Devil's Pawn

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THERE WAS an elemental in the room. It was small, not more than two feet long, but it was none the less horrible. The shifting, cloudy ectoplasm around it blew aside now and then in the slight breeze, and revealed the hideous foulness of its shape. Tiny yellow eyes glared fiercely out of the amorphous face, it said: “My warning is for your benefit, Mallon. When your phone rings tonight, do not answer it.”

Phillip Mallon stuck out his jaw stubbornly. “I am required by law to give my services as a maji to anyone urgently in need of them,” he said.

“You are not required by law to give up your life to a demon too strong for you,” said the elemental. “This—demon—is too strong.”

“That remains to be seen,” said Mallon. “If your master is so strong, why didn’t he come himself?”

“Because he has better things to do with his time, you fool.” The elemental’s gash of a mouth sneered behind its veil of mist. “He is not afraid of you. He sends me, the least of his servants, to warn away a possible source of annoyance. Those who annoy my master, he kills.”

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