A waxy fellow preserved in some seasoned early thirties was reclining in the sort of posture that questioned any ligaments above his waist and strained the seams at his crotch. He was examining a large, glossy Samsung Galaxy in a Placenta valve. He had the visage of a Viking sewn into a paisley and corduroy marriage by a hipster-tailor disguising modern corseting in ultra cool non-slouch wear.

Fleshy jowls sacked about his jawline where a full sandy blonde beard shoulder locked descriptions of gentlemanly, oiled elegance and moist, facial pubic hair.

He was a collection of miss-alignments. Dense knobs of cartilage at his furrowed brow and testosterone fertilised follicular density tricked the brain into filing him in the same zone as goat gristle and sledge hammers. The mind would then jump cautionary back anxiously questioning itself noting his dexterous and acrobatically ballerina-like movements.

He considered this ying yang collision philanthropic abuse of lazy neural guesswork. Staples of overdue upkeep glinted bronze rods of intermediate scaffolding at his ears, temple and neck advertising with a tickle that the blood warmed meat he was wearing he was, just, wearing.

Near universally this meant that any company who didn't know who he actually was, once they had recovered from the jolting queasiness, became very, very paranoid. The best sports were the theologically inclined. These chaps ended, eventually, slumped twitching on the conclusions of either God, Lucifer or Napoleon. At which point Lewis replied yyeess and offered either an eye-wateringly lackluster and astronomically unbeneficial addition to LIFE, a well mushed ham sandwich with too much butter or a tape measure.

He was a mage or male magician. Much less powerful than witches or warlocks mages are about a thousand times sharper and of a population number less than a hundred. He was nearly employed, specifically, he was a residential consultant who did his residing in a private, belly suite at The Morax Estate: Scotland branch. Here he did a lot of snooping, technological insidiousness-ness and sometimes flayed whenever he got bored of wearing the same epidermis. He had a dedicated pink-room, bulb-controlled by an App called Boudoir Funk, were skins stretched tersely from wire webbing so as to minimise creasing and save on the expenses of wet-cleaning.

Tricks in the footsteps of his ancestors. Treats which afforded him his life and an official listing in Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and PD App as deceased. He smiled bitterly. And what unwanting ancestors they were. Stockholm idolisation. How grand daddy dearest would wince.

Today he was Logan. In the footsteps of his ancestors. Again. And Logan too because, when he found time, he still enjoyed a fine American comic. Killing time he was watching the backwash of a recent purchase by a Seattle based member of House Sytry, position three, of Lucifer. The man resembled a not much grown northern mole vole and had in House Morax’s most recent auction of class As acquired a magnificent jazelle destined for House Paymon.

House Paymon, Lucifer’s Artillery, had been dormant for millennia and thus sadly their coming lineage reduced to the short-lived of the Class A line of merchandise. Logan had bid for the boy himself and lost. As was respectful, product must be presented first to patron, only if there were no, or no noteworthy takers did his brightly polished teeth get their sink.

After an hour of hacking the internal systems of almost every hotel in the state of Washington he’d swallowed one pole of his dichotomised pride to recline in the older padding of the other and crafted a Mirror Noir in the dormant surface of his ipad screen.

A Mirror Noir, a glamorous art deco vestige of spellmanship patented in the nineteen thirties, is an angle adjustably peephole which required a tedious amount of toggling. They could be formed from any dark, smooth and semi-reflective surface and although requiring only a minute IC to construct one needed artful precision in Divine Mechanics.

Occasionally Logan's eyes would forward focus and he'd wistfully stroke a thumbpad over the charm. It was clandescent. The rebirthed fragmented light two-dimensionally re-laminated onto the tablet surface in a pixel refresh rate of over one hundred and twenty Hz with a resolution LG Electronics would crusade to sacrifice South Korea's entire population of weasels to know the secret of.

Shame be that Sytry listed a house of Lucifer.

Rodent dancing ridiculous footwork around the incapacitated boy. A flaccid flogging and the limp merk moved to the main event. Barely minutes of his face swelling purple, ready-to-pluck above the noose's sphincter. Minutes. Only one round at it too. Poor sportsmanship. Now the sweet little sprout flopped drawn, entrails surfaced, presented to him for only moments and already the axe hung mid-air.

Inexcusable waste of fine product. At least eat him.

Dispirited he frisbeed the tablet to the stiff bricks of ultraviolet vinyl padding opposite and dropped his chin to his fists pouting. This only lasted a moment before he remembered the beard which he reflexively batted away. He remembered it was attached to his own skin. He grimaced snatching the tablet and inverted the camera to check for any damage to his own, milky skin beneath.

Malignantly sprouting scouring pad. Gone were the days when a man’s chin was as smooth as his southern cheeks before spreading.

He prayed, for his own sanity, which he was obliged to do rather frequently, that Marc come to him soon. Bucking the trend he despised Placenta. It induced in him a great, tight anxiety of change for the worst in the pits of his bowels. He slumped back examining, segment by segment, the valve cubicle. It was a mangled, neon carcass of the middle-east and the starship Enterprise in interstellar amethyst. His leather portfolio settled before him was underlit by some aquarius light cube. Blown glass bubbles bobbed above him dispersing a kaleidoscope of dizzy light prisms. His martini glass hummed. The fucker actually hummed. The spectrum of colours vomited from whatever ethereal calamity he’d ordered was so dense to diffuse the crystal visibly reverberated.

Teeth clamped tightly his eyes slipped to the bar below watching a UV splattered waitress waterfall chartreuse sugar water from the decapitated glass of a Boston to its tin arse. Unwelcome in the valve’s proofed noiselessness the sounds of a guitar’s earthy, honest notes crept up the right peripherals of his vision drawing in their progress a curtain of increasing black. The thick frames of his eyelashes fluttered. The free pour and oily splash of cognac at the spout of rolled sleeves and handsome suspenders.

Nineteen thirty nine and the dry heat of the dessert spread. The scent of tobacco, ribbons of smoke clumping against the ceiling oak beams. Canvas, taupe, thick films of sandy dust, shutters which glowed like burning coals weeping amber sap at the back of Franco’s sun. Marc’s elbows on the freshly polished top of his bar. Zealots for war. Himself chasing Hemingway on the cusp of popular politics. Marc because destruction and dictatorship were increasingly the only realities which landed with any gravity for him.

“Lewis”

Logan jolted upright from his psychological sinkhole “Logan”

“My apologies. Logan” Marc tweaked the classic, virgin wool at his thighs up a notch before dropping down beside him. Logan’s gaze darted further upwards between his legs before he caught himself.

Marc drank him in carefully “How are we?”

Logan rolled his eyes “Overworked and under-appreciated. How are we and our joyous surprise?”

“I appreciate you”

“Mm? No"

"No"

"No. You bruise me. Soon you'll have me listing myself on the company pension scheme"

Laughter was so far forward down Marc's gullet his reply was muffled "I wouldn't dream of it"

“Hm. Witchy little witchlet” Lewis, Logan, I agree with Amon, pick a name I'm trying to narrate here, held out an upright palm "I want to see her"

Marc raised to pull his phone from the back pocket of his trousers and accessed his downloaded cloud files. He held it out to Lewis “Contracts of Coalition" Marc slid the portfolio from the table towards himself.

Lewis eyed the portfolio “Four of the six. The other two are awaiting less, absolute, offers”

Marc glanced up newly venomous

Lewis found threat very exciting and resisted laughter “My God we have to replace the cameras at De Gaul. Sony’s Betamax had higher pixilation. Floppy discs. I have floppy discs manufactured more recently than these”

A tendon bounced in Marc's jawline “Awaiting less absolute offers. Charity the personality marker of the damned. Cut off their standing orders. Starve the fuckers. They’ll come ears slick to their scalps pinning or the PP can have ‘em. Lucifer’s itching for goats. Strap ‘em to the slaughter block”

“Done. Hours ago. I have the egg-timer running. Wonderful invention the egg-timer. It’s the mechanical bbrrring. The impact of audio stimuli under conditions of torture isn’t given the worth it warrants” Logan beamed at Marc slyly “Its a game me and James are playing. If Verrine's houses come a crawling before its rings lil jamey boy gets me to peel his scrotum”

“If afterwards?”

“He’ll be splicing himself”

Logan's eyes rolled up and down Marc’s subdued smirk and then to the rough, thickened skin at the pads of his fingers fanning the pages noting the houses they’d obtained “Bare in mind it's subordinance for a millennia. They go against that print and it’s an eternity of 9.T. In three and half thousand words you semantically revolutionize sponsorship in terms of slavery. I’d think twice”

“You think. These are Verrine’s houses. Their co-inhabitant syphilis engages in more sophisticated patterns of reasoning. These houses” he held up the dense assortments of signed contracts “Are now a stepping stone, through us, from the top bands of the Hierarchy if that’s not a ladder rung I don’t know what the fuck is”

Lewis swallowed: no they're your subordinates and by signing they're submitting to the loss of their house, title and place in parliament, for “are your feelings hurt?”

“Aye. I wanted Benefactor of the year. I’m courting. She might warm t’ some Kennedy esque press attention”

“Mm" Lewis looked off thoughtfully "Lucifer lubricating it's panties in anticipation of God’s re-arrival. I feel like organising a protection program on the murkier quadrants of limbo. It takes one smart guy, one, to comment on the suspiciously vanished IC. Because Astaroth help us no one has yet noticed the law of conservation has hiccuped. Thank that cat with the mighty PR for Faith and the next gen nobles" Lewis laughed "They should all start a band"

Marc withdrew a plastic encased, unsigned stack of parchments “Hence” he brandished it discarding the rest of the portfolio of signed contracts displeased “This’ll give us enough rule over the damned’s collective eye to ride Agares”

“Peace, war, politics. Why is my life on repeat?” Lewis sighed “North wing room 206. ‘Off his head. He's playing out the part of an amicable brother of shared lifely shortcomings. Marc. Benefactor to outreach worker. I may end this year stitching your rosette myself”

Marc wiped his face with two hands hunching forward

Lewis eyed him “You’re two fifteen, ’ll be all set up and waiting for when you’re finished assuming you still have enough blood flow around the skull to pull this. It's like salivating in dogs. Just the promise of food and" Lewis clicked his fingers "off the body goes. Hormones like tokyo in an air raid. You've been thinking about her too long. You're a dog" Lewis held out a hand to Marc organising his thoughts "who's been starved, spent centuries daydreaming about ribeye and now knows it's going to get ribeye. Do dogs daydream?" Lewis shrugged "they dream"

Marc looked up drawing a deep breath and examining the ceiling "right then"

"No whore, human or otherwise, is going to bring you any relief, you know? You're, well, I won't use profanities. Thankfully you have me” Lewis lent back to withdraw an oblong, glass vial with a faint scent of antiseptic “Lathered the plastic darling in it. Pheremonically she’s a clone to your cher. Bare in mind Marc this is the only reason that is going to work. As far as your body is concerned there’s only one creature worth wasting reproductive fluids on”

“We’ve been close enough to Faith to artificially, manufacture, replicas, of her pheromones” Marc drawlled drily plucking the vile

“I don’t do well with spare time” Lewis shrugged “Share and share alike. It’s like a puppy, yes it might be mostly yours but you have to let everyone else have a play. For the dog’s sake as much as anyone else's"

“Don’t we just sound like grandpa. She isn’t a dog, Lewis" Marc grumbled from his palms

"Mm. Logan. Also” Logan sheepishly pointed at the vile "that's going to make things worse"

Marc straightened palms upturned "If it's 't make things worse why the fuck'd ye do it?”

“Because if I didn't you're not going to climax. How long do you wanna be jabbing away for? You'll chafe! This potion doesn't come ingredient cheap, you know? Your choice you can either remain blue-balled and yet pheromone unaffected or you can save the knocker from falling hypoxic 'tween your ankles and get an early whiff. Either way postpone too long Faithy-winkle is going to end a pummelled mess and you’re going to sit rather guilty when you pop back to your senses to find carnage"

Logan tapped his knee calming "Sweet thing is in over her head. A depth we don’t know the footage of yet, you mark my words. I don't think any of us do. 'Sides. There’s something preternatural about our little supernatural” Logan lent forward eyes dancing manically “she talks to herself. Not in a healthy, where did I put my keys kind of way either. That girl can spend hours in full blown argument with her own reflection”

Logan’s tongue smacked “I’m going to be her favourite. You watch”

Marc laughed “Lewis, I’m her favourite”

Lewis batted a hand dismissively “Logan. See? You see? This is what I mean. You have no respect for me. And you’re not a favourite you’re an obligation”

Marc murmured thoughtfully “If Faith falls under House Gremory her highest rung is Astaroth. Maybe Beelzebub. If she's ours she could potentially-

"I fall under your house" Logan was hurt "You've cupid's arrow in an eye and Faithy-winkle on a pedestal"