Chase stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor, his body still humming with the residual heat of his session with Lilith. He was looking forward to a silent room and perhaps a few hours of sleep before his roommates inevitably demanded his attention.
He didn't even get to the door before he smelled it: ozonated air and burnt sugar.
He threw the door open. The living room was a disaster zone of glowing sigils and shredded financial newspapers. Alex was hunched over Chase's laptop, her red horns glowing a frantic, sparking crimson. Kaelen was standing on the dining table, wielding a broom like a spear against a swarm of small, floating golden coins that were buzzing around the room like angry hornets. Rixsa was perched on the back of the sofa, recording the entire thing on her phone, cackling.
"What," Chase said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register, "is happening? What did you idiots do?"
Alex jumped nearly a foot into the air, her chair clattering backward. "Chase! You're home! Early! I can explain!"
"The coins are biting, human!" Kaelen shrieked, swatting at a golden penny that dove for her ear. "Destroy them! They have no respect for my station!"
Chase walked into the center of the room, snatched a buzzing coin out of the air—it felt hot and vibrated with a frantic, mindless greed—and crushed it in his palm. The coin vanished into a puff of gold dust.
"Alex," Chase said, stepping over a pile of smoldering stock tickers. "Tell me you didn't."
"I just wanted to help with the debt!" Alex wailed, her eyes tearing up. "You said I had to assist with market analysis! I saw the 'Bull Market' section and I thought... Well, I'm a Goddess of Hearth and Harvest! I know how to make things grow! I thought I was being a team player!"
Rixsa doubled over, gasping for air between fits of laughter. "She tried to 'bless' the portfolio, Chase! She didn't like that the tech stocks were down, so she performed a High-Elysian Multiplier Rite on your E-Trade account! She thought she was giving you a 'divine dividend'!"
Chase closed his eyes, rubbing his temples. "You used divine intervention on a digital trading platform? That's not how that works, Alex," Chase said, rubbing his eyes in frustration. "You can't apply agricultural fertility rites to a centralized exchange."
"I thought I was just encouraging them!" Alex sobbed. "But the internet is so... fast! The blessing surged through the fiber-optic cables and manifested physically. The stocks didn't just go up; they turned into Sentient Capital."
Chase looked at his laptop screen. His portfolio wasn't showing numbers anymore; it was showing a 3D map of a digital dungeon where his Apple and Amazon stocks had formed a raiding party and were currently attacking the Federal Reserve's server.
"You've turned my retirement fund into a localized magical anomaly," Chase stated flatly. "I'm going to have a heart attack before I'm thirty."
"On the bright side," Rixsa piped up, pointing to a monitor, "you're technically a trillionaire for the next eight minutes until the SEC's reality-stabilizers kick in and realize your money is made of concentrated sunlight. You should buy a boat while you're still a god of finance."
"Alex, get away from the computer," Chase commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument.
He spent the next hour performing a "Spiritual Audit." It required him to flare his Essence—still heavy with Lilith's Alpha scent—to cow the sentient coins into submission. As he moved through the room, the golden hornets froze in mid-air, sensing the dominant, ancient power radiating from him, and dissolved back into digital bits.
By the time the room was clear, the apartment was silent. Alex was curled into a ball on the rug, Kaelen was grumpily sweeping up gold dust, and Rixsa was looking at Chase with a new, speculative glint in her eyes.
"You're getting better at that," Rixsa noted, her voice softer and surprisingly serious. "The way you just... took command of the room. It didn't feel like a human. It felt like the guy who used to lead armies. You had that 'kneel or die' energy again."
"The guy who led armies didn't have to deal with a Goddess crashing the NASDAQ," Chase grumbled. He turned to Alex. "New rule. You are forbidden from touching anything with a screen. You will do your market research on paper. With a pencil. If I see you near a Wi-Fi router, I'm taking away your snack privileges for a month. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Chase," Alex whispered, looking thoroughly defeated.
"And Kaelen, clean the ceiling. There are nickels stuck in the crown molding. Use the ladder, don't stand on the furniture."
Chase retreated to his bedroom, Rixsa trailing behind him like a persistent shadow. He collapsed onto the bed, too tired to even argue about her being in his space.
"Hey," Rixsa said, sitting on the edge of the bed. She reached out, her hand hovering near his shoulder before she pulled back, sensing his genuine exhaustion. "Lilith really put you through it today, didn't she? You smell like you've been through a blender... and then seasoned with Alpha pheromones."
"It's fine, Rixsa. It's just... a lot. Managing the office and then coming home to this."
"Well," Rixsa smirked, leaning back and getting comfortable. "Since the guest room is officially a biohazard thanks to Alex's 'blessing'—pretty sure the carpet is still humming—I guess it's a good thing we're sharing. Move over, Warrior. I need to regulate your tremors before you blow a fuse and turn the toaster into a dragon. Consider it 'therapeutic proximity'."
Chase was too exhausted to fight. He moved over, and as Rixsa settled in beside him, her tail once again finding its way around his waist with practiced ease, he found himself falling into a deep, dreamless sleep, anchored by the chaotic but oddly comforting presence of the demon.