What would it would mean if the Virulent left it to me? What misery would be deserving to anyone other than I, if I were not to receive her?

And while I’d been lost in such thoughts, fiddling in my pockets, a name had been read.

When it was announced for a second time, the gathering boiled over from gasped vacuum to pure hysteria. Slugging his way forward, Gormorster Toadly, as surprised as his howling detractors, knew now the first announcement hadn’t been a trick of his ears. With a rodent’s face sitting on top of several glistening chins, the gormandizer smelling of sweat, sweets, and necrophilia looked to be the unlikeliest of all attendants to receive an invitation, let alone this choice artifact.

I was soon leading the mob, hurling insults and looking for an available chair not bolted to the floor. While an imp was highly sought after, this was an heirloom. It going to anyone outside the House was detestable, and all the more foul to the senses that a flatulent glutton-wretch like Toadly would now own it. I had to wrestle down a misfit trying to rise from deep within me. Reappraising the genius of my recently deceased patriarch was by all accounts an ill strategy, even if he was dead.

Toadly gloated and giggled, showboating by a series of squinty-eyed sneers. He held the statue like a pageant winner or a proud new father.

I burst open the doors and marched out into the lobby. Last wishes be damned. That inner-misfit was winning, and it was straight to the coat closest. I pilfered through the dampened garb. It didn’t take long. I found the raven-feathered collar.

“Belot,” I heard myself say, “Still wearing lyceum monstrosities.” I opened the coal coat and rifled through it. A smile broke free across my face by the second or third pocket. Charm spells were one thing, but Belot loved a single practice above all else; raping the minds of the dying. It took the meeting of two special powders to enact such a spell—two powders I then replaced with two components you’d never wish to see conjoined.

When the crowd hobbled out from the hall, I melted back into the swarm. Some were angry, most disappointed, but those were more their ways than any. A few of the more brazen cursed Maecidion before catching themselves mid-utterance to look over their shoulder, staring into my disapproving glare. Before long the hall and the coat closet were all but empty. The fiends returned to their lairs to, as Chapwyn priests so ardently report, brew their irksome things; slither under the moonlight; and invoke, summon, and fondle the dead.

—