A man and wife came in together, both dressed in their church best. They eyed my attack on the loveseat and then seated themselves as far from me as possible. They peered at me but looked away before I might make eye contact. The secretary brought them a sheaf of papers to fill out. The couple complained about the trouble all this was and how it didn't seem right that they, who were the wronged party, ought to have to do so much. The secretary apologized without much feeling and then drifted back to his desk.

Every few minutes the husband or the wife stole a glance in my direction. They obviously believed themselves innocent in whatever legal matter had brought them to this office. I, on the other hand, clearly had the look of a hardened criminal of some kind. I heard the soft whispers of their speculations.

I leered at them and they pressed closer to each other, ignoring me with all their concentration.

"Sykes?" A middle-aged man called out from the door just past the secretary's desk. "Belahhh...Is there a Mr. Sykes here?" he asked, unable to make out the brutish scribble that I had given as my first name.

"Here." I stood and went to the man.

He was shorter than me by a few inches, but heavier. His shoulders and chest bowed outward in a thick mix of muscle and fat that reminded me of a bulldog. His animal physique looked odd packed into such an elegant suit. The image he cut was almost amusing, except that I got the distinct idea that the man could snap me in half if I laughed at him. Powerful men could dress however they liked.

A smell on him burned at my nostrils. It bothered me, but I couldn't pick it out from beneath the thick waves of cologne that hung around him like mosquito netting. As he shook my hand with a firm military grip, I noticed that two of his fingers were bandaged.

"Cats," he explained, though I hadn't asked. "I'm Lewis Brown,

Mr. Scott-Beck's partner. I've gotten through all of my appointments today, so Albert asked me if I could run you through the first interview." His voice was slightly too loud and, like his handshake, too assured to be natural.

"Thank you," I said when I realized that he was waiting for as much. I smiled to make up for my belated response. The only thing that truly pleased me was the prospect of escaping the waiting room before that clock went off again.

"Come along." Brown turned hard on his heel and strode back through the doorway. I followed him through, then up a steep flight of stairs. He moved quickly, as if reaching the top of the staircase was a venture to be relished with healthy enthusiasm. I lagged behind.

"I had a late night," I said after Brown turned and noticed that I was still several feet below him. "I'm still a little tired."

"You work nights, do you?" Brown placed both his thick hands on his hips and looked down at me from the top of the stairs.

"No, I was up with a girl." It pleased me to mislead Brown while telling him the truth. I reached the top of the stairs and followed Brown into his office. The room was large but filled with shelves of record books. Brown's desk was near the one window in the room. Late afternoon sun poured in between the curtains. I sat down across from Brown and shifted the chair so that I wasn't staring straight into the light.

"Well, let's begin with these questions first." Brown set the unanswered form with my scribbled name at the top down on his desk.

"Very well." I smiled to cover my lack of enthusiasm. The burning scent that had clung on Brown's gray suit seemed now to be drifting out from some corner of the room.

"Your full name," Brown said.

"Belimai Sykes," I replied, still half-lost attempting to recognize the smell.

"No middle name?" Brown asked.

"What? Oh, yes. Rimmon." The scent was distinctly coming from above the bookshelves. At first it almost smelled like rosewater, but the longer I remained in the room, the more I began to pick up sharp, searing undercurrents.

"Rimmon." Brown paused after he had written my name in on the form. "I assume that's your lineage name."

"I suppose." I forced myself to turn my attention back to Brown.

"Now let me see..." Brown thumped the back of his pen lightly against his chin. For a moment he looked as if he was reading from some text at the center of his empty desk. "Clothed in the darkness he came beside Sariel, his body white as the lightning, his voice a terrible thunder, and he was called Rimmon, and he too knelt before the cross..."

I just looked at Brown.

"Book of Prodigals," he said. "It's a hobby of mine, keeping genealogies of all those fallen princes. It's very telling, you know."

"Is it?" I wasn't really sure of what else to say. If I had had a genuine legal problem, I might have been annoyed by this digression. As it was, I thought it might be better than filling out the form. I let Brown go on.

"Yes, indeed. You may think that genealogy has little importance in this modern age, but many Prodigals still carry traits of their ancestors in one form or another." Brown looked me over for a moment. "You, for example, I would guess are one of those rarities, a flyer. You have a strong affinity for the air, either moving through it or smelling and tasting it." Brown made several marks on the form. "I'd also guess that you're pretty solitary, even among your own."

"All that from just a name?" I asked, neither acknowledging nor refuting the description.

"From just the name," Brown assured me with a look of pride. "Of course, there are well over a hundred names and attributes to keep straight in your head. I know most of the higher demons, but it's Albert who has all of them memorized perfectly."

"Mr. Scott-Beck?"

"Yes. The man has the memory of a mastodon." Brown turned back to the form. "Family?" he asked just as I had again begun to draw in curious tastes of the air in the office.

"No," I replied.

"None?" Brown seemed unable to credit this. "Certainly you have parents?"

"Both dead."

"Oh. Was it the Inquisition?" Brown asked with an unnatural gentleness in his voice. I could imagine him practicing that tone at night while flipping through the evening paper.

"No," I replied, though it was half a lie. "My father was killed after a mine collapse." The explanation had been my mother's way of lifting the criminal nature out of my father's execution for sabotaging the Wellton mining company. "My mother drowned during the sewer floods twelve years ago."

"And you have no one else?" Brown pressed.

"May I ask why you need to know?" I didn't mean to sound irritated, but the elusive smell in the room and the memory of my mother's bloated dead body had twisted into a single presence. Repulsion and sorrow for a moment made me wish to just get up and leave the room. I held my breath against the smell in the air and the feeling passed.

"We need someone to contact in case you're summoned to court and we can't find you," Brown explained.

"I see." I frowned. "I can't think of anyone. You'd just have to leave a word at my residence."

"And where is that?" Brown skipped down several spaces on the form.

"For now, the Good Commons Boarding House, in Hells Beow." I watched Brown carefully as I gave my answer.

"Good Commons." He smiled just slightly at the corners of his mouth as he wrote the name. "Yes, I believe I know where that is." He didn't pause long enough to take a breath before asking, "So, do you already have a criminal record?"