Billy considers this.
“Besides,” Lucifer says. “If you do this, you’ll have saved the world. I would hope that you could categorize whatever ancillary benefits might emerge as things you had earned.”
“Maybe,” Billy says. “But what exactly would I be doing? I still don’t get that part. How exactly would I be getting the thing from the dude?”
“Let’s get off the street,” Lucifer says. An expression of deep appetite spreads across his features. “Have you had breakfast? I know a place.”
They end up taking a quick cab to an Algerian creperie. They settle in on tufted ottomans and a lean man with the most impeccably groomed mustache Billy has ever seen brings them an octagonal tin samovar of what Billy can immediately tell is really good coffee. After his first sip, Lucifer begins speaking with more animation than Billy’s ever seen in him.
“Until Ollard dispels all the seals,” Lucifer says, “the Neko still, in some real sense, belongs to me. I can sense it. I can’t tell you exactly where it is, but I can tell you that it is likely underground.”
“Like buried?” Billy says.
“Not buried,” Lucifer says. “More like in a basement. So you won’t need to waste time going through the upper levels of the tower. You get in, you go down.”
“How am I even going to get in in the first place? If I were, in fact, to actually agree to go in.”
“What do you mean?” Lucifer says. “You’ve seen through the cloak. You go in through the door.”
“Okay, but, seriously, am I crazy to think that Ollard might just not, you know, be a hundred percent cool with me just walking in there and taking his cat?”
“My cat,” Lucifer says. “But no, he probably won’t be.”
“So what do I do? When he tries to stop me?”
Lucifer shrugs. “You fight him.”
“I fight him?”
“You fight him like the fate of the world depended on it.”
“You have the wrong guy,” Billy says. “I haven’t thrown a punch in, like, ever.”
“This might help,” Lucifer says. He reaches into the pocket of his coat and takes out a little cylinder of self-defense spray, which he slides across the table. It has a key ring on it.
“This?” Billy says. “Is it magical?”
“No,” Lucifer says.
“So, really? That’s the entire plan? Walk in the front door, pepper-spray Ollard, grab the cat and run?”
“Billy,” Lucifer says. “It is dangerous to overplan. Plans, by definition, are rigid, and it is to our advantage to remain as fluid as possible. Thus, as you said: you walk in the front door. You find the Neko. If you need to, you fight Ollard. If you encounter any difficulties, simply retreat, and you and I will make a new plan that accounts for whatever difficulty we have encountered. That is the plan. Simplicity, Billy. The great virtue of a simple plan is that it leaves one with fewer, far fewer, things to fuck up. You can do this. Now: eat.”
Billy’s savory lamb crepes hit the table, and he wolfs them down. They are the best thing he’s eaten in days, weeks maybe, and he feels a sudden swell of gratitude. He remembers Anil’s gag from the other night: a small, good thing in a time like this. But there’s something to that. Good food: that alone maybe makes the world worth saving. His mood picks up a little. Maybe the Devil is right; maybe he can do this. He stifles a belch with his napkin.
“Okay. Okay,” he says, in a very small voice. “I have to tell you, though: I’m scared. I saw that tower. It’s scary.”
“Well,” says Lucifer. He takes a sip of coffee. “It’s designed to look scary. It’s an illusion.”
“It’s a really fucking good illusion,” Billy says.
“Yes,” Lucifer says, “because Timothy Ollard is a really fucking good illusionist.”
Billy frowns, tries out an alternate wording, frowns again. He takes the tiny pepper-spray canister into his hand.
“You’re afraid,” Lucifer says, after watching this for a minute, “that Ollard is going to kill you.”
“Yes,” Billy says, a little relieved to have it out there, on the table.
“The You Getting Killed part,” Lucifer says. “You see? I remembered that.”
“Awesome?” Billy says.
“Ollard will not attempt to kill you. It’s a delicate time for him; while he works on the Neko he needs to lie as low as possible. Using magic to take a human life is—attention-getting. Disruptive. Sloppy.”
“But what if he doesn’t use magic? What if he uses, like, a shotgun?”