Robin groaned, staring at the ceiling through half-closed eyes. He'd been working even harder than usual for the last week, and the strain was starting to show. He'd always been a hard worker anyway, throwing himself into his work, but now he had new objectives, and other things he had to aim for. So he was trying to understand the powers he'd gained while still putting in a full shift at the school.

The box was on a tiny shelf next to his bedroom window. The kind of place you could only put ornaments because anything of practical use would likely have pulled it right off the wall. He might have taken it down years before, if he'd had anything more useful to put there, but now he was grateful that he had a perfect place to keep his treasure, where he could see it from his bed and the instant he walked into the room.

All the books he'd read said that this was a deal with the devil. A big sacrifice you'd have to make in order to obtain unimaginable power, but there had been no reports from past users or bystanders about the actual nature of the sacrifice. Some of the girls who'd used it had kept diaries, and some fragments of their writings had survived in the school basements. They'd all said it was a big thing to give away, but they hadn't said what it might be.

Robin had put a lot of thought into it, and extrapolated from tangential sources. It would be fair to say he'd read almost every text on practical magic and its survival into the modern age, so he knew what a contract with a demon should feel like. But he'd never expected it to be anything like this, this was something that he wouldn't have expected in a million years. For a moment, he wondered if even Uncle Spencer had anticipated something like this; maybe that could explain the old man's enigmatic and contextless last words: "Someday, you'll understand."

Robin forced himself to his feet, whole body aching like he'd gone twelve rounds with the champion. He knew it had happened again; the one sacrifice he'd never imagined the demon asking for. He always thought of it as 'the demon' now, he wouldn't do that creature the honour of using its preferred name. After a long day working, he'd gone to sleep and that creature had taken over his body like a puppet, stalking the streets of the town and looking for trouble. He wasn't even sure what it was searching for; he had no memory of where his body had gone, and if he set tracking devices in his clothes they would either fail by chance as soon as he was out of the door, or he would be subjected to crippling migraines when he tried to review the data.

The demon didn't want him to know where it was going. And from just a few words of explanation at the point he'd made the contract, he was sure that if he could see those events he would have wished to not know again. That was his mistake, he hadn't waited for the demon to offer him a contract, that he could scrutinise before deciding that power over the world was worth any cost. Instead he'd reached out and forced his soul into contact with the thing, demanded a contract in terms that didn't allow it to say he was unworthy or unsuitable. He'd guaranteed his access to the power, at the cost of having no say in what the demon would ask for in exchange, and no chance to change his mind once he knew.

As he waited for the slow drip and gurgle of the percolator to prepare his morning coffee, he wondered again if he would have turned down this deal, given the chance. If he would have given up on world domination if it had meant he could avoid the nights of walking the streets.

"No," he said the word aloud, as if that would help to convince himself. "No, I'm playing for the world." And he was about as sure as he ever was about that one thing. This power was enough to change the world, to rule the world even, if used right. But it seemed like the more he tapped into it, the longer Mal– that other thing – could dominate his body and overrule his instincts for self preservation. So now, the challenge was to analyse and understand all the powers at his disposal, and work out how best to use them without leaving himself exhausted before another work day.

As he sipped the coffee, mouth too dry to even try breakfast yet, he turned on the television news. He didn't want to, but he needed to know what was happening in the world around him. He needed to know, for example, that there had been six muggings in the city last night where people had claimed they were attacked by a humanoid creature with no face, which caused them to age by years in an instant when it touched them. The stories were mostly different, so it was most likely a case of people trying to get something from their insurance companies, who'd seen the earlier stories on the news and thought they could cash in when there was a crime spree that the police would surely never solve. But where had the first report come from? It was possibly inspired by the surge in urban legends after the previous week's monster attack, or there could be something real in there.

Robin didn't want to fight monsters; that wasn't what this power was for, and he was no hero. But if there were monsters out there, if he was putting himself in danger when the demon took over, he was sure that he needed at least to know about it, and to limit his use when the monsters were on the prowl.

For a moment he wondered if there was more he should be doing; more possibilities he could have considered. Was it pure coincidence that these things were happening just when he had gained the power that might stop them, or were sinister forces at work? He stood frozen in thought for a moment, and then realised that all these thoughts did nothing to benefit him. The demon's activities must have tired him out more than he thought.