“Look at Mister I-Can’t-Write-Songs over there.”

I idly twirled the wooden stirrer from my coffee and then popped it into my mouth, chewing on the drink-soaked wood. We were sitting in a small café not far from the train station with my tiny suitcase and backpack nestled in close to the table. The air was mixed with the sweet scent of cinnamon among the smoky fragrance of freshly-ground coffee, and frankly, I would have chosen no other place to bid farewell to Magnus Claymore.

I couldn’t even be upset that our conversation had floated away to a comfortable silence. Ever since I had gone to the counter to order our coffees the man had started scribbling on the back of a napkin, as though the urge to write had caught him woefully unprepared. I hadn’t been able to hold back the teasing comment, and I was glad to see him look up from his work with something close to an apology in his eyes.

“S-sorry.” Magnus stopped writing and began fiddling with the edge of the napkin. “Honestly, I…I can’t. That’s the thing. I can’t write a song to save my life, Stella. Usually…”

I arched an eyebrow at him. I hadn’t pushed him on this strange display of self-doubt, but now it was starting to grate on me. It was all too common in the world of art—people would knowingly create masterpieces yet claim to be “rubbish”. They would carve a sculpture to inspire awe and wave it off as though it were a muddled attempt with Play-Doh.

“What about ‘Dream Shapes’?” I asked around the chewed stirrer dangling from my lips. I propped my elbow on the table and shoved my chin on top of my hand as I rattled off the Silent Swansong’s hit singles. “Or ‘Unrequited’? ‘Names on the Shore’? ‘Adorned and Adored’? ‘The Violin Without a Bow’?”

“I—” Magnus hesitated, his face twisting in discomfort. I knew before he spoke that this had something to do with Faenyx. Magnus’ learned habit of clamming up whenever anyone got close to his demonic secret was a clear tell in the eyes of someone privy to said secret. “I didn’t…not really…”

He dropped his gaze back to the napkin in his hand. A curious expression rippled across him, and he looked at the tissue as though it were an anomaly that shouldn’t—or couldn’t—exist. But my mind wandered back to the pages of the Goetia, and specifically, those of the Great Marquis Faenyx.

“…He’s an excellent poet…” I muttered, leaning back in my seat and looking away from the table. “So that’s it.”

The pieces of the puzzle Magnus had been slowly pushing my way were starting to fall into place. He had not yet explained exactly why or how Faenyx had come to be a part of him. Now, I realised why.

Magnus was a fraud.

“Yeah…” Magnus’ sullen tone cut over my disappointment. “I-I can sing. I’ve always been able to sing,” he added hurriedly, as though to save face. “Man, that sounds so arrogant. But it’s true. Never had an issue when it came to singing. But…no matter what I did, I just…couldn’t write a song. I tried and tried, but the images in my head, the feelings in my chest…I couldn’t…find the words. I couldn’t put them in order. Can you imagine how frustrating that is?”

I turned back to him, hoping my displeasure wasn’t too evident in my expression. From his pained reaction, his eyebrows sloping up in sorrow, I realised I had done a bad job masking it. “Stella…it would be like you being able to see masterpieces of art in your mind’s eye and not being able to paint them. Could you imagine how frustrating that would be? How frustrated I was?”

I took the stirrer out of my mouth and set it on a napkin. He had a point—that did sound like a fresh hell, but solving that with another rather literal fresh hell was madness to me.

“So instead of taking some poetry classes or a gap year to go find yourself or something, you…turned to Satan?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Magnus grumbled, going back to scowling at the napkin in his hand. “I didn’t know what I was getting into. It’s a long story but…suffice to say it explains a lot.”

“Like what?”

Finally, Magnus found a smile.

“You never wondered how those reality TV people got famous? Instagram stars raking in millions for their talent in selecting a filter? Why one video of a guy jumping into a swimming pool of custard gets a few hundred views, but another video of a guy jumping into a swimming pool of pudding gets millions?”

At this point, I was quite sure it wasn’t healthy for my brain to be short-circuiting as many times as it had the last few days.

“Demons,” I said again for the umpteenth time since meeting Magnus. “You’re telling me all those people…made deals with devils?”