“‘I have promised that you shall never be returned to the netherworld, and you shall not,’ he said. ‘But this demon has put me off of immortals more than somewhat, and I do not wish that you be allowed to roam free. You shall be imprisoned in a jar and cast into the sea. Should the time come when you are set free to walk the Earth again, you shall have no power over the realm of man except as is commanded by my will, which shall be from now to the end of time the goodwill of all men. By this you shall be bound.’

“He had a jar fashioned from lead and marked it on all sides with a silver seal. Before he imprisoned me, Solomon promised that Catch would remain chained to the rock until his screams burned into the king’s soul—so that Solomon might never lose his will or his wisdom again. He said he would then send the demon back to hell and destroy the tablets with the invocations, as well as the great seal. He swore these things to me, as if he believed the fate of the demon meant something to me. I didn’t give a camel’s fart about Catch. Then he gave me a last command and sealed the jar. His soldiers cast the jar into the Red Sea.

“For two thousand years I languished inside the jar, my only comfort a trickle of seawater that seeped in, which I drank with relish, for it tasted of freedom.

“When the jar was finally pulled from the sea by a fisherman, and I was released, I cared nothing about Solomon or Catch, only about my freedom. I have lived as a man would live these last thousand years, bound by Solomon’s will. Of this Solomon spoke truly, but about the demon, he lied.”

The little man paused and refilled his cup in the ocean. Augustus Brine was at a loss. It couldn’t possibly be true. There was nothing to corroborate the story.

“Begging your pardon, Gian Hen Gian, but why is none of this told in the Bible?”

“Editing,” the Djinn said.

“But aren’t you confusing Greek myth with Christian myth? The birds eating the demon’s liver sounds an awful lot like the story of Prometheus.”

“It was my idea. The Greeks were thieves, no better than Solomon.”

Brine considered this for a moment. He was seeing evidence of the supernatural, wasn’t he? Wasn’t this little Arab drinking seawater as he watched, with no apparent ill effects? And even if some of it could be explained by hallucination, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t been the only one to see the strange blue swirls in the store this morning. What if for a moment—just a moment—he took the Arab’s outrageous story for the truth?…