"Now you gonna to have to listen to me. Okay? I tell you that you gonna to have to think before you go over there and punch people in the faces. Okay? Because you know what? You don't know nothing. Okay? You could give me some more silvers. We could go ask more question."

  Emil's concern was plain on his face. The man worried over Samantha in his own prickly way.

  "Now listen. Them folks sent somebody to kill me. They threatened my frie- my employee. I'm gonna go over there and beat everybody I find, starting with that wormy little Phineas fuck."

  "But you remember what I'm telling you just like five minutes ago? You gotta listen to me. You listen to me good. You go over there. You don't know what's going on. You don't investigate nothing. You're gonna die. You understand? You go over there all angry. You thinking you tough. You don't know shit. I know some of them folks over there and they is nice people. I don't know what's going on and neither does you."

  Sam, for all her bluster and stubbornness, wasn't stupid enough to ignore good advice. She calmed herself down and thought about what she knew.

  A man with a rose-cross tattooed on his chest and strange, reptilian eyes attacked her. The attack was blatant, clumsy, and showed almost no planning or awareness of what the attacker would find. This suggested the attacker was an amateur or held a personal grudge. Sam hadn't been able to see the man's face. It was covered with a mask before most of his head had been burned off.

  She had no way of knowing if she would have recognized the face. She didn't know anybody with snake eyes. Those could have been recent acquisitions. Strange body modifications were not unheard of among sorcerers or those who paid them. The man could have been very keen on snakes and, separately, wanted to kill Sam.

  Most people she met eventually wanted to kill her for one reason or another. She chalked it up to her line of work, but secretly knew it was because she was an asshole.

  She nodded to Emil and reassured him she wasn't gonna go off half-cocked. She bundled herself against the weather and made her way outside.

  Emil lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the city. There were fewer homeless addicts here. The streets were clean. All the buildings had expensive-looking foyers where the doorman would greet you and make sure you weren't trash.

  The cold hit her. She braced her mind against the weather. She walked back towards her far shittier neighborhood. Sam mostly got around by walking. Occasionally, she'd hail a cab.

  Stinking infernal engine powered cars were a recent creation of sorcerer-engineers. The foul fuel they consumed was offered up as part of the price to the binding that powered them. Magic technology like this worked in much the same way as her eye. You paid a price, you got the effect. She had no idea which demon was providing constant power to the fetid machines. She didn't care.

  She didn't want the comfort of a cushioned seat and talkative driver. She wanted to feel the wind on her face. If the weather got too cold, the stone in her eye socket started to ache. The cold stone would change temperature faster than the rest of her skull. The suffering would clear her thoughts or make her angrier. Either one was fine with her.

  She arrived back at her office, frigid and furious. She half hoped whoever sent someone to kill her would send someone else to take her anger out on. The walk had helped her clarify her thoughts but not come up with a plan.

  Phineas Trimus, the man she'd met at the Rosicrucian temple, had lied to her about snakes not being part of the symbolism of the order. She cursed her own stupidity for not carefully thinking out the questions she asked that day. Her training had taught her that going in unprepared to an interrogation was a sure way to miss important information.

  But the man hadn't recognized the snake daggers. She assumed they were some sort of ritual implement, and the Rosicrucians were another stupid cult. The surprise caused her to fumble her words and then get kicked off the premises.

  After a moment of warm air, she realized it was time for a good old-fashioned stakeout.

  It took Sam a few hours to gather up everything she would need. She arrived at the Rosicrucian Temple before nightfall. The winter sun was starting to set. There was a chill breeze in the air, but not the kind of howling wind that would freeze her to death before she learned anything.

  The Temple grounds were filled with leafless trees. Their bony branches reached up into the darkening sky. Clouds and smoke from the city hung low over the landscape. The vines and overgrowth made the place feel wild, like nature was trying to claw back the stone into the earth. It was quiet, like a churchyard at night on a weekday.

  She planned on hiding in the freezing cold weather until she knew something, until she understood how folk came and went from the temple. She thought this was what a proper investigator would do. They’d learn everything they could before taking action. Rather than go off half-cocked, stumbling around in sewers and maybe losing her remaining eye.

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  She crept towards the building to where she would have a good vantage of any comings or goings. She picked a spot of underbrush that still bore enough leaves to hide her presence. There were a handful of lights on in the windows. Most of the building was dark. A pair of electric lights in the front of the building lit the facade from the bottom, as if they were watching her freeze her ass off watching them.

  Sam sat and Sam waited. She saw no movement in the building. She saw no indication of activity outside. As the night got darker, the wind picked up a bit, enough to stab through the heavy clothing she had prepared. After a few hours, she thought she'd go crazy. She wished she could smoke a cigar or have a drink, even if it wouldn't make her drunk. Anything to stave off the boredom.

  She questioned if being an investigator was the best job for her. She knew a bit of sorcery and could learn more. She wondered if she should give up on being a private eye to become a sorcerer or a diviner. They lived comfortable lives. They didn't have to sit in a pile of weeds trying to find out who wanted to kill them and why.

  But Sam had a reason that she wanted to become an investigator, even if she had lost sight of her goal over the years. Someone had killed her father and ended the happiness of her life. She needed to find out who it was and make them suffer.

  Her father wasn't a perfect man. He hadn't planned on raising a daughter on his own. But her mother died in childbirth. So he cared for her as best he could. She remembered precious little about the man. She remembered her big house, filled with warmth and light.

  Every once in a while, she would go stare into the big house. There were people living there now, a pretty family with a couple kids. She watched one night as they sat at the dinner table, under glowing gas lamp light. Servants brought platters heavy with food. The children laughed and the parents laughed with them. She couldn't bring herself to hate them. They didn't know the house was hers and stolen.

  Sam continued to question her life choices as the night wore on. First, her legs started aching. Then her bottom went numb against the cold ground. She started to lose feeling in her nose and the tips of her fingers despite the heavy gloves she had donned for the occasion. Her toes became distant memories. She shifted back and forth, trying to find some sort of comfort against the hard earth.

  "Fuck this," she said to the darkness and to the dirt.

  She could take no more. Her patience had reached its limit. Now, in a fouler mood than when she found out she was the target of some sort of sorcerous or otherwise nefarious plot, she decided to break into the facility like a common burglar. She felt reasonably safe doing so, as she had seen no movement outside the building. No lights changed, no shadows moved against the windows. And it was late at night, somewhere between dusk and dawn, she wasn't sure where.

  Based on her previous experience at the property, she determined that the closest window to her was the best one. Impatience was also a factor. She would have to force any entrance, and she felt it would be easier to jimmy open a window and scramble over the windowsill than it would be to pick the lock, given that she couldn't feel her fingers.

  She used her lock picks as a shim to pop the latch. The windows were ancient. Layers of paint crumbled on the outside. Years of frost and thaw had widened the gap between the window frame and the latch such that she found it easy to gain entry. She hauled herself inside, grateful for a little bit of warmth.

  Once inside, she allowed her eyes a moment to adjust. It was darker in this room than it had been outside. She'd been staring at the electric floodlights that illuminated the outside of the building for so long her eyes had barely adjusted to the night's darkness.

  She found herself in an office study. A wide bookshelf contained unmarked binders. Dark wood was barely visible. A long, polished desk with carved feet sat before the window. A green leather chair waited in front of the desk. She took a seat to warm herself.

  Sam found that when breaking and entering, a certain level of comfort and ease was necessary. Too much tension risked clumsy accidents, so it was best to act like you were at home. There was a small chance that anyone discovering you might think you actually belonged there.

  She winced as a grating creak escaped the chair as she sat. Anyone nearby would be alerted to the sound. She reassured herself that she had seen no activity from outside the building. It was late at night, and according to Phineas, the order was too broke to afford nighttime staff, and too sparsely populated to have anybody there after hours.

  Sufficiently warmed up, she decided to start snooping. She was determined to have some answers to some questions for all the effort she put out and time she spent. She had almost lost a digit from the cold.

  She began at the bookshelves by pulling off the binders. They were financial records and tax documents. The Empire levied heavy fees against organizations that were not specifically sanctioned. She suspected the Rosicrucians offered no military, financial, or political influence that would enable them to enjoy benefits conveyed by the Imperial crown.

  She pulled the drawers out of the desk. There were no personal effects, only a few bits of stationery. In one drawer she found a key for a locked cabinet in the desk. It contained nothing.

  She was going to spend all night going through every little detail of this room and the adjoining rooms at this rate. She decided to get the lay of the land. She listened carefully to make sure she didn't hear any footsteps or late-night workers.

  Sam made her way from room to room. There was a broom closet, another office, and a library. In the library, she stopped.

  The room was lit with electric lamps on the walls. There were several large tomes covered in leather. A rosy cross was embossed on the front. Leafing through the book, she came across esoteric explanations of some of the symbolism she had seen throughout the building. On one page, an illustrated snake circled a cross.

  Here was described the "life essence." It was the vital force that every human body and every living thing possessed, symbolized by the serpent. This may have been why Phineas had lied to her. The man didn't want to reveal the secrets of the Order. All signs pointed to the wiry, bookish man being innocent of an attempt on her life, but she hadn't ruled anything out yet.

  She reminded herself to steal the book on her way out.

  She turned to leave the library. Behind her, with his face close to hers, a man with serpent eyes stood staring. She started. She hadn't heard anyone come close.

  He was inches away so there was no way she could stop the dagger in his hand. He slid it between her ribs. The sharp pain made her twist away but his hold was fast. The dagger's tip pierced her heart.

  The last thing she remembered before falling to her knees was how angry she was to die here.