Ignoring the doorbell, I made final checks in the mirror to be sure I could make the best first impression I was capable of. The bottom half of my costume was chosen to evoke shadow, all being flat textures in mono-black. The dress shoes had a light-absorbing matte finish, the slacks were freshly ironed, and the effect was one of near perfect silhouette. In the interest of maintaining a limited color palette, I also wore a black undershirt and a black pocket square, but the suit jacket between them was olive green. The final flourishes were a pair of thin black gloves and a green plastic mask with a horseshoe shape cut out of the otherwise blank half-egg form.

After a minute or so, I finally headed to the front door.

“Took you long enough,” Ranger grumbled.

“You were early,” I pointed out. “It’s ten sharp now.”

Ranger rolled his eyes. “Car.”

“Naturally.”

My car, at the moment, was inaccessible on account of being repossessed during the eight months I spent not making payments on it. My new client wasn’t keen on waiting too long for this meeting, so Ranger was facilitating. He didn’t seem thrilled about it, if the silence throughout the drive was anything to go on. It was only when he parked and took the keys out of the ignition that he deigned to say anything more to me.

“The man you’re about to meet is Davor Kolyich. He’s not local.”

“Huh. Alright.” I pulled on the door handle, and it didn’t open.

“You will refer to him as Davor Kolyich,” Ranger said. “Don’t call him Davor. Do not call him Dave. Do you understand?”

“Davor Kolyich, sure. Got it.”

I raised an eyebrow, not that it was fully visible through the mask, and I held up a palm to urge Ranger to get on with anything else he had to say. When he just sat there, frowning, I unlocked the passenger door and stepped out of the car. Ranger followed, overtaking me to show the way to the meeting place.

Ever since we met a few days ago, Ranger had seemed peculiar to me. Whatever power he had was subtle, which I could appreciate, but people with subtle powers tended to either operate in plain sight or wear the most flamboyant costumes of all of us to compensate for it. I fell somewhere in the middle of that scale, on average, by bouncing between the ends of it. Ranger, though, was on neither end. He made no attempt to blend in with the common masses, but the manner in which he stood out evoked more of a stereotyped bank robber than a supervillain.

Ranger led me to something I would never pick as a meeting place between criminals. The street we’d parked on was one that formed the border of a public park, albeit one that I rarely saw anyone making use of. We passed two men who had suits, sunglasses, and earpieces in plain view, as well as weapons that wouldn’t be as obvious to someone who wasn’t looking for that sort of thing. Either one of them could pull a handgun from their coat, and the redhead on the left had a knife stowed between his trousers and coattails. A suit with coattails was an odd choice for security detail, which was the main reason I noticed what they were intended to hide. Bit of a backfire, that.

In any case, we proceeded into the shade of a large wooden gazebo, where a man reclined in a bright blue camping chair. He raised an arm as thick around as a football in a lazy static wave.

“Hello,” I said. “Davor Kolyich?”

Davor Kolyich nodded.

Everything about my new client had presence. His eyebrows were thick — not large, not bushy, but thick in the way that they became impenetrable, a solid block of dark hair breaking up an expressive pale face. Davor Kolyich was not here to be ignored, and that would be true of him anywhere, because it was a structural property.

I also noticed — not that I was interested, obviously — that he was wearing a Chopard watch. Probably. It looked like a Chopard, anyway. It may or may not have looked like the L.U.C. XPS 1860 Officer, even. If I was the sort of person who would be able to guess a watch make at a glance, I would say that watch was the sort of watch that made pickpockets very happy. “Thirty-thousand bucks on a simple clasp”-type happy. Allegedly. Not that I would know.

“You know what you look like?” Davor Kolyich finally spoke.

“Hm?”

Ranger elbowed me.

I corrected myself. “What’s that, sir?”

Davor Kolyich grinned from sideburn to sideburn. “Once-Ler. Heh! Aheheh!”

…Alright. I was gonna take that fucking watch.

“You are this, eh, Boggart, then?” Davor Kolyich asked, still beaming.

“It’s, uh. It’s a business suit. Goblin green, so-“

“You steal?”

“Not in this outfit,” I finished floundering to justify myself. “But yeah. Yes, Davor Kolyich. Quite well.”

“You tell me what I am working with, okay? I tell you what you are after when I decide you will succeed,” he said.

I fell into a more relaxed posture, glad to move on to a topic I could at least brag about. “Right. Boggart, that’s me. I can twist shadow into rodents, and I can get into anything they can get into. Teleport, that is. I can-“

“Rodent?” Davor Kolyich interrupted. “Rat?”

“I can do rats, yeah. Any rodents. Mice, those are good infiltrators. I’ve got-“

“Bunny?”

“Um. Pardon?”

“Can you make a bunny?”

I glanced at Ranger. He glared back and jerked his head at Davor Kolyich.

“Um. No. Those are actually lagomorphs, so. Not rodents,” I explained.

Davor Kolyich frowned, then nodded. “Hm.”

“I… I can create and control these, uh, shadow rodents. Convincing illusions, not like a moving shadow or anything. And I can teleport through the illusion that I’m controlling. That’s Boggart, as a sales pitch. Plus, I guess, the history. Tricks of the trade, and all that.”

“How long have you been a thief?” Davor Kolyich asked.

“Not sure,” I shrugged. “I was picking candy off checklanes maybe half the times my parents brought me shopping, and them yelling at me only ever really taught me that getting caught was the thing to avoid.”

“Ranger says you have more to talk about.”

Does he, now? I threw another look at the silent escort who’d arranged this meeting.

“As a thief, I personally can’t just pawn off most goods and call it a day if I want to stay out of jail, so I’ve sort of-“

“You were in jail, though, no?” Davor Kolyich smirked.

I sighed. “Circumstances weren’t ideal leading up to that.”

“You do not need to make context for things you explain,” he said, moving his hand in the classic get on with it circle. “What can you do?”

“Right. Fine. Um, I maintain a series of front businesses on Bellow Street. That’s where Ranger found me, it’s where I operate. These are all traditional businesses from the outside, so customers and tax people don’t take issue with what’s going on. The owners are all also running different… non-traditional businesses, as part of their leasing agreements. Fencing goods, acquiring supplies, gathering information, you name it. Bellow Street is paved with gold, so to speak. It’s all been kept running smoothly in my absence.”

“Good to hear,” Davor Kolyich said. He tilted his head, his eyes darting from me to Ranger.

“One more thing,” Ranger said.

Davor Kolyich turned back to me.

“The hell are you on about?” I hissed.

“In this meeting, you tell Davor Kolyich every reason he has for hiring you,” Ranger murmured. “Get on with it.”

I grit my teeth and swallowed.

“I do have one other notable, uh,” I started.

No need for context.

“I have an ace up my sleeve, I guess. There’s a contact in the police department. Things can go my way during investigations, which means they can go your way during investigations.”

“And?” Ranger prodded.

“She’ll fucking kill me,” I countered.

“That a fact?”

“If I don’t get the job, maybe.”

Davor Kolyich sighed. “Is there more, or not?”

I pressed my hand against the upper half of my mask. The arc of plastic dug into my forehead.

“I have an acquaintance. This person possesses an ability. That ability manipulates perceptions of objects. Reverse psychometry, basically. If this person leaves a thing in a place, that’s where that thing goes. Nobody questions it without a damn good reason, and they’ll go a long way to justify their own perception.”

“What is this acquaintance called?” Davor Kolyich asked.

“Mister Spot,” I said.

“And you are Boggart? Is that your name?”

I narrowed my eyes, sensing a trap.

“You’re familiar with a DBA, right?”

“Don’t Be Asshole,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh, that’s something else. I meant Doing Business As. Boggart is, effectively, a trade name.”

Davor Kolyich nodded. “For?”

Not today, no. But that watch was mine.

“Lucas Maye,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Davor Kolyich.”

Davor Kolyich smiled. “Pishon Industries. You are taking a hard drive. Ranger will answer questions. Good luck.”

“What?”

Ranger grabbed my wrist and turned to walk away. I’d poured out almost every little detail of my operations to this guy, stuff that could really sink me, and the job description was two fucking sentences?

More importantly, that name rang a bell. Hell of one, too. Alarm bell, arguably. Pishon Industries was a hard mark, and to try and fail against them was borderline suicidal.

Mark my words, I was going to get that damn watch.

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