"In the meantime, I don't suppose you can help with the more mundane side of moving?—also the less mundane one where I should bring the Lord a gift."

"Yeah, Rose told us to expect that first part. We can get you a job too if you aren't worried about career ambitions. The gift is mostly just symbolic."

"'Mostly'?"

"I'm sure he'd rather have something useful than not, but it's just a way of saying you're here and acknowledging his Lordship. Most of us don't want to tell the official Toronto community we're here. I think the last person who did ended up offering a painting of a glorious battle or something dumb like that. He took it, and he doesn't even care for art."

"Is he completely unaware of you?"

"Doesn't know there's a cabal of scary diabolists; has met some members. 'S why we mostly can't claim demesnes— that, he'd notice."

"Yeah, fair enough. Have you actually done much undetected diabolism here?"

"Some summonings. A few successes at extracting promises—just the regular seal, though; did Rose tell you about the other one?"

"Oh yes. It sounds very elegant."

"That's one word. Invasive would be another. I'd go with sticky."

"You don't like it, I take it?"

"I get how someone might have wanted it this way. But having actually lived under it, it's the reason we're cowering out here."

"—really? How does it keep you here?"

"We could be a force to be reckoned with. Like Rose is. She's got a doomsday device and can imply she might use it without ever having to follow through. We couldn't follow through, so we can't get any use out of implying things."

"Doesn't the oath allow this kind of thing for self-defence and defence of others? And there's the loophole where you can harm someone in order to coerce them to take the oath, too."

"Yeah, yeah. And most sides would even be easy to provoke. Still can't just announce hey look we're scary. I could see it working for people who aren't diabolists, but we are."

"Well, you could announce you're scary, because by dint of being diabolists you are. The oath is rather careful about extraneous damage, though, so no doomsday devices..."

"Which rules out actually using the firepower unless they're pretty much at the gates. We'd be bluffing the whole time."

"Do most people know about the oath, though?"

"Of course not. And they'd be really unlikely to guess, which would be great if it mattered whether they find out why we're bluffing."

"But then they needn't find out that you're bluffing."

"In theory. We've weighed the risks a lot, and it never seemed like a good bet to count on them not gambling against the conspicuous lack of demons."

"Well there is a demon in that one warehouse, and given the maintenance work you've been doing it doesn't seem inaccurate to say you've bound it."

"Sure. Not well enough yet to threaten anyone, so still a bluff."

"Right, but like you said, the problem with a bluff is that people might be more inclined to call it given an absence of demons, which wouldn't be the case with this actual demon."