Amazingly, the demon accepted my request. “Done!” he said, a grin of epic proportions plastered all over his mush. “And I shall join you! But right now, you’ve got something else to be drinking up.”

I looked down at the brew. I didn’t smell any sugar in there. Other things, perhaps, but no sugar. Still, couldn’t be worse than my gran’s.

“What is it?” I asked.

The demon chuckled sweetly, as a matter of fact exactly like Gran used to just before watching me descend through the depths of madness to the bottom of the milky sludge. “Just tea. Tea and a little magic that I’ve been brewing up for the thirteen years, thirteen days and twenty-four seconds I’ve been stuck here, waiting for you.”

“As long as the bag’s not been in that long too.” Honestly, I’d have tea however it was given me. I’m not rude. Just not too milky, not too strong, five-eights of a spoon of sugar, a fraction of a degree above body temperature and a reasonable approximation of Dulux #76: Summer Bark. I carry the colour chart with me at all times.

He just ignored that. He was getting onto a pretty serious subject in fairness. “Tea is precious. Tea is life. There is no form of esoteric art more potent than tea magic, especially in the heart of Yorkshire. It is so powerful, in fact, that you idiots - I mean, you noble mortals - use a good cuppa for guidance when you’re at a crossroads in life.”

“We need a little magic in our lives at times,” I mused, thinking of the piles of dishes crusted with unspeakable things that awaited me back home tonight.

“Well, this is the same,” the man said. “Only better. Imbibe, and you will be guided to the end of this little temporary problem of mine.”

“And where’s that?” I ventured. The fact I was talking to a real living devil was starting to sink in, and I was becoming aware that the Alley of the Quick Shag outside the nightclub I’d passed half an hour ago might not be the worst place in Raughnen after all.

“That’s the beauty of it,” he laughed. “I have no idea. Do you ever know what to do about the sorry state of your meaningless existence before that brew?” I shook my head. “Well then. I know that in order to trap me in such a Cage of Trapping, they will have had to capture a part of my essence in a Seal of Trapping. As has been foretold in a billion clumsy and derivative fantasies before, you must destroy the seal to unleash - pardon, free- me from this place. But the Glordites own a dozen or more abbeys, churches and catacombs all across the Old Riding. Or the seal may have been handed over to an ally as a symbol of trust or to throw off my adoring, brainwashed followers. It could be anywhere. But...” He gestured at the scorching mug in my hands.

I think I was still following. I’d been a bit harsh on myself earlier; I had got the colour of Mr. Brown’s dog right in comprehension when I was three, and it wasn’t even brown. “So, drink the magic tea, go whizzing off to the right place, find the seal, break it, meet you in the pub for a sesh.”

The demon smiled his broad smile. “Precisely. So go on, drink up. But all of it, mind you, or you never know where you may end up.”

I guessed ‘dead’ might be the answer to that. I raised the mug to my lips. It was bubbling like melted lava in there. There are probably more sensible courses of action in life than to drink a potion offered to you by a demon in a dark room you’ve just been locked in, but I was starting to need a wee and there were no toilets in sight. And if the Glordites were as powerful as he said then they must have at least invested in some modern amenities at all these haunted temples of theirs.

I took a sip. It was tea... and pretty good at that, too. But, as with all decent hot beverages, the mouthful opened up my mind to a whole world of daunting problems and possibilities that existed beyond my little skive.

“What does the seal look like?” I said suddenly.

He shrugged. “Beats me. Drink up.”

“Will there be monsters trying to stop me?”

“Absolutely, now drink!”

But something was very wrong now. I smacked my lips in disgust, held my mug at arm’s length. “Say, this has a pretty bitter aftertaste. Could you summon up some Earl Grey?”

The creature, for that is what he was again, howled in rage, but it was too late. The mug fell from my hand, because I didn’t have a hand any more. It shattered on the cool tile of the hall, and I watched with headless eyes as the liquid sizzled into a nothingness as nothing as me. Then, like a big, cumbersome balloon, I rose, rose and rose, up and through the roof, out above the streets and onto what I already knew I could tell the lads was a right proper adventure.