"Demons who wish you harm are scary when you're mortal. Mind, so are angels and fairies wishing the same, but demons do have better range and scale and need know less about what we're doing, and the worse reputation. And we're harder to pay, because, well. We're demons."

It takes her a moment to parse this. "And can make stuff, right, for a minute I thought you meant something about wilful obstinacy or wickedness or some such."

"Nah. Fairies are easy to pay. They live in a very naturally rich world, but they only move things, so it's just economics: it's easier for the fairy to move your furniture than to bake cookies, so this is a trade you can get a fairy to make a decent fraction of the time. Angels are harder, they can change matter into whatever they like, but they need to do all their own detail work, so they'll take electronics or potted plants or books. And then there's demons. If you are reasonably fortunate, what you do is you pay demons in information. Lists of music, the news of a new art museum, your favorite author's name. Then we go home and conjure up the discography or the gallery or the complete works. But those of us who take summons have a pretty efficient network for sharing that information and if it's not new and your demon is in the loop, you're out of luck. And then you can try to pay the demon in live animals - we can make those, but we can't make minds, so they don't make very satisfying pets - but there are animals in Hell, now, most of the particularly charismatic varieties, either made painstakingly with the mindless kind as parents or imported. And then you're left with - intangibles."

"Like souls. Or sex."

"Yep."

"Honestly, I can think of worse things than paying for arbitrary objects with sex. But that's me--I'm aware most people put more emotional investment into it."

"Yeah. And it complicates the matter that the demons are almost never allowed to talk. I know they sometimes are - I once had an extremely fortunate series of summons to a linguistics department, they were learning demonic languages from a different demon they had and wanted me to confirm translations, they had to have been letting the other demon talk. But usually we can't negotiate, which means not only no suggesting souls as payment but also no saying look, I will totally fill your entire soup kitchen back room for literally the least token of payment necessary to count for dismissal, if you insist on offering me your physical charms we're just going to sit here very awkwardly between the rice and the beans before you notice that I'm not collecting."

She bursts out laughing. "Oh dear. That's terrible, did that happen to you?"

"Yes, that happened to me. Summoners and their daeva can renegotiate payment on the fly as long as they come to an agreement, so faced with someone who literally just wanted food to give to the needy and couldn't think of anything to trade for it - well, I didn't want her to summon more demons until she found one who'd go through with it, the poor girl, so I made all the food and then just sort of stared at her until she asked if I might have remembered I left the stove on in which case I could have one of the nectarines and call it good. And then it was 'yes summoner' and that was that."

"Poor dear. Was it a tasty nectarine at least?"

"I made it! It was delicious!"

"I'm glad. We are fantastically lucky to have gotten you even instead of some other demon who wouldn't have immediately started committing mayhem."

"I agree entirely. Although I can't claim I've never slept with a summoner."

"Well, it's a different matter when it's not someone who doesn't actually want it."

"Yes, this one had me make her a house and then looked me over and said that if she summoned me back it would be to have sex with me, and then she did. I am reasonably sure she downloaded inadequate 'how to have sex with a demon' instructions from the Internet, but since I wasn't actually out to do her harm she emerged unscathed - although I do wonder why she stopped, I hope it was some nice human and not branching out into more practically unsafe demon-related practices."

"Oh dear. I hope so too."

"Yeah. I didn't have her name to see if she wound up in Hell. I wouldn't think she did, though I have no way to verify if my idle mental sortings of anyone I've tried to sort are correct."

"Why, what determines who goes where?"

"I don't know, you understand, but my guess is that it's a matter of a personality fit with the powers."

"From our brief acquaintance I'm guessing demon."

"Cool. On the other hand I have no idea where anyone else I love would go...I don't have a good grasp of this yet but I can't help but think my mother would go anywhere but demon, somehow."

"Well, that's still only two choices, this isn't exactly a fine-grained personality test. But yes, the afterlife arrangement leaves some commuting options to be desired unless you can convince someone to unite you in the mortal world."

"That seems like a really good intangible, if only anyone knew."

"I'm surprised it doesn't happen more with ex-human angels and fairies, actually. Most daeva aren't ex-humans, but I get summons often enough that if I were allowed to talk one time in ten I'd have managed to meet some people I wanted to meet. But I can't go to Heaven or Fairyland and ask around about that."