He is in a room in a dark, drafty house. Candles are set at the corners of what appear to be a pentagram set into the circle. The other two people in the room are a balding man in a grey cloak holding a rusty knife and a young woman tied to some sort of makeshift altar. Grey Cloak looks startled; Young Woman looks bored. Grey Cloak is holding a piece of chalk that he looks to have just completed the circle with.

"He's trying to sacrifice me to his dark god," the young woman says. "As in an actual murder attempt."

"Thank you for that. You probably saved me at least half an hour of work. What's your name?"

"Cam. Yours? And what exactly were you planning to spend half an hour doing?"

"I'm Daphne. I was going to spend half an hour keeping him monologuing while I wriggled out of the ropes. And then cosh him on the back of the head with a random blunt object."

"Well, that... might have worked, if he's dumb enough to doodle on the floor."

"Oh, it usually works. If it doesn't I figure something else out. I haven't been murdered yet, after all. What's dumb about doodling on the floor?"

"It, uh, sometimes summons unbound demons." He wiggles a wing at her.

"I think most kinds of floor doodles don't summon demons. If they did I would have seen it happen before now. You have no idea how often I get into these situations."

"You do seem to consider it pretty old hat. I mean, most things you can draw on the floor won't summon demons and some would get angels or fairies instead, but it's a good general precaution, no drawing on level surfaces."

"I don't think I've ever heard of someone summoning an angel or a fairy."

"I mean, I don't think there's any technical proof that angels exist, although most people seem to think the existence of demons strongly implies their opposite, and when fey visit our plane they do it under their own power. In my experience, anyway."

"...People have been routinely, openly summoning daeva, demons least often of the three, for more than a century and a half."

"Even demons aren't open knowledge. I just know about these things because I'm serial horror movie chick. And most of the would-be B-Movie villains I've met are either sane enough or incompetent enough not to summon demons. Are you a time traveler? That wouldn't surprise me, at this point."

"Well, what year is it, at this point I can't necessarily rule it out..."

"Nineteen ninety-nine."

"Yep, I'm a time traveling demon, daeva are all very secret still - although it would be mildly weird if you'd heard of demon summonings and not the other two even so."

"Well, I am serial horror movie protagonist. I imagine I get a slightly skewed view of things. I'll ask Kanimir later."

"You say you're a serial horror movie protagonist as though this is what the career counselor told you in eleventh grade."

"Ha! No, I'm a biology major at Borgia University. Horror movie protagonist is just a thing that happens to me."

"Uh, why?"

"Because if it rains and I am anywhere near a creepy building my car will break down."