Young Writers Society

"Mary!" the little girl chirped. The tone made Raptor want to let up his guard, but all he needed to do was remind himself that Bartimaeus could have looked the part and done the act. A little cheerful response wasn't a reason to ignore the doll's aura.

Mary held out her doll.

"And this is Sabrina," she said, her tone very serious.

"Mary, please don't hold me out like that," a woman's voice said.

The voice had been coming from where the doll was. But no one else had heard it. Why hadn't anyone else heard it? None of them were giving the doll especially funny looks. The doll might have been creepy to them, but they weren't creeped out by the doll talking!

Mary frowned.

"Sorry, Sabrina," she apologized, hanging her head down. The doll gave a gentle laugh, only to be cut short by Mary suddenly remembering that Raptor was there.

A second later, the little girl had wrapped her arms around his armor-clad legs.

If Raptor was a fainter, he was pretty sure he would have fainted.

"Mary, be careful," the doll hissed. "He's not safe."

"But he's a knight!" Mary protested.

"He's drawing strange designs on the ground," the doll said, in a tone that suggested it knew exactly what he was drawing. "And his eyes aren't normal, either. The only thing he could be is a-"

"Demon," Raptor finished, staring down at the girl and her doll. Before Mary could even move, he grabbed the doll right out of her hands and dangled it in front of his helmet. "You're a demon."

The doll went still and silent.

Mary, meanwhile, pounded at Raptor's legs and tried to jump up to grab her doll back. "You're not a good knight!" she exclaimed. "You're a really, really mean one!"

The boys followed the girl and her doll as fast as they could, losing her around a corner for only a moment before they caught up. They watched a large, armored man snatch Sabrina from the young child's hands after she exclaimed her own name "Mary!" Mykel was quite immediately and thoroughly wracked with anger. Why would someone take a defenseless child's toy?



June watched things unfold before her, as Raptor stole the child, Mary's, toy from her hands. She was furious with him. Mary was clearly upset, she pounded at his armored legs, calling him names.

June stood quickly, and crossed to Raptor swiftly, snatching the doll from his hands and holding it to her chest. She pulled Mary away from him and gently handed her the doll before pressing the girl behind her back and holding out her arm the same way she had before, her palm flat to the sky. A small, but very real fire appeared.

A threat, as clear as if she had spoken it.

Shock froze Jackson in place for too long for him to do anything, and then he gave Raptor a look much like he'd give one of the 'tough kids' after they pulled a particularly pointless stunt. Really dude?!

He was too distracted by the sheer...he couldn't even describe whatever it was. Taking a kid's toy was wrong, especially when there wasn't even a reason to take it!

"What the heck dude?!" he exclaimed, briefly catching a glimpse of Briar, who, for once, looked tense.

The moment June conjured flames, Raptor had flashbacks to just a short time before - of Mist standing protectively in front of Herobrine. A hand instinctively went to cover his eye. There was nothing that could be plunged into it this time around, but it had hurt. And if he wasn't careful with what potion he took, he could actually die this time around.

"You don't understand," Raptor said. "That doll isn't normal. There's a demon in it-"

"Sabrina's not a demon!" Mary protested. "She's a really, really good knight, and she's my best friend!"

Raptor crossed his arms. "That doesn't mean that she's not a demon."

Mary faltered.

"But...But Sabrina is really nice," she said. "Demons are mean and scary - just like you!"

Time to scratch his original thought process. Mary was too young to be summoning, anyways. Whoever put that demon in that doll had to be older, and had to be someone that Mary didn't know all that well. It did bring up the question of why the demon was going along with all of this to begin with.

He tilted his head ever so slightly to the side. "Then why don't you ask Sabrina?" he said. "She'd know, wouldn't she?"

Mary immediately perked up at the suggestion. She looked down at the silent, motionless doll in her arms. "Sabrina, you're not a demon!"

The doll still said nothing.

Mary frowned. "I think you hurt her feelings."

"I think she knows that I'm onto her," Raptor said. "So she's being quiet right now because she doesn't know what to say. Isn't that right, Sabrina?"

There was a pause.

And then the doll moved ever so slightly, raising a slightly cracked hand up to its mouth. It pressed its thumb against it lip before jerking said thumb out back in his direction.

Raptor stared from behind his helmet.

Steam might as well have been coming out of Julia's ears considering how angry she was at Raptor for snatching the doll from Mary. And she could have been shaking from fear that there might have been a demon in between the group. But she didn't know what to say when the doll moved so she gaped instead and a chill went up her spine.

She peeled her eyes away from the doll finally and looked up at Raptor. "Are you a demon?" she asked, now shivering uncontrollably. Had it suddenly gotten cold in here by any chance? "Children have more knowledge than adults think." she added, stepping away to lean on a desk for support.

"I'm not a demon," Raptor reassured her. "I know how to summon one, but I'm not-"

"Says the guy with red eyes," the demon in the doll interrupted. Mary was gaping at her doll - Raptor couldn't tell if it was because of the revelation, the movement or the comment, but he didn't really care.

Raptor groaned. "Is it a demon thing to be immature?"

"I don't know," the doll said. "I should be asking you that."

Raptor let out another sigh. "I'm not a demon."

"I don't believe it," the demonic doll said. "Everything about you seems demonic. Your eyes, your armor, your lack of social skills - they all add up to you being a demon. I wouldn't be surprised if you're the one who planned all of this."

Raptor had no way of knowing it, but the entirety of this conversation had been heard by all parties present in the room.

Julia's eyes widened with each word the doll uttered.

A talking doll.

A talking doll.

She didn't get why she was so freaked out about this. In her past time, she had read fantastical books all the time - Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Land of Stories, etc., why was a talking doll creeping her out?

Probably because she'd never seen magic in front of her very eyes before, and that this talking doll really was possessed by a demon - like Raptor had said - with black magic.

She didn't know what reminded her of her phone, but she suddenly reached down to her jeans pocket, and pulled it out. Thank god she had charged it fully earlier. She attempted calling her mother, and her heart raced with excitement.

No signals.

Why, of course.

Julia shoved it back in her pocket and looked back at the doll warily and begged herself into thinking that the talking doll wasn't real.

No success though.

June tensed for a mere moment. She knew the doll had spoken but that proved nothing. She gently pulled Mary towards the board, so she could still protect her but communicate as well. The doll's correct. None of us are free of suspicion. She paused her writing and glanced back at Raptor. You're summoning a demon? That couldn't be safe, summoning magic wasn't even something Esther trusted herself with. Too unpredictable.



Mykel attempted to move towards Mary and Sabrina, still feeling an obligation to protect her as well. Reggie, however, had other plans and tugged him back by his shirt, casting wary glances at the other people in the room. Mykel softly smiled at him and stepped back to stand beside him.

Reggie didn't know what to think, the girl looked to be a witch, but she was mute. Everything Mykel had told him pointed to witches having to speak in order to cast spells. Maybe he'd forgotten something. He wrapped his arm around one of Mykel's and stepped closer to him.

Briar observed the goings-on quietly. It seemed she was the only one who still held the belief that the doll wasn't haunted, possessed, or otherwise supernatural. It looked like the kind of thing Queenie might put together in one of her more sadistic moods. Something to mess with people, either to make them seem insane or to make their death more fun for Queenie to carry out.

It was robotic, most likely. There was probably a powerful AI involved, like the one her father was developing for the more expensive of his security systems. Something that knew how to behave deceivingly.

She could tell such an argument wouldn't sway the others, though, so she kept quiet.



Jackson had almost sprinted for the exit the moment the doll said her first word. He'd seen this movie, and it did not end well for the chubby kid.

He wanted to say something, but he couldn't speak. Wanted to run, but fear and morbid, curiosity - a fancy way of describing stupidity - kept his feet stuck firmly to the ground.

"I was," Raptor said. He didn't miss how June pulled Mary and her doll closer to her and the board, and he didn't miss the looks everyone else was giving both him and the doll. They must have finally been able to hear what the demon was saying - Raptor couldn't figure out why, but he'd go with it.

An important thing to note: Raptor actually doubted that the demon had anything to do with this. "Sabrina" was just as irritating as Bartimaeus could be, and Bartimaeus would have never pulled something like this together.

He crossed his arms.

"But it looks like I don't have to," Raptor said. "There's already a demon right here."

Said demon faltered.

"...Wait," she (?) said. "Demons can't summon demons. So you can't be..."

The demon groaned.

"I don't get it!" she announced. "You look the part of a demon, so why aren't you one?"

Well, Raptor wasn't going to share that. "Every magician has their secrets," he softly said. Then he glanced at the other occupants of the room, gaze lingering the longest on June and Mary. Mary was still standing silently off to the side, an unreadable expression on her face.

And June had her message on the board.

"I don't think paranoia is going to help us right now," Raptor said. "I think it's more likely that some outside force brought us here. Pointing fingers at each other is going to waste time that could be spent looking for the actual culprit."

Julia looked at everyone in the room, eyeing them carefully before speaking up.

"And how exactly are we going to figure out what brought us here? What if it was this demon..." her voice caught in her throat, but she continued, an octave higher, "who just wanted to have some fun so it brought random people here?"

"Who could it be?" she asked, her voice back to normal. "Some Roman god? Dumbledore? Voldemort?" she blushed, embarassed, at her list of suspects.

But it could have been any of the above. If demons were real, Roman gods and magical world were too - Raptor and June were proof. Julia shuddered at the thought of a Voldemort transporting people around as if they were toys.

Raptor went to speak, but Mary beat him to it.

"I don't know," Mary whispered. Raptor wondered how much of the conversation was actually really registering with her - were six year olds that good at understanding things like this? He had been summoning his first imp when he was six, and he couldn't remember if it had made any sense to him then.

She leaned up against June's leg, holding Sabrina tight to her chest.

"I just want to go home," she whispered. Her lips quivered. "I want to see Kody again. And Jack. And Mommy. And Daddy..."

"Mary..." the demon said. It raised a porcelain hand and pressed it up against Mary's cheek - catching the tear that was beginning to fall.

Raptor knew that June didn't really trust him right now. He knew that most of the people here, in fact, probably didn't trust him. But Mary was crying, and Raptor couldn't just stand off to the side like the cold magician he was supposed to be.

He walked over to June's side and crouched down in front of her.

"Don't worry," he softly said. "I'll get you back to your home in no time, Mary. I promise."

Mary hesitated.

A second later, she had darted over to him and was giving him a hug. Her hands couldn't even begin to reach around his waist, but he got the intention. The doll miraculously wasn't crushed between them.

"I trust you," Mary relented. "Even if you called Sabrina a demon!"

Raptor faltered.

"That's because she-" He paused. It wasn't worth arguing over it with Mary. "Never mind."

He glanced back at Julia, Mary still holding on tight.

"A demon is a possibility," Raptor agreed. "This one is too weak to do it, but-"

"Hey!" the doll protested from between Mary and Raptor. "I'm not weak. I'm just...limited. But I'd never do something like this, anyways. I have standards."

"My point stands," Raptor clarified. "And it might be a god. I've never met one myself, but I know someone who's interacted with those that have..."

Lost deep in thought, Raptor went to stand up. It wasn't his intention to, but he suddenly found himself holding Mary in his arms when he glanced down. He was so startled that he almost dropped her - he had to hurry to rearrange his arms so he was actually supporting her.

He stiffened.

This...wasn't how he had imagined this conversation would go.

Mary resting her head on his shoulder only made it worse.