Spirit didn't know where she was. Something told her that was normal for newly organized and summoned intelligences, but she didn't know how she knew that. Or how she knew that whatever spells had called her forth were not strong enough to bind her. Or why she wanted so badly to rip the windpipes out of the throats of the creatures standing around her in a circle and chanting. Or why they were called throats and windpipes or how she knew that they were.

It was all rather confusing to suddenly come into existence.

Assiah, she noted, was dark. Light came only from tiny pinpoints far above her and the raging, flickering bonfire that turned every object she set her new eyes on an interesting orange-red. There was light at her feet as well, a glowing that came from Gehenna. It was a seal, meant to summon her, in the shape of a five-pointed star. One of the lines curved ever so slightly inward. She knew it immediately.

The creatures' chanting continued nonetheless. Humans—she knew—cloaked in hoods and robes, standing around her and the bonfire. She didn't know what they wanted from her. She only knew that they had made a terrible mistake.

"O, wise and great spirit," a particular said, stepping forward from the circle of the others. "Lend us your power—"

"And what do you offer in return?"

Spirit was surprised at the strength of her voice, the way it made the very leaves on the groves of trees around them shudder, the flickering of the bonfire at her speech. The human creature hesitated, surprised as well, it seemed.

"Demon, we offer—"

"I do not deal with insulars."

Perhaps they had been wise enough to discover her name and the spells to summon her. Perhaps they had had the collective power to actually draw her forth for the first time from Gehenna. But they lacked the power to contain her. They lacked the wisdom to see the imperfection in their summoning seal.

And that was enough for Spirit.

The bonfire went out.

The leaves rustled.

The bodies of nine men were abandoned on the northern face of Mount Misen, their windpipes ripped from their throats.

Typically, the first thing Daphne saw when she woke up in the morning was the framed photograph of herself and Rin at Itsukushima Shrine on their wedding day—the one in front of the Otorii gate where the photographer had caught Rin mid-sneeze and Daphne was laughing—but today, instead, she woke up to a big face full of Mephisto Pheles. So she did the only sensible thing.

She punched him square in the mouth.

With an oof, Mephisto fell backwards, laughing and raising a hand to his teeth, which Daphne had cut her knuckles on. Out of instinct, she was on her feet, ready to fight, though there wasn't any need for that. Mephisto was a creep, but that was all.

"The hell is wrong with you?" she asked, shaking out her sore hand and feeling grateful she had decided to sleep in pajamas. "Who gave you a key to our house?"

"Let us not forget that I am King of Time, Miss Lux," Mephisto replied, still chuckling, "and require neither keys nor doorways to be where I please." He hadn't ever stopped calling Daphne "Miss Lux" even though she and Rin had been married for almost two years. Two years that Friday as a matter of fact.

"All right, then," Daphne said and got down from the bed to go into the bathroom and rinse her knuckles. "What are you doing in our house?"

"Do you always sleep poised to wake up and knock someone else unconscious?" Mephisto asked. Daphne watched in the mirror as he felt around his front teeth for a moment checking for loose ones.

"I'll do more than that in about five seconds if you don't explain yourself."

Mephisto looked up grinning and met Daphne's eye in the mirror, about to call her bluff, but she had already reached behind her head and summoned Castor from its seal on her shoulder. Her hand hung steady, waiting to fully draw the blade.

"All right, all right," Mephisto said, patting the air in front of him. "Let's not get too hasty. I have a job for you."

"I'm on leave," Daphne replied. She let Castor slip back into its seal and dried her hand on a towel before coming up to Mephisto. "No teaching, no exorcisms."

She'd taken the week leading up to the anniversary off for some much-needed downtime. Teaching regular students during the day, cram school students in the afternoon, and working as a senior exorcist first class for the Japan Branch of the Knights of the True Cross at night was rightfully considered by most to be too-full a plate for one person. Add being married to a half-demon with the same schedule and you had a recipe for perpetual exhaustion. Unfortunately, the school and the branch had only been able to spare one of them for the entire week. Daphne had drawn the long straw.

"It's more a favor," Mephisto said.

"I don't do favors for you."

The demon king smiled. "Now, Miss Lux—"

Daphne drew Castor. Fully this time. She angled the squared-off end of the blade at Mephisto's throat.

"I. Am. On. Leave."

The corners of his mouth curling, Mephisto titled his head so that the brim of his hat shrouded his eyes in darkness. It was a sinister expression, one Daphne was all too familiar with. She often forgot that Mephisto was not only a demon king, but the second most powerful. There was a reason both the Japan Branch of the Knights of the True Cross and True Cross Academy ran under his direction, and had for so many years. His true nature was so easy to lose under the poofy pants and purple hair.

"You may be on leave, but permission came from me. On both accounts." Slowly, Mephisto folded his hands over the handle of his umbrella. "And permission can be revoked. On both accounts."

Daphne lowered Castor, but she did not sheath the blade.

Mephisto smiled. "I don't think it's asking too much to have you look into a number of disturbances in Hiroshima, since you'll be headed to the prefecture anyway."

"Why not just contact the Hiroshima field office?" Daphne asked. It was true that she was headed south, but that didn't mean she wanted to accept. She and Rin were leaving Thursday afternoon for a long weekend on Miyajima to celebrate their anniversary. Not to do favors for demon kings.

"Because they are an office of degenerates," Mephisto replied, shaking his head. "And something about the nature of the reports reeks of trickery."

"Well, you are an expert on degenerates and trickery," Daphne grinned, putting her blade away. She set her hands on her hips. "We'll look into it."

"Wonderful—"

"But." She held up a stern finger. "Not until Monday. I'm not working off the clock, even as a favor. We can extend our stay in Hiroshima a couple of days if needed. I'll make sure to find substitutes."

Mephisto chuckled darkly. "You drive a hard bargain, Miss Lux."

"You don't play a fair game," she replied. "It's the only way any of us can compete."

"I'll send copies of the field office reports your direction. You and your husband can look over them at your leisure." Swinging his umbrella up to let it rest on his shoulder, Mephisto gave Daphne a wink. "Don't forget."

Daphne simply pursed her lips in a weary expression. "I won't."

"Happy Anniversary to you~!"

With that, Mephisto disappeared, leaving behind a cloud of swirling pink smoke. Daphne fanned it away, wondering if the cloud was some kind of side effect of space-time travel or if Mephisto conjured it on purpose to go with his aesthetic. The odds seemed equal in either direction.

She'd have to see if she could get a couple barrier spells placed over the house to keep him out.

The second Rin walked through the front door, he knew something was up. The energy in the house was different. Bad different. Like the kind of different that immediately sets a guy on-edge. The house was not supposed to feel that way. Daphne was not supposed to be working.

He found her in the second bedroom—the room they used as an office and a dumping ground for all the random junk they owned. She was seated at her desk that faced the door, her eyes locked on the screen, her studious face on, surrounded by the boxes of records they'd never unpacked, a half-dismantled bicycle, and art and pictures they hadn't put up on the walls even after two years among other things. The fact that the room was still a mess like the day they'd moved in had never seemed weird to Rin before.

"I'll trade you, you know," he said, leaning against the door frame.

Daphne didn't even look up. "Hm?"

"If you wanna work, I'll trade you." It was a stupid waste of a vacation otherwise. He should have known Daphne wouldn't know how to take a break. She probably hadn't taken a break her entire life. "I don't want to…"

Smiling, Daphne lifted her eyes from the computer and looked at him. "I'm confirming our inn reservation and booking seats for our train, Rin."

He straightened. "Oh."

"What did you think I was doing?"

"I don't know," he replied, feeling a little sheepish as he came into the room and around the desk to stand behind Daphne. "It just feels like you're, you know, working."

She leaned her head back to give him a kiss, so he obliged. "No," she said.

It was then that he noticed the pink file folders stamped in the corner with the watermark for the Knights of the True Cross. He'd never felt so betrayed in his entire life.

"You dirty liar!"

He grabbed the file, but Daphne snatched it out of his hands before he could even open it. She was laughing, too, which only made him more suspicious. He tried to snatch the file back from her, but she put it behind her back.

"I'm not working," she said. "Mephisto brought this by. Something he wants us to look into on our way home this weekend."

"If that's true, then why won't you let me look at it?"

Daphne brought the file out and offered it to him, but when he moved to take it, she pulled it out of his reach.

"First you have to relax," she said.

Rin rolled his eyes, so Daphne gave him a stern look until he sighed, took a deep breath in, and let it out slowly. "Happy now?" he asked.

Daphne gave him a peck on the lips and put the file in his hands. "Yes."

He wanted to grumble, but he couldn't now, smiling stupidly instead. Everybody had told him that after the first year of marriage, everything went downhill, but here he was with Daphne, going on year two, and while that wasn't a particularly long time, it did count for something, and he was no less in love with her or her with him. It was cheesy, but he might have said he loved her more then than he had the day before, and more that day than the day before that. He suspected their upcoming anniversary was turning him into an even bigger sap.

"Mephisto brought these?" he asked.

Daphne took a seat at her desk again, so Rin pulled his chair over and opened the file to thumb through it.

"They're reports from the Hiroshima field office," she replied. "He said he doesn't trust them and wants us to take a look since we'll be down there this weekend."

"What's not to trust?"

The documents looked normal enough—just the typical filing any exorcist had to fill out following an exorcism. A log of events, detailed observations, notes on the type of demon, how strong it was, how it was exorcised, and a record of any damage caused to public or private property.

Daphne shrugged. "I haven't looked at them."

She finished her tasks on the laptop and shut it, stretching as she spun around in her chair to face Rin. She put her feet up on the seat of his chair on either side of his legs, so he let the file rest against her shins.

"They seem pretty normal," he said.

Daphne shrugged again. "It's probably nothing."

"It's never nothing with Mephisto."

She snorted. "That's true."

Rin kept reading, scanning the documents, though he didn't really know what he was looking for. Errors in filing? Bad grammar? Demons that had manifested that were out of the ordinary? The more he read, the more typical the reports became. In fact, they were almost identical to one another, which was odd, come to think of it. Daphne wriggled her toes underneath his legs and startled him. Rin looked up.

"You ready for dinner?" she asked.

Rin set the files down immediately. "Always."

Chuckling, Daphne got to her feet and headed into the kitchen. Rin rose as well, ready to follow. He couldn't help one more glance at the files, even though it was him who'd scolded Daphne for working when she shouldn't have. Something did feel off about the paperwork, though he couldn't put his finger on what. Then he noticed what was weird.

In the final section, simply labeled DAMAGES, every last report shared the exact same word:

None.