Something fluttered. Rudgutter looked up, his eyes smarting in air that seemed suddenly clotted and very dry.

A heavy man in an immaculate dark suit had appeared behind the desk.

He leaned forward slowly, his elbows resting on the papers that suddenly littered the desk. He waited.

Vansetty peered over Rescue’s shoulder and jerked his thumb at the apparition.

“His Infernal Excellency,” he declared, “the ambassador of Hell.”

“Mayor Rudgutter,” the dæmon said, in a pleasant, low voice. “How nice to see you again. I was just doing some paperwork.” The humans looked up with a flicker of unease.

The ambassador had an echo: half a second after he spoke his words were repeated in the appalling shriek of one undergoing torture. The screamed words were not loud. They were audible just beyond the walls of the room, as if they had soared up through miles of unearthly heat from some trench in Hell’s floor.

“What can I do for you?” he continued (What can I do for you? came the soulless howl of misery). “Still trying to find out if you’ll be joining us when you pass on?” The ambassador smiled slightly.

Rudgutter smiled back and shook his head.

“You know my views on that, ambassador,” he replied levelly. “I’ll not be drawn, I’m afraid. You can’t provoke me into existential fear, you know.” He gave a polite little laugh, to which the ambassador responded in kind. As did his horrendous echo. “My soul, if such exists, is my own. It is not yours to punish or covet. The universe is a much more capricious place than that . . . I asked you before, what do you suppose happens to dæmons when you die? As we both know you can.”

The ambassador bowed his head in polite demur.

“You’re such a modernist, Mayor Rudgutter,” he said. “I won’t argue with you. Please remember my offer stands.”

Rudgutter waved his hands impatiently. He was composed. He did not flinch at the pitiable screams which shadowed the ambassador’s words. And he did not allow himself to experience any disquiet when, as he stared at the ambassador, the image of the man in the chair flickered for a tiny sliver of a second, to be replaced by . . . something else.

He had experienced this before. Whenever Rudgutter blinked, for that infinitesimal moment, he saw the room and its occupant in very different forms. Through his eyelids, Rudgutter saw the inside of a slatted cage; iron bars moving like snakes; arcs of unthinkable force, a jagged, rippling maelstrom of heat. Where the ambassador sat, Rudgutter caught glimpses of a monstrous form. A hyaena’s head stared at him, tongue lolling. Breasts with gnashing teeth. Hooves and claws.