I realized Jim had disappeared from view and called out to him. “Don’t go into the bushes. I have to pick up your offerings, remember, and I don’t fancy crawling around inside of a bush to do so.”

Jim stuck his head out of the rhodie. “I’m not going to do this right out there in the open where anyone can see me! That’s unnatural!”

“A talking dog who is really a demon is unnatural,” I pointed out, shaking the plastic bags at him. “Now, get with the program and poop.”

“You’re looking at me again!” he said, emerging from the rhododendron. “I can’t poop when people look at me, and while we’re on that subject, what does it say about you that you want to watch me?”

“Sweet Samarian sandals, I don’t want to watch you! I’m simply trying to keep track of where you are so I can pick up your ploppies. Now, stop arguing and get down to business.”

He squinted his eyes at me. “You sure you don’t have some sort of dog pooping fetish?”

“Argh!” I yelled, slapping the plastic bags on my thighs. “I don’t have any fetishes whatsoever. Why the hell aren’t you pooping? You said you were about to explode!”

“It’s Abaddon, not hell,” Jim corrected with a sniff, and turned his back to me, strolling over to a patch of grass near the fence line.

“Well?” I asked after a couple of minutes and still no action. “Come on, Jim. We don’t have all day; I’m tired and I want to curl up in bed.”

“I can’t go with the sort of performance pressure you’re putting on me!” Jim snapped, glaring at me.

I looked pointedly at my watch. “Honestly, I had no idea demons were this fussy about bodily functions.”

“Me being a demon has nothing to do with it,” Jim answered, moving to another spot. I cast a look around, but Istvan had evidently just completed his check along the perimeter of the fence and was heading back our way. “It’s because I picked this magnificent form, and you can’t rush things like internal functions if you want to keep your form in nice shape.”

I stopped dead next to a small azalea. “Wait a minute—you picked your form?”

“Of course.” Jim snuffled a couple of leaves on the ground and moved on down to the next shrub.

“You wanted to be a dog? You didn’t just end up that way?”

“Demons don’t work like that. We get to pick our forms unless our demon lords order us to a different one.” He struck a pose for a few seconds. “Could you imagine anything more fabulous than this? There isn’t anything. I’ve got the pinnacle of demon forms, let me tell you.”

I followed after him deeper into the shadows as a line of trees marching alongside the fence cast inky fingers that the streetlights didn’t disperse. “Wait a second—how come you’re suddenly an expert on being a demon when a few days ago you thought you were nothing more than a dog?”

“It’s called asking questions, babe. Turns out Rene knows a lot of stuff.”

I shrugged off his explanation. “So, you could be anything you wanted, anything at all? Like a horse? Or an elephant?”

He laughed and headed for a bench that sat firmly in the shadows of a tall line of elms. “Yeah, but you really would not want to take me walkies if I was an elephant. Talk about ploppies! Hey, that spot over there smells pretty good. This area has been peed on a lot.” He set off at a fast walk across the corner of the park toward a clump of trees where a small groundskeeper’s shed sat. I stood for a minute in thought before I realized that he was almost out of view. I dashed after him, hearing Istvan shout something behind me, no doubt chastising me for getting so far from his protection.

“You annoying demon!” I said as I ran up to where Jim was smelling the door of the shed, an odd look on his face. “Right, this is ending here and now. As your demon lord, I command you to stop being a dog and instead change into a human being, the kind who can take himself to the bathroom and who doesn’t slobber all over everything, including my shoes and Kostya’s pants legs.”

“Hey, you know what this smells li—” Jim’s eyes bugged out the second the words left my lips. He spun around, his body elongating and changing as he moved. There was a little ripple in the air, and Jim the dog was gone, replaced by a man a little shorter but stockier than Kostya, with a broad chest, dark hair and eyes, and an expression of absolute astonishment. “Fires of Abaddon, Eefies! What did you do to me?”

I stared openmouthed for a second until I realized what I was doing. “You don’t have any clothes on!” I said, pointing at his crotch. “Jim, put some clothes on!”

“You made me human,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, an annoyed expression on his face as he examined himself. “Man, I can’t tell you how much this sucks. Look at my package! It’s not nearly as good as it was, and I don’t have that cute white spot on my chest anymore, and crapballs, I don’t have a tail! How am I supposed to express my emotions without a proper tail? I’m ugly and awkward, and look, I can’t even lift my leg properly.”

I spun around at the sight of Jim trying to lift his leg on the side of the shed, and rubbed my forehead, hoping the dull throb there was going to go away. “Holy testicles, Jim! You can’t do that now. And stop whining—being human isn’t that bad.”

“Yeah?” He marched around to stand in front of me. “You’re saying I can’t pee on whatever I want? Or take a dump behind that shed, like I was going to do before you got all demon lord on my butt?” He glanced over his shoulder to his backside. “Aw, man! My butt is huge now, too! There isn’t anything good about human form! I bet I can’t even lick my own—”

“Okay, new ground rules. When we are in human form, we do not mimic the behavior of dogs. We also don’t talk about the things that we can no longer do. Got that? Good. Let’s go home and you can use the bathroom there, or if you can’t make it that far, we’ll stop at the café on the corner and use their facilities.”

“Right, because the café won’t have an issue at all with me showing up starkers because you forgot to order me to have some clothes when you forced me into a new form.” Jim’s expression was oddly the same now that he was human—and a tiny little voice in my head pointed out that I actually missed Jim’s doggy form—and right now, it read sour discontent.