"Kyrie, I'm fine."

She crossed her arms. "Nero, you fainted. You are not fine."

"I did not faint." Nero struggled upright on the lower bunk where she'd forced him to lie down. "I just got dizzy for a second."

"And then you fell on the floor, unconscious. That's called fainting." She pushed him back down. "Don't move."

"Seriously, I'm fine—"

She loomed over him, fierce and stern. "I said don't move."

He knew better than to disobey when she had that look on her face, so he sank back and stared at the springs on the underside of Julio's bunk, feeling foolish and irritated by his own weakness.

Kyrie reappeared a minute later bearing a plate piled with apple slices and the sandwich he hadn't eaten. She helped him sit up before depositing it in his lap. "Eat."

Nero rolled his eyes. "Kyrie, you don't have to fuss over me. I'm just a little tired from working this morning. It's not a big deal."

"Oh, really?" She snatched the plate away and, before he could react, yanked his T-shirt hem up above his chest. "And is that why I can see every one of your ribs? Because you're tired?"

Nero refused to meet her eyes as he pulled his shirt back down.

The plate landed in his lap again. "I know you ate dinner last night, because I watched to make sure. But you haven't eaten breakfast or lunch in days, have you?" Kyrie knelt on the floor beside the bed and stared up at him. "What is going on, Nero? Why aren't you eating?"

Nero stared at the food, reluctant to touch it even though his stomach was churning in anticipation. "The less I eat, the more the kids can."

"Oh, Nero." Kyrie gripped his hand, and when he could bring himself to look at her, he saw tears in her eyes. "Starving yourself isn't helping anyone."

"We're short on money and food. I can go a lot longer without eating than anyone else can."

"And if you can't work, because you're weak from hunger? If some demon wounds you, because you don't have the energy to evade it? Whom will you be helping then?" She shook her head. "I know you'd do anything for the children—and I love that about you—but we need you strong and healthy."

Nero saw movement at the door and glanced toward it. The twins peered in, undisguised concern on their faces. "Hey, kids." Nero plastered on a smile. "Everything's fine."

"You fell down," Rosso said.

"Yeah, I did. But I'm okay." Nero felt Kyrie's gaze burning into him and waved the white flag. "I'm just gonna have a little snack and rest for a minute. Can you guys finish up the books? Then we can all put the toys away together."

The twins nodded and returned to the living room. Kyrie squeezed his hand. "Thank you," she whispered.

Nero sighed and picked up an apple slice. "It's weird. I don't even really feel hungry. Just exhausted."

"You'll feel it once your stomach remembers what food is. But eat slowly." She shifted her position to lean against the bed beside his knees. "You know, for all your talk about how much you love my cooking, I'm not sure what to think when you stop eating it."

Nero bent to kiss the top of her head. "I'm sorry. I really do love your cooking."

"Prove it." She tapped the plate. "Eat."

Nero bit into the apple. At the taste of the tangy, sweet juice his entire mouth came alive, and he realized just how hungry he was. He made short work of the contents of the plate, and only Kyrie's insistence that he take it slow and let his stomach adjust kept him from going back to the kitchen to refill it. To distract himself from his still-rumbling belly, he asked, "So what happened at the orphanage? Why the early closing?"

Kyrie sighed and tipped her head to rest against his leg. "You remember how the children told us about the baby that was brought in yesterday?"

"Yeah. Julio said they thought it was sick."

"It's worse than that. Sister Benedicta thinks the poor thing was starved and deliberately left to die. Which he did, late this morning. The doctor said nothing could be done for him. He never even woke up."

Nero stroked her hair. "I'm sorry."

"It was awful. He was so thin and weak, and so young." A shudder ran through Kyrie's body. "I don't know what kind of monster would subject an innocent child to that kind of suffering. Even if his parents couldn't afford to feed him, they could have brought him to us sooner, or taken him to the hospital. Someone would have helped him. But instead, they let him waste away."

A creeping unease that had nothing to do with his hunger invaded Nero's stomach. "Why did she think it was deliberate?"

"Because he was left exposed." Bitterness saturated each word. "The man who found him said there were some clothes nearby, but whoever left him there hadn't even wrapped him up. The baby was just lying there, unconscious, without even a blanket or diaper to protect him."

Cold spread through Nero's body. "Shit. Shit."

Kyrie turned to stare at him, startled by the rare profane outburst. "What is it?"

"That wasn't a baby."

She blinked. "What on earth are you talking about? I saw him, Nero. He can't have been more than four months old."

"And Dante and Vergil were in their mid-forties until a few weeks ago." Nero leaned forward and grasped her shoulders. "I have to talk to the guy who found that baby. Do you have his name?"

"Sister Benedicta might." Fear was creeping into Kyrie's expression. "Nero, what's going on?"

"Everything you described—naked baby, unconscious, emaciated, clothes on the ground, nobody else around—that's exactly what we found at that factory."

"Oh, no." Her hands went to her mouth. "You think the Nilepoch is here?"

"We knew it would come after them."

"Yes, but I didn't imagine it would be so soon. We were talking about years, not weeks."

"Yeah, but there's a lot we don't know about it. Maybe we were wrong about how it works, or maybe it didn't absorb as much energy from Dante and Vergil as we thought." Nero got to his feet. "I'm gonna call the orphanage and see if I can get that guy's name. If the Nilepoch is on Fortuna, this whole island could be in danger."

Sister Benedicta sounded tired when Nero spoke to her, but once he explained that he thought a demon was responsible for what had happened to the baby, she didn't even hesitate in giving him the information he sought. "If it is a devil," she told him with rare ferocity, "you hunt it down. No child deserves to suffer like that."

Even with the good Samaritan's name and telephone number, it took until the next day to arrange a meeting. On Friday afternoon, Nero followed the old man, who called himself Tasso the Tinker, through a string of dilapidated structures not far from Port Caerula as he rambled about his work—which turned out to be any handyman job available. "I was looking for pipe fittings," Tasso explained. "It's hard to get new parts, sometimes, but these condemned buildings are full of plumbing and electrical systems just going to waste, so sometimes I come down and see if I can salvage anything. Here it is, just around this corner."

The roof of the building he pointed out was half collapsed, admitting daylight to the main part of what had once been a warehouse. A narrow path cut through the rubble in the center of the space, packing down the dirt that had washed into the building. Nero crouched to peer at it. "Somebody's been through here a lot."

"It's a popular shortcut," the old man said. "Some of the local workers use it to get from the docks to the bars on the next street. Saves a couple of blocks' walking."

"This is weird." Nero touched a small circular depression in the dirt, about the size of a large coin. The mark was repeated every couple of paces, overlaying old footprints in the dried mud. "What do you suppose made this?"

Tasso squinted over his shoulder. "A pirate, maybe. With a peg leg." He slapped Nero's arm with the back of his hand. "Because we're near the docks, you see?" He laughed at his own joke before leading the way to a pile of dark fabric in the corner. "Here's where the baby was."

Nero examined the slight disturbance in the dust, then rifled through the pile of clothing beside it. Most of the clothing was fairly generic, of the type most of his fellow dock workers wore, but the gray wool coat looked familiar. The pockets were empty; if there had been a wallet, someone had made off with it already. Nero tucked the coat into the crook of his arm and glanced down the path. "You said this goes along to the docks?"

"Sure does. Just go out and angle to the right, and you'll see the ships."

"Thanks. You've been a big help."

Tasso nodded. "I hope the little boy will be all right. I wish I'd found him sooner, but I only get out here about once a week."

Nero hesitated, then decided there was no reason to burden the kindly old stranger with the sad truth. "He definitely would have died here without your help. Thanks for bringing him to us."

Leaving his guide, Nero followed the path into more familiar territory and made his way to the port. There was a freighter just pulling away from the dock, and Nero hurried to the office to catch Joe Panni before he left for the day.

Panni cocked his head in surprise when he saw Nero at the door. "Hey, kid. You could have just called about picking up the shifts."

"Not why I'm here." Nero tossed him the coat. "This look familiar to you?"

Panni turned the coat over in his hands. His eyes widened at a distinctive stain on the sleeve. "This is Tonio's."

"You sure?"

"Definitely. He bitched for two weeks after he got that oil mark on it."

Nero swore under his breath.

Panni's expression turned wary. "Where'd you find this? Where is he?"

Nero shook his head. "He's not coming back, Joe."

Panni moved to a chair and sank into it. "What happened?"

"Demon got him." Nero paced to burn off the nervous energy. "I only found out about the attack last night, and I wasn't sure it was him until you IDed the coat. The body was… hard to identify."

"So why aren't you out there killing it?" Panni's voice was hard. "That's your job, isn't it? To kill those monsters before they hurt people? Why are you standin' around here when our friend is dead?"

"Believe me, there is nobody that wants this bastard's head more than I do," Nero growled. "I'm calling in my partners from the mainland, and we are gonna hunt this thing down or die trying."

"Good. I don't want to see you back here until it's dead." Panni's hands tightened on the coat. "I'll pay your standard rate, but that's your only job from now on, you hear me? You don't work on the docks, you don't work anywhere else. You find this thing and you kill it."

"Brother, you got my word on that," Nero promised. "This demon's going down hard."

In spite of his enthusiasm, Nero's search stalled out within a matter of hours. None of his contacts had seen or heard anything about a demon matching the Nilepoch's description, and no other unconscious children had turned up.

It was Lady who proposed an explanation, when he called her to give her the news. "This thing was designed to feed off of other demons, and now it's on an island full of them. It's very likely that it just switched back to its regular diet."

"Which is good, because people aren't getting hurt," Nero sighed, "but bad because our chances of tracking it down just dropped into the underworld."

"It still has to surface sometime," Lady countered. "Especially since most of what's left on Fortuna are weak, low-level demons. I can't imagine one of those has enough power to kick it very far forward in time."

Nero considered this. "And I guess if we keep wiping those out, eventually it will have to come looking for a new target."

"I'll finish up the gig I'm on and head your way in a few days. Trish is out of town on a big job, but I'll leave word with Morrison to have her join us when she gets back. If the Nilepoch shows up again, we'll be ready for it."

"Yeah, we will. I'll see you soon."

Nero hung up the phone, and Kyrie glanced over from where she was cooking dinner. "Lady's coming?"

"Yeah, but not for a few days." Nero paced the short distance to the opposite side of the room and back. "I hate that there's nothing I can do until this thing shows up again. I wish I could sense demons, like Trish or Dante can, and just go kill the damn thing."

"Well, you don't have to stay idle while you wait. In fact, if Lady is going to be here soon, we should spend the next couple of days getting everything else done so you can focus on hunting once she's here."

"Everything else?"

"Starting with finishing the boys' bedroom. We still need to get that bed from the orphanage."

"Right." He'd been so preoccupied with the Nilepoch, he'd all but forgotten what he'd been doing when he learned of its presence. "I'll get it tomorrow."

"By yourself?"

"Tomorrow's Saturday. Julio can help me." Kyrie looked skeptical, but Nero shrugged. "It's not like I can go back and ask Joe Panni. I told you what he said."

"All right." She still sounded dubious. "But don't let Julio hurt himself. He's tall, but he's still only twelve."

"I'll do the heavy lifting. I'll just have him spot me so I don't run into a car or anything." Nero leaned closer and glanced into the pan simmering on the stove. "Of course, that means I'll need to keep my strength up. You sure I can't sample some of that now?"

Kyrie shot him a look. "You can sample it when everyone else does, at dinnertime. I know you're still hungry, but consider the next hour as your punishment for not eating enough over the past—Nero!" She slapped his hand as he tried to spear a piece of chicken with a fork. "It's not finished cooking yet, and I don't want to test whether your powers can save you from salmonella poisoning."

"Can't help it. It smells really good. You're a fabulous cook." He ducked in to kiss her cheek, and used the spectral extension of his right arm to lift a bunch of grapes from a bowl on the opposite side of the stove.

"I saw that," Kyrie scolded.

"Can't get salmonella from grapes, though." Nero popped a single fruit into his mouth, then darted the devil arm back across to replace the rest of the bunch in the bowl.

"Showoff."

"You also can't slap a hand that isn't really there." He winked.

Kyrie was trying her hardest not to laugh. "Get out of my kitchen and go do something useful."

It was fun to tease her, but Nero knew the children would be home soon, so he complied. He emptied the wastebaskets around the house, and was just about to carry the bag of garbage out to the garage when he realized the house was too quiet. "Kyrie?" he called.

Kyrie's head appeared, leaning into the hallway from the kitchen. "Yes?"

"Where are the twins?"

"Last I saw, they were in the living room." Her expression shifted to one of alarm. "Are they not in the living room now?"

Nero checked behind the sofa to be sure. "Nope. They weren't upstairs, either. I've just been all over the house." He tested the doorknob. "And the front door's locked."

"Hold on, let me turn down the stove." She vanished into the kitchen and reappeared a few seconds later, wiping her hands on her apron. "There aren't that many places they can hide. They're too big to fit under the furniture now."

Kyrie searched the bedrooms and utility room while Nero checked the garage. They met in the living room again, exchanging headshakes.

"Nothing. That leaves only—" Nero's sentence was cut off by the sound of something shattering outside. He unlocked the front door and yanked it open, expecting to see a culprit throwing something at the front of the house. Instead, the sight that greeted him was a little pile of terra cotta shards on the front stoop.

"Oh, no," breathed Kyrie.

Nero turned and bolted up the stairs three at a time, noticing now what he hadn't when he'd come in to collect the trash: The window above the crib, often left cracked an inch for ventilation, was wide open. From outside came the distinct sound of giggling.

Kyrie entered the room behind him just as Nero was climbing up on the sill. "Be careful," she urged. "Don't startle them, or they might slip and fall."

"Fall?" Nero growled. "They'll be lucky if I don't punt their asses off the roof myself." He crawled out onto the ledge, mindful of the loose tiles that shifted beneath his knees, and craned his neck to find the boys.

His search didn't take long. "Look at me!" cried a voice from almost directly above him. "Brother, watch!" Nero twisted and saw Rosso wobbling on the narrow peak of the dormer, arms outstretched to balance himself. "I can walk on the very top!"

"I bet I can do that all the way across," came an answering voice, and Nero leaned out to see Zaffiro standing farther up, balanced on the highest peak of the roof. He swayed as he walked, adjusting for the slight breeze and his own movement, but he strode across the cap tiles with sure-footed grace.

Nero was furious, but he was also impressed.

Just as Zaffiro's foot came down near the end of the roof, there was a crack of breaking tile. The boy's arms windmilled for an instant before he toppled forward, scrabbling at tiles that broke loose beneath his clawed fingers. Rosso screamed a warning as Zaffiro rocketed toward the edge of the roof and a two-story drop to the ground—

Nero's spectral arm shot out, grasping the back of Zaffiro's collar just as he flew past the guttering. He stretched into the fall and swung the boy back toward him with less speed than he typically used on demons—after all, a four-year-old's neck was delicate, and whiplash from such movement was a very real risk—then switched Zaffiro's collar into his left hand before reaching up and retrieving Rosso with the devil arm. He dropped both twins back through the window into Kyrie's anxious arms before crawling inside.

Rosso's expression hovered somewhere between terrified and chagrined, but once Zaffiro had recovered from his near-death experience—a process that took approximately eight seconds—the older twin gazed impassively back at Nero and Kyrie.

Nero's ire was stoked up for a proper hellfire lecture, but Kyrie stopped him with a raised hand. "Are either of you hurt?" she asked quietly. Both boys shook their heads. "Good." She stepped aside and gestured for Nero to go ahead.

The short pause had been enough for Nero to rein in his rage, so the lecture contained less profanity and fewer threats than what had initially circulated in his mind. Still, there was plenty of heat behind his words. "You two are in serious trouble," he seethed.

"Why?" Zaffiro asked calmly.

Nero hadn't expected that. "I think you know exactly why."

Rosso certainly did; he hung his head and looked very, very sorry. Zaffiro merely cocked his head to one side. "We didn't break any rules."

Nero stared back at him. "You were on the roof! On the second floor! You could have been killed!"

"You never said we couldn't go outside," Zaffiro returned.

It was a good dodge—one Nero couldn't immediately dispute. He glanced at the window, his brain scrambling for an argument Zaffiro would accept, and his eyes landed on the crib just to one side of the window, where he'd shoved it so he could climb out. The crib rail was shorter than the window sill. Nero eyeballed the boys' height. "How did you get the window open?"

Zaffiro saw where this line of questioning was going, and his expression turned wary. "It was already open."

"But not all the way." Nero crossed his arms. "You aren't tall enough to reach it on your own. Which means you had to stand on the edge of the crib to do it. And I know you know that standing on the furniture is against the rules."

Zaffiro scowled at the floor.

"While we're on the subject, here are some new rules: You are not allowed to leave this house without permission from Kyrie or myself. That includes through doors, windows, or any holes that may spontaneously appear in the wall. You are not allowed to engage in any dangerous behavior, including but not limited to climbing on or jumping off of very tall objects. And you are definitely not allowed on the roof! Got it?"

The twins nodded in unison.

Nero was about to go on with the lecture when the acrid smell of something burning invaded the room. Kyrie's eyes widened. "The chicken!" she cried, bolting for the stairs.

The last of the adrenaline drained from Nero's system, and his shoulders sagged. "You kids are gonna be the death of me," he groaned. "Either from stress, or from starvation."