"It's fairly common these days for cheeses to involve some mold. Different kinds depending on the cheese. I will refrain from demonstrating, what with being a guest in your house and so on."

"Thank you. The incinerator in my basement is very efficient, but the fact that the cheese had been here at all would be heresy of the highest order."

"Anything else you won't have within these walls besides moldy cheese?"

"Not much, really. That was mostly facetious anyway."

"All right. Wouldn't want to get stuck in a black hole for being a smartass, though, so I'll steer clear of moldy cheese till I leave."

"Nah, I don't hole people. It's antisocial and all. There's a very short list of people I'd do that to."

"And you've already got them all?"

"By 'very short list' I mean one, and she's in Heaven. Or fucking people over on Earth again, as is her wont."

"I am pretty concerned about that. I tried to make, you know, general safety information firmly attached to the 'hey look daeva' thing, but yeah."

"She's very, very persuasive. For what it's worth, she's probably already swanning about on some hapless bastard's lifespan, so it'll be a while before she renews her lease. Maybe by then they'll have learned."

"Do you know what she does?"

"Usually once she's loosed on the world, she acquires a great deal of money by various awful means and sets herself up as a socialite. Once she's in society, she mostly just enjoys her life, though I believe she also has a fondness for turning people into horrible living sculptures. Very artistic type, Belinda was."

"Eugh."

"Rather. I've often wished I could've convinced some summoner or another to let me and some fairy wheel her out into interstellar space and strand her in a black hole. Would've been a nice turnabout, to have her trapped for however long instead of roaming free."

"It'd be a long trip," Cam points out. "There aren't any in the immediate neighborhood and I have no information suggesting fairies can break lightspeed. You could have dumped her in the sun, maybe."

"We can make black holes, you know. Probably want to do it outside the immediate neighborhood, but it could be done. And I'd hesitate to drop her in the sun in case she decided to start hacking away at its lifespan by changing it to iron as quickly as she could, which I wouldn't put past her."

"Oh, and here I was assuming you didn't want to risk wrecking the orbit of the Earth by putting massive objects nearby. Point well taken on the sun."

"Ugh. At any rate, it's a philosophical question at best, because the chances of a summoner arranging that kind of circumstance for a demon is about the same as the chance of me putting on a halo and spinning straw into gold."

"I imagine you could pull off the halo if you were willing to undergo some surgery. Straw thing's probably harder."

"The only reason I would ever consider a halo would be for a pantomime show. The Rumpelstilzchen act would actually be quite easy, if you set up a 'spinning wheel' that burnt the straw and then set up the gold to come out the other side. That one, I've done."

"The halo would contribute to your 'confuse the summoners' act. You don't really have anything on you that screams angel, just fairy wings and demon horns and a tail equally uncharacteristic of anyone who could acquire such a thing."

"I'd consider it, were it not for the fact that I'd never consider it."

"One time I got this really over the top practically Biblical angel with a ton of wings and eyes who was slightly on fire all the time, it was amazing."

Ari cackles. "Typical. You want to see Biblical, though, Nalagon in the obsidian house down the way has actually given himself hooves. Utterly mad, I think, but then I'm the one with butterfly wings and a jetpack."

"I don't think I will go for extreme body modification that involves cutting things off," shudders Cam. "Not anytime soon. I can appreciate the fashion statement of hooves, but I can also appreciate, like, sneakers."