The lodestone strung about my neck was an onerous burden. The large, flat stone sat upon my chest like a smoldering ember, pressing against my sternum with bruising force. Needles of the energy housed within the lodestone's pulsating rune swaddled my entire body in a blanket of prickling knife-points. Perspiration dripped from my temples and pooled at the small of my back. My breath escaped me in choked exhalations. The five-minute walk from Amoroth's "borrowed" car to the doors of G&R had been excruciating.

"I am so tir—!"

"Might I remind you," Darius interjected, adjusting how his useless glasses sat upon his nose. "That though you are invisible, you are also quite audible. Stop huffing like rhinoceros."

It was Monday afternoon in early September, the sun warm but not overwhelming as large cumulus clouds jockeyed for position on the horizon. The Sin and I stood outside G&R Supplies and Distribution, and I was—in fact—huffing like an asthmatic rhinoceros. I was also invisible, thanks to the throbbing rock throttling my neck. The glamour allowed my presence to go unnoticed and afforded Darius the simplest means of infiltration. The Sin could use the Tongue of the Realm to alter people's memories, but it had its limitations, and there were too many people—too many variables—inside the buildings. Darius couldn't cover them all, not when he was starving.

Thus, I was invisible.

"It's like there's a boulder tied to my chest," I complained, keeping my volume low. "A boulder that keeps shocking me every fifteen seconds." If I moved too erratically, the stone sent a warning jolt through my system before I could buck off the glamour. It was not a pleasant sensation. "How do they wear these?!"

"It's designed for mages, not humans. Bear it," Darius muttered as he straightened his ironed cuffs. The Sin wore a slate-colored, three-piece suit he had acquired from some poor, now suitless businessman. His hair was combed and tamed with a liberal dollop of gel. He smelled of overpriced aftershave and—if I was not mistaken—he appeared older. Somehow the creature had managed to deepen the lines of wear marring his face, aging his countenance by at least a decade. I was glad for my invisibility, as I'd been staring at the Sin in confusion for most of the day.

It was almost five o'clock. Most of G&R's employees would be heading home for the evening, but not the man we were here for. John Pier had an appointment with Darius Bellows.

After discovering John Pier's dossier in the employee registry for G&R, Darius and I had spent the weekend deciding the best way to proceed. Darius had first proposed the most obvious solution; he would follow John Pier to his home and interrogate him there. The Sin had been more than willing to enact the plan until he discovered Pier was married and slept in a house with two guards and a kennel of persnickety hounds. It was not an environment that lent itself to interrogations. Waiting for him to be alone in his home could take weeks.

We'd settled upon our current strategy. John Pier was a manager for the supply side of G&R, and the man apparently worked much later than many of his cohorts. Darius surmised Pier was able to conduct his shadier business affairs during these transitory hours when the office building was clearing and the night was still young. He would be alone, somewhere quiet and overlooked, a place where he could work without interruption.

Our greatest chance of catching John Pier alone was now.

Darius shifted his grip on the briefcase, sighed, and leveled his eyes toward the smog-clad skyline. Someone came out of the main doors, talking into their phone as they loosened their tie. "Let's go," the Sin whispered as he strode forward. He reached for the door on the pretext of holding it open for the departing employee—which allowed me, hidden by my mage glamour, to duck inside. Darius followed.

The interior of G&R was as unimpressive as the exterior. The carpeting was dingy and spotted in places. The plants were fake, made from rubbery plastics and fuzzy dirt. The ceiling hung only half a foot above Darius's height, and the dim lighting was not up to code. Two hallways branched away from the reception area. The left hall opened onto a stairwell. The right led deeper into the building's recesses. Two employees loitered at the mouth of the latter corridor as they chatted by a bubbling water cooler.

The skinny man behind the front desk was startled by Darius' sudden presence. "Oh!" he said, straightening from his game of computer solitaire, clicking several times to close the incriminating window. Holding my breath, I inched behind the receptionist and watched his red-knuckled hands fly over the desktop, quickly straightening the disheveled mess. "Err, welcome to G&R Supplies and Distribution! How may I help you...?"

"I have an appointment with Mr. Pier," Darius stated as he flicked imaginary dust from his lapel. One would think Darius, whose normal dress consisted of leather, aged denim, and scuffed tennis shoes, would be discomfited by his current outfit—but the demon wore the suit with practiced ease. My traitorous mind superimposed the remembered image of Balthier over Pride, and I could not suppress the answering shiver. Darius looked just like the Sin of Envy.

"Your name?"

"Bellows. Darius Bellows, representing Spark-Craft Ingenuities."

"Okay...." The man began to discreetly riffle through the papers on his desk. Growing more tired by the second, I nudged the datebook from under the latest gossip rag so the man could see it. Darius's harsh eyes snapped in my direction in silent warning. I stuck out my tongue and made as many obscene gestures as I could get away with. "Oh! Here we are. Let me page Mr. Pier and he'll be down to greet you."

Darius gave the slight man a single solemn nod—then continued to stare at the poor guy until he squeaked and excused himself to use the restroom. The Sin folded his hands together upon the handle of his stolen briefcase and raised his nose to the ceiling. "Get on with it," he muttered.

I shuffled through the receptionist's mess as Darius watched the two employees who lingered in the room. I attempted to be stealthy, but being invisible meant exactly that; I was invisible. I couldn't see my own hands. I knocked the man's soda from the desk, covering the carpet in a thick layer of syrupy drink. Darius hid his face behind his hand. Swearing softly, I managed to open the datebook and thumb through the pages. There was nothing written there.

I tried opening several of the drawers, but all were locked. Many of the papers on the desk were inconsequential receipts or unfulfilled orders. Frustrated, I swept an armload onto the floor. Darius coughed—his displeasure clear—as the slouches by the water cooler ogled the sudden downfall of paperwork.

"And I thought I had difficulty with discretion...."

"Shut up, Darius," I whispered, moving as swiftly as my clumsy hands would allow. Someone descended the stairs within the left hall, their footsteps reverberating in the enclosed space. I could find nothing—but this was another reason why Darius had coerced an uncooperative mage in Los Angeles into supplying him with a very expensive invisibility rune, so I could search where Darius couldn't. I wasn't looking for anything cult-related. Even madmen weren't stupid enough to leave pertinent evidence on their receptionist's desk for anyone to see. I was searching for information on the operations of G&R and was uncovering nothing. As Darius suspected, the supplier seemed rather...sketchy.

I stepped away from the desk as John Pier came into view. The murderer swaggered with undeserved pomp, one hand stuck in the front pocket of his pants, the other holding a slim manila folder. "Mr. Bellows?" he asked Darius, removing his hand from its pocket to proffer it in greeting. I looked away as Darius met the gesture with a congenial smile.

"Mr. Pier, I take it?"

They continued to share pleasantries, the milieu of male machismo thick in the air. I was aware Darius was only acting, but the charade was convincing—so much so that I couldn't help but stare and reassess everything I knew about the Sin. Well, until his frigid eyes narrowed in my direction and his hand rotated in his discreet but recognizable 'get on with it' gesture. How did he know where I was?

I left. I held my breath as I walked past the men at the watercooler so my huffing wouldn't alert them to my presence. I eased open the first door and winced as the flimsy material screeched on its untended hinges. Inside was an empty, slightly musty breakroom. I left the door where it was and continued on.

Darius's voice continued to rumble from the reception area as I crept farther along the dark corridor. The next door was locked, but the final door in the hall swung open with minimal protest. The inner room was cramped, unlit. I spied a barricade of stuffed boxes and metal cabinets lining the far wall. I stepped inside and left the door ajar so the hall's dim light would show the way. I caught my hip on the corner of the empty desk and swore as the entire thing shifted several inches. The ceramic cup by the keyboard shook, splashing liquid on the papers below its coaster. Curious, I rubbed my bruised hip and popped my forefinger into the cup. The coffee was warm. Whoever sat here would return soon.

There was a large, humming freezer chest set off in the corner. Drying my finger, I approached the freezer first, curious as to why a supply company would stash a freezer in an employee's office rather than in the breakroom or a storage room. I popped open the lid, and the pressurized seal puffed in release. The cool air was a welcome relief to my overheated face as I bent over the unlit freezer. I prodded the item stacked on top of an untidy, flat pile of similar items, trying to deduce what they were. They were dark, encased by some form of thick plastic wrapping. My index finger sank into the top sack, dipping into chilled, sludgy liquid.

My eyes adjusted—and I snatched my hand away with a gasp. Blood bags. Why are there blood bags here?

I allowed the lid to seal itself once more and moved on.

I heaved a box out of my way as I stomped to the cabinets. The rune against my chest was growing heavier with every passing minute, and my legs were weakening. A strange tessellation of color rimmed my vision as sharp pain pulsed in time with my heartbeat.

It's designed for mages, not humans, Darius had said.

It's like running water through a motor, Saule's word echoed in my thoughts. Your mana just doesn't have the right substance to it. The rune required mana to work, and as my soul dumped my inadequate supply through its mysterious carvings, the rune desperately demanded more. I wondered what would be exhausted first; the rune or my soul. Either way, my time was limited.

My fingers skirted the sharp handles protruding from the front of the cabinets. I frowned at the dust that dispersed under my touch. Despite the presence of the employee's desk, no one had gone through these files in recent months. I yanked open the first then the second, squinting inside get an impression of what each drawer held. They both contained records of some kind, various scraps of past orders and reclamations. The third drawer was brimming with crinkled contracts. I couldn't find anything dated after the previous year.

I heard footsteps moving down the outer hall and froze, forgetting I was invisible. The footsteps did not extend to the final stretch of the corridor but petered out at the next door over. I heard it unlock, open, and close. Someone coughed in the adjoining room and a chair squeaked when they sat.

The fourth drawer I tried was locked. I gave it a solid tug that nearly brought the precarious cabinet down on top of me. I took a moment to study the lock, running my fingertips over the cabinet's cold front. The metal was thin, flimsy enough to give with a slight warble of metal when I pressed upon it. I smirked as I leaned my weight upon it, situating my palm beneath the curved handle. I would have never guessed my time as a receptionist would teach me a valuable skill.

My arm surged upward, slamming the drawer's own weight into its upper lock. With the mechanism buckling, I slammed my other first into the corner of the flimsy drawer until I heard the lock crack. Muttering about "Cheap-ass cultists," I allowed the drawer's weight to settle before sliding it out.

A few stapled packets littered the drawer's bottom. Coughing on dust, I slit the top fold and slid a few papers into my hand. The microscopic jargon was lost to the darkness, but I could decipher the larger headlines. These were legal documents—not receipts or filed orders. The bottoms were stamped with seals, and lined with flourished signatures. I read as much as I could or dared in the muggy office with my energy quickly depleting.

I was holding merger proposals. Someone had bought out G&R a year ago.

Another body was moving in the hall. I stuffed the papers into their packet and shoved the entire thing under my shirt. I had to wrap one arm across my middle to keep it in place and a staple snagged on my bandages, but the packet was engulfed by the invisibility charm. I managed to slip out of the office just seconds before the scruffy employee returned. The door shut again, and I heard the lock click into place.

Darius and Pier still stood in what passed for a lobby in this dilapidated building. The Sin gave a convincing laugh at some contrived joke spoken by the cultist, soothing his well-groomed hair. I was surprised by how deft Darius was at handling the situation. His affected façade was seemingly faultless. He spoke with clever, concise business acumen and handled Pier with flabbergasting social finesse I would have never attributed to the Sin. The man who had been spitting hellfire this morning over his waffles had been replaced by a suave, cultured executive who made John Pier seem like a sullen teenager dressing in his father's suit. Darius continually surprised me.

Silent as I could be, I approached the pair and tapped Darius's hand to tell him I had returned. Fine trembling and scorching heat met my touch. I recoiled, startled. Darius's expression remained passive—but beneath his rigid mask lay molten fury the creature was barely restraining. Both of us were reaching our limits.

"Ah," Pier chuckled as he glanced at his watch. "Look at me, wasting time. Let's go up to my office and discuss business." He turned to lead the way, pausing after a step. "Oh, and I hope you don't mind that our elevator is out of service."

Marvelous, I seethed as I kept my pace deliberately slow. It was difficult not to breathe hard, and the last thing I wanted to do was alert John Pier to my presence. I kept the Sin between myself and the cultist as a buffer when we began to ascend the flight of stairs. If the man heard any of my subtle whimpers of exhaustion, he attributed them to Darius, or perhaps to the echo of their footsteps.

John Pier led us to the third floor, where the lights were kept dim and the sunlight struggled to seep through the aluminum blinds covering the small windows. Cubicles dotted the level like fawn-colored sepulchers, but there was an office tucked into the far corner of the desolate space. While I followed them, I was able to duck my head into the empty cubicles and peruse their contents. Many of the desks were generically stocked with bundles of blank letterheads, strewn pens, and late-model computers. Some seemed to house legitimate employees during their work hours—but not many.

Darius and Pier entered the adjoining office and Darius clapped a hand onto the door's edge to prevent the cultist from swinging it shut. Darius smiled as he continued to hold the door, his eyes as black as untouched velvet. Pier shrank with an attempted simper and retreated to his desk. I slipped inside behind Darius, tapping his shoulder to alert the Sin to my presence. I sank into one of the chairs with a gratified huff. The office door shut with a quiet snick.

"So, Mr. Bellows. Can I ask what interested Spark-Craft in an association with G&R?" Pier questioned as he thumbed his computer's keyboard. The monitor flickered to life, its dull ambiance competing with the horrid fluorescent overhead. "It's not that we're not thrilled with the prospect of doing business with you, it's just a bit—ah—unusual."

Darius hadn't taken a seat. There were windows inset on the office's dividing wall, allowing for a view into the main floor space. Darius stuck one finger between the blind slits and bent it downward, peering into the area we had just passed through. "A mutual client recommended you." The blind snapped into place once Darius removed his finger. "It's quiet here. Did the rest of your employees leave already?"

"Hm? Oh, yes. I like to burn the candle from both ends, as they say." Pier typed on his computer. The hour wasn't close to being even remotely "late," but neither of us said anything. Pier's gaze was fixed on the monitor when he should have been watching the creature shut into the tiny room with him. The atmosphere was becoming cooler, the frigid air biting the flesh of my clammy hands. John Pier shivered as he adjusted his cuffs in jerky, habitual motions. "Sorry, who did you say recommended you, again?"

"I didn't say." Darius passed behind my seat, reaching out to cuff the side of my head as if to ascertain where I was. He tugged on the cord belonging to the blinds, shutting them with a clatter. "In fact, I was hoping you could tell me who he is."

The slow patter of pressed keys ceased. "What?" Pier asked, his fair brows drawn together in confusion. Darius shut another set of blinds. "What are you doing? What is this meeting about?"

The Sin's hand dipped from the side of my head to my chest. His fingers curled about the lodestone's thick chain and yanked. The resulting shock of severed energy zinged through my nerves, startling a yelp from my lips.

"Ouch!" I barked, touching my throat with one hand as I batted Darius's hand and the infernal rune away with the other. "Warn me, please!"

John Pier's face had become ghostly pale, his lips quivering in disbelief. "You—!"

Before the cultist could say another word, Darius bore down upon him. The monitor tipped from the desk and slid to the floor with a harsh clacking sound. Darius pinned Pier to the desk, scattering pens and papers like shrapnel in a bomb explosion. I rose to find a safer position in the cramped room.

Pier let loose a guttural shout—but there wasn't a single other person on our floor. His shout was throttled by Darius's punishing grip. The Sin clamped his fingers about Pier's neck in such a way that the cultist's jaw was forced open. Darius pushed two fingers into Pier's mouth, sneering as Pier watched him with bulging eyes—well, eye. The cultist kicked his feet and struggled, but Darius's weight was immovable.

The Sin retracted his hand. Between his fingers was a false molar and the same kind of tiny, seemingly innocuous cyanide pill that had killed the cultist in the van. A fine sheen of sweat beaded Pier's pale skin as Darius wiped the drops of pink spittle from his hand upon Pier's collar.

"Well, well," the Sin said. His upper lip curled upon his sharp teeth in a horrid, demeaning smile. "Tell me, scum. Is it bravery or cowardice to take your own life in the name of your cult?"

"C-cult? What is this about?! You have the wrong man!"

"Because innocent men have cyanide between their teeth? Don't try to play me for a fool." Darius's grip tightened until small, tremulous gasp began escaping Pier's throat. Ice formed and melted upon his flesh. "That's a game you won't win."

Pier snarled, spitting in Darius's face. I retrieved the packet from under my shirt and used what small allotment of available desk space I could to sort through the many pages. In adequate lighting, I could decipher more of the documents—but much of it was worded vaguely, and I could not ascertain the identity of the entity G&R had merged with.

"Do you recognize this?" I asked Pier. It was difficult to keep my voice calm, but I managed. Darius was already choking the life from the man, so there was little I could do to cause Pier more misfortune, regardless of how much I wished I could. I held one sheet before his bruised nose. "Tell me."

"Go fu—!" Darius banged the cultist's shiny head into the desktop, choking his profanity. "—yourself!"

Frowning, I gave the paper a deliberate shake. "C'mon, John. I think I'm being very reasonable, considering you killed my sister for your perverted ritual. This paper states that G&R was bought out last November. After November, the company of which you are a manager of—John—doesn't have any records. Who bought G&R? Who was it?"

I expected many things from John Pier. I expected denial, sarcasm, rage, or even tears—but I did not expect the man to burst into high-pitched giggles. Darius and I stared at one another over Pier's rabid form as we shared a moment of silent communication.

Pier was nuts. Great.

"Did you think I would tell you anything?" the man cackled, jerking his neck to and fro, allowing saliva to pool and drip from the corners of his mouth. "You're dead. You're dead. We gave you to him!"

He twisted himself until he could sink his teeth in Darius's hand. The Sin snarled but didn't move, unable to do so without releasing the deranged cultist.

Unsure of what else to do, I shook the paper again. "Just tell us what this is!"

"Sara," Darius grunted, sinking his own teeth into his lower lip as Pier's blunt teeth carved weeping pink moons in the Sin's hand. His voice rose in a gruff, tangled growl. "Get on with it."

"Adan ladd vallan faevannada!" Pier shouted. "Adan ladd vallan faevannada! And every dream dies! And every dream dies!" The situation was devolving fast. Cursing, I shuffled the page into its fellows and looked to Darius for guidance. Pier spat in my face. His hot, bloody spit splattered across my cheek. "Even yours, dead girl!"

I used my sleeve to wipe myself clean, refusing to let the tears pricking my eyes free. They weren't tears of grief. They were tears of rage—ugly, immutable rage that bubbled in my veins with fervid desperation. The pressing need to scream was almost more than I could stifle. Bits of myself were dissolving into the hellfire consuming my heart and lungs, my self-control spiraling ever closer to the event horizon of utter collapse.

"Mr. Pier, I—." A middle-aged woman opened the door, and our heads snapped up at her appearance. She froze in the doorway, spilling documents over the grubby carpet as she cupped a dark hand over her mouth. She screamed.

"Sara!" Darius snarled—but I was already out of the chair and out the door, chasing the fleeing woman. I collided with her legs and we went down in a tangle of thrown limbs. She screeched and attempted to strike my head, but I grabbed her arms and held them to the floor.

My heart thundered and cold sweat soaked my neck. "Please, stop!" I told the woman. Her nails bit into my skin, her screams of fear shattering the domestic silence clinging to the empty office. "Stop! Darius!"

The Sin shoved me aside, taking my place atop the woman as he used his weight and superior strength to effortlessly pin her in place. He began whispering in his otherworldly language and the poor woman went limp beneath the Sin, her wailing subsiding into thin blubbering until that ceased as well. She stared at the ceiling with wide, unseeing eyes.

"Don't kill her," I panted, my breath stolen by our brief skirmish. "Don't kill her...."

Darius only hushed me before continuing his soft, susurrating diatribe. The unfortunate woman calmed in fractions until Darius slid away and she rose to her heels without glancing at me or the Sin. She gathered her papers from the floor and seemed confused as to how they got there. She went to great pains not to look into the office and, as she patted the titled barrette in her messy hair and tottered away, she hummed a toneless song.

I slouched my shoulders as I shook my head. "That was awful." I was only grateful I hadn't been worse. It could have been much, much worse.

Darius lay upon the floor on his back, chest rising and falling with his gratuitous breaths as the carpet trembled beneath us. The heater kicked on to battle the arctic chill besetting the office. My teeth chattered as hazy plumes of crystallized air materialized like uncertain storm clouds. I reached out to touch one, and the ice adhered to my skin.

"I should have just killed her," Darius groaned as he eased himself into a sitting position, propping his long arms upon his bent knees. The cuts on his hand had healed, but his suit was ruined. "The effort to let her live was far more taxing than it should have been."

Perhaps that was true—but I was glad the Sin had done it. I was glad his first reaction had been to alter her mind, not snap her neck.

Shivering, I turned from the Sin to the gaping office. I shut my eyes in wordless aggravation. It had occurred to me that Pier was being far too tame, too quiet during our fleeting scuffle with the secretary—and now I knew why.

John Pier lay beyond his desk with only his feet visible. He did not move. Darius had killed him.