Chapter Six - Getting in the Business

We had no idea what had actually triggered the level up, but I had my suspicions. Unfortunately, they were just that, suspicions. I didn't have anything tangible to work on, and I felt like the sensible thing to do at that moment was head on back to the bar.

We did pick up some food for the trip, which gave me some processed mystery meat hot dog to munch on as I thought. Had the Protagonist stat increased because Sharp had gone out and done something?

She said that the last time it had levelled was the first morning she woke up on the street, which really didn't help much.

Was it avoiding a threat? Or doing something like a protagonist in a story would? What did that even mean?

For that matter, I still wasn't sure what stats did overall. Did my level one in Cat make me a better cat, or did it just exemplify that I'd acted in a cat-like way?

Well, whatever. It wasn't something I could do more than ponder for now, and eating a full half of a hot dog (which was about a quarter of my entire mass) left me unbelievably sleepy.

I woke up to Sharp placing me on her pillow and smoothing out my fur. "Take a nap," she said. "My shift starts in an hour, and I wanna be early."

I nodded, then quickly fell back asleep.

I'd forgotten what it was like to sleep well. At some point I hit thirty, and I could vividly recall sleeping slightly crooked one night and enduring a pulled muscle from it for a week. Hitting forty was worse in every way that was predictable.

When I awoke next, it was probably hours later, because I wasn't tired anymore, though what woke me up was Sharp shaking me. "Hey, hey, Tsarina Kittina, wake up, please."

I blinked some gunk out of my eyes, then looked around. The door was closed, the room secured. Sharp's face was a painting of helpless distress at the moment, as though she was on the verge of panic. "What is it?" I asked as I stood.

"The girls are back!" she hissed.

"Girls?" I asked. Then my mind slid back to what had happened that afternoon. "You mean those we met at the pawn shop?"

"Yeah, the gremlin and the pretty one," she said. "They're here."

"Did they ask for you? Are they searching now?"

"What? No, they have a booth on the second floor, where all the mercenary-sorts gather. My shift is about to end in like, an hour or so? I told Paris I needed to use the washroom. What do I do?"

I considered it for a moment. A coincidence? Actually... that was possible. It would be a wild one, however. Boston Two was a massive city. Running into the same people twice in one day wasn't a statistical impossibility, but it stretched plausibility.

Then again, I'd had similar coincidences throughout my life. Once I was driving to a city to take out a target, and I happened to stop by a roadside fast food place only to find them there, in the midst of fleeing the city and ready to change their identity. The kind of target that would have been an absolute nightmare to track if they had failed to run into me by sheer accident.

That was a situation that was far less plausible, and yet it had happened. What of this one?

"Let's assume it's nothing," I sent Sharp. "But, just in case... I'm going to check in on them."

"You will?"

"Yes. Try to avoid being in the same end of the bar as they are. Act normally. Don't look at them if you can avoid it. You're dressed differently. Stand tall... that's right. Now, how was your hair this afternoon? Right, now tie it into a ponytail. Maybe pick up one of the bar's branded hats and slip it on, it'll change the profile of your face."

It really didn't take much to pass as someone else if the person you were dealing with had only gotten a fleeting glance.

Most of the time, people couldn't remember anyone they encountered unless the encounter went on for long enough.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked.

"I'll be fine. Just... leave the door open a crack?"

She bobbed her head in a nod, stood, smacked her shirt clean of crumbs and adjusted her socks, then she slipped out of the room. I paused at the edge of the bed, then hopped down. It wasn't a long fall, but it felt eternal.

I crashed into the ground, stumbled, but managed to stick the landing. Four legs was quite the advantage, and these cat legs had a lot of spring to them.

I padded out of the room, still trying to come to grips with walking. Cats were supposed to be gracious and stealthy, but I felt like I had four left paws. Big left paws, as if I still had a lot of growing to do.

Which begged the question... what sort of cat was I?

There was no way to tell so easily, and we weren't going to spend money on a pet DNA test.

Sharp paused by the door into the main area of the Bloody Bat, music thumped out of there and into the corridor we were in and lights strobed across the floor. I shot by her legs and ran left, behind the barman and into the shadows of the counter.

She'd mentioned that the girls were on the second floor, but not where... that was a little annoying, but whatever. I could deal with it.

I peaked around the corner of the bar and spied across the room. It wasn't well lit except for a few areas, notably around the bar itself and the second bar in the centre of the floor. The dance area and the booths on the sides were dimly lit and the dancefloor only had strobing flashes to illuminate it.

I shot over to one of the stairs, timing it so that I was behind a trio of men moving up the stairs. I kept to the side, up near the railing and in the men's shadows. Each step was a small hop, and by the time I reached the top I was already tired.

No matter. I was able to slip to the side of the room near the booths. I darted under an unoccupied table and stared out across the floor, looking for my prey. That was, my targets. It was a little weird to think of them as prey.

I could dwell on that when I wasn't actively sneaking, though.

Most of the time, I liked being inconspicuous. Just another person in the crowd. Being a cat would allow that in some places, but not in a bar.

The girls weren't in the section across from where I was, which was great, I wouldn't have to circle around.

I slipped from one booth to the next. The booth seats didn't actually reach all the way to the floor. There was a six-inch or so slot below them that hadn't been cleaned in ages. Perfect for me to slip into though.

It took a few tries, but I found the right booth. Two pairs of legs, one in black pumps, the other in what looked like combat boots with a modified heel to make them much taller. The mage and the gremlin.

I stationed myself as far from the mage as I could be. There was no telling what kind of surveillance magic she might have that could trigger if I came close, or if I was a threat. There were ways around both, but that required knowledge and preparation time.

"You sure you don't want anything?" the mage asked.

"Yeah, I'm watching my calories. Did you know there's like, a million calories in beer? It's bullshit," the shorter girl said. She stomped her foot, and I noticed when her pants rode up that she had a knife tucked into one of her lifted boots.

"Your loss. Just don't steal my fries."

"Bitch, I might."

The mage laughed. "I think I'll have the double rack of ribs," she said.

"You suck."

The mage's feet shifted. "I need it, for casting. You know it might come up."

The Gremlin moved to press the tips of her toes down. She was just short enough that it seemed like she couldn't sit in the booth normally. "Still not fair. Do you really think you'll have to cast? This is neutral ground."

"Neutral isn't safe. I'll set up a privacy ward when they... they're here."

I glanced to the side in time to see two more pairs of feet coming up to the table. One in sneakers, the other in boots covered in little metal spikes. Spikey boots slid into the booth across from the girls. "Hey ladies," he said. "Good to see that you're here already."

"Don't be flirty," the gremlin said. "We're here to talk, that's all."

"Hey hey, mamacita, no need to be rough with me. Come, I'll pay for your lunch, yeah?"

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Ah, so this was one of those kinds of meetings. Interesting.

***

The two men were gangsters. I couldn't quite tell which gang, but I had some suspicions. All of the spikes on the one guy's pants and boots suggested that he might be a Breaker, from Allston. The other guy I wasn't so sure. He was wearing some pretty utilitarian pants. Cargos with big pockets slipped into a pair of plain running shoes. That didn't tell me much.

"Stop with the flirtin' bub," the gremlin said. "Though if you'll pay for our meals, I won't say no."

"This is a business meeting," the mage said. "Let's keep some airs of professionalism. Mister Brown Note."

"DJ Brown Note," the spikey booted guy said. "And don't ya forget it."

"I wouldn't dare," the mage said. "And this is Mister Robinson, from Grower Lab Forty-Two?"

"That's correct," Mister Robinson said. "The two of you have a good reputation as up and comers in the area, we were hoping to contract you for a small job."

"Of course," the mage said. "One moment. I hope you don't mind if I cast something, for privacy?"

The two men tensed, and I couldn't blame them. Magic wasn't like cybernetics or tech. It was esoteric and bizarre and oftentimes dangerous. Even people that studied it for a lifetime couldn't predict all it could do.

There was a strange feeling that passed over me, as if I could faintly hear a TV turned to a dead channel some ways away, but then it faded into the background. "We should be secure," the mage said. "But let's not be uncautious beyond that."

"Right," DJ Brown Note said. "So, mamacitas, here's the sitch, we just bought a heap of goods from our friends down south but we can't move them across Brookline, going around is a pain in the ass, and getting our boys to do the deliveries is a risk."

"How many deliveries, can we know what's in the packages, and what's the total mass of each?" the gremlin asked. She was surprisingly business-minded when she wasn't being a gremlin.

The DJ shifted in his seat. "Twenty-Nine deliveries. About a quarter of them are higher risk. We'll pay you a flat eighty per delivery."

"That's way too low," the gremlin said.

"It's an easy job, my cute little lady," he said.

I winced as her foot shot out to kick him.

She was too short and only met air. Then she went on as if she hadn't tried to break his kneecap. "I don't want to drive all over the city for a few bucks an hour. I'll burn more than that in gas. If I wanted a driving gig, I'd get one off an app and not risk getting shot up nearly as much."

"That's a valid concern," Mister Robinson said. "We're willing to increase the price to one hundred dollars per delivery."

Or two thousand nine hundred for the full job. Not a great pay, but if it was a quick and easy job, then it was maybe worth it.

"What about Jenny's other questions?" the mage asked. Ah, so the gremlin was Jenny, huh? Good to know.

"The packages are small." I saw the DJ's shoulders moving, so I imagined he was miming their size above the table. "Don't weight more than half a pound each. As for what's in 'em, it's the good zaza. If you're wanting a sample, lemme know, but it ain't nothing worth stealing for the likes of you."

That was fair. Each package was worth... well, I didn't know how much half a pound of marihuana was worth, but it likely wasn't enough to risk one's life for. I'd never been in that kind of business, but my work was... legally adjacent at times. I'd guess a half pound to be worth at most a thousand dollars. So they were moving nearly thirty thousand worth of drugs across the city. Altogether, enough to tempt someone, but definitely not enough to earn the ire of two of the city's gangs, and maybe a third of their clients were affiliated.

"Understood. Obviously not something we want the BPD to know about, but that's nothing new. I can cast something to make the packages unnoteworthy. And we can handle your high-risk deliveries. I'll want one fifty for each of those."

"You're cutting into our margins," the DJ said.

"Then find someone else."

"Tsk tsk. One twenty, love."

The girl moved, and I had the impression they were looking at each other. "One twenty," the mage agreed. "And you don't forget to pay for our lunch."

"Hah! You got a deal, sweet thing!"

There was some handshaking, then the DJ pulled out his wallet for a moment before returning it to his pocket. I think it was to pay for the meal, not the entire contract. The men stood, then headed out.

"Sharp. I don't know if you can hear me, but it seems like the deal that went down here is over."

No telepathic reply, but I wasn't expecting one either.

"Ah, shit, Aly," Jenny said. "A couple thou for like, two days of running around?"

"It's an easy enough job," Aly said. "Plus it gets us in with both the Breakers and the Growers. They're both worth having contacts with."

"I know, but it's boring work. And they want that stuff delivered fast, right?"

"Yes? And?"

"Look, just got the text with the addresses. This is all over South Boston and Central. I don't think this is a two day thing, Aly."

The mage hummed. "I see. The high risk ones can be done first. I'll take care of those."

"And I can do all the rest? On my own? Half of these will have to be delivered on foot, and I don't know South Boston well."

"Then we hire a local, it's not a big deal."

The gremlin snorted. "Can you trust a local? It's a dumb move."

I blinked. Well, that was an idea. "Sharp, if you can hear me, I need you to come over to their table, bow slightly, and then say 'I'll take the job.' Don't ask too many questions, I'll fill you in later."

Was this a stupid move? Maybe. But I was gambling on Sharp's Protagonist powers coming in clutch, and this kind of opportunity could be a big game changer.

The girls talked for a while, then paused as someone came closer. It was Sharp, I recognized her terrible shoes. She set down a trey on the table, then stepped back and bowed. "I-I would like to take the job, please."

"What?" the gremlin asked.

"Just repeat after me. 'I know South Boston well, and I can get around there easily. I'll take the job. Twenty dollars per delivery.'"

"Uh... I know South Boston wall, and I can get around there easily, I guess. I'll take the job for twenty dollars a delivery."

The gremlin's hand shot under the table and she gripped a gun. "How'd you hear us?"

"My ward is still up," the mage said.

"Don't panic. If you can't meet their eyes, then focus on the table. Tell them that you just want to help for a small price."

"I, uh, just want to help? It's a small price? I'm trustworthy, I swear!""

I hadn't asked for that addition, but it wasn't a bad move. Sharp was, for a lack of a better term, pretty sharp.

"You're not actually considering this, are you, Aly?" the gremlin asked. "Wait... you're that sus girl from the pawn shop! With the weird-ass cat!"

I felt my hackles rise. I wasn't weird!

"Are you spying on us?"

"She works here," Aly said. "She passed another waitress on the way and they didn't see her as suspicious. Which makes this all the more suspicious."

"I'm not suspicious, I really do work here. But I could use a bit more money."

"And how did you see through my ward?" the mage asked.

"Your what?"

I held back an inappropriate snicker. That would piss off any mage, and Sharp's innocence only made it worse. "Tell her that she can hire you, or find someone else for the job. It's up to them."

"You can hire me, or find someone else. It's up to you."

"... Okay," Aly said.

"Seriously?" Jenny asked. "We're trusting this weirdo?"

"To some degree," Aly said. "If you can take ten of our lower risk deliveries, then we'll pay you two hundred dollars. After they're delivered and we get our cut. If you fail, I'll personally hunt you down and sacrifice you to the Veilwing Sovereign She Who Whispers in the Dark."

"Uh, o-okay?" Sharp said. And from the tone in her voice, I could tell that she really wanted some answers.

"Good. We'll deliver the goods here, tomorrow morning," Aly said. "Along with a list of addresses. Don't fail us. Or do. My mistress always enjoys a good sacrifice."

***