‘‘No peanut butter or spatulas of any variety, Jim. And it’s nice to see you all again, too, Aisling, although I imagine you’re about ready to have that baby.’’

She sighed and rubbed her large belly. ‘‘Another six weeks, the midwife says. I sure hope that’s all, because I’m getting a bit tired of being treated like I’m made of glass. Do you know that Drake wouldn’t even let me summon you by myself? He insisted my mentor, Nora, do the actual work. Oh, you haven’t met Nora, have you? Nora Charles, this is May Northcott, who you might have guessed is Gabriel’s mate.’’

‘‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’’ the woman with the red glasses said with a warm smile, offering me her hand.

I reached out to take it but fell into a black pit instead, crashing with a complete lack of grace onto the black marble floor of Magoth’s main hall.

‘‘What is going on? Who keeps summoning you from me? I will not have this, May! I absolutely will not have this! You are my consort! Who dares to pull you from my side?’’ Magoth stormed.

I sighed and got to my feet again, brushing off the remaining dried bits of clay that had mostly been knocked from my face. ‘‘I was summoned by Nora Charles.’’

Magoth’s frown turned somewhat puzzled. ‘‘I do not know this name. Who is this person?’’

‘‘She’s a Guardian, I suspect,’’ I answered, picking my words carefully. My standard operating policy was that the less information Magoth had, the happier I was, and although the fact that I had been bound to him at my creation meant I had to answer his questions truthfully, it didn’t mean I had to blab everything to him.

‘‘Oh, dear; all that talking has destroyed the mask,’’ Sally said, her hands fluttering around vaguely. ‘‘Now it won’t do the least bit of good.’’

‘‘I’m sure my pores will survive, assuming the rest of me does as well.’’ I disappeared down the hall to the bathroom attached to my room, quickly scrubbing off the remains of the mask. Magoth and Sally both followed.

‘‘I sense that you’re unhappy with me, May. This distresses me. I so hoped we’d be good friends,’’ Sally said, fretting with the pale pink lace that clung to the wrists of her darker pink cashmere sweater. ‘‘I know that as a demon lord, I won’t be expected to notice, let alone converse with, a minion of a fellow demon lord, but I’ve found that a little honey can make every situation easier, and I’d like us to be friends.’’

There wasn’t much I could say that wasn’t outright rude, so I said nothing, returning to my bedroom.

‘‘This Guardian—your dragon must have hired her to steal you from me,’’ Magoth said, his face clearing. ‘‘I suspected he would do something like this, but it is easily stopped. I will simply tell him that if he tries it again, I will torture you.’’

I ignored the word ‘‘torture’’ (not to mention the light of enjoyment that suddenly dawned in Magoth’s black eyes) and confined myself to the important point. ‘‘Oh? And how do you expect to tell Gabriel that? It’s not possible for you to leave Abaddon—you don’t have the power or ability to do so—and Gabriel is certainly not foolish enough to come here and place himself in your power.’’

Magoth’s jaw worked for a moment. Sally, who had plopped herself down in a chair and was browsing through my journal, looked up. ‘‘You know, one of the things that they taught us at the Carrie Fay Academy of Allurement and Attraction was to never say something was impossible. Surely there must be some way you can leave Abaddon, Magoth?’’

‘‘Hmm.’’ Magoth stopped looking like he was about to rain down death and destruction (not in the least bit unlikely) as he thought that over.

I wondered what the penalty was for throttling a demon-lord candidate.

‘‘I could have sworn—if you’ll forgive me for chiming in here when you haven’t asked my advice, and Bael only knows that you have far, far more experience in this field than I have—but I could have sworn that I read something in the Doctrine of Unending Conscious about methods of leaving Abaddon.’’

Magoth stared at her as if she had suddenly sprouted a halo and a pair of wings.

‘‘Aren’t you familiar with the Doctrine?’’ she asked, shooting a confused look my way before returning to him. ‘‘It’s a set of laws governing Abad—’’

‘‘I know what the Doctrine is.’’ He interrupted her with an abrupt gesture. ‘‘I wrote the chapter on suitable methods of punishment for unruly minions, a fact my sweet May seems to have forgotten.’’

‘‘I’m here, aren’t I?’’ I said with blithe disregard. ‘‘I haven’t forgotten.’’

‘‘I can’t imagine anyone thinking that time spent with you is a punishment,’’ Sally told him with a smile that really did seem to have more teeth than was humanly possible. ‘‘You’re by far the nicest of all the demon lords I’ve met.’’

Magoth all but shimmied over to her, both hands on her boobs as he undulated against her. ‘‘And you have much insight and a true understanding of what it is to be such a sublime being as myself, but alas, until my sweet May consents to being my consort, I cannot bed you as is your due.’’

‘‘Where on earth did that come from?’’ I asked, astounded by that little tidbit.

He shrugged and reluctantly stopped fondling Sally’s boobs. I noted acidly to myself that she didn’t protest the groping at all. ‘‘I am wooing you to be my consort. Until you agree to that, I must concentrate my full energies on you. But if you consented, then we might have a deliciously wicked threesome in which one of you—’’

‘‘I’ve already told you that is not happening,’’ I interrupted before he went into graphic detail. Magoth loved to go into graphic detail. It didn’t matter whether it was punishment or sex; he would happily spend hours describing both.

‘‘Which, the threesome or the consort?’’ Sally asked.

‘‘Both.’’ I turned to Magoth. ‘‘I accepted the punishment of being bound to your side for going dybbuk, but I am not going to be your consort.’’