Little Mississippi Jones once again banged her tiny fists on the door to her cell. She'd been trapped in the stone room for days. She slept on a dirty mat on the floor. They gave her a bucket, now almost full of her waste.

  Every day they opened the door to give her stale bread and water. Once she had been given a chicken bone, picked clean of meat.

  She cried and called out for her mama once again. She was starting to understand her mama wasn't coming.

  It was her mama who threw her into the cell.

  Sam once again found herself going door-to-door. The height of her investigative power was asking questions of people who would answer them. She had various ways and means of compelling answers for those who did not wish to give them. In this case, she relied on her reputation as a friendly face in the neighborhood, or at least one that would not stomp them with a steel-toed boot.

  She was trying to find out what happened to Missy, the little girl who had hired her to find her lost dog. The Spirit of the City had given her a disturbing vision in which Missy was threatened by some monster with red eyes. Missy's mother was also in the vision, her hands covered in blood. She didn't know if that meant Missy's mother was responsible in some way, or a further victim. These questions plagued her, and she decided it was time to get some answers.

  None of Missy's neighbors knew where she went. They heard that Missy's mother had been keeping with a new man, a local preacher. The man was the landlord of several nearby buildings. None of the buildings were in good repair.

  Slums were common in the city. There were too many people and too many people meant not enough housing. The land outside the city was a blasted wasteland, or uncivilized wilderness. The few farms that dotted the hillsides provided all of the city's food. But there wasn't enough work to go around, so everyone came to the city. It was this way all across the American Empire. Dirt roads crisscrossed the nation. Trains delivered goods from the south to the north, from the east to the west. Train tracks had been laid by immigrants who lay buried next to their work. Every once in a while, someone like Sam or some other sorcerer would get a call to come and quell the rebellious spirits of those long-dead workers.

  Sam wasn't making any progress, so she decided it was time to break into Missy's house. It was one of the ramshackle row homes in Sam’s neighborhood. It was red brick that had been painted white. When the brick started to fall apart, most landlords found it cheaper to cover it with paint than to make repairs. This one was like that. She could see chips in the lower brick, and the mortar that crumbled to mush pushed out from under the paint.

  Sam picked the lock to the front door. It was easy, like the lock gave up, as if it was tired of holding the door shut. Once inside, Sam had to hold her sleeve to her nose. The smell of rotten food assailed her. The place was filled with trash. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. She stepped carefully through the refuse, trying to find any sign of where the missing girl had gone or who had taken her.

  The only clean room in the house was Missy's. She had a white bed and a few flowers stuck to the walls. One doll lay on her bed up against her pillow. The bed was made. In the closet, Sam found a few clean dresses. Missy spent a lot of time taking care of her room despite the state of the rest of the house.

  Sam made her way over to the master bedroom. The two bedrooms were opposite each other. The master bedroom was filled with the same filth that afflicted the rest of the house. The bed was the only clean spot. Next to the bed was a photo of Missy's mom standing next to a man with white skin and a preacher's collar. The woman wore a wide smile. She stood next to the preacher with pride.

  Recently, personal photographs had become a fad in the city. Local churches liked to take portraits of parishioners standing next to preachers as a matter of pride. But most of these photos would be hung on a wall next to family portraits. To have one on a nightstand was unusual.

  Sam recalled how she became involved with Missy in the first place. The young girl had been given a whole silver coin by a gentleman visitor, according to the little girl's account. In a neighborhood like this, a preacher would be one of the only people able to afford such lavish gifts to a young girl. In particular if one was trying to court the mother, or simply get her out of the house.

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  Sam decided to pay a visit to the church. She pocketed the photograph. She knew the place. Church wasn't a place she frequented often, or ever, but she knew the building. It was a small white steeple over a sparse chapel, a few pews inside, and a large lawn. The lawn was what had caught her attention. There weren't many buildings in this neighborhood that had space for greenery. In back of most houses was a small concrete courtyard surrounded by a wall with a gate for the residents to throw their trash out back, which would hopefully someday be picked up by city garbage trucks.

  Sam entered the building. The chapel was clean, the pews empty. One of the windows had been boarded up. There was no rectory. So the preacher who occupied the pulpit on Sundays did not live in the building.

  It wasn't unusual, even in this neighborhood, for a church to have unlocked doors. Most folk were either too religious or at least superstitious to steal from a church, and most churches didn't have anything valuable in the chapel anyway.

  "Can I help you, ma'am?" said a thin voice from behind her.

  Sam jumped at the sound. She hadn't heard a creak of floorboard nor whisper of breath. Sneaking up on someone as paranoid as Sam was almost impossible.

  She turned to face the speaker. He stood in the open doorway of the chapel. He was thin and tall with pale skin and a wiry white mustache. Spectacles sat atop his nose. His hair was white with age, though he looked spry. He wore a clergyman’s collar, a white shirt, black trousers and jacket against the cold. She recognized the man from the photo in Missy's house. This was the preacher she had come to question.

  "Well, hello, Reverend. Sorry to disturb you here. I'm Samantha Fontaine. I've come to ask after Mrs. Jones. I apologize that I do not know her first name. I am an acquaintance of her daughter's, young as she is. You see, the woman's gone missing and I hope to find her."

  "Oh, missing, is it? Well, ain't that a shame. Louisa is her name. The mother. And young Mississippi is quite a little firecracker, isn't she? I can hardly get her to be quiet during the sermon on Sundays."

  The man sauntered past Sam, who stood by the center pews. He walked by her towards the altar, as if he meant to take care of some chore. The sort of housekeeping that only a reverend need do. Picking out letters for the billboards outside his church meant to draw in parishioners, organizing communion wafers, or picking up a stray bit of communion wine resting behind the pulpit. Sam wondered if he thought she was some sort of indigent, seeking a few drops of free wine.

  "Missing, you said? Why, I recall them both here this Sunday. That was the last I saw. Now, how could I help you find them?”

  "Well, I just wonder, Reverend. You see, in the Jones house I came upon a portrait of you and Mrs. Jones. You seemed familiar with her. At least she seemed familiar with you. And Missy had mentioned how you had given her a silver coin."

  At this, the preacher's face turned momentarily sour. Sam was careful to catch changes in expression or little nuances of guilt that might cross a person's face, however brief. She had lied about Missy telling her who had given her the silver coin. At the time it was a remarkable sum, but Sam assumed Missy's mother had found herself a wealthy boyfriend and that she was trying to sleep her way out of the slums. Thinking back, it had been an unkind assumption, one she would spare time to regret once she had found the little girl.

  "Now, many of my constituency, of my flock, they consider me an important figure in their life. I do, on occasion, visit the homes of parishioners here. This is mostly to check up on them and to ensure that they have necessities. Food and the like. And that their shelter is adequate."

  The preacher's face dropped all expression. His thin smile faded to nothing. He stared past Sam and said, "What took you idiots so long? I've been humoring this bitch for minutes."

  Sam whipped her head to look at who he was talking to.

  For the second time today she'd been snuck up on in the same church. Behind her were two burly men. One wore a bowler hat. The other's head was bald. Both men had muscular builds. They made their way toward Sam, malice on their faces. They wore the sort of grim, bored anger that one who does violence for a living wears before they ply their trade. Sam was starting to reconsider carrying a personal firearm if she was going to keep on getting into situations in which having a gun would be far more useful than having careful words, clever ideas, or detecting lies.

  The only exit was blocked. The one weapon Sam carried was a small pocket knife, which she tried to dig out of her pocket as she readied herself for a fight.

  Icy fingers circled her throat. The strength of the grip was unnatural. She tried prying the fingers off. She tried kicking back. She tried swinging. Nothing made those fingers move even a whit. They squeezed and the breath came to her in ragged gasps and her vision swam as the pressure cut off the circulation.

  She heard the voice behind her say, "Take her to the chapel. Put her in the room next to the girl" before the world went black.