I stepped through the wall under strict instructions not to venture more than two metres further in. With Regina loitering in sight of another security camera, the waitress did her best to pretend to be a passer-by texting on the phone. Neetu, meanwhile hung back in position out of sight. Everything about the sergeant screamed ‘off-duty police officer’, from the cautious way she carried herself to the air of nervous, guilty energy found in well-meaning people well out of their comfort zone.

The room on the other side looked like a spacious waiting area for some kind of private medical practice or expensive consultant. After the hallway, I’d expected something shoddy and run-down, but this was surprisingly well-kept. Plush black carpet crawled across the floor in subtle criss-crossing patterns accompanied by wall drapes of the same colour and soft gold lights. A dark minimalist sofa sat at the back of the space under a subtle spotlight, the other lights gently leading the way from the door like an airstrip. Tez would have loved it. Or at least the old Tez; I still wasn’t sure about the current version.

And that was it. No people, no obvious equipment, just what I could see in front of me. Behind the sofa stood another door bearing a black nameplate with gold engraved lettering: Dr Louis Ngai.

Absolutely nothing about the room indicated there might be any mysterious construct creating odd magical effects; not unless it was sewn into the sofa or hidden in the fittings, which seemed like a lot of inconvenient trouble to go to. More likely whatever it was was originating from the back room.

I ducked back out next to Regina. “Don’t look up,” I said, aware of the camera’s continued surveillance. “How’s the internet out here?”

“You mean the government crackdown?” she murmured. “This all has something to do with that, doesn’t it?”

“Not the way you think. But yes. So there’s no access?”

“Some. But everything outside the country’s being blocked. I asked your friend about it; she said it was a quarantine measure. For measles.” She didn’t look at me, but I could hear the accusation in her voice.

“Sometimes,” I responded, smiling innocently, “words can just run away from you. And people should take an epidemic seriously. It’s just good procedure.”

“Not buying it.”

“And that’s why you’re my favourite priestess.”

“I’m your only priestess. Can we get out of here yet?”

“No,” I said, describing the dimensions of the layout. “Is there another clear spot around the back?”

“Look, maybe. But there’s another office blocking the way. We walked past it coming in. I can’t get you close enough.”

“Then we break into that one.”

“Oh god,” she said. “I’m definitely still getting paid for this, right?”

“Good news and bad news on that front. The bad news is that I technically don’t have a budget anymore.”

“What?”

“The good news is, I can now shower you with ten times that. Probably not a hundred without attracting the wrong kind of notice. But something tells me you won’t mind.”

“– oh.”

“Bad news is, you won’t get it until we pop the bubble on this country.”

Questions were busy writing themselves all over her face, and she started to turn her head. I swiftly put a hand out to stop the action in its tracks. “Keep your face down,” I reiterated. “I doubt these will be your average security guards. Actually, why don’t we continue this conversation away from the camera?”

“Wait,” she said, voice a little shaky. “You just touched me. I thought –”

“What do they teach you in psychic school?” I jested, starting to tick the points off on my fingers, as I beckoned her back towards Neetu still peeking warily around the corner. “Crash course on visitations. On the one hand, you get to feel special interacting with your favourite deity when no one else can. On the other, if we decide you’re annoying us, we can stab you to death remotely with zero evidence or witnesses. There’s a fun fact for you.”

“How is that even remotely fair?” Regina hissed at me, keeping a straight face for the camera.

“And there it is,” I said. I let the humour fade rapidly from my voice. “The eternal problem. Change of plan, Neetu,” I added in a lighter tone, nodding at Regina to pass on the message. “We’re desecrating the neighbours instead. And if one of you could do a search for Dr Louis Ngai, it would help. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Withdrawing back to the apartment, I came to to discover my housemate sitting on the opposite sofa still dressed for the cold outdoors, arms folded and watching me. Faint violet light glittered from the fehu rune permanently engraved in the palm of his hand. Wet patches adorned Tru’s hair and shoulders where snow had fallen, but it looked like he’d been waiting there for some time. Very faintly, I could still see a purple glint to his eyes.

“We need to talk,” he declared.

“Little busy right now,” I replied, escaping the sofa to boot up the computer in the hidden wall panel. “Your password, if you please.”

“You were just sitting there, staring into space,” he protested.

“Like I said. Password?”

The demon lord didn’t move, tight-lipped. Then, “Aerial Space Kitten,” he answered.

I made a double-take. “What’s that, your aspiring artist name? You know, I’m not even going to suggest you change it,” I added, typing it in.

“I thought you claimed you were a good listener,” Tru objected.

“I did. I am. And later, when I’m not trying to decipher what may be the most important riddle of the modern era, I will.”

Searching for Louis Ngai turned up only dross – it was a rare name, apparently, and the more I looked, the more likely it seemed to be a fake. None of the names matched exactly, none of the results were from Singapore, and none seemed to be doctors, medical or academic. Unless something turned up on the Singaporean network, I was guessing the name – and possibly the entire person – was a fake. That, or our mysterious Siphon member was good at covering their online tracks. Of course it couldn’t be that easy.

“Got it,” said Tru, over my shoulder.

“Got what?”

“Ngai,” he responded. “Dude you’re looking for. Has bank accounts in five different countries. Hefty ones. Or they were.”

I swivelled on top of the chair and gave him a slow look. “Were?”

Tru didn’t quite manage to keep the smugness off his face, despite clearly trying. “So now you do want to talk.”

“At least I don’t get my lines from spy movies,” I drawled. “Alright, Mr Bond. Or Space Kitten, whatever. Assuming you’ve got the right person, would any of this mysterious expenditure happen to give us any hints what’s going on at an address in Singapore? Tell me and I may not put you through a second exorcism.”

“First answer me this,” he countered. “What’s your goal? Why are you and –“ he hesitated just a fraction of a second, “– Lucifer doing all this? With the sun, and recruiting people, and the rest of it. What are you trying to do?”

I let a breath out of my nose, pausing for a moment. The Vatican Concord wasn’t going to like me answering that question. That left deception and evasion, and Tru wasn’t going to appreciate either. “Now is really not the time,” I said, getting to my feet and heading back to the sofa.

“Why? It’s not a hard question. You’ve taken my house and my money, turned me into an abomination, and nearly gotten me killed. The least you can do is tell me why.”

I stopped. “Alright,” I said, turning back to face him. “I chose you because you were an easy target. Not because you’re special. Because you had money and wouldn’t be missed. But consider for a moment that you now have access to far more funding than you ever did, are functionally immortal as long as you don’t throw yourself into trouble, and have apparently been cured of bad rap syndrome. I think that makes up the difference, all things considered.”

Tru’s face was starting to turn red – and a little purple – as if he was about to explode. “That,” he said, “was a fucking accident.”

“And yet it’s done,” I said, eying him levelly. “No hard feelings. The question is what you do next. Like it or not, you are a demon. There’s nothing stopping you from leaving and sulking your way to meaningless catharsis, if that’s what you want. I wouldn’t blame you. However, I can’t help but notice you’re somehow still here. In which case, you can always dive down the rabbit hole and possibly make a difference.”

“To what?”

The corners of my mouth twitched. “Talk to Lucy if you want answers.”

“Why do I need to talk to him?”

“Please,” I sniffed. “What would the demonic experience be without signing a contract with the devil? Non-disclosure agreements are a pretty standard practice. Trust has to go both ways, after all.”

He stared at me for a few moments without speaking, then shook his head and turned away.

“Tru,” I called after him. “This isn’t something you’ll be able to unlearn.”

But I was talking to his shoulder blades at this point.

Reclaiming my spot on the sofa, I reclined and relaxed, hands behind my neck as I distanced myself back to Singapore.

This time, we were standing in a different segment of the same uninspiring building as before, though this section of the hallway sat in full view of the nearby street front. Relatively few people were out on the roads this time of day, but the sun shone bright and ensured the two women were clearly visible to anyone who cared to look. Neetu knelt at a new door, fiddling with what appeared to be a lockpick, while Regina stood with her back to the officer, doing her best to shield her from view. It wasn’t very convincing.

“Finally,” Neetu muttered, the lock clicking open. No alarm sounded. Siphon might have invested in security, but the neighbours, not so much. I sidestepped through the wall for a preview and found myself faced with the kind of dingy office I’d been expecting from the former. Most of the space was filled with vending machines or their parts in various states of disrepair. A separate section hosted a workbench laden with tools and electronic components, and at the very back of the mess existed a tiny desk barely larger than the computer it sat under.

Neetu and Regina followed me in, albeit through the actual door. “Is she here?” the former asked the latter cautiously. The cap already sat low over her eyes, but she tugged it lower.

Regina glanced towards me. “Pretty much.”

Neetu grimaced, closing the door behind her. “Let’s make this quick.”

Under the waitress’ guidance, we approached the back wall. It became quickly apparent I’d have even less room to move going through the back than the front. But until we figured out what we were dealing with, it was better than tripping some kind of alarm.

Dr Ngai’s mysterious back room turned out to be two mysterious back rooms, the office extending further than I’d realised. I’d stepped in partway through a dividing partition, with most of my face looking out onto a tidy consulting office similar to a surgeon’s or therapist’s. An exit in the opposite wall led back into what I assumed was the waiting area.

To my right, however, I could hear an unfamiliar low voice on the other side of a second door. Someone had stayed back after hours, after all. Mindful of Regina’s warning, I carefully sidestepped through the barrier and hugged the wall.

This was obviously where the action happened. The black décor continued, but framed around the fittings of a sterile lab. Two long stainless steel islands traversed the length of the room, clear in parts and topped with racks of apparatus in others. It was all very sciencey, with a fair number of electronics shoved into the mix. Neatly-bound cables trailed across the benchtops. A small clump of monitors displayed footage from the various security cameras Neetu and Regina had so carefully catered to.

At the far side of the room, approximately where I guessed the centre of Regina’s mystery radius would be, lay a third long bench stacked with what looked like pharmaceutical supplies. A fashionably-dressed greying man with a prominent bald patch sat in front of it with his back to me, twisting away from his computer to speak on the phone. He hunched over, speaking in clipped, tense syllables as he rummaged through a drawer.

Even if Regina hadn’t mentioned the stillness of the field generator, I doubted it would be him. You didn’t get too many immortals with bald patches around. Unless you were a late convert, the eternal youth part usually kicked in long before alopecia got a chance.

It was largely moot in any case, because most of my attention was immediately captured by the room’s other inhabitants. There were three, two slumped up against the wall as if sleeping. Worse, I recognised them.

That wasn’t great.

In the centre of it all, taking prime position on one of the benches, lay a prone woman in an impeccable suit with her hands folded gently over her stomach. When I realised who it belonged to, my stomach decided it was going to mimic being dropped freefall in an elevator.

“Well, shit,” I muttered, and for good reason.

The woman on the bench was looking a hell of a lot like Themis.