The house didn’t look like it beloo a diabolist.

  Usually, I’d have some shought about how little reality resembled someone’s book with cag vilins. However, between sympathetic magic properties and the corruptive influence of Diabolism, long-practig Diabolist residents would pick up some traits of the Hells’ magic.

  Also, I couldn’t really judge, I liked reading those books too.

  The house of Holmsteader’s liaison with the destitute was a small, pleasant oory house, freshly structed, possibly one of the buildings in the Quarter. A pleasant, weling porch, wide unbarred windows, even pnts, a set of three rose bushes. All very dull and mundane, part of a series set to the side of Glee Street for Holmsteader aop people. Probably the only buildings of their kind iire Quarter.

  Even the man’s name was dull and uening. Donald Tyler, was sidered a generous and passionate soul by the people he gathered to do bor for Holmsteader. Willing to sneak food or actual into their pay, as long as they weren’t too loud and Holmsteader wasn’t paying too close attention. At least two I’d talked to had lived through life-threatening illnesses because of him sneaking them to see a doctor on his own dime.

  Acts of charity turned sour by the realization he’d been doing them to keep his herd of sacrifices alive the way a farmer made sure animals destined for the sughterhouse lived long enough to produough meat when killed.

  I hadn’t e directly here first, having stopped with some of Marat and Jones’ fellows aing them. Some didn’t have the trag spell. Most did.

  In the process, I’d had to assuage quite a few fears and anger, and I at least was certain no one would be trying to attack Tyler tonight.

  Tonight being the keyword, if nothing was done and the days stretched on, some of them would definitely get ao try something on their own. However personally, I was more ed with Tyler finding out about my snooping.

  Let the days wear on and people might wonder how much I said was the truth and how much might have just been a show. Undermining trust in Holmsteader and her subordinates as the prelude to an attempted Bck Fme takeover. Something that they might get a reward from if they informed Tyler and Holmsteader.

  So I had a time limit. This had to be doonight before wot to either of them.

  Of course, while I’d done much to assuage the anger of those I’d talked to, two had insisted on ing with me to see this through. And given the choice between them helping me how they could or doing some other fool thing instead, I would relutly choose the former.

  They also cimed they’d be able to scare up a cart, which did sweeten the deal a little.

  So, Marat, Jones, and I were holed up in an alley while I tried to spot all the watchers assigned for this stretch of the street.

  This was the home of all of Glee Street’s leadership, there would be at least one, and I retty sure I’d spotted him. A drunk slumped over by a deserted horse hitg post from an era long gone, now rusted to the point the inal design was near-impossible to make out.

  He was not the best-trained watcher. Pretending to be bck-out drunk didn’t work when you perked up ever so slightly whenever anyone walked past.

  “You think it’ll be here?” Jones whispered. “Not at the pce he works? Or where he currently is?”

  I resisted the urge to sigh. My own fault for wanting helpers in case I o get something out of there. I hadn’t intehat meant I’d be giving lessons, but being blunt with these two? While handling something as delicate as this? It's not a wise move.

  “I doubt Holmsteader is involved,” I told him and Marat. “If she is, that means bigger problems than I handle. But if she doesn’t know, he’s not going to be doing rituals inside any space filled with her people. A hidden location inside an Infernal Gang’s stronghold? Won’t be hidden for long. A secure location in his home? Much safer and easier to hide. But if we need firmation?”

  I pulled out my bottle of are revealer agaiing a few drops fall on the grouween us and the house. Once agairag spells lit up, as well as easily a dozen others reag out from the house towards the outskirts of Glee Street.

  “I don’t get it,” Marat said, eyeing the ground and the glowing lines. “He should be at the ht now overseeing the scut work. Shouldn’t these be attached to them?”

  “Managing his risks,” I replied. “Sure, people magically ined who’ve learo peer into the are are rare, and he’s disguised his little trag spells as best he , but Glee Street? Where rid powerful e for a bit of safe anger and taboo-breaking? Magi get you there, so there’s probably a higher tration of those who practice than anywhere else in the Quarter. Sure, they’re disguised, but why run the risk when you anchor all the tethers to your house or an item i’s not like he o keep track when he’s doing his job for Holmsteader. Hells, I bet he’s only tagged people who live further in the Quarter just so none of them run through Glee Street.”

  It wasn’t foolproof, sine of the people he tagged would be w ireet, but it was as close as he could reasonably get.

  “There is only one way to find out,” I muttered. “ you get that cart you mentioned?”

  Jones nodded. “Take a bit of iating, but I have it here in half an hour. And Tyler don’t finish his overseeing of us till at least three hours from now.”

  Just a while before dawn. Which would be ing soon. What I would do for just eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  “Go then. I’ll hopefully be out with what I need by then.”

  He wice, then scampered off in the darkness. Still could move fast for an old-timer.

  “While Jones gets the wagon, I have something I want you to do,” I told Marat.

  “And what’s that?” she asked, squinting at me. She was less eager than her friend to help me on this, mostly dragged along by his anger.

  She, I thought, had doubts about what I’d done and about the theory I’d sketched out. I couldn’t bme her. Suspi was a stant panion if you wao live in the Quarter, maybe less today than it had in the past, but still.

  “See the bcked-out window he’s got leading to his celr?” I said, pointing towards it.

  “My eyesight ain’t goi. Yeah, I see it.”

  “I’m guessing that’s where he’d keep the evidence,” I told her. “He needs his first floor retively clear and for any guests he might have. So, oake out the watch, you head over there, and if anyone es to ehe house, just gently rap on it to get my attention. Then hide till they get inside?”

  She frowned, eyeing the celr window. “That’s it?”

  “That’s all,” I firmed. “I don’t want y anything else. If my suspis are right, I don’t think you hurt him, and I don’t want you to try. Be ba a bit.”

  The hitg post was on this side of the street, and I crept closer. I’d chosen an alley exiting close to where the pretend-drunk y. Another rookie mistake, and that made me pause. Holmsteader wasn’t a fool, so why this setup? You had yabouts in every operation, but I wasn’t this lucky.

  Bait. A decoy. There to grab the casual eye and the actual watcher could just keep an eye on them. I settled ba the alley, looking for easy pces to keep an eye og post. I’d already sed most, so where-

  I shook my head slightly. I only had looked from this side of the street, and there was an easy enough answer. Assuming not ihe building behind the hitg post? On top of it. I grabbed a rock, and then sidered how to get up the roof without being heard.

  Fireworks started firing off from Glee Street again, exploding into bursting balls of red and gold, the noise loud enough to deafen. Well, maybe I could get a little lucky.

  I cmbered onto the roof and made it only a few feet behind the sed watcher. He was crouched he ey, blending into its shadow while keeping an eye down below. While the fireworks tinued, I sidered my options for knog him unscious.

  Part of the kit I’d brought was three little gss balls, led in a hankerchef, all put inside a wooden box that I slid into one of my jacket pockets. The little balls tained a mixture I’d worked on, taining spores from a predatory pnt that put its victims to sleep and thehe unscious bodies.

  I’d treated the handkerchief so it would filter out the spores. Not the best of ons to use in the pinch, one hand to throw and the other to hold the handkerchief over my nose, but with luck, they wouldn’t be used for bat.

  Either way, not needed for this guard. I crept closer, then at the right moment, flicked the rock to the side.

  He rushed to his hooves as the roded to his side. The noise of the rock cttering didn’t cover the sound of my hooves as I rushed forward, but they distracted him long enough for me to get him in a hold.

  He struggled, and I held on tightly, arm around his throat, hand on the back of his head as I ched it tighter. He went limp, and I quickly let go.

  I was hoping for hs. hs meant less ce of Holmsteader seeking reveerward, otherwise, I might have settled for a knife. No ce of him waking up from that.

  “Heldert?” A voice called from down below, the drunk pletely upright. “You slip or something?”

  I’d already pulled out the box. My aim erfect, and the ball nded right betweeg Post Watcher’s hooves.

  He cursed and tried to move, only to trip over his ow and nd snoozing oreet.

  I made sure the one up top wasn’t going to slide, then got off the roof, grabbed the sed watcher, aled them against the hitg post. Perfect, it didn’t look any different than it had before.

  “Took your time,” Marat ented as I made my way over to the side of the house.

  “Two watchers,” I said as I moved to one of the side windows. “They’ll be asleep for a while now. Anyone back here when you arrived?”

  “Nope.”

  Hrrm, no bars outside the window, but peering through it, there were bars ihe window. Tyler was someone who cared about aesthetics as a front, keeping the outside of his house nid pleasant while the inside held the eyesore defenses.

  Well, those wouldn’t be a bother. trated acid would eat away at it. Maybe not fast enough to fully chew through in time, but enough that a file would make up the difference.

  “Door would be easier,” Marat noted.

  “Doors are likely trapped,” I replied. “Holy, if I had more time I’d settle for taking the long, safe route, but as things are-’

  A dip into the are to take a look, then a spsh of revealer to double-check, then I got to work with a steel gss cutter. Marat wi the noise of it scraping along the gss, but soon enough I’d cut around the entire frame. Hook the cutter around the top, pull, grab the pane before it hit the ground, and soon I had a gssless window to climb through.

  “Shouldn’t be more thay minutes,” I said. “If I am? Hang around my shop, it’s in Pelkin’s Row. First Infernal you see wearing pink, tell them.”

  “Pink,” Marat repeated in disbelief.

  “It’s a strange world we live in,” I muttered as I began to work on the iron bars.

  I’d brought a few other alchemicals besides the spores and the acid. The are revealer I’d already used to find the spell. ing cos to block all sound in a room. I’d beeed t a vial of inky bess, but I only had the one. Besides, I had yet to brew the drops that would let me see through it, and my hearing wasn’t fiuned enough that I could use it to avoid filing in the dark like everyone else. Alchemist’s fire, a single vial, is a bit dangerous in a wooden house and sure to attract attention. A Pop-stick, simir although its entire use was for attrag attention.

  The acid I poured a few drops on each bar, hissing as they began to chew through the metal. I did have to work some with the chisel, the the process up top. Leave just a little bit on one side so I could rea, snap them off, then pull them out. I couldn’t let them hit the ground. I could see wood fl inside, but I couldn’t be certain there were no traps or arms.

  Marat at least had hidden the pne of gss and was w on the iron bars as I removed them. I could have squeezed through with two but went up to four. Having more spaever hurt.

  Inside was dark, but I could see a tertop, a sink, and a cookstove. The kit of the house, which made the wood floor a bit of a puzzler. Did he not worry about moisture? Or was this for show and not actually for cooking?

  Enough thinking about the yout of this muicer house than the one I lived in. I got up on the windowsill, moving inside.

  I stepped on a floorboard and as soon as it began to shift removed my hoof. Hrrm, creaky floorboards. In a very well-maintained house. Surely these could not possibly be traps. He must have a way to disable them, otherwise making breakfast might be an adventure in not causing an explosion

  Tentative testing with my hooves shoattern of every other floorboard at first. I remained cautious, which paid off o set of floorboards. A trap built itern, desigo trip you up for being zy.

  A test of the first set of floorboards outside the kit proved them all solid. I wouldn’t stop testing of course.

  I was in a hallway now, ohat ran to a parlor and dining room in the back, and three doors further towards the back. Study, bedroom, and bathroom most likely. Opening each, and yep, well-appointed rooms much better than my own, very nice furniture, three entire bookshelves of reading material, and a very fortable-looking bed. Dipping into the are, not a trace of the lines, nor of anything else. Strange.

  Are revealer on the floor and the lines led to a wall. Oh.

  Sighing, I put my hand against the wall, and the illusion faded, revealing the door behind it. This wasn’t diabolism, to colpse at a touch. Likely a store-bought charm he’d installed. I opehe door, and immediately closed it again, bile rising in my throat as I leaned against the wall.

  As soon as I’d ope, the stench, an overp smell of rot ah that had rushed out. Hells, how did the entire house not reek of it?

  Prepared, I ope again aured down into the celr.

  A single flight of stairs, the stench growing thicker with each step, the curdliion in my gut growing. I found a ntern at the bottom and lit it.

  I was in a el pit.

  I stepped over discarded limbs and severed heads, hacked apart torsos and disemboweled stomachs. It was impossible not to step in some of the offal, but I weaved a path through the torn-apart bodies. This wasn’t a small celr, forty by forty feet, and some of these parts were stacked two high. How many dead?

  It wasn’t all just body parts. A desk by the door, papers stacked high, almost uling in its mundanity. Two tables, stacked with tools, saws, hammers, and hatchets. All had dried blood on them, and from the sptter, not necessarily from use on dead bodies. Four tarps e masses that were easily my height.

  In the middle of the room was a steel dis the floor, easily te across, coated in dried blood, bck lines f patterns. It hurt to look at, the lines searing in my brain the longer I stared till I turned my attention to an elderly face frozen into a scream, bisected down the middle.

  I’d seen simir. This was all too familiar in fact. Ba my days with the Fme, although never so haphazard and jumbled up. It had been so easy to ignore back then, so easy to pretend we weren’t monsters. Corpses of enemies, or those deemed ehose lost in the cause. Carved up precisely, body parts were used the moment they were collected. Occasional rites over the dead who’d been ours, h them before we used them as s to summon devils and monsters.

  Blind, blind girl I’d been. A bit of ceremony and a prete rebellion had all that had been needed back then. Monstrous acts had been necessary, but they’d been at the service of a power-seeking lunatic.

  Although here I was, doing his bidding once again. At least wiser a smidge. Monstrosity when it was needed, not all the time. And not only in servi.

  I was at least past the days when it felt like a y.

  I pulled the tarp off one of the rger lumpy objects and grimaced as I looked over what it had hidden.

  Limbs, sewn together to what must be three, no four torsos joiogether, formed into a horse-like shape, a rib cage and skull topping the ehing. I circled it, looking into the are. Impressions of those who had died making this, but nothing crete. Inky bck lines, but they were faint, nearly dissolved into the air.

  At the ter, this was a summoning circle, drawn in blood along the metal surface. A plex one as well, with twelve symbols carved ial, f the pattern of a six-tipped star. Rough, beaten irhly carved into these symbols.

  "Imp, what am I looking at?"

  A rapping interrupted my question, the sound of a hoof tapping the gss across from me. The bcked-out window.

  I hurried upstairs, w who it could be. Surely not Tyler, not yet.

  I stopped in the hallway, looking into the kit, at the window I’d left open and stripped of defenses.

  A red-skinned, crimson-haired, short-horned Infernal stepped through, her eyes glowing e in the darkness.

  Right into the rising muzzle of my revolver.

  She froze, eyes panicked as her hand came up, but I clicked my tongue.

  “None of that, Melissa. Well, this is a shock. And I thought this was all some attempt by my dear brother to set me up and have Holmsteader e after me. Unless you aren’t as important to him as you’d like to think?”

  Her skin flushed with anger, but she didn’t make any sudden moves.

  “e all the way inside,” I said. “Be a bit careful, the owner has some very creaky floorboards I’m pretty sure are rigged. What are you doing here?”

  “Same thing you are,” she said, gring at me. “Following up on this cause it didn’t look like you cared.”

  “I do care,” I said reflexively. “Just not enough to agree to my brother’s demands of me when he bursts in early on in my day.”

  I led her towards the hidden door, tinuing to talk while pointing at the trapped floorboards.

  “Holy, I figured this was just some trap of Versalicci’s,” I admitted as I led her down at gunpoint. “But upon further iigation, well-”

  She looked at the grisly sight, then cursed under her breath.

  “This is-”

  “Dozens,” I said. “Probably more. How did you know to e here, Melissa?”

  She froze, the out a held breath. “Versalicci didn’t know but he suspected. He noticed wheried some ingredients from a supplier in uh, exotic parts.”

  Demon bits and pieces. There was a trade, as well in ical creature body parts, fluids, powders and other such things. I’d been approached about it early into my shop’s opening, and I’d started trading with a few of them. It would have been suspicious not to trade at all, and I knew most of them would be involved with Versalicci or one of his rivals.

  “And how did you know?” I asked her.

  I had my suspis, especially with her assigo watch me trace that unication circle the st time I’d visited Versalicci.

  “We needed reagents for…I’m not saying,” she muttered. “I probably shouldn’t even admit it, but the only way I tracked this was by probing that diabolic trag spell.”

  My heart plummeted. “You probed it? How?”

  She frowned. “Just a little bit of diabolism, make it read follow the disturbao this house. Why?”

  “It’s a trag spell,” I hissed. “He would have beeed the moment you-”

  A rap against the little window once again, Marat nudging it, and then the hurried sound of hooves oones outside. And from above, the sound of a door opening.

  Melissa and I both went quiet as the sound of voices drifted down to us.

  “-really, you didn’t o e Lord Montague,” an unfamiliar baritone said from above, polite but distinctly irritated. “Holy, we could have had this discussion at aime, another pce.”

  Lord Montague? Oh, if that bumbling, bragging blowhard was mixed up in all of this I was going to take pleasure in nailing his carcass to a wall when this was all said and done-

  “Nonsense,” a voice very distinctly Gregory Montague’s said with that kind of cheeriness some took ohey kheir presehered you, just i enough that you couldn’t be entirely sure. “The Church of Tarver insists on paying all of it’s debts, and Father Reginald owed you quite a bit. And as the person who has to handle all of his affairs after death, it is only natural I take care of them as soon as possible.”

  Joy. I g Melissa, then hoped that the sign nguage from ba the Bck Fme days hadn’t been adjusted too much.

  I’ll take the lead. Follow.

  A brief moment of hesitation, then a nod.

  This, this was going to be tricky. Tyler must have e back as soon as he felt the disturbance. Gregory was with him because Father Reginald owed Tyler money. Running his own iigation that intersected with the dead Father. Was Tyler the diabolist?

  Entirely possible. I kept my finger origger as I crept up the stairs, my other hand reag into my pocket.

  My tail ed around the door handle, ready to wrench it open. I pulled out a small gss ball.

  I was going to waste so mu terms of alchemy on this. Maybe I could send Versalic invoice after this.

  I opehe door to the ground floor, tossing the gss bottle inside. As soon as the gss shattered, both the sound of the opening door and the gss breaking stopped.

  I moved through the doorway, not a sound as I moved into the entrance hall, pivoting towards the front door.

  Two stood there, one Infernal, one human. Gregory Montague’s eyes widened as he saw me move into view, aiming my revolver.

  Donald Tyler was an e-skinned Infernal in his thirties, with a short trimmed beard and a professional demeanor matched with a professional suit. His eyes widened in shock, but then they narrowed, fmes beginning to sprout from his hands.

  Too te. I pulled the trigger, and his head snapped back, a hole punched right through the middle of it.