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."

"I mean, there's bad luck, but if it happens often enough that being tied up by a would-be murderer doesn't faze you..."

"Pff, he was just human. Not even in my top ten."

"Yeah, that's definitely weird."

"Better me than someone who doesn't know how to deal with it."

"Which would be nothing but noble of you if you were deliberately sabotaging your car so that you could clear creepy buildings of their abundant creepy inhabitants, but something else has got to be going on. Like, minimum, a fairy who doesn't like you or finds you entertaining is following you around during rainstorms."

"Why would it be a fairy? I'd think a gremlin would be more likely. In fact I've often suspected that I have a gremlin problem, but I've never been able to prove it."

"Yes, it is, and no, he doesn't. Or I doubt it anyway. This is the 'cabin in the woods' type of creepy building; he'll almost certainly have left me no way to call for help if I got free."

"Damn. I could make a laptop, I cannot make a subscription to whatever godawful dialup service is currently in vogue. ...He's my summoner, and if he dies I go home. I want to keep an eye on him, unconscious is fine though. If I make you a car can you find civilization?"

"I have a car. If you make me a spare tire I can find civilization. He could fit in the backseat, it wouldn't be the first time I've brought one of my B-Movie villains home."

"Right then." Cam zipties the villain up with suddenly appearing zipties. "Just how thoroughly in this dimension should I avoid appearing in public winged on a scale from 'meh' through 'trenchcoat' to 'cut them off'?"

"Everyone on campus knows Jaromira is a vampire. You don't have to trenchcoat if you don't want to, although I recommend it when we're not actually at Borgia University."

"Okay, no coat. You want to help me drag this guy to your car?"

"Sure. So your universe only has demons, angels, and fairies besides humans, huh? What kind of demon are you?"

"There's not really kinds per se. I'm just a demon."

"We definitely have kinds of demon. Most of them are bad news, but incubi and succubi are okay."

Daphne changes the tire with the ease of long practice. "I don't actually know that much about the power types of various demons, but incubi and succubi look much more human than most. I actually thought you were one when you first appeared. This guy probably did too and that was why he was so surprised. Are your wings going to interfere with riding shotgun?"

"I can fold 'em up pretty small." Behold.

"Cool. It's about another half-hour back to campus--ironically enough, I was coming back from visiting Kanimir."

"The vampire."

"I think I only mentioned that Jaromira was a vampire, did you guess that they were siblings from the names?"

"Sort of, I confused the names entirely, it's the 'mir' part."

"Ah. Well, yes, what happened was that Kanimir invited me and several of my friends in--we're a sort of unofficial club, we were on an unofficial club trip--locked them in his dungeons and tried to coerce me into sleeping with him. I grabbed his fang in such a way that I could yank it out if I pulled on it right and made him let them go. Jaromira showed up on my doorstep a few weeks later to tell me she was impressed, one thing led to another, and now Kanimir won't hurt me because Jaromira cares about me and she's the only person in all the world who matters to him."

"What an interestingly sociopathic person."

"I can't say I've ever put it in those words, but you're not wrong. Luckily, Jaromira is *not* a sociopath. If she hadn't believed her brother deserved what I threatened to do to him she would have been a lot less happy with me for it, I'll tell you that."

"That's often the way of things. Is Kanimir a danger to others?"

"Not usually. I think he probably would have let my friends go even if I'd just refused him instead of managing to be a credible source of harm. He knows what Jaromira won't forgive, and I don't think he's ever crossed that line."

"I mean, being locked up in a dungeon by a vampire sounds like a singularly unpleasant evening even if the vampire does not in fact intend on doing you bodily injury."

"I know. But he is important to Jaromira, too, and she's important to me. And he's a spectacularly useful font of knowledge--most of the time he's too busy with his books to bother anyone."

"These are not usually the pieces of information I use to decide whether someone is a threat to the general public."

"Also I'm not actually a credible source of harm to him when I don't have the element of surprise and close physical contact. And--fuck." She stops the car and drops her head against the steering wheel. "He really, really doesn't like upsetting Jaromira. And she really, really is not a sociopath. If I say, I have reason to believe his judgement was addled at the time, I know what caused it, it is no longer a factor, and the whole situation is intensely private, will that satisfy you?"

"It'll cause me to develop interest in other priorities first, I suppose."

She bites her lip. "Will you let me know when you get that far down the list so I can tell you the rest of it and hope that convinces you? If you kill Kanimir Jaromira will be heartbroken."

"Who said anything about killing him? For all I know vampires are as immortal as I am. If, after I have saved the bees and terraformed Mars and so on, I get down to wondering about Kanimir's inappropriate entertainments, step one is 'learn about the situation'."

She relaxes. "Good. I'm sorry, it's just, most people who decide a vampire is a problem that needs to be solved default to killing them. I had no particular reason to expect you to be different. So how are you planning on saving the bees, I didn't even know they needed saving. And you might want to be careful about Mars, I think it has natives."

"Oh, great. I finally get summoned unbound and Mars has natives. Does Titan have natives? I could also do Titan. Anyway, maybe your bees don't need saving just like your Mars doesn't need colonizing, but on my world nowish bees were getting sick in alarming numbers and it was a bit of a problem for a while."

"I don't know if Titan has natives. If they do they don't come to Earth as often as Martians do, I've never met one. I'd check first if at all possible. I'm still curious how you intend to manage all this."

"Remember how I appeared the spare tire out of nowhere and also how I'm from the future? These facts combine really well."

"Ooh. So you have arbitrary creating things powers and also future technology to make. That's awesome."

"I know, right? I'm excited."

"The Martians live underground, so you could probably still terraform it so long as you talk to them first. Most of the ones who come to Earth do so because 'the surface of the planet doesn't kill you' is a pleasant novelty."

"Huh. What about it kills them?"

"Well, there's not enough air, for one thing. I think Mars actually used to be more Earthlike and the Martians hadn't developed space travel when it started getting like it currently is so they moved to sealed underground environments instead of Earth."

"Oh. So maybe terraforming it is still on the table, but now it will involve a complex diplomacy project. I'll probably want to at least practice on Titan first."

"After checking for Titanians."

"Yes, yes, I will check now I know you have intrasolar aliens. What else have you got besides Martians, vampires, gremlins, fairies that probably aren't the kind I'm used to, demons that definitely aren't the kind I'm used to, and humans?"

"Werewolves, swamp things, ghosts, and honestly I don't think there's anything I for sure and certain could tell you doesn't exist."

"Well, that's all very exciting. Is there a known explanation of any kind for why you're a Stuff Magnet?"

"...We think it might have something to do with the private thing I mentioned earlier."

"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?"

"He's an incubus. They're all cute," she says archly.

"I mean, it'll depend on if we get along, but I do want to know more about all the numerous interesting species around here."

"Ooh. Well, I'm happy to be your native guide," she says, a little flirtatiously.

Cam giggles. "How very generous of you! I really appreciate that."

"In all seriousness--I would be happy to show you around, regardless of whether or not you're interested in sleeping with me. I would also be happy to sleep with you regardless of whether or not you want me to show you around."

"I require the showing-around a little more urgently than the sleeping-with but both appeal."

"Okay then! So we get back to campus, we find somewhere to stash your summoner, and then I set about finding people who can tell you things."

"Where does one normally stash comatose summoners?"

"I have no idea, I don't usually need to hang onto anyone I have reason to leave unconscious. We could claim you're his cousin and check him into a hospital?"

"Do people not check up on claimed familial relationships here? Also, I have to decide whether to maintain the coma or let him wake up."

"They probably do, but I bet it would work in the short term. How does he dismiss you anyway? Is he likely to do it by accident?"

"He might. He'd just have to concentrate on wanting to for about a minute. Still, indefinite coma seems a little harsh."

"I don't disagree. Well, we could tell the truth--or nearly, I'm sure we'd have to present you as a helpful passerby rather than how you really showed up--and drop him off at the police station. And you could leave me with instructions on how to summon you in case he dismisses you."

"Yeah, that's probably the right thing to do, I'm just given pause by the possibility that this was a one-off fluke and he can send me back but you can't retrieve me."

"That would be a shame, but taking that risk looks like the lesser evil right now."

"I mean, in the short term, yes, in the long term I can eradicate malaria, you see what I mean?"

"I hesitate to agree, but I feel like most people would prefer it to the indefinite coma option, which I have been seriously considering, so... I mean, does it have any side effects or would it just be 'he wakes up in the police station and is a bit hindered in testifying when tried for being about to murder you'?"

"...Okay, that's worse. That might be too much worse. I could try drugs with amnestic effects but those have side effects which are not trivially weighed against rape and wouldn't be totally reliable."

"I mean, there's a decent chance he would consent to sex with a random beautiful woman. I definitely wouldn't be bringing it up if there weren't. And, y'know, I know some people who would be willing to sleep with her if this guy weren't interested."

"I'm not sure of the exact sort of case of the baskets this guy has, but I feel like most people awoken with their most recent memory being of trying to sacrifice someone to their dread divine lord and master would have priorities other than making time with random beautiful women. Are the 'some people' to apologize for wasting the succubus's time...?"

"Pretty much, yeah. It was just a thought. How long would curing malaria take? A non-indefinite coma would be less harsh."

"I mean, curing malaria - or rather setting it up to go extinct without further intervention - would not take long, but that's just an example, you know? I am a fully qualified medical demon from the year 2159."

"True. I suppose I could threaten him that if you disappear I'll do nasty horrible things to him--I don't like that idea much either, but it might keep him from wanting you gone and it's not like I'd need to follow through."

"Maybe we should just keep me out of sight and you can tell him that you have destroyed me with your ancestral silver athame or something."

"That sounds as good a plan as any. I might go with 'smashed the summoning apparatus with my baseball bat and this caused you to be unsummoned' though, that's more plausible than that I have an ancestral silver athame."

"I could make you a distinctly non-ancestral silver athame but you'd know better than I if this would a plausible implement make."

"It's more plausible to me, and this will affect my acting ability."

"Fair. So I let him come around while you drop him off with the cops - maybe I go with low safe doses of an amnestic too just for redundancy, and if he seems to remember I exist you tell him that I have stopped doing it."

"This is a good plan."

"Okay. I'll keep him down till we get where we're going, then. Are the zip ties plausible or should I replace them?"

"They're fine."

"All right. I will double-check my memory on amnestic drugs." Cam conjures an extremely futuristic computer-object. With no visible actions at all he zips around through file structures, finds what he's looking for, reads it, and remarks, "All right, trial dose of this one and see if he's allergic... aaaand he's not, good, I can nudge it up - and that should do it."

"Is that a future computer?"

"I think we've settled on the theory that it is merely an extradimensional computer. But yes, this is a very recent-model demonic computer."

"It's from a future! It's from farther ahead than this, anyway. It is futuristic."

"I will grant you that. Unfortunately, you cannot have one, because using it requires brain surgery."

"Yep, that would be prohibitive."

"I mean, not strictly, but you'd have a much harder time of it than a daeva. I just made the chip in place and if I want to get rid of it the process is disturbing but not dangerous."

"I'm not fond of the idea of introducing foreign matter to my brain. It's kind of the most important thing I have."

"Yeah. Speaking of the ongoing intactness of your brain, if after I've unleashed a hundred fifty years of medicine and terraformed at least one large sky rock and it's relatively lower in opportunity cost to determine if I can go to Hell and back - so to speak - if you summon me, or anyone else after this experiment yields its results, you may become a daeva when you die. I say may because of uncertainties about the interdimensionality but where I'm from it's quite consistent."

"If we can dismiss and resummon you successfully I want all of my friends and family to do it."

"That is an entirely reasonable response."

"I feel sort of vaguely cheated that if only one of us gets this it's Coma Guy."

"Yes, well, in exchange for this narratively inappropriate distribution of rewards: no malaria."

"A worthwhile tradeoff. This does not appease my irrational emotional center."

"Oh well. Would you also like a candy bar?"

"Yes, please!"

"Any requests?"

"Snickers, please."

He hands her a Snickers. He doesn't bother with the wrapper.

"You're awesome."

"Why thank you."

"And I do mean for the malaria and so on, not just the deliciousness. My priorities aren't that far out of whack."

"I haven't done the malaria yet. I will need to travel to where malaria is found."

"Yes, but you have expressed the intention and the ability, and this is awesome."

"I am fortified by your appreciation."

"What interesting names all your friends have."

"Oh! Right, his real name's Cecil. He's part of the unofficial club I mentioned earlier. We all have nicknames. I'm Little Bird."

"You don't look particularly avian to me."

"My full name is Daphne Major. This is also the name of an island in the Galapagos where some important research is being done on finches."

"Aha. My full name's Campbell Mark Swan, if you're curious."

"That seems like a very human name. I take it your advice on what happens when someone who summons daeva dies was at least partly from personal experience, then."

"There's a few reasons I don't usually tell summoners that, but yeah, I used to be a human."

"I'm sorry if I intruded on something private."

"Well, one reason is they usually summon me bound and gagged and I am literally unable to communicate with them."

"Why would they do that?"

"Aforementioned rumor about demons taking people's souls. No one wishes to be cajoled out of theirs. The binding is a legitimate safety precaution when you don't know who you're getting - the gagging is ultimately quite pointless."

"Okay, the binding part makes sense, but if they don't want to be talked out of their souls why don't they just resolve to say no?"

"Because some demons think it's really fun to convince summoners to offer up their souls and have gotten very good at it. This is really the safest equilibrium, because the souls are being traded for something, the something is real and the soul is not - or at least the claim on it isn't - and if it were common knowledge that there was nothing on one end of this bargain you'd still have an asshole demon and a desperate summoner and that gets less pleasant fast."

"That part makes sense. I've just never understood how you can be so afraid of someone persuading you to something that you don't let them talk--if you expect them to have arguments you'll find swaying, that should sway you. I don't understand what irrational appeals could be made that wouldn't fit into that category--verbally, anyway. I do understand how the application of...stimuli can impair one's judgment."

"Stimuli. Threats. Insinuations that there are loopholes in the binding. Outright bribery - you summoned me for this thing, but imagine if I also did that thing, which is not in the scope of what you asked and would require additional payment?"

"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."

"Seems a shame. Howcome everyone knows about Daeva but no one knows that some of them are dead humans?"

"I can only answer half of that question."

"Which half?"

"Oh, everyone knows about daeva because I told them."

"Yep. I was seventeen, I found some summoning books in an abandoned house, I carefully experimented and talked to some daeva, and then I deployed a bunch of summons to make it pretty undeniable that they existed. Previous summoners came clean in small quantities - they'd all had economic incentives to keep quiet, you see, but those were gone - and I hid among them and taught summoning at a university for four years and then someone figured out it was me and shot me in the head."

"I took to being a demon really well! The only trouble was then I couldn't get in touch with my parents."

"That must suck. My parents are kind of gratuitously ordinary for the most part but I'd hate not being able to see them again."

"Gratuitously ordinary. Mine are approximately that too. Anyway, eventually they died and went to Limbo, which is what happens if you don't turn into a daeva. I knew about it but hadn't publicized - it seemed like it would make the engine of post-scarcity unnecessarily political, you know? - but Limboites aren't summonable and don't get cool powers and the place is kind of disappointing."

Cam hands her a piece of paper.

"Thanks. Fair warning, if this doesn't work the first time I'm absolutely going to try again."

"I mean, maybe give me twenty minutes if it's been long enough between dismissal and resummoning that your first attempt catches me in the shower. The first drawing will remain valid in that instance, incidentally, as this is a personally targeted circle. I'll just turn up slightly damp while you're drawing a redundant duplicate."

"Okay, that's fair. Why would you be damp, though, couldn't you create a layer of hot air between your skin and the water or something?"

"Water clings tight enough that it's mildly uncomfortable to get the air under it. I'm faster than those awful public restroom fans, but not by that much."

"Yeah, okay, I'm a biology major, not a physics major, I'll take your word for it."

"Some people don't mind sloughing the water off like that, I've just never liked the sensation."

"I'll probably try it at least once if I'm ever a demon. I believe in trying new things before judging them unless they're really obviously a bad idea."

"Oh, that will get you into all sorts of messes if you're any kind of daeva. We're indestructible."

"I do have a fairly reasonable definition of what constitutes really obviously a bad idea you know."

"Yes, but if one is indestructible things like 'flinging oneself into a star' are merely 'inconvenient'."

"That sounds annoying to get out of. I don't mind risking pain, but tedium is more of a deterrent."

"I do actually have a plan to get out of any stars or black holes I find myself in but it would take a while."

"Yeah, it doesn't sound like eternal torment, but I can't imagine why I would want to do it in the first place. There's a difference between 'not judging' and 'bothering with.'"

"Fair enough."

"If I tried literally every single thing I'd heard of that didn't sound like an automatic disaster I wouldn't have time to get attempted murdered in the woods."

"It would really depend on how you prioritized the things."

"If I tried every sex thing I'd heard of I wouldn't have time to get attempted murdered in the woods."

"...This would probably also depend on how you prioritized the things. The thing with the attempted murderers is they're really impolite about interruptions."

"I'm assuming I'm doing these sex things in my college dorm room. Or an apartment, if I was constantly having sex instead of attending to my school work I'd get expelled sooner or later."

"Is outdoor sex in various locations not practiced on this version of Earth?"

"True, it is, but that will get you arrested for public indecency and therefore goes under 'obviously terrible ideas.' Unless you did it at night...in the woods...okay, I see your point."

"Except that if I was busy having sex I might not notice the lunatic with the hockey mask and chainsaw and get actually murdered instead of attempted murdered which puts it firmly back into the realm of terrible ideas."

"That's true, you do seem to have this problem. Do you not get bizarre home invasions when you're just minding your own business?"

"...Not in my hometown or on campus. There was this one time when I had an internship abroad that a different kind of vampire broke into my room, but she was actually after my roommate."

"How many kinds are there?"

"There's the most famous kind, the European ones, there's the Chinese Hopping Vampires which is probably kind of racist for me to say but I can't remember their real name, there was the kind I mentioned encountering that I...was not eligible to be victimized by, and I repeat my disclaimer about not being able to promise anything doesn't exist."

"This seems like too many kinds."

"I don't disagree."

"Home invader vampire didn't get your vampire, did they?"

"Different roommate. Jaromira's not a biology major, and it was a biology internship."

"Well, didn't get your other roommate, then?"

"No, I woke up and chased it off with a baseball bat, and then we consulted the locals on how to keep it away. It was an unpleasant surprise for the roommate, though. That kind of vampire feeds by sucking fetuses out the mother's bellybutton, and she hadn't known she was pregnant."

"...And there's some excellent reason they don't staff abortion clinics? I hope?"

"Sucking the fetus out of a woman's bellybutton is not exactly safe for the woman in question."

"Right. And probably they can only feed on humans or prefer to do so for flavor reasons?"

"I assume so. The only one I met wasn't all that interested in holding an intellectual discourse on how to make her less murdery."

"Fair enough. So, I've been getting the impression that this is a United States and similar in most ways to the one I know - national bird is the bald eagle? Fifty states, little wiggly ones East and big square ones West? Capital is Washington D.C.?"

"Those things are all true. We're currently in Pennsylvania."

"Okay, this implies that at least various political figures are in place - D.C. being named after someone and the Louisiana Purchase having gone through and the argument about birds having occurred. When we get somewhere with Internet I'm going to see if versions of my parents and, more saliently, me, are around."

"Thaaaat did not even occur to me. You probably don't have a way to access Earth records or I'd ask you to see if there was a version of me in your universe when we made the sending-you-back experiment."

"I mean, if you'd have a particularly public existence I might be able to track you down, I have a lot of notes on how to conjure up various sorts of Earth information from nothing since I'm usually crippled on Earth itself, but I'm planning to look for my parents by virtue of the fact they were both public employees."

"I mean, I'm going to be a biologist and make groundbreaking contributions in whatever subfield I ultimately decide to go with, but an alternate version of me might have made different life choices."

"Well, apparently George Washington was a general and the first president in both cases, unless you're about to tell me that actually, here he was a Martian who conquered the fledgling republic and the place has been a tyrrany ever since. So I'm hoping at least one of my parents is where I'd expect them to be. Charlie more likely than Renée."

"General George Washington became the first president, yes sir. I don't know, I feel like...I'm more likely to make different life choices than someone during a charged period of history like the late eighteenth century. Or maybe it's just random egotism, whatever."

"Sure, and I don't know how all the various necessary conditions for a United States survive the existence of aliens and abundant forms of vampire and so on. In my world there were barely any summoners and they kept it low-key; in your world apparently they break into apartments and so on."

"Beats me. I mean, vampires and so on rarely do anything that would majorly impact the world stage--random college students are the farthest from 'underbelly of society' I've heard of getting preyed on. Not that I'm condoning preying on the underbelly of society, you understand."

"I do. But some people who went on to become public figures did spend time as college students. I mean, I didn't, but that's because when you get in on the ground floor of a field like daeva summoning you can skip it."

"That is true. But on the other hand, most of the B-Movie villains I've run into were human, and you have serial killers in your universe too, right?"

"Yes, but it's really pretty seldom they try to sacrifice people to things."

"Hadn't occurred to me to contemplate that particular collision."

"Also, chainsaws are literally the one melee weapon that needs to be reloaded. The first time I survived by managing to run and hide until he ran out of gas, and then snuck up on him while he was refueling the thing."

"Good for you."

"That one's the only 'human' incident that makes my top ten. It was my first time, so I didn't have as much of an idea of what I was doing."

"And now this is just routine? Are the cops going to recognize you?"

"Oh yes."

"They probably think you're some kind of vigilante."

"Oh, probably. But I've literally had a mechanic testify in court that the damage to my car couldn't have been deliberate one time."

"What happened to your car?"

"A belt in the engine wore out. I had to push the thing to the mechanic's, and apparently the wear pattern meant I couldn't have cut it and the grease patterns meant I couldn't have removed a good one and replaced it with a shoddy one."

"And then when you were stuck in the middle of nowhere you were beset by goblins or something?"

"That was the ghosts one."

"Grand. Ghosts. Tell me about ghosts."

"They were pissed off about being dead. I recommended a good therapist. One of them was a Borgia University student before she died. I managed to help her get her scholarship back and disability accommodations."

"So ghosts are basically insubstantial people?"

"Yeah. Some of the older ones, if they're all by themselves and haven't had human contact in a long time, go insane and warp into something else, but barring daevahood ghost seems to be the most reliable good bet for what happens when you die. I mean, hope for a real afterlife and all, but."

"What determines whether somebody turns into a ghost, then?"

"If I could figure that out for sure I would be telling people. As far as I can tell it just happens sometimes. It's more likely if you're murdered, more likely if you have strong negative emotions about your death, and less likely if it's of old age."

"Figures."

"I mean, you won't hear me arguing that the world is sensibly ordered. I just live here."

"I like mine better. But with one or two assumptions this one can probably be brought around."

"Mostly I like yours better too. As long as Jaromira got to be a summoner so I could still meet her, anyway."

"Oh - at home only humans can summon. I don't know if that will hold here, because your non-humans aren't daeva."

"Ah. Well, its not quite as important in her case--she's already seven hundred years old. She's not invulnerable, but she doesn't have an expiration date the way us humans do."

"That's nice, then."

"Yeah. I've considered turning, if I can't find anything better and I'm worried about dying of old age...but it doesn't really appeal, just for itself."

"What's the process like?"

"If you die of blood loss while a vampire's got their fangs in you you wake up a few days later with pointy teeth of your own."

"What's being a vampire like?"

"You can't eat solid food and have to drink blood, but your taste buds aren't actually reconfigured. Garlic smells terrible. Maintaining a diurnal schedule is a pain and requires heavy clothing and parasols. You're a little stronger than a human but not much, depending on who you've been feeding on."

"Sounds inconvenient. I'd do it too to not keel over of old age, though, if that were something that could happen to me anymore."

"Yeah. One thing that is good about it is that there's basically a maximum age a vampire can look, so the only reason to do it sooner rather than later is if you're worried about being hit by a bus in the meanwhile."

"Oh, that's nice. Daeva have that too. I actually looked like this when I died - minus the wings and the tail, I made those - but if I'd been old I wouldn't have looked it when I appeared in Hell."

"It actually wouldn't surprise me if there were vampires willing to risk their lives in exchange for a chance at nifty powers and freedom from vampiric inconveniences, if we want to test whether dead summoners in this universe daevafy."

"Well, for all I know they'd keep the inconveniences, at least to a point, but a volunteer experimental subject is a useful thing to have. After we get rid of this guy and I handle the emergency priorities that I shouldn't risk leaving forever without handling."

"Of course. But nifty powers are nifty powers."

"They are!"

"We might want to start with someone who seemed likely to be a demon, given that the ability to make blood would be a major boon all by itself if they turn out not to lose the inconveniences."

"Angel could do that too with knowhow and raw material."

"True. Well, if there's someone who particularly stands out as 'not a fairy' I guess that's our man."

"Yeah. It'll take me a while to get all my medicine stuff distributed, though, unless you know someone with a complete non-daeva-based production system for equipment and drugs."

"No, but it would take a while to get word out through the vampire grapevine about this anyway."

"Yeah. Man, 1999, your internet is probably terrible."

"I'm sure your internet will seem terrible to people several centuries in your future too."

"Yes, yes, they'll probably have a workaround for the lightspeed delay or something."

"Besides, most vampires are old. They don't reliably use the internet we have. What I'm going to do is tell Jaromira, and she'll tell Kanimir, and he'll start writing letters to people."

"I actually get a lot of paper letters, but that's because that's the best way for a demon to receive correspondence from distant locales."

"Vampires use them because most of them think the telegraph was a new-fangled invention and not to be trusted, let alone anything else."

"I'm a hundred and seventy-two and I like to stay on the bleeding edge of technology. Are you sure vampirism doesn't cause luddism?"

"Oh, they're not all like that. Jaromira has a cell phone and computer, and Kanimir has his castle wired for internet."

"He has a castle?"

"He has a mansion with castle-like architecture. I call it a castle."

"Aw, I was imagining a version of Pennsylvania with fortified parapets everywhere."

"That would be fantastic and hilarious, but alas no."

"Well, I think I can live with it well enough to not need to go for a flyover and add a bunch."

"Not that I'm not amused by the idea of you being a ridiculous movie thing that happens to people."

"I think I'll manage that without architectural intrusion. But I'm some utopian protagonist, not a serial killer, so."

"To be fair, several of my more improbable encounters did not involve serial killers. But you do you, utopia sounds way better than just not actively malicious."

"I have immense ambitions."

"Good for you."

"Thank you. So how far is the police station?"

"About another five minutes, it looks like."

"Cool. I'll get out of the car and hide somewhere?"

"I mean, it's five minutes by car, not five minutes on foot. You might want to wait a couple more minutes."

"I mean when we're closer. I don't really want to try giving the cops a statement in my current array of limbs."

"Then sure. How long should whatever you knocked him out with last?"

"I've been giving him small booster doses. After I stop, maybe ten to twenty minutes."

"Okay. I'm half tempted to whack him on the back of the head anyway--gentler than I would if I were actually trying to knock him out, but enough to give a corroborating bruise."

"It wouldn't hold up to close examination, but I can add some blood below his skin in a bruise pattern. Less risk of brain damage."

"I could also whack him in the jaw. You can knock someone unconscious by punching them in the jaw, too, and that's much less likely to cause brain damage."

"If you don't think you can pull off having had a hypodermic on you, I guess."

"Then I would need to explain why I had a hypodermic of knockout drugs on me, and I would explain that it was because this shit keeps happening to me, and they would want to know where I got it, which would be harder to explain."

"I mean, they do know shit keeps happening to you, you mentioned, but yeah. You could say he had it?"

"I doubt amnestics will insert memories as well as remove them, and if he acts confused rather than indignant when they ask him about it they are liable to believe he didn't have it."

"Yeah, all right, swat him in the jaw. Don't overdo it."

And Cam makes himself a shrub in a convenient hiding-in shape.

"Someone's going to notice that," Daphne informs him gleefully. "But no one's going to guess correctly where it came from."

"Who's paying attention to the shubbery at the side of the road?"

"We're close enough to the police station that I assume the answer is cops."

"Ha. Well, let's hope they don't notice while you're talking to them."

"Even if they do, 'random acts of topiary' isn't the kind of trouble I'm infamous for."

"Maybe I'll turn it into a hippopotamus before we clear out altogether."

"Sure. I'll read up on malaria et al." He hides in his bush and reads.

"Good, good. This will be a little awkward when I do want to go home, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it." He emerges from the bush. He refrains from topiarying the bush and gets back in the car.

"Hey, you accidentally summoned a demon several years ago, this is him, please concentrate very hard on wanting him gone."

"I mean, yes, but this will probably involve visiting him in prison and my being unable to be accounted for afterwards and maybe prisons take a dim view of people entering and vanishing?"

"This is him, please wait half an hour after we leave and then concentrate very hard on wanting him gone. Or I show him a picture of you instead of having you come in in person or something."

"First one doesn't work if he's uncooperative. Actually none of it does unless we want to kill him, but the picture would do."

"That's true, but 'you have accidentally summoned a demon, you have no control over it, it wants to go home and will be pissed at you if you don't cooperate' would probably be enough to make him want you gone."

"This is true. Plus 'the demon can also get home by killing you'."

"That too. ...Hm, I was about to ask if you wanted me to put some music on, but you'd probably make a disparaging remark about my cassette tapes, wouldn't you."

"I mean, they work, play whatever you want to play, I don't plan to make a futuristic speaker system in your car unless you really really want one."

Cam whistles along softly and reads notes on his computer.

And after "I Want To Break Free" and "Mr. Fahrenheit" have concluded, and they're about halfway through "Under Pressure," they arrive on campus.

Her car clock works, and it's a little after eleven at night.

"So, I don't have to sleep and can render the question academic by just wandering around outdoors all night long, but are we stashing me somewhere in particular?"

"You can stay in my room, at least until Jaromira gets back. Probably after, too, she probably don't mind, but I don't have the right to make promises for her."

"All right."

"Wandering around outdoors sounds kind of boring anyways. And I think it's late enough that Jawbreaker--Cecil--will be asleep, but we could check anyway if you want."

"I might just hop in a little shuttle and fly to Africa and release sterile male mosquitoes in enormous clouds and be back in time for breakfast with malaria on its way to dying," Cam points out. "I do need to get briefly online to assess the local state of the parasite so I know where to go, but that's all it'd take."

"Good point. I have a computer in my room, it's the weekend so the library will be closed and you can't use one of those."

"I can make my own computer, no need to trespass, it's the internet connection I can't do myself."

"Well, you can use my Ethernet cable."

"Joy. Rapture. No, this is actually fine, it's nearly impossible to get demons to coordinate on an internet we all reliably use instead of just privately conjuring up whatever we want to look at, most of the time I don't even have Ethernet."

"I live in in Lucy Hall. This way."

Follow, follow.

Her room is divided roughly in half, with the two beds against opposite walls. One side of the room is decorated with a faux-Victorian aesthetic, and the other has posters and assorted bric-a-brac. Daphne tosses her bag on the bed on the bric-a-brac side and unplugs the Ethernet cable from the desktop computer on the desk.

And he takes the end of it and plugs it into a computer much less advanced than the one currently clipped to his belt loop. It is already booted up. He starts a browser Daphne has never heard of and looks for old familiar websites. Google exists! It hasn't done so for very long, but it is there. Wikipedia isn't. Damn. Muttering about that, he looks up the current scope of malarial mosquitoes.