Guilty Smith the runesmith. Back then, here, to the room where the runes had begun, to trap a girl he sensed would come. He set a noisetrap at the outer door (it opened outward so he propped a 4 x 4 against it and an old tin washtub under it; open the door and whamcrash!) and next to it a rune-trap (which cannot be described here) and he settled down to wait.

The nixie to the incubus:

What have you been doing? I’ve lured him back to the focus location. You fool! He may suspect now. He suspects nothing. I’ve implanted a delusion, a girl. When he sleeps we take him and rip the veil completely. What girl? What have you done? You can ruin it all, you egomaniac! There is no girl. A succubus. I tried earlier, but it went wrong. This time he’s weaker, he’ll sleep, we’ll take him.

What makes you think he’ll succumb this time, any more than he did the last time? Because he’s a human and he’s weak and stupid and lonely and filled with guilt and he has never known love. I will give him love. Love that will drain him, empty him. Then he’s mine.

Not yours…ours.

Not yours at all, nixie. The Masters will see to you.

He stood in a dark corner, waiting. And sleep suddenly seemed the most important thing in the world to him. He wanted to sleep.

Sleep! Should a man live threescore years, one of them must go to this inert stupidity, a biochemical habit deriving from the accident of diurnal rotation. The caveman must huddle away behind rocks and flame during the hours of darkness because of the nocturnal predators who can see better in the dark than he can.