Actually, dramatic-irony-wise, wouldn't signing a happy and beautifully symbolic contract like this make it a great time for something terrible to happen to Carissa just before her actual afterlife arrangements got made?  There's hardly any author in dath ilan who would, if planning to have Carissa kidnapped in the next few hours, not have this beautiful emotional options contract get signed first.  Only a Genre Savvy character's explicit awareness of the trope could possibly prevent that, because the author really can't do that so freely if the protagonist is a normal dath ilani and able to notice, and even then the protagonist would need to -

"On due reflection, I think the level of 'trope' alarm this entire situation is generating is sufficient that I literally don't want to let you out of my sight until the devil gets back," Keltham states.  "I may entertain arguments that you be allowed to use the bathroom."

"You're very concerning sometimes, you know that?" She sits down in one of his fancy chairs. "Also fair warning, if we'd been dating for a week longer I'd make you enforce that."

"I'd say that, once I understand Golarion better and have lived here longer, I'll maybe know better what can't happen.  But I also remind you that your new standard of improbability needs to be, 'Is that less likely than a godwar starting' or 'Is that less likely than Cayden Cailean volunteering snacks catering for our project' because that is where you live now."

"...Enforce it how, pray tell?"

"Well, I say, 'oh? make me' and then you figure out the 'how'. ....to be clear I won't, actually, do that about an actual safety request even if it doesn't make sense to me."

"Wrong time to ask me to figure that out, but we can put a pin in it for later."

Keltham does have a book of cleric spells to finish reading, and many Additional Questions to ask about it.

A roaring sound like the ocean has overtaken Sothis and is racing at top speed towards his eardrums in particular, and a sense of heat like he's tripped face-first into the Sun -

"We are occupied elsewhere," the pharaoh tells this petitioner, already unable to hear his voice, "and will speak to you later. Dismissed."

The cleric in Cheliax has just exchanged 500 gold pieces for an option exercisable for 500,000gp for the soul of one Carissa Sevar.

Assistance in generating theories of why.

......you can buy options on souls? I didn't know you could buy options on souls!! 

He doesn't expect a response on that; Abadar doesn't usually communicate with things that parse as words at all, and he suspects that it only happened this time because the words were in the contract.

Possibilities: 

- the cleric wants to rescue the girl from Hell and can't afford it yet but expects he'll be able to someday?

- the cleric has been very much misled about any of what souls are, what contracts are, what gold pieces are, what options are, or who Carissa Sevar is

- the contract is meant to communicate with Us, because the cleric knows that when people formalize their intent and their preferences so, it's much clearer to You, and is asking You to protect Carissa Sevar. Who is she.

A potential trade partner of Irori's! (There's an additional nuance there but it doesn't make it across the translation barrier; it's something like 'unfinished'.)

....well that rules out the first theory! Leaves the second one very much intact, though, and the third.

Can we talk to her?

No. 

Interdiction, right. 

Is she the cake girl.

???????????????

??????????????? right back at you!!!!!!!!

That's about as well as talking to mortals ever goes. He'll leave before he causes permanent brain damage. 

When Sevar and Subirachs reconvene to see if Sevar's soul will be salable, the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus is also there.

There are many reasons for this, but mainly, because it is now also her duty to deal with 'tropes', as it is her duty to deal with gods.  The degree to which Keltham has guessed that something might go wrong with this sale, which is far more probable than Keltham has any just reason to believe, is sufficient for Aspexia to consider what it is she must now do if a 'trope' is controlling this situation fully.

And if clarification from Hell is forthcoming, let her perhaps be present to hear it in person and even ask a question or two.  Such as - if the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus in Golarion is permitted to know as much - why exactly is Sevar's soul so valuable?

There is not much here for her to do with the Grand High Priestess so close by.

"Grand High Priestess," says Carissa, and takes out the contract which she and Keltham signed. "I represented it to Keltham that I'm going to get permanent Arcane Sight and have the rest paid out in spellsilver; he won't know how much spellsilver it ought to be and I think with assistance I could cast a Permanent Detect Magic instead to imitate. If I'm unable to sell my soul. Obviously I hope I'll just be able to sell my soul."

Aspexia has generated some such possibilities herself.  "I have made some such advance arrangements should they be needed; Keltham will not expect you to tarry long here, and he may ask to see any such ability proven given all his suspicions."

"Another option in that same case is to claim that there is to be more payment later, with their ownership of your soul's indenture to be revoked if they cannot complete that payment within the year, but your afterlife arrangements are in place right now and safe."

"- I admit, I am somewhat concerned now about the consequences of what lies this lie must then imply.  Will Keltham ask to speak with you, perhaps, see you scryed, if you are dead and not yet raised, expecting to see you comfortably in some safe Hell?  There is much that can be done with illusion, and yet, I worry.  Keltham is a little to us like a god is to a mortal, or sometimes a mortal to a god, in that it is hard for us to think of all the thoughts that he may think."

"Yes. I would almost advocate for being truthful with him, except that his theory is that if I'm unable to sell my soul it's because I'm a secret cleric of Zon-Kuthon, which does not seem useful for any of our goals and which we're sure is not what's going on here, whatever is."

"I will perform that check on you at once, if you prove unable to sell your soul, as it was represented to Keltham that we would."

He's back, alone, and frowning.

"Who are you?" he demands at once of the new, somewhat respectably high-level cleric of Asmodeus, who has presumed to intrude upon his bargaining.

"Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus in Golarion, Aspexia Rugatonn.  I may, perhaps, have additional questions for you, depending on what eventuates now."

He doesn't have another devil with him. Carissa feels - probably more disappointed than anyone has ever felt about not getting to sell their soul. She wanted her Wishes and her spellsilver and her Arcane Sight and her Tongues and her - not having to worry quite so much about being a heretic -