A little context changes everything.

  “There was an attack.”

  Mister Best’s voice had been raw, pleading. It’s what woke Dalliance up from his nap.

  “Your point, schoolmaster?”

  “A young man was carried off—”

  “—again, I am not ignorant of the circumstances. I merely request that you complete whatever it is you are trying to state about what I ought to be doing about this.”

  “It was to be starved. That’s why we agreed. This changes everything.”

  “It changes nothing.”

  Dalliance screwed up his courage and took the first step onto the steps.

  He stepped onto the rotting stairs. They were in even worse disrepair than he had thought, flexing dangerously if his weight went anywhere but right next to the edge of the stair banister, or right at the front, where the forward-facing board offered some support.

  Behind him, Sterling affected a three-legged crawl by means of one hand on the railing, legs spread to either side, looking ridiculous—like a mail-clad spider with a spear—but gaining ground, which Dalliance supposed was really the point.

  "Don’t look it in the eye," Dalliance said. It was the last moment; he had already left it later than he should’ve.

  "But Mister Best didn’t tell us that," said Sterling.

  "No. He wasn’t allowed to."

  "If my father couldn’t tell me," the boy continued stubbornly, "then we’re not meant to have known, and you’re interfering with the integrity of the hunt. That's against the law, and for good reasons."

  Maybe Industry just likes me better, Dalliance thought nastily. He'd had to ask around for a long time to find anyone who both knew anything and was willing to comment. His brother had told him not to mention his name, too.

  "You say," Earnest muttered.

  "A [Magistrate]upholds the law," Sterling continued, his high-mindedness at odds with his undignified climb, "even when—"

  "A good [Magistrate]," Effluvia corrected, "knows when the law is a tool to power, and when the law is inviolate in practice as well as in principle. Are you planning to be a bad [Magistrate], Sterling?"

  Sterling looked at her for a brief instant before continuing his slow climb up the stairs. "Just . . . secrets are secrets for a reason. Even if you don’t like the Auditor."

  "After what you’ve seen today, you still trust him?" she asked, clearly disbelieving.

  "How precious."

  Dalliance froze.

  A rasping voice from the darkness hissed sibilantly. "Sent you to me as sheep to slaughter, did they?"

  Foul red eyes glowed down out of the darkness for an instant, and then began wet-sounding chanting.

  Dalliance had known it was coming, and had [Deflection] ready when the spell arced downward at them.

  As always, the part he didn’t get predictions on was the aftermath of the deflection spell—perhaps the two both used Fortune-aspected mana. Whatever the reason, once again, he found himself having to choose an outcome: where to deflect the spell, who had to take it so that Circe, who had been targeted, would not be hit.

  He almost selected Sterling before realizing they would need that spear. In the instant of hesitation, the skill ended.

  The spell completed, a bolt of red light lashing down, curving around Circe to strike Earnest, who turned pale as a sheet and fell backwards off the steps without a sound.

  "That's [Drain Life]," Circe howled.

  Flame-red eyes locked on Dalliance. The room seemed to swim nauseatingly, the stairs swaying beneath his feet.

  He reached for deflection, but the skill failed to cast. There was nothing to deflect yet. He'd looked at its eyes.

  He held a hand between his face and its, shielding his sight from those baleful red orbs, and the vertigo vanished.

  The spell blossomed into life between gnarled fingers, hovering there like an ember.

  He failed to deflect.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  The spell flickered forward toward him like a dart at a board.

  The skill caught, this time, and he focused its consequences on the post of the banister, which looked a little person-like to him. He could see the spell rebound off the painted wood; he could see the wood crack, flake, and rot. But also he saw the ghoul as it recoiled in pain as its own spell danced in ugly red arcs, revealing in their own light the withered, wrinkled skin and tattered robes.

  "Break!" commanded Circe, her ring flashing a nameless light.

  The ghoul shrieked in pain, and as it did, that awful hunger redoubled. Three points of mana gone. Three points of constitution gone. Dalliance stumbled backwards quickly, but the ghoul wasn’t focused on him.

  Charity ran for the center of the entryway, raising her crossbow and sighting down it. A word of power, and her crossbow glowed, pink metal steaming as she dropped it with a cry. The bolt went into the stairway's outer side and stuck, thrumming.

  It spoke with another word, wet and rotten-sounding. A splash of milky ichor lanced down from the darkness and engulfed one of the torches sticking there, burning with a sullen, deep violet flame before going out in a cloud of black smoke.

  "No!" Effluvia yelled. She cast lightning, the brilliance lighting the entryway as bright as noon. The sizzling bolt of energy connected her and it for an instant, and then they were alone in the entryway, the smoke dancing less unnaturally, the shadows retreating to closer to fitting the physical forms casting them.

  "I’m gonna get him somewhere safe," Effluvia said, taking one of Earnest's arms. Zenith took the other and Circe, finishing with Charity's hands, nodded sharply.

  "Don’t," said Dalliance. "Don’t come back. We'll go to you."

  "We go up," Sterling said. "And then we light it up. Corner it somewhere small. By then Earnest will be back on his feet."

  Dalliance and Sterling eyed each other for a moment, each looking put out at having nothing to disagree with. Dalliance was faintly aware that he was being ridiculous.

  "Fine," she said.

  They pressed on into the darkness.

  The floorboards were thin, groaning under the weight of the group as they pressed forward despite the relative opulence of the house. Dalliance found himself wondering if they’d bothered to hire a [Carpenter]: his brother would have done better than this.

  But then, it was old. It might predate him.

  “Shoulda burned it down,” Dalliance noted. “Wood’s as dry as tinder.”

  “It was in the brief,” Sterling snapped. “No structural damage.”

  Charity didn't comment. Her crossbow, apparently still too hot to hold comfortably, dangled from a belt from a new-healed hand, held at arm's length. Her other hand held a knife, but Dalliance didn't see the good it would do.

  “I thought that too,” Immaculate admitted. “About burning. Sterling’s sword would have been perfect as a fire-starter. Board the doors and windows, burn it all down.”

  “I asked how ghouls are handled in cities, when found.” Sterling’s words were clipped. “They send the legion, herd all the civilians out of the block, then send in a hero.”

  Silence, broken by echoing steps on floorboards.

  “Still sounded like a good idea,” Immaculate noted. “Seeing as they can’t go through light.”

  Dalliance saw a pencil-thin line of light under a door, casting a long beam across the hallway. Sterling shook his head in disgust and passed it by. Woebegone, it’d be.

  Hiding in a closet.

  Fine.

  The upper hallway was unadorned, a bare and functional space running the length of the building with rooms to either side. There had been a long rug running its length, but it was a mass of black and moldy matter, now, the visible holes in the roof likely culprits. Dalliance placed a torch every ten feet, each securing blow sounding overloud in the quiet.

  A faint miasma hung in the air, thinner and less obtrusive than it had seemed in the dark. Dalliance didn’t see any future in which they saw the ghoul.

  But for some reason, they were going into the master bedroom . . . he opened the door.

  The bed was nearly pristine, but clearly well used, sheets in disarray and a small divot worn into the mattress. Incense holders, empty, were well ashed. A chalk circle on the floor blazed with runes. Dalliance could sense the mana from the doorway.

  A gaping hole in the floor led down into darkness, probably to the same closet next to the servant’s quarters. Beside it lay a wooden dumbwaiter, still connected to pulleys but on its side, removed from its shaft.

  “That’s where it dumped the body,” Fallowfield breathed. Dalliance managed to avoid rolling his eyes.

  “But it’s not here.”

  “Could be hiding,” suggested Sterling.

  “No . . . no Mana drain.”

  So where was it.

  Why did he see so many futures where Charity was climbing down into the hole.

  As if on cue, a distant scream.

  Ah.

  It just took a glance to see what had to happen.

  Sterling wouldn’t even fit. Neither would Immaculate. They’d have to go down the stairs.

  “Into the hole,” Charity said, pushing his shoulder toward the dumbwaiter shaft.

  Sterling was already rushing out the door. Immaculate paused long enough to glance regretfully at the pair of them, then ran for the entryway, Fallowfield on his heels.

  He’d have fit, Dalliance thought, annoyed.

  Charity’s hand was shockingly soft, again. No callouses at all. Even Effie’s hands were rougher. She let herself freefall to the extent of his grasp, then let go of his wrist and fell the rest of the way. There was a squishing sound, and a billow of flies and the scent of rot. He heard her retching.

  The screaming hadn’t stopped. Effie. Calling for help.

  [Werewind], he thought, would be so much more pleasant. But he couldn't make Charity go alone.

  He took a deep breath and swung himself down into the fetid black.