Of course it's who you think it is.

After a couple of heartbeats of panic, you decide you can't just hope whoever it is goes away - and that you can probably hide most of this. Crudely. If given a couple of minutes. Fuck.

...Maybe there would be some divine intervention, in between now and the fifteen seconds it will take you to answer the door? Or, hell, diabolic intervention. You'd kinda said a sort of prayer to Satan just now, right? Fuck, that bastard probably set this up because you weren't doing a real ritual or something, didn't he.

Escapism not actually being an effective conduit to higher (or lower) powers, nothing changes between the knock and you opening the door a tiny crack... Confirming that it was, indeed, who you feared it was on the other side.

"Oh, um, Maya..." You say, trying to keep the door as shut as possible without being more suspicious, "Just... Give me five minutes?"

Pushing the door and hoping momentum shuts it while you clean up, you scan the room quickly. Snuff the candles first, go! The very expensive grimoire? Just kick it under the bed, the leather can take it! The circle... The circle... Um, you can maybe cover that up with your bedsheet? Probably? And claim you're... Trying to mix your own ****? Some other students were brewing their own beer, so that would kind of be similar, right?

...And as your mind throws out that inane thought, you look back towards Maya, and realize that the door is, in fact, completely open. Fuck. Because why the hell would Maya think you had anything important to hide?

For perhaps the only time in your life, you wish you had actual boundaries with Maya.

"So. Um..." She says, looking around the room wide eyes, like she was taking in some kind haunted house, "Guess you've been hitting the local bookstores, then? Anything useful?"

...Well, at least she wasn't freaking out. Still, you really wish she hadn't found out about this, considering how deep you were willing to dive... You knew it would only worry her, and that she'd tip off Ms. Devlin pretty quickly. At least she'd probably take any solutions you uncover a bit more seriously after this?

With a sigh, you go ahead and cover up the circle anyway. The horse was well out of the barn, but it made you feel a bit better regardless.

"University library," You correct, "Ms. Devlin apparently donated part of her collection as a sign of goodwill. I doubt she'd give us anything truly useful in escaping her, and the information is probably biased, but... It seemed like a good starting point. If her book says she has wings, and another dusty tome says succubae don't have wings, then that book is probably more prone to errors, right?"

You wonder if it's a good idea to tell her this much considering her meetings, but... Well, it would be trivial for Ms. Devlin to find out what you were doing if she knew you were dabbling in demonology, and it's possible that Maya would catch a flaw you'd overlooked. Two heads were better than one, and May was the better student of you two.

Maya gives you a nod in return.

"But why the..." She asks, gesturing towards your now-hidden-and-aborted summoning.

"Research," You answer, "I'm expecting that they're accurate to a point, because donating bad books would defeat the purpose... But I'm also not necessarily putting that much faith in them. They could have traps of their own, or just be plausible-sounding lies. So I thought I'd follow the setup steps for some of the basic invocations, take a few pictures, and crossreference them to other occult texts - or maybe reverse-image-search them to see if any of them show up in the news surrounding, like, horrible accidents."

You pointedly do not mention your intent to perform a full-fledged summoning as a final validation step, nor that you had almost talked yourself into going through with it tonight, nor any of what it would entail. Maya might be pretty accepting of this step considering the circumstances, but you know she'd freak out if she knew you were going to become a full-fledged demon summoner - however temporarily.

"You really wanted to work with something so smelly before your date?" She asked, wrinkling her nose, "It smells like some mad biologist decided to crossbreed a rafflesia and a durian in here..."

...Huh? You'd used perfectly normal scented candles, ones that you'd used a dozen or so times back in high school when you'd experimented with pot, and kept using long after you'd decided you'd rather do something more active. They smelled fine then, and they smelled fine now.

"Huh?" You ask, completely mystified as to what the issue could be, "It's just sandalwood and sage... Maybe Elizabeth will think I'm some kind of crunchy granola type, but it shouldn't be a problem. It really smells that horrible to you?"

"Worse, I was getting a headache just approaching the door," She answered, seeming genuinely repulsed.

You go back to your laptop, checking your notes for any summarized points that might be relevant, and entering a mention of this under your testing notes. The only way this should happen is if a demon overwhelmed your protections with brute ****... But that would require A), a demon, and B), a gross display of power that would be beyond obvious. Like, "Blood dripping from the walls while the holy water turns to urine" obvious.

Plus, it definitely doesn't smell that way to you... Which would suggest you were bewitched. A vanity demon could do that, and the idea crosses your mind that maybe you'd actually done the summoning and had your memory erased, but... No, a powerful demon subverted your protections, wiped the last hour from your mind, cleaned up the blood, but didn't do anything about the lingering purity? That was nonsensical.

It was more likely that Maya was bespelled, then... But just to smell something foul in your room? That was beyond arbitrary. Who would do that, and why?

...Shit, you shouldn't stay quiet for too long, or Maya's own thoughts would probably go in dangerous directions.

"That's really weird..." You say, hedging with your thoughts, "The foul-smelling stuff isn't supposed to come into play yet; that's the offering to the demon, though exactly what they prefer varies. The scented candles are supposed to represent some element of purity to protect the summoner long enough to curry favor. It doesn't smell off to me, so maybe that's the trap? Something else about the ritual fouls the protections, so you're just letting a demon loose on the place - and because it looks like an obvious diabolist error from the outside, it doesn't hurt her reputation."

You honestly don't think that's likely; there's too many different possible types of protection involved to subtly sabotage all of them, especially since summoners can freely add their own. If Ms. Devlin was going to do that, she wouldn't have donated a dedicated book on protections. But it's... A plausible enough theory to someone who wasn't versed in the details, and it's not like it was impossible.

"Yeah, that crazy thing you drew..." She adds, disgust writ clear on her face, "Who knows what it does. Lines just shouldn't move like that."

...Okay, yeah, this definitely wasn't anything to do with your ritual. And it basically erased any chance that you were bewitched without realizing it; you would never risk drawing something that intricate without a lot more practice in summoning. Practice you never intended to engage in.

That gave you a pretty firm lead, though; Ms. Devlin's influence. The book had mentioned that those who were particularly corrupted by demons, but still ensouled, could have difficulty with "pure" elements like these; it was one reason it was a lot easier to just go along with the corruption than to struggle with those "pure" things to claw your way back. The candles were obvious, but the symbols were probably just screwing with her eyes - or maybe that was the salt or silver.

...Well, she was supposed to acclimate with time, at least if you couldn't find a way to reverse this before she had to.

Still, you should at least show this to someone else before you make assumptions. Maybe there is something horribly wrong with your circle, though you doubt it. Elizabeth, probably? She was fine with demons, unlike most of your acquaintances.

"...Yeah, I understand," You nod, "I'll ask Elizabeth for some help later, we should be able to figure out exactly how this works."

"Speaking of," Maya said, glancing at your clock, "We need to get you prepared for your date! You probably only have an hour or two left, right?"

...Huh? Maybe this wasn't a demon thing. Maybe your best friend was just having the world's weirdest stroke.

"Um, yeah, the reservation is for eight," You answer, "I figured I'd get some work done for another hour or so, hop in the shower around seven fifteen, and start fretting if I missed anything around seven forty-five."

Why the fuck would you be preparing this early for your date, especially when you have much more important issues to be struggling with? You did want to make a good impression on Elizabeth, sure, but she was already into you - and the only reason you were dating her today instead of next week was at Ms. Devlin's order.

The horror-stricken stare Maya is giving you, however, suggests that she has a decidedly different perspective on the matter.

"Taylor... No," Maya half-chokes, "This is a Luigi's Jubilee date. You can't go in there looking like some broke college student!"

"Maya, I am a broke college student," You reply, exasperated, "It's a nice place, but it's still the go-to place for serious dates here. They'll definitely have seen worse."

"That is so not the point!" Maya answers, burying her face in her hands, "Don't you want to see Elizabeth's face light up with admiration and desire? Don't you want to draw everyone's eyes to you as the star of the night? This is your special day, so you should make it yours!"

...Fuck, this was going to be a whole thing, wasn't it. There was no stopping Maya when she was like this; either you were going to spend the next couple of hours dressing up, or the next couple of hours with Maya sulkily insistent that you should be getting dressed up. Either way, demonology for the night had been forcefully placed on hold.

"...I really don't get it," Taylor sighs, "But if it's what you want..."

...Except, the terrifying manic gleam in Maya's eyes as she reached for her purse suggested that you'd made a terrible, terrible mistake in agreeing to her request.