PART 2<br/>One month has passed. December has settled in, icy across the countryside and icy in hearts of people. Isolde had returned to the clinic in the ghetto.  To her dismay and sorrow, more and more of those who wore the gaudy yellow star disappeared. Now she worked double shifts to make up for the lack of doctors and nurses. Disease and malnutrition were ever present visitors to the poverty stricken quarters where she labored.<br/><br/>Daily, open bed trucks with crimson swastikas rumbled through the streets, stopping only long enough to press men and boys into service maintaining roads. Some trudged back through the grey snow, but more and more did not return. Isolde heard that some met with accidents and were rolled into the snow with no care for their bodies or souls. Others dropped in their tracks from starvation. She treated the fortunate few who returned, binding wounds or dosing them with vitamins.<br/><br/>Isolde tried not to think of Erlind. She tried not to think of Darcy. She couldn’t help but think of the white lighter who had freed her from the dungeon. With a sigh, she straightened and went to care for the next one. She knew what it was to be possessed by a demon and she liked to have a connection. Isolde smiled into the face of the waif who had come to her with a fever. While she took temperature and looked into the child’s mouth, Isolde felt, a nothingness.<br/><br/>Nothingness meant that Erlind had severed ties with her or something bad had happened to him. Isolde hoped not. How else could these wrongs be righted? He had not come to see her since her return and following up on a deal was not the way of a demon. They were more relentless than tax collectors.<br/><br/>She thought of her promise to kill Hitler and she frowned at the thought of her cousin, the Ice Queen. A woman in advanced stages of pregnancy sat in the examination chair. Isolde measured her stomach and listened to the rattle of asthma in her chest. Staring into the face of such misery broken the witch’s heart and sent her blood into a slow boil.<br/><br/>What to do? She cursed under her breath. So many loose ends and so many questions left unanswered, she thought. She wished Adina would come out of hiding and talk to her. She was there that night at the ball. Isolde closed her eyes and wished she had been able to go to the ball wearing that pink dress with the ermine trim. An old man shuffled in with slash marks across his face. His eye was swollen shut.<br/><br/>“What happened here?” she asked quietly, setting about gently cleansing it.<br/><br/>The old man stared into space, unwilling to answer or perhaps unable to answer. His tongue had been crudely removed