The return trek to my house took place in near silence, interrupted only by a quick trip to the Verweald Plaza Hotel to retrieve my car, the demon—Darius—trailing me without a word, Tara's cat tucked under my arm.

I watched him from the corner of my eye, though no one else on the streets stared at the demon like I did. He was innocuous in his leather jacket and tinted wayfarers, a few women throwing appreciative glances in his direction, and I realized had I been in their shoes, I may have done the same and would have never, in a million years, guessed something was amiss. He walked among the humans with ease and indifference, this devil from another world, and I wondered how many creatures of his ilk I'd crossed paths with before, how many monsters dwelt in our misconceptions and preyed upon our naivety.

He vanished after we exited the taxi and before the miffed valet could retrieve my vehicle, seeming to step behind a swell of tourists and disappear, leaving me to drive home on my own. The cat remained a docile companion who did little more than sit on the middle console and watch with idle, feline contempt. I pressed on into mounting traffic, mind weighed by fatigue and suspicions. Where did the demon go? What is he doing?

The unanswered questions circled in my head like bloody water around a drain, my sister's image rising to the fore more often than not, quick flickers of affection in a seething tide poisoned by anger and loss, guilt and sorrow. I was a woman who appreciated plans; for all that I had made several of my life's most significant decisions at random or with haste, I still preferred routine and perspective. Having the demon flit about without saying a word left me feeling useless and stupid.

You're barely in a fit state to drive, let alone find a cult, I cursed myself, forehead lowered to the steering wheel's upper rim. You wandered out here half delirious in search of your dead twin, for pity's sake.

Evening crouched upon Evergreen Acres by the time I pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. Sighing, I got out of the car with Tara's animal in tow, listening to the loud clap of the door closing and how it bounced against the opposing houses, echoing into the muggy night. I dropped the cat once we were past my home's threshold and it started to peruse the living room with middling curiosity, tail flicking back and forth, amber eyes landing on me a final time before he slunk off into the thicker dark provided by the cold lights.

I'll need a cat box, I thought, reaching for the switch. And food. I should probably try to find it a new home.

The lights came on—and I let out a breathless shriek.

The demon, Darius, perched on the armchair near the hearth. Perched seemed the better word because he didn't sit in the chair so much as roost on it like a great, malevolent gargoyle, both feet balanced on the edge, arms braced upon his knees with a tattered book open between his poised hands. At first, I expected the book to be one of my own, purloined off my shelves without my notice, but the one the demon held didn't belong to me and I had no recollection of seeing it in my house before. The spine bore a grubby, peeling sticker.

"Is that—?" I questioned, heart lodged in my throat and seeming unwilling to relocate back to its proper place in my chest. "Is that a library book?"

Darius flicked a page over without looking up. "How very astute of you."

I braved the living room proper and glanced at the coffee table, spying a new stack among my leftover novels and Tara's forgotten magazines. Such titles as Ruminations on Occult Pedagogy, Obscure Symbology Reference, and A History of Fanaticism caught my eye. Picking up the topmost volume, a quick flip through the thick tome showed a prosaic slide-show of famous cults in recent time and a rough rundown of their sordid pasts, the references sparse, the author's voice bleeding through more than it should. In terms of academia, it was little more than an op-ed rag, if better written.

"What is all this?"

He neither responded nor bothered looking in my direction, instead continuing to turn pages faster than I would have been able to, dark eyes flickering back and forth as he absorbed the information contained within the volume.

"Is this how you're going to find them?" I asked, unable to hide my derision. "With stolen library books?" Because they had to be stolen; I could no more picture the dour creature strutting into the local library and handing over his card at checkout than I could picture him buying groceries, or sitting in a chair like a normal man, for God's sake. Ridiculous!

In weeks prior, if someone had asked how I imagined a demon might go about solving a problem or finding a hypothetical cult of madmen, I hadn't the slightest idea what I might have said, but I would not have replied that I believed he would sequester himself in my favorite armchair and paw through substandard research books like a bottom-feeding undergrad in too far over his head. He'd thrown a poorly cooked meal on the counter that morning, needed Daniel Fairchild to vanish my sister, all the while sneering and deriding my every question. So far, I'd seen little benefit to being a demon besides taking bullets to the chest and surviving. Arrogant bastard.

I blamed pain, exhaustion, and no little amount of aggravation for my next outburst.

"Is there anything you actually can do?"

Darius didn't react immediately. My question stunned him—and me, and we blinked at one another as if unsure of what to do with the words floating like choking dust motes in the air between us until the demon inhaled and cold assailed my lungs. The light, already flickering, blew with a sudden pop! In an instant, he stood before me, his left hand folding gently beneath my chin as his nails scraped against the exposed skin of my throat. My pulse thrummed in my veins like a rabbit caught in a snare.

He brought his right hand before my face, his fingers limp, his palm tipped upward, and I stared at it, waiting, breath held in silent dread.

"Do not test me, mortal," the demon whispered, shadows flitting in the corners of my vision, reaching and running, the house wailing as the cold slammed into its sun-warmed bones and forced the wood supports to contract. His flesh burned where it touched my own and still I felt as though I would never be warm again. "Observe."

A fine tremor ran the length of the hand between us. Lines appeared on the skin, following the invisible veins knitted within his muscles and bones, and those lines parted like fissures in the crust of a different world, the trembling of his limbs like earthquakes tearing that world asunder. Red color bloomed in the cracks and glowed brighter and brighter, until delicate tongues of impossibly blue fire lapped at the demon's hand, blistering the skin with haunting, quiet snaps of melting flesh and cracking bones.

Darius never blinked nor looked away.

"Isn't that painful?" I breathed as I watched the flames consume Darius' flesh and weave angry red bands into his skin from wrist to elbow. Not human, my mind whispered. Not human at all.

"Incredibly." He flexed his fingers and forced the ravaged hand to form a blackened fist, quelling the fire, letting it sink once more into the split crevices splintering his veins. Disappointment and relief warred in his brilliant eyes as if he'd worked himself up to commit a great, taxing feat, and was equally pleased to not have to go through with it as he was dissatisfied to have wasted the effort.

The injury began to heal, reddened skin fading in patches, blackened edges shedding to render the severe burn nothing more than a thoughtless afternoon's sunburn. New, pink skin grew from the joints of his fingers as muscle and sinew reformed under the flesh molding itself to the demon's hand. In less than a moment, the soft skin grayed and solidified, thin calluses forming over the palm's mound and along the ridge of knuckles, leaving his limb as it had been not five minutes before.

Darius' hand slipped from my chin and I retreated to the sofa's relative safety, sucking in a discreet breath once I put space between the demon and myself. The air smelt of burnt hair and charred meat, and though the scent was dissipating, my stomach lurched and I fought the urge to gag. I wiped my mouth on my shirt's hem and said, "I didn't...I didn't mean that. Not like that, anyway."

He resumed his place on the armchair, library book set aside, expression pensive, tired. "However insubordinate your attitude may be...I cannot fault you for being...observant." Darius sneered, a distinct, peeved arch highlighting one side of his mouth. "Verweald is a hotbed of preternatural activity, a city of liminal affiliation and subversive movements, and it provides yet another knot in this already twisted chain of a contract. I do not know much about...." He gestured at the books. "Cults. I have...been removed from human affairs for several decades, and am no longer informed on their movements and organizations. In truth, I have never been very informed when it comes to your kind."

The demon shifted, and with effort, he adopted a normal posture in his seat, both feet on the ground with his hands braced on his knees. He almost looked human. "So far, I've gleaned little knowledge of your cult or its motivations."

My gaze drifted from Darius to the empty, dusty hearth, then to the waiting books. Something of what he'd said resonated with me; true, many of the demon's idiosyncrasies were becoming more apparent over time, like his posture and curious hand gestures, and the meticulous way he chose his words, as if plucking them from a translated lexicon stashed inside his head, but his particular phrasing stuck out.

I have been removed from human affairs for several decades.

Removed where? How? The word itself held a worrying connotation, as instead of saying he'd been "apart" or "disinterested," removed implied a physical restriction or reticence—a lack of choice on the demon's behalf. He'd stated his need for an "anchor" before, but I hadn't fully wrapped my mind around the idea; if he could be removed from this place, then somewhere else had to exist. Where was that?

And several decades? How old was Darius?

Shaking my head, I returned my attention to the demon. "You'll find nothing in these books; they're guides for hobbyists, shelf fodder. To me, it seems we're ignoring the easiest solution in finding the answers we need," I said. "You recognized the name of the demon the cult summoned. He did try to kill me, but isn't it possible to go to Bal—all right, I won't say it, calm down—the other demon, and ask him the names of the people he's contracted to?" I hated suggesting it, despised the idea of asking him for any form of assistance, especially when I desired nothing more than to see his head roll with the rest of them, but I wouldn't ignore the most plausible route to my goal simply because it was distasteful.

Color leached from Darius' face. "No," he replied softly, easing farther into the worn folds of my armchair until his head rested on the cushioned top. "No, I cannot ask him."

"Why? I don't understand. Wouldn't one demon want to assist another in completing a contract?"

He didn't reply. Seconds rolled into minutes, and all the while Darius stared at the front window without blinking, the frozen angles of his face cast deep in shadow where night stole into the room. I rose to leave him to his silence, contemplating if I should make dinner myself and the cat or drop into my bed, when he finally spoke, addressing the window's blinds rather than me.

"You pose a question with a complicated answer. You assume a demon should wish to help another demon, and yet altruism, that trait you humans regard so highly, is an evolutionary wonder that, I assure you, has never graced the likes of that creature. It has never graced any of us.

"Before mankind had memory, the Baal rebelled against the High King. Even if I were privy to the specifics of the event, I would not tell you; instead, you may know that the Baal's efforts to unseat Iadlim were fruitless. Christian mythology portrays the Absolian Rending as a battle between angels and their God. Perhaps this isn't so far off from the truth, as Absolians are winged, and colloquially known as 'angels.' If there truly is a Christian God, he would undoubtedly resemble an entity much like the High King, and the Baal enjoys taking the names 'Lucifer' or 'the Great Enemy' as his monikers. He finds irony in the titles, an irony the rest of us do not understand."

I settled into my seat again, watching him, and Darius abandoned the armchair to stand at the mantel. "God or no, the moral remains the same; the Baal and his followers were defeated, captured, and pitched from the white cliffs of Absolia's Aromont into the yawning unknown below.

"The Baal survived his descent, though how he managed such a feat is a secret he's never thought to share, and no one has ever been able to guess how he remained intact while the rest shattered in the Pit. The sun does not rise there; fields of volcanic rock and black ice stretch endless into the nether, and in those fallow dales one can still find splinters of their split souls, like moonlight encased in a piece of glass...."

Darius trailed off, his fingertips sliding along the mantel's worn edge, some language other than English warming his voice for the briefest moment before it hardened again, and red eyes sought my own, narrowing in focus.

"For some time afterward, the Baal remained alone in his private, dark world, until he decided to shed his solitude and save those followers who remained broken upon the obsidian plains. Some postulate loneliness drove him; some believe it was arrogance, or grief, or anger. Personally, I think it was boredom; the Fallen is not a creature who dwells well in the solitude of his own mind.

"Whatever his reasoning, the Baal only managed to piece together seven of the ruined Absolians into a semblance of their original selves. Like the secret of his survival, the Baal never shared how he managed to salvage and breathe life into them—and his results were far from perfect. These new creatures with their broken souls tethered to the very weft and weave of the Pit's existence were not the High King's winged Absolians. They were...lesser, shadows of their former selves risen by the strength of their Original Sin."

The seething demon came to lean over me, one hand braced on the sofa's back, and though his proximity tightened my chest and sent tremors into my arms, I refused to cower. "Ah, do you see now? Can you guess, little mortal? Altruism is a virtue and the very antithesis of our being—yet another concept hijacked by humankind. Original Sin. We came before, you know. Before humans developed morality, before your messiahs and idols, before your ideals of what sin is. The Original Sins wore monikers that expressed their greatest failings, the greatest tether the darkness had to their broken souls. When you speak of wrath, of envy, of lust, sloth, gluttony, avarice and pride—you speak of us."

His hand came to touch my shoulder, one finger tracing along my collarbone to the hollow of my throat and back again, the caress unnerving in its idle tension. "Your kind labels us demons, and yet the Sins are so much more. What you think demons to be are what we refer to as the fracti, and they are the failed bits of Absolians the Baal could not properly raise, the bits retaining enough sentience to cause mayhem and mischief within your world when they manage to find a way here.

"Four of the Original Sins remain, yet an entity is always summoned through the void to occupy the forsaken seat of a fallen Sin. There are always seven. No more. No less. From the beginning of time, to the end of it, there will always be sin."

The demon—the Sin—lingered still with his hand upon my person, touch ghosting over my throat and jaw, cheek and temple, seeming to seek that which he could not name or see or rightfully feel. Darius' tone softened and became all the crueler for its temperance. "Balthier is the Original Sin of Envy. My kind are vicious nature in nature, but even amongst us, he is a cruel anomaly, a monster whose atrocities are as varied as his names. He is a thug." Abruptly, Darius exhaled and muttered, "He would see me dead before granting me aid."

Fingertips grazed my ear, parting the long, cool strands of hair, then withdrew, Darius humming low in thought as he did so, brow furrowed. "Who...who are you, then?" I asked, more than slightly unsettled.

"Who...am I?"

"You're one of these—these entities that replace a Sin?" It would make a certain kind of sense, perhaps even explain why his knowledge of humans and our societies fell short of expectation.

Darius snorted. "No, girl. I replace no one. I am Original."

My eyes widened. Original. Before me stood a creature old enough to be carbon-dated if his tale was to be believed—old enough to have seen the Ice Age and the Xia Dynasty, to have witnessed the building of Giza's Great Pyramids and to have eaten in the gardens of Babylon. From the beginning of time, to the end of it, there will always be sin. I couldn't fathom his existence, couldn't rectify the image in my brain. How many years had he been alive? How many humans had played his host? How many people had fed that insatiable cistern of souls?

"Which Sin are you?"

Contempt shadowed his grin, darkening the lip curling over white teeth while gut-turning hate writhed in his blackened eyes. "Pride."

"...oh," was all I could say. Yes, I could imagine the overbearing man—the creature, the demon, the Sin—as the embodiment of Pride. It would explain why I seemed to insult him with every second breath I took.

Darius paced away, taking the chill with him, and once more he perched upon the armchair's edge and somehow managed not to overbalance it. "I believe that's enough storytime for this evening. No, I cannot go to him—to Envy. I cannot simply ask him who summoned him, as not only would doing so bring you to his attention—which would be most unwise—he would take exception to my very presence and seek to rectify it. Envy signed a contract with this mysterious cult, and you were the ink of his signature, his reward. Given he must have begun his contract by now, learning you had not died, that he is essentially working on loan, would aggrieve the over-hyped ponce greatly."

I grimaced and touched my side. "Like accepting payment upfront only to learn you've been ripped off."

"Exactly."

A sigh escaped me, and I let my eyes slide shut, fingers kneading at my brow as exhausted tension built there. "So...this is what you meant before. About it being complicated."

He grunted. I opened my eyes as Darius threaded his lower lip between his sharp teeth and worried the skin until it bled, pink tongue lapping at the wound without thought. "Yes...and no." His lip healed, only for the Sin to repeat the process, reddening his teeth and mouth with his own blood. "I will not kill Envy for our contract."

"What?"

"As I said; I will not kill Envy for our contract."

I understood his meaning well enough, and still my heart lurched in its cage of bones, Balthier's face flitting through my thoughts, the memory of his hands upon my skin so similar to Darius', and yet different for their apathy, their condescension. How easily he'd sunk that blade into my flesh; how easily he'd stepped over my body, how easily he'd left me for dead without ever assuming I might just live.

I wanted nothing more than to see his strange green eyes grow wide in terror and pain and grief as I sank a dagger of my own into his ribs, though I knew it wouldn't work, knew that if a Sin like Darius could take a bullet to the chest, Envy could withstand a thousand stab wounds without faltering. The cult may be responsible for Tara's murder and our kidnapping, may be the reason for this horrific denouement in my otherwise unremarkable life—but Balthier had been the one to drive that silver dagger into my side.

I didn't despise him because he'd ruined my life. It wasn't because he'd stolen my dreams, my future, my hopes, my aspirations. Worse, it was because his crime had proved a grievous, unrelenting truth; the world kept spinning despite all that had occurred, time ticked on, and the universe didn't give a shit what happened to jaded, unremarkable, average Sara Gaspard or her brilliant sister.

I hated Balthier for proving how very irrelevant I truly was.

"I'll do it," I whispered as my nails bit into the underside of my palms. "I'll kill him myself."

Darius sputtered, then laughed. He laughed as if I'd uttered the most humorous line he'd ever heard in his long, long existence. "You can't," he gasped between peals of laughter, the sound surprisingly provincial, harkening of a world long since dead, of places and times that existed before the hard lines had been carved in the molding of Darius's face.

I ground my teeth. "Just because you don't want to do it doesn't mean that I can't try—."

"Try all you'd like," he interjected, amusement fading into his typical severity. "There isn't a being in the realm capable of matching him in power, let alone ability or sheer, unrelenting violence. Go ahead and try, stupid girl. You won't get far."

Frustrated, I didn't relent. "How can you know if you haven't tried?"

I expected annoyance, perhaps goaded him for it. I better understood his quiet, simmering anger; his humor, his dissonant laughter terrified me more with its manic implications, as laughter is a surrender to emotion, a capitulation in an implicit war of juxtapositions—the need to be in control and the desire to relinquish it. The creature who let go of himself to laugh was a creature capable of losing control to other emotions, like rage. The Sin I better understood, the one who glared while his countenance remained passive, was the monster I felt safer with.

Darius wasn't annoyed. He wasn't angry. Rather, sorrow drifted through those sanguine eyes, and his jaw ticked. "But I have tried."

Before I could ask, he raised his voice and changed the conversation. "Leave me be...Sara. I don't care what you do, where you go. Just...leave me be."

He subsided, turning his face away in apparent dismissal, and though I disliked being shooed like an errant dog in my own home, I stood and walked away, if only because I'd seen his grief—no matter how short-lived—and empathized with it. As I drifted toward my bedroom and looked back at the morose creature sheltered in the dark, I pondered who the Sin of Pride must have lost to Balthier in the past.