Sam enjoyed the look of fear that crept into the pudgy man's face on the stage. She sauntered over, leapt up onto the stage effortlessly. Anger and adrenaline still fresh in her body.

  He turned and tried to flee. But she caught up to him easily. Grabbed him by the back of his tan jacket. Held him by the collar while she undid the leather binding on her eye. She wanted to be sure the answers she was about to get were the truth.

  She knocked the back of his knees with her foot so that he stumbled to the ground. He pitched forward, caught himself with his hands before he fell. He looked properly cowed, suppliant to her anger.

  "Now we're gonna do this real nice and slow like," Sam said. "I'm gonna ask you questions and you're gonna tell me the truth. If you don't tell me the truth, I'm gonna hurt you. Do you understand?"

  He nodded.

  "Okay. It's good to see that you're already being nice and compliant. You'd hate to end up like your fuckin' minions, wouldn't you?"

  Sam leaned down real close to his face. She was tired of being attacked. She was tired of being hunted. She wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  "Why did you send one of these fuckin' snake-eye goons to try and hurt me?" she asked, letting each word drip out of her mouth.

  "I cannot reveal the name of the client. But I can say this attack was not planned, it was not intentional. You were supposed to be attacked. But not like this. Not," the man blubbered. His words became incoherent.

  "Now hold on you sad sack. Listen, I promise not to kill you if you answer my questions and you're honest," Sam reassured him. "I want to tell you I can tell if you're lying to me. You understand? I'm not saying I can tell like a poker player. I'm saying I can tell by magic whether or not you are lying. You see my eye right here?" Sam tapped the Liar's Eye. "This is gonna tell me if you tell the truth or not. So let's start real nice like. I promise I'm not gonna turn you into paste like I did your buddies over there. If you answer my questions nice, and calm, and right now."

  This was the type of interrogation Sam was much more comfortable with.

  "Let's start real simple. What's your name? And what are you doing here?"

  "My name is Phillip Daniels, ma'am, I am the Imperator of the Rosicrucian Order."

  "Imperator, huh? It's funny, my friend Phineas said the Imperator died recently. Do you know anything about that?"

  "Your friend? Oh my." Phillip Daniels looked at her Liar's Eye. Stared at it for a moment. Sighed and sat back on his heels.

  "Well, I suppose I can no longer conceal anything from you. You've wiped out everyone. You've destroyed everything. And I've seen with my own eyes what happens to those who challenge you, so I suppose now is a time for honesty.

  "I poisoned him, the previous Imperator. You see, the order was falling apart, and no one had any success with human sorcery. We had almost no power and no way of gaining it. So, the old fool was going to shutter the doors and be honest with his supporters. I managed to stop him before too much damage was done. But it left our coffers painfully empty.

  "So, I decided to repurpose the Order, as it were. So many of the nobility, the elite, and the wealthy have problematic individuals they wish to have eliminated. We began providing that service in exchange for gold. It does seem foolish now given your onslaught."

  "I appreciate your forthright candidness. That does seem to clarify poor Phineas's death. I take it he didn't want to go along with your master plan."

  "He knew nothing of it. The man was a supporter of the previous Imperator, through and through. I knew I could not bring him to my side. So he became an unfortunate casualty. After your visit, I knew I could no longer rely on him as a cover for the Order. He was too naive and too cynical."

  "So you repurposed a scholarly order into a team of assassins. The Snakemen. How'd they get those eyes?"

  The man hung his head at this question. "I was once a great believer in our cause. I thought if I took on this new purpose, I could eventually earn enough money to continue our research. I have a certain moral flexibility, shall we say, and my belief was that the powerful..."

  "Shut the fuck up and answer the question."

  "Marbas. I made an offering to Marbas for each of them. He gave them the ability to sense the heat of their prey. As he explained it, it made them deadly and effective and silent, as they could work in the dark."

  "So you gave them snake daggers and snake parts. Why? You like snakes?"

  "It was in keeping with the symbolism of the Order, and I thought that the nobility would be swayed by the esoteric nature of serpents and the theatricality."

  "Before you lost your nerve, you said the attack on me wasn't planned. What happened?"

  "Ah, yes. Blunder on our part, I'm afraid. The young man became infatuated with our client and wanted to impress her. Struck out on his own, as it were, and came ill-prepared. And, well, here you are. I'm in no position to ask questions but how are you so strong? These men were trained."

  "Fuck you. Who's your client?"

  "I'm afraid even if I wanted to tell you, I could not. Our contracts are bound to secrecy. I could not tell you even to save my life."

  "You're not going to believe this," Sam said as she pulled chalk out of her overcoat.

  Sam used the chalk to lay out the binding of Paimon. She used the one that would break contracts. With Emil's education, she now understood more of the sigil than she did before. She could read the parts that referred to the contracts that would be broken. She could tell where Paimon's name was inscribed in the script. Her greater understanding didn't change the fact that she was going to need blood for some of her work. Paimon was sympathetic to breaking contracts of lesser demons. The price for doing so was fantastically cheaper than if she wanted to ask the King to answer questions. She would just need a few drops of blood. She had a ready supply sitting in front of her.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Sam asked the compliant Phillip Daniels to sit in the center of the circle.

  "Now I'm going to give you a little cut. You understand I could do a lot worse and will if you squirm."

  The chubby middle-aged man nodded.

  "What are you doing?" he asked.

  "You'll see."

  Emil had taught her a more complete invocation to Paimon. It helped make the price cheaper. She took Phillip Daniels' hand and cut him at the palm. He winced at the pain. He cried out but found no sympathy. The blood dropped on the floor and then disappeared into black smoke.

  "Well, just like that, your contract is broken. Now, unless you want me to squeeze your balls until they pop, who fucking hired you to kill me?"

  "Seraphina Van Thorne," said Phillip Daniels. His eyes widened in surprise that he could speak the name.

  "Well, seems like I got all the answers I came for. Broke all the fools I came for. I do have one last question for you though, before I'm on my way. How many clients would you say you had before I found you?"

  "Twenty-seven," he replied.

  They were the last words he spoke before Sam opened his throat with her knife.

  The Van Thorne mansion was as Sam recalled it from her last visit. Although that time she had been invited, and the gate stood open. Her anger gave her enough strength to jump halfway up the gate and climb over the rest of it. She walked in the yard just past the drive to avoid being seen before she wanted.

  Sam walked up the long lawn past the fountain of angels with their arms and wings crossed. She sauntered up to the great double doors. This time, she did not wait for an invitation to enter. She pulled hard on the door handle, heard something snap inside and wrenched the door open.

  Sam had last been here in the warmer weather. She didn't need her overcoat that time, just her crumpled gray suit jacket. Now she was bundled against the cold. The strength of Furcas and her anger didn't help with the winter wind.

  She'd hoped to catch up with Victor Adebayo. She wanted to slap him around a little for his part in her attempted murder. But a new, different butler greeted her this time. She punched him in the stomach, crumpled him over, gasping for breath. She didn't kill him. She just kept walking.

  After a few steps she stopped, turned around, knelt down and said, "Hey, where's your fuckin' boss?"

  The butler's eyes widened and he gasped for breath. A careful calculus passed behind his eyes. He apparently landed on her side of the equation and said, "Office! Office! She's in her office!" and pointed in the direction Sam needed to go.

  "Well, I can't have you use a telephone to call the local soldiers. I think I'm just gonna bring you along. You tell me if I need to make a turn, okay?"

  Sam had questioned the choice to come and seek revenge on Seraphina Van Thorne. The woman was powerful and wealthy. Everyone in the city knew that the Van Thorne family was ruthless. But no one could quite say how, which meant that more often than not their enemies were completely dealt with and not left alive to complain about their treatment after.

  Sam's newfound power, stubbornness, and temper all conspired against her common sense. So she found herself dragging the hapless butler down the hallway. She had gentled him good and hard, but he was still dead weight in her hand.

  She once again marveled at the wealth on display. Gilded frames surrounded ancient paintings, sculptures dotted the hallway. She thought about smashing a few on the way, but didn't want to draw attention, didn't want to be quite that petty. Seeking revenge is one thing, breaking beautiful objects of art was unnecessary.

  A few maids had heard the commotion and come to investigate. Sam warned them all with a stern glance. She hoped their curiosity and hatred of Seraphina Van Thorne would be sufficient to prevent them from calling the soldiers before she completed her business there. Sam just assumed all staff hated their employers at this level of wealth. How could you not when you spent every day surrounded by absolute opulence while you waited on them hand and foot?

  Sam and her unwilling companion reached the wide double doors of the office. She used the butler to smash the door open, which combined with the injury she had given him earlier proved too much. He fell unconscious. Sam spared a passing thought to hope the man wasn't dead. As far as she knew he hadn't done anything wrong to her, but he was, as they said in the military, collateral damage.

  "Seraphina Van Thorne. Pleasure to meet ya," Sam greeted the woman she saw sitting at the wide carved desk in front of her.

  This room was lined with lush green velvet and paneled walls. Electric lamps lined the walls and illuminated the room with their inhuman glow. Objects of art and sculpture sat on pedestals around the room.

  Behind the desk was a beautiful, pale woman wearing two red earrings that Sam recognized. As she looked on them, she heard the whispers of the demons she thought she had exorcised whispering to her.

  "Oh Samantha," they said.

  "Thou shalt obey. Thou shalt kneel. Thou shalt worship," they spoke in her mind.

  Waves of desire for Seraphina Van Thorne washed over Samantha. She wanted to make the woman the center of the universe, give her every drop of her being. She wanted to be possessed by the woman, ruled by her, owned by her.

  The anger in her heart flared up. The challenge, the fury that had pushed her so far, that had sat in her stomach most of her life, the rage she felt against people exactly like Seraphina in front of her became a rising tide. It pushed back against the temptation, the power of the Devil's Eyes.

  "Hey, you ugly bitch," Sam said as she struggled to make words against the power washing over her. "Why the fuck do you call them the Devil's Eyes when they go on your fucking ears?"

  "You are a spirited one, aren't you, Miss Fontaine? I think my mother knew your father. You Fontaines were always begging for alms for the poor. I suppose you've come because I had the nerve to have someone try to kill you.

  "Well, you've made it this far, and poor Stefan over there is certainly a little worse for wear for having met you, as most people are. Isn't that true? I'm going to be billing you for that doorway and for anything else you've broken on your way in here, you absolute brute."

  The more the woman talked, the angrier Sam became, until the fury was all she knew. It gave her the strength to stand back up and turn her eye on the woman standing in front of her. She was no longer the blinding beauty from before. Sam saw flaws: a wrinkle, a blemish on the otherwise perfect skin. She could see pores and clumped eyelashes, and how frail the woman was, like she'd never been in the sun or taken a day of exercise in her life.

  Seraphina stared at Sam's rising form. The woman was surprised that someone was defying her. Sam realized that wearing those earrings must have drowned out every single "no" anyone ever thought to say. It must have twisted her up inside and made it so that she only heard what she wanted to hear. No one had ever, literally, stood up to her before.

  A sneer twisted the woman's beautiful face. "How dare you stand in front of me, you filthy little worm!" she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  "I've had quite enough of this shit," Sam said.

  She leapt over the desk. Before the Van Thorne woman could react, she reached up and ripped the earrings from her ears. A shrill howl rose from Seraphina Van Thorne's throat. No one had ever tried to hurt her before, Sam supposed. The onslaught of the demons' voices threatened to crush Sam's mind. She pushed back with her newfound strength. She dropped the earrings in her pocket and the voices stopped.

  Seraphina's hands cupped her ears. Blood ran down her neck and wrists. Her face was a mixture of pain, rage, and disgust.

  "How dare you touch me. I will kill you," she said, raising her voice.

  "Not without these, you won't," Sam said, patting the earrings in her pockets. "Now I do suppose if I kill you, I'll have to deal with the local soldiers. That's a little too much heat for me. But you did try to have somebody kill me. You threatened a friend of mine. I'm taking these as recompense."

  "I'll fucking kill you. You fucking trash," said Seraphina.

  "Right, well, I wonder why you think that was the right thing to say, given the situation?" Sam replied.

  She reached out and snapped the bones in Seraphina Van Thorne's arms. The woman howled in pain.