Proverbs 6:27-28 — Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?

The priest knelt in the confessional, forehead pressed to the carved wood, his rosary clicking in a desperate rhythm. From the other side of the grate, Crowley’s voice slid through like smoke, low and unhurried. "You're shaking, Father. That's not very godly of you." The priest told him to leave, but Crowley only laughed softly. "I'm not in a place," he said. "I'm in you." A pause, the creak of leather. "You've been dreaming of me again. The amber eyes. The smirk. The way I said your name the last time—"

"Be silent," the priest whispered, but his voice cracked. Crowley’s reply came like a blade wrapped in velvet. "Make me."

The candle guttered. The priest could feel the demon’s presence through the grate—not heat, exactly, but the memory of heat, the ghost of a fire he had already walked into once. "You are temptation itself," he said, and Crowley answered, "No, love. I'm just the one who showed up. Temptation's been inside you since the first time you looked at a man and didn't look away." The priest’s knuckles went white around his crucifix. He tried to speak of prayer, of salvation, of how he had once believed he could save the creature before him. Crowley’s voice dropped, almost tender. "You prayed to forget me. And you couldn't. So now you're here, pretending you still believe the prayers you're whispering."

The priest quoted Matthew under his breath—the spirit is willing—but Crowley finished the thought for him, leaning closer to the grate. "But the flesh? The flesh remembers my mouth. My hands. The dark of my room where you didn't pray at all." The rosary slipped from the priest’s fingers. Beads scattered across the stone floor like fallen stars, and in the ringing silence that followed, Crowley whispered, "Tell me to leave. Go on. Say 'Depart from me, Satan.' I'll go. I always do. And you always call me back."

The priest closed his eyes. His lips moved, but no words came. Finally, barely audible, he said, "I can't." He heard Crowley exhale on the other side of the wall—not a sigh of triumph, but something slower, something almost sad.

"There it is," the demon murmured. He did not move. He simply waited, patient and cruel and impossibly gentle, as the priest’s last prayer died on his tongue. Then, softer still: "Good boy. Now open the door.”