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Jasper had only been training as a Shadowhunter since birth. He really should’ve known better than to summon a demon to help him get a date. He really should have. If Monty, his parabatai, had been around, he would’ve told him he was being a dumbass. Which he would have deserved, because he was being a dumbass.
But Monty wasn’t around and Monty was like eighty percent of his impulse control and now there was a demon trapped in a pentagram in the middle of the Griffin House living room.
Dumbass.
And, because Clarke had walked in and, like a responsible person who didn’t summon demons to be her wingman, had tried to stop him, somehow everything had gone wrong and now the demon was inside Clarke’s body in the pentagram in the middle of the Griffin House living room.
Did he mention he was a dumbass? Because he was.
“Ooo,” demon-Clarke purred, running a hand down the side of her body. “This is an upgrade from the last one.”
“The last one?” Jasper asked. Should he leave Clarke and her new demon friend here and go try to find help and/or a way to fix this? Would being inside Clarke now mean that the demon could leave the pentagram? Would he get punished for summoning a demon in the first place, and would that punishment be better or worse than accidentally putting it in Clarke?
“Yeah.” The demon used Clarke’s voice, but it was different. Higher. Airier. He couldn’t quite figure it out. “Usually I get gross, half-dead bodies, if they give me a body at all. This one’s nice. Very like the one I had once upon a time before I became a demon.”
“Oh.” Did demons used to be humans? Maybe Jasper should pay more attention in class. “That’s cool.”
“Right.” Demon-Clarke nodded once, her hands planting themselves on her hips. “Let’s get going then, shall we? I am Josephine Lightbourne, High Princess of the Order of the Prime.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jasper said, because he was panicking and panicking meant being polite to demons apparently. Why hadn’t he brought a sword? Why did he think summoning a demon without a sword would be a good idea? “I’m Jasper.” Fuck. Why did he say that? Did names give demons power? What kind of demon was Josephine? Did the type of demon mean anything in regards to names?
“You can’t keep Clarke’s body,” Jasper told her. Because that seemed important. “She’ll need it back. You weren’t supposed to have her body anyway. She just…got in the way.”
Josephine shrugged. “No matter,” she said. “What’s the saying? Here for a good time, not a long time? That’s the Josie motto.”
That seemed like a trap. He wasn’t sure how, but it seemed like a lie, at the very least.
“Can you, like, let her go?” he asked, and Josephine laughed.
“Not until I fulfil my end of our bargain,” she told him, and turned in a slow circle, taking in the runes he’d carefully painted onto the floor. “Oh, fun! I’m wingman-ing you, huh? That’s a new one.”
The fact that she was essentially pointing out that he couldn’t get a date without the help of a demon was a little diminishing, but Jasper brushed it off.
“We can just cancel the deal,” he said. “You don’t have to get me a date, and you can just go home.”
Josephine pursed her lips. “No can do, Jasper,” she said. “You summoned me, and the summoning is the deal. “Whether or not you wanted me to be in Clarke’s body is irrelevant. I’m stuck here until I, quote, get you a date, whatever that means, and until you fulfil my side of the bargain. Once we’ve both done our parts, I’ll happily return to Sanctum and you can have Clarke back.” She paused and glanced down at herself. “Unless you’re wanting Clarke to be your date. Then we might have a problem.”
Jasper shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not Clarke.”
“Good.” Josephine smiled at him. “Then we’re in business.”
Jasper almost agreed because he was a dumbass, but then another thought crossed his mind.
“What’s your side of the bargain?” he asked, and Josephine laughed.
“Oh, Jasper, darling,” she purred. “Josie wants to get drunk.”
That seemed like a fair enough deal, and Jasper had just voiced his acceptance when the door to the living room slammed open.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Bellamy asked, rubbing at his parabatai rune. “Why is this telling me you’re in trouble?”
“Ooo,” Josie mused. “He’s hot. Is it him?”
“It’s not him,” Jasper told her. “Shut up.” He turned back to Bellamy, pasting an innocent grin on his face. “Nothing’s wrong, Bellamy. Me and Clarke are just hanging out.”
Bellamy shot him a disapproving look. “Cut the shit,” he said. “My parabatai run would not be on fire if something wasn’t happening to Clarke. She looks fine, so what’s wrong with her?”
“Why are you looking at me?” Jasper asked, frowning, then decided he was the obvious conclusion, as he was the only person in the room where Clarke was standing in the middle of a pentagram. “Never mind. But nothing’s wrong with Clarke. She’s fine.”
“Right,” Josie agreed, twirling a piece of her hair. “I’m, like, totally fine.”
Bellamy and Jasper stared at her for a moment, before Bellamy turned to him with a glare. “That’s not Clarke.”
“It’s not,” Jasper agreed.
“Fuck,” Josie said. “I thought I did a good job.”
“You didn’t,” Jasper told her, and Josie pouted in a very un-Clarke-like way.
“What did you do?” Bellamy asked again, and Jasper heaved a sigh.
“She wasn’t supposed to possess Clarke,” he started, feeling like that was an important part. “Clarke just, like, came in and tried to stop me, but she was too late and she tripped into the pentagram and now we’re here.”
“So there’s a demon in my girlfriend,” Bellamy surmised, which, Jasper figured, was a harsh way of putting things.
“Ooo, girlfriend,” Josie purred, eying Bellamy. “Is it too late to amend my end of the bargain?”
“Yes,” Jasper and Bellamy answered at the same time.
“What is the bargain?” Bellamy asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Is this something we can hide? Or are we all going to get in shit over this? Or did you agree to something dumb enough to get Clarke killed?”
“I’m not that idiotic,” Jasper told him. “Josie’s just got to get me a date, and I’ve got to get her drunk. Josie, not the date. That’s it.”
Bellamy glanced back and forth between him and Josie, who was smiling innocently, like he wasn’t sure that was everything.
“That’s it?” he confirmed, and Jasper nodded. “By the angel, you’re an idiot.”
Jasper didn’t refute that.
“Great,” Josie said, clapping her hands together. “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.” She skipped out of the center of the pentagram until she’d fully exited the one piece of protection Jasper had thought he’d had. She collapsed down on one of Abby’s ornate, fancy-company-only couches that he’d pushed aside to draw the pentagram, folding one leg neatly across the other. “So. Who are we wooing?”
Who they were wooing was, in fact, Maya Vie of the Mount Weather Clan. A fact that was not at all shocking to Bellamy, even with his feigned disappointment that he was into a vampire.
Josie, however, was thrilled.
“A Nephilim and a Child of the Night,” she mused, painting her toenails with a bottle of hot pink nail polish she’d pulled out of thin air. “How scandalous. Now, where do we find this Child?”
“Let’s not do this here,” Bellamy grumbled. He snatched the nail polish from Josie’s hand. “Abby will kill you if you get that on her good couch.”
As per Bellamy’s direction, Josie and Jasper wiped up the paint and maneuvered Abby’s furniture back where it belonged.
They went upstairs afterwards to the dormatories, and found themselves in Jasper’s room.
Josie sprawled across his bed, a new bottle of polish appearing as she resumed her toenail painting.
“So tell me about this Maya,” she said, and Jasper had the sudden feeling that this was what girls’ sleepovers were like. “What’s she like? Why do you like her?”
“Where did you find this demon?” Bellamy asked, tense where he leaned against the closed door, his stele clenched in his hand. “A Barbie dreamhouse?”
“Ha, ha,” Jasper told him, deadpanned. He grabbed a pillow from his bed and dropped to the floor, hugging it to his chest, because it felt right. “Maya is amazing. She’s the best person I’ve ever met, and I’m in love with her.”
“You’ve talked to her, like, twice,” Bellamy pointed out, but Josie shushed him.
“Literally tell me everything,” she told Jasper, and Bellamy sighed loudly.
But Jasper complied, gushing out everything he knew about Maya.
Maya was part of the Mount Weather Clan, a group of vampires that lived in the tunnels beneath Mount Weather University. Dante Wallace, the patriarch of the clan, had long ago had the windows in all the buildings tinted with sun-blocking materials, which meant the members of the clan were free to enroll in classes and build up an impressive resume of degrees. Frat and sorority parties were where they drank their meals, as most people were too buzzed to remember it in the morning. They’d made a deal centuries back with the local Shadowhunter branch to leave them to their business in return for reduced tuition and not killing their victims.
That was the basics, at least, which Jasper explained to Josie at their little slumber party in his bedroom. He didn’t point out that there were suspicions that some of the vampires were doing something a little less chill to some of the human students in the tunnels beneath the university, because that wasn’t relevant. And, really, as fun as Josie seemed to be, should he really trust her with details?
They decided to keep it simple.
Jasper would meet up with Maya in the university library. Josie and Bellamy would watch inconspicuously from a nearby table or rack of books. He’d flirt a little, invite her to an art gallery showing in town the next night, and leave it at that. If she accepted, Josie would hang around to help him get ready for it, as a favour—Bellamy rolled his eyes at this—and then, once the date was successful, they’d go get drunk to celebrate.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Which was why Jasper was already failing miserably.
“What?” Maya asked, a slight smile on her lips as she looked up at Jasper.
Jasper resisted the urge to send Bellamy and Josie, who were sitting a few tables away, a panicked glance.
“I asked what brings you here,” he repeated, cringing as he said it. “Which is your midterm. Obviously. Because you already said that.”
Maya’s smile grew. “That’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s midterm season. I can barely think straight either.”
Jasper shook his head. “Haven’t you had, like, a thousand midterm seasons?” he asked, and Maya laughed.
“No,” she told him honestly. “I’ve only been allowed to actually take courses since the sixties. For a couple hundred years before that, I mostly just wandered around or hid out during the day.”
“Right,” Jasper agreed lamely. “What’s your midterm on?”
“Vampiric feminism,” Maya told him, which seemed accurate. “I actually have a PhD in the subject, and I wrote a few papers on the subject and I’ve guest lectured for other university clans every once in a while. That alias should be in her sixties or seventies now, though, so I figured I’d see what’s changed over the years.”
“Wow,” Jasper said, and Maya laughed.
“I’m studying art this time, though,” she said. “Getting my Master’s. The Vampire Feminism course is just an easy elective."
Josie gave him a very unsubtle thumbs up from the corner of his vision, and Jasper knew this was the opening he needed.
“Did you hear about the new gallery at City of Light?” he asked. “It sounds like it’ll be pretty cool.”
Maya grinned. “Oh, it should be more than cool,” she agreed. “I was planning to head over to check it out in the next couple of days.”
“Do you want to, maybe, I don’t know, go with me?” Jasper asked, cringing at how lame that came out. “Like as a date?”
Maya’s grin froze, then came back softer, giddier. If she’d been able to blush, Jasper was sure she would be. “Okay,” she agreed, and her eyes darted down to the book in front of her before darting back up to Jasper. “That would be fun.”
“Great,” Jasper agreed, just grinning at her like an idiot.
Josie’s thumbs up had gotten more obvious, and Maya glanced at her for a moment before looking back at him.
“Why is there a demon inside Clarke?” she asked, and Jasper felt his face heat up.
“I accidentally put her there,” he admitted, and Maya laughed.
“Why would you accidentally put a demon in Clarke?” she asked. “Why did you have a demon in the first place? Were you trying to kill it?”
Jasper shook his head. “I summoned Josie,” he told her. “But don’t worry. Once our deal is done, she’ll go back.”
“Okay,” Maya agreed, far too readily. But Jasper figured, as a vampire, she’d probably seen an accidental demon possession before. “Want to go somewhere where your demon and Bellamy aren’t breathing down our necks?”
Jasper would love that very much. He wasn’t enjoying having an audience. “Sure,” he agreed. “But don’t you need to study?”
Maya snorted and snapped her book shut, turning it so he could see the title. “Maya Vincent,” she said, running her finger under the author’s name. “A past alias of mine. I literally wrote the textbook, Jasper. I think I’ll do fine on the midterm.”
Jasper grinned at her, and let her grab his hand and pull her away from their table.
They maneuvered their way down aisles of books, giggling as they ran. They reached a far off, dusty corner that Jasper figured no one had been to in years and stopped there. His chest heaved with the exertion of the run, but Maya’s was just as still as it always was.
“Are we even allowed back here?” he asked, breathless, staring at the flashing, buzzing, broken fluorescents hanging from the roof.
Maya shrugged. “Does it matter?” she asked, her finger brushing along the spine of a book. Another by Maya V-something. A novel this time, by the looks of it. “Dante keeps the first editions here. Collects them. It’s insurance, I think. Sell my classic romances from the 1800s and I can start a new life somewhere else if everything goes to shit. There’s something for everyone back here.”
“Wow.” Jasper moved to pull the book from the shelf, but Maya redirected his gaze to hers with a finger under his chin. Her fangs glinted in the light of the fluorescents.
“I don’t know about you,” she whispered, “but I didn’t bring you back here to read.”
Jasper’s eyes darted down to her lips, her fangs, again, and then he found her eyes, shining and bright, and then he leaned in and kissed her.
“Was summoning a demon the best decision of my life or what?” Jasper asked, flopping back on his bed with a grin on his face.
“Definitely up for debate,” Bellamy grumbled. He was sitting now, at least, his stele put away.
“Oh, stop,” Josie told him, slapping him on the arm. “I want all the details. All of them. Even the dirty ones. And then we’ll plan your angle for tomorrow.”
“I’m in love,” he declared, mostly ignoring Josie’s words. Bellamy sighed, long and suffering, and Josie let out a joyful laugh.
They went out for drinks that night. Josie didn’t care either way about going to the gallery, but Bellamy claimed Clarke would kill him if she didn’t get to go. Her side of the bargain had been met, anyway, as Jasper had more than secured the date, so as long as she got drunk, she was happy.
They went out to Second Dawn, a nightclub, at Josie’s request. She’d raided Clarke’s closet, and they brought along Monty and Harper, who both gained points in the Good At Being Shadowhunters category for immediately clocking Josie as not being Clarke—not that that was particularly difficult to do.
Jasper would take any excuse to party, but the combination of finally asking Maya out—as well as everything that went down in the hidden stacks of her library—and needing to get drunk to get Clarke back was more than enough to encourage him to get wasted.
“You can’t be hungover for your date,” Josie shouted at him over the music, arm draped over him and drink sloshing onto her dress. “You just can’t. It’s not classy.”
“Nothing a little Anti Hangover Rune can’t fix,” Jasper shouted back. He downed the shot Monty handed him after clinking it against Josie’s. “Fuck, I’m gonna miss you. You’re fun, you know?”
Josie laughed. “I got a man to get back to in Hell,” she informed him. “Can’t stay here without him.”
“That’s so nice,” Jasper gushed, and she laughed again. “You should come visit.”
“Sure,” Josie agreed. “Summon me whenever! I’m great at wedding planning, too!”
Jasper laughed and reached out with his empty shot glass to cheers against her fruity drink. “That’s amazing,” he told her. “We’ll have to get you to plan Clarke and Bellamy’s wedding!”
Josie cackled and they headed back to the bar for more shots, drinking until Jasper could barely remember why they started or who he was or why they were there.
He woke the next morning with a pounding in his head and a banging on his bedroom door. He opened it, only to be tackled to the ground by a very rumpled and angry Clarke, her stele pressing against his neck.
“I can’t believe you let a demon possess me,” she growled, and Jasper was too hung over for this conversation. Couldn’t she have waited to very rightly accuse him of things until after he’d had time to get rid of his hangover?
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “It was an accident.” Clarke scoffed. “All she did was help me ask Maya out. And she also got drunk.”
Clarke rolled her eyes. “You owe me,” she declared, and he nodded in agreement.
“What do you think of this one?” Maya asked. The painting they were staring at was pretty, with rolling fields of flowers and a windmill in the distance.
"I like it,” he told her. “It looks peaceful.”
Maya smiled fondly at it, reaching out to brush her fingers along the paint despite the large No Touching sign.
“There was a house attached to the windmill,” she told him. “I was born there, a few centuries ago. I spent my childhood running through these fields picking flowers.” Her voice turned wistful. “It’s gone now. I don’t know what happened, but I went back in the early twentieth century. There’s a city there now.”
“That’s sad,” Jasper told her, and Maya shrugged.
“That’s life,” she said simply. “Everything comes and goes. Nothing lasts forever.”
The painting, the sign declared beside it, was done in the late seventeen hundreds by an anonymous artist. It was on loan from Dante Wallace’s private collection. Maya said it was hers, that Dante didn’t claim it in the slightest, but an elderly billionaire owning a piece of priceless art made more sense than a supposedly broke Master’s student.
“This just got depressing,” Maya added with a laugh. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Jasper told her. “I want to learn everything about you.”
She smiled at him, and he fell a little more in love with her. “How long do you have?”