"Okay Mr. Hoffman, can you start at the beginning?" asked Donnie. "You said he messed up the contract? What's that mean? Why are you here? What is he hoping to accomplish by keeping you trapped? How long have you been here?"

  The middle-aged pinkish man rubbed his face in his hands. He looked weary before answering.

  "I've been here for about four days. He got us both. Bathym has him trapped here because he fucked up the contract. Dave and I, we were working on a contract with Bathym the Vast. If we got it right, we were going to be able to make a fortune. Imagine you could turn a one-bedroom apartment into a mansion for just a couple of gemstones and everybody in this city would be living like kings."

  The man clearly overestimated how many gemstones an average person in this city had at their disposal. This was often the case with the rich. They wondered why, if everyone was so miserable, they couldn't just buy themselves a boat and escape? Why did they live in hovels as if there were mansions sitting empty? Their perspective on reality had been warped by their wealth. It was one of the reasons Sam avoided hoarding too much money. She told herself it was to stay grounded, but the reality was she was just poor and had no way out.

  The man continued.

  "You could have one of those new automobiles and you could drive it around anywhere. Inside you'd have an entire apartment. You could have a bag and the bag would be able to carry everything you owned. Just for some gems.

  "We were working so hard on it. I was working with Harry originally but he was no good. He sucked. We were making no progress so I took him off the project. I thanked him for his time and I thought that was the end of it but he must have kept on working on it on his own. He sucks! He's an idiot! He fucked up the contract! I have a copy of it sitting over there on the bedside table.

  "That's what he wanted me for. He wanted me to help him fix the contract and renegotiate with Bathym, but Bathym takes precious stones and he was out of them. He wouldn't let me leave. I told him I would get him more stones but he was right. I would have just left him here to rot, the fucking asshole."

  "Okay Mr. Hoffman, let's slow down a bit," directed Donnie. "You said he fucked up the contract. What does that mean? How did he fuck it up?"

  As the men spoke, Sam walked over to the bedside table. A sheaf of paper crammed into a notebook Hoffman had indicated was the contract they were working on. She began to leaf through the pages. Absorbing the content of the contract was no simple task. The complexity of the working meant that the wording of the contract had to be precise.

  Bathym's nature was sympathetic to manipulating space but only insofar as taking a single person a vast distance, thus his name. This new working used Bathym's power in a way the demon must have disagreed with. It meant the contract had to be precise and perfect, otherwise the demon would find some sort of loophole.

  "Whereas the Bound Party Harold Maris seeks to create an effect whereby an enclosed physical space shall contain interior dimensions exceeding blah blah blah," read Sam.

  "That's it, that's it, that's where he fucked up!" exclaimed Hoffman, turning his attention to Sam as she read through the contract. "Bound Party, Bound Party. Then in Article 3.2 look down: any party to this contract shall have unrestricted ingress and egress through any existing point of entry to the Vessel. That's where he fucked up. He's an idiot. 'Any party' is not 'the Bound Party.' 'Any party,' according to the terms of the contract, would be Bathym. Bathym can come and go as he pleases. Maris can't leave."

  Donnie scowled at the floor as he thought through the man's words.

  "Hold on," he hesitated. "If he's trapped here… We found clear evidence of someone tossing David Wilson's apartment. How? How did he do that? If he's trapped here?"

  "He had a few precious gems sitting around, a couple sapphires or something. I don't remember. They were enough for Bathym to take him somewhere, but then he'd get pulled back. The exit clause of the contract says he has to pay an equal or greater value to cancel the contract and he didn't have enough gems to cancel.

  "He bargained with Bathym to allow him to go to some place where he thought he could find more gems. He didn't find enough so he grabbed Wilson. He fucking sacrificed him, man. He thought Bathym would take the cost but Bathym doesn't give a shit about blood or souls."

  Donnie stroked his chin and chewed his lip as he considered the implications of what he was hearing.

  "This is why I never fucked with magic," exasperated Donnie.

  "Yeah, big contracts like this, fuckin' stupid. You make one mistake and you end up getting chewed through by a demon," explained Sam. Philip Hoffman's forlorn expression at Sam's words had her shut her mouth before she continued further.

  "Mr. Hoffman, can you tell us where we can find Maris?" questioned Sam.

  "No, he tied me up in here. He said he would feed me if I helped him fix the contract but the answer is already in the contract. He just needs gemstones. He can cancel it."

  "Okay sir. We're gonna help you get outta here now. We made a map so we know the way straight back. I'm gonna ask you to just wait a second here. We're gonna step outside. I need to consult with my partner," assured Sam.

  Sam waved Donnie out of the room. They lowered their voices to a whisper.

  "Donnie, you wanna take this guy outta here? Then I'll go find Maris."

  "Hold on, Sam. How are you gonna deal with the situation once you find him? I think we got a clear situation here. We know Wilson's dead. We found Hoffman. According to Hoffman's testimony just now, Maris is stuck here. We can walk Hoffman out together and send the city soldiers. They'll either break the contract, get Maris out, or pronounce him guilty on the spot."

  Sam considered Donnie. He was right. That did make more sense, but something still tickled her conscience. Her sense of justice didn't want to let somebody else handle Maris. She was angry he had resorted to kidnapping and murder to fix problems he had caused.

  "Donnie, we can't do that," reasoned Sam. "What if he's got more gems? What if he figures out a way to escape while we wander off? We're here now. You can take Hoffman out and I can go find Maris and deal with him."

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  "You mean kill him?"

  This forced Sam to confront her own morality. Yes, in fact, she did mean to kill him. That's what she wanted to do. It’s what she would do given the opportunity. Donnie was here to help her become an investigator, not judge and jury.

  She stared into Donnie's eyes. Sam usually found it uncomfortable to look into another person's eyes but this was serious enough that she met her teacher's gaze.

  "No, I won't kill him," she promised.

  Donnie hesitated a moment. Sam could tell he was deciding whether or not to believe her.

  "We'll take Hoffman out together. Then we'll both go and deal with Maris," he suggested.

  Sam agreed. She wanted Donnie to trust her enough to let her go and deal with Maris immediately. Truth was she didn't trust herself once she got angry. Furcas's power made her irrational. Her anger combined with her strength meant that if Maris pissed her off too much he'd end up as paste on the wall.

  They got Hoffman and ushered him out of the rooms into the first foyer. They told him to go straight to the city soldiers and explain what happened and to send them running. Sam wanted to deal with the entire situation herself. In order for Donnie to trust her, and in order for her to have faith in herself, she had to know the city soldiers were going to come. She wouldn't want to kill anybody they would find.

  They made their way methodically through the apartments, looking for Harold Maris. Sam still marveled at how the man managed to turn a simple broken contract into kidnapping, torture, and murder. The guy really was an asshole.

  They reached an apartment which was filled with extra furniture as if someone had cleared out one of the duplicates. A couch was leaned up against another, identical couch. All of the furniture from the bedroom was thrown into the other bedroom. Only the kitchen was normal. Donnie pointed out scuff marks on the hallway wall indicating that the furniture had come from the hallway entrance to the copy apartment.

  They prepared to enter the hallway door for their confrontation with Harold Maris.

  Donnie Frisk eyed Sam nervously. She wasn't lying to him when she said she wasn't gonna kill nobody, but she had gotten increasingly agitated and excited as the case wore on.

  Donnie was about sick of this magic bullshit after the third apartment. They were approaching the twenty-fourth apartment now. At this point he was almost tempted to let Sam handle the rest of the case while he went out and got some fresh goddamn air.

  He had so many questions. How'd Bathym do this? What would happen if he opened an exterior window and stuck his head outside? If he wasn't trying to play it cool in front of Sam, he might have tried it.

  Sam herself continued to be a puzzle for Donnie. He wondered if he could have kicked in that door as hard as she did. Rather than puzzle out that particular feature of his protégé he was gonna just ask her directly. In fact he decided to do it before they went into the room where they expected to find Harold Maris. Donnie had a feeling the man would be in the next apartment. And those feelings were almost never wrong. They were honed by dealing with exactly this sort of situation, minus all the weird demon bullshit.

  "Hold on a second, Sam. Let me ask you something," hesitated Donnie. "The door to Hoffman's room. How'd you kick that so hard?"

  Sam chewed her tongue for a moment while she thought about his question. Donnie guessed she was wondering whether or not she should lie to him.

  "When I was learning sorcery," she began, "one of the entities I learned how to contact was a demon named Furcas. He hadn't talked to nobody in hundreds of years. I managed to talk to him. He's a demon of battle and conquest. In exchange for an offering of violence, which I was able to provide through entirely reasonable circumstances I assure you, he gave me strength when I'm angry."

  "So you were pissed off at the door?"

  "I was frustrated. Frustration is mild anger. Made me strong enough to kick the door."

  "How did you manage to talk to him?"

  "I'll tell you after we get this guy. Come on."

  Donnie let Sam go through the door first. If she had demon strength he'd let her deal with whatever bullshit was on the other side of the door. Especially if it was going to be scary.

  He hated this magic business. Sam seemed right at home. In fact, she got more comfortable the weirder the situation got, as if she expected this. He supposed her early confession had been true. Her cases tended to end up more weird than not. It wasn't just the bluster of a beginner.

  One of the questions he originally had about her was answered: why she moved that way. Donnie had noticed that, at times, Sam moved like she was weightless, like her body didn't work right. She would take a step and go too far. Her center of gravity would lower a little when she got angry, as if she was getting ready for a fight. He originally attributed the tendency to her military training and resulting trauma. Now he knew it was an effect of the power she had gained.

  He intended to get the rest of the details out of her later on. It was too interesting to ignore.

  Donnie followed Sam into the next apartment. Beyond the foyer, they could see the room was devoid of furniture. Inscribed circles, "bindings" Donnie heard they were called, were all over the walls and floor. Maris was running out of space there were so many. Some were written on the walls with ink, some on the floor with white chalk. A few recent-looking ones had the dried brown of old blood.

  They heard rambling coming from one of the back rooms beyond the kitchen.

  "Get ready, Sam," Donnie told his partner. He saw her center of gravity shift the way he knew it would, but the look in her eye wasn't intense enough for her to kill anybody, so he felt safe proceeding.

  "Let me go first," he continued. "You're stronger, that's for sure, but I look scarier."

  Sam nodded. Donnie approached the door, where they heard muttering in a language Donnie didn't recognize. He supposed it was more sorcery bullshit.

  Donnie kicked open the door. The offices of each of the apartments were a square room with built-in bookshelves and dark wood. The same flooring was throughout the entire apartment: dark brown wood. In the center of this room, and on the walls, were more bindings scrawled in text Donnie assumed was somehow magical. In the center of one of the bindings, a man in his underwear crouched on the floor.

  "Harold Maris, put your goddamn hands up right now. You're under arrest for kidnapping and murder," Donnie shouted.

  Sam came charging in and stopped herself short, to her credit. Donnie was still nervous about her, but he supposed if she was showing restraint now, in the most tense part of the exchange, then she'd be able to control herself for the rest of it. Things were likely to calm down now. Maris would be in shock. He wasn't expecting anybody to charge in, and he certainly wasn't expecting anybody to know what he'd done.

  But Maris apparently had other ideas. He wasn't in his right mind. His hair looked like it had been pulled out in clumps. His skin was raw, like he'd been clawing at it. The man must've run out of food because he was skinny, like he hadn't eaten proper in weeks. Donnie recalled none of the food had been missing from any of the places Maris had hit.

  The feral man raised his hands and charged at Donnie. What he was thinking, Donnie didn't know. Even without Sam here, Donnie would have fed him the floor.

  Again, to Sam's credit, she didn't even flinch. Donnie had a moment flush with pride that his protégé trusted him enough to not turn the clearly mentally unbalanced man into chunks.

  Donnie didn't need to know where the man was going. He waited for Maris to charge him and relied on instinct honed from years of training. His hands flew out, caught Maris by the wrist. He stepped to the side, twisted the man's arm behind him. He slammed him face down into the floor. Maris seemed to regain a semblance of humanity at the shock of being brought low so quickly.

  "Wait! Wait! Wait, you have to get me out of here! Please! Please! Please! Please! I'm stuck here!"

  Donnie had made a habit of carrying handcuffs with him. He didn't break the habit after retirement. Easy as anything, a person who wished you harm was restrained with their hands behind their back. Most grown adult men couldn't even sit upright with their hands behind their back. They'd need to push themselves up, not being flexible or have enough control over their body to simply turn to the side and get on to their knees. He put the handcuffs on Harold Maris.

  He looked over at Sam. She had started to relax after she saw how Donnie handled the man. Her expression said her concern was more for his safety than it was for her own satisfaction.

  "Good job, Sam," congratulated Donnie. "You didn't even kill nobody."