I had a little more luck in one of the smaller shops, where a bedraggled old woman-thing with a face like a bunch of parsnips stapled together and fingers like dead twigs told me my sample was “the real thing,” the dye being something that nobody used anymore except for Chateau Machecoul, one of the most exclusive clothing stores in Pandaemonium. She told me this for free, which made me suspicious, but she also took a look at my clothes and declared I’d never be allowed in looking like such a gross peasant, which made me feel a little better. If someone isn’t saying something unpleasant to you in Hell, you should be checking to see if they’ve stuck a knife in your back.

I asked her to recommend a few things for me that might make a visit to Machecoul more successful. The prospect of extorting some money from me brightened her up considerably, and she spent the good part of an hour rigging me an outfit that wouldn’t have drawn attention in a community theater production of The Pirates of Penzance. She assured me that I looked like a leader of Pandaemoniac fashion, and as I examined my reflection in a polished sheet of metal I could almost agree. Yet another reason for me to get out of Hell as quickly as possible.

I knew better than just to walk up to a place like Chateau Machecoul. In Hell, going anywhere on your own little hooves is like announcing that you’re poor as dirt and eligible to be eaten by anything higher up the food chain, so I hired a cab, a sort of huffing steam crab on huge spiked wheels, and had it drop me off on the corner of Torquemada Street and Ranavalona Avenue in the Tumbrel District, a wealthy neighborhood where the mistresses and catamites of powerful demons did their shopping. I could believe that, since most of the demons and damned I saw there were either ridiculously beautiful in some very extreme ways, or deformed in some specifically sexual manner.