"You were expecting something else?" he asks dryly. 

"I have sought nothing else for the past twenty years, child: tell me now whether you can grant my wish, or no."

"What year is this?"

...

"Why, this is the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty-five." 

It makes some degree of sense, he supposes, that the Fair Folk would pay little attention to mortal ways of reckoning time. But were that the case, such a question would be meaningless to ask.

"Or, if you prefer, it is the eleventh year of the reign of King Charles I, or the year 5,587 since the beginning of the world, by the Vulgate count."

"The last time I met someone who counted anno domini, it was 1106. Do not call me 'child'."

"Many apologies, my lady. It was merely a slip of the tongue, no doubt inspired by your youthful appearance." He bows slightly.

"I shall not make the same mistake again," he assures her with utmost sincerity. "For does not the Lord instruct us, through the prophet Samuel, that we must not place too much stock in outward appearances?"

He suspects his casual displays of scholarship are wasted on the faerie, but it does not do to assume, as he has just discovered.

His hands are still shaking. 

"I wouldn't know."

He finds himself suddenly worried, irrationally now that he has the secret of summoning more of her kind, that he has offended Evanathe to the point that she will refuse to grant his request. 

Nevertheless, he feels compelled to ask.

"Well...can you grant immortality? And, if so, what price must I pay to obtain it?"

Hehehe, okay this opportunity is too good to miss. He's a bit of a dick, anyway. Her wings flutter and she rises a bit off the ground, but she keeps a straight face. Now, how did Ligath say he always played this...?

"I'd want your soul."

"Oh."

A pause, then he says, "May I take some time to think over your offer?"

His voice does not shake. He is rather proud of that. 

"Sure. Not too long, though."

He staggers out of the room and, as soon as he is out of sight, sits abruptly on the floor like a puppet whose strings have been cut. 

So. The faerie has asked for his soul.

To hand his soul over to one of the Fair Folk would presumably mean that it would not be available to Hell in the event of his death, which can be assumed to be positive. However, it might also have other, less desirable, effects, which might even be great enough to outweigh or obviate the benefits of immortality.

He does not have enough information to evaluate the potential utility cost, and cannot trust Evanathe to answer honestly given her vested interest in the outcome of their bargain. Whatever the stories may say about the honesty of the fey, they also warn that the Fair Folk can, if they wish, twist the truth into a tool with which they fool the unwary. His opinion of himself is not high enough to be confident that he could detect such traps. 

One potential solution, now that he has the trick of it, would be to summon a second faerie to confirm or deny the words of the first, or to tell him more about the process and consequences of bargaining away his soul. The timing does not appear to be important, nor the chanting, only the drawn circle. Not knowing which parts might be essential, his best option would be to copy exactly the circle with which he summoned Evanathe. This will take time, which is a limited resource; if he intends to do this, he should start right away. 

He reaches for the chalk in his pocket and begins to draw out a circle. 

The chalk crumbles to dust in his hand.

"Whatcha doin'?"

He whirls around to face her.

"You - what - how?"

"Might want to do a little polishing work on the wording of your bindings. You're lucky I'm friendly."

"Friendly?" he exclaims, sounding almost crazed.

A little more calmly, he continues.

"You express the desire to extort my soul from its rightful resting place, in return for granting an immortality which you already possess yourself. You display abilities which your kind are not recorded to possess, as casually as walking, and use them to prevent me from verifying your claims. Do you truly consider such behaviour friendly?"

"I could have just killed you. Instead, I'm offering exactly what you want."

"Ah, I see," he says, raising one eyebrow. 

"You have low standards for benevolence, and expect me to share them. I do not know if you are aware, but between humans it is rarely a default assumption that one party in a conversation is acting with any unusual virtue in refraining from murdering the other." 

"I don't know if you are aware, but this is not a conversation between two humans."

"I am very much aware of that," he snaps.

Reminded that he is dealing with someone who could, apparently, kill him without effort, he takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly before continuing. 

"I simply do not see why I should hold you to any lower a moral standard than I do my fellow mortals. By all means, feel free to persuade me otherwise." 

"I'm pretty sure your fellow mortals can't offer what you want."

"And why should your greater abilities entitle you to greater lenience?" he argues.

"No doubt, with your powers, you could kill me at any moment, but that does not necessarily imply that I should regard you as any more virtuous than a human because you refrain from doing so."

She shrugs. "Maybe not. I'm not really interested in debating it."

Of course she is not. Calling a premature end to the debate is a common tactic among those who are intelligent enough to recognise that they are losing, but not enough to have chosen the winning side in the first place. He does not say this aloud.

Instead, he says, "Then what, may I ask, do you intend to do now?"

"Still waiting for you to give an answer."

"I am, alas, merely a mortal man," Jeremiah points out, "and not blessed with a perfect memory."

He wonders, idly, if a faerie would be capable of providing him with such a gift, and what price they might ask.

"Would you mind repeating the question to which you refer?"