The late afternoon sun spilled warmth over the city, hovering just an inch above the crest of buildings to the west. The car's side radiated the captured heat against my back, and I allowed my head to tip backward on an exhale. The grit and gravel crunched under my legs as I shifted to poke a blade of yellowed grass at the ladybug creeping over my knee. I exhaled again, louder this time, and the meandering insect flew away.

Leaving Eoul's office had been difficult. Amoroth dropped us from the Realm twice before reaching the parking garage, cursing more flagrantly with every passing minute and failed attempt. She physically stuffed me into the passenger's seat of a car I couldn't afford in my dizziest daydreams and drove us to an abandoned lot on Verweald's outskirts. She didn't give a word of explanation. We'd been in the lot for almost two hours now, with only the words "neutral ground" traded between us. Behind the car rose a highway overpass leading into the eastern high desert. In the shadows of the brush-strewn underpass was a corroded access gate to the sewers where thick plumes of sulfurous steam belched up from the rank depths. The concrete walls and supports of the highway surrounding the access were predictably painted in layers of graffiti—but the crimson words "The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law" were clear and untouched.

Amoroth sat on the hood of her car, smoking her third or fourth cigarette with a spare shirt from the trunk swaddling her bleeding arm. The Sin was staring toward the distant city, where her tower was only a slip of darkness against a golden sky. The woman was plainly nervous as her left hand tapped an anxious rhythm against the car's paint. The constant ping of her ring striking the fiberglass was irritating the living daylights out of me. She was terrified of Darius, of what my Sin could do once he got his hands on her, but even deep in thought as she was, Amoroth's mannerisms were glaringly human. If their roles had been reversed, Darius would have been perched above the wheel-well like a gargoyle, baring his teeth as he sneered into the wind. I figured their behaviors came down to the fundamental differences of their natures; Amoroth was not Original and had once been human. Darius was Original and had once been Absolian.

"You could have dropped me off at home," I complained as I kicked dirt with my heel. I ground my palms together, trying to scrub off the dried patches of Amoroth's blood, which had stained my nails a disgusting shade of brown.

"I could have," Amoroth agreed as she flicked the ash from her cigarette. "Or you could learn the meaning of the words 'neutral ground' and comprehend that your hovel of a house is not neutral ground. Idiot."

"And you could have been rational and used a telephone to send a message, instead of throwing me off a building."

"The latter method ensures my point is taken seriously." She glanced at her watch, tongue clicking. "Waiting here gives Darius a chance to cool his temper before he does something regrettable. Darius always does regrettable things, but being torn apart by an ancient, half-crazed moron for a simple misunderstanding is not on my agenda for the evening."

"How will he know where to find us? What with this great locale you've chosen?"

"He will know. He'll know right after he extracts his head from up his own ass and remembers."

Amoroth crushed the cigarette, snuffing it in her palm with little thought to the burn it left behind. She began pacing, though she kept her gait modulated and unhurried, obviously aware of her nervous bearing and wishing to cover it. She was barefoot but didn't spare the prickly weeds any attention. I watched her and prepared myself to dodge if she tried sifting me through the Realm again for whatever reason. Her last attempt had been disastrous and painful.

"He's not completely irrational, you know," I said slowly, speaking to my scuffed knees. "I don't understand your antagonism toward Darius."

The woman scoffed, her voice cheap and withering. "No, no of course not. God forbid I don't conform to the little mortal's narrow understanding of our vastly more complicated lives and histories."

"He said he killed your host. He told me it was an accident." Amoroth froze. Her head tipped to direct a harsh, angry glare in my direction. The emotion written on her face was cold and brittle, and though I bit the inside of my lip, I continued regardless of her increasing agitation. "He was imprisoned for years because of you, because of what he did. What I don't understand is your hostile opinion of him. Darius suffered for his wrongs; from what I see, you didn't. You're successful and thriving."

"You understand nothing." She resumed pacing and finally came to a stop at the car's bumper. She sat on the hood and crossed her legs, straightening the torn and bloodied length of her skirt. "You sit in the dirt and dare lecture me? Stupid girl. Yes, he killed my host—a person like you. You do realize that, don't you? He kills people like you for his own ends. Innocent little hosts."

"I have no sympathy for people like me," I retorted, my tone firm but unemotional. "I have no sympathy for people who sell their souls to bend creatures like you to their whims. They—and I—are hardly innocent, and though some of them probably don't deserve to be slaughtered in cold blood, I'd wager most of them do. Besides, demon, you threw me off a roof. I would have died, and that would make you the same as Darius, wouldn't it?"

"Oh, break me twice!" the woman exclaimed as she extracted a slender book of smokes from her jacket's inner pocket. She tossed up her free hand. "'You threw me from the roof. You're so mean, you're so evil—boo-hoo, poor me.' There was a bloody access balcony not ten feet below you!"

I hadn't known that, though it would explain where Darius had jumped from to catch me. I shook off my surprise, determined. "I would have broken bones! And what if you had missed? I could have still died!"

"I'm not that fucking lucky," the Sin grumbled as she cupped her hands before her mouth, the lighter clicking twice before a small flame glowed and lit her fifth cigarette.

"And? If I had died, what would you have done? Said 'whoops?' You told me Darius is unstable and dangerous, and yet he's not the one chucking people off sky-scrapers to make a point."

"I really must reevaluate my opinion of Darius if he can tolerate this incessant whining and grandstanding," she said lightly. Her nose wrinkled as she held the lit cigarette away from her face and allowed a thin trill of smoke to issue between her glossed lips. "The man must be an absolute saint."

I was silent, my jaw clenched tightly in pique.

"I am not human, Gaspard. Darius is not human. We do not have your sense of morality. If you had hit the pavement, I would have paid your Sin reparations and we would have all gotten on with our lives. I wouldn't have cared. I don't care. The only reason Darius would care is that he would have felt slighted, and one does not slight the Sin of Pride without expecting some form of retribution." The thumb on her left hand began twisting the band on her finger around and around. "Hence why you are still alive and why we are waiting here."

We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Amoroth smoked and occasionally paced, paying me no mind. Infrequent words escaped her inner monologue in hushed exhalations of smoke. I caught the words "idiot" and "bastard" several times. I leaned on the Sin's car, listening to Amoroth's silent tirade and the rush of cars driving the highway. The city was doused in colors of bronze, amber, and orange as the sun sank below the horizon. From there it grew swiftly darker until the only light came from the sweep of headlights roving the road behind us. I shivered in the cool evening air.

My backside grew stiff from sitting on the unyielding ground. Frustrated, I got up and beat the dirt off my clothes as I started moving. If the impossible woman wanted to wait in this barren spit of underdeveloped land all night to avoid being ripped to pieces, so be it. That was her business. I was tired, bleeding again, and conflicted over how today's events had taken such a drastic turn. What was Amoroth thinking, having me fired from Imor?

"Will you just sit down?" the Sin complained as I walked toward the distant highway.

"No." I tripped on a rock and sucked in a breath when I caught myself. "No, I'm going to find a phone and call a cab. You can stand there all night if you want, but I'm going home."

Something struck the car with enough force to jar to a warning bark from the alarm. "I swear I'll drag you back here by the hair, you stupid—."

Amoroth's harangue was cut short when a car jerked away from the onramp and instead drove off the pavement into the dirt lot. I immediately recognized the coughing engine and sighed with relief. Darius had gone to Imor for my keys and had retrieved my rusted car. I hoped he hadn't just taken the keys and abandoned my purse on the desk, but did Darius understood concepts like identity theft or stolen credit card?

My car lurched to a stop and Darius slid from the driver's seat without killing the engine or shutting the door. The intense glare of the headlights shrouded the Sin of Pride's expression in obscurity. He walked carefully—purposefully—among the thin sage bushes and dry clods of earth until he drew level with me. I shivered in the clawing chill following the demon, my fingers folding into the hem of my dirty blouse. I peeked through my lashes and found Darius' stare fixated on my bloody hands. The side of his face was caught by the car's light, and the sightless black beneath his lids glimmered like slick oil.

"Go home," the Sin said as he turned again to face Amoroth. The younger Sin remained at her car's side, one hand fisted on a cocked hip—but the cigarette in her opposing hand had burned down the filter, and the woman was so still she appeared to not be breathing. "I will join you there momentarily."

I hesitated, though I wasn't certain why. Perhaps, though I thoroughly disliked the Sin of Lust and found her insufferably self-absorbed, I didn't believe she should die for her mistakes or perceived insults. However, it wasn't my business. I was an outsider in this issue, and as Amoroth had mentioned I didn't fully comprehend the complexities of their histories or lives. If Amoroth died at Darius's hands, it would not be my fault. It would be her own.

"Okay," I muttered, lowering my gaze. I heard Darius continue toward Amoroth and I heard her snipe something cutting in a language I did not recognize. By the time I was seated in my car and could glance over the dusty lot again, both Sins had vanished. Amoroth's shiny car remained as an odd statement against the tagged underpass behind it.

I drove home in silence, my mind intent on the small, one-bedroom tract house in its sleepy suburb—intent upon being barricaded within its four walls to balance myself with its normalcy. Darius would return and that normalcy would be shattered, but after a day of being repetitively tossed through an inter-dimensional realm by a pissed off, eccentric demon, even the most microscopic taste of something normal would do wonders to ground my anxious thoughts.

It was early yet, so the night sighed with late summer warmth, the sky lambent with the captured rays of the gloaming hour. Spruce Street was as subdued as ever, but a few gatherings of kids played on their front lawns or biked along the paved sidewalks. Televisions were visible in the front rooms of most houses as my neighbors ate dinner on their sofas from trays and watched the evening news. I parked in my driveway and sat in the car for a moment, my nose wrinkling at the lingering smell of brine and salt that had soaked into my seats.

I need to have the interior cleaned.

I wrapped a tentative hand over my aching side.

Will I live long enough for it to matter?

I found my purse in the backseat where Darius had tossed it. The contents had been thoroughly disorganized by the Sin's hunt for the keys, and I exhaled with aggravation as I picked through the mess, trying to locate my pain medication. I got out of the car and started up my walk while I searched, grumbling wordlessly. The keys had been on top of everything else. Had it really been necessary for him to go through the rest of my things as well?

I stood on the porch with my keys in hand, ready to head inside—but the door was already unlocked and left barely ajar, as if the latch hadn't quite caught when someone had shoved it shut. Great. Darius must've come back to the house earlier. He couldn't even shut the damn door behind himself? Peeved, I toed the door open as I managed to unearth the bottle. The crack of the pills shaking in the plastic as I wrestled with the lid was loud in the dark house.

I stepped on something soft on my way to the restroom. Confused, I bent and lifted a squishy cushion in my free hand. I touched the fabric, unable to see much of anything in the dark—but I recognized the rough texture of the couch's pillows. A couch cushion? In the hallway?

Tara's cat hissed and growled as he darted from below the couch in question, wrapping about my ankles. His fur felt strange on my skin, sharp and prickling and too hot, the growls vibrating against my very bones.

Someone stepped from the bathroom. They didn't see me partially bent over—and with my eyes on the floor, I didn't see them. They bumped into me and I stumbled to catch my balance against the wall. "Darius...?" I asked—but as my gaze roved over the solid, darkened form frozen before me, I knew it wasn't the Sin. The man was too short, too stocky—and the whisper of cologne clinging to his skin wasn't a scent I had ever caught on the Sin of Pride. There was an intruder in my home.

"What are you doing in my house?!" I demanded as my purse hit the floor and its contents scattered. The cat growled again.

I must have startled the intruder, for he only slammed my back into the wall and I yelped in fear. For a moment I was convinced this was going to be my end. I was terrified this invader was going to kill me. However, the man ran into the front room and I heard the door crash open, his footsteps erratic upon the pavement outside. I tried to chase him—though a dozen reasons why that would be utterly stupid lit up my thoughts in a dizzying display, and the cat clung to my ankle, slowing me down. I staggered to the mouth of the hallway with my hand crimped over my wound, light-headed with adrenaline as my heart thundered in my chest.

The rush of displaced air covered the hall in a choking draft. Darius appeared from the pin-wheeling arms of black flames. His eyes found me, then searched the dark. and I realized that this was how he had appeared on Klau's roof. My fear—my terror—had called the Sin to my side, had given him a sharp jerk on that leash of his to bring him to heel like an errant dog.

"There—!" I pointed at the open door, breathless. "A man—!"

Darius ran before I could finish speaking. I went as far as the threshold and lingered, my hands shaking on the door's frame. Darius's head whipped to face both directions of the street as he searched the dark for a retreating figure. The Sin inhaled sharply and charged westward along Spruce Street, disappearing behind the neighbor's hedges as the dog barked, scratching at the wood fence between our yards.

I waited. There was little else I could do.