“So I see that didn’t go to plan,” I remarked into the ensuing silence, shaking shards out of my dress and hair. “How many years’ experience did you say you had, again?”

Lucy looked like he might have tried to strangle me if not for the fact he had to stay in character. Rather than replying, he strode over to the kitchen to collect his briefcase, stepping over pieces of glass with a noticeable crunching noise. The container itself had several pieces of purple glass embedded in the case, much like the rest of the room.

Leathergrip crawled out from behind my chair and got to her feet, surveying the scene with wide eyes. “Royce,” she said, in a quavering voice. “That was our client. What are we going to do now?”

Lucy took a deep breath. “He signed the indemnity. If anyone asks, we’re legally covered.”

“But he’s dead.”

“I’m not going to press charges,” I contributed helpfully. “It’s obvious you’ve taken care of the demon that was terrorising me. Good job, everyone.”

“But he -” With a shaking finger, she pointed to the greatest concentration of shards, “- for you -” At this point she noticed I was free of my bonds, and buried her face in her hands. “Which one was the demon? I’m so confused.”

“You and I both,” said Lucy. He stared at me expectantly.

“Oh,” I said, and shifted into Tru’s likeness, rising to my feet. The shards in my lap clinked to the floor. “Oh, would you look at that! The terrible curse has worn off at last, and now I, Trust Ifana, am free of the accursed demon’s deception once more!”

Lucy put a palm to his forehead. With the other, he reached out and snapped his fingers in Leathergrip’s direction. Her muscles relaxed, the stress fading from her countenance and her gaze becoming distant.

“You could have at least tried to be convincing,” he objected, surveying the damage. “This is why I wanted to take it easy.”

“But it’s salvageable,” I stated. “He’s not actually gone, right?”

“No. Banishment isn’t good for demons, though, and this Greed has no idea what he’s doing. There’s a certain amount of recovery time.”

I searched around for the fehu rune and found nothing. Not a good sign. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some of the shards beginning to disintegrate. “Lucy -”

“I see it.” Unlatching the briefcase, he withdrew what looked like a metallic hip flask from one of the side pockets and unscrewed the lid. Taking a knife from Tru’s expensive-looking set hanging along the kitchen splashback, he slashed it across the back of his thumb and squeezed a drop of blood into the bottle’s opening. “Come,” he said in Aramaic, and blew into the flask.

As one, the remaining glass shards snapped into vertical alignment, standing on end like iron filings under a magnet. A few of the closest slid across the bench towards the bottle, but slowly. Frowning, Lucy tapped the container a few times to little effect, then gave it a massive whack with the flat of his hand. It jolted the fragments into action, though still sluggish, with most of them levitating towards the open neck.

“Pact contingencies kicking in again,” he commented. “This must have caught someone’s attention. We’ll need to be more careful. At least you managed to ditch your audience. I’ve still got a target on my back.”

“Well, this is also temporary,” I elaborated, my eyes following the stream of pieces as they travelled through the air, filling the penthouse with glittering movement. As they neared the bottle, they reduced in size, disappearing into the vessel. “In fact, I should really go and check -”

“Not in this condition, you shouldn’t,” he said. “Anything we attempt now is going to be obvious.”

“You’re underestimating me.”

“I’m not underestimating our adversaries,” he corrected me. “Besides, I could use your help here. You’re the most qualified to bring him back from the brink.”

“Me? My dealings with demons are very limited.” And not amicable, although I wasn’t about to admit to Lucy I’d mostly spent those interactions taunting his old underlings with harmless pranks. Harmless for demons, anyway. With any luck the new generation would have a better sense of humour, if it survived.

Most of the shards had made their way into the bottle at this point. Lucy made his way around the room to collect the rest of the stragglers, then hesitated, tilting his head a little. “That’s the last of them,” he declared. “We lost a few, but they’ll find their way back eventually. He’s just going to be under full strength for a while. No more exorcisms under any circumstances. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” I said with a grin. “And to be fair, if we didn’t achieve the ultimate in dissuasion today, we’ve both failed as caretakers.”

“There is that.” He lifted the hip flask. Violet light scintillated out of its open neck. “Have you come across one of these?”

I extended my senses out towards it, but if there was anything special about it, it was overshadowed by the presence of the fehu rune, faint but rebuilding inside the container. I’d never been good at this kind of thing. “Is this a trick question?”

Lucy didn’t seem bothered by my answer. “Soul jar. You know, the thing djinn are always getting themselves trapped in. Seeing as Greed kindly signed his soul over -” here he shot me a wry smile, “- it should contain him as long as we need. But I’d rather we got him out. In a form that won’t just fall apart. That’s where you come in.”

“He’s not a shapeshifter. And frankly, I’m not sure there’s much left to work with.”

“But?”

“There is no ‘but’. I can try. Don’t expect much.”

The devil stared at me for a moment, then placed the bottle back on the counter. “Loki,” he addressed me, placing his palms flat on the kitchen island with the unflattering priest’s gown flouncing around them, “what happened?”

I shook my head. “Nothing we didn’t already know. Your dad’s a megalomaniac, the fun police are breathing down my neck, I’m trapped in this useless company and I think it’s driving me legitimately insane. Next thing you know, I’ll be another Eris throwing tantrums with paint in my hair.”

Lucy said nothing. Just waited.

“I thought getting my powers back would help,” I said. “It does and it doesn’t. What’s the point of having more limbs to stretch out with if they’re all still tied behind my back?”

Lucy took his hands off the bench, picked up the bottle again and carried it over to the nearest sofa, which was looking somewhat worse for wear thanks to the shallow tears the shards had punctured into it. He took off the priest’s gown and dropped it onto the floor.

“Oh, thank god,” I said. “That thing was hideous.”

“You know I’ve tried,” he said, folding himself onto the seat. “I’ve been trying ever since Dad decided he wanted a slave race. We’ve tried. Over and over. You just don’t remember. Or did you really think you managed to sit still through three centuries of repetitive task crunching?”

“Lucy,” I pointed out, “I’ve only been sitting with you for sixty years. I managed just fine for the rest of it on my own.”

“And what if I told you I pulled some strings to make that happen? We’ve known each other for much longer than that.”

I frowned at him and followed him to the sofa. “I would be skeptical. But go on.”

“This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. It comes to a point where I have to wipe any recollection of your involvement from your mind. Other than the pact, it’s the only real defence we have against my father. And I’d do it again.” He looked a little uncomfortable at the admission. “You always agree to it, if that helps.”

“If the alternative is demotion, I can see why.” I spread my fingers out in front of me in a criss-crossing pattern and looked through the gaps. “I saw one of the facilities today. Anything is better than that.”

“Ah,” he said.

“How many times have we had this conversation?”

“Seven or eight.”

I let out a long breath. “Okay. I can live with that. As long as it’s just the minimum needed to not end up a living skewer on someone’s metaphysical charcuterie board.”

“It’s just that.”

I didn’t have a headache, but massaged the sides of my forehead anyway. “Does Odin know?”

“I think he suspects.”

That was bad. “We’ve got to take him out,” I said, raising my head. “Soon. He’s a ticking time bomb, and an incident like the Vatican attack is exactly the kind of thing that would trigger him to go off.”

“Alright,” said Lucy. “We’ll do it.”

I blinked at him. “Wait – really? Just like that? No ‘this seems unwise’ or ‘we need more time to prepare’?”

He sighed. “Well, you’ve already thrown a spanner in the works on Plan A, so at this point we’re already winging it. But mainly it’s because it’s the first thing you suggest every time we have this conversation, and I either ignore it or put it off, and then we end up back where we started. Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s where we went wrong. It’s worth a try.”

“Well, Shitface getting in the way wouldn’t have helped,” I conceded. “But you can’t assume you’ll get another chance after this. If we do go after him and he comes out of it, he’ll make sure we won’t be around to do it again. Whatever you think he knows, he knows more. If you think he suspects you’ve been messing with people’s heads, he’ll have multiple defences against it. He probably knows you have your powers. And if he hasn’t done anything about that, it likely means he has a plan for you in the grand scheme and is setting you up to walk right into it.”

Lucy made an amused noise. “Two can play at that game. I think we have a few pieces in circulation he doesn’t know about.”

“Yet is the word you’re looking for.”

He followed my eyes to where they rested on Leathergrip, still staring aimlessly into space in the middle of the room, oblivious to the conversation happening around her. “Loki,” he prompted me again, “you’re my closest ally. Don’t make me do this without you.”

“Oh, I’m still in,” I replied. “I could wallow in fatalistic dread, but I have about a million better things to do than mourn a version of myself I don’t even remember. And if I don’t care, then you shouldn’t have to.”

“Hah,” he voiced in a more serious tone. “But you know, you’re right about one thing. All my magic hurts, one way or another.”

A lump formed in my throat. I shifted it away but it just came back again. What did he expect me to say to that?

Lucy held the shining flask out towards me and poked me in the knee with it when I didn’t respond fast enough. “Here. Take it. You’ve got a demon lord to reboot, and I shouldn’t stay. The longer I keep possessing this poor sap, the worse the drain will be on everyone. You’ll need the extra help.”

I accepted the soul jar and opened my mouth to respond, but was distracted by the distinctive buzz of a phone from the vicinity of the floor. Peering over the back of the lounge, I found it lying face up on the carpet at the approximate spot Tru had met his untimely demise, somehow exempt from the destruction. On screen shone an automated appointment reminder. I read far enough to establish it wasn’t from Providence and dismissed it as being unimportant. But it did give me an idea.

“Seven or eight conversations, you say? Does that translate to an equal number of favours?”

A fleeting air of relief passed over Lucy’s borrowed face, fast enough I might have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m not feeling that guilty,” he contended. “One. Two, if I’m feeling generous.”

“One’s all I need.” I got up to retrieve the phone and swiped it open, pleased Tru hadn’t thought to turn off its biometric security features, and pointed its camera at Lucy. “And all it’ll cost is your dignity. Then I’ll consider us even.”