The Demon and the City

indeed look like a dog of some sort, but much larger. She descended the fire escape and picked her way warily through the litter. The animal was nowhere to be seen. Robin dumped her bag and pushed the rest of the mess around with her foot, until it lay in a heap. Let the collectors sort it out. By morning, half of it would be gone, sneaked away to sell to the recyclers. There was a pungent, animal smell around the alley, unfamiliar, but redolent of earth and meat. Uneasily, Robin climbed back up the rickety escape and shut the kitchen hatch. She spent the evening in front of the television, pondering her problem of Mhara's horrible prophecy until her head pounded.
    Deveth did not call.

Four
    Until this week, Zhu Irzh had been residing in a somewhat seedy boardinghouse in Lower Murray Street, but Chen's trip to Hawaii had brought an unexpected offer.
    "You can look after the houseboat for me, if you like," Chen had said, glancing amiably upward at the demon standing by his desk. "We'll be gone for three weeks; I'd like someone to water the plants and look after the badger."
    "You're not taking the badger with you?"
    "No, it might cause problems taking him on the plane even in his inanimate form and, anyway, he says he's happy to stay at home. I don't suppose he'll be much trouble. He'll probably be in teakettle mode most of the time. So. What shall I do, drop off the keys on our way to the airport?"
    Thus, in the space of a morning, Zhu Irzh had acquired a new home and a familiar. He was becoming almost domesticated, he thought. He had always wanted to live on a boat, that traditional last resort of the poor. It was a long way from that pagoda fortress of his home in Hell, the balconies and verandahs of the Irzh clan, but Zhu Irzh didn't miss the luxury all that much. At least he didn't have to put up with his mother, and that was worth a bit of poverty.
    The boat was moored some distance from the waterfront which, a short distance later, led round to Ghenret harbor. Chen had moved the boat closer to shore before a recent typhoon, and it was now reached via a few short hops over a series of pontoons. It looked out over the polluted waters of the Shendei, which, despite their filth, was why Zhu Irzh liked it. He supposed that Chen felt the same way. He could sit on the windowsill in the evening and watch the freighters plough across the harbor, until the swift night fell out of the sky and they became only moving lights.
    It was a long way down the wharf. Zhu Irzh passed one of his neighbors on the way; an elderly lady who seemed faintly familiar, though all these people looked alike to him. She did not seem to see him, which was probably just as well. It would have been easier in ways if he had been equally invisible to his human colleagues, but the police station was covered with revealing spells, just in case something nasty decided to slip in and wreak havoc, and so Zhu Irzh stood out like a sore thumb once inside the walls of the precinct. The spells made him sneeze, to add insult to injury. Zhu Irzh tended to unnerve those folk who could actually see him, though the people who lived around the harbor seemed a fair old mix themselves. Sometimes fights broke out on the wharf; mostly, it was quiet. The whole community, with the exception of Zhu Irzh and a few other reclusive souls, decamped to the bars down the road during the evenings and lived out their dramas in more congenial surroundings.
    Zhu Irzh unlocked the door and shut it behind him. The room was stuffy, so he opened the windows and let in a faint breath of air from the sea. At one end of the cubicle was a tiny shower, which generally worked. He stripped and stood, resigned, under the trickle of water. At least it was cold. Stepping from under the shower, he rummaged for fresh clothes, glancing at himself in the reflected mirror door of the closet as he did so. The reflection smiled back at him, turning and posing. Zhu Irzh frowned. He didn't feel much like the glittering image in the mirror. Any longer, and he might—terrible thought—start losing his looks. The human world was taking it out of him, depleting his energies. He needed a diversion. He needed a girlfriend .

Five
    The heat grew as the night wore on. Robin slept badly, tossing the damp sheet off the futon and onto the floor, and toward dawn she got up and opened the kitchen hatch. She stood for a moment on the parapet of the fire escape, looking first up at the pearly sky and then down