with the descrambler. It was only because of the descrambler that Lucifer knew Agonostis was skimming fifteen percent of the daily take off the top of the leccubi earnings, or that he had already set up a Swiss bank account for himself.
"What time did you lose him?"
"He sort of . . . faded out at around oh-seven-hundred."
Lucifer glanced up at Hell's big clock, which showed thirteen hundred twenty-four, Hell Standard Time. "That was a very long time ago," he said in a voice grown cold and quiet. "Why didn't you call me when he began to fade?"
"I didn't think you would want to be bothered—I remembered what happened to Bootlicker. And I thought it was something that could be fixed."
Lucifer vaguely recalled Bootlicker, consigned to a thousand years as the soul in one of Hell's shovels for disturbing him at an inconvenient hour over a major matter. Lucifer loved destroying people who were actually doing their jobs when they crossed him; it kept everyone else on edge.
And here was Bilgemire, afraid to find himself sharing his doomed colleague's fate, failing to notify Lucifer of important information. The Lord of Hell smiled and leaned against his desk, looking down at the demon.
"I might as well be trying to read the thoughts of the Kuttner bitch for all this is doing," he said in conversational tones. "You've failed me, Bilgemire."
Bilgemire's warty olive green skin flushed black, and he backed up a step. He cringed and whispered, "Per-per-perhaps it isn't the technology, your Awfulness. Perhaps you've—er, we've, ah, lost him to the other side."
"And you didn't call me for hours after my second-in-command deserted?" Lucifer shook his head slowly, and let his smile grow bigger. "Oh, dear. What dereliction of duty that is. I'm afraid I'm going to have to demote you. One thousand years as . . . oh, what would be appropriate?" The Master of Evil rubbed his chin with an index finger and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. "As the fuel that heats the lower reaches." Lucifer nodded. "Yes. Fully aware, constantly burning, constantly reforming. c