You have to understand, first, that I was behind on my quota. You've never worked for the Lower Beings, so you don't know how bad that is. These are the people who put the eternal into the damnation, you know? It was very, very important that I dish out some vengeance, and soon. I was so far behind, that it couldn't just be any old vengeance. It had to be something with style. And if it seriously inconvenienced the Powers, that would be even better.

So there was this group that went by the name of the League of the Golden Clematis. Word was that the Lower Beings would be happy if something bad happened to them. I don't mean to say that the Lower Beings had issued a proclamation or put a price on their heads. They only do that in very rare occasions. More often it's a rumour whispered in a willing ear here, a quiet innuendo there, a wink or a nudge in the right direction. That's how the word got around when they wanted someone inconvenienced.

These mortals had liberated a major artefact from a dark sorcerer. This artefact had originally been created to serve the purposes of the Powers, but had been under the control of someone on our side for several centuries. The Lower Beings wanted the artefact back in our court, or at least neutralized. I knew if I could catch this League in a truly first-class curse, the Lower Beings would be very, very happy, and might completely erase my quota deficit for my trouble.

Besides, the League included a woman that Anyanka had tried to trick into a wish a few years earlier. Anyanka had failed, and the woman had gone on to inherit the powers of the Witch of Darlson. She was well on her path to becoming a formidible warrior for the Powers. If I could catch her--someone the great Anyanka had failed to ensnare-- well, that would be quite a feather in my cap.

The Witch had broken a man's heart. Which was right in my speciality. So I set out to grant a wish.

The man whose heart she had broken was one Simon MacGreggor. He was an Inspector with the London Metropolitan Police. He was a dedicated police officer, a good neighbor, and a kind man. He had three sisters whom he adored, a mother to whom he was devoted, and a father who had died under questionable circumstances, who had taken to haunting him--though in the spirit guide mode. I think, perhaps, the father was hoping to earn his soul a better final reward.

As I said, MacGreggor had fallen in love with one Victoria Whitnell, the Witch of Darlson. It seemed to him that she returned his affection. In fact, any reasonable person observing them during the first month or so of their acquaintance would have thought so, as well. Unfortunately, when he worked up the nerve to make his feelings known, she had dashed his hopes. Further, through her subsequent actions she had made it clear that her affections were firmly fixed upon another man--a servant, no less.

That must have made the disappointment particularly painful. There was MacGreggor, the son of a country squire, a good provider from a good family, and she threw him over for a servant. And not even a servant from a sturdy working-class English family, either, but a former thuggee. A murderous east indian who had been paroled into the League's care. MacGreggor had been despondent for days. He had difficulty sleeping and was having increasingly painful headaches.

He decided to go to an apothecary for something to help with the headaches. That's where I made first contact. I took on the persona of the apothecary. I was solicitous and sympathetic. I asked some leading questions under the guise of trying to correctly diagnose his ailment. When he avoided talking about her, or the other man, I nudged him a bit, arranging for an apparently chance appearance of the servant assisting the woman into their carriage. Mirrors are wonderful things, and not just for the magickal properties.

I could feel his resolve to resist temptation weakening ever-so-slightly.

Except one of the other members of the League, a stern, humourless woman who worked as a governess and tutor, came into the shop and demanded to know what was taking MacGreggor so long. The woman had the nerve to peer down her nose at the herbs I was mixing in my mortar. She hardly made any pretense to disguise her suspicion of me. I made a mental note to seek out one of her former charges once this curse had been rendered. I don't normally grant vengeance for wronged children, that's usually Halfrek's area, but I was willing to make an exception for this woman.

I finished the headache powder and sent them on their way. This wish was going to be more difficult than I had first thought.

I kept them under observation for the rest of the day as they continued to shop. MacGreggor accompanied several of his companions into a bookstore. I considered taking on the persona of one of the booksellers, but the governess was with him. I was able to nudge him a bit, though. There was an advertisement for an upcoming shilling shocker, one based upon the exploits of one of their number. The advertisement featured an engraving of a scene from their own recent adventures, when the Witch had nearly died at the hands of an ifrit, and the servant had leapt to her rescue. The engraving had been based upon a newspaper account of the incident, so the faces of the principles were nondescript. It took only the lightest application of magick to make the servant and the witch recognizable.

I saw MacGreggor's face blanch when he first saw the poster. If I just kept his thoughts focused on them long enough, I knew he would eventually make a wish.

Once their shopping was completed, they gathered their belongings and boarded a train for Antwerp. Once in Belgium, they settled in at a rented villa just outside the city. The next day many members of the party went back into the city on several errands. It was there that I thought I had found the perfect venue.

MacGreggor and two other men of the League, the former boxer Seamus O'Flaherty, and the mining magnate and big game hunter Spencer Cuthbert, were awaiting some of their companions in a salon. I took on the persona of the bartender, and began serving conversational bon mots with their drinks, which I kept filling quite liberally.

It wasn't that difficult to get them talking about women and difficulties thereof. Except that MacGreggor, the stupid git, didn't want to complain about women. No, he made excuses for the entire sex, and began advocating for rights and opportunites like some demented sufferagette. He did make several statements that could have been construed as wishes, but they were all for good things to befall members of the weaker sex. Which, I admit, would had been quite a nasty curse to grant, from the point of view of most normal men, but they weren't likely to put me in the good graces of the Lower Beings.

Fortunately, a fight broke out. It was quite a spectacular one. Except for the bit where O'Flaherty got hold of me and almost bashed my face in. When they say he's a giant of a man, they are not just speaking figuratively. He's mostly human, of course, but if you look at his aura just right, you can see that he's descended from one of the Greenlander giant clans. He startled me enough that I temporarily revealed my true face. Fortunately, in his addled state, it took only the slightest mental nudge to hide the memory so that he would only remember the friendly barkeep.

I wish I could have taken credit for the mayhem that ensued. The gendarmes arrived on the scene and hauled off several people to jail, including MacGreggor and his two friends.

The bartender gambit had not been entirely fruitless, however. MacGreggor had mentioned the talking dog; specifically that the dog was the only one who he'd been able to talk to about his troubles. I had heard rumours of this cursed dog from Prussia, and my research on the League had indicated that he had briefly travelled with them. MacGreggor had mentioned losing his dog when I, in the guise of the apothecary, had asked him why his heart was so heavy. It was the work of a few moments to find memories in his unconscious mind. He had become fond of the wretched creature in the few days they had known each other, and his memories of the mongrel were quite strong.

When MacGreggor woke in the early morning, I was there, in the jail, in the guise of the dog. I had woven a past for the persona, as having been adopted by the jailor. When MacGeggor called me, and rebuked me for having abandoned him, I had explained that I had loyalties to others. When he questioned why I wasn't with these others, I explained that I was doing undercover work.

He tried to say that he was doing the same.

I scoffed. I got him talking about the woman. He still refused to voice the slightest reprobation of the woman who had done him wrong, saying only that he wished for her happiness. I had had no idea that he had such a well-developed and deeply rooted martyr complex! I was becoming quite disgusted with him. If I hadn't been behind on my quota, I would have washed my hands of it and walked away, fully convinced that some other demon had already cursed him to a life of being the willing doormat to every selfish woman in creation.

But I was behind on my quota, and I had expended several days trying to nail him down already. I couldn't walk away from that investment. So I got him talking about the other man, the former thuggee who was working as their servant and bodyguard, doing penance for his past sins. He would be an especially rich plum to curse! The Lower Beings would have to give me at least double-credit for a curse that took out a former killer seeking redemption!

Even in regards to his rival suitor, MacGreggor would wish no ill. He did, however, admit to a slight envy. Suddenly, I had an idea. So I asked him, "Don't you wish you could trade places with him?"

And he said, "Of course I do!"

I had him! "Granted!" I proclaimed, as I activated the curse. Reality folded in obedience to the wish. MacGreggor the Inspector ceased to be. MacGreggor's soul was infused into the body of the servant, Salmalin.

When MacGreggor awoke in the body of the thuggee, he was quite distraught. He inadvertently attracted the attention of his companions by shrieking in fright when he beheld Salmalin's face in the mirror.

Two of the other servants, a woman warrior by the name of Emily, and another former thuggee (though much younger) who was known as George, came to his aid, but MacGreggor refused to let them into his room. He asked them to summon Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Cuthbert. Ramsay was a Watcher and a mage of small power. Mrs. Cuthbert was a Medium and Seer with the Gift of Healing.

Other members of the household were roused by the disturbance. Miss Chigwidgeon, a young half-breed who had somehow gotten herself engaged to a Baronet, was one of the first to come down and try to speak to Salmalin. The Witch of Darlson also came, and when Salmalin refused to see her, and the others explained his strange behavior, she retreated to her room in tears.

Oh, how that warmed the cockles of my heart. Well, no, I don't technically have a heart, at least I didn't when I was a vengeance demon, but it gave me quite a feeling of satisfaction that the Witch of Darlson had been reduced to tears so quickly by my curse. Anyanka was going to be bright green with envy!

Once Ramsay and Mrs. Cuthbert arrived, MacGreggor let them into his chamber and confessed all. If you could have seen the expression of consternation on his face when he learned that the other two had absolutely no memories of MacGreggor at all! In this new reality, the reality created by his wish, Simon MacGreggor had died several years before meeting any of them.

They examined his aura and cast various divinations on him, which all turned up nothing. Because there was nothing wrong with him in this new reality. He was the man the Witch of Darlson had chosen. The only reason he remembered the other reality at all was because his wish had created the new one. He didn't realize it yet, but as time progressed those memories would fade--though not before he'd had time to reflect on everything that he had lost.

As MacGreggor's companions interviewed him, Mr. Frazer, a clerk with the detective department, recalled that he had heard the name Simon MacGreggor before. He asked Salmalin/MacGreggor the name of MacGreggor's parents. When he answered, Frazer became very quiet and left. He quietly informed several of his colleagues that Simon MacGreggor had been hanged several years ago for the murder of his own father. Further, Frazer thought that the remainder of the family had fallen on hard times.

Frazer went into the city to retreive the members of the party still in jail: O'Flaherty, Cuthbert, and Inspector Lestrade. Since Simon had not lived to become an Inspector, Lestrade had accompanied the League to Belgium, instead.

Mr. Ramsey had also gone into the city, taking a drawing MacGreggor had done of me (it was a terrible likeness). Ramsay was going to use the library of the local Order of St. Jerome chapterhouse to try to figure out who I was.

Miss Chigwidgeon, meanwhile, was one of the few members of the League who immediately believed MacGreggor. She found a quiet spot in the garden to mediate, and hope that her goddess, Kali, would send some help.

Miss Sinclair had taken tea in to the distraught Witch of Darlson. Then she went back to keep MacGreggor company. MacGreggor had decided, for some reason, to search Lestrade's room. Miss Sinclair found him and engaged him in conversation. Miss Whitnell joined them and asked MacGreggor to tell her precisely what had happened and how he had come to believe that he was another man, somehow possessing Salmalin's body.

While this conversation proceeded, Miss Sinclair took her leave, only to be startled by a ghost. MacGreggor's father, Bernard, was still hanging about. He hadn't quite been blotted out of existence by the wish yet. That's one of the tricky parts of the power of the wish, you see. Reality is at the same time extremely malleable and terribly resilient. Natural philosophers talk of reality as if it were a colossal clock, made up of an infinite number of gears packed tightly together and ticking along in perfect accord to the Laws of Nature. Hardly. Reality is more like an enormous, impossibly elaborate sand castle--one in which a disturbingly large number of the grains of sand had minds of their own and could hardly care less about following any laws, natural or otherwise.

Anyway, since MacGreggor was dead, his father's ghost should have been trapped in the third or fifth circle of hell, not haunting the League. Once the curse had settled in and the rest of reality finished arranging itself to accomodate the wish, that's precisely where he would have gone. However, he was currently caught in a loophole. He knew he was supposed to be haunting one of his children, but he couldn't find any of them. They were all dead, now.

When MacGreggor was convicted of his father's murder, and subsequently hanged, his family was devasted. The mother blamed herself for both deaths and suffered a complete mental break down. Confining her to an asylum had consumed most of the family's remaining resources. The eldest sister felt compelled to enter into a loveless marriage, to a man with sufficient resources to care for her sisters. The man was a violent drunk who, in one of his frequent fits of rage, knocked his wife down a stairway. She died a few days later from the injuries. The second sister developed consumption--it was said she wasted away from a broken heart. The third sister was forced, after all this, to a life on the street, where she contracted syphilis and joined her siblings in death. All because MacGreggor wasn't there to take care of his family.

None of the other members of the League, not even Mrs. Cuthbert, could perceive Bernard's ghost, his connection to their new reality was that tenuous. I believe Miss Sinclair could perceive him because her own natural resistance to most things magickal was preventing her from fully aligning with the new reality. In any case, she learned enough from him to convey the news of the other MacGreggors' deaths to Miss Whitnell and MacGreggor.

Emily was becoming quite distressed during all of this, convinced that each of her companions was losing their minds. She has a particular phobia along those lines, not to mention a number of issues with men in general. If she were a bit more creative she might make a decent vengeance demon. I bet she would give Anyanka some competition in the cursing men department! Emily decided to test Salmalin's reflexes. She struck at him from behind. I don't think she was very relieved when, using the thuggee's reflexes and training and memories, MacGreggor caught the blow and suggested that now wasn't a good time to practice.

A moment later, MacGreggor's personality resurfaced. He realized that he was slowly being absorbed into the thuggee and it scared him. That fear put both Miss Whitnell and Emily into no small amount of anguish. Ah, I love to watch a good curse coming to fruition!

Meanwhile, Miss Chigwidgeon had received a vision. I really wish that there was a way to keep gods out of these things. They do not seem to operate under the same restrictions as either the Powers or the Lower Beings and they are quite content to switch which side they are working toward on the slightest whim. Kali had imparted some information about me, a vision specifically of the moment when O'Flaherty had grabbed me by the shirt front when I was disguised as the bartender. I wasn't sure, at first, why Kali pointed the girl toward O'Flaherty.

He had arrived at the villa, along with Ramsey, Frazer, Mr. Cuthbert, and Lestrade. And he was having a bit of trouble with more ghosts. Specifically an old nemesis who had only recently died. The nemesis was a bit too helpful, explaining to O'Flaherty that he, O'Flaherty, and his companions were all in Purgatory.

Which they were, temporarily. See, when the power of the wish folds reality, it has to fold it somewhere. The folded bits extrude into Purgatory while the rest of reality sorts itself out, you see. That's how a victim of the curse can sometimes remember parts of the old reality along with the new. It also gives us a little leeway, if it turns out, for example, that we wrongfully cursed someone, say a person who is destined to play a major role in a coming apocalypse, or just someone the Lower Beings want left alone. Until reality had finished adjusting to the wish, it was still possible to lift the curse, push the folded bits out of Purgatory, and restore the world to the way it had been.

Apparently O'Flaherty could percieve more than the ghost. Other parts of Purgatory came into his perceptions. Miss Chigwidgeon thought this was fascinating, but she remembered her vision, and began questioning O'Flaherty about the bartender. The big Irish lout remembered my name, sort of, though he had a devil of a time pronouncing it. While he was discussing my appearance with Miss Chigwidgeon, and trying to ignore the larger and larger host of ghosts crowding around them, he pulled from his pocket his lucky coin and went to kiss it.

That was when he saw that it wasn't his coin. It was my amulet. My powerstone. The center of my powers as a vengeance demon. Why did he have it, you ask? Well, one of the conditions of the power of the wish is that my amulet must act as an anchor for the altered reality, at least until the rest of the universe adjusts itself to the wish. Usually this means that the amulet is left in the possession of the wisher. But sometimes the amulet sets itself into another part of the new reality. I'm not altogether certain why it put itself in O'Flaherty's pocket. But that's where it was.

That's all part of the price of the power of the wish. Once a mortal makes an appropriate wish, I can bend reality to my will, but I temporarily lose possession of the amulet. Most of the times the mortals involved never realize what it is, if they even notice it at all. Once the curse is fully integrated into the fabric of the universe, the amulet reverts back to me. But during that interval, I am vulnerable.

When O'Flaherty produced the amulet from his pocket, Miss Chigwidgeon immediately recognized it from her vision. She exclaimed that she had seen the demon wearing the amulet, and O'Flaherty practically threw it at her, so anxious was he to get it away from himself. She snatched it up, told him to follow, and hurried into the house.

Ramsay had found Anyanka's entry in Hume's Index of the Diabolical. There it was, an illustration of her face that looked enough like the picture MacGreggor had drawn of me to get Ramsay's attention. The entry referred to Anyanka as both the patron of scorned women and a demon of vengeance. And the cursed book also contains a picture of Anyanka's amulet, a spell for summoning her, and mentions that the amulet can be used to bargain one's way out of the curse.

Now, I'm not one to complain, but Anyanka's incompetence has cost many of us a fair curse over the years. In the 12th century a Franciscan monk had gotten possession of Anyanka's amulet while the curse was still ripening, and he forced her to lift a curse and swear by the Lower Beings never to harm any of the inhabitants of the village in question. I don't know why the Lower Beings didn't destroy her. Or why they allowed the story to survive in mortal hands long enough for the invention of moveable type. If they had smote a few well-chosen mortals while the information was still not widely known, things would be better for all us vengeance demons.

But I was never as popular as the notorious Anyanka. There are those that say the Lower Beings cut her so much slack because she has never, in nine hundred years, fallen behind her quota. Others say that signs and portents indicate she is destined to play a pivotal role in a future apocalypse. I, however, subscribe to the simpler explanation that she's sleeping with one of the Lower Beings. One has to admit that she's quite a looker.

Anyway, Ramsay had a pretty good idea what I was. He believed if they could find my name they might be able to alter Anyanka's summing spell to apply to me. But he thought it best that they find the amulet, first. As if on cue, Miss Chigwidgeon and Mr. O'Flaherty appeared with the amulet at that moment.

There was nothing I could do about it. Once the curse is in motion, until my amulet reverts back to me of its own accord, I can't re-enter the arena unless I'm summoned. I can observe the mayhem, relish the suffering of the victims, but I can't get involved.

So I watched, helpless, as they prepared a pair of magic circles. I could only gnash my teeth and curse as they read my name from the amulet (another condition of the power of the wish--there must be limits and loopholes in anything that far-reaching). And then, as they chanted the modified version of Anyanka's summoning, I had to materialize inside the empty circle.

If I could, I would have appeared in a clap of thunder with a dramatic explosion of smoke. Perhaps with the scent of brimstone heavy in the air. Unfortunately that's not how it works. I have to teleport in by the most efficient route. The most I can do is deepen the shadows so I materialize ominously in the dark. Though I couldn't arrive with the fire and brimstone, at least I could ask in a menacing voice who dared to summon me!

The Witch answered, saying she and the Watcher had done the deed. I rebuked her, a woman, for daring to summon me, the punisher of cold-hearted women. I told her she would be punished for the transgression.

She seemed unmoved. I didn't really expect less from the heir of the Witch of Darlson, though I had reduced her to tears earlier. I turned on MacGreggor, skulking beside them like a repentent schoolboy. I told him he was a fool to throw it away. If he had just accepted his wish graciously, he would soon have what he desired, the love of this woman.

He rejected it, saying he never wished to steal Salmalin's place, and that all he had ever wanted was Miss Whitnell's happiness. Did I mention the martyr complex? And the doormat syndrome? I mean, how can I be expected to mete out proper punishment when scorned men like that roll over and beg for more abuse?

The Witch interrupted, accusing me of cheating. I had half a mind to point out that I was evil, after all. But I didn't need to go there. Mortals are so silly about these rules. Fairy tales have given them the notion that they must actually say the words "I wish..." at the beginning of a wish for it to be valid. All that is required is a positive affirmation of the desire. The exact formulation can be almost anything, so long as the wisher makes a positive affirmation. "Of course I would" is about as positive an affirmation as there can be.

But they insisted on arguing for several minutes. They finally showed me the amulet. I acted as if I hadn't known or cared that they had it. I explained that my immediate superior, D'Hoffryn, would never allow me to lift such a good curse.

They threatened to destroy the amulet.

I laughed, told them it would have no effect. Which, of course, was a lie, but if they would just hesitate for a moment, if the Witch loosened her grip as she looked to her companions for advice, I could snatch it from her.

She didn't hesitate. She pulled out a weapon and turned away.

Of course, I knew something she didn't. Because it was my power that had created this reality, her magic circle had no effect on me in the altered reality. If she had summoned me at some other time, I would have been constrained within the circle until released or summoned elsewhere. But in that non-time and non-place, the circle had no power over me.

I leapt from the circle and grabbed her. I slammed her against the wall, and propelled us both through to the other side.

MacGreggor jumped me from behind. And he summoned the talents of the thuggee. Or, perhaps, the thuggee's soul was incensed to see the Witch in danger that he asserted himself on her behalf. He unleashed his full power, punching his fist through my spine so hard that it came out of my chest. If I had been a mortal, or one of the lesser demons, that would have seriously inconvenienced me. It hurt indescribably, but as I said earlier, I didn't have a heart to destroy with a thuggee mantra. Neither was my spine a vital organ. Truth be told, vengeance demons have no vital organs. All wounds, no matter how deep, wide, or bloody, are mere flesh wounds. We heal from them in a matter of seconds. The most you can do to us with weapons and fist is to stun us temporarily.

MacGreggor wasn't alone. Emily came at me from one side with sword in one hand and a knife in the other. Miss Chigwidgeon came at me from another side using hand-to-hand combat moves learned from the thuggee. O'Flaherty jumped in, too. At one point or another in the next few minutes, just about every member of the League struck me a blow that would have killed a mortal.

I managed to wound most of them. I killed MacGreggor, the ingrate. I was about to do the same to Emily and Miss Chigwidgeon, when the Witch broke my amulet.

That is the only way to hurt one of us.

Such agony I felt. It was as if every thread of the fabric of the universe where pulled forcibly through my body. While on fire. When the pain subsided, I found myself in the jail, again. I was just saying the word, "Granted!"

And nothing happened. Truth be told, for many minutes there I couldn't remember that I'd already granted the curse and my amulet had been destroyed. It was as if the reweaving of the universe had required unravelling my memory. I said "Granted!" again, and tried with all my might to make the wish come true.

Nothing happened. I tried to shapeshift to my natural form. It didn't work. I was trapped as a scruffy, smelly, unhealthy mongrel. I tried to get MacGreggor to make another wish. He obliged me, now, freely wishing that I was a less smelly dog, a more handsome dog, and several other things. I tried to grant them all, even without any curseful hooks. But none of it worked.

My memories began to sort themselves out. They'd broken my amulet. My power was gone. I was trapped in this mangy body, doomed to live out a brief, unhappy life, and die alone and powerless.

Unless I could find a way out.

I turned up my nose at the haughty Mr. MacGreggor, swore that some day I would have my revenge, and I left. I knew it would be difficult to get my powers back. I hadn't quite realized what a horrible liability a lack of thumbs would be. It it so hard to turn the pages of a magickal tome without a fully functioning set of fingers and thumbs, and never mind lighting candles!

I haven't succeeded, yet, but mark my words, I shall get my powers back. And then there will be a day of reckoning like no other in the last two millenia! They will scream. They will cry out for mercy. They will grovel at my feet and beg for release. And will laugh as I turn away in disdain.

But just now, I'll settle for that bath and meal you promised.

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