Sam made her way once again to the other side of town. The Eversons lived in a nice middle-class community full of row homes. The city had precious few places available for the middle class. Most people in the city were either poor or rich, and the rich wouldn't live in the cramped row homes the Eversons and their neighbors occupied.

  Each house was made of red brick and had plain white marble steps leading up to a decorated front door. Folk in this neighborhood painted the front door of the house to be beautiful and to express something about the family inside. This area of the city at least had some color, and some life. She passed doors with birds painted onto vines painted onto beautiful blue backgrounds. Some were painted with city landscapes, or trees, or flowers.

  The Everson door had a painting of Joe Everson, the patriarch, standing with his arms held wide under a glowing sun. The crude stick figure bore little resemblance to the man. Underneath Joe's outstretched arms were portraits of his wife and daughter. They each wore a plain white dress and had simple marks to represent their hair. It looked like he was about to baptize them with his armpits.

  Sam was frustrated to have to return here. She had already exorcised this particular problem, so she didn't know what to expect. Sam had exorcised the demon possessing Lisa Everson, the daughter. The Eversons had paid a full two silvers to expel the demon that had found its way into Lisa's soul. One of the silvers was Sam’s fee. The other fueled the magic.

  Magic required a price. This could be blood, a soul, or, for the most literal sorcerers, money.

  Sam also didn't want to waste a bunch of time on these folks. She worried about Missy, the little girl who hired her to find Rex the dog. Rex was now a zombie, although a very healthy sort of zombie. Sam wanted to return the dog and claim the little girl's silver. In this city, nothing was done for free, even for poor little girls. The Spirit of the City had given Sam a vision in which Missy was in terrible danger. She didn't know if the vision was true, but she wanted to find the little girl just in case. She found it suspicious that neither the girl nor her mother was at home.

  Sam knocked at the front door of the Everson house. After a few beats, Sarah Everson, Lisa's mother, came to the door. Her hair was done up in a perfect bob, her nails sparkled, her dress immaculate, and she greeted Sam with a broad smile.

  "Miss Fontaine, thank you so much for coming. Now, why don't you come in and make yourself comfortable? I'll let Joe know you're here."

  Sam gave the woman a skeptical look. "I thought you said Joe was possessed.”

  "Well, yes, there is that. But still. It's nice to be polite, isn't it? Of course you're right. We can go upstairs, straight to business. Can I get you a drink?"

  The woman didn’t wait for an answer.

  "I must confess, once again we did try some home remedies prior to calling you. We thought we would save ourselves a little bit of money this time. I tried a few of my grandmother's recipes. She was a hedge witch of some renown, and she left her recipe book down to my mother, who left it down to me. There was a recipe for a potion guaranteed to remove evil spirits."

  Far from being offended, Sam actually loved these people. Their DIY approach was preposterous, never worked, and she absolutely loved hearing what they tried.

  "What was in the potion?" she prodded.

  "Well," replied Mrs. Everson, "some of the handwriting on that particular page had faded over time. So I couldn't quite make out the entire recipe, but knowing my grandmother and looking at some of the other pages, I was able to cobble it back together. I think the problem is the recipe itself.

  "You see, it did call for Eye of Newt. I wasn't able to get Eye of Newt at the grocer. Nor was I able to find any newts at the pet store whereby I could possibly somehow take one of their eyes. I felt squeamish about taking a newt's eye, of course. I was rather glad they didn't have any. There was a dragonfly flitting about, and I do hate those things. I figured dragonfly and newt, they both have quite large eyes, so I substituted dragonfly. Now, I didn't want to take out the entire eye. So I instead squished the dragonfly with a towel and dumped it into the mixture. Then the recipe called for holy water. Once again, we did not have holy water, so of course I tried my best and substituted laundry detergent in dilution, ten parts water, one part detergent. Figured the concentration might help Joe's disposition.

  "Now, Lisa was kind enough to find the next few ingredients for me. They were plants. I wasn't quite sure what the plants were, but I showed Lisa the pictures my grandmother drew and she came back with plenty of leaves and roots.

  "Lisa's been staying over at a friend's house on account of not wanting to see her father possessed, having been so recently cured of the affliction herself. We're still so grateful for that, by the way. She sends her warmest regards. When I told her you were coming, she seemed so disappointed she was going to miss your visit.

  "Then the recipe had some strange instructions, and here is where I think it went amiss. You see, it said to boil the ingredients together under moonlight, sky-clad. My blue dress was at the cleaners, and it was cloudy, so I did my best by boiling it by the open window. I did wait until nighttime, so I think we're square on that front.

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  “But when I gave Joe the resulting concoction, it smelled so foul and sour he complained and hollered. He hooted about not wanting to drink the foul ichor. I spilled it on my nice dress. I spilled a good portion on Joe, of course, thinking that would do the trick. But the recipe did say he has to drink it. So down it went! Unfortunately, the demon did not leave. Instead, it cursed my cooking skills. Can you imagine the rudeness?

  "Well, I was so upset. The very next day I went out and did a little shopping to calm myself down. It does put me in a better mood. I tell you, whenever Joe gets into one of his fits - which frankly isn't very different from when he's possessed - I’ll go out and I'll buy myself a pretty dress or necklace, anything to take the frustration off my shoulders for a little bit."

  "Okay, okay, okay, Mrs. Everson, please, please, I get it. You gave him a potion. It didn't work. Can you show me where you got him locked up?"

  "Of course," said Mrs. Everson. "Right this way. Like I said, up the stairs to the left. Here we go."

  The woman led Sam upstairs, past floral wallpaper and a modestly carved banister. As they approached the bedroom, either Joe or the demon started banging on the door.

  "Let me out! I'm not possessed! Let me out!"

  This was a common tactic. The demon had pretended the same during Sam's last visit, but the Liar’s Eye underneath Sam’s eyepatch had revealed the truth.

  Sam's proficiency in exorcism came from her military training. The military taught her several sorceries. She didn’t understand their full workings because she didn’t need to. But she knew enough to kick a demon out of an overweight bald guy.

  Sam entered the room and the demon quieted down a bit. Then, it started banging at the door. She worried the hinges were going to come off or the door would break. If not for a chair propped under the doorknob, the demon might have escaped. She appreciated some parts of the Everson ethos.

  "I smell you, woman. I smell your stink. I know you, Fontaine. You're the one that sent me back last time."

  Sam was grateful that the demon had dropped the pretense. She got to work. She told Mrs. Everson to excuse herself. She used chalk to draw a sigil on the floor. The military sorcerers had explained that this was a binding circle for Phenex the Marquis, a demon sympathetic to the task of exorcism.

  With a nominal offering, Phenex would bind any demon in the circle, then separate it from its host. Sam wanted to ask this particular demon a few questions before she sent it on its way.

  Once Sam had finished drawing the circle, she took Mrs. Everson's silver coin, placed it on one of the symbols, and said, "Oh, Phenex! Precious metal I offer thee, silver coin to pay thy price. Bind this demon and force him to speak true. Then send him back to Hell."

  Then she opened the closet door. Joe Everson was covered in sweat. He wore the same dirty shirt from Sam’s last visit. Overworked suspenders still held up his pants.

  Rage twisted his face when he laid eyes on Sam. He raised his hands up like claws and charged at her. He was yanked back before he was able to reach Sam, as if pulled by a leash. Phenex had answered and seen fit to empower the circle such that the demon possessing Joe could not attack her.

  "Filthy, vile slut," the demon whispered. "How dare you?"

  "Save it," said Sam. "Do you really think I haven't heard it all before? I do have some questions before I send you on your way."

  "I spit at thee," said the demon. He did, at that point, spit. Sam stepped aside, neatly avoiding being touched by Joe Everson's goopy saliva.

  "Tell me, demon, what is your name?"

  Sam hadn't really asked any questions of the demon during her last visit. She simply performed the exorcism and left. It was a simple matter when one knew the binding of Phenex, made specifically for this purpose. A military-grade magic circle worked almost effortlessly on part of the exorcist. Phenex the Marquis hoped to become an angel once again and sit before the throne, so it was sympathetic to those wishing to send demons back to Hell.

  The demon tried to resist. Phenex was the stronger. Demons held rank. And each rank could command the lower ranks, destroy their bindings, and undo their workings. Most demons common folk encountered were part of the legions. Phenex, being a Marquis, could command all of them.

  But the binding and Sam's invocation said to speak the truth, so the demon was forced to answer.

  "Haborym the Firebrand is my name." The demon glared through Joe's eyes.

  "Well, thank you, Haborym, for speaking true," Sam said.

  "I was invited here, woman. You have no right to send me back."

  "Well," said Sam, "according to the binding, I have every right to send you back, don't I? But you said you were invited here. By who?"

  "This fat fool. He saw you perform sorcery. He said, 'If she can do it, I can certainly do it.' So he drew a circle he found, and he commanded forces he did not understand. He opened the door back up for me, and I took his gluttonous body."

  Sam shook her head and resolved to charge the Eversons three silvers for her next visit.

  "Goddamn amateurs," she sighed.

  Gul Zerah stepped over the body of his former protégé. His greatest creation, the Elixir of Life, was stolen. The binding circle surrounding his body told him Mira, his student, planned to resurrect him as a mere slave.

  Her throat had already been ripped out. He was only frustrated because he wanted to ask her what happened.

  The empty chalice which once held the precious Elixir lay outside the scripted circle. He surmised the few drops left had trickled their way to the center of the floor. A simple accident of gravity resurrected him. The humiliation rankled more than Mira's betrayal.

  Gul Zerah explored the stinking tunnels his followers had turned into their headquarters. He walked from the resurrection ritual room through the sewers. The sewer tunnel opened on a smaller ritual room filled with cages. Dead animals piled against a far wall. One of them, he was amused to see, was a lion. Mira certainly loved drama.

  In the center of the room, still tied to a chair, he saw his beautiful Guillaume. His pretty, stupid love hunched over. A bloodless gash in his neck told the sorcerer the boy had been sacrificed, his blood given up as offering. He knelt in front of the body. He brushed the curls out of the young man's face.

  Despair and rage washed over him in wracking waves. Through tears, he bent to examine the circle the careless sorcerer had left behind.

  His rage faded as he read the mystic script. Guillaume's sacrifice, the loss of his followers, the betrayal of his trust, and his own murder had, at least, given him the power of the Elixir. Now, too, he had the binding of a King of Hell.

  He would use it for his revenge.