Lucy Ives

My friend seemed to understand the trade-offs, as well as society’s position on the matter. She took it all in stride. “I know he’s an infernal demiurge, but he’s actually just a nice guy.”

Everyone grinned hard.

My friend wasn’t talking to us, anyway. She was describing her own happiness, which had its limits. We wanted to
believe that she knew more than we did, but, in truth, even my friend did not know where things were going to go.

Now, my friend had mentioned to me, at some point during the time when she was engaged to the venerable FMP but not yet married, that there is a little-known fact about demons, which is that they have two different names, or sets of names, given FMP’s tripart moniker. There is the name by which they are known to humans, and the one by which they are known among themselves. My friend said that at some point during a certain particularly poignant night of passion and spooning, the demon FMP had let slip the fact of the existence of his other name, his real name, the name by which he was known among demons.

“It must be hard,” I said, “going all those millennia.”

She was reserved. “I’m not his first human, you know.”

I was doing my best not to imagine whatever it was that transpired between my friend and her supernatural other on the carnal plane. “So, what is it?”

“You mean, his real name?”

I nodded.

My friend seemed to contemplate my lack of inhibition. It wasn’t the same thing as rudeness, and I think that she was wondering if one day this lack of tact would destroy me—or if, because of it, I was destined to live an unusual life.