The wheels of a government facility often turn at notoriously sluggish speeds, but I was astounded by the haste the tax revenue office could muster when a woman like Grace Amoroth storms into their office on a Thursday morning and demands to inspect certain discrepancies within their records.

Of course, they were markedly more willing to cooperate after Amoroth hinted at a potentially sizable donation of an undetermined amount in recompense for the assessor's assistance.

The office of the county's tax assessor was exactly what I expected of a federally funded government facility: drab, square, with far too little parking and far too many lines. The building's name was neatly stenciled above the double doors, and tin signs lined the walls with instructions listed in various languages. The lines would have been bothersome—if we had been forced to deal with them. Amoroth shoved her way to the front desk and proceeded to make a spectacle of herself until a harangued manager came forth from the bowels of bureaucracy to assist her.

I sighed as I followed the Sin of Lust and the supervisor along a dimly lit, carpeted hallway. The lack of windows aggravated my claustrophobia, ratcheting my shoulders up to my ears. Darius walked behind me, amused by Amoroth's charade, my discomfort, and the undisclosed torture dragging upon the frames of the workers we passed. The elder Sin and I were posing as Amoroth's assistants—not that anyone believed Darius, in his leather jacket and sneakers, was an assistant to a multi-billion-dollar corporation CEO. No one questioned his presence, however. Money spoke a persuasive language I would never understand.

I was more presentable in my Klau uniform and brushed hair, but my twitchy, self-conscious movements drew curious gazes.

To my dismay, the records we wished to search through were physical records kept in a large, poorly air-conditioned facility adjoining the revenue office. I had hoped to find the contract in a computer somewhere, stored digitally on a hard drive, but I didn't complain as the flustered manager showed us into the bursting warehouse.

"Dear God," I muttered as Darius and I paced several feet into the expanse, leaving Amoroth to handle our guide. Metal racks stretched to the exposed rafters, each holding line upon line of boxes taped and labeled with letters or years. There were ladders interspersed throughout the soaring rows, ready to be climbed to reach the heights up above. "We're in someone's version of Hell."

"The Malebolge," Darius yawned. I glanced at the Sin, surprised by his joke. "It's Dante's eighth circle."

"I know, I've read it," I replied. I hadn't known that Darius had read it as well, though. As horrid as our situation was becoming, I still stumbled when a wayward thought occurred to me. Did Darius like to read? Did he like Dante? What else did he like to do? "It's the circle for fraudulent sinners."

Darius continued to walk into one of the aisles, his hand rotating in a silent, lazy circle as he went. That's my point.

Amoroth was quickly coercing the manager to go about his way and to allow us unfettered access to the records. From what I could surmise, he was proving to be difficult to manipulate—but Amoroth was using her feminine wiles in conjunction with her mastery of the Tongue of the Realm, and soon the man was tottering from the warehouse with a blank expression on his face.

"Damn civil servants," Amoroth growled as she adjusted the collar of her silk blouse to conceal her cleavage. "It would cost me less effort and money to convince a King to part with his soul."

I didn't understand the reference—but, judging by the acrid glare Amoroth directed at me, the words hadn't been meant for my ears anyway. "You owe me two favors," the Sin growled as she crossed her thin arms. The ring upon her bandaged hand caught the light and shone in my eyes. "If you kick the bucket before I get my due, your debt transfers to Pride. Are we in agreement?"

"Naturally," I said, attempting to keep the venom out of my tone. I failed miserably. "God forbid I die before I can repay your munificence."

Her brow lowered into a dangerous slope as lavender washed through her irises. "Careful, girl. I'm in no mood for your behavior. The only reason I agreed to this stupidity is for my own benefit. I wager if you catch your cult, my little problem with dying employees will cease. And, if it doesn't, at least you'll be dead."

"Your confidence is inspiring." I pressed my lips into a firm line to keep from saying more as the Sin of Lust sat upon a crate not inches from the shut door. She removed a new phone from her pocket. "You're not going to help look, are you?"

"No. My munificence has met its end. Have fun, Gaspard."

I stormed away from the exasperating woman, choosing a different aisle than the one Darius had ventured into. There were no signs to direct our search, and I was not sure how they organized things in an assessor's office. I truly felt like I was in a perverse level of Hell, my functional heels click-clacking on the shined concrete, towers upon towers of bureaucracy slowly closing in upon me. What records of fraud lurked here, dormant in the rivers of pitch and ink? No one would ever know.

I picked a box and began my search, then searched the one next to it. Again and again, I repeated my cursory browsing in an attempt to discern what filing mechanism this rung of the underworld operated upon, but I couldn't figure it out. I slid the boxes back into their allotted space and kneaded my temples. This was going to take a lifetime.

"Most likely."

I jumped and banged my head on the sharp lip of a shelf, swearing flagrantly as I glowered at Amoroth. She had abandoned her post by the door in favor of flagging me, though how she managed to move so quietly upon her lengthy stilettos I would never know. "What?"

"You spoke aloud. Yes, this will most likely take a lifetime."

Irritated, I moved on. Amoroth followed, smirking with her silent, insidious humor. "You're not going to help, you're just going to follow me?"

"Sounds about right."

I searched another box. Distracted, I slit my tender fingertips on the thick paper inside. Saule had fixed that hand not an hour prior to our invasion of the assessor's office. Wincing from the sting, I rounded on the woman shadowing me. "Why won't you help if you're so eager to see me offed?"

"I wouldn't say eager." The Sin judged her manicured nails with indifference. "It would just be a fantastic bonus for me. As for why I won't help—besides it being more effort than I wish to expend on your behalf—I think this is a stupid idea. How you cajoled Darius into this farce is beyond me."

"Aren't you always complaining that he's an idiot? Wouldn't that fit within his character?" I wiped the fresh cut on the dark material of my uniform and licked the pad of my thumb to continue searching. I didn't think I was in the right section.

"He usually has some sense, though."

I walked to the next row as I tucked my hair behind my ear. The dust was thick in the air, irritating my nose. "What is your objection to this, exactly? Do you have any brighter ideas? Please, illuminate me."

Amoroth huffed. Her lower lip jutted outward as she pouted, irked by my uncooperative mood. "Why would you expect a cult, of all things, to turn in records to the IRS? I don't turn in everything to the IRS."

I sometimes forgot Amoroth was not privy to everything Darius and I discovered about the wannabe Exordium. She didn't comprehend our suspicions, including our conviction that the Exordium was fronted by a large, hitherto unknown entity that was capable of funding assassins and consuming smaller businesses to shed like fodder for the police.

Yes, the cult was illegal—but they wanted to avoid scrutiny. Such an organization needed to keep itself visibly spotless. They would need to have a faultless exterior no one would think to remove to reveal the nasty beast within. The fact that Amoroth could so freely admit to fudging her own taxes was foolish, in my opinion. The Sins lived and died by their need for discretion. She was only inviting trouble and unwanted inquiry.

I made my displeasure known in a quiet 'hrmph.' I pried the lid from a box comprised of particleboard. "You think it's stupid they obey the laws of acquisition, and I think it's stupid they summoned a demon. It seems one of us has faulty judgment."

The Sin meant to retort. I saw her take a breath to begin what would either prove to be another agonizing death threat or scathing insult—but Amoroth suddenly snapped her jaws closed, and an uncharacteristic veil of unease arrested her pretty features. Her pupils grew smaller in the dark violet of her eyes. "...what did you just say?"

I bent over the edge of the crate to search its innards, my toes hovering above the floor. "What was that?"

Amoroth grabbed my waistband and yanked me upright. "Repeat what you said, girl! Verbatim!"

The Sin was much too close. Startled, I braced my arms between us to ward away any forthcoming blows. "I said you think it's stupid they follow the law and I think it's stupid they summoned a demon. One of us is an idiot!"

Something flickered in her alien eyes—something I could only ascribe the word terror to. "Attempt. Attempt to summon demons. They attempt to summon demons."

Baffled, I tried to put space between myself and the woman, but Amoroth pressed forward until my back hit a shelf. Her breath fell upon my face like the plumes of steam expelled by bellows. "Seeing as one drove a dagger between my ribs, I would say they did a bit more than attempt."

Minute motions gripped the Sin as she shook her head from side to side. Her hair was as dark as mine in the washed-out fluorescent lighting, exemplifying her sudden pallor. "No—Darius gave you that wound. He said as much before."

"No, he didn't."

Amoroth snarled, striking a box by my head. Something slid and hit the floor. In the distance I could hear Darius searching, oblivious to my current predicament. "Who?!"

"Balthier," I sputtered. Where was this confusion coming from? Why was her mood so explosive? "Amoroth, they summoned Balthier. He tried to kill me."

Color dissolved from the Sin of Lust's countenance. Eyes wide, she took one step, then another away from me. "Darius...in my office, he said tried to summon. Tried." Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper shared between us.

Slowly, I shook my head and prayed she would not accost me again. I would never describe Amoroth as a stoic woman, but she was typically more levelheaded than this. What the hell?

Amoroth's hand clawed at her pockets in search of her cigarettes. She stared at the floor as a harsh quiver overcame her. "Shit."

The Sin of Lust vanished.

I waited a full minute, expecting her to reappear, but Amoroth had left. My hand crept upward to clasp my collar, worrying the thick fabric between my fingers. What just happened? I gazed toward the entrance, then deeper into the building's recesses in search of the woman, but I saw no sign of the strange Sin. What did I say?

The aisle Darius had chosen to search was utterly dismantled. I had opened my boxes and had inspected the stored documents with care before returning each box to its shelf. Darius threw the crates or containers onto the concrete, where they burst open like overripe fruit falling from their bushes. The resulting chaos was frightening in its disorganized intensity. There had to be four hundred boxes now upturned across the warehouse.

The Sin was crouched before one spot of the mess, holding a piece of paper to his nose.

"Amoroth just...left," I told him as I gestured toward the area I had vacated. "She had some sort of fit and vanished—what are you looking at?"

"The merger papers." Darius held the papers in question aloft, and I rushed forward to take them. He had found them? Already? "They're not complete. It seems you were wrong, girl. Your cult didn't follow your human protocol. It was far too optimistic of us to assume they would."

Disheartened, I nevertheless continued to scan the document, throwing aside unnecessary pages without regard. "But there has to be something. The IRS and state demand a percentile of profits whenever a business is sold—whether or not it's a merger or a sell-out. You can't escape that. Not without bringing their eyes upon you and having them reveal all your nasty little secrets out of spite!"

"You expected the Exordium to act far too human, Sara." Angry, Darius kicked a box and it flew into a shelf, scattering accumulated records. "It was not a bad plan, but it was ultimately futile."

I reached the bottom of the last page. "But they wrote something here on their signature line. This was cut off the other copy...."

Darius scoffed. "It's some nonsense slogan. Tomorrow's Ambitions Today. Kings above and below only know how they manage when they write such absurdities...."

The Sin kept talking—until he noticed I'd gone still, the merger documents sliding from my fingertips in a cascade of inked paper. The papercuts tracing my hands left streaks of red upon the monochrome surfaces.

I couldn't breathe. The realization was so powerful it had paralyzed my lungs and heart.

Tomorrow's Ambitions Today.

A ballroom. A rickety table. The smell of ash and cheap cologne.

"IMOR Advances..." I wheezed, reaching out for the Sin's hand—for anything I could clasp to ground myself. I felt dizzy, as if I were trapped within a whirlpool. "That's the slogan for IMOR Advances."

That's the strange thing about Hell; it crept up on you, slowly, layering itself piece by piece until you can't tell the difference between here and there. I saw a ballroom, a table, voices in my head, a violet-eyed woman and a passage of Dante. I kept blaming it all on that night, like Sunday, like it was a proverbial gate through which I descended into the earth—but it wasn't, because I'd already been in Hell, and I hadn't had a clue.

Hours, days, weeks before my sister's death, and I'd already been there.

I was sitting upon the stockroom floor, though I didn't remember putting myself there. "Mitch helped get me that job at IMOR," I whispered as I wound my arms about my knees. "I wasn't supposed to be at the party that night. Someone—someone called me, said they needed me to come in, and I didn't really have a choice to refuse. Eoul seemed so surprised when I came back to work, and I—. They knew where I was, knew—."

My throat was tight with unshed tears of guilt and rage. No matter how the tears burned, I refused to cry. I would not allow myself the satisfaction. "How could I have been so fucking blind?! They were right in front of me the entire time!"

Darius knelt and laid one hand atop my shivering knee. "Things are not always as they appear, Sara," he said, keeping his voice at a composed, modulated level. I didn't want him to be composed. I wanted him to yell—to yell at me, to call me a fool for being so blithely unobservant. For being the one who walked my beloved sister into the den of wolves.

"How is this not what is appears?!" I shouted as I slapped his hand off of my person. My words echoed in the cavernous room. "I'm an idiot! They hired Mitch to pick their prized hog and I fed at their troth while they sharpened their knives! How could I have not noticed? How could I have allowed them to take my sister from me?!" I buried my face in my hands and fought the need to scream.

Darius' fingers dugs into my shoulders as the Sin shook me. "Look at me, Sara!" Alarmed, I did as he said, catching the unraveling strands of my control before it could fully desert me. The Sin's eyes were bright with sanguine color, but I could not decipher his mood. Was he angry? Excited? I did not know. I knew nothing. "IMOR Advances is a large company. Like G&R, Not all of them would be involved in the Exordium. The numbers would not properly align."

What he was saying made sense. I had seen fifty cultists. IMOR employed well over a hundred. Taking a breath, I nodded.

"From what you've said, we can assume by his surprise at return, Eoul is involved—perhaps even the ringleader. In retrospect, it has a certain sense; he must have heard the particulars of my search for Mitch as I relayed them to you in the building's lobby. That gave the Exordium just enough time to plant the bomb and eliminate a potential leak."

I remembered seeing Eoul standing at the partition as Darius had spoken, but I had not thought much of it at the time.

"We must both remain rational." The Sin's fingers skated upon my skin, roving over my heated cheeks to swipe the perfidious tears that fought free of my lashes. His voice continued to drift lower and lower until it was more a ripple of noise than any actual words. He was not speaking English, but something...primal. Something otherworldly that transcended the realms and reached what small part of my mind hadn't been stunned by this information. "Do not act upon your anger. We have learned their name, but we will not act. Not yet. Not until we must. I sense there is something...deeper to this. There was a conscious choice upon the Exordium's part. But...why you? Why this woman?"

Darius' hand lingered for a moment longer, then left me. "Do you understand, Sara?"

I did understand. I understood the danger of being rash, of acting out of emotion rather than logic. If I allowed myself to be eaten by my fury and disbelief, the cult could slip from our grasp. We had to cage them first, cage them between our fingers in a slow embrace, and at the last moment—

I squeezed my hands into pale, white-knuckled fists. Calmer now, I lifted my chin to meet the Sin of Pride's gaze. "How are you so calm?" I asked, pleased that my words did not break when I uttered them. "Tell me how to be so calm."

Darius smiled. It was then that I realized beyond our slim puddle of light, the warehouse had been plunged into darkness. Frost split the concrete, and chunks of ice shattered upon the floor as the air froze in an instant. The Sin's teeth were as sharp as blades. "Who said anything about being calm?"