I dozed while Darius drove, and next I was aware, the car stopped against a curb—tires rubbing the concrete—and Darius' shadow darkened my window, blocking out the streetlights. He opened the door and prodded my shoulder, and so I blinked unwilling eyes and stumbled out of the vehicle, using the Sin's reluctant arm for support.

I took in the familiar sight of old-growth trees swaying overhead and frowned. I hadn't anticipated this. "Why are we in Rio Verde? I thought we were going home."

Darius didn't answer. Typical.

Tidy two-story shops lined the narrow avenue, a mixture of domestic and commercial living spaces with none of the generalized shopping centers. Blearing techno music bled into the street from a larger building on the far corner, lights cascading over the covered windows, but the Sin ignored the place in favor of a darkened shop squeezed between it and a closed delicatessen.

The quiet brick storefront waited as innocuous as any of the others in the district, anointed in thick white friezes reminiscent of row houses across the pond and not shabby strip malls on the west coast. It was an older place, though much of Rio Verde was older, the district the first to be made in Verweald, before skyscrapers cluttered the skyline or the more modern residential tracts popped up along the water's edge. A sign in the dim, barred window blinked 'Closed' in flashing red neon, illuminating the sign faceted to the mottled facia, slender green letters reading "Baba Yaga's Inkwell," posted along with a fern leaf crossed over a stylized flame.

Darius took hold of my sweater, and I limped after him toward the shop, gripping my bleeding side and aching ribs. I could feel the bass from the distant music trembling in the soles of my feet while the Sin stepped up the store's recessed door, darkening the threshold, and suddenly bit into his hand. I jerked as red welled from the savage mark, not that he seemed to care as he reached up to smear the blood against the lintel.

I hadn't noticed the strip of paper plastered there until Darius touched it, at which point I couldn't ignore the slender talisman with foreign characters painted on its surface because it began to glow. A low, static hum filled the air like a circuit board overloading and fizzling, and when the Sin ripped the paper free, a palpable yellow mist warbled over the door's front. It dissipated in an instant, leaving me to wonder if it'd been there at all.

Darius grabbed the door's handle and twisted, the lock giving way with a short, tiny screech.

"What the hell are we doing here? Breaking and entering? Seriously?"

"Shut up, Sara."

He entered first, muttering for me to shut the door, which I did, sealing us inside the strange, humid shop with the pervasive smell of loam and fresh green things. The wall muted the music from next door, though not entirely, lending the hushed atmosphere an eerie, irregular pulse like a heartbeat I could feel more than hear. A veritable jungle of clutter sprawled through the interior, racks upon racks of pots and jewelry, crystals and dried herbs, thick sacks of differently hued salt, earth, moss, dried peat and withered roots, bottles filled to the brim with strange liquids, locked cases bearing innocuous things alongside black blades and framed, yellowing pages from books. It hit the eye in a hurricane of color and smell—not all of it pleasant.

My gaze eventually roved to the wall papered in posters bearing complex designs and price labels.

We're...we're in a tattoo parlor? Really?

A long wooden counter waited at the back, burdened beneath yet more merchandise, a single candle giving light to the otherwise blackened space. The woman there almost disappeared behind the antiquated register and potted ferns, small as she was, sitting on a short, rickety three-legged stool. Wild brown hair all but swallowed her head, color and freckles dusting her cheeks, a smudge of soil forgotten on the bridge of her upturned nose. She was not at all what I would expect from an operator of a tattoo parlor, more like an alternative grad student—what with her overlarge cardigan, glossed lips, and slouched posture.

She hadn't noticed our approach; she wore a dated headset over her ears, the wire leading to a walkman straight out of the nineties resting on the counter between a sack of seeds and medical tape. She sang under her breath, foot bobbing in time to the music as she flipped through some kind of catalog.

When she finally noted Darius' looming presence, she started and shoved back the headset, letting it fall around her neck. "How did you—? We're closed! Can't you read—?"

Recognition sparked in her wide, gleaming eyes, and her cherub face drained of color, leaving the woman wan and terrified. Darius tossed a lazy gesture behind himself, coaching me to stay where I was as the woman yelped and threw herself from the stool. The catalog and walkman both clattered on the floor.

This did not look promising.

"Oh, frick—!" The woman didn't run for the door or the beaded curtain concealing the stairs; she instead collided headlong with a bookcase partly hidden behind an engorged begonia, from which she yanked several books in rapid succession before settling on an old, moldering tome. She backed into the corner as she feverishly flipped through the pages. Several tore in her haste. I stared.

"Baba's bones! Oh frick, where is it—? Where—?! Here!" She stopped searching and began a breathless chant. "Walker of the distant realm, member of the legion, Sin of the Fallen; I banish thee, Sahan!"

Her shout echoed in the shop—but if she meant for something to happen, I didn't know, because Darius snorted and took a step closer. "No."

The woman scrambled for another page. "Walker of the d-distant realm, member of the legion, Sin of the Fallen; I banish thee—Mammon!"

"He's been dead for millennia. So sorry to disappoint."

"Sin of the Fallen; I banish thee—Belphegor!"

"No." The Sin came closer still, and the shadows gathered in the store's inky crevices seemed to swell with delight. He smirked.

"I banish thee—Leviathan!"

"Now you're just being insulting!"

"Rosier!"

"By all means, try another."

"Belias!"

Darius stopped. The woman, all but sprawled on the floor from trying to shrink into the tiles, trembled with triumph, her lungs heaving—until the Sin released a low, murderous chuckle, and we both shivered. "Close, but not quite, witchling. You're a few centuries off; I haven't been called that in quite some time...though I am very interested in learning how you and your wretched coven came by that name."

He licked the pad of his thumb and snuffed the candle with a sullen hiss.

In the sudden darkness, the woman whined, and I heard the tome fall. The music continued to beat low and furious under out feet. "P...Pride."

"Yes. Now that you are aware of whom you're dealing with, desist in this pointless guessing game, witch, and do as you are ordered."

Did he just say witch? I looked over the shop—what I could see of it in the dark, anyway—with new interest, thrown by the sudden revelation. Was the woman actually a witch? What on earth were we doing here? She'd tried to guess his name. I gathered it'd been for some kind of banishing spell, but it couldn't possibly work, could it? If it could, I would give the woman—witch—Balthier's name now and be done with it.

"W-what do you want?" she asked, using the shelves behind her to leverage herself off the dirty floor. Bits of greenery clung to her leggings. She squared her shoulders and faced Darius, but I knew from experience how difficult it could be to stare him down, and the witch proved less resistant to his intimidation. I gave her credit for trying.

"I want you to heal this woman." The Sin extended his arm, and I took this as my cue to approach, coming to Darius' side as he touched my shoulder, either in a gesture of reassurance or to make certain I didn't bolt from the shop.

The witch shoved her wild hair from her face and snapped her fingers. The candle on the counter reignited without further fanfare, and the woman looked me over, attention lingering on the bloodstain spreading from my middle, then on my hands, ghostly and weak, clinging to myself with tired, weary desperation.

"But she's...she's human, isn't she?"

Darius bore his teeth, and the temperature plunged, the tropical plants drooping under the dramatic shift. "I did not invite you to question me, mortal. I simply said to do as you are told."

The woman swallowed, throat moving with the motion, her trembling hands balled into diminutive fists. "I—. I'll be banished for this. You—you can't expect me to—."

"I expect you to value your life, witch, and the life of your coven. If you think yourself at all clever, then heed your silly little stories and recognize what I am. I will break bones to get what I require; whether I start with yours or your sisters' is up to whether or not I find your obedience swift enough."

The woman appeared near wetting herself in terror, and even I felt cold dread crawl like ice along my spine—though I wouldn't allow the Sin to attack the woman when I didn't know her and she posed no threat. I doubted Darius would understand my reticence; he was not human, and breaking fingers or limbs for a spot of coercion meant little to him.

"Please," I said softly, bringing their attention back to me. "I...I need your help."

The woman met my gaze and held it, unspoken fear in her hazel eyes, the candlelight dancing on their wet surface. She didn't want to heal me, but not because she wished for my suffering; rather, I assumed she could get in trouble for assisting Darius, though I couldn't say where that trouble would come from, or whether it'd affect her or her coven. She needed to acquiesce, however, as I had little enough energy to argue with an irritated demon, and I was not above a smidgen of begging to be healed.

"No one needs to know we came here," I continued, voice raspy with hurt and exhaustion. "...but he won't leave until he gets what he wants. Don't test him. Please help me."

I saw her swallow again, teeth digging into her lower lip, and the witch dragged a measure of composure over herself, ignoring the towering Sin lingering at my elbow. "Okay," she whispered, wiping frightened tears from her lashes. "Okay...I'll help."