The Sinner

by Emma Scott

Night had fallen and there was a demon in my kitchen eating cereal.

“Demons can’t make you do anything,” Casziel said. “We insinuate. Influence. Cajole. We stoke the fires of your sloth, or wrath, or jealousy, then feed off it. Whether or not you act on our insinuations is entirely up to you, though you rarely believe that.

Everything is black and white for you humans when there are a thousand shades of gray.” He pulled a book off the shelf, an eyebrow arched. “More than fifty.”

“I’ll just go get showered and dressed.” I gathered some clothes to take with me in the bathroom. “You can watch TV or…do that.” Casziel had found a head of iceberg lettuce in my fridge and bit into it, crunching noisily.

“I would wait for you until the sun goes black and the stars fall, beloved.”