"You don't get to be with me 'cause you're important. I feed you because we're friends, is all. But...Jerica's special."

She was at that. If she hadn't been, Elise never would have retrieved her from Malebolge. Elise rested her chin on the top of Neuma's head, closing her eyes and sighing.

"Feed on Lincoln," Neuma murmured. "Make him yours. Let him fill up the empty places."

It was a tempting thought. And if Elise didn't have anyone else to feed on...

She watched Neuma's blood trickle down her skin and fog the surface of the bath. She was tempted to lick it again, drink deep, take what little Neuma had remaining and make it her own.

But she didn't. Neuma had asked to stop, so they were done. Elise owed that much to her.

The fact that Elise was holding back in more ways than one didn't escape Neuma. She slid her hand along the surface of the water, making the soap swirl. "Thank you."

Elise resumed washing her in silence.

Something was amiss in the Palace.

Elise slipped out of bed silently, careful not to disturb Neuma and Ace. The half-succubus was snoring lightly-blissfully unconscious. Elise had struggled to fall asleep and then drifted for a fitful hour, caught in dreams of amniotic fluid and skeletons wrapped in tissue paper skin. She wasn't sure if the dreams were hers or Neuma's. Either way, she wasn't resting.

She stood in front of the windows with a crimson robe hanging open around her body, bone-dry after her bath. Water evaporated almost immediately in Hell's dry atmosphere.

The city outside looked as unrestful as Elise felt. The courtyard crawled with workers cleaning up after the executions. Fresh heads were mounted on the spiked bridges between towers-a sight that gave her little satisfaction, but would definitely send a clear message to the House of Volac.

Beyond the battlements, factories were working overtime to supply her legions, belching smoke in thick plumes that rendered the skyline of the outer districts invisible. She could make out faint movement in the nearest streets. Probably her army patrolling. It was difficult to tell, since nighttime clung to the city like mold on rotting meat.

The difference between day and night had become more distinguished over the last few months, thanks to the fissure that allowed Earth to leak into Hell. In daytime, the light was almost violet. Now, after the sun had fallen topside, it was darker than dark.

It was normal for Dis's nights to be unsettled. Most of its residents preferred the shadows.

Elise still felt strange, as if she were missing something.

She stared hard at the shapes of the buildings outside. Had any of them changed or gone missing? The city seemed to evolve when her back was turned.

Behind her, Neuma rolled over, hugged a pillow tightly to her chest, sighed in her sleep.

Elise stepped away from the window and hung her robe on a hook. She dressed herself for work: the leather slacks, ass-kicking boots, a holster for Seth's Beretta.

She sidled out of the room, opening the door only a crack so that the lamplight wouldn't disturb Neuma. The woman had been so exhausted that she had fallen asleep in the bath. Elise had been forced to carry her to bed, which was exactly the kind of sympathetic gesture that she couldn't let anyone see her perform. As far as anyone knew, Elise and Neuma spent all their private time whipping and biting and beating each other like most demons, and that was a useful perception to maintain.

Her entire life had become a show. Public executions. Heads on spikes. Tossing dissidents into the dungeons. Elise missed being able to drink coffee while relaxing in sweatpants without worrying if anyone would perceive it as weakness.

Something new on her desk caught her eye as she headed for the antechamber.

She had ordered her guards to stay out of her room, yet someone had given her a long, narrow box with a piece of folded paper on top of it. Elise hadn't heard anyone come in. Ace hadn't even barked, and he barked at everything.

Elise flipped the paper open.

The text on the page had been printed off of a computer. For a moment, she thought that it was a page from her list-the one that McIntyre had sent her-but the font was different and the paper was yellowing with age.

It was definitely a list of names, though.

Another list of names.

Elise jerked the dagger out of her boot then pushed the paper off of the box so that she could open it. When she saw what was inside, her heart stopped beating.

The obsidian falchion.

Elise rammed the point of the falchion into the librarian's desk, spearing the center of a paper. The two witches working on decrypting Onoskelis's books, Aniruddha and Isaiah, were accustomed to Elise's temper-they only flinched and leaned back in their chairs.

Lincoln wasn't used to her, and she watched his adrenaline spike like TNT exploding in his skull. He put a hand on his gun but didn't draw.

She pointed at the sword. "What the fuck is this, Lincoln?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Aniruddha. Isaiah. Leave."

Isaiah grabbed the other witch's sleeve and hauled him out of the Great Library. The door echoed when it slammed behind them.

Lincoln remained on his side of the desk, and Elise on hers. She glared at him, waiting for him to explain, and he stared back with the look of a man who had been cornered by a tiger escaped from the zoo.

"I found this in my bedroom," Elise finally said.

"Isn't that..." He took his hat off and squinted at the falchion. "That's your sword, isn't it?"

"It used to be. But I got rid of it. There is no way that it could have returned to me unless someone put it there." Elise sidestepped, edging around the chair. Lincoln moved at the same time, keeping the desk between them, hand still on his gun.

"What makes you think it was be me?"

"Because I tossed this sword into a flaming chasm in the wastelands while you were still possessed by a nightmare. It somehow reappeared on Earth after you were exorcised. Now it's come back to Hell at the same time that you did."

Redness climbed up his neck and jaw, flushing his cheeks. "You don't think I'm still possessed." His hands pulsed bright orange as though filled with fire.

"I don't know what to think," Elise said. But after a beat, she added, "No. I don't think you're possessed. I don't feel any of that inside of you, and you're not demonstrating the signs."

"I'm not planting swords in your rooms."

She shook the paper at him. "What about this list? Are these more missing people?"

"How would I know? Calm your tits, woman. You're acting insane."

Calm your tits?

Elise phased across the library before Lincoln could run, shoving him against an empty desk. He twisted free. Swung a fist at her. She caught his wrist and used it as leverage to bend his elbow the wrong way-not far enough to break, but enough to make him pay attention.

She shoved the paper into his chest.

"Read the list," Elise said.

"I told you, I didn't put it there!"

"Read it."

She allowed him to shove her away. He snatched the paper out of her hand. "Damn it, Elise. I came down here to help. What's wrong with you?"

She clenched her jaw and waited.

Without Elise taking up the other end of the argument, Lincoln reluctantly scanned the page, rubbing a hand over his jaw. Coarse blond hair was beginning to grow around his mouth.

She watched as the muscles in his face went slack and his mind whited out with shock.

"Tell me," Elise said.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"You do know. I can tell." She could also tell that he hadn't seen the list before-he was much too surprised when he read it.

"The thing is...I do recognize these names," Lincoln said with no small hint of reluctance. "These folks are from Two Rivers."

"Two Rivers?"

"Small town down in Georgia." He paused, considering what he said. "Well, guess it's up there, now." He pointed toward the sky. "Clayton Gregg...he's the mayor. Stuck around, decided to go down with the ship after the fissure opened. The name underneath is his wife's. Lisa Gregg."

Elise's fist crumpled the edge of the paper. "When were you in Two Rivers?"

"Not even a month ago," Lincoln said.

Had they gone missing since then? And what did the people of Two Rivers have to do with her falchion?

Easy way to find out.

Elise phased and reformed into her corporeal body, setting Lincoln beside her. He hit the ground on hands and knees. Vomit splattered on the pavement.

She studied the surrounding street as he emptied his stomach, polite enough not to watch him do what most mortals did when being carried between dimensions.

Two Rivers, Georgia was a ghost town, but it looked nothing like the other ghost towns that Elise had seen in post-Breaking America. The downtown district was old and preserved. Lots of antique shops, a few restaurants, not a lot of broken windows. It was far enough from the fissure that the trees and grass were still alive.

Why is it empty?

Lincoln sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth clean. "Gone." He coughed. Spit. Spoke again. "Everyone's gone."

"What do you mean?"

"When I visited, there were hundreds of people living and working around here." He nodded to a breakfast place advertising chicken and waffles on the corner. "Madge was still opening every morning." Lincoln's gaze swept up the street. "They had meetings in the town hall almost every day."

And now there was trash blowing down the street, tangling between the wheels of parked, uninhabited cars. The breeze smelled like blossoms. Elise stepped up to the side of the road and looked at the creek on the other side. It was still running with clean water.

No reason for people to have disappeared. It was, by all accounts, still a very beautiful little town.

Elise headed for town hall. The doors were propped open. A chalkboard outside read, "Mayor Gregg talks utility power, 3pm on the 14th of April." What date had Rylie said it was? The seventeenth? Someone had been there to change the sign just a few days earlier.

Lincoln pushed past her, heading inside. "Hello? Clayton? Lisa?"

Nobody responded to his calls. Lincoln crossed himself, shut his eyes, whispered a prayer.

She clenched her jaw to keep herself from telling him what a waste of time that was. When he turned back to face her, worry lined his face. His prayers hadn't comforted him at all. "They were here. This was their base of operations, so to speak."

Elise stepped into the hall, pushed the door to the ladies' room open. Empty. She checked the men's bathroom too, and found nothing but foggy mirrors and dry sinks.

There were offices in the back. She passed the unmarked doors and approached one with another sign outside. This one read "Mayor Gregg, Office Hours: 8am to 6pm." It had the same handwriting as the one on the front steps.

Lincoln pushed past her, entering first.

"Clayton?"

The room was unoccupied. Mayor Gregg's office looked like it had been abandoned in the middle of a workday; his shutters were opened to allow cloudy daylight to penetrate the gloom, and his desk was covered in papers.

There were chalkboards and whiteboards positioned around the room, each covered with addresses, names, and phone numbers. Mayor Gregg had obviously been making a big push at keeping track of everyone in Two Rivers and organizing them to recover.

An area rug muffled Elise's steps as she crossed the room slowly, skimming the shadows for signs of intruders. She didn't sense anything behind the chairs, under the desks, or in the closets-the office felt as hollow as the rest of the town.

Elise wiped her thumb along a word written on a whiteboard in marker. It came off easily. The ink hadn't been there long enough to dry. "Do you know what's missing, Deputy?"

Lincoln didn't respond with the obvious answer, and it made her like him better for it. "A struggle."

"When demons abduct humans, they don't do it quietly. There are portals in Dis that can rip people across the dimensions and drop them in the Screaming Forest, but that's messy. I'd expect to see broken furniture. Blood."

"Bodies of people who didn't let themselves be taken," Lincoln said grimly.

"That too." She watched him from the corner of her eye. How much did he remember of his time being possessed by one of the most important demons in Dis?

A hint of mirth flashed over his mouth. "I always take you on the best dates, don't I? First chewed-up bodies in the morgue, now towns where the entire population's gone missing."

"Keeps the relationship thrilling," Elise said. "Lincoln, why were you in Two Rivers, Georgia?"

"Because I kept thinking about it." He rubbed his temples hard. "I'd never been here before, but the names kept coming to me. Two Rivers, Georgia. Portola, California. Nissa Falls, Maine. I figured it was something that I did when I was...out of it. When she had me." He meant Judy, the innocuously named nightmare demon that had possessed him. "If she had these towns on her mind, I figured she was doing something for Abraxas here. So I went looking for answers."

Elise thought that she could guess the questions. Why was his demon heritage manifesting now? What had he done while possessed? Why had the demon that ruled him been interested in nowhere towns like Two Rivers?

"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked.

"No. But I found good Christians. Great people. People who didn't recognize me, so I know I hadn't been here before." Lincoln flipped the light switch by the door. Nothing happened. "They had power here, sometimes. In the middle of the day, and an hour after sundown."

A strange smell itched in Elise's nose. It reminded her of burned hair.

She bent down to look at the lamp on Mayor Gregg's desk. The bulb was black on the inside, filaments broken. He hadn't lost power. His bulb had blown.

A quick check of the other lights showed her more of the same. There was no struggle, and yet all of Mayor Gregg's light bulbs had exploded, most likely at the same time.