Emil’s book contained a list of demons. It was called the Lesser Key of Solomon and its pages described the demons and their powers. A primer on demonology, one Sam intended to use to learn which powers she would need to contact in order to have questions answered and to increase her strength. She was tired of being thrown around by every two-bit thug and zombie she ran across.

  One caught her attention in particular: the entry for Paimon. She knew a binding for Paimon which would help her break contracts of the lower ranked demons. With it, she could interrogate anyone without magical contracts interfering with their truthfulness. This was one the military had taught her and she had only used rarely because the price was incredibly high.

  She disregarded the entries of most of the Kings aside from learning their names. Emil had told her he was not going to teach her the King binding he knew because, as he put it, "Your pants aren't going to be big enough yet. You gotta get big britches." Also, she suspected Emil didn't want to teach her anything too powerful too quickly, so she didn’t get herself into trouble. As much as he pretended to dislike her, he had worried after her ever since they first met. As far as she knew, Emil had no family and never had. So his concern didn't stem from seeing Sam as a long-lost daughter. Rather, it sprang from the kindness in the old man's wrinkled, salty heart.

  Of the great Kings of Hell, Paimon was the only one she knew. The Lesser Key of Solomon explained that Paimon was a great teacher and could answer all mysteries of the earth and reveal the origin of the wind and other impossibilities. The price to invoke his power was astronomical. It required a fantastic amount of blood, or a soul.

  The Key described the other Kings: Baal, Beleth, Purson, Asmodeus, Balaam, Zagan, Belial, and Vinea. Each had terrible powers, and all were beyond her reach. She didn't even know which binding Emil knew, only that one of them responded to him as an Imperial Diviner.

  Under the Kings were the Dukes. She recognized another name here: Haborym was listed as a Duke of Hell. There were twenty-three other Dukes. Emil had explained to her that if she chose one of them, the price would be high, but their power was second only to the Kings. She considered the pact she had agreed to with Haborym, and how foolish it had been to allow him to possess her brand new receptionist. She had little choice in the matter, given that if Haborym wanted, he could have lit her up like a candle.

  There were Dukes, Princes, Marquises, Earls, and Presidents, all with their own powers and goals. Prices for the contracts were listed. Some required animal fur. Some wanted blood, but only from bats. Some wanted strange sacrifices, such as cheese or shoes worn by virgins. Sam didn't want to know what they would do with such offerings.

  Finally, at the end of the book, a section with only one entry: Knights. The only Knight of Hell was called Furcas. It said he was a cruel-looking man with a spear. Furcas would teach the art of swordplay and answer questions for the strong, and took blood as the price for his contract. It also mentioned he would accept the sweat of strong effort as payment. The Key did not describe what powers the Knight ruled over. She would have to ask Emil about this strange entry. It seemed to line up with her goals, but the entry was so vague she didn't know if she was being foolish by ignoring all the other strange and great powers in the Key.

  She didn't even know which bindings Emil would be able to teach her. Surely he didn't know all of them for all the demons.

  Sam arrived home exhausted from trying to absorb all of the information Emil gave her through his thick accent. The man had been born in Russia. As a child, his family fled to Italy to escape a famine that swept his native country. He'd learned English there. Then, his parents passed away. He made his way to America, where he was conscripted into the military on account of his knowledge as a sorcerer. Sam wasn't clear when he had apprenticed. She assumed it was after his parents' death. Whatever the case, when he arrived in America, they saw his potential and he became an Imperial Diviner. He was tasked with answering questions about movements of enemy forces. He also stymied enemy efforts on the battlefield by preventing them from using their sorcerers to discover Imperial movements.

  The man's accent was a mess, and he took to using idioms incorrectly, such that Sam had to interpret half of what he said. It was an exhausting way to learn. But she was grateful for the knowledge. It helped her understand how much of a mess she had made with Haborym.

  The next day, Sam made her way to where Emil told her the Rosicrucians had their temple. It was outside the city. Sam didn't like leaving the city much. It felt unsafe to be away from all the buildings and people. She didn't like the way the trees, the grass, and the bushes all seemed to gang up on her senses. Concrete and steel made much more sense to her. She felt safer despite knowing the city was a far more dangerous place.

  Emil told her the Rosicrucians were a mystical order. She wasn't quite sure what that meant, and Emil's explanation didn't help very much. He said they were trying to discover and utilize human magic that didn't rely on demons. She had never heard of such a thing. But the Spirit of the City had mentioned that humans, once they saw the power the demons offered, had stopped learning any other type of magic. Sam was a pragmatist above all things. She would take power wherever she could get it. She couldn't help but wonder if there was some sort of magic outside of demons, why wouldn't anybody have discovered it? Surely humans weren't all lazy?

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  The temple's sprawling grounds were choked with weeds. Ancient trees loomed overhead and made the place dark despite the winter sun. A gravel path wound past overgrown gardens with vine-covered statues that crumbled with age. The place felt ancient, but could only be as old as the American Empire itself, so barely more than a hundred years.

  Sam kept herself off the path so as not to advertise her presence. This forced her to pick her way past hedgerows that needed a trim and around underbrush she suspected wouldn't be there if the place was kept in better repair. She passed a frozen pond surrounded by dead cattails. The entire place was still and quiet.

  She approached the main temple building, a squat rectangular structure. The foliage once decorating it had grown up past where it belonged. Vines crept up the walls and the gray stucco had started to come off in clumps, revealing the cement building underneath.

  Sam carefully made her way around the perimeter of the building. All the windows were in decent repair. There was no dust, and they were latched shut. The doors leading inside were also locked against entry. She would have to go through the front door unless she wanted to pick her way in like a burglar.

  She completed her lap around the perimeter of the building. She kept herself out of sight the entire time except when she crept up to a few windows to check if the building was occupied. The state of the grounds seemed to indicate the Rosicrucians were no more, or the building had fallen into disrepair or on hard times. But the inside was lit with gas lamps and even some electrical light.

  Sam now made her way to the front entrance as if she were a common visitor. In many ways, she was. Her lead on the Rosicrucians was tenuous at best. It didn't make sense to her that a lone assassin would tattoo his affiliation large on his chest. But, she supposed, no assassin planned on being cooked to a crisp by a stray Duke of Hell.

  But here she was, outside her safe city, walking up to a strange, decrepit building to contact an order of mystical humans. There were times Sam loved her job. She was looking forward to interviewing whoever she found inside.

  Before she turned the final corner to the entrance of the building, she undid the binding on the Liar's Eye underneath her eye patch. The military, in a horrible ritual, had replaced her left eye with a stone inscribed with bindings and contracts which, when activated, would restore her vision if whoever she spoke to lied. The pain of undoing binding stitches in her left eyelid was the price she paid to activate its power. She didn't like the sensation of leather stitching being pulled out. The pain had lessened somewhat over the years, but it still felt horrible and reminded her of when they pulled her eye out. They hadn't even let her get drunk first.

  She replaced the patch over her stone eye. It didn't need to be bare to work, and the patch served as a handy disguise for when she wanted to use it surreptitiously.

  She approached the large metal double doors of the Rosicrucian temple. They were green with patina. There was no doorbell, no way to announce herself in a building so large. So, she simply opened the door and walked in.

  The entrance hall was the largest part of the building. It had high ceilings and dark wood floors. Paintings lined the walls depicting angelic figures and demonic portraits, some of which she now recognized as demons from the Lesser Key of Solomon.

  "Hello?" she called out.

  "What? What? Is someone there?" replied a man's voice from down one of the long hallways that branched off of the grand entrance. "I'll be right with you."

  A man wearing glasses with wispy blonde hair, thin of frame and long of nose, appeared from the hallway.

  "Hello? Yes. How can I help you?" he greeted Sam.

  "Hello, sir," began Sam. "I'm sorry to disturb you. My name is Samantha Fontaine. I have a friend. He is a Diviner. He told me a bit about your Order, and I thought since I was in the neighborhood I would drop by. You see, I'm something of an apprentice sorcerer myself, and I thought the idea of human magic that required no demon involvement, am I understanding that right? I thought the idea sounded so interesting I wanted to come and find out what you are all about."

  "Ah, yes, of course." The man bristled at the mention of the word 'sorcerer', but he began his spiel. "Well, first of all, allow me to introduce myself. I am Phineas Trimus, one-time secretary to the Imperator.

  "Our supposition is that humans have always been capable of great works of magic, but most sorcery, I'm sure you're aware, involves contracting with otherworldly entities. These entities then grant boons, but they exact a terrible price for their blessings. We seek to cut out the middleman, as it were, and achieve a sort of human sorcery that does not involve intermediary parties."

  "Absolutely fascinating," replied Sam. "Have you had any success thus far?"

  "Well, yes. In the future, before your visits, it may be a good idea to telephone ahead of time. As you see, we are in something of a crisis. Our Order, though ancient, has fallen onto hard times as of late. Our aged Imperator sadly passed away a few months ago, and our research has ground to a halt. Our donations have stopped pouring in. I'm sure you saw the state of our grounds; we can no longer afford to hire a groundskeeper.

  "As such, I regret to inform you that your visit is a tremendous waste of time. Our Order, unlike many sorcerers," he pronounced the word slowly, "seeks to share the results of our research with anyone interested. Formerly, we would accept new initiates, apprentices, and anyone interested; however, this is no longer the case as we cannot afford to maintain the premises, much less continue our research."

  He was telling the truth because Sam was still blind in one eye.

  "It is unfortunate that such a promising avenue of research has been stymied. Another friend of mine came across some Rosicrucian materials. Can you tell me the symbolism of serpents within your Order?"

  "Serpents!" The man seemed perplexed. "None whatsoever, I'm afraid."

  This time she could see him clearly through both eyes.