The others looked to Danny for confirmation. “It’s hard to explain it when you can’t see it. Sense it. But yes, Pat saw it and I didn’t till she pointed it out. That creature I had inside me, when I wasn’t acting like me—”

“Set,” said Laurette and Xena together. “The Belmage,” said Sin at the same time.

“When he was expelled from Duat and came to Earth without a human body, there were millions that came with him. Also without bodies. Smaller than microscopic. More like geometric points. But they joined in Set’s cause, which was to make human beings as miserable as possible, to make us destroy each other.”

“So the devil made me do it,” said Wheeler, halfway between scorn and hope.

“Not made you,” said Danny. “They would if they could, but no, they can only sort of trigger you. Remind you of something you already felt or thought. Every angry word you said to me was something you truly thought of. But it wasn’t all you thought about me. Just the parts that might destroy our friendship.”

“Why would they care if I had you as a friend?” asked Wheeler.

“Any bonds between people—they’re real, even if they’re insubstantial. We bind ourselves to each other in friendship, in families. And the Sutahites want us all to act in ways that tear that down.”

Xena blushed. “So when we tried to, like, seduce you—”

“When we threw ourselves at you like discount whores,” said Sin.

“Clearance-table harlots,” said Laurette.

“Sutahites were working on us?” asked Xena.

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “I couldn’t see the prets then. But I think, probably so.”

“Do we have them now?” asked Laurette.

“When you guys were competing to find the most disgustingly clever way to describe your own behavior,” said Pat, “each time you had a couple or three sort of divebomb your ka, your inself.”

“Great,” said Sin. “So whenever I’m clever, it’s really the devil that’s clever and I’m just his puppet.”

“No,” said Danny. “You’re never a puppet. They can’t make you say or do anything. You have no strings to pull. I mean, when you’re hungry and you pass the bakery department at Walmart—”

“Nothing there makes me hungry,” said Sin.

“Liar,” said Xena.

“Is your sudden rush of hunger forcing you to stop and pick up something to eat?” asked Danny. “You can just walk by, and when you’re broke, that’s exactly what you do. Your brain doesn’t switch off, you can still choose.”

“So Wheeler was responsible for every mean thing he said?” Xena asked.

“Just as you’re responsible for that mean thing,” said Pat. “But Danny just gathered up the ones that were hovering around Wheeler.”

“So if I say something nasty now, it just came from me,” said Wheeler.