"Have we got a plan?" Irene asked.

Ray nodded. "There's some standard procedures the Tower likes us to follow. Set a Devil's Trap in a remote and hopefully closed-off location, drive the demon into it, and if we can't kill it on the way there we finish it when we've got it trapped."

There wasn't much talking beyond that. After ten minutes in the car Eliot dialed the go-to number the Tower handed out to the Hunters they had in the field, and spent only thirty seconds on hold before he was transferred to a curt, efficient young woman named Lorie who had a talent for remotely sensing powerful spirits. He was still talking to her fifteen minutes later.

"She says she's getting some weird signals," said Eliot, as they pulled into the town, "but she thinks she has the hang of it."

"What do you mean, 'weird'?" Ray asked, as he parked the car, checking there weren't any passers-by as he did so.

"Dunno. Hang on. What do you mean, 'weird'? Hard-to-find weird, or... Oh. Okay. Thanks." Eliot set the phone down on the top of the car while they unloaded the trunk. "She says he keeps fading in and out, whatever the hell that means," he said. "She figures maybe he's magicked himself with stealth charms that are close to giving out, or maybe he's got enough mental discipline to make himself run silent but he's been having a bad day."

"Well, his day's about to get worse," said Ray, cocking a sawn-off shotgun. After some more thought, he also selected a handgun and a few clips of ornate-looking bullets which resembled inch-high gothic cathedrals. Eliot snorted and turned his attentions back to the phone.

"What are those?" Irene asked, pulling out a couple vials of holy water to stash next to the ones she was already carrying in her jacket.

Ray picked one of the strange-looking bullets up and waved it in front of her face. "These," he said, "are designed to release holy water upon impact."

Irene thought it over. "How come they don't issue water guns?"

Now it was Ray's turn to snort. "Talk to our R&D department. Personally, I just think all those bloody labcoated D&D-loving techies would feel all awkward trying to explain how they spent a 50-thousand-dollar budget on Super Soakers. Oh, and longer range, better accuracy, and never feeling kind of stupid when you try to threaten a demon with it are added bonuses." He examined the contents of the trunk again, and then pulled out another, different type of round.

"Fair enough. And those?"

Ray grinned. "Classified. I'd have to kill you."

"Uh huh."

Ray got off the phone for a second. "She says it's tough, but she has a fix on him. Pemberton Street, two blocks from here. You two ready?"

Irene shrugged. "Are you?" asked Raymond.

Eliot grinned. "Got my Colt, don't I?"

They quickly walked south down a main thoroughfare, few cars or people passing them by in the early morning. It was dead quiet, Ray thought, a good time for a hunt. Tower management was always irked by witnesses.

"So where are we putting that trap?" Irene asked.

"Dunno yet," Ray said, as Eliot continued to interrogate the woman on the other side of the phone. "If we start trying to drive that demon anywhere, it's going to want to stay near people if it doesn't dispossess the host and bolt entirely. Those are both big problems—we can't kill it if it's flying away at fifty miles an hour and we really shouldn't risk a bunch of civilians. Kind of thing we could get fired for."

Irene looked around. "Uncle Ray, it's six in the morning on a saturday. There's almost nobody up."

"Yeah? How many people do you count on the street? If it's more than zero, we could have trouble, Irene. Killing some demon's not worth getting more people killed than absolutely necessary in the process. We want a clean hunt."

Eliot put his hand over the phone speaker as he interrupted. "She says he's fading badly. We need to make some ground."

They jogged until they hit Pemberton, and then tried to slow into the casual walk of normal people. There were three people milling about in the early morning, and Irene caught sight of the demon almost immediately, about a block away from them—the body dressed in worn-out and faded clothes and the shattered face above it grimacing like a carnival mask. The terrible grin that revealed sickly yellowed teeth, the jaggedly unkempt hair that fell behind the head in near-spikes, and the bone-white pallor of the skin all put Irene in mind of a jester, or perhaps a jester's corpse. As the thing jerked its kidnapped head towards her Irene made sure she was staring at some storefront instead. She felt the eyes slide off of her after a second, and then the demon had turned away to keep walking.

"Crap," said Eliot. "Lorie here says she lost it."

"Why don't we just follow it?" said Irene, pointing when she was sure the demon's back was still turned.

Ray and Eliot both frowned, confused. Irene continued with, "Honestly, it's so weird-looking I don't know why everybody else isn't screaming by now—" before her voice shuddered to a halt. She looked back at Eliot and Raymond. Both men still looked confused, but now Raymond's head was tilted into an evaluating look and Eliot's stare held some small measure of fear.

"You can't see it?" Irene asked.

There was a silence. Then, Eliot murmured, "You mean you can?"

Ray put a hand on Eliot's shoulder. "So she's psychic. Just another gift in this business, right?"

"It's not what it is, it's how she—" Eliot broke off and looked away from either of them, and stopped moving abruptly. This left Ray and Irene to wait awkwardly in the center of the sidewalk, with Eliot between them, seemingly assessing some mote of dust on the pavement. Irene glanced between the retreating demon and her father, beginning to feel a little torn. "Uh...Dad?"

Eliot looked back up and Irene watched him manage to manufacture a small smile. "You can see it? Fine. Hunt it for us. I'll stay with you, Raymond will cut around and try to get ahead of it. Okay?"

Raymond grunted. "Yeah. Fine. Already going." And he was sprinting down a cross-street before the demon could glance back again.

They paced the demon for a couple blocks in silence. Finally, Irene tried, "Dad? Is everything okay?"

Eliot managed another smile. "Everything's just fine, Irene. You're doing fine."

It kept going for two more blocks, turned, and then began to walk down another cross-street, away from the people. Eliot frowned. "Maybe we should pick the pace up," he said. "If he turns like that, he could run into Ray—"

There was a sharp cracking sound and Eliot started running, Irene struggling to keep up. "Gunfire! That'd be Ray," Eliot grunted out.

"Yeah. Figured."

When they got there the demon was on the ground clutching at the left side of his chest, just below his clavicle. The host's blood welled up out of the wound and poured through its hand like it was a sieve. Irene felt her breath catch a little, and steeled herself. Come on. You're a Hunter now. This is the job. Ray was a couple feet away with his gun out. He nodded to them when he saw them.

"Hey, El. Figured you might want to try putting this one away yourself with that new toy you've got."

Eliot sidled around the dying man, sizing him up. The host's eyes stayed fixed on the ground. "How come he doesn't just dispossess?"

Ray grinned and held up one of the bullets. It was one of the special ones Irene had asked about. "Thank Tower R&D for that. They've given me some damned stupid equipment over the years, but I'd say this makes up for it."

"Tower dwellers," muttered the demon, and spat, still not looking up. "Company men. You're all bloody pawns."

Raymond laughed. "Hear that? We've got ourselves a hippie demon. You around for Woodstock, pal?"

It said nothing.

Ray laughed again. " Go on, Eliot, slot the bastard."

Eliot shrugged and pulled his Colt out, but hesitated. The demon looked up suddenly and glanced between Irene, Eliot, and the Colt before his eyes settled on Eliot.

"Yeah," said the demon, "Go on. Get on with it!" It straightened up and stood wearily, still clutching at its chest, and tried to laugh. The sound that emerged was a half-empty wheeze. "I've had it with all of you. With all of you bloody Tower dwellers. Whatever comes next... it's got to be better. Than you. Lot. So go on, do it. Do. It."

Eliot stared at the demon for a moment, and then shrugged. The Colt erupted and blew another wound through the body. The creature stood there for a moment, completely still, and then crumpled to the ground.

Cleanup took only a few minutes, and they were gone before the police arrived.

"Well," said Raymond to Eliot privately, as they walked back to the car, "I don't know what that was about but it sure as hell wasn't Azazel."

"No. I'll tell the Tower about it." Some of the blood had splattered onto his jacket, and Eliot had the stain concealed in such a way that he could try to clean it off while they walked.

"Uh huh. Hey, El? I could use a drink right now."

"See what I can do about that."

"I'm still underage, though," said Irene. "What am I supposed to do, order Pepsi?"

Eliot shrugged. "Nah, I figure you're close enough to 21 by now. I could just order for you, but I got you some great fake ID's last birthday, kid. Use them already."

Irene sighed, annoyed. "Fine, Dad. That's really plausible. So am I an FBI agent going out for a drink, or a coronor, or what?"

"Use the Jane Doe one. Driver's license for a twenty-six-year-old named Rachel Phelps? You brought it, right?"

"Of course. Hey, can I actually drive with it?"

Raymond grunted. "Not in my car, you're not."

And so on, through the awakening day as they drove back into North Dakota looking for a bar. It took some doing to find a place open at 7 A.M. that would serve alcohol, and the bartender had watched them curiously for the first few minutes, but for Ray at least it was worth it to get some alcohol. Within about half an hour of coming in, the drinks had already started to blur what had originally been stark, vivid memories of a cold-blooded killing into a muzzy recollection of yet another job well done. Eliot, after a tense rock-paper-scissors match between him and Raymond, had been declared the designated driver and limited himself to only a half-pint worth. Irene drank even less, and more speculatively. Both of the other Hunters were crashing too hard on the adrenaline high of the hunt to remember it was her first real experience with alcohol.

They swapped first-time stories like Ray had proposed. Eliot naturally went first and managed to give his a better treatment than Ray had with his heavily-abridged version, and got a laugh out Irene for his trouble. Ray went next, and to Eliot's well-contained surprise told Irene the truth. Eliot had been expecting Ray to pull out one of the funnier or more self-aggrandizing hunts that had come later, after he'd joined the Tower. Unlike Eliot's first time, Ray's had been of the more familiar and tragic variety of blooding for a Hunter—barely surviving an attack.

Eliot had been a cop once, a very long time ago. A bachelor's degree in Criminology and a well-honed body had been good enough to get him out on the streets almost immediately as a detective in homicide investigation, and he'd run into Raymond Trissome on a case. Raymond had proven to him that they were dealing with a hoodoo witch rather than a highly resourceful and delusional serial killer, and after Eliot had helped to take her out Raymond had recommended Eliot to the Tower. He'd been apprenticed to Raymond and their first case together was a shifter. End of story.

Raymond, by contrast, had been born and raised a Hunter. His uncle Simon had been a great Hunter when the man had been in his prime—in fact, as far as Eliot knew, Simon was still out wandering familiar US back-roads in search of monsters—and he'd raised up Raymond in the lifestyle. But he'd had to do that because Raymond's parents hadn't been around since Ray was eight.

It had been a werewolf, Eliot heard Raymond say, as the middle-aged Hunter skirted carefully around the part where his parents had been killed so that he wouldn't put Irene completely off her drink. Ray had hid and called Simon the first moment he had thought he was safe, and Simon had arrived minutes later. Ray grinned as he said that, sipping at the bourbon he'd ordered. "He lived fifty miles away. He must have floored it the whole way to get there that fast."

Simon had told him the truth, which probably hadn't been all that easy. He'd told Ray the truth, and then Ray had told him that he wanted to help. So Simon had let the eight-year-old tag along. And when they'd finally trapped it, fortunately while it was in monster form, Raymond was the one who shot it.

"Simon," said Irene musingly in the meditative silence that had followed Ray's story. "Great-uncle Simon? The old guy you introduced me to a couple years back?"

Ray nodded and grinned. "That's the one. He still makes me send him letters about you sometimes, just to tell him how you're doing."

"He always seemed like such a nice person."

Ray nodded. "Well, he is. Just don't ever push him too far."

Eliot's phone suddenly rang. "Damn," he said, and pulled it out to check the caller ID. "Well, I can probably avoid it—"

He read the number, twice. "Or not. Think I'll have to take it in private, too. Give me a couple minutes?"

Raymond shrugged and mock-toasted him. "I think we'll stick around at least that long."

Eliot walked outside and leaned against the bar's front glass window. He spent roughly a second preparing himself for talking with one of the Tower's senior managers before he answered his phone. "Hey Max."

"Hey Eliot. Just finished reading the post-mission report you filed with the remote-sensing support. You sure there weren't any witnesses?"

Eliot snorted. "Is this really what qualifies as small talk for us these days?"

"Sorry man. Just trying to ease into the conversation, here." Eliot heard the sound of Max flipping through the hard-copy of the report. "I'm calling about Irene."

Eliot held his breath. "And? What about her?"

"Easy, El. I just want to fill out some details that seem to be missing. When Lorie lost it, you say that Irene tracked it instead. How?"

Eliot tried to think of a suitable lie and came up empty. He settled for an obfuscation. "She could sense where it was."

More silence, more sounds of flipping pages. Max said, "Very useful talent in a Hunter. I notice you didn't recommend her for employment."

"Because she's not even twenty-one yet."

"I'm sorry, but I don't see how that's a problem. You do know that Ray started with us at eighteen, right?"

"Yes. He told me, once."

"Okay. Look, I'm not trying to pressure you or anything but from what I've heard you're raising her up as a Hunter anyway. You pass her over to us and she can get first-rate gear, any training that she hasn't already gotten from you... It's a better way than freelancing it El. You know that."

"Yeah. I do. I just..."

Max sighed. "I get it. You don't want her growing up that fast. Well, like I said, I'm not pressuring you. I'm just saying that we're very interested in hiring talented Hunters and by the sound of it your girl is one of them. Think about it and get back to me when you can."

"I'll talk to her," said Eliot at last, after spending some time staring at nothing.

"Thank you."

Eliot went back in, sat back down, and waited for Irene and Ray to finish their conversation. When they had, he said, "Irene. The Tower called and they want to hire you. What do you think?"

Her grin told him everything he didn't want to know.