Thicker Than Water

She was here because Gwillam wouldn’t have let me take Bic without her, but that was as far as it went - and it didn’t give her a voice in the negotiations.

I lowered the whistle. ‘Go on,’ I said.

The demon bared his teeth in what could equally well have been a grin or a threat display. ‘I have to admit,’ he said, ‘that my indifference was feigned. I want this. It’s been a while since I tasted another demon’s substance. A pleasure too long denied. So I’m inclined to . . . unbend a little to make it happen.’

He paused, staring at me through narrowed eyes.

‘Your circle,’ he said, ‘already binds me in certain ways. If I add the sigils of my own name - my true name - to those already present, then your hold on me is that much stronger. You could cripple me if I broke my word to you. If you’re strong enough, you’d even have a shot at destroying me.’

‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Except that I’ve only got your word for it what your true name is, and I can’t read your symbols. You could write George W. Bush down there and I wouldn’t know any better, would I?’

‘The law of analogues—’ Trudie Pax began.

‘Trudie,’ I snapped, ‘I swear if you open your mouth again I’ll put you outside the door until we’re finished.’

She gave me a long, narrow-eyed stare, but she fell silent.

‘The lady is, however, entirely right,’ Asmodeus said. ‘A false name would make your circle convulse and the space within it rupture. We’d all suffer - and I, being inside it, would suffer most of all. You’d know whatever I wrote was truth because I wouldn’t be screaming.

I shook my head. ‘I’m not into all this black-magic gubbins,’ I said, ‘and I’m not taking your word for anything. Try again.’

We locked stares for a moment longer.

‘I’ll set it to music for you,’ Asmodeus snarled.

‘Done,’ I said at once. Because that was what I’d been hoping for all along.

‘Close your eyes,’ Asmodeus instructed me. ‘And cover your ears. They may bleed slightly, but that can’t be helped.’

I put my hands to my ears but kept my eyes open: you can say what you like about my table manners and my love of my fellow man, but Mrs Castor didn’t raise any stupid children.

"Asmodeus gestured, and a complicated sequence of notes came into my mind from nowhere. I knew, without needing to be told, what it was: it was a portion of his essence - the part of him that could be broken down into sound, and made accessible to my death-sense. He was giving me the wherewithal to destroy him: the magic bullet.