SATAN WAS ACTUALLY A PRETTY AVERAGE-LOOKING GUY, at least from Theodosius's perspective.

"Hey, boss," Bihatra said with alarming nonchalance as she dragged Theo with force into the Devil's office, which was situated roughly three hundred kilometers away from the Mouth of Hell by foot—at least in Theo's reckoning.

The room was compact and crowded with shelves, which in turn were crowded with ledgers, which in turn were, Theo assumed, crowded with the names of the damned and various debts owing to the Prince of Hell.

The man—being?—behind the desk was rather human-looking. He was much less frightening than Bihatra; he seemed intelligent, overworked, and underrested. He wore a rumpled suit that made him look like a harried personal accountant. His disheveled hair stuck up on the sides with an odd resemblance to horns, but his pointed beard was neatly trimmed. "Ah, Bihatra. Welcome. And—Todderosh the Nacremoncer?"

Theo, startled, looked over his shoulder to see if Todderosh the Nacremoncer had accompanied them into the Devil's office. He had not. He looked back at the Devil, who gazed back at him with a disarming, expectant smile. After a moment, the Devil looked down, fixing his gaze somewhere in the vicinity of Theo's crotch.

Assuming that he had, at last, let go of his bladder without even realizing it, Theo looked down with only the dimmest feeling of horror. He was mostly beyond fear by now. What he found, however, was not a pungent, spreading damp spot; it was his visitor's badge, upon which Fred had printed: TOddeROSH THe NACReMONCeR.

"Er," Theo said, "no."

"No?" asked the Devil, rather politely. His smile invited a response.

"It's Theodosius, actually." Theo tapped the visitor's badge and shrugged. "Spelling."

"Ah. Theodosius the Necromancer, then, I assume. Welcome."

Theo was having a much better time with this Devil chap than he had with Bihatra. He smiled. "It is a plea—honor to meet you, Satan."

Bihatra made the sound a person makes when he or she witnesses another person getting hurt—a sort of hissing, wincey sound. Theo glanced her way in alarm, then back at the Devil, who only sighed a long-suffering sigh.

"Spelling," he said, chagrined.

"Er—sorry?" Theo asked, because he wasn't sure whether he had done something wrong—although he thought it best, under the circumstances, to assume that he had.

"No, no, it's alright. It's Stan, that's all. You lot have had it wrong for centuries. I'm used to it. Do sit down, Theodosius. Bihatra, pull up that other chair, would you?"

Bihatra and Theo settled down to sit in front of the Devil's cluttered desk. That worthy demonic gentleman pushed aside a ledger, making room before him so that he could lean forward with an engaging smile, folding his hands together on top of the blotter. Several No. 2 pencils rolled off the desk onto the floor, and Theo bent to pick them up. He noticed that there were tooth marks on the pencils and, in passing, wondered if being the Prince of Hell were a much more stressful job than people made it out to be.

The Devil took the pencils from Theo and put them into a cat-shaped holder on his desk. "Thank you. Now, I'm very busy, and I'm sure you both are too, so let's get right to the point, shall we?"

Theo was not exceptionally busy, but wrapping up sooner, rather than later, might mean getting away from Bihatra—so he nodded.

"I've a proposition for you, Theodosius, but you—er—you have me at something of a disadvantage."

"Er—sir?"

"Well, Bihatra here brought you down to Hell under regulations that can't actually be applied in your case, my friend. As such—if we're being technical—you're free to go."

The demoness sitting to Theo's right shifted in her chair. Theo smiled.

"But, if we want to be a little more realistic about everything, you are ... well, you are sort of in Hell. There are a lot of unpleasant characters around who could more or less stop you from leaving. If they wanted." The Devil spread his hands with a helpless expression. "I mean, they work for me, but there are so many of them, Theodosius, and recording mankind's sins has got me swamped. It's so hard to keep track of what every one of my demons is doing."

The smile slid off of Theo's face and onto the Devil's. Pointed fangs flashed in that smile as he said, "So I'd like to make a deal with you."

Under any other circumstances, such a proposition would be easy to handle. The obvious answer was no. Had Theo been on earth and alive, or one of the two, even, he would have been able to refuse the Devil without any qualms whatsoever. But he was now, unfortunately, both dead and in Hell, and as such, he did not have a lot of wiggle room.

"What ... what sort of deal?" he asked.

"I need you to do your ..." The Devil trailed off, then wiggled his fingers daintily in Theo's general direction. "Your necromancy thing. You do that for me—just one eensy little raising-of-the-dead—and I'll grant you something in exchange."

Theo blinked. "That's it?"

"Well, what I mean is that I'll grant you something in addition to letting you out of Hell."

Glancing up at Bihatra, Theo tried to assess whether this was some kind of welcome-to-Hell hazing. Was it a trick? But Bihatra looked more irritated than she had before. She darted an angry look at Theo, who began to wonder why she was so frustrated about not having the right to keep him here.

Maybe demons worked on commission.

"What do you think, my friend?" the Devil asked, still smiling.

"Well ... er. It sounds like a very appealing arrangement, Devil, sir, but I'm afraid I'm not a very good necromancer."

"Yes, I know, but you're pretty much all we've got at this point. There've only been two of your kind before, you know. One of them is down here, but he's absolutely batty. Too much of the wrong kind of magic." The Devil twirled his finger by his temple and rolled his eyes. "The other blew her soul up along with her body—accidentally, I think—and will not be of much use to us."

Theo blinked at the Devil. He was certain it would be foolish to hope that his side of the bargain would involve raising a few dead pigs from the dead; it would probably be a person, and as such, it would probably be beyond what he had ever accomplished in life. But he had very little to lose; what could the Devil do if he failed? Damn him? "Very well. I can try. What sort of thing do I get to ask for?"

The Devil put his hands behind his head and leaned his chair back onto two legs, raising his eyebrows. "Pretty much anything you want, I guess," he said.

"I want my wife back."

Bihatra snorted. The Devil glanced her way with a frown. "Manners." He let his chair fall back onto its four legs and reached for a memo pad that was sitting near at hand. "Very well—what's her name and when was she damned?"

Theo sighed. "Her name was Tansy, and I don't think she's down here."

The Devil glanced up at him, tapping the pink eraser of his pencil onto the desk. "You mean she's Upstairs?"

Bihatra broke in. "Yeah, she is. I checked it out when I was tempting Theo."

With a sympathetic look, the Devil shook his head. "That complicates matters. It isn't very easy to get messages back and forth. You understand. Holy war, blah blah blah, good versus evil—they're very snooty about it all. Wouldn't you like infinite riches instead? Or maybe a pony? That's the hottest request in black magic rituals these days."

Theo shook his head. "No, I want Tansy. Those are my terms, Stan."