He buzzed in the company representative. Ms. Connor turned out to be a woman in her midthirties whose looks bore out her Irish name. She had thick red hair done up in a twist, and the kind of impenetrable white skin that Magnus was prepared to bet never tanned. She was wearing a boxy but expensive-looking blue suit, and she looked extremely askance at Magnus’s outfit.
This was Magnus’s home, she had arrived early, and Magnus felt entirely within his rights to be dressed in nothing but black silk pajama bottoms decorated with a pattern of tigers and flamingos dancing. He did realize that the pants were sliding down his hips a fraction, and pulled them up. He saw Ms. Connor’s disapproving gaze slip down his bare chest and fasten on the smooth brown skin where a belly button should have been. Devil’s mark, his stepfather had called it, but he’d said the same thing about Magnus’s eyes. Magnus was long past caring whether mundanes judged him.
“Caroline Connor,” said the woman. She did not offer a hand. “CFO and vice president of marketing for Sigblad Enterprises.”
“Magnus Bane,” said Magnus. “High Warlock of Brooklyn and Scrabble champion.”
“You come highly recommended. I have heard you are an extremely powerful wizard.”
“Warlock,” said Magnus, “actually.”
“I expected you to be . . .”
She paused like someone hovering over a selection of chocolates, all of which she was extremely doubtful about. Magnus wondered which she would choose, which marker of a trustworthy magic user she had been imagining or hoping for—elderly, bearded, white. Magnus had encountered many people in the market for a sage. He had very little time for it.
Still, he had to admit that this was perhaps not the most professional he had ever been.
“Did you expect me to be, perhaps,” he suggested gently, “wearing a shirt?”
Ms. Connor lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug.
“Everybody told me that you make eccentric fashion choices, and I’m sure that’s a very fashionable hairstyle,” she said. “But frankly, it looks like a cat has been sleeping on your head.”
Magnus offered Caroline Connor a coffee, which she declined. All she would accept was a glass of water. Magnus was becoming more and more suspicious of her.
When Magnus emerged from his room wearing maroon leather pants and a glittering cowl-neck sweater, which had come with a jaunty little matching scarf, Caroline looked at him with a cool distance that suggested she did not find it to be a huge improvement on his pajama pants. Magnus had already accepted the fact that there would never be an eternal friendship between them, and did not find himself heartbroken.
“So, Caroline,” he said.
“I prefer ‘Ms. Connor,’” said Ms. Connor, perched on the very edge of Magnus’s gold velvet sofa. She was looking around at the furniture as disapprovingly as she had looked at Magnus’s bare chest, as if she thought that a few interesting prints and a lamp with bells were somewhat equivalent to Roman orgies.
“Ms. Connor,” Magnus amended easily. The customer was always right, and that would be Magnus’s policy until the job was completed, at which point he would decline to ever be employed by this company again.
She produced a file from her briefcase, a contract in a dark green binder, which she passed over to Magnus to flip through. Magnus had signed two other contracts in the past week, one graven into a tree trunk in the depths of a German forest under the light of a new moon, and one in his own blood. Mundanes were so quaint.
Magnus scanned through it. Summon minor demon, mysterious purpose, obscene sums of money. Check, check, and check. He signed it with a flourish and handed it back.
“Well,” said Ms. Connor, folding her hands in her lap. “I would like to see the demon now, if you please.”
“It takes a little while to set up the pentagram and the summoning circle,” Magnus said. “You might want to get comfortable.”
Ms. Connor looked startled and displeased. “I have a lunch meeting,” she noted. “Is there no way to expedite the process?”
“Er, no. This is dark magic, Ms. Connor,” said Magnus. “It is not quite the same as ordering a pizza.”
Ms. Connor’s mouth flattened like a piece of paper being folded in half. “Would it be possible for me to come back in a few hours?”
Magnus’s conviction that people who arrived early to meetings had no respect for other people’s time was being confirmed. On the other hand, he did not really wish for this woman to remain in his house for any longer than necessary.
“Off you go,” Magnus said, keeping his voice urbane and charming. “When you return, there will be a cecaelia demon in place for you to do with as you wish.”
“Casa Bane,” Magnus muttered as Ms. Connor left, his voice not quite low enough to be sure she wouldn’t hear him. “Hot-and cold-running demons, at your service.”