"Tehran?" Robin spat the name in disgust, and slumped heavily down in his chair. "The Middle East again?"

There was nobody there to listen to him, but it made him feel just a little more sane to vent his frustrations out loud. He didn't look at the box on the shelf now, and he was done listening to the demon's excuses. He'd thought he was signing away his soul for a shot at being the most powerful man in the world, but it turned out he was bargaining with his sanity as well. It was too late to change his mind now.

"I told you," he carried on, "We're not going overseas. Not until I can afford it. I don't care what's on the news, or what you think you might find out there in some desert hellhole. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get home after the last time? Especially with the army running round, looking for anyone out of place?"

The only answer he got was silence.

"Look, we got off on the wrong foot. I want the power, right, but I'm not interested in following through on all your dreams. If you want to do that stuff, you need to make it worth it for me. And skipping the country without even giving me a warning, that's not going to make me trust you. If you're going to do stuff like that, you need to give me a warning. Ask me if it's okay, not lay down the law like you're doing me a favour. Understand?"

"I have to–" his own voice answered him, sounding unusually shrill to his ears. He interrupted right away, cutting it off.

"What you have to do is give me the power you promised," he snapped. "If you're going to play fair, then maybe we can come to some kind of agreement. But dragging me halfway around the world, without any way to get back, when there's going to be cops and soldiers swarming all over the region because of the monsters... And that's another thing. Monsters. There hasn't been anything like that in the news recently. There was something in the local media like ninety years back, when the rest of the world didn't take it seriously. So give me a straight answer, they're something to do with you, right?"

"I thought you didn't care for our destiny? You said my plans aren't your concern, and you have no interest in how I settle my old scores."

Robin shook his head in disgust. It was repeating his own words back to him, but completely twisting the meanings.

"I said I don't want to be involved. Not that you can use my body without even asking. If you're going to be involved in stuff like that, I need to know. Because these days, the law's interested in monsters too. I don't want to be waking up in a military base again, while there's guys running around like headless chickens because some kind of ghost dinosaur is trashing the city. What even are those things?"

"I'll tell you, if that's what you really want. But the terms of the soul contract are not normally so flexible. I can't use most of my own powers in this form, so I'm at a significant disadvantage. And I can only fight for a few minutes, that's why you find yourself isolated. If you want to avoid those problems, you need to deal with me like all of your predecessors have. Do you understand? You use my powers, and you use them to fulfil both our aims. Then I will only use your powerless body to fulfil my more human needs, and you won't be left hurt, or stranded."

"But you'd be... I can't imagine... You want to use my body to..." Robin was so disgusted by the demon's proposals that he couldn't even fit words around what she wanted. But he knew that he couldn't cope any longer with the demon using his body to channel magic, that was slowly tearing him apart.

"The fusion of two minds is the key," it insisted, "Two minds and two hearts. My heart and mind in your body, or my body to be controlled by your mind and the sum of our hearts. That is the only way my power can be channeled. I don't like being around monsters with this weak body any more than you do, but you haven't left me any option."

"I don't see why monsters have to be involved at all," Robin growled, but they both knew that was as close as he could come to agreement. He'd do it, if it was the only way he'd stop waking up in strange places with his body battered and bruised by some ritual he could neither remember nor understand. "Fine. I'll think about it. But first, you tell me what these monsters are, why you have to do this, and all the bits I've missed out on. Right?"

"As you wish."

Suddenly the office chair, the desk, and the stacks of papers around him were gone. He was in another city, and looking down at his hands, he knew he was another person. These must be the demon's memories. A previous person's contract maybe, or before that had ever started.

"This is my world," a familiar voice whispered into the back of his mind. "This palace, we knew it just as The City. Where people of the modern day think of it at all, you might call it Atlantis. I ruled the whole world once, you understand. But they called me a traitor, and tried to take it from me. I'll show you what happened, and then perhaps you will understand why I need to form this contract. Why there is no path open to me, but to take back what should be mine."