The University has two libraries -- the one named after some rich douchebag who funded the football team for about thirty years, and the Annex. The one named after the rich douchebag (Caldwell, if you want to stop being profane about the whole matter) is a clean, well-lighted modern facility of glass and steel and computerized card catalogues; multimedia centers and comfortable study carrels; meeting rooms equipped with whiteboards and internet access; bland rows of nondescript books that sport enough dust to make even the most hardcore lover of the printed word realize that we're only a few short years from purely digital libraries. The last gasp of the college library; give it a decade and they'll turn it into lecture halls ... or plow it under for a new stadium.

The Annex is not any of those things.

The Annex is the original University library, a Gothic pile of stone and turrets and pinnacles; the sort of place where you can imagine Heathcliff roaming the halls; Bertha wailing away in a secret attic chamber; de la Poer's rats chewing away at the bindings of the century-old texts; vaulted ceilings and echoing cellars; the smell of ancient leather and the sound of whispering paper. Every tour guide on campus has a different ghost story to tell about the place, from the obligatory spectral librarian wandering the stacks to the amorous couple who spent one Halloween night in a forgotten study lounge, only to be found dead in the morning, their hair turned white and their eyes bulging out in terror.

Obviously none of those stories are true, which is why you're here on another Halloween night. Alone. With the book.

You'd never find a tome like this in the Caldwell Library. Nothing there predates the 1960s; all the old and useless crap was left here in the Annex. Even the Special Collections room remains here, probably due to the prohibitive cost of moving the bank vault style door from the Annex's subcellar (or, God forbid, buying a new one). But it wasn't in Special Collections where you found the book. No -- it lay on a bottom shelf at the end of one of the infinite stacks, innocuous and gritty with dust, its Latin title barely visible, the gilt long since having peeled away.

A book of spells. A book of summonings. A book of rituals, preserved from the 16th century or even earlier. You knew what you'd found at once.

And that's why you're here, in this lonely room beneath the annex, the pentagram chalked on the cracked and rolling floor, candles flickering and incense smoldering, a ritual dagger in one hand -- voice quivering as you call out to me.

To Azraphel. To the Lord of Desire, the granter of wishes, ready to grant your deepest hungers ... for a price.

The illustration is a crude one, but you've read other descriptions of me. The black fur covering powerful body, the rams' horns curling over my head, the strangely goatish yet alluring, heavily masculine features, the hooved goatlegs and lashing tail ... and of course the cock. Not monstrously huge ... unless that is your craving. A thing of malleable flesh, reshaping itself to whatever hungers haunt your darkest dreams.

And in one pawlike hand, the silver needle, the one that will give you the witch's mark, the one that will pierce not flesh but spirit. Where Azraphel will claim his due.

But you're a modern woman. You can get what you want from this absurd old demon without falling prey to his hungers. That's all superstitious nonsense. You know better. You'll be able to deal with him without breaking a sweat.

You hope.

I've left the nature of Azraphel's supplicant entirely open. What wish you're looking to have granted, and what price Azraphel will exact, can all be discussed and negotiated. And just because I've described a college setting, don't feel restricted to being a bubbleheaded co-ed. Tenured lady professors are most welcome.