"Well, you fucked that one up royally," Myr opines, straightening from his own hunch. "Can't say I know from this Jeremy fellow, but you--sorry, your...brother? Compatriot?--left Rich exactly as miserable as it found him."

The question, of course, is why it would say something that far in conflict with the facts of the situation. Did it want him to believe it? Did it believe that itself--and were its creators spectacularly incompetent on top of breathtakingly irresponsible?

Or did it crave misery and mastery as much as any other demon did?

(It is sort of grotesquely amusing that it hadn't failed entirely at part of its stated intention: Apparently Rich and Jeremy had ended up friends by the end of it. "Shared trauma from demonic possession" was just about the worst way he could think of to make friends, though.)