THEODOSIUS WAS PREPARED TO TAKE ELLIOTT'S ADVICE and avoid deals with demonesses. If he never saw Bihatra again, he would not mind one little bit. But there was another infinitely powerful infernal creature who'd had a claw in bringing Tansy back from beyond Theo's reach.

You remember Stan, right? The devil?

Yeah. Him.

Well, Theo had a bone to pick with Stan. Never once in their conversations had he mentioned the small matter of Tansy's being an insubstantial spirit upon her return to earth, and it seemed to Theo that he was owed an explanation for services rendered in an unexpected and exceedingly inconvenient manner.

"You need to what?" Tansy asked. She had been doing her level best to make them a meal, which was difficult for two reasons. The first reason was that there was precious little edible food in the pantry, because Theo himself had been dead for so long. The second reason was that it took her a great effort to lift so much as a spoon.

"I just need to have a little chat with the devil," explained Theo. "I'm certain he can help—"

"Theo, that sounds dangerous."

"Yes. Probably a little. But you might be surprised. Stan is surprisingly normal. He had a lot to do with bringing you back. I'm sure he would be glad to help us figure out how we can..."

Tansy waited.

"...You know."

Tansy waited some more.

"Make you a little bit less of a ghost."

Tansy sighed. "Elliott told you not to make any deals with demonesses."

"I know. First of all, Stan is not a demoness—he's a devil. Those are two different things. And, secondly, I won't be making any deals. I'm simply going to discuss the deal we already made. Okay?"

It was apparent that it was not okay, but Tansy could not very well argue with Theo about his plans. They might find a way to live together like this, she a spirit and he a man, but it would not be the wedded bliss they had anticipated on their wedding day.

"I still say we could simply bring a large cauldron to boil," began Elliott, "and then—"

"Very well." Tansy's tone was flat, and she threw a dark look toward the cat. "Go and talk to the devil. But be careful. And be home for dinner."

"Of course." Theo cast a slightly apprehensive glance toward the unidentifiable gloop Tansy was preparing. He smiled at his wife and leaned in for a very soft, very strange kiss. Then he found his cloak and his wizardly walking staff, which had been left a long, long time ago in a corner to gather cobwebs and mildew, and he left the cottage at the End of the World with a scowl of determination on his face.

***

THEODOSIUS WAS VERY WELL-READ, although not all of the reading he had done would be on an American high school curriculum these days. He had studied all sorts of sorcery. He had read extensively on alchemy. He had studied every dimension known to man, and some only hypothesized. He had read all of the extant Barennite books on necromancy. And he had, as you are well aware, read every one of the Hidden Library of Mystery's texts on invocations.

Interspersed with terrifying illustrations of bearded demons making kebabs out of sinners and lengthy essays detailing what not to do when attempting to invoke spirits from alternate, very warm dimensions, Theo had come across a brief footnote. He could not remember now precisely what it had said, but it had been something along these lines:

Of course, if you only need to have a quick chat with a Denizen of Hell, and if you know its name—that is, if you possess its interdimensional calling card—you can simply sacrifice something small, adorable, and innocent, which will function as a sort of voice-portal.

Theo did not want to strike a deal with the devil. He did not want to invoke him, by any stretch of the imagination. Invoking Bihatra had been enough to put him off of invocations forever and ever, amen. He simply wanted to have a quick, civil chat with the Prince of Hell.

Luckily, Theo lived at the End of the World, near to a lush forest chock full of small, adorable, innocent creatures ripe for the sacrificing. It took a matter of minutes for Theo to trip across a squirrel, bash said squirrel upon its tiny squirrely head, and then slice it open for bloody effect. After some crinkle-browed consideration, our worthy sorcerer decided to burn the sacrifice.

Everybody knows that sacrifices are far more palatable to ancient forces of evil (or good) when they are nice and crispy.

Well. Everybody thinks...

"Oh, my bloody home," came a familiar, long-suffering voice from outside of space and time.

Theo, seated next to a merrily-burning campfire heaped with twigs and logs and squirrely limbs, flinched and looked up, and then down, and then all around. "Um...Stan?"

"Yeah, yeah." There was a long, sad sigh. "Why must you humans always burn them? Poor little squirrel. What did he ever do to you?"

"Ah..." Theo looked around again, unsettled. "Nothing. He was just, you know. Being a squirrel. I just needed to talk to you, and—"

"And you could have just called me, Theo. Didn't I give you my card?"

Because poor Theo was from Barenn, where any kind of phone would not be invented for another thousand years, these words were essentially meaningless to him. He pictured Stan with a deck of tarot cards, and then playing cards, and then arithmetical flash cards, and nothing seemed to fit. "Uh," he said, quite eloquently under the circumstances.

"Never mind. You know, if you have to sacrifice a squirrel, the least you could do is cook him right. Most of us like our small mammals medium rare. Just for future reference. You've gone and made him all crispy."

"Um."

"Are you going to say anything other than 'Ah, uh, um,' Theo? I'm very busy. You rang—well, you sizzled—and I answered. What is it?"

Theodosius took a very long breath.

He let it out in a very long sigh.

He took another very long breath.

He let it out in a very long stream of words that he hoped would not make the devil angry. "I'm very grateful to you for bringing my wife back and I would never think to question you or your methods because you are, you know, the actual devil, and, uh—but there's a very minor problem which in the grand scheme of things is not so great of a problem but has caused my wife and—well, also me some considerable distress, so I thought I would just give you a little jingle and ask you if you might have any idea how we could possibly get Tansy to...ah...not be...a ghost."

There was silence on the other side of the burning squirrel.

"If it is not too much of an inconvenience, of course," said Theo hastily. "You're such a busy fellow. Don't think that has escaped me. And I am grateful that you've helped me get this far. Of course I am. And if my wife is going to be a ghost, well, of course: my wife is going to be a ghost. That's just the way things are."

You can see, Dear Reader, how Theodosius stood up bravely to the devil. He had come into this burning sacrifice with a bone to pick, and he was...well. He was not picking it at all. But he was trying, in a roundabout way. One thing for which our Theo can be relied upon is his complete and utter lack of a single vertebra, let alone a spine.

"A ghost?" demanded Stan, sounding a bit impatient.

"A ghost," echoed Theo, wincing.

"She isn't a ghost, Theodosius. She's a Soul. Ghosts are spirits trapped in the mortal world after death. You got her fresh out of Heaven. I can assure you, she is not a ghost."

"Oh."

"But if I understand you correctly, you're disappointed in our deal because your wife is wafty."

Theo froze, staring at the burning squirrel. This felt like a trap. He was quite certain it was a trap. But then a memory came to him of Tansy's terrified face as she wafted across the field, and he steeled his resolve—what little there was of it—and clenched his jaw. "Wafty. Yes. Yes I am."

There was another silence on the other side of the squirrel. At length, Stan spoke again. "I very nearly incinerated you just there," he said thoughtfully, "but then I remembered that you happen to be the only necromancer in existence in any dimension. Rather convenient, that. Makes a fellow like me think twice about incinerating you."

Theo's throat was so dry that he did not manage to say anything in response. He simply gasped like a lady whose corset has just been cinched half an inch tighter.

"All right. You humans and your complaints." Stan sighed a long and dramatic sigh. "I can't fix your little problem, Theo. If I so much as lay hands on a human body, the heavenly court and chorus will have my you-know-what. But I think I know someone who can help you. One moment."

There was a crackle and a spit as the squirrel burned, the last molecule of fat on its tiny innocent body sizzling up into smoke. Theo stared at its blackened skull, waiting.

"Here we are. Victoria the Badass. A Barennite, like you. Look her up. She'll work things out for you, I'm confident. She and I go way back."

"Oh," wheezed Theo. "Excellent. Marvelous. Wonderful. Thank you, Stan. Thank you very much."

"No probs. Now, are you going to eat those extra-crispy squirrel-nuggets, or can I have them? I missed lunch."