“You know nothing!” Ku’Sox shouted, red faced as the surrounding demons laughed. “I’m stronger than all of you! I can take this world and destroy it! Open a hole to reality and drain this world to nothing until you’re bumping around in a universe the size of a closet and you all get sucked into oblivion!”

The conversations stilled, and Dali cleared his throat in the sudden silence. Ku’Sox stopped, the hem of his robe swinging as he dared anyone to comment, his chin high and a defiant gleam in his blue, goat-slitted eyes. Every demon in the place wore hatred and fear on his shadowed, candlelit, ruddy face. And that, of course, was why they didn’t kill him. If they tried and failed, he might destroy the ever-after, laughing all the way to the sunny side of reality and his survival. Their prodigal son was fucking insane.

“You’re not stronger than me,” Newt said into the quiet, and Ku’Sox’s eyes narrowed.

“Aren’t you dead yet, you old hag?” he grumbled.

The demons started to whisper, and Dali’s slippers were a soft hush on the reeds as he came forward. He was looking at me with speculation, and now I knew why. Is she the one? Is it her? What he meant was, am I a demon? Can I kill Ku’Sox?

“Test-tube brat,” Al said as he stood his empty wineglass upright with a thump. “DNA degenerate. Magical mistake. You’re picking on Rachel because she might be a better demon than you.”

“Her?” Ku’Sox exclaimed, and Al simpered at him. “I’m the way back to our rebirth, and you will respect that! Me! Not her! She’s born from a witch. A stunted, damaged witch!”

Newt shifted coyly on her cushion, the only one who hadn’t left her seat throughout the entire scene. “No, poor boy, you are a mistake we loved too much to put down. I still think you would have turned out fine if Dali hadn’t dropped you when you were but a blastocyst.”

“You are deluding yourselves,” Ku’Sox said, frowning. “I am your rebirth.”

“My dame’s ashes,” Al muttered. “The poor boy is going to go off now to brood about world domination.”

A few of the demons sliding back to their tables laughed, and Ku’Sox flushed in anger.

“Something is wrong with you, my lovely little boy,” Newt continued, the silver goblet of wine in her hand as demons drifted away and the tension eased. “In your head. Even demons do not eat souls. Is it because you’re worried that you don’t have one?”

“I have a soul,” Ku’Sox said with a scowl, but I wondered.

“Of course you do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have an aura,” Newt said brightly. “Come sit with us.”

Oh, there’s a good idea, I thought, sitting down between Al and Newt, leaving Ku’Sox to stand by himself.

“That,” he said, pointing at me again, “isn’t a demon. I need proof. We all do.” He looked over the assembled demons. There were more people now than there were tables. They must have been coming in all this time, filling the Mesopotamian darkness with soft mutters and speculation. “It takes more than being able to invoke demon magic to be one,” Ku’Sox said. “Do something demonic.”