He raises his hands. "Please don't shoot anybody my summoner's not here."

"I think this isn't actually illegal, just - incredibly unsafe -"

"Kid wanted me to kill him. And I can't go back to Hell and get a nicer one until my lawyer figures out how to settle the case in absentia for me."

"...and you didn't kill him? I guess?"

" - I mean, I asked him why he wanted to die, said there were interdimensional magic solutions if he was clinically depressed or something, and if he was in a bad home situation I could just take him to another dimension and give him a couple billion to start over with, and if he still felt that way about it in six months I'd do it but it's kind of amazing what living in a safe environment with cool people your age can do, and it's not irreversible like becoming a daeva is, and he'll get to spend forever as a daeva anyway. And he said sure he'd try it so he's in another dimension with a ton of money now and my brother's checking in on him to make sure he's happy and making friends and stuff and hopefully he'll be okay but if in six months he wants to die I'll do it, I gave my word."

Nod.

"Let's go home," he says to Aaron. Circle.

He finishes it. "Let me know if you need anything."

"All right."

Off they go.

Aaron gets an email. Mica says the demon could have faked a null result if it wanted to.

And another one: I haven't met the forensics demon I don't know if it's a male one or a female one or a nonbinary one or what.

Could that've also been happening on evidence for trials -

She says not. Those are taken more seriously.

This one was going to lead to a trial, though.

They might have redone it if he'd answered a circle.

That's good to know. Thanks for your time.

I emailed the prison people about the pronouns thing and they said the Pancelestial Fellowship of Gender Minorities got on their case for guessing and left them alone when they said 'okay, we'll just call them all "it" till otherwise specified' but this was a long time ago and I don't think the PFGM still exists so I told them maybe they could ignore that now.

Or give them a way to otherwise specify. Thanks.

Boss says it's too early to reconsider whether encouragement to suicide is a circling offense.

Well, arrange for him to be able to go to school and write his family and I'm sure he'll happily show up.

I probably can't get that to happen.

Mica retried the forensics with a different demon. She was curious so she gave the same wording and this one faked null too. I don't know why.

That's interesting. Do you have names, we could grab them and offer better payments - what do you even pay demons with - 

Kayanda and Nymi. We have an arts budget they can direct, they mostly spend it on music videos.

He fetches Timothy. "Hey, the GCP's claiming that their forensics demons conspired to hide the fact people daevafy, want to summon them and ask?"

"Yeah sure." He completes a circle for Kayanda.