It didn't look like a demon abduction at all.

While Elise was standing on the chair to look at the light hanging from the ceiling, she noticed a strange smear behind one of the chalkboards. She pushed it aside.

There was a single bloody handprint on the paneling behind it.

Lincoln spanned his fingers over it. His hand was glowing again, highlighting the bones through his flesh. "Dainty. Looks like a woman's."

Elise searched the room with new eyes, looking for something that could have inflicted a bloody wound. She pushed the rest of the chalkboards aside, shifted Mayor Gregg's desk, and peered behind the curtains. Nothing.

All that left was the area rug.

Elise grabbed the edge, whipped it aside.

Lincoln crouched to examine the floor underneath. He scrubbed his forefinger on the line between two boards.

"Look at this," he said, lifting his hand.

There was coppery, flaky powder on his skin. Elise knew it was blood by the way it made her hungry body recoil. Blood was good-blood was life-but old, wasted blood was offensive to her senses.

Dizziness struck her at the sight of it, and she pressed a hand to her forehead, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

"You okay?" Lincoln asked.

"I'm just...hungry."

His eyes darkened. Elise hadn't been drinking blood to feed herself when they'd last been together, but she had offered to open his veins for much more carnal reasons. He had been as repulsed by it as he had been aroused. Nothing had changed.

His blood pressure rose. He looked away, back down at the floor, but not before she saw the warmth on his cheeks. "I'm hungry, too," he said, surprising her.

"When did you last eat? I expected Aniruddha to make sure that the kitchens were serving you."

"I don't mean like that," Lincoln said. "I'm not craving food." He clenched his fist and the red glow brightened. "I don't know what I'm craving, but whatever it is can't be eaten."

It was her turn for her heart to accelerate. "Demon hungers," Elise said. He didn't respond, but she could tell that was what he was thinking by the way he flinched. The idea of feeding together-drawing on Lincoln's energies as he drew on hers, the same way she did with Neuma-was far too appealing.

What kind of demon blood was in the Marshall heritage? He was handsome, but he didn't look anything like an incubus; most of them resembled Yatam, the demon that had given Elise her powers. He couldn't have been a nightmare, either.

"I keep thinking that you taste good," Lincoln muttered without looking at her. "I'm...drawn to you, somehow. Mostly when you get pissed. I want to be close when you're mad at me." He blew a breath out of his lips. "I liked it when you attacked me in the library."

Surprise blossomed within her, warming her deep in her belly. "You want to feed on my anger. You must be a megaira."

His throat worked. "I don't even know what those are." After a beat, he said, "Snake heads. Like Medusa. Never mind-I remember them from when I was possessed."

"You probably won't grow snakes," Elise said. "If physical changes manifest in part-demon Gray, it's during puberty. Your changes will only be in power."

It didn't look like the idea comforted him. He rubbed his fingertips along the floor again, clearing his throat. "Someone tried to clean this up. There are sponge marks."

She bent close to the floor. Sniffed. In addition to the sour smell of wasted blood, she picked up the scent of lemon pine.

Demons didn't clean their murder scenes.

"Witches, maybe," she mused aloud, shoving her hands in her pockets so that Lincoln wouldn't see that they were shaking. She was even hungrier now that she knew that Lincoln was unconsciously feeding off of her bad temper. She wanted to return the favor.

"What's that about witches?"

"This might be a witch behavior. They're known for cleaning up the scenes of their crimes. They'll return to a site after the fact and wash away any indication of a ritual, murder, or...whatever else they might have done." Witches were almost as creative as demons when the situation called for it.

"Do you sense magic?" Lincoln asked. His blood pressure was dropping again. The mention of crimes and murders didn't faze him. This was his element-being on the scene of an investigation. Even Elise couldn't shake him up enough to change that.

She would have to take off her warding ring to be sensitive enough to detect magic here. Since she was on Earth, taking off the ring would give James a direct route into her mind. Elise didn't want James to see whom she was spending time with.

"No," she said. "I don't sense any magic."

Elise lifted the phone's receiver on Mayor Gregg's desk. To her surprise, she got a dial tone. The artificial sound was painfully loud in the house's silence.

"The mayor was trying to get everything back online," Lincoln said. "He was doing a fine job. A damn fine job." Past tense. He was already convinced that everyone was dead.

Nothing that Elise saw suggested otherwise.

She sat on the edge of the desk and dialed the only phone number she had memorized. It rang twice before McIntyre answered. "Hey," he said. "'Sup?"

Anyone else would have had questions about Elise's whereabouts for the last several months, but not McIntyre. The sound of his voice was almost as good for her mood as a hot bath. "I need anything you can find about our anonymous benefactor."

"Already looked him up. Haven't found anything. The email he used leads back along a trail of empty email addresses that doesn't go anywhere. Same with the bank account."

"What about tracing his IP address?" Elise asked.

"There wasn't one in the header info."

"Proxy?"

"Nope. Just...missing. Wasn't the only thing missing. The whole trail was weird." McIntyre sighed, like he dreaded having to say anything else. "The bank account that deposited the money-it had gotten three thousand and sixty-two microdeposits in one hour before it transferred to us."

"Three thousand..."

"You're not going to guess who owns the accounts." Without even a pause for her to answer, he said, "The missing people. Three thousand and sixty-two of them, anyway."

Chilly frisson settled over Elise's shoulders. She gripped the handset harder and said, "I don't like any of this."

"Me neither. I'd return the money and take you off the case, but..."

"Yeah," Elise said. She wasn't going to be able to drop it now, but she was going to need help. It had been a big enough mess before impossible bank account activity and people washing away crime scenes. "What's Anthony's ETA?"

"He doesn't have one. I haven't been able to reach him."

Tendrils of fear sneaked into her heart. Not the kind of fear that a nightmare demon evoked, but the fear of realizing she had missed something-maybe something big.

Anthony would never have gone so long without contacting McIntyre or Elise.

"You didn't tell me that," she said, trying not to make it sound accusatory and failing. How could one of their trio go missing without the other two realizing it?

"Until I saw your email, I thought he was with you. Guess not." McIntyre's voice shook with frustration. He'd come to the same conclusion that she had.

She swallowed hard before speaking. "Is he on the list, Lucas?"

A moment of silence followed the question.

A very long moment of silence.

"No," McIntyre said.

Anthony had been with her for years. Before she had been a demon, before he had known that he was a kopis, back when the world was normal and good things sometimes happened. He was the one who had pulled her body from Lake Tahoe when she was resurrected as a demon. He had stood at the gates of Heaven to wait for her return after killing Adam. He had remained her friend and confidant when she had nobody else to trust-nobody but McIntyre.

For all she knew, he had been missing for months.

"We need him," she said, forcing herself to uncurl her fingers from the phone before she shattered it.

"I'll put out the word."

"Good. I'm going to come see you in a few hours."

A grunt. "See you soon."

She dropped the phone in its cradle.

Lincoln was leaning against the wall, watching her with his arms folded. "What's the next move?"

A pressure headache was building in her skull and the wound on her chest was aching again. Elise stood slowly, and just the change in posture made her dizzy again.

"I don't know," she said, rubbing her forehead. "I need to think."

Anthony gone missing. Assassination attempts in Dis. Wounds Elise wasn't healing. Thousands of missing people. Thousands more slaves that still needed to be liberated. Neuma and Jerica. Lincoln. James.

What's the next move?

"I'm taking you back to the Great Library to continue working with Isaiah and Aniruddha," Elise said. Whatever came next, she could handle alone. She needed him where he was more useful. Where he could be helping Elise learn to cast the magic she needed to be strong enough to kill all her enemies.

"What? You can't cut me out of this. I'm not going back."

"This isn't a debate."

"The demon knew something was going to happen in Two Rivers," Lincoln said, tapping his forehead with a knuckle. "Your answers-my answers-are in here somewhere, and that means you need me to investigate, not read books."

"I need you learning to be a warlock, Lincoln," Elise said. "I won't be able to do anything for these people if you don't. And, frankly, if you're starting to manifest megaira powers, you're too unreliable to be on the road with me."

"But...this is why I'm here." His fists shook with frustration. "This must be it."

"You're here because Gerard asked you to help me."

"Do you think so?" Lincoln asked. "Do you honestly think it's that easy? Because if one of your guys contacted me right before you stumbled across trouble with something Judy was doing-well, that'd be one big coincidence, Kavanagh, and I don't know that I believe in coincidences. Do you?"

The obsidian falchion was a reminder of exactly how many coincidences were in her life.

She still wanted Lincoln safe in the library, where she wouldn't lose him the way she had lost Anthony.

"Brace yourself," Elise said.

He tensed, anticipating being phased again. But before she released her physical form, the bloody handprint on the wall caught her eye. On impulse, she bent down and licked it.

Lincoln sucked a breath in through his teeth.

Elise traced her tongue over her lips, pondering the flavor of the old blood. It had been there for at least three days. It was still heady with power. She could taste ice water and pine and the musk of fur.

Werewolf blood.

Seven.

IT WAS RAINING hard in Northgate, but the precipitation didn't quite reach the streets surrounding the fissure; it evaporated into steam before hitting the pavement.

Rylie walked briskly through the storm, hood pulled over her head to protect herself. She tried not to look down into Hell. It was bad enough that she couldn't tune out the scents-the melting human flesh, the burnt charcoal, the factories and smelters.

There seemed to be more Scions guarding the bridge than usual. A small crowd had gathered on the lawn surrounding the statue of Bain Marshall, most of them armed and all of them whispering.

Disturbance in the fissure? Rylie wasn't sure that she wanted to know badly enough to stop. She hadn't told anyone that she was going to be in Northgate, and she preferred to get back to the sanctuary without anyone catching on.

The wind picked up as she passed the edge of the bridge, carrying the scent of werewolves to her. It wasn't just Scions talking over by Bain Marshall. Some of the pack were there, too. People who would be likely to report back to Abel.

Rylie quickened her pace.

As she passed, a woman unhitched herself from one of the bridge's pylons and moved to walk alongside Rylie. Elise appeared to be unbothered by the rain. She didn't even look like she was wet. Maybe she, like the fissure, repelled Earth's natural weather.

A thrill of fear raced through Rylie. "What are you doing here again?" she asked without stopping. She liked Elise, she really did, but two visits in such a short period of time couldn't be a good thing.

"We need to talk," Elise said.

Rylie glanced over her shoulder at the road leading to St. Philomene's, and all of the people who were now blocking that route. How much had Elise seen? Did she know who Rylie had just been visiting?

"I'm on my way back to the sanctuary. I have to make sure that everything's coming together for dinner. I can't really talk right now."

"Tough shit. This is more important than dinner. Are you missing any werewolves?"