"No."

"I suppose we can conduct the whole trip on that basis, but it'll make it less fun, and maybe less beneficial to Asmodeus too.  How about if you're nice to me and tell me, and then I'll be nice to you?"

"Fine.  The entire time you were gone, I spent with various things trying to seduce me into spending a few hours with them, in exchange for a large gem or magic item."

"You know you're just allowed to tell them all no, and to leave you alone until I get back, right?"

"Weren't you supposed to be nice back to me, now?"

"So I was.  Here's forty thousand platinum pieces' worth of spending money.  Not for anything in particular, just if anything catches your eye while we're wandering around."  Ione hands over a bag that would be much heavier if it wasn't mostly huge faceted rubies and other gemstones.

"What the fuck did you sell to her."

"Eh, some of Doomlord's stuff.  I'd say it's not important and not to worry about it, but I'd be lying."

"Is there a point at which I get read in on this whole Doomlord business?"

"Yes, actually.  It's the point at which you're sufficiently reliably a grownup that you can be trusted to act on that information, granted you on that basis, only in ways that benefit Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus, rather than trying to seize as much benefit for Asmodeus as possible."

"I have, in fact, been incredibly fucking cooperative about that.  Since the day that Snack Service first told me I couldn't arrest a group of Osirian spies because Surprise Compact I Never Agreed To."

"Yeah, but you also spent the entire four months whining about it and that does not encourage trust on genuinely serious matters, Pilar."

"I perceive that going all the way over to Good doesn't change the extent to which one is an enormous bitch, then.  I'd wondered."

"And you're not an enormous bitch?"

"First of all: I'm Evil, what's your excuse.  And second: no, actually.  I just have a huge case of resting bitch face, which is probably something like seventy percent of how I was able to still be considered a serious Asmodean after I started going around giving people cookies."

"Surprisingly valid."

Pilar doesn't answer because she's staring at the display-window of the bottom level of a five-story building, trying to deal with the thought her brain just had and the subsequent complete thought crash.

"Whatcha looking at?  - Oooh, Metamagic Rods."

"Yes, Pilar, that's right.  You want them.  You have plenty of spending money.  You should go in and buy all the cool ones."

"Do it, Pilar."

"It'll make you a better Asmodean."

"Do it."

"Wow, you are so bad at that dark hissing voice of corruption, what with still sounding like a teenage girl."

"Don't need to expend an auditory illusion on sounding better.  You're not going to be that hard to corrupt."

"Yeah, fair."

Pilar Pineda heads into the store which has ALL THE METAMAGIC RODS with a weird spring in her step and an odd light feeling in her heart.  This is evil, right?  She's being evil right now?  She's sure this is what Abrogail Thrune would do in her place.  Shopping must be evil.