Potato Demon by Rachel Whitehill illustration by Sadie Hutchings
“God damn it,” he growls, hefting twenty bulky pounds of potatoes over his shoulder. After thinking about that statement more in depth, he suspects God probably already has. Damned this whole project, that is. Look. He’d been fine with blood rites, small sacrifices, sure, and all the usual stuff that came with trying to become an evil mage. It isn’t too much of a hassle to swear fidelity to the dark arts every weekend or so to keep his apprentice’s certification up to date. But he’d recently risen all the way to the point of getting a master’s certification—for this, one has to summon a demon—and now they suddenly expect some real effort from him. After all, someone will need to replace his father—evil mage by trade—in The Association. How hard, he’d thought, could a little summoning ritual even be? But potatoes? He has to put his foot down somewhere. What kind of summoning ritual requires potatoes? Not just a few little ones, either—oh, no, no, because that would be too easy. It needs twenty pounds of potatoes. Thud. “What the hell?” he says. That had better not be what 43
