Miriam stayed up most of the night making several copies of the more important pages of the Sefer Poyel, particularly the Gremory and summoning circle pages. As she practiced writing the strange glyphs over and over, her fingers around her pen seemed to grow stronger and bolder on their own with each attempt, as if guided by some kind of muscle memory she shouldn’t have had. It might have been just her imagination but it invigorated her despite the little sleep she got.

Several times she was reminded of Georgie’s hand against her back, and she shivered, growing ever more eager to know what secrets she was preserving in her own writing.

She called Darby bright and early, offering no apologies when he answered very sleepily. “The café across from Quigley’s,” she told him. “Meet me there at...eleven thirty. If you please.”

Darby yawned inelegantly. “It would, in fact, please me very much.”

He’ll be late, Miriam thought as she finished her preparation for work. Naomi will probably be early, but if I can get him for at least a few minutes alone...maybe he’ll have something to tell me he can’t tell her.

Miriam’s morning at the switchboard was an almost unbearable slog. As distracted as she was she managed not to let her work suffer too badly...not to the point of earning her a reprimand, at least. Though it was against policy she kept her purse with her at her station, tucked up against her leg so she could feel the weight of the book. She had risked too much already to bare it being out of her sight.

By the time her lunch break came around, Miriam was all but vibrating with anticipation. She punched her time card a bit ahead of schedule—surely her years of excellent work ethic would again act as a buffer against reproach—and rushed down the street to the promised café. She picked a corner near the back to wait.

As expected, Darby arrived ten minutes late. He had dressed down somewhat for the meeting, in a simple—though still unmistakably tailored—dress shirt and slacks, a cap hiding his curly hair. Even so, the waitress seemed to recognize him as he joined Miriam at her far table and then ordered a coffee. Her eyes gleamed as she hurried to fetch him a mug.

If only she knew, Miriam thought, staring at Darby hard across the small table they shared. Would she ever believe that Boston’s most famous romance author is some kind of hellspawn? She had to admit that she was finding it difficult to believe herself, now in broad daylight, Darby sipping delicately from his beverage. His silvery eyes which had seemed to sparkle in the dim of the club seemed diminished in such a mundane setting.

Miriam cleared her throat. “Good morning, Mr. Fairchild.”

“Good morning to you, Miss...Miriam.” Though Darby’s expression was rather impassive, Miriam sensed—or perhaps simply wanted to sense—an almost childlike curiosity in him as he shifted in his seat, as if trying to appear more casual than he was. “I assume you have it with you now?”

Miriam worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she tugged the Sefer Poyel from her purse. She had to remind herself several times about the copies she had made. Darby had intended it for her in the first place—what possible reason could he have had to take it back now? Trusting logic more than her suspicion, she placed the book on the table and flipped precisely to the unreadable page.

“Well?” Miriam goaded, watching him very carefully for any hints, despite Gremory’s sigil as always clawing for her attention. She gulped and tried to make her face project as much boredom as his. “What does it say?”

Darby took another sip of his coffee, feigning only modest interest, and tugged the book closer. “This is the only page written like this?” he asked, and he rubbed his thumb against the first glyph in the text. 

“Yes. And I haven’t seen anything like it in the other books I have.” Miriam’s stomach bounced and fluttered; it took all her concentration not to fidget. “Can you read it or not?”

Darby leaned closer, and as his eyes glided back and forth across the page he certainly did look as if he were making an actual effort to read it. His eyebrow arched, and as he got closer to the bottom, he even betrayed a quiet huff through his nose that might have been amusement. Miriam waited as patiently as she was able; toward the end, when the corner of his lip turned up, she even held her breath. 

Darby let out an incredulous little chuckle. “My, my,” he said. “I can certainly understand why the author chose glyphs almost no one could read.”

Unable to contain herself any further, Miriam leaned far forward with her elbows on the table. “So you can read it?” she demanded under her breath.

“I’m a little rusty,” Darby admitted, and a look of wistful fondness crept into his face as he traced Gremory’s sigil with his fingertips. “But yes, absolutely.” He smirked. “It’s quite scandalous.”

“Scandalous?” Miriam repeated, baffled, though as he continued to fix her with that dreadfully smug half grin,  her excitement boiled into indignant frustration. “Tell me what it says—that was the deal.”

“Yes, I suppose it was.” Darby took up the book and leaned back, as if he were an orator about to give a stage performance. “You’re aware, I assume, of the myth that all demons were once angels who fell due to—” he waved his hand dismissively “—Satan or some other?”

“Yes,” Miriam said, glaring daggers into him. “Go on.”

“Well it claims here that this is most certainly the case,” Darby obliged, and despite her frustration Miriam clung to his every word. “That Gremory, who was named something else at the time, was one of the Watcher Angels who worked closely with Poiel. Thus her inclusion in the book.”

“So...that much is true?” Miriam squirmed excitedly. “Then Hightower wasn’t a useless fraud after all—that old book of hers, it said that each of Solomon’s seventy-two demons were matched to an angel of the Shem Hamephorash.” She scoffed. “Gosh, it seemed like such nonsense! Just because there so happens to be seventy-two of each doesn’t mean anything more than coincidence and, well, math. But I checked again this morning and she did list Poiel with Gremory, so—”

“Ahem,” said Darby, eyebrows raised. “Do you want to hear the rest or not?” Miriam went back to glaring at him as her answer, and so, he continued. “It says they worked together so closely that they eventually became lovers,” he said, inciting Miriam’s memories of the night before a bit too vividly for her tastes. She gulped again. “But when the Fallen Prince pit himself and his legion against the Holy Throne, Gremory was a silly, deluded fool, who spurned Poiel and fell into Hell like the stuck up, frivolous tramp that she is.”

Miriam let out an angry sigh so loud that the waitress cast them a concerned look from several tables over. “It does not say that,” she protested.

Darby put a hand to his chest in mock offense. “You don’t believe me?”

“It does not say that!” Miriam threw her hands up in the air and slouched back in her chair. “God! Why did I ever think you were even capable of just telling me the truth?”

“‘But ‘lo, the irreverent and foolish Gemory,’” Darby read from the book in a much exaggerated tone, ‘“turned her back on ever-pious and faithful Poiel, thus reaping her just reward...that being, descent into the fiery pit…’” Darby set the book down and pointed to the last line of glyphs on the page. “‘Like the stuck up, frivolous tramp that she is.’ I’m sorry but I can’t think of a fancier way to translate that.”

“You’re...you’re indefensible,” Miriam grumbled, crossing her arms. “Utterly.”

Darby chuckled as he nudged the book back across the table to her. “Well, I’m very sorry it doesn’t live up to your expectations, but that is what it says. Seems rather accurate to me.”

She knew better than to let him poke her interest like that. She really did. With arms still crossed she chewed her lip a moment, and at last she couldn’t help herself. “All demons used to be angels once, huh?” she asked, keeping her voice down.

“That’s what it says, yes.”

Miriam narrowed her eyes on him. “Even you?”

Darby smiled crookedly as he considered his answer. Was he debating whether she deserved the truth? Whether he could trust her with it? Or maybe just what would be more amusing for him? He settled with a shrug. “Don’t I look angelic?” he teased.

Miriam bit down on another exasperated response. I know Georgie is Gremory, she thought with determination, and she straightened up in her seat, determined to make Darby recognize and appreciate her resolve. And she said Darby cursed that doorman, which means he is a demon. He can’t fool me. “Maybe once,” she said. “But not anymore. Right?”

Darby’s eyes pinched as some of the humor left his smile. Had she actually hurt his feelings? Rather than feel any guilt, it was exhilarating to have at last provoked an honest reaction from the slippery weasel. He reached for his coffee again.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose that would be the case.” He took a sip, and by the time he lowered his mug, he had his full, arrogant composure back. “So? Are you going to ask me for my magic?”

Miriam’s moment of triumph was immediately derailed. Remarkably, she hadn’t even considered making such a request of Darby, with so much of her focus already on Gremory and the book. She stared back at him, thoughts drawn thin and taut. The young girl in her pounded her tiny fists against the inside of her rib cage in encouragement; Gremory’s hand against her spine held her back. 

“I don’t know,” she said carefully. “After hearing what kind of magic you gave Hugo, I’m not sure I’d like what you have to offer.”

“I had nothing to do with whoever that is,” Darby lied with barely any effort to be convincing. “And even if I did, becoming a demon’s familiar is far different from being cursed.”

Darby leaned forward, resting his chin against his knuckles and lowering his voice as if to close the two of them in away from the rest of the café. “Think how it could be, Miriam,” he told her, his tone dripping into sultry in a way Miriam hadn’t expected. She couldn’t keep from squirming. “You and me, bound together for all eternity. Tempting, isn’t it? You’ve been a fan of mine for some time already. Think of all the pleasure I’ve brought you. Reenacting a few of those stories is part of your aim in all this, isn’t it?”

Miriam swallowed, cheeks red-hot as her hands fisted in her lap. Embarrassed, furious...aroused. Her imagination was all too eager to supply her with various images of what Darby T Fairchild, wielder of the most provocative romances of a generation, could do and become if she invited him in so intimately. Her curiosity burned with a feverish intensity, so why was she hesitating? Hadn’t she told Georgie just the night before that she didn’t even care where the magic came from? Even so, her mouth was too dry for her to answer.

Darby smiled as if plucking each of those thoughts directly from her. “Ahh, but on the other hand,” he drawled, “I wouldn’t be your first choice even then, would I?” He straightened up once more. “Which is just as well, because I don’t have anything to offer you anyway.”

Miriam let out her held breath in a huff; she wasn’t yet ready to dial up her temper on him yet, not with his temptation still hanging in the air between them. “Sure,” she said distractedly. “Tell yourself that.”

“Well, whatever the case, it’s best you know that you have several options,” Darby continued. “You’re allowed to be picky when it’s your soul you’re gambling away.” He glanced out the window and his eyelids drooped. “It doesn’t have to be Hell you sell yourself to.”

Miriam was still collecting herself and couldn’t piece together his meaning. “What?”

The doorway jingling with an arriving customer, and Miriam jolted in her seat to see Naomi entering. Not wanting Naomi to see her so flustered and out of sorts, she did what she could to straighten her blouse and skirt—though they didn’t need it—and rub the blush from her cheeks—which didn’t work. She wasn’t very confident that she could greet Naomi without arousing some suspicion, but when she looked up and found that Naomi had crossed the café to them much faster than seemed normal, her preparation was proven unnecessary.

“Miriam!” Naomi’s eyes were wide and anxious, her hands clutched against her chest. “Come quickly!”