The devil smiled, an act that made him look oddly like Krishna Menon. "You are disturbed," he said, "but you really needn't keep projecting such raw fear. I have no intention of harming you. Quite the contrary in fact."
Miss Twilley wasn't reassured. Devils with British accents were probably untrustworthy. "Why don't you go back to hell where you came from?" she asked pettishly.
"I wish," the devil said with a shade of annoyance in his beautifully modulated voice, "that you would stop using those terminal 'l's', I'm a Devi, not a devil—and my homeworld is Hel, not hell. One 'l', not two. I'm a species, not a spirit."
"It makes no difference," Miss Twilley said. "Either way you're disconcerting, particularly when you come slithering out of my T.V. set."
"It might give your television industry a bad name," the Devi agreed. "But there are many of your race who claim the device is an invention of mine."
"I don't enjoy being frightened," Miss Twilley said coldly. She was rapidly recovering her normal self-possession. "And I would have felt much better if you had stayed where you belonged and minded your own business," she finished.
"But my dear young lady," the Devi protested. "I never dreamed that I would frighten you, and besides you are my business." He smiled gently at the suddenly re-frozen Miss Twilley.
I must be dreaming, Miss Twilley thought wildly. This has to be a nightmare. After all, this is the Twentieth Century and there are no such things as devils.
"Of course there aren't," the Devi said.