"Okay."

"I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being cryptic, I just don't like to talk about it."

"This is me, not asking."

"Augh. Yes, sorry, I'm attributing characteristics to you based on other people again. Usually I get badgered and--well. But you're being perfectly nice."

"I try. Everybody is lucky Mr. Sacrificing People To Something got me instead of some more antisocial demon."

"I'll bet."

"Incidentally, don't draw on the floor, since apparently that can get you demons even though this is the wrong universe. I'd offer to teach you to safely summon things but it's not entirely clear yet that it'll work normally - say, if I can't get back - and I can't think of anybody I want to make that experiment with."

"That is also a good point. If you want to get back without killing your summoner, I could probably convince him to send you back if you let him wake up now that I'm not tied to anything. And if I knew how to do it."

"Oh, no, I have no pressing engagements in Hell. I won't have the slightest reason to experiment with sending me back until the next concordance, and that's not for years, and that's assuming time is even passing at the same rate in both worlds and it hasn't been seven hundred years. Hell is perfectly nice, but nobody needs anything there and I can re-make all my stuff and I didn't have a close social network."

"What's a concordance?"

"It's when any pair of the non-mortal worlds overlap. Mortal world doesn't participate, but when Hell overlaps Fairyland, say, we get to send mail."

"Oh, cool. So you have penpals? ...But not a social circle in Hell? That's a little strange."

"I have penpals but not a close social circle in Hell. There are people who know me and we like each other for the most part, but I take a lot of summons and I'm pretty introverted and my old violin teacher and library buddies and so on will think nothing of it if I'm gone for a few decades, the pen pals will notice first."

"Okay, that makes sense. You play violin? Is it gold plated?"

"I sense you have figured out why I picked violin when I decided to learn an instrument."

"I love that song. I actually have a friend who's an incubus who plays the violin for the same reason."

"And I thought I was so creative. But anyway, I have a few violins back home and which one or ones I make here will depend on the circumstances."

"It's a popular song. Reasonably popular, anyway. Tzarsik says that demons who actually try to collect souls hate it."

"My kind of demon can't actually do that but it's a popular myth that we can. Yours can pull it off?"

"Yeah, I think so. It doesn't happen very often."

"When it happens, does it involve violin contests...?"

"No, they apparently dislike it because they feel mocked."

"What happens to people with their souls stolen, and how does the transaction in fact occur?"

"I don't know. I can introduce you to Tzarsik if you want, although if you do he'll probably assume you want to sleep with him."

"...I mean, is he cute?"