"Emil!" Sam said, bursting out of the old sorcerer's ritual room. "You're right. He's an asshole. But! He talked to me!"

  "What you mean? He talked to you. Did he? What he said? Samantha, that's a big deal. I don't think you understand. Nobody's been talking to him for a long, long, long time. Nobody I know, anyway. Hey, you know, many people they give up."

  "He said I was weak."

  "Oh okay, well, you know, like I said, he's an asshole. But you talked to him first try! Congratulations! Very good, very good."

  "Thank you. He said he responded because I used a weapon won by conquest to draw my own blood. That's what he said. Then, he said I was too weak and to return when I'm stronger. What does he mean stronger?"

  "How the fuck am I gonna know? Am I looking strong to you?"

  "Well, whatever, it's still very, very exciting. But listen. Now I got a problem. The tattooed snake man that attacked me? I got no leads. The Rosicrucians were a bust. There was only one person I could talk to there, and he said the entire Order had basically fallen apart since their leader died."

  "Okay, what you wanna do about it for me? You are thinking I'm going to come along busting heads, asking questions to you? Huh?"

  "I don't have any heads to bust. Will you help me as a Diviner?"

  "Ho boy. Always with the favors. You gonna pay for it and I'm only doing because you bring the good wine this time and ask about my mother, even though I already told you she's dead. It's the whole reason we know each other, Samantha, I'm orphan like you.

  "Let me tell you something for free, Samantha. How many Diviners you think there is in whole Empire?"

  Emil didn't wait for her answer.

  "It's less than one hundred. You know that? Okay? It's not a lot of people. It's not a popular job. Think about it. You gotta pay a lot of moneys and you gotta be somebody's little servant for a long time and then? You know what? You gotta find bat blood. Do you know how to get bat blood? Because I do. Let me tell you it's not fun job. Them flappy, creepy little critters like to bite and run away. They don't wanna give you no blood. But you gotta get it because your master he says 'Go get bat blood I wanna talk to Barbatos.'

  "Fucking jerk that guy was. My master, not Barbatos. I mean Barbatos is okay, he's fine, it's just an example. Anyways it's not a lot of people who want to put up with problems just so they can have more problems."

  Emil continued to grumble as he ambled into his ritual room. He grumbled louder when he saw that Sam hadn’t cleaned up the binding circle she made for Furcas. He wiped it away.

  Emil said he was going to use a binding for a President of Hell. One who would accept silver as payment. That way it wasn't too expensive for her. Emil complained a lot, but he was a decent guy.

  Sam watched as he poured salt to make the binding circle. He told her he was going to talk to Marbas, a President of Hell. The Lesser Key of Solomon said that Marbas the Lion was one who would reveal secrets if asked. He could also change the sorcerer's shape at their request. Sam had considered learning the bindings for Marbas but decided against it because the Presidents were the lowest in the hierarchy of Hell. And she didn't need to change her shape that much.

  Before he began, Emil stopped and considered for a moment.

  "Samantha," he said, "Listen, I got to tell you, you're not real good at your job. In the military, you're going to get a lot of interrogations where you can just keep on punching and punching and punching. But listen, somebody comes ,they try and kill you, and it's only dumb stupid luck why you're not dead. Okay, dumb stupid luck. You just get lucky and, yeah, he turned into crispy guy because you're dumping alcohol on his head. What if you miss? You gotta understand. What have you done in this investigation? You come, you ask me, 'Hey, do you know about snake people?' And I say, 'No.' Then you go to the one place I tell you is okay, and then you go and it sounds like you're an asshole when you're there. Then what do you do? You come here again? You say, 'Can you do magic for me please, Emil?'"

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  "What I'm saying to you is, if you want to keep on doing this, what you're going to have to do is maybe go learn a thing or two about how to be an investigator.

  "You're going to learn, maybe, how to be punching a little bit. I know you try to get Furcas to teaching you some things. That's good, but if you're going to be an investigator, you gotta learn to be an investigator.

  "Otherwise, I think it's better for you to find a rich boyfriend and maybe he'll tell you to sit around, drink, and smoke cigarettes, because that's what you like to do anyway. Maybe he's going to bring somebody, and you're going to kill them because I know sometimes, every once in a while, you just like to do a few murders."

  "Good lord, Emil. After I brought you wine and everything."

  "It's the truth. Okay, I know you don't like the truth so much unless you got your creepy eye rock out. Okay, but listen, you're gonna die if you don't know nothing."

  "Yeah, okay. I know, Emil," Sam admitted.

  She had been planning on getting some sort of professional training. She had hoped she would find the types of cases she had heard about before opening her investigation practice. Cases of infidelity or missing persons or the like. But it seemed like everywhere she turned was some sort of supernatural shenanigans. She wasn't quite sure what type of training would be available for someone like that. Being able to properly investigate leads was something the military had not prepared her for. Emil was right: in her interrogation training she learned how to ask the right questions and to beat answers out of people. Torture was frowned on in most cases a private investigator handled.

  Most.

  The things she had done during the war were part of why she had trouble sleeping at night. Sam wasn't a cruel person by nature, but the men under her command would have died if she didn't get the answers she needed.

  Sam was an enlisted soldier when she began but quickly rose up the ranks and distinguished herself during the war to be promoted to Second Lieutenant in charge of a platoon of over thirty soldiers. Her particular knack for getting the truth out of people led the military to choose her for a special interrogator program. They assigned her platoon to capture enemy persons of interest and extract intelligence from them. It was then that the Empire decided to pull out and replace her eye with the Liar’s Eye. She made use of it extensively through the war.

  "Okay, so then we're going to find out what question you wanna be asking," Emil said, interrupting Sam's memories.

  "Well, I got several questions, Emil. Who was the man that attacked me? Why did he attack me? Did someone send him to attack me? And if someone sent him to attack me, where can I find them?"

  "But you don't want to know also why they sending him to attacking you?"

  "I'd prefer to ask that when I find them."

  "Okay, it's going to be ten silvers for you to be asking Marbas about who's going to be stabbing you, why they're going to be stabbing you, where they're stabbing you from. All these questions, okay?"

  "Ten silvers? But it's only four questions."

  "You thinking I'm doing this because I like you face? I don't like you face. It's always grumpy."

  Sam stared at Emil for a moment before responding.

  "Then let's take off the question of who was the man that attacked me. I don't really give a shit. Also, let's take off the question of why did he attack me. That leaves two questions, Emil. Four silvers."

  "Hey, numbers make people confused, you know. You gotta learn to be paying attention if you doing magic. You did great!"

  Emil took her money and placed it in a small space at the southern tip of the seal he had made of poured salt. He stepped outside of the circle. He intoned the invocation that would draw Marbas.

  Many invocations requested the demon spirit appear before them. This was hyperbole, as no demon could manifest itself in the world. Emil had told her that ancient magicians could cavort with demons. They could cross freely from Hell into the realm of Earth. But at some point in history, such traffic was prohibited.

  Sam waited. After a long moment, the silver in the circle disappeared into a puff of black smoke. She heard a voice. It sounded like a rumble of gravel and stone.

  "Ask thy questions," spoke Marbas the Lion.

  Emil gestured at Sam. She stepped forward and said, "Was the man with serpent eyes who attacked me sent by someone?"

  "Yes," replied the voice, like thunder in a cave.

  Now, Sam had to be careful. If she said, "Where can I find them that sent him?" the demon would respond with as few words as possible. He’d say something like "In their homes" and she’d be shit out of luck. Demons have no respect for the spirit of the question. Only the letter. They would respond with as little effort as possible. When asked questions or performing favors, demons were notoriously lazy. However, they were excellent teachers. If you asked a demon to instruct you on a matter of science or philosophy, for example, it would go to great lengths to educate you. Sam suspected this was because they had pride in their knowledge but did not like being summoned as simple servants.

  But Sam was prepared.

  "At what street address will I find them that sent the man with serpent eyes who attacked me?"

  Sam recognized the address Marbas gave her in response. She had been there before.

  It was the Rosicrucian temple.