She shrugs and smiles. "Then I guess you have no idea who this enemy of the Lord's is, do you?"

She smiles back. "There are upstart challengers who want Toronto for themselves all the time. Maybe it's just another of those."

"Who knows?" She stands up. "I think I've taken up enough of your time."

"Not at all; thanks for stopping by.

Good luck, and remember, running is better than losing."

"I'll remember."

Sadde gives her a number and goes on her way.

Doug shows himself almost immediately. "You'll have to fill me in on Fell later," he starts. "Something's up with your sketchy diabolist friends. Who's Hauri?"

"You have got to be kidding me."

"Nope. Hang on. Di?"

Diana's voice comes out from the crow. "This Hauri sent help. Lots of it, with no visible strings. What's the catch?"

"Hauri's an imp. He's bound by my new seal, but specifically because he thinks that this will cause the most chaos and mayhem in the long run."

Diana splutters and Doug stares. He recovers first. "It's probably right and is definitely playing you. It has to have a plan. We need to get rid of all this."

"Not to mention the karma of getting an imp's help to overthrow the Lord. Agreed."

The devil's position, which several diabolists are happy to advocate for once the three of them are all there demanding it, is that the cabal does know Hauri's goal. It's more exposure for the Seal, strengthening it, and insurance against losing one of the few groups sworn to it.

And If the fact that the help is from an imp is enough reason to turn it down, it should also have been enough reason not to trust the Seal when setting Hauri free in the first place. If Sam is going to freak out as soon as Hauri does something, maybe that promise doesn't make imps harmless after all, hm?

Also, it's not obvious that they can get rid of it. The reinforcements are bogeymen from the Abyss, and Hauri didn't send instructions on how to break the summonses. The monsters might just sit there until they attract attention, so they might as well use them. (Which the imp definitely did on purpose, but that doesn't make it false.)

Besides, this is some serious firepower. Diana agrees with this part. Sadde and Doug really should see it for themselves.

Sure, Sadde will want to see it, but:

"The problem isn't Hauri doing something, it's Hauri doing something for other people. Regardless of whether Hauri can now be a member of general society, it's still the case that karma is working against him and anyone who works with him. This is an obstacle Hauri has to get over, not us, by for example doing small, inconsequential acts of kindness and scaling up from that for a very, very long time to try to undo the karma. And it doesn't seem like it's a terrible idea to have the monsters just sit there, at least then they won't be actively sabotaging our efforts just by existing."

"That's...probably not even possible. Hauri is an imp. The spirits hate it just for existing; it can't make up for that in volume when every right act counts as wrong because it's an imp doing it.

As for the bogeymen, they're sealed too. Although I don't really know what the ones that need to feed are going to do if we just ignore them. Probably go looking for a fight so they can eat the aggressor. Might as well be your fight."

"They" are, apparently, scary in their own right. The practitioners enter a confined but not really secured area out back through a hastily added second door forming an airlock-type boundary. They get greeted by a sphere of darkness flowing toward them. When it covers Sadde she feels nothing unusual and sees nothing but the glint of eyes and teeth and occasional glimpses of light outside the layers of shadow. It moves on after less than a second. Diana explains that it did that to each of them at least once.

The other creatures are hardly less strange. A one-eyed lizard lazes in the middle of a stretch of grass, surrounded by a radius where all vegetation is dry and dead. The others give it a berth, except for a long serpentine creature that basks in the warmth cascading from around it. The lizard's skin and flesh are dotted with holes, creating a sponge structure inhabited either by a colony of worms or a many-headed parasite or symbiont. Hard to guess from the outside. A third creature looks, aside from the massive forelimbs and the short spiked tail, like a twelve-foot frog. One of its eyes tracks a swarm of insects that occasionally coalesces into forms ranging from giant mosquito to canine to humanoid. The swarm carries a long, needle-like proboscis that reaches and stretches in random directions and forms the centerpiece of all its non-swarm shapes. Looking relatively normal, a dead and rotting terrier barks. It still wears a collar, illegible, which on closer inspection has grown into the neck and fused with it. This one both the bogeymen and practitioners keep away from.

There is also a constant feeling of being watched, and of flickers visible only in the corner of the eye.

All in all, it's a pretty unpleasant space.

"What's up with the dog?"

"It just hurts to get near. Emotionally. I think the bugs are immune, but everything else relives losing something or someone. Could be disablingly effective against some enemies."

Nod.

"In any case—I care more than just about bringing the Lord down. I don't want the power vacuum to cause more trouble, nor do I want whoever succeeds him to be screwed over by the karma I left there. I care about the long-term stability of the city, and while I'd be willing to sacrifice some short-term goodwill from the spirits by dealing with Hauri, that's a lot more lives and a lot more power at stake than just mine."

"You'll notice we aren't dealing with the imp directly. Doing it at one remove, using these, is closer to allying with diabolists than demons."

It's pretty clear that Hauri wasn't even here in person. There's a note left just inside the door, written in pen on the front cover of the latest issue of GQ. All it says is "You're welcome." It's signed with a Roman numeral in two thick columns, with a thin crossbar making it an initial. The reverse of the sheet is a cover of Vogue and has been marked with the Seal of Sadde.

She ponders. "I think... I might defer judgment to Diana and Doug."

Diana and Doug are at "ugh" and "hell no," respectively. Like working with diabolists in the first place, except that these reinforcements are answering primarily to the imp. Though it's almost a moot point, because they're answering secondarily to the cabal. Probably. At least that's where they were sent. The three non-diabolists are allies, not members.

"Not that we're planning to up and win your fight against your will," one of the cabal says, "but what you're deciding is more whether to ask us not to use a resource."

"I thought you wanted to stay out of it?"

"We're split. This is use-it-or-lose-it and might just tip the balance if there's a way to do it anonymously."

"What are the arguments in favour of getting involved?"

"Well, the Lord being gone would mean we aren't constantly watching our backs for the authorities. At least until he's replaced. And being able to say we were one of the two main factions that pulled it off would be worth a fair amount of collective credibility any time it's worth revealing. Plus, if the replacement is anyone other than Isadora they'd be less disposed to shoot on sight. And obviously we'd rather have you win than lose.

And it's safer now. We can send stronger things than we could summon ourselves short of the really big guns, and if anyone manages to turn them back on the summoner the summoner isn't us."

"I did in fact have a replacement planned. Who's not me."