Sehun knew he didn't really have cause to complain, not when he'd been trying for years to set up his master. Unfortunately, most people took one look at Jongin when he was practicing magic, all sleek and sultry in black and silver, and assumed that beneath the confident smirk and smoky eye make-up lay the heart of a take-charge, 'kiss my boots now, !' dark wizard. In reality, Kim Jongin, while comfortable and playful with his friends, was terminally shy and awkward around strangers, and it took a lot for people to move from the latter category to the former.

Luckily for him, Kyungsoo seemed to be into that sort of thing - though Sehun couldn't see what was so appealing, personally, and if he'd known Kyungsoo was going to turn out to be such a thorn in his side, he wouldn't have tried to set them up in the first place. The annoying little demon had a way of getting to him, and Sehun was used to coming out on top in all his dealings. (Jongin tried to give as good as he got, but it was just too easy to embarrass him. Sehun could almost feel guilty about it - if he ever felt guilty about anything, which he didn't.)

Even so, both wizard and demon seemed happy with the arrangement, and it gave Sehun something to gossip about (Baekhyun and Chanyeol were so old news), so he tried not to pout too much when he couldn't slip into Jongin's bed on those odd nights when he had nightmares about his death and subsequent revival, because Kyungsoo was already there and no way was he sharing. Not all the time, of course, because demons always had other places to be, but often enough to be inconvenient.

As Jongin was now preoccupied with his budding relationship with Kyungsoo, Sehun found himself with a lot more free time on his hands. Running the castle only took so much out of his day, and he'd given up trying to persuade his boss to smite villages. (As dark wizards went, Jongin's score on the 'evil' scale was very low indeed.) He suddenly had the opportunity to pick up where he'd been forced to leave off, after that unfortunate car accident.

And he knew just where to start...

"If you want a tattoo, why don't you just go into town and get a professional to do it?" Jongin asked.

"Because then there will be needles involved and it'll hurt," Sehun said. "And I'm not paying to have a tattoo done that'll only last for one day."

Resurrection had changed his body forever - rather, it didn't change at all. Anything he did to it one day had vanished by the next, and now he'd tried out every hair color known to man (and some that weren't) it was time to take his experiments a little further.

"I'm pretty sure somebody's going to end up in pain because of this." Jongin tapped the spellbook on his workroom desk. "It better not be me."

"Wimp," Sehun muttered under his breath.

"I heard that." Jongin grinned. "We'll see who the wimp is when you're screaming that you've accidentally tattooed your eyeball. You know something's going to go wrong."

"Nothing's going to go wrong. Not this time."

Sehun felt less confident than he sounded, though. The last spell he'd tried to cast had left the castle overrun with mice for a week. Possibly, trying his hand at body art was not the smartest idea, especially not when he was trying for something permanent.

"Maybe you should do this just before midnight?" Jongin suggested. "Then if you wind up horribly disfigured, it'll fix itself when the clock strikes twelve."

"I'll do magic at three in the afternoon if I want to," Sehun huffed. "Watch and learn, sir."

He'd been in the year below Jongin in school, and therefore not had much firsthand knowledge of his abilities at the time, but he'd heard all the stories about the boy who'd been forced down the dark wizard's path due to lack of places, and ended up outperforming his entire class.

For Sehun, things were slightly different. He'd chosen that path himself, had also graduated at the head of his class, had all the natural rhythm and magical grace with which Jongin had been gifted...right up until his death, only a couple of months after graduation and not long into his apprenticeship with Jongin's uncle. If Jongin hadn't been staying at the castle at the time, Sehun's shattered corpse would probably have been buried out back somewhere, maybe with a headstone saying it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Resurrection hadn't left him with many options for the future: working for Jongin as his personal manservant had been by far the best of them. (Which wasn't saying much, but it was a living. Or the equivalent, for an undead man.) He'd been planning on being a working wizard by now, charging a fortune for custom spells, with his own harem of beautiful serving boys to do his bidding.

So much for that idea...

The tattoo's design was fairly simple, only a few lines, because Sehun didn't want to risk losing concentration and messing up halfway through. No complicated dragons or scorpions for him. He didn't need super-manly body art to prove himself.

"You're going to look like a magical girl with a crescent moon on your shoulder," Jongin teased.

"When did you last see a magical girl do her own tattoo?" Sehun countered. "And it's not like I'm putting it on my forehead."

Jongin retreated to the corner of the room, smirking in anticipation. For once, Sehun regretted that Kyungsoo wasn't around to act as a distraction. If something went wrong...

No. Nothing was going to go wrong. This was going to be perfect from start to finish, he was determined.

Ignoring Jongin entirely, Sehun began the spell. Marking flesh on the surface was easy enough; marking it in such a way that it would survive his nightly regeneration process was slightly more complicated. He fixed the square of paper bearing the design to his left shoulder with strips of plaster, leaving the picture clear. He couldn't really see it properly without looking in a mirror, but he didn't need to. The picture was just the target for the spell, marking where he wanted the tattoo to be.

He ran through a light warm-up, stretching every muscle to prepare it for the magic that would soon be coursing through his body. Since it was his skin that would be affected by the spell, his body had to be fairly thrumming with magic. External spells were different, but for this, Sehun couldn't use words. He preferred movements anyway. They made him feel like he was still alive.

Power crackled through his limbs as he reached deep inside himself to the core of his magic and released the catch keeping it locked in place. He swept his left leg in a wide arc across the floor, then back in a shallower arc, sketching out the pattern he wanted. He repeated the motion with his right arm, then with his left leg. As he drew the crescent moon over and over with his body, he kept his focus on his shoulder, on the piece of paper bearing the same design. He pictured the ink seeping through the paper into his skin, pictured the magic sealing it deep.

There.

"Um...Sehun?"

Or maybe not.

"It's a nice design," Jongin said. "I just wish it was on your shoulder where it's supposed to be, and not on my workroom ceiling."

Sehun glanced up. Sure enough, the plain white ceiling now had a crescent moon drawn out in thick black lines, stretching across the entire room. He peeled the now-blank paper away from his shoulder, revealing nothing but bare skin below.

Failed again.

It only took a few words and a wave from Jongin to fix the ceiling, but nothing could fix Sehun. Not now.

"It's never going to work, is it?" he said bitterly, slumping down on the nearest chair. "I haven't been able to do anything right with magic since you brought me back. Not a single thing."

"I'm sorry." Jongin looked and sounded even more miserable, if possible, than Sehun felt. "I didn't mean to wreck your career."

"Better than leaving me dead?" Sehun said. "Your uncle told me no one else was even willing to try, because the chances were I was going to end up as a mindless zombie and they'd have to kill me again anyway. At least you took the risk."

They hadn't discussed it too much afterwards, because Jongin tended to feel guilty about the fact that Sehun could no longer use magic properly, and that was the one thing Sehun couldn't stomach needling him about. Regardless of whether or not Sehun was broken as a dark wizard for the rest of his immortal unlife, he owed whatever existence he had now to Jongin. Sehun was grateful for that, even if he didn't express it too well.

"Sometimes I'm not sure the risk paid off," Jongin grumbled, but Sehun could see the gloom lifting from him. "I'm sure this castle would be so much more peaceful without you in it."

"Yeah, and you'd still be single," Sehun pointed out. "You'd never have summoned a demon if I hadn't put it on your to-do list. I'm going to put 'world domination' on tomorrow's. Not that I think you'll succeed, but it'll amuse me to watch you try."

"I don't want to conquer the world."

"I know." Sehun sighed exaggeratedly. "I can't believe I'm stuck with such a lame dark wizard who won't even smite villages or practice instilling fear into the hearts of innocents."

"You'll have to settle for me instilling fear in the heart of someone who's definitely not innocent," Jongin said, standing up with his best menacing look on his face. (It wasn't very menacing. Sehun thought it looked more like he was about to have a fit. So much for all that practice he'd insisted Jongin do of intimidating glares.)

Sehun balled up the blank piece of paper, tossed it nonchalantly into the trashcan under the desk, and strolled out before his boss could accidentally injure himself trying to be terrifying.

##########*****##########

Failure with the tattoo by no means meant Sehun would be giving up on magic. Oh no. Just because his body - no longer technically alive - couldn't process magic properly anymore didn't mean there weren't other routes he could try. Ok, so he couldn't shape spells with his body anymore. He couldn't provide the final magical spark that even the simplest spoken spell required for ignition. The same went for potions. He had to face the facts: unless he could do something about his physical condition, he couldn't work magic.

Some of his experiments had been less of a disaster than others. Moving objects with magic had worked - sort of. Not in a straight line, but things had ended up where he'd sent them eventually, albeit by a more scenic route. He'd almost managed to summon an Air Elemental (since his affinity lay with that element) but only the poor creature's voice had come through. And even the tattoo had kind of worked, only on the ceiling instead of his body, and many times larger than planned.

Of course, there had also been incidents at the other extreme, such as the time he'd set fire to his bathroom while trying to turn the tub into a jacuzzi. And Jongin still had no idea why their last cook had disappeared (although he did insinuate - correctly - that Sehun was probably responsible in some way).

So working magic directly was out - for now. That left Sehun with the option of using a familiar.

Familiars had fallen out of fashion round about the same time as flying on broomsticks (carrying a black cat while teleporting didn't look nearly as cool as having one balancing on the end of your broom as you flew) and while Sehun had learned about them in school, he'd never actually had one. He didn't know anyone who did. But for his purposes, they were perfect. Wizards could use familiars as channels, conducting magic through their bodies without having to rely on their own.

He spent several days searching through the castle library for everything he could find on the subject. Cats were the most popular, followed by rats and bats (though not gnats) and one particularly enterprising wizard had conscripted his horse for that purpose. All things considered, a cat seemed to be the easiest to live with. Jongin probably wouldn't even notice, being all wrapped up with his demon, and even if he did, he liked cute things.

Calling a familiar didn't require a great deal of magic, which is why Sehun thought he stood a shot at being able to achieve it by himself. It was mostly about the lure and the information, which anyone could provide, magical or not.

One day when Jongin was out visiting Baekhyun, Sehun made his preparations. He pushed all his bedroom furniture to the edges of the room, because it was best to call a familiar in a place in which he spent a great deal of time, and set in the center of the floor the following: a map with the castle circled in red, a ball of yarn, a bowl of wet cat food (the most expensive he could find), another bowl of milk, a small pink collar and a toy mouse. These things together gave an indication to any potential familiar of the life they could expect and where it would be.

All Sehun had to do was push the message out into the world, so any interested cats could hear it. It was the equivalent of taking out an ad in the paper.

He nudged that tiny spark of magic inside until it flared up, coming to life with a warmth that cheered him every time. Gently, he pushed it out through his fingertips, touching all the items he'd gathered together. He drew a circle on the floor around them, just to make doubly sure they were linked. Then he relinquished the tight control he had over his magic and allowed it to burst into the atmosphere, carrying his message with it.

The books said it could take anywhere up to a couple of days to work - and if he hadn't heard anything after three, nobody was interested. He settled down to wait, anyway, lying face down on his bed so he could watch the heap on the floor. He had a good feeling about this.

Sehun woke up three hours later, after a nap he hadn't realized he'd needed, to find something very peculiar taking place on his bedroom floor. All the objects he'd left had vanished, but the circle he'd drawn with magic was now visible, glowing blue, and humming. He sat up in a hurry, excited, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Maybe his cat was going to appear now.

The blue light shot up from the floor to the ceiling, creating an opaque column; the humming grew louder, enough to become annoying. This was it. Sehun crossed his fingers and hoped nothing had gone amiss this time. With the way his magic had been going, he'd probably called a dog instead of a cat, or something like that. Still, the animal didn't matter, as long as he could use it as his familiar.

When the column split open and vanished altogether, it left something behind.

Or rather, someone.

Sehun frowned. "You're not a cat," he said.

"I'm not?" The pinkhaired man standing in the middle of the room looked crestfallen for a moment, then his eyes lit up with a devilish gleam and his lips parted in a wide grin. "I guess that explains why the collar's way too small for me. I'm keeping the mouse plushie, though."

Sehun cursed silently to himself. He'd probably picked up one of the townie kids. This guy looked like he fronted an indie band somewhere. He was wearing the collar, Sehun noticed - as a bracelet. The mouse, he had sticking out of the pocket of his jeans. Of the map, food and yarn there was no sign.

"Sorry," Sehun muttered. He hated having to apologize. "Where are you from? I'll get someone to take you home."

The other man didn't seem at all upset at having suddenly found himself in a stranger's bedroom. "Do you have a car that can drive to the Netherworld?"

The Netherworld? Oh no. This couldn't possibly be good. The spell to summon a familiar had opened a channel, true, but not to the Netherworld. It was supposed to be open only to creatures from Earth.

"Not yet." Sehun cautiously approached the pinkhaired man. "You're obviously not the cat I was trying to call, so who exactly are you?"

"I've never been mistaken for anyone's cat before..."

"You're supposed to be my familiar. Not a...whatever you are."

"If you're truly a wizard, you probably know of my kind, even if you don't know me."

A book appeared in the stranger's hand. Sehun recognised it from the cover, knowing they had a copy in the castle library - in the Forbidden Spells section. Warily, he approached as the stranger flipped through pages until he found the one he wanted and held it out for Sehun to see.

The drawing on the page, while considerably more archaic in terms of clothing, was otherwise an accurate depiction of the pinkhaired man. The picture came with a number of warnings, along with the name of the subject.

Name: Lu Han
Species: Demon
Class: Destroyer