“Let’s stick a pin in Ken and come back to him. All right, so it was midnight … You drew the door, you read the ritual…”
“And it worked. The demon showed up. The marks appeared on my arms.
It left.” Shepard is looking at his lap, scratching the back of his head. He isn’t smiling at all.
“Tell me about it. ”
He sighs. “It was a demon.”
“What did it look like?”
“Does that matter?”
“I guess not. What did it say?”
“Not much. Small talk … ‘Who calls me?’ ‘Did you call me of your own free will?’ Yada, yada.”
“Yada, yada?”
“It really was just small talk, Penelope. I thought we were having a nice time.”
“And then?”
“And then tattoos.”
“And it didn’t explain?”
“It said … I don’t remember exactly what it said.”
SHEPARD
“Who calls me?” the demon said, pushing open the door in the floor.
“Hi,” I said. “My name is Shepard Love. I’m from Omaha, Nebraska. I’m studying journalism.” I was still in school then.
It climbed into the room with me, like it was walking up stairs—I wasn’t expecting it to do that. It sat on my bed. I offered it a can of Coke, and it took it. This is going so well, I remember thinking.
The demon spoke English with no accent. Or maybe with my accent.
（When I was a little kid, I thought my accent was the true neutral. Because everyone on TV sort of sounds like they’re from Omaha, Nebraska.） It seemed a bit hassled at first, like I’d interrupted it in the middle of something. But then it was polite. I told it a lot about myself. That’s something one of my journalism professors taught me. You can soften up a source by sharing things about yourself. It’s like saying, This is a safe place for intimacy. This has always come naturally to me. I like telling people about myself. I like listening when it’s their turn to talk. I like being such a good listener that they sort of forget about me. Most people really like to talk about themselves; it doesn’t take much encouragement.
The demon was less forthcoming than most people. It didn’t forget itself.
It sat on my bed—Penelope would be horrified—and drank my Coke and got right to the point.
“Did you call me of your own free will?” it asked.
“Yes,” I told it. “Of course. I was excited to meet you.”
It nodded at me. My room was full of sulphurous smoke by then. “All right, Shepard Love from Omaha, Nebraska—you’ve got yourself a deal.”
PENELOPE
I’m running out of space on my blackboard wall. I cast the spell on a second wall and push the TV out of the way. Simon would complain about this if he were here, but Simon isn’t here.
NEXT STEPS, I write in big block letters, as high as I can reach. “I still think we should wake the giant. I’m putting that on the list. And also, if the giant could read this demon language, maybe someone else can. Maybe it’s not totally dead or obscure—maybe there’s even another copy of that book.
Was it handwritten?”
Language! I write.
The book. More copies? Check at Watford. Pitch Library?
“You know, the Mage actually seized a bunch of old magickal books.
Wonder where those ended up…” I tap my chin.
Ask Premal about the Mage’s book stash.
“Was the book handwritten?” I ask again.
When Shepard doesn’t answer, I turn away from the wall.
His head is down, and he’s running his fingertips up and down the raised stripes of his trousers.
“The book,” I say, “was it handwritten? Could there be more copies?”
Shepard looks up at me, with one eye closed, like he’s thinking.
“Penelope. I have to go now, if I’m going to make my flight.”
“What? No—you’ve still got time.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
I pick up my phone … Oh. He doesn’t have time. He’s already going to be cutting it close. I look back at the blackboard. “But…”
Shepard stands up, pulling his backpack straps over his shoulders. “This helped.”
“It didn’t help,” I say. “We were just getting started—”
Then he reaches for my face, and for a completely absurd moment, I think he might be trying to kiss me good-bye—but he’s just rubbing chalk from my chin. “It helped,” he says. “You have a way of making things seem manageable. I like it.”