I stepped through into the typical Singaporean wall of heat, some blocks away from where I’d entered the city the previous day. I had to figure out what I was going to do about housing, and I didn’t have a lot of time. There were plenty of available options, but few that wouldn’t raise immediate red flags.

I’d set down outside one of the local parks, a large one, all greenery and lush vegetation, with wide gravel paths winding their way through the trees and multicoloured floodlights in neon purple, pink and green lighting up the walkways. The walk gave me an opportunity to sort a few things out in the meantime. With no one else around, I tested out the pact to see if it was still registering an observer. Sure enough, I wasn’t as alone as I seemed.

“Welcome to Singapore, I guess,” I addressed them. “Not sure exactly what you can pick up over there on your end, but it’s a balmy thirty degrees and the scent of dumplings is on the air. I figure if you’re going to all the trouble of watching me, I might as well take you through a nice scenic route. Consider it a professional courtesy. I expect a top rating because of it, mind you. Ten out of ten; would surveil again.”

If I’d thought that would convince them to give me some sign they were listening, it failed. Well, it was always going to be a long shot. “Bear in mind I’m open to both giving and receiving bribes,” I continued, earning myself a strange look from a jogger passing in the opposite direction. “Within reason, of course. I don’t know if this is going to be a long-term engagement yet, and there’s only so much I’m willing to commit at such an early stage in our relationship.”

Only silence met my comments. “Not a conversationalist, I take it? Or is whatever you’re using strictly one-way?” More silence. “Suit yourself. I’ll be here if you change your mind.”

I turned my attention elsewhere. Janus. Someone else I hadn’t met. I knew of him, though. A powerful player back in his day, with powers far on the abstract end of the scale. Hadn’t been enough to save him, though. It made sense that he’d be capable of the kind of personality extraction I was looking for, but what was Hel doing trafficking his name around like a secret? His demotion was common knowledge; if it was a matter of breaking in to wherever he was being held and organising a rescue attempt, she could have just said so.

And ‘Janus face four’? And ‘find it’, not ‘find him’. Janus had two faces; everyone knew that. It wasn’t common, even in Providence. But four? Was I supposed to be looking for one of them? Four of them? Were they detached from the rest of him? Charming thought, that. Knowing how demotions could go, it wasn’t unlikely. And this was all assuming a literal interpretation. Once you started reaching for metaphors, it was anyone’s guess.

Once I could get hold of some privacy, I could do a little more digging. For now, I was going to have to rely on proxies to do some of the work for me. And that, it seemed, was where a roster of demons was about to come in handy.

I have a job for you, I told Grace, reaching out through the naudhiz rune. If I gave the pope Apollo’s phone number and both of them played ball, Grace would have indirect access to a large part of the Security department’s confidential information. Information which could then be filtered down to me with no one else being any the wiser. After all, who did you ask about demotions if not Mr Demotion himself? Bonus, I wouldn’t have to talk to him directly - although the notion somehow managed to feel both more and less satisfying at the same time.

The response was immediate. The one in Apollo’s plan? Janus?

That’s it, I confirmed. Typical Shitface, stealing the glory and confidential information alike. And it’s my plan, just so we’re clear. I take it he's already been in contact, then.

Hold on, said Grace. Before I tell you anything, you have some explaining to do. You killed the officer interviewing me, didn’t you?

Yes, I said bluntly. News about your rune gets out, it exposes everything. It's not nice, but we're up against gods here, not mortals. If you have a better plan, by all means share.

It hardly matters now, he grumbled. It’s not going to bring him back. You do that often? Just casually murder everyone who gets in your way?

Of course not. For a start, most of the people who get in my way are immortal.

I didn’t receive a response to that; the joke falling flat.

I’m not Yahweh, I continued, switching tacks. He’s a sociopath. I’m just –

Ruthless, Grace interrupted.

Focused, I corrected, dodging a cyclist who came zooming up the path behind me. Much like yourself, from what I can tell. I’ve just been around a lot longer and have a few more tricks up my sleeve. Speaking of, you’ve gotten a lot better at this since the last time we spoke.

Lucifer’s been coaching me, he explained.

Sneaky devil, I thought. So Lucy had a direct line to the pope, too. It made sense. Are you in touch with him now?

No, but he said to say hi when you figured it out.

I felt my lips quirk despite myself. That was Lucy, alright. Useful, I acknowledged. What else has he been coaching you on? Any progress on what your powers are yet?

There was a bit of a pause. I don’t know how you think I’ve had the time. I’ve had to deal with distressed and angry families, the police and the international media circuit all morning, all with the devil whispering in my ear. And now you, too. Theory is all I’ve got for you.

Better than nothing, I observed. I had plans riding on this.

Well, then, he said, somewhat mollified. I don’t know what you’d call it. I’ve been noticing things. About people. Information I shouldn’t know. It’s subtle. If you hadn’t raised the desire angle, I doubt I’d have made the connection.

My hopes rose. You can read people’s desires?

I can read something. If you want to jump to conclusions, it’s on you.

I wiped the growing veneer of sweat off my brow with the heel of my wrist. It was tempting to just make it go away, but small details like that were the kinds of red flags that niggled away in people’s subconscious minds until they reached critical mass and alerted their conscious brains to the fact something was amiss. Easy way to find out, Grace. Try it on me.

I can’t, he said. I’ve already been through this with Lucifer. I have to be looking at the person.

Thinking for a moment, I sent through a detailed mental image of myself as I currently appeared. And now?

Doesn’t change anything. And just FYI, I have a meeting with the Italian Prime Minister in five minutes. If you have something to say, make it speedy.

Long gone were the days when people lived in awe of the gods, I mused to myself wryly, outliers like Yun-Qi notwithstanding. There was plenty more I wanted to ask about Grace’s powers, but it could come later. A detection skill was exactly what I’d been hoping for, although it was sounding like a short-range ability with none of the incredible breadth Tru’s powers had manifested. In fact, it sounded like there was such a power disparity between the two demon lords that I was convinced there had to be more to Grace’s portfolio than that.

But we could discuss that later. What does Apollo have to say about Janus? I asked instead. I assume he left you something to pass on to me.

Only that he’s being held in Facility J. This was followed by a set of GPS coordinates I recognised as being in the middle of the Sahara desert. He paused. What’s Facility J?

A bad place. You just worry about the Prime Minister for now. I can explain more later.

In truth, I knew very little about where Providence took demoted employees. Like the suppressants bunker on the moon, it was supposed to be a closely-guarded secret. In fact, this was the first I’d heard of there being more than one facility, or of them being designated letters. Or that there were dedicated facilities at all. The fact they’d made it all the way to J – J for Janus – strongly suggested Themis and her love affair with alphebetisation had had a direct hand in managing them. That alone brought my estimation of her down another few notches.

The implications of what this meant hit me so hard I physically stumbled over my own feet and almost went flying onto the footpath. Let my watcher make of it what they would – I had something more important to worry about. Themis’ alphabet rule might have just given me the key to finding one of my sons. J also stood for Jörmungand, after all.

There’s more, Grace prompted me. He says Janus wears two faces. I assume we're talking about the Roman god and that he’s another colleague of yours, because otherwise it sounds to me like one of those crossword clues they give to people with too much time on their hands.

Hah, I responded. Leave it with me. Meanwhile, see if you can't get everyone else's details off Apollo and stay in touch. And delete your phone trail before Yahweh checks in.

Facility J, I thought to myself as I cut off the conversation, ruminating on the discovery. A name and location for the latest venue of horrors; only one of many if I had the drift of it. Gods had been committing atrocities upon each other since the dawn of time, and if the slavery wasn’t enough of an indication we were lagging behind our mortal counterparts on the concept of human rights, then the existence of demotions took that evidence and hammered it home harder than Mjolnir’s wielder on a drunken bender.

Shitface might have decided to be helpful now, but it came at the tail end of a long, bloody history of complicity. I doubted our mock conversation the day before was all it had taken to change his mind. Plenty of others had done so before him, some of whom had been even higher up in the corporate hierarchy, and most of them were now languishing away in similar conditions to the people they’d attempted to save. A pledge of loyalty to the tyrant was a pledge for life, especially when it involved a breach of confidentiality.

It was easy to see why so many fell in line. A long time ago, Yahweh had talked to the right people and sold them on his shitty vision, and by the time the less gullible ones wised up to the sordid details or developed the semblance of a conscience, they were already in too deep to break free. That was how you ended up with people like Themis, who threw themselves into operational minutiae as a way to avoid looking at the bigger picture.

Like so many in the Greek pantheon, the little ‘of’ in her title was a liability. Couldn’t have been easy going against her underlying nature for so long. Goddess of justice? Not anymore. Eris wasn’t the only deity going loopy.

Or maybe I was making excuses for people who neither needed nor deserved them.

Shitface had just been sitting on this information, one of the precious few entrusted with it, enabling and facilitating it, deluded enough to think he was changing the system from within. Even he didn’t pretend it was humane. The best the Marketing department could do was avoid the subject entirely, hoping the topic would fall out of fashion long enough to reclaim some semblance of credibility.

For all Apollo’s many faults, he had obviously believed he was doing the right thing on the balance of things. And if he was telling the truth about covering up the majority of misdemeanours committed by Providence’s employees – and it seemed he was - as much as I hated to admit it, he probably had a point. The tyrant, with his all-or-nothing views on morality, was narrow-minded enough to believe every inference coming from a god of truth, heedless of the difference between lies and deception.

Others in the executive team, less so. But I doubted anyone else was there because they were true believers. Everyone had an agenda. Odin’s I was sure about – the what, if not the why. Enki was borderline cuckoo and alcoholic to boot, and Vishnu literally hadn’t been himself since his consolidation. Hera was savvy enough to realise this was as high up the food chain as she was ever going to get and willing to do whatever it took to keep her liferaft afloat. And Legba, as far as I could tell, was there for shits and giggles; a cause I would have been on board with if the stakes had been less awful.

The magnitude of what we were doing started to sink in. I’d just been handed a piece of top-secret security information from someone who had been my enemy only a day ago. Facility J was ripe for assault, and I planned to push for it one way or another. Lucy was going to want to bide his time, I knew, but if we wanted to get Durga back that wasn’t an option. At the very least, we had to scout it out.

Or someone else did. I wasn’t going anywhere until I could deal with this surveillance.