, actually,” Timothy said, nodding. “Rita has signed away her protections only for the duration of the agreement between her and Ixxy. As soon as that is concluded, they will come back.”

“But what about the part where you said she could collect the souls of the people that signed onto your contract?” Rita asked. “Surely that wouldn’t just go away? It’s in a different part!”

“Ye-es, but that can never and will never override the protections granted by the Grand Contract,” Timothy explained. “The only reason it worked with you was because you’d explicitly signed them away separately.

“Obviously I’d have to be incredibly careful going forward…”

“Not really,” Ixxy interrupted again. “With what that thingy you’re going to pay me with is worth, that neatly finishes off that part of our contract as well, Timothy. We’ll both have provided what we agreed.”

“There is no way we are paying this bitch after what she tried to do,” Gora growled. “No fucking way.”

“Gora, please let’s at least consider the option…” Timothy pleaded.

“No!” Gora insisted. “Cuz, just safeword the damn contract! This bitch gets nothing!”

“Oh, for fuck sakes. It’s my stuff, I get to to decide!” Rita exclaimed, reaching up and pulling her tronic out from under the silk band wrapped around her upper arm.

She held it up and every pair of eyes in the room locked onto the small green square between her fingers.

“This one is identical to the one we offered you. So now I’ve paid you, alright?”

Then she reached forward, placing it just about halfway between Ixxy and herself, before turning and spouting some incomprehensible gibberish towards Timothy in a questioning tone.

Luckily, it wasn’t hard to figure out what she was asking.

“Yes, that should work. Ixxy, do you agree that you’ve now been paid?” Timothy asked.

Ixxy glanced up towards Gora. “May I?” she asked.

Grumbling under her breath, Gora released a single one of Ixxy’s arms and watched her like a hawk as she stretched out and just barely managed to get the tips of her fingers around the little green square.

Immediately, the tiniest tingle signifying a shift in the contract landscape pertaining to her ran through Ixxy. It was done.

“Yep!” she chattered happily, drawing her prize back towards her body, only to feel a large, red hand close around her skull.

“Can you confirm, Cuz?” the Cambion growled from on top of her, and she felt the fingers pressing into her cheek and the back of her head menacingly.

“Uh… yes! It appears this section of the contract is in a completed state!” Timothy said, smiling. “Rita, you’re safe!”

“Oh thank goodness,” Rita exclaimed, breathing a sigh of relief. “And nobody needed to do any emergency contract breaks.”

“Good,” Gora growled, and Ixxy suddenly felt the hand on her head start to squeeze tighter. “Then I can break this bitch’s neck and take your tronic back.”

Ixxy’s eyes widened in panic.

“What?” she stammered. “Are you crazy? You can’t just do that!”

Unfortunately, she could. And both of them knew it. That was the problem with accepting physical items as payment. The contract was done. If she died right now, everything she had on her was effectively forfeit.

True, Gora would incur a debt, same if she’d attacked her on the street, but that would be nowhere near the ridiculous windfall that she’d gotten from Rita in exchange.

“I don’t know,” Gora grinned, leaning down until her face was right next to Ixxy’s. “You tried to kill Rita. Seems like a just punishment to me.”

Fuck. That was… kind of true. It wouldn’t completely exonerate her, but it would diminish the debt even further. Plus, she’d have to collect her debt from… from… a cambion!

“No, wait!”

She frantically clawed at the hand gripping her head with her free arm in a futile effort to stop the half-demon, but despite her efforts, she felt her head slowly being twisted, the muscles in her neck stretched to their absolute limit. She was quite certain that if she hadn’t switched off her sense of pain, they would be screaming in absolute agony.

The pressure kept increasing. She felt her vertebrae creak. Breathing was becoming difficult…

Then she felt a hand wriggle into her own, until it touched the little green tronic.

“Gora! No!”

The pressure vanished, leaving Ixxy gasping for breath.

“Rita?” Gora growled.

Ixxy looked up at the spider-woman who had just saved her life, leaning over her. She’d actually wormed her hand into Ixxy’s so that she could speak.

“No,” Rita repeated. “That is enough. Let her go. Let’s not escalate things any further.”

Gora sighed. “Rita, I can literally just snap her neck and take back your tronic. You know it’s what she deserves it for what she tried to do.”

“Yes. It is,” Rita agreed. “And I don’t care. It’s over. Everything worked out. Let’s not push things any further. Just give me my other tronic, kick her out and let it be over.”

Gora stared at her, a hard expression on her face.

“Please,” Rita repeated.

With a sigh, Gora let Ixxy go, standing up and leaving Ixxy lying on the ground with her heart hammering in her chest and the little green tronic pressed between her and Rita’s hands.

“You’re too soft for this city, Rita,” Gora grumbled, dusting herself off and fishing another green square out of one of her pockets where she’d been keeping it safe.

“I know,” Rita replied quietly, taking the tronic from Gora. “But I’ve decided I’m not letting it change who I am.”

“Th-thank you,” Ixxy stammered, slowly crawling to shaking hands and knees, feeling the tell-tale tingle of her demonic regeneration fixing whatever nerve damage the brutish cambion had caused.

Then she felt a pair of large red hands grab her by the scruff of her shirt and the back of her shorts.

“Wait, what are you doing?” she protested.

“You heard her,” Gora replied. “At least I get to kick you out.”