The demon trapped in the summoning circle screamed, slamming its crablike pincers against the unseen barrier, hurling its chitinous shoulders from side to side in an effort to escape the confinement. It couldn’t. I kept my will on the circle, kept the demon from bursting free.
“Satisfied, Chauncy?” I asked it.
The demon straightened its hideous form and said, in a perfect Oxford accent, “Quite. You understand, I must observe the formalities.” Then it took a pair of wholly incongruous wire-frame spectacles from beneath a scale and perched them upon the beaklike extremity of its nose. “You have questions?”

Okay, so the explanation is, there are actual rules saying demons must attempt to break out of the summoning circle and, should they accomplish it, must then kill their summoner.

This is so fucking stupid and it’s really only there because the author wanted to do the whole sudden tone shift you see above, which any non-hack could’ve accomplished by just mentioning the “crablike pincers” snapping etc and it being a demon in a circle followed by the glasses and snooty accent.

It’s possible given what happens next that the demons lied to him about there being rules, but it doesn’t matter, because the core problem is a demon thrashing around in a summoning circle is cliche and pointing out that it’s cliche can’t save that. We’ll see in a minute that demons have some major reasons not to act like this and it’d have been a lot more interesting if so.

Harry explains that Bob the Rapist Skull tried asking the fairies about the werewolf thing and no one knew, and apparently the effort of doing that for a few hours wore the poor rapist skull out despite the fact he could mind-control a whole building into a 24 hour orgy last book, so that leaves him with demon-summoning because god forbid Harry actually investigate things himself.

Anyway, he explains that he’s totally buddies with Chaunzaggoroth here, despite this not being mentioned at all last book, but the whole required to kill Harry if he messes up thing means it’s automatically a risky method of finding out info. “The underworld” does, however, generally know everything about everyone, though – and again, that means they’d have known last book’s heartsplosion guy. The only way to make sense of this is to assume Harry got into demon-summoning after the events of last book. It doesn’t make sense that he’d have looked at Crazypants McStormsalot’s demon-summoning and figured he needed to get in on that, but maybe he could’ve started doing research on demons in general so he’d be better prepared for another person sending a demon after him rather than relying on having lightningbolts on tap, and along the way learned they actually had uses other than eating your enemies and decided to try a summons just to find out a bit more…

So now he’s asking about MacFinn and the project when both of these are major things in his world and he could probably find something out just by flipping through some newspapers. Also, calling up Murphy to say that hey, Marcone showed up all freaked out and said to check this stuff out, what’s he talking about, do the police already know about this?

Pincers wants to know what Harry will give for the info.

“Not my soul,” I snorted. “So don’t even start with that. Look, I could dig this up myself in a few days.”
Chauncy tilted his head, birdlike. “Ah. But time is of the essence, yes?

No, Harry is just really, really fucking lazy.

The demon also points out that he must be desperate to be going against the council like this (again no, fucking lazy) and Harry says that technically the 4th law is no willbinding and the 7th law appears to be no letting demons loose, so summoning is okay. However, we learned from Morgan last book that you only can’t willbind mortals, since the technicality Harry hid behind then was fuck you goody-two-shoes I can mindrape fairies all day if I want, and we know that a summoning fuckup doesn’t meaningfully let a demon loose because if it kills it’s summoner it pops back (as established last book) and it’s required to do this first thing (as established a few lines ago) therefore the white council can’t care that much about prosecuting summoning fuckups because both sides of the problem will take care of themselves.

“The moral and ethical ramifications of your attitudes are quite fascinating, Harry Dresden. I am continually amazed that you remain in the Council’s good graces.

This is one of those sue issues. Harry’s said worse things every other time the technicality issue has come up (fairies aren’t people, I can mindrape them; lycanthropes aren’t people, I can explode them) but the author isn’t aware that any of this is wrong, so we just have standard demon vague implications that amount to nothing.

The demon says that most of the Council would look the other way while their enforcers killed you, should they learn that you have willfully brought a demon into this world which…why? We know Morgan when faced with evidence Harry summoned, attempted willbound and fucked up releasing a demon still had to bring it to the council, and Harry interfering with another wizard so the demon broke its bounds was considered heroic.

And somehow the fact he’s summoned this guy multiple times and/or isn’t concerned with the council’s opinion means Your attitudes are much more contiguous with those of many of my brethren in the World Below and Harry interrupts to be all lol temptation I’m already a powerhouse moving on.

This all seems to be boiling down to that yes, demons are literally demons who come from hell.

It seems like it’d be a good idea to use something from popular culture because then you don’t have to explain it, but the thing is, we really don’t have a very unified concept of hell. The broad strokes – demons, underworld, souls, summoning – yeah, but the reasons behind it vary widely based on who’s explaining it, and that’s what matters here. If this is purely the pop culture, with demons existing to steal souls as part of a grudge against God, then Harry has indirect proof that God and Heaven exist, in which case he should ditch the pentagram necklace and get a cross. He also knows why the demon keeps saying he should totally join: it hates him and wants him to burn eternally. Since Harry isn’t acting like that’s true, it must be different in some way, but he isn’t clarifying, not even by saying what he knows it isn’t.

“I admit that it would give me no small amount of status to gather a soul of your caliber into our legions,” he said. “Additionally, it would free me from the onerous duties which make even these excruciating visits to your world seem pleasant by comparison.”

And this doesn’t help because it seems like it’s the bog-standard demons just want souls thing, while opening up that issue that if Hell is punishment for demons too, they should want to hang out here.

Who made the rule that they have to kill incompetent summoners? It can’t be the individual demons, because this one just said anything is better than there. It doesn’t make sense it’s the boss demons, because having their underlings running about able to make deals with random mortals rather than just the one guy summoning them who probably learned better than to make a deal would mean they get more souls overall. Is it being enforced by God? If so, why doesn’t every demon give tips on how to summon them better so that by now summoning is basically error-proof?

Harry repeats that seriously, no.

“So make me a counteroffer, or we can call a close to the negotiations and I can send you back.”
The demon shuddered.

Moreover, this is raising the issue of how it seems morally right to summon demons if they’re getting tortured otherwise, as even bad people shouldn’t be tortured, and it’s downright creepy that Harry can use that as part of his bargain – yes, he’s not the one actually making it happen, but if you went to somewhere people were being constantly tortured, asked for one to come out to chat, then threatened to send them back right now if they didn’t cough up what you wanted to know…

The demon quickly explains it knows what he wants to know and in fact knows a whole bunch of other great stuff that’ll save lots of lives and it’ll tell him all of it. It just wants a name.

Harry then tells us that he’s already lost two of his four names to it.

This, I think, is an issue with serial books where no one knew quite how serial they’d be. We’ve skipped over an awful lot of stuff here and we’re now on the penultimate name. It sounds very dramatic right now, but since we can be reasonably sure Harry won’t be dragged down to Hell, we can guess that he’ll just never need to make another deal like this.

Anyway, Harry tells us that he really only has to worry about it knowing his whole name, and then goes on to add that actually it can’t do much with that either:

demons and their ilk had great difficulty in reaching out from the Nevernever, the spirit world beyond the physical one we inhabited, with sorcery.

So these appear to be Christian demons engaged in a war with heaven over human souls, but also they live in the same place as fairies.

The only threat the demon presents is that if other people summon the same guy, he could give them Harry’s name and then they could use it. Harry goes on to say that he’s apparently been summoning the same demon as everyone else uses for info because he’s dumb.

Okay, in fairness, there are possible reasons, but Harry gives none. He said earlier that the underworld as a whole knows stuff, so there’s nothing suggesting this particular guy is the only one who knows. Nor does he say that this guy is known to not lie but most demons will, or that most demons just scream in the black tongue rather than anything understandable. He also doesn’t explain with something like that he’s a newbie demon summoner so this is the only one he knows how to summon (my best guess is this is true but he’d rather die than admit it even in his internal narration).

Also he assumes whoever attacks him would be the council despite them being against demons, and he doesn’t even say anything about hypocrisy. We’ve been told repeatedly that demon-summoning is grey at best and that Harry doing this is super edgy and a sign he’s not really one of them, but also it goes without saying that a huge chunk of those wizards are summoning this guy all the time to find out what new stuff he knows and if he can finally give them Harry’s name.

Oh, and what would the white wizards be able to do with his name?

either to kill me or to magically force me to do something that would openly violate one of the Seven Laws and have me brought to trial and killed.

So killing with magic or willbinding him and then committing another law violation by proxy.

This gets into the book’s noir-but-not issues. It’s so obvious that authority is evil for not gushing over Harry’s perfectness that it doesn’t even bother saying the council is a bunch of corrupt assholes. It doesn’t care if they’re good or evil in the objective sense, solely that they’re mean to Harry. So sometimes they’re upstanding members of society and sometimes they’re going to commit magic war crimes and the book sees no difference.

On the other hand, Chauncy never lied to me.

Important facts we should know at this point:

1) Can demons lie?
2) Is this demon confirmed to never lie, or do you just mean he hasn’t lied so far, possibly precisely to get you to trust him now?
3) How good are demons at the technically not a lie game?
4) Are most demons generally trustworthy, so you could likely get non-lie answers if you summoned a different one who didn’t already know half your name?

he might even know who the killer was, though a demon’s grasp of individual human identity was somewhat shaky.

Instead, we just get this tantalizing bit that isn’t elaborated on. The demon certainly seems to be able to tell who Harry is – none of Coyote’s confusion with the names of the firehead girl. It seems unlikely demons can identify people by soul if we’re going on a straight heaven/hell afterlife rather than reincarnation. Perhaps it’s a wizard/mundane issue, where they identify people based on magic signature and can’t make out individual muggles but it doesn’t seem like the author’s had the idea that wizards are functionally another species yet.

But because it’s come up and one thing you can say for the book, it does involve Harry doing stuff that comes up, he naturally takes the deal without explaining much of anything further.

Okay so – MacFinn’s super rich because of a fortune made in coal and railroads back in the day. One of the ten richest guys, which incidentally, demon, you can’t do better than that? Just give his actual position, this isn’t a magazine puff piece.

He served during the police action in Vietnam

Why would a demon use the politician’s term rather than call a war a war?

and when he returned to this country he began divesting himself of business interests, merely accruing capital.

…I don’t think that’s how being the 1 to 10th richest person in America works.

The demon then says the guy likes red and Harry cuts it off. The babbling suggests the demon really is trying to stick around as long as possible and by implication yeah, Hell is nonstop torture and Harry is taking advantage of this.

The relevant part is, he wants a giant wildlife preserve that goes from the southwest through Canada for migratory animals. That’s…nice, I guess? I feel like if you were that worried about wildlife you could try buying up the rainforest instead. We have the major stuff under control in America, it’s the unique species in particular spots that are in trouble. (Well, there are big issues, but they’re largely about global warming destroying stuff regardless.) Oh, and the oceans. Oceans are just fucked everywhere.

I’d say this is particularly uncomfortable now given the whole thing where we can’t bear to let refugees in because where oh where could we possibly fit them, but it’s been true with pretty much every crisis.

In conclusion I’d guess the author feels he’s nebulously for the environment but doesn’t know much about any of the actual issues and just knows that wildlife preserves are good.

But anyway just about everyone thinks his plan of buying all the land and donating it to become a giant national park is cool, except other rich guys who want to exploit the resources. And the dead business guy had made this his major cause.

So in sum: yes, Harry can’t use the internet, but he can use a fucking phone to call Murphy to use google by proxy. For that matter, the police should have already checked the dead guy’s most recent business stuff to see if there’s a motive there, although I guess they haven’t because it’s actually pretty easy to assume that the wolf theme is from crazy environmentalists and that should’ve come up.

I mean, here’s what we know:

A bunch of apparently random killings in area one are followed by a similar killing style but in a completely different area and indoors against an important guy involved in a business deal, and then a while later, a second out of the area killing indoors of another person connected to the same business thing.

That doesn’t say “single unified werewolf pack”, that says “copycat killing”. Someone thought they could kill people they had a grievance against under the cover of the other killings. If the police can somehow verify that it’s actually the same tooth pattern rather than just weird teeth weapons, that makes it much weirder, perhaps psychos who were willing to kill a bunch of innocent people first to cover up their motive on the others. In both cases, it smacks of crazy environmentalists and that gives you an idea why they might be trying to fake the wolf thing.

The fact there are two distinct styles done with the same weapons should be a much bigger concern than the wolf teeth issue, because that tells you a lot more about who’s doing it and why. It’s easy to throw some sort of crazy twist into your killings, it’s harder to disguise who you’re killing and what your motive is.

And having the police going down this track would help show how much trouble Murphy’s in. If they view this as a weird but otherwise explicable case, then any attempt she makes to research it further, even if she hides the fact she thinks it’s werewolves, is going to be shut down by the higher-ups because they’ve already narrowed it down, but since there actually are no people with wolfbats faking it, she’s going to fail to find anything and lose her job.

Currently, we have the police just flailing around wildly with no clue, so Murphy should be relatively free to poke around as long as she keeps from visibly hanging out with Harry. The only real sticking point is the FBI has taken the case and supposedly they’re willing to work with her now.

“MacFinn is a member of an ancient family line from an island known as Ireland. His family has a notable history. Sometime in the murky past, legend would have it, the man known as Saint Patrick cursed his ancestor to become a ravening beast at every full moon. The curse came with two addenda. First, that it would be hereditary, passing down to someone new each and every generation. And second, that the cursed line of the family would never, ever die out, lasting until the end of days.”
I wrote that down as well. “A Catholic saint did that?”

No he did not.

St. Patrick did apocryphally curse a whole bunch of people who constantly interrupted his preaching with howls to turn into wolves for it, because early Christianity has fun stuff. But just like regular live in the forest canines, and it had nothing to do with the full moon because the full moon is a recent movie invention but was every seven years as actually makes sense because seven is magic, and he didn’t design it so that also this line of human-eating monsters would never ever end because who the fuck would even do that. It actually makes a degree of reasonable sense – they wouldn’t stop howling, so he made it so they’d have to go away while doing it so he could preach in peace. Plus you could almost certainly get the curse lifted by just converting and repenting already, given it’s not only a boogyman story about people getting punished for not converting but set in the general timeperiod that’s all about how Christianity, priests, and baptism trumps everything.

Also he was probably a pretty nice guy going by what we actually know about him since his whole thing was going, “Hey, so if you join Christianity you don’t have to live in constant terror of a million temperamental spirits fucking you over, it’s pretty great!” so this is particularly unfair.

Chauncy made a sound of distaste. “I am not responsible for the sorts of people the Other Side employs, wizard. Or the tactics they use.”
“Considering the source, I think I’ll note it as a biased opinion. Your folk have done a thousand times worse,” I said.
“Well. True,” Chauncy admitted. “But we tend to be quite honest about the sort of beings we are and the sorts of things we stand for, at least.”

The most annoying part of copying what everyone else does is when it’s fucked up. If he and his think the basic idea is totally fine, he’s being dishonest when he shows disgust at the idea.

Generally, this is supposed to just be demons being disgusted at the hypocrisy of claiming to be good afterward, not saying anything negative about the tactics used, OR when there’s actually some distinction where demons, say, don’t visit the sins of the father upon the sons – the latter requires a pretty grey setup where Good and good have little in common, which is obviously not the case here given the demon himself is agreeing they’re objectively evil in comparison.

In conclusion, this is actually a pretty big deal – I’d absolutely class this as an attempt at lying. People telling the truth only when you tell them it to them first are not truthful people.

But Harry is at least smart enough to successfully summarize what we just heard – MacFinn is a loup-garou because St. Patrick was apparently into proxy generational serial killing, therefore giant park as atonement, therefore killing spree.

“Except that Harding was the last person to be murdered last month. You would have thought that if MacFinn was going to lose it, Harding would be the first to go.”

Fuck’s sake Harry, what part of “ravening monster” made you think it was particularly easy to aim?

Obviously this is supposed to be some big discovery, but like all of Harry’s own thoughts, it’s just a matter of script reading. What makes more sense:

1) A werewolf just happens to come into town followed by the guy he hates most dying, but in the days leading up there were totally unrelated werewolf killings that stopped just before he killed the guy he hates most and then stopped for the month, and then remained stopped as he hit another guy he hates the next month/a werewolf just happens to come into town followed by lots of werewolf killings including of people he hates that he has nothing to do with.

2) A werewolf that’s totally uncontrollable upon turning took several days to successfully get in position to ambush the guy he hates most, leading to collateral damage on each of those earlier days, but naturally stopping after he got his target, then he manages to attack his next target on the first try now that he knows what he’s doing.

We weren’t told that he has to lose it. We were told that he turns into an unstoppable psychotic monster no matter what he does and the only control he has is if he locks himself up in advance.

The demon then says it can’t say if MacFinn is the guy who did any or all of the killings, just that he’s definitely killed at least one person at some point in his life. Given it’s a demon, it could as easily use “MacFinn is a murderer,” to mean “MacFinn shot a single person in Vietnam who died months later as a result.”

But that’s assuming it’s even twisting the truth. Going by this full exchange:

“Is he the one who killed Marcone’s bodyguard? The other people last month?”
“My information on that point is inconclusive, Harry Dresden,” Chauncy said. His black eyes gleamed. “Perhaps for the price of another name, I could inquire of my brethren and give you a more precise answer.”
I scowled. “Not a chance. Do you know who murdered the other people, last month?”
“I do,” Chauncy said. “Murder is one of the foremost sins, and we keep close track of sins.”

It sure seems like the demon is straight-up lying, doesn’t it? You can’t both know the murderer and say you’re not sure if a particular guy did it.

Also, no explanation for why, if another demon might know it, he can’t just summon that demon himself.

I leaned forward intently. “Who was it?”
Chauncy laughed, a grating sound. “Really, Harry Dresden. In the first place, our bargain was for information regarding MacFinn and the Northwest Passage Project. In the second, I could not tell you the answer to such a direct question, and you know it. There is a limit to how much I may involve myself in mortal affairs.”

A limit that as far as I can say is exactly whatever the plot wants it to be, as there’s no explanation.

The demon then says it can directly tell him that Marcone is involved and somehow assumed control of a majority of the business interests shared with Harding upon Harding’s death.” because I guess Marcone is a highly legitimate businessman.

Harry then states the obvious that if Marcone got stuff from the other guy dying, he had motive to make the other guy die.

But it doesn’t explain why everyone else got killed. Or who did it. Unless Marcone’s got a pack of werewolves in his pocket, that is.” I chewed on my lip, and thought about my encounter at the Full Moon Garage. “Or Streetwolves.”

Most importantly, you dumbass, it doesn’t explain why he would’ve asked for your help, especially when you spent the whole chapter insisting he was terrified and desperate to have you deal with the problem. This is a particularly big problem when his dealings with you last book established you’re a loose cannon who does what he wants rather than what he was actually asked, plus you immediately freaked out at him and generally acted like you’d take any chance to get rid of him.

(Also the lycanthropes were totally incompetent. Come on, we just saw this! Someone who isn’t a mob boss who keeps a stable of murderers might have a use for them, but if Marcone wanted somebody dead, he has other options that are not only better at killing but better at making it look like he wasn’t involved.)

Now, I seem to have lived up to all of my obligations. I expect my payment now.” Chauncy took a few restless steps back and forth within the circle. His time on earth was beginning to wear on him.

Which, of course, doesn’t fit with how he started off trying to take as long as possible with every last response, and the only thing that got him to speed up was threatening to send him back in the first place.

So Harry gives 3/4ths of his full name and the demon points out that hey, he’s named after fake magicians so Harry can explain to the reader that his dad was into that.

I think if my mother had survived the birth, she would have slapped him for it.

I think it’s fucked up that she dies having you and still gets zero say in your name.

Also, the fact your dad packed extra names onto you is clearly a benefit for a magician, so she should’ve been on board for that reason.

The demon responds by saying yeah he knew her. She was a most direct and willful woman which is not obviously bad until you realize you really don’t see guys described like this and then it gets skeevy.

“You … you knew my mother? You knew Margaret Gwendolyn Dresden?”

Welp, if she faked her death or if her spirit is still around, you’ve just totally fucked her over. Part of names having magic means the author can’t have the character show them off all the time.

With slightly more attention, Harry could’ve indicated that he needs to unambiguously identify a human to have any idea if they’re talking about the same person.

Luckily, it seems his mom predicted her child would be a fuckup and Margaret Gwendolyn Dresden is a fake name because they knew her by a different one. Could also just mean she herself wasn’t a fuckup who had to sell her names to these guys all the time so they never had a clue who she was, but I prefer the idea of people knowing Harry is this sort of idiot and taking precautions.

Her coming was awaited with great anticipation, but the Dark Prince lost her, in the end.”

So although literal demons exist, you can just repent and get away after a lifetime of misdeeds.

This is one of the many, many times you can see Christianity was not meant to be a long-term religion. It’s designed on the assumption that you’re trying to convert new cultures who’ve never heard of this guy before, many of whom are pretty old and have done a lot of stuff your religion disapproves of, so you need to be able to sweep away all the misdeeds they did before because telling people to switch to the new god BUT they’re also probably damned for all the stuff they already did is a hard sell. And that worked great, resulting in the current situation of people getting born into a world where the religion is well known so you can look around and decide to game the system if you want.

Harry’s all wat, because Harry never investigates or is curious about anything so he never talked to anybody before about his mom.

The demon decides to mock him a little extra saying that it’d have thrown this in to the previous bargain if Harry had mentioned it, but since that one’s done, maybe Harry would like to make a new bargain…? BTW both your parents actually died of other causes juuuuuuuuuuust saying!

I had expected that she was a wizardess
she was a wizardess
wizardess
wizardess
wizardess
wizardess
wizardess
wizardess

Just what the fuck is wrong with the author.

but I had never been able to prove anything, one way or another.

Pretty obviously by this he means “I wondered silently about it two whole times, and when the universe didn’t immediately hand it to me I gave up.”

You know, I’m not the biggest fan of the other, Pottery Harry, but god, at least he could orphan properly. Harry suddenly is all What were my parents like? How had they perished and why? Had they been killed? Did they have enemies lurking out there, somewhere? If so, had I inherited them? My mother’s dark past. Did that explain my own fascination with the darker powers, my somewhat-less-than-sterling adherence to the rules of the White Council that I considered foolish or inconvenient?

You never knew your mom at all and your dad died when you were nebulously young and yet only now did it occur to you to maybe give half a shit about this?

I also call shenanigans, if Harry’s mom was even halfway important that should’ve come up when they were deciding what to do with him and triply so if she’d done any noteworthy light or dark stuff. The council doesn’t appear to be particularly unified given Harry keeps complaining that half of them still want him dead, so at least one person among them would’ve brought it up at some point.

All this said, and wizardess aside, it is cool that Harry’s mom is apparently the important family member.

You’ve never seen your mother’s face.

I keep telling you people, photography is not that new of a technology.

I can give that to you. You’ve never heard her voice. I can let you hear that as well. You know nothing of what sort of people your parents were—or if you have any other family out there. Family, Harry Blackstone Dresden. Blood. Every bit as tormented and alone as you are …”

I yet again wonder how Harry is sure this guy doesn’t lie.

Also, how hard could it possibly be to whip up a “find relatives” spell? Plus if Harry’s blood is wizard powerhouse, it’s hard to believe his relatives are staying off the radar.

Family. Was it possible that I had a family?

Actually his last statement can only be a non-lie if you actually do, so your question’s answered there, and if he’s able to lie about that than he’s able to bullshit you about this whole thing and therefore there’s no point in asking anything.

Aunts? Uncles? Cousins? Others, like me, perhaps, moving through the secret societies of the wizards, hidden from the view of the mortal world?

Harry I just said it doesn’t work like that. The wizard clubhouse is a smaller group, so it’s actually easier for them to find you, doubly so when you upset the entire wizarding body as a teen.

At most, you might have some weirdness where they heard of you but have no idea who you are because wizards would avoid using people’s names, except that’s never once come up. It’s not just that Morgan knows your name, you know Morgan’s name back. So everyone even tangentially related to magic probably knows who you are, in the same way that everyone in the shop is aware of the bull.

So pretty much our choices are either no, you have no family, or you do but they want nothing to do with you.

It’s possible there’s some sort of edge case where maybe they’re looked down on by the main wizarding body so they thought advertising being related to you would just make it more likely Morgan’s naked steel met your neck, but that’s rather convoluted especially when they must’ve heard you finally got acquitted in full and could’ve come by in the last few months. (They can’t possibly be in worse standing given anyone in worse standing than Harry doesn’t have a head.)

“The price is comparatively low. What need have you for your immortal soul when your body is finished with it? What harm to pass on to me only one more name?

So are those the same thing, or…?

Also, what exactly is the soul in this universe?

I remember being struck with a folk tale about some Mexican evil guy who made a deal with a devil in a cave and it was said as he left his soul could be seen weeping in the corner, and I thought – so, what is the soul to him? Is it a like copy of him, and he’s the sort of hardass to be willing to sacrifice a clone to eternal torture if it means he gets some cool powers right now? Is it a portion of him, and not enough of a portion to outvote the rest? The phrasing we see here similarly suggests the soul existing as a unit that’s not quite the same thing as the person doing the talking right now.

I realize none of this will be answered because this is just standard temptation rambling but isn’t it a lot more interesting to find out how souls work than to find out that demons want to get them?

The demon goes on to claim that he won’t be able to just summon another demon, but Harry’s claim this guy is truthful is looking dumber by the second, so it’s hard to take that seriously or be impressed when Harry refuses. Harry starts screaming, in fact, and threatening to mutilate the demon because torture is heroic.

Chaunzaggoroth’s eyes flashed with rage and he hurled himself against the barrier again, howling with blood lust and fury. I extended my hand and snarled, “Oh no you don’t, you slimy little shit head.” The demon’s will strained against mine, and though sweat burst out on my forehead, I came out ahead once more.
Chaunzaggoroth began to grow smaller and smaller, howling out his frustrated rage. “We are watching you, wizard!” he screamed. “You walk through shadows and one night you will slip and fall. And when you do, we will be there. We will be waiting to bring you down to us. You will be ours in the end.”
He went on like that until he shrank to the size of a pinpoint and vanished with a little, imploding sound. I let my hand drop and lowered my head, breathing hard. I was shaking all over, and not only with the cold of my laboratory. I had badly misjudged Chaunzaggoroth, thought him a somewhat reliable, if dangerous, source of information, willing to do reasonable business. But the rage, the fury, the frustrated malice that had been in his final offer, those last words, had shown his true colors. He had lied to me, deceived me about his true nature, played me along like a sucker and then tried to set the hook, hard. I felt like such an idiot.

The idiot is the demon.

This is what I was getting into earlier when I said the demon shouldn’t be thrashing around in the circle. It’s a hell of a lot easier to trick people into Hell if you don’t shout that’s what you’re doing.

“You walk through shadows and one night you will slip and fall. And when you do, we will be there. We will be waiting to bring you down to us. You will be ours in the end.”

What this actually amounts to is the demon warning him to be a better person. Why would it do that? If you want someone to do bad things, you don’t tell them every time they’ve done anything wrong. You tell them they’re a good person and everyone else just doesn’t see it. Bob the rapist skull gets it, why wouldn’t an actual demon?

And sure, he wanted to get Harry’s final name now, but come on, Harry just coughed up the third for practically nothing. It was inevitable he’d give up the final one soon. The only thing that could possibly stop that is this temper tantrum convincing Harry he shouldn’t summon demons at all.

I expect slightly better from immortal creatures who have this as their entire job.

Anyway, the phone then rings and Murphy is saying there’s a killing and it’s the place the demon just told him the werewolf is staying at, so back to that plot.