And the Stalking was Hung Ch. 02

I didn't trust my client any farther than I could throw her, all one hundred and ten pounds of her soaking wet, but I was willing to entertain the idea of accepting her case, at least for now. None of her answers to my questions were detectable as fibs, but her answers were a tad generic and sounded rather well rehearsed. I made a mental note to triple my usual fees and demand immediate up-front payment.

Supposedly, she and her husband were due to be divorced, effective December 26th, Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. At that point, allegedly, the settlement would be final and he would no longer have any motivation to seek her death. Nonsense, there isn't an ex alive that wouldn't want their former partner impaled upon a sharp pole… if they thought that they could get away with it.

Her story just didn't quite add up, but I couldn't take the risk. Anything potentially involving anything to do with Shadow visitors was just bad news. The alternative was to contact BMA and promptly dump the matter on them, but then I'd look really stupid if the matter ended up being trivial. Besides, they're not my favorite people in the world, nor am I one of theirs.

For now it was better to at least try and evaluate the situation myself. Besides, I was a big boy now and should be able handle anything up to a major visitor without having to run for help.

She accepted my contract offer of $1500 per day, two day minimum; plus $300 per day for normal expenses and per diem. Significant itemized expenses and materials extra. First two days payable up front, now – before going to her home. Cash, preferably Republic of Texas tender. Payment in gold was ok too, and silver would be even better still.

This was an outrageous quote; I would have laughed in the face of anyone trying to bill me even half of that.

No problem. Gloria had it already on hand, with considerably more left over, and it was real, not ensorcelled in any way that I could detect. Payment complete, we then held hands and did a short Contract Oath. I promised to do my best for my client and my client pledged in return not to lie to me (too much), pay my just fees, and try to be a help rather than a hindrance in my investigation.

No problems. The Oath wouldn't prevent a client from turning rogue on me or trying to stab me in the back, but if she broke the Oath I'd gain a few subtle, but useful additional protections as a result. Still it made me wonder if I hadn't raised my rates quite high enough. Still two days of work would well cover all of my normal monthly expenses, and if the job was simple, I'd be home on my own sofa for Christmas.

If the job turned out to be complicated, well at least I'll be well paid.

******

Gloria's house was up in the wine sipping/quiche eating part of Austin, up in the northwest part of town off of Research Blvd. That's generally accounted to be any part of Austin north of the Colorado River. The southern part of the city, bisected by the Colorado River is generally accounted to be the "bubba" section of town. Bubba's are generally considered to be good for nothing, beer swilling, BBQ eating, inbred daughter fuckers that can be safely relied upon to have at least one car up on bricks in their front lawn.

A slanderous exaggeration! I enjoy the quieter life down here in Bubba-ville and I've never seen more than half a dozen of my neighbors ever plant their broken cars up on the front lawn… most more considerately, do this in their back yards.

Her house was just nothing special and looked like all the others around it. The neighborhood certainly didn't scream out 'money'. In fact a majority of the neighborhood seemed to be rental properties, such as the two houses on each side next door that were both currently vacant with for lease signs out in front.

Good. If I needed to blow something up, at least the collateral damage was likely to be very slight. I almost never get to go full John Wayne and really blow some shit up. Besides, that's the fastest way to get some very unfriendly attention from the kind and considerate folks at the BMA. They're pretty humor impaired about that sort of thing. Still, one can hope.

You join the Marines to kill people and blow shit up, and you become an Adept to (mostly) help people and hopefully get to blow even more shit up someday when something or someone nasty really, really deserves it.

First, I did a walk-around of the entire house and it didn't take long. It was a small two story structure of fairly modern construction that didn't look like it held a whole lot of square footage inside. There was a single small Earth Ley Line, sort of nearby but a good ways underground, that I could probably tap into in an emergency, but no other significant magic batteries or sources. No pets, no deck chairs, no grill, no car up on blocks… nothing. The snow covered yards were featureless and devoid of any personal characteristics of the owner. No sort of psychic marker or tag saying "mine" to the rest of world.

An old school friend of mine and very minor Adept named Gregor could take a glance at any house and give you a nearly complete history of everything that had ever happened there. A full psychic playback of the history of that home and its' occupants. He didn't have any other notable talents and got his governmental release quite early, but I've heard he's made a small fortune as a private real estate inspector, but even he'd probably find this particular house to be pretty much a big fat boring zero.

The tour of the inside wasn't much more fruitful. The furniture all appeared to be rented or else had come with the house. There were lots of metaphysical markers from previous owners, but all of them seemed old, and few showed little if any imprints from Gloria, my client who allegedly lived here. Obviously she didn't spend much time sitting on the sofa watching the TV. No… now that I looked closer there wasn't even a TV to be found. The kitchen was nearly as bare and also signal free. Gloria apparently ate out most of the time and didn't cook, as most of the food in the house was of the simple nuke and eat variety.

Once I went upstairs I began to find better traces of my client… and the unmistakable stench of Shadow Visitors. No, you can't actually smell their trace with your nose, just think of them as leaving a nasty oily stain to your magical senses wherever they've been. In her bedroom, where Gloria apparently spent the overwhelming majority of her time, the traces were everywhere. Not particularly fresh, or else these guests were of extremely limited power. Candles were to be seen everywhere, which is not uncommon among the folks with trivial or minor magical ability... or normal women that enjoy long tub baths.

Zak's candle rule #1, the more candles you find in a client's private inter-sanctum, usually the bigger the poser they are. Sure, candle light makes magic seem like more fun, but most real practitioners use fire sticks if they actually need light or a flame for their magic casting. There is nothing innately magical about candlewax… and it's a pain to remove from your oriental carpets and hard wood floors.

Traces of magic were nearly everywhere. Some of it could have been Shadow contamination, but not nearly all of it. I could also smell chalk, the tool of choice for drawing protection or summoning circles. No bets that underneath the large (and fairly new) rug on the bedroom floor I'd find either one or both kinds. Likewise, I was certain that if I turned on her computer I'd find loads of bookmarks to dodgy practitioner wanna-be websites. No bets.

I had thoughts of now asking some very precise and pointedly direct questions when the psychic odor of the room suddenly became increasingly foul and the room began to fall into murky Shadow. It wasn't especially bright outdoors, as the current snowstorm was doing a fabulous job of blocking the sunlight. Still, I opened up the bedside curtains as much as I could. The weak light wouldn't hurt any lurking Shadow creatures, but they might dislike it enough to avoid it.

This was indeed odd in several ways; no practitioner with an ounce of sense summons Shadow creatures in the middle of the day. They don't like sunlight for obvious reasons and they are at less than full power. Conversely they're a bit easier to control during the daytime and perhaps easier for a very weak magician to handle once summoned. Nighttime is when they are at their peak of strength and self-will.

The whispy forms began to appear more solidly and with more feature definition. There was no mistake, someone had summoned a pair of Shadow Wraiths, a fairly moderately powered creature that would have definitely taken some skill and power to summon, let alone control. Mostly definitely not weak Adept level magic, let alone do-able by a borderline Sensitive, in theory.

Nominally, Wraiths are a variety of air elemental without a firm physical form, and although their touch is bone chilling and quite baneful to human flesh, they're not an immediate dire threat to a trained and prepared Adept. They're still Minor League level talent, albeit a good bit further along upwards in power pecking order.

Silver or cold iron, usually very efficacious against most material visitors, would be only a vague annoyance here. This eliminated a big chunk of my normal repertoire of self-defense tricks, but by no means all. From out of one of my suit vest pockets I pulled out a small medical ionizer. To all appearances, it looks just like the sort of bronchial inhaler that allergy and asthma sufferers carry around with them all the time in case of a respiratory attack. Mine carries something a bit more potent than decongestants, namely a reservoir of quicksilver capped with an ionized sprayer. Not as potent as silver perhaps, but both metals have very similar chemical characteristics and is effective against nearly all Visitors.

Since my attackers were not of solid substance, the ultra-fine mist of quicksilver should have nearly the same banishment effect. Unless I was very unlucky, they wouldn't enjoy this even a little bit. And they didn't.

I began pronouncing the Command of Banishment, and the Wraith on my left didn't even bother to wait around for the second verse and Departed post-haste. The second one on my right just got a glancing effect from the mist and decided that Gloria would make a much more promising target than I was.

Gloria was making herself quite useless by screaming at the top of her lungs.

A second puff of ionized quicksilver nailed the bugger and after a repeat of the Command of Banishment it decided that it had had enough fun for this visit and Departed also. I sent Gloria downstairs to make some tea or find herself something stronger to drink, while I opened up the bedroom windows to air the room out a bit. Inhaling Quicksilver isn't particularly healthy for mortals either.

I remained with Gloria in her house for the remainder of the evening and all of that night. Yes, she confirmed it was a recent rental, but I was wondering what else she hadn't told me. I slept on the sofa downstairs as there was no bed in the smaller upstairs second bedroom.

Gloria hinted strongly that I could share her bed, but sleeping with clients is never a good idea… especially if your gut instinct is telling you not to trust her. I had taken her money and sworn a Contract Oath to protect her, but I was becoming a bit more certain about the true source of the threats against her.

Questioning her further, I received a few more vague unsatisfactory answers to several pointed questions.

Yes, she admitted that she had been dabbling with Protection Circles (instructions found on the InterWeb naturally), but had been unable to make them properly work… undoubtedly due to her extremely limited talent as a Sensitive. My query asking her if she had any additional artificial Arc-Tech 'aides' to boost her latent power received a vague and quite meaningless response, after which she tried to change the subject as quickly as possible.

Neither of us got much sleep. I thought I detected a hint of Shadow magic a few times, but my checks upstairs revealed nothing amiss. Gloria spent a lot of time in her bathroom, nerves I suppose, and I could sometimes hear her muttering even downstairs.

Yeah, I really was that naive… once.