Writing prompt archive

Sibling akwardness

{Alice could barely hold her excitement as she was about to try the new demon-summoning ritual she learned today in the middle school Occult Club. Her first surprise was that it actually worked, the second that it was her own stepbrother who was looking at her confused from inside the circle.}

Alice stared.

Her stepbrother, Thomas, stared back.

Alice blinked.

Thomas blinked back with horizontal eyelids.

Alice then sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Is this why you suddenly need to leave at random hours of the day?"

Her only response is a nervous chuckle in an impossibly deep voice from her stepbrother. Alice sighed again, deeper this time. She then gave her brother a neutral look before waving him away.

"Go on. Go back to hell or wherever this thing pulls you from." She got another nervous chuckle.

"Uh......so that's the thing..." Thomas says, avoiding eyecontact with her as he trailed off. She groaned and dropped her head into her hands.

"Dont tell me. You can't leave without making a deal." When she looked back up at him he had a sheepish sharp-toothed smile. She threw her head back with a groan.

"Fine. Ok, fine, whatever." She threw her hands up with an eye roll. "How about this: I don't tell dad about.....this," she gestures to him stuck in the summoning circle, "and mom about this," she gestures to the circle itself, "and you don't tell them about.....all this." She then used both arms to gesture at everything in the summoning ritual around them. "Deal?"

Thomas stared at her extended hand, fingers twitching. He then added a condition. "As long as you cover for me whenever I get summoned during a family event." Alice retracted her hand to cross her arms and raise a brow at him. He groans and rolls his eyes in annoyance. "In return I'll do two free 'favors' for you every year."

"Once a week." Alice bargained, making Thomas growl a tad as he haggled it back up.

"Every third month." Alice narrowed her eyes and leaned towards her currently demonic brother.

"Once a month. Final offer." Thomas blankly stared at her, mulling it over in his head. Before making one last counter-offer.

"Every other month, no more." The two had a momentary staring match before Alice made one last bargain back. "Teach me about hell and the occult and you have a deal." Her brother snarled loudly in annoyance and threw his clawed hands up.

"FINE, you little rat!" He extended his clawed hand, colored demonic fire encircling it. Alice happily clasped ans shook it. "A pleasure doing business with you!" She chirped. "Yeah, yeah." Her brother grumbled as he sank back into the earth grumpily.