"You were hoping for an angel? I'll give you a hint, it's spelled A-N-G-E-L. No harm done." Cam takes a bite out of his sandwich. "Unless I'll do just as well for whatever you had in mind."

"Actually, I, uh, wasn't really summoning anything. Least of all an angel, those guys are creepy. I was trying to practice elemental thaumaturgy by sculpting a dick out of the gravel."

"...Practice what?"

"Have I been summoned into some kind of elaborate LARP or is something weird going on?"

"Uh... probably the latter, though I can recommend you some LARPs if you want, they're fun. Are you a mortal or something? That'd be super weird."

"No, no, I'm as demonic as I look, summoning is ordinary, elemental thaumaturgy as a thing isn't."

"You look like about as much like a demon as the Sugarplum Fairy looks like Queen Mab. And if you don't know what thaumaturgy is then you're either weirdly bad at being a demon or you're from some bizarro alternate universe."

"I'm leaning bizarro alternate universe. I'm well within the range on demonic cosmetics in the Hell I'm from."

"Eh, no need to be sorry unless it turns out you can't put me back. And even then only a little. Worse things have happened than unbound summoning into uncharted extra mortal realms."

"Well, I did rudely yank you out of your home dimension, but if you're okay with it I'm okay with it. Actually, I'm way more than okay with it, this is cool as shit."

"I don't miss the place; in a few years, if you can't put me back, I will miss the mail system. You probably don't even know what demons - my kind - are for, do you? So what's so cool about it?"

"Dude. I just summoned a hot winged guy from another universe. While I was trying to make a dick statue. In what was could this not be cool?"

"Well, if you'd gotten the wrong demon, the planet we are standing on would now be getting slurped into a black hole, there's that."

"I assume other people also live here."

"Cool doesn't necessarily mean good! Getting sucked into a black hole is unhappy, but it's still kinda cool."

"Noted. Anyway, what's this bizarro alternate dimension like? I notice you're speaking English, so there's at least that."

"I am totally speaking English! I could also be speaking French or German, but I'm not doing that because you seem like a decent sort of person and it'd be very cruel. You are in Vancouver, in Canada, in North America, on Earth, etcetera etcetera Lanikea galactic supercluster, known universe, etcetera. We have wizards! And demons and faeries and vampires and other variously awful or non-awful monsterfolks."

"What year is it?"

"2015. Uh, AD, if that was questionable."

"Innnnteresting."

"...Are you a futuredemon? You're totally a futuredemon."

"2159!"

"Nice. Do you have Future Video Games? Are they really, really well ruggedized?"

"Future video games yes, ruggedized huh?"

"Oh yeah. Fun Wizard Fact: we're not great with technology. As in, 'stuff starts exploding when we're upset or actively doing magic unless it's behind leaded glass or preposterously sturdy', bad. You don't have, like, a chip in your brain or something, right? That'd suck."

"I do actually have a chip in my brain. Please don't fry the chip in my brain, it would be moderately unpleasant."

"...Duly noted. Maybe I can wear a Faraday cage around you or something. I don't want to explode your brain."

"You... I'm going to say probably... shouldn't be able to do any more than minor damage to my actual body, which should heal. But if you wreck the chip I'll have to dissolve it and make a new one before I can use my most up-to-date computer."

"Are you invulnerable or something? Is that what demons do?"

"Daeva in general - that's us and angels and fairies - are indestructible. This is not quite the same as invulnerable. You could scratch me, you couldn't cut my tail off. Imagine attacking a watermelon with a plastic fork." Wag.

"...Damn do I want to spar with a daeva now. Do you punch recreationally?"

"Nah. I'm actually a very nonviolent, and also a very clumsy, sort of demon. The wings and tail help, but not enough that I'd take up a hobby like that even without the risk of brain damage and staving my nose into my skull."

"Aw. Do you know any demons I could fight? Or, like, angels, or fairies, if they're cool too. Is that just a cosmetic difference?"

"Cosmetics and magic powers. More the latter; you could find demons and angels with each other's wing types. Less so with fairies, their magic doesn't lend itself to that. Demons make things, angels change things, fairies move things. I could maybe dig somebody up, but we don't know if I can go home, and I don't think anybody wants to be permanently stranded in a mortal realm."

"Ooh. Yeah, that'd be a problem. I could ask some knowledge spirit or other about it, they've sometimes got answers to really unlikely questions. Until then, I will have an itchy sort of unsatisfied desire for punching invulnerable folks. Do you make sandwiches?"

"Sure, what kinda sandwich do you want?" Cam asks, and he pops the last corner of his into his mouth.

Ari considers. "Roast beef," he decides. "And barbecue sauce. And fries."

Cam hands him a little cardboard tray thing with those items, on very nice ciabatta.

"You're welcome," chuckles Cam.

"Am I going to have trouble being winged and tailed in places better lit than this?"

"Mm... people don't know about magic for the most part, so you might get stared at. There's a magic-conscious 24-hour coffeeshop downtown, though. They've got these really nice little cookies shaped like stars. And scones."

"Okay, but, there's space between here and there, I assume. Should I be cutting the wings off or hiding them under a snazzy leather coat?"

"Coat's fine. Vancouver doesn't have so much of an active nightlife, we might not even run into anybody."

"Cool." Cam folds his wings snug against his back and then there is a snazy leather coat, ankle-length and black and fitted perfectly over his wings and concealing his tail in deep shadow. He's still not actually wearing a shirt.

"When I'm not taking summonses I read and fly and swim and play the violin."

"Violin! Nice! I mostly just do magic and fight monsters and have lots of sex, which is fun. And some competitive poker."

"Well, I do magic too, but that's more of a daily 'hmm what's for breakfast, what is the latest issue of my favorite periodicals today' thing."

"Your magic is cool but I don't imagine it lends itself to, like... being a hobby? It's kind of just a thing you do. Whereas with mine it's more like art or karate or something, you want to practice a bunch so you can get better and maintain your skills and stuff."

"Yeah, I mean, there's things I read up on to be better at deploying it, but that's more like learning engineering and physics and chem."

"Same for mine with math, though that's more because I specialize in earth and long-term earth effects are super complicated. Lucky bastards who picked up fire don't have to worry about that, though I get the last laugh since I'm actually useful for things other than destroying things."

"Things like accidentally summoning unbound demons."

"Seriously, I have no idea how that happened. How does a gnomic resonance array turn into a summoning spell? It wasn't even finished!"

"I don't know, was it a horizontal design drawn by a human containing a circle that said around its border in some language something about summoning a demon? There's not a ton of flex on those parts."

"...There were some squiggles-around-a-circle involved? Maybe the exact configuration of squiggle for 'make a dick out of gravel' accidentally aligned itself into Urdu for 'summon a demon from Bizarro Summon World' somehow? Not likely, but I could believe it."

"By the way, don't do that again, there were no precautions at all and you're very lucky. Most of the demons who take summons aren't doing it for humanitarian reasons."

"I can avoid circles with words around in the future, yeah. There's other configurations that can sub in. It's kind of weird that nobody else has summoned something nasty that way, given how frequently that kind of diagram crops up in magic...Might have to ask the loa about that too. She's going to be getting half a cup of my blood at this point, isn't she."

"Wow, that's gross. I can make blood if that helps."

"...Huh. That could be interesting, blood from no one - she might actually put more value on that, magical curiosity or because she already knows what she could do with it. Could be very helpful. Thanks!"

"I mean, by default it would be materially identical to someone's, I'd have to go somewhat out of my way to make it a total nonmatch for everybody. But are you sure it's a good idea to make it known to this individual - if she doesn't already know - that it's possible to summon daeva?"

"'Is there a way to retrieve the Library of Alexandria'. 'Is there a way to safely de-radiate nuclear fallout'. 'Is there a way to launch spaceships without burning fuel'."

"We already have the Library of Alexandria and you could do a temporal scry on it anyway, anybody who wants to un-nuke Three Mile Island is welcome to a choir of angels to do it with, and launching spaceships without much fuel is totally feasible for a wizard without getting daeva involved. As are most things. And the thing is, she's got discretion. She doesn't live on Earth, but her customers do, so she's got a vested interest in it not turning into a black hole; anybody she'd actually, willingly give the secret to is somebody who wouldn't fuck it up."

"No, anyone who wants to un-nuke things is not fucking welcome to a choir of angels to do it with, an angel who is not handled correctly might have a hard time destroying the earth but they can sure as they sprout feathers go on a massive killing spree or worse if they feel like it. If daeva are going to be common knowledge it's got to be carefully handled. I did it once but I would want to know about the local differences before doing it again."

"Yes, because she'd obviously tell them how to summon an unbound angel, or tell someone who has no idea what the hell he's doing, because she has no idea how to keep people from using dangerous knowledge to destroy the world, what with all those other apocalyptic secrets she's let slip over the past several thousand years and allowed to shred the world to pieces. This is not her first rodeo."

"Look," says Cam. "I consider telling anybody about daeva - who doesn't already know a dangerous amount because he got one while trying to sculpt genitals in a park - to be my personal responsibility. I carried it off without disaster once before and I did that by being fucking careful and I still got murdered in the process. I have known you for about fifteen minutes. I have never met your friend. My, personal responsibility cannot be discharged by going 'oh it's probably fine, I have hearsay that this person has both competence and reasonably well-aligned goals'."

"Or by the fact that she already knows much, much more dangerous things, apparently. But that is... reasonable. Okay. I concede defeat. Grumpily. I concede grumpy defeat."

"That will probably suffice. Don't go tearing off to announce eureka to anybody, please."

"I am still telling my best friend, because there is literally nothing you could say that would convince me not to. But not to the Knower."

"Go ahead and explain why I should let you do that."

"Because in the first place, she's the best and most trustworthy person I've ever known; in the second place, I've sworn an oath never to lie to her, and I don't care to split hairs about deliberately leaving out relevant information; and in the third place, you don't 'let' me do anything."

Ari hisses through his teeth. "The idea of Sally doing anything that could endanger the world... is absurd. She has worked harder than anyone I know to prevent our reality from crumbling to pieces around us like it desperately wants to do. I trust her infinitely more than I trust myself. And she's had the resources and information necessary to intentionally or accidentally destroy this world since she was twenty-three, and astonishingly, she hasn't done it, because she is a reasonable and extremely cautious person."

"That sure is a paragraph that you just said. I don't have demonic truth-detection powers. I have approximately human-grade judgment. As far as I can tell, so do you."

"And you won't give a shit if I swear upon my magic and my name, because you have no idea how our magic works. Great."

"I mean, I might after learning how your magic works, but in the next half an hour, not likely. How impatient are you? Relatedly, how would you feel about letting me actually meet this person who you're so damn keen on telling and telling her myself?"

"...And if you decide she isn't trustworthy? Does she get put tidily out of the way until you've sorted out our world?"

"Do you believe that your friend here will not be able to convince a reasonable sort of demon that she has an IQ above room temperature and doesn't want to end the world?"

"I have some trouble gauging your standards of judgment. For instance, you apparently think I'm unqualified to decide that my best friend, who I've known for ten years, has an IQ above room temperature and doesn't want to end the world, despite the fact that she's personally saved the world multiple times."

"It's not that I think you're unqualified, it's that from where I'm standing you are a random dude saying words. If what you are saying is true, she sounds great, let's give her Introduction to Circles and tell her to go nuts while I have way more fun than this conversation with terraforming Mars, yay. If what you are saying has any of the things wrong with it that may go wrong with Utterances A La Random Dude, then maybe I get as far as putting atmo in and then I get balcony seats to oh look the Earth is being sucked into a singularity or I come back to find oh an angel has turned most of the population of the eastern seaboard into spicy garlic eggplant."

"Great. You severely underestimate our world's ability to take care of apocalypse, but fine. I'll introduce you to Sally. And while I'm sure that my threats if you decide she needs a three-year-long nap are already implicit, I'd like to make it clear that they are not empty, no matter how invulnerable you are."

"Random Dude, I have no information about how good you are at handling apocalypses, but I have a pretty poor opinion of how good you are at handling infosec," mutters Cam under his breath. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," he says at a more normal volume.

"Yes, let's. It's very endearing, by the way, that you think I can't hear you when you stage-whisper. I'm sure that if you weren't an asshole I'd be delighted."

"Oh, if I cared that you could hear me I'd speak Ecvora'h or something, I just wanted that part to remain closer to the level of subtext."

"Yes. Delightful."

"I can feel the hospitality like a plastic fork through a watermelon, dude, lead the way."

Cam remains silent. Pensive, even. He makes himself a cup of water to sip as they approach a trash can, then discards the cup when they get there.

"Mm."

"You're scared? One day I'm comfortably immortal and my biggest problem is that I never get the cool public works project summons, the next I'm in an alternate universe with magic I know nothing about which may or may not be able to dent me or kill me or for example explode the chip in my brain without you even trying, I'm wondering if it would stick if I got murdered a second time and you were the one pulling the trigger, wondering how literal a mind-reader you are vis a vis that most recent comment - you're scared? You have big guns to call in. My big guns have to worry about this being an inhabited locale to the point where I may as well have none. I'm fucking terrified and if I didn't know approximately the population of early twentieth century Earth I would let you do whatever you damn well pleased with the fact that you nearly got somebody, anybody, less friendly and more inclined to running rampant than me."

"Well, color me paranoid about eye contact," mutters Cam.

"Shouldn't look in people's eyes anyway, there's worse things that can happen. First thing my mother ever taught me."

"Oh?"

"There's any number of things that'll hypnotize you with their eyes so they can eat you alive. The Black Court of vampires uses eye contact to enthrall victims and destroy minds, turn you into a living zombie. And I've heard of things that can eat your soul out through your eyes, though there's a fair chance that's a myth."

"Grand. This may be a jaunt that consists entirely of terraforming Mars. Assuming I can ever go home."

"If you'd rather not deal with the unending horror, I can do whatever you need to dismiss you. We're not the best vacation spot, I know."

"If eye contact is the major one I can rig up something with goggles and a video feed, maybe. Save the bees, patch the ozone layer, swing by the NIH and be the Medical Technology Gift Basket."

"You could also wear mirrored shades. Mirrored shades work. Eye contact is not the only part of the unending horror, no."

Cam is now wearing mirrored shades. "Do go on."

"Mostly it's just... there's a lot of supernatural things that prey on humans, and some that would like us to die out entirely. And practically nothing is on our side. So, a human could be eaten by vampires or sacrificed to demons or massacred by zombies at any moment. You specifically are probably safe from most random threats because you're invulnerable-ish, and if you stay anonymous and stick to subtle tweaks then you're mostly safe from magical threats too. But it's never totally safe."

"Subtlety's not my strong suit, but I can rework some of my ideas. I'm not sure how to subtly terraform Mars though. And I've always really wanted to do that."

"You could do it right before you go home?"

"I don't know if I can go home. I've never heard of anyone being summoned to an alternate universe before, and one obvious reason for me not to have ever heard of it is if it's one-way."

"Well... if I can get you to trust my judgment at some point, the Knower would probably have a good idea of whether it'd work. Until then, Mars is probably off the menu."

"Not too far. The apartment's just a couple more blocks north."

Ari also walks silently, his usual chipperness almost fully restored.

How nice for him.

Cam follows Ari in. He'd like to be taking in the decor as a sort of information-gathering practice but mostly he's concentrating on not tripping over his boots.

"I might well like some enchanted shoes. But yeah, nothing about being a demon improves grace. I can make lifesize elephant sculptures out of multicolored corundum if ever I suffer a sudden defect in taste but I cannot ice skate even when I'm not hiding my extra appendages."

"I mean, Sally's kind of clumsy, but I'm not sure I've ever met someone that clumsy who didn't have some kind of neuro thing. Or was drunk, which I assume you're not."

"I am not drunk. I probably have some kind of neuro thing but don't know enough about it to fix it with another brain-chip."

"Ah. Makes sense, brains are complicated. Anyway, enchanted shoes are easier than brain-chips, the ones I'm thinking of just sort of shift your probability so you don't step in such a way as to trip yourself up. Wouldn't help with skating, but you could walk and run and such without any real trouble."

"That'd be nice."

"Yeah. Sally could churn some out in a couple weeks. And given you're helping with the general problems of the world and stuff, she definitely wouldn't feel too put out about it."

"Cool."

"Hello. I'm Cam. Your friend here just had a near-lifetime-coma-experience and I'm having a hell of a time convincing him not to share around information on how to replicate it without slowing down and talking it over."

She relaxes. "Oh, good. I thought he'd decided to introduce me to his boyfriend or something."

"Not my type."

"I don't remember the entity's name. Ari accidentally summoned a random demon - or, let's call me an apsel, you reportedly have different demons here - he accidentally summoned a random apsel. I had the quickest reaction time on this occasion but he could have gotten anybody who felt like going for a jaunt about the mortal realm, however mistaken they would have proven about the identity of said mortal realm, and they would have been delightedly surprised to land ungagged and unbound. If a summoner dies their summoned daeva get sent back, so an apsel who wanted to have some fun would have merely rendered Ari unconscious, and then gone and done whatever. I'm a nice friendly apsel. I am only slightly out of the ordinary for apsels in general but I am a huge outlier as apsels who take summonses go."

"Hey!"

"I didn't expect him to instruct anyone to summon random unbound apsels, but it's not complicated if you have the basic idea."

"Ari not being malicious or an idiot includes not telling people whose immediate reaction to 'this creature is extremely powerful and most would likely put you in a coma immediately' is 'ooh, I want to summon one!'"

"Yes, but Ari's only available example did not put him in a coma immediately. Ari thought his available example was cool. You see my problem."

"You are badly misunderstanding the nature of my roommate. He thinks that everything is 'cool'. That does not mean that he doesn't realize that it is incredibly dangerous. He chooses to be blasé about dangers passed, but believe me when I say that he is fully aware of them. At the very least, he would never do something stupid without consulting me first."

"Sure. Your roommate did not understand that I did not understand the nature of your roommate and started threatening me."

"...Fuck's sake, Ari."

"I felt threatened first!"

"I apologize. He was raised by a sociopath and lacks a mode of socialization that doesn't involve weaponized escalation. He's very sorry, and if I thought it'd help I'd whack him with a newspaper."

"I feel very reassured."

"Anyway. Would you like a cup of something or other? We've got a ridiculous amount of tea, or there's hot chocolate."

"My magical apsel properties include being able to make arbitrary matter. But I'd take a mug, I don't like making new dishes every time I decide to ingest things."

"Mugs are in steady supply!" She flits into the kitchen and returns with a mug bearing the legend #1 Grandpa!, which she hands to Cam. (She also brings a cup of fruity-smelling tea, which she may have already had steeping, and sips at it.)

Cam makes himself mulled cider. Sip. "Thanks."

"Oh, it's no trouble! So, apparently you're a nice apsel who doesn't put people in comas. What do you plan to do instead? Also, would you like to stay here, since Ari's the one who summoned you? We've got a spare room and all."

"Maybe. Once I am reasonably sure that the key information is not going to be carelessly deployed by this vector I might also fuck off and terraform Mars and visit the NIH and - are your bees in trouble? This year in the other mortal world I know the bees were in trouble."

"Yes, actually. It's because of the death of the Summer Lady, though, so your expertise may not be so useful here."

"Oh, other world it was mostly a disease."

"Well, it may still be a disease here. But the root cause stems from the Lady. Anyway, I may have mentioned that we're not idiots or inclined to tell idiots how to summon apsels, so you can soulgaze Ari and be on your way if you like. I offer our place mostly because if you stayed here you'd be protected from a lot of supernatural threats that might otherwise trouble you, and our world is tricky for outsiders."

"The soulgaze would by why I'm wearing these sunglasses indoors at night. It... might be prudent to stay here long enough to get a crash course on local hazards and what tacky accessories to wear to avoid them."

"The abridged version of that crash course is that fully avoiding hazards without being, or being accompanied by, a wizard, verges on impossible. I can make you a number of tacky accessories to shield your mind et cetera, at reasonable rates, but you'd need to stay here for a time waiting for me to finish them anyway. Until such a time as you're covered in sparkly things to keep you from getting your soul ripped out, you'd likely be best off if you only went out while accompanied by Ari or I. Or Peter, I suppose, if he shows up any time soon."

"I would appreciate accessories. If I make their nonmagical substrates do they have to be tacky?"

"Oh, they don't have to be tacky anyway. I'll make them perfectly tasteful if you like. I just tend towards the gaudy myself, as you may have noticed." She indicates the truly ridiculous volume of gemstones dangling from her person and set into her face, and the equal number decorating the room.

"Reminds me of home, land of universal making powers and chronic problems with garbage disposal."

"I just have enormous amounts of money, a friend who can turn things into shiny rocks, and very personal tastes."

"To be fair, the gems do help focus magic energies," contributes Ari (who has been eating a sandwich).

"And they're shiny."

"Very shiny indeed. On the subject of magic items, Ari suggested anti-clumsiness shoes?"