Six months she worked with Xander before she was allowed to grant her first wish. She watched as he traded and haggled, granting riches and brides and death where it was requested and the person involved could pay the price.

He did not judge anyone's wish, no matter how twisted. He listened to them all with an impassive face. It was only when they returned to his apartment that Pani began to see that Xander didn't approve of all wishes.

"A man who wants to be rich because he's been poor all his life, or a rich man who wants someone dead because they made him angry? We do not censure their actions, we do not judge them. There is a greater power that will do that when they pass on," Xander had said when she asked him about it. But Pani knew that Xander did sometimes judge them. She could see it in the way he threw the contracts onto his desk with disgust. Some of the contracts never even made it into the filing system, just left in an ever growing pile of paper until Xander ordered her to box them up and remove them to the loft.

Pani's first chance to grant a wish was a teenage girl, terminally ill, who wanted her parents to forget she'd ever existed. Her name was Lucy. She wanted to erase the suffering of everyone who had been around her. Pani had listened to the story, and had caught herself just before she tried to talk Lucy out of it. Instead she carefully constructed a contract.

Lucy signed it. Her loved ones forgot her instantly. In return, she also forgot her loved ones. The next day Xander handed her the paper. An obituary to a Jane Doe who had died in hospital with no one around her, seemingly forgotten by doctors and family alike. Pani had sobbed into the paper until Xander had awkwardly laid a hand on her hair and gone to make her a cup of tea. By the time he returned, she couldn't remember why she was crying and Xander had to explain that the contract was also affecting her memory.

Six months became a year, and Pani began to learn more and more. Xander began to trust her to sit in when other creatures like him visited. It seemed humans weren't the only ones who wanted wishes. A fairy had come who wished to be bigger and paid in teeth. A gigantic rabbit with hollowed out eyes had asked to be able to bottle stardust and paid with his forepaws. Xander had told her that the rabbit was a regular and that he was running out of things with which to pay for his habit.

She began to think of Xander as more than just a demon that sprang from the night, but instead as a dear friend. When he fell asleep over his desk, or when he brought her breakfast in the morning, it was hard to remember that he sometimes literally granted life or death.

Her favorite memory was the night he took her to the West End. They sat in the audience, eating ice cream, staring at the actors on stage stage. Afterwards they ate dinner at a noisy restaurant in Chinatown and walked back through Central London amidst the sea of tourists.

She had been tempted to try to hold his hand. But she hadn't wanted to tilt the balance.

Then one day, he came.

Pani finished straightening up Xander's desk. The Wish Granter had left on a job, leaving her to manage his appointments in the office for the day. She had spent the day so far filing, but she knew she had some clients in the afternoon.

A sharp rap on the door let her know the first had arrived.

"Come in!" she called. The creature walked inside awkwardly. It was shrouded in a black cloak and its face was a strange mixture between bird and man, human eyes but instead of a nose or a mouth, a long ebory beak. It wore round, thick rimmed spectacles, and a broad hat. From beneath its robes, spindly, stalk-like legs protruded.

"Greetings," it said, and coughed, a hacking cough that seemed to go on forever. Pani fixed her smile and gestured for the creature to sit down. She had never seen him before and Xander had not yet taught her how to read minds in order to extract the information needed for wish granting. She would have to rely on verbalizing only. Which was a shame, because she didn't want to catch whatever this thing seemed to be suffering from.

"I am Pani," she said brightly. "How may I help you today?"

The creature looked at her for a long time. It didn't seem to blink.

"I want power," he said and erupted into another coughing fit. This time a glob of bloodied phlegm landed in the middle of the desk. Pani looked at it in alarm. She hurried to excused herself to get a cloth and wipe down the desk. When she returned, the creature was sat there, trembling inside its cloak.

"Power? Well you've come to the right place. Now let's see, if you just sign this contract," she said. She usually checked over the contracts that the wish granting magic drew up, but the disgusting hacking noises coming from the customer's chest made her nervous enough to just give it a cursory glance. Half a life span was the cost. Power was expensive it seemed.

The creature glanced through it for barely a few seconds before he signed it. Pani smiled and took the contract back, signing her own name on the dotted line. She had barely got out her thanks before the creature disappeared in a sound like a wing flap.

She ran to the kitchen to grab some disinfectant and rubber gloves. Damnit, Xander could have the next one.

"I can't find it!"

Xander was rifling through piles of paper on his desk frantically. Pani paused on her way through, coffee cup in hand.

"Can't find what?" she asked. Xander's long nails dug into the wood of the desk, leaving lighter brown lines as he began to slump into his leather seat.

"Damnit Pani, can't you leave anything alone?!" he yelled, then hunched over. "No, no I'm sorry.... It's just... Our names are gone."

"What do you mean, 'gone'?" she asked. Xander put his head in his hands, gripping his horns tightly.

"I removed my own name to keep it safe. Something that could never be traded because I didn't have it. But now it's gone..." Xander's voice was shaking. "Has anyone been here while I've been gone?"

"Yes but I didn't leave any of them alone near your desk... except..." Pani realized with dread which customer she had left alone.

"Bring me the receipt book," Xander said, flying to his feet. Pani grimaced at the tone of his voice but did as she was told, pulling out the stubs of the receipts and handing it over to him. He began to flip through anxiously until he found the ones from that day.

"This receipt just says the customer wanted power. What type of power? Political? Spiritual? Magical?" Xander demanded. Pani cast her mind back. Had the customer ever specified?

"Just power? They didn't say what type. I took half their life in payme-"

"Stupid girl! You didn't check the specifics?! What is the first rule, Pani? Always know your customer!" he barked. He began to rifle through her desk, upturning it all until he found the contract he was looking for.

"Peste," Xander stared at the signature for a long time before he flipped back through the pages to the written contracts. Pani tried to make herself a small as possible. "Granted the 'power which he seeks' and in return pays part of his life span, half of infinity."

Xander held the contract close enough to Pani's face that she couldn't read it, the lines blurred into nothingness.

"And you see what's written here, next to the 'power you seek'? Our names, Pani, our names," Xander growled. Pani pulled back enough to see that indeed there were two names on the sheet. One was written in the angular script that she could not read, but the other was written in handwriting that looked like her own. Magdalena. She felt no more connection to one name than the other.

"So what now?" Pani asked. Xander slammed the contract back down onto the desk.

"If he has our names, he controls us. And controlling Wish Granters... That's a tremendous amount of power. He can make us defy the equivalent exchanges or grant wishes we would normally never allow..." Xander said. His large form looked strange as he slumped over, defeated. Pani felt guilt settle in her chest. It was her fault. Even if she hadn't known better, she had to take responsibility for what she had done.

"Can we not just wish for them back?" Pani asked. Xander froze.

"You would need something of comparable cost. Maybe your soul? Even then, that might not be enough when you consider the last price paid for them was uncountable. And as for my name... It is worth too much, we would never have something to bargain for it," Xander said, his gaze seeming lost in the distance.

"Besides, I cannot grant my own wishes and you are not yet powerful enough to create contracts that override other ones," Xander grimaced. "It is also bad practice to do so that way."

"Alright... so what about if I just wished Peste dead?" Pani asked. Xander was running his hand over the curve of his horn. Pani had noticed he did things like that when he was trying to self-soothe.

"You'd be condemned to Hell as a murderer," he said, looking her straight in the eye. Pani shivered. Xander had taken her close to Hell only once, when they had needed to visit one of the guards there to receive his payment. She could still hear the screaming pleas and countless wishes wailing from inside, unable to be granted despite their agony. Seeing her reaction, Xander looked away once more.

"I can't pay that price, but I could pay others! We could track him down and get our names back. I'll cover the costs!" Pani thought for a moment that Xander looked more relaxed but then he was on his feet faster than she thought he could move, his teeth bared.

"You think it will be so simple to steal back my name? You forget that your own name, your human one, cannot be stolen!" he snarled. Pani stuck out her jaw stubbornly. She refused to be rattled by him.

"Then we convince him to return it or we trick him! But I will get us our names back!"

Xander drew back, still visibly angry, but taking deep breaths. His hand went back to tugging along the length of his horn.

"Pack your things. Tomorrow we leave for Venice. And do not forget you promise, you will pay every wish along the way," Xander said, his voice sounding deep and resentful. Pani nodded and got to her feet, walking quickly towards the door.

When she reached it she heard the unmistakable sound of her coffee mug smashing against the wall, followed by the crashing sound of Xander sweeping things off his desk in anger. She didn't look behind her, instead opening the door and closing it behind her, guiltily making her escape.