I can barely keep up with all the insane crap being dumped on me by the truckload.  But it fits, Mr. Greasy probably actually is a Jinn.  While I keep half an ear on the conversation, I try to recall everything I've ever heard about them, but it's mostly maddeningly vague and uncorroborated.  One thing that's universally agreed upon, wishes always have a price, always...even if it wasn't explicitly negotiated, or indeed immediately apparent.

Shit.

Still, if even half of what he's saying is true, that's a secondary problem.  And it, too, makes sense...the otherwise unprecedented "contagion" of Demonic influence would have been just a slow trickle from a primary source, so heavily disguised that no one realized what they were looking at.  And all Demons have control over their own forms, to a greater or lesser degree.  Being able to Quick Change without a specific imprint would be a logical manifestation of that.  If I'm to accept for the moment that she is a Demon somehow wearing a dead-girl-suit.  My stomach twists at the perversion of it, but I've been working in these circles for nearly a decade, and I've seen worse.

Far worse.

But either way, my immediate path forward seems clear.  Demons do not enjoy any protection from the Councillary Tenets, and there's no exception for some sort of hypothetical Enochian amnesia.  Whether she remembers it or not, she is not meant for this world.

As they hold hands and get all weepy, I quietly step behind the Demon and with a smooth thrust, I bury my knife most of the way into her side, carefully sliding the blade between two of the hard plates of her ridiculous costume.  I jerk it back out, more harshly than I need to, and she topples forward, making a strangled half-groan.

"Would you believe, neck-deep in all this bullshit, I nearly missed that this ditz has actually been a fucking demon all along?!"  I hear an edge of hysteria to my voice and realize I'm more emotional than I ought to be, I'm clearly picking up taint from her, even partially 'shielded' as she seems to be, and drawing blood would likely only increase that.

I half close my eyes and focus on my training, walling off external impulses to the edge of my mind where I can observe them without being controlled.  But the idiot girl breaks my concentration, and insanely worse, Invokes the actual Pit, jumping off of the bed to protect the Demon.

"Shut up!   She's a Demon, are you fucking stupid?"  Using words like that even under normal circumstances is a really stupid mistake, you can build up all kinds of Karmic debt, but in the actual physical presence of a Demon, it's way beyond stupidity.

"Weren't you listening, she's only kind of a Demon!  And she's been nice, sort of, in a totally messed up way!  And anyway, I fucking love her, so step the fuck off!"  She points a finger at me vehemently, her manacles rattling with the gesture.

It doesn't matter that she's warded and bound by the runes, she's a danger to herself and everyone around her, she's so lost it she's professing love for a horrid thing that couldn't possibly be less deserving.  I ready the knife to put her out of her misery, Tenets be damned.  How dare she?  We'll see how much she wants her twisted, evil, mockery of goodness when both their blood is spraying onto the goddamn floor, even as she dies I'll cut her fucking tongue out if she says another word of such filthy wrongness, she needs to PAY-

From deep in the cleaner patches of my soul, scattered and lonely in the darkness, an echo of my partner's voice comes to me, thick with repetition over a dozen encounters, firm, urgent, and always trying to guard my innermost self.

Nora! Rule three!

Rule three: Before any action accompanied by unstable emotion, complete the catechism.  I bite my lip and mentally run through the questions impatiently, eager to kill her and be done with it.  'Is what I do for the good of Humanity above myself?'  I don't deny I'll get some satisfaction from this, but, dammit, yes.  'To the best of my knowledge, will this act cause more good than harm?'  Again, yes.  The Council would almost certainly kill her after a trial anyway.  'Would this action violate the Councillary Tenets?'  My heart skips a beat.

Yes.  Obviously.  'No accused shall receive punishment except after trial and by the express and plural judgement of the Council.'  The Tenets and the Grand Farce are the only things that keep us from slipping back into the days of temple sacrifices, mythic constructs loosed on the populace, burnings, inquisitions.  I feel a sliver of cold fear at how close I came, and most of my rage slides away to the edges of my mind.  I stare at the coughing and still-bleeding Demon and feel a renewed respect for the threat they represent...how easily they can get such a hold on us, even when they're seemingly helpless.  Or even especially then.

"She's obviously Bound into infatuation," I note calmly, trying to keep my voice steady, "and the taint from her Invocation almost twisted me into killing her on the spot...nice try, really nice try."  I step around the thrall towards her, but the girl tries to get in my way again, pushing at me with her manacled hands.  With my free hand, I take one of her wrists almost gently, twisting it inexorably up and out.  Unnaturally strong as she may be from whatever's been done to her, she's clearly never encountered Aikido.  The confusion on her face is nearly comical as she instinctively rolls aside in a somersault to relieve the pressure on her joints.

I lean forward over the Demon and lay the edge of the bloody knife against her throat, itself already stained slightly with blood coughed from her own lips.  I run through the catechism automatically, but this time my motives are my own, and the questions pass with firm certainty.

"Go back where you belong," I whisper.  Mentally, I add, For my mother, a gallon for every drop.  She closes her eyes in apparent resignation, but I stay on my guard as I press firmly and draw the blade across, making sure it bites deep enough to cut into windpipe, carotid and jugular.  There's no indication she'd been able to pick up any imprints that would allow her to survive this, but I fully intended on following through with a thrust to the heart, dismemberment, burning, and scattering the ashes in three different seas.  Others might make use of demonic substance for enchantment...I prefer to be certain.

But despite my wariness, only halfway through opening the Demon's throat, I'm surprised to hear words.  Not from my victim, but from the idiot thrall, her voice cracking with blind love, desperation and a sadness that I find terrifying, as it suggests she knows there will be a price, and is willing to pay.

"I wish I wasn't wearing manacles anymore."