He was in a bit of a mood. Not necessarily a bad one, just the kind of mood you get into when you're living off six hours of sleep over a week and unbridled spite. The fluorescent lights of his apartment hummed overhead, casting a harsh glow on the ancient book spread open on his kitchen table. The smell of dusty paper and candle wax filled his nostrils, mixing with the faint aroma of the coffee he'd brewed three hours ago that was now stone cold.

He traced a finger along the faded ink of the summoning circle printed on the page. His grandmother had been many things—strict, opinionated, and fiercely religious—but he'd never pegged her as someone who kept demon summoning manuals in her attic. The discovery had seemed ridiculous at first, something out of a bad horror movie.

But that was before he'd spent three nights reading through it, before the sleep deprivation had blurred the line between rational thought and desperate action. Now, with five black candles burning at the points of the chalk pentagram he'd drawn on his kitchen floor, he found himself actually following the instructions. The prayer candle in the center flickered, casting shadows that danced across the walls like living things.

"This is so stupid," he muttered, running a hand through his unwashed hair. His heart pounded in his chest, and he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. "Absolutely ridiculous."

Just as he was about to dismiss the whole thing as a waste of time and perfectly good chalk, the air in the room shifted. The temperature plummeted so suddenly that his breath fogged in front of his face. The candles flared, their flames turning an unnatural crimson as a wind picked up inside his closed apartment, swirling papers into a cyclone around him.