"Ho boy, Samantha! The one time we wanted the killing of a man? A lady in this case? You're leaving her alive? Are you stupid?"

  Emil had his hands in his hair, what was left of it. He wasn't looking at Sam. But he was looking around at the books in his study, as if they were about to get up and dance for him.

  "No, I'm not stupid. Without the earrings, she's gonna be dead. Everybody in her life was affected by those things. Every member of her staff. Every business dealing she ever had. Every political entanglement. Every single one of them. She used the earrings. She's gonna be dealing with so many people coming after her looking for revenge. She's not gonna have time to deal with me. Also, how's she gonna do sorcery when I busted her arms up?"

  Sam had gone against her nature, leaving a potential threat alive. The truth was, it would be more dangerous for her to kill Seraphina Van Thorne. It was better to humiliate her, take her powers, and then leave. The Van Thorne family was rich and powerful, but it all hinged on the earrings working their magic. Without them, all those she had manipulated and all those that had spent years nipping at her heels would be back. And this time, she would have no way to protect herself.

  "Okey-dokey. Well, you're the boss of things. We're gonna see if you're right about that or if you get squashed like a little bug because you play too big for your britches. And, you know, like I say, them Rosicrucians, you say what happens to them. Some of them guys was my friends. I'm gonna have me a drink for them and be a little bit pouty about it, I think."

  "Okay, but you're gonna be telling me about Furcas now. You make sacrifices to him in fighting, I think I understand you. Maybe that's why nobody talked to Furcas in a long time because most sorcerers are kinda wimpy.

  "But you got to be telling me about the powers you're getting. What? You say you're squishing them necks?"

  "When I get angry, I get strong. That's not really it. It's like I lose sight of everything else. The anger and the strength. It's like all I want to do is fight."

  Sam was troubled by the way she had handled the assassins. She could have killed them more gently, she supposed.

  "That's all you ever want to do anyway, so I think he's probably going to be okay. But listen, you gotta learn to control yourself. Okay? Because sometimes you can't be doing things by punching. You get it?"

  "Yeah, Emil. I understand," said Sam. "Thanks for worrying about me."

  "I'm not worried about you so much as I am worried about anybody gonna talk to you. You're gonna squish them. But now I am having a problem which I think I need to talk to you about. This means it's a big problem for me because talking to you never solves problems, you know?"

  "Well, when you put it that way, I'm all ears," replied Sam.

  "Remember how I'm telling you you need to be a better type of investigator? Well, now you're going to get a chance because I'm going to be hiring you, Samantha. The thing is, maybe it's nothing. Maybe I'm being scared, but I am scared."

  "Well, that is curious. What's got you scared that you can't just call up a demon and ask for clarity?"

  "I did go and talk to a demon. I asked to them, but the one I asked to he don't have no answer for me, and I'm gonna be honest, that is part of why I am scared. You see he was Marquis of the demons, and that means if he don't got no answer for me, not only is demons involved, but they stronger than Marquis. You remember what I'm teaching you it is going Marquises, Princes, Dukes, Kings. There is one guy above the Kings, but we don't ever talk to him. Not like Furcas, he's a different kind of not gonna talk to him."

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  "Can you tell me the problem, Emil?"

  "Okay, somewhere it's going away. Couple diviners in the city. Remember I told you there is only maybe one hundred diviners and these different types of powerful. You know how much they know from their teachers. We got the ones that work for the Empire, we got the ones that work for rich people, and sometimes I was one of them. So what is happening is a couple of them just poof gone. No more talk to them, they're gone."

  "A couple diviners disappeared, and you want me to look into it on account of how when you looked into it, a Marquis of the hierarchy could not give you an answer," clarified Sam.

  "Yes, that's the nutties and bolties of it, but I am telling you, maybe it's nothing. This is why I am not being worried too much. I tell you this because you know sometimes diviners do the magic on themselves to be secret. They're doing stuff they don't want nobody poking in on them, so they go to a Prince and they go, 'Hey Prince, make me secret.'"

  "Okay, well why don't you give me their names and you give me where I should have been able to find them, and we'll work out a price, and I'll go check it out? Sound good?"

  "Ho boy, I think you're probably gonna be charging me too much money for it. Probably not gonna be able to do shit, but yeah okay sounds good."

  Sam had barely been home since the incident with the Rosicrucians. She'd been there, showered. She did have to get rid of her overcoat. The stains weren't coming out. She barely rested before she went over to Emil's house in the morning. Sam hadn't been sleeping well lately on account of not being able to drink herself to a forgetful stupor.

  She was lonely down to her bones. It was hard to see herself doing violence in her own memories. It was hard to look back and regret things that she'd done, have them creep up into every happy little moment. She felt like she wanted to lay down and rest forever. The strength Furcas had given her had not faded, but now the weariness and sadness made her feel more weak than before she accepted his gift. She needed his power to survive, at the time. She needed it to escape. She knew she would need it in the future. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw how those men's eyes had changed from grim determination to absolute terror. Like she was death itself walking towards them. And in the end, for them, she was.

  Her hands shook as she sat alone in her office. Used to be she would drink the shakes away. Drink away the memories of the things that she had done in the war. She justified it by saying that if the enemy got their hands on her they'd have done the same things or worse. But that didn't make the shakes go away. It didn't make what was behind her eyes any easier to deal with. But drinking did. The Elixir of Life had taken care of that small comfort.

  As she sat in the creaky leather chair she had found in an alley when she first moved into her office, she lit a cigar and pulled long and slow. The smoke soothed her. She couldn't smoke cigarettes anymore on account of the Elixir as well. Every time she'd have a coughing fit like it was her first one. The Elixir must have healed her lungs up from all the damage she'd done over the years. The Elixir was a tremendous blessing. She used it to gain the power of Furcas. But it had taken nearly as much as it had given her, even as it saved her life.

  In the morning, she'd pull herself together, pretend nothing was wrong, head out into the day. She'd have to pick up a new jacket from somewhere. Throw her bloody shirt into the furnace. But for now she just sat alone with the blinds shut, consoling herself by remembering the men she killed were killers themselves. Had murdered her at least once, and tried to murder her before that.

  It made her think of Lisa. The woman did deserve to know that she had a demon inside her, but Sam had made a deal and paid a price for the deal. She was coerced into it. Haborym could have killed her as quick as looking at her. She had kept Lisa close by hiring her as a receptionist. And to the girl's credit, she was a damn good receptionist. Haborym's presence had saved both Sam and Lisa's lives. Even if it did set her on the path to becoming more of a killer than she already was.

  And that brought her mind back to the nature of the power Furcas had given her. The angrier she became, the stronger. Sam had learned to push her anger down. As a young girl, after her father was killed, she had no recourse. The orphanage she was shipped off to didn't wanna hear about how a child was gonna take revenge. There was no proof of murder. But she knew her father was murdered. She felt it in her gut. She now had the tools to get an answer if she wanted to, but the price for asking questions to the ones she could ask was too high for now.

  And she needed to find some damned diviners.