After signing the contract Travis had presented them, Albert and Graham were able to leave the pub with ease. It might have had something to do with half of the rest of the patrons moving on to play their own games of five finger filet, but they were grateful for the discrete exit all the same. The only person that seemed to be paying attention was Travis. The contractor made Albert nervous; he wasn’t predictable or forthcoming about anything. He had seemed sincere at times, but it only made Albert feel more and more uncomfortable around him. Everything felt intentional, and so the things that also felt natural stood out all the more.
It wasn’t until they had left the block that housed McClellan’s pub that either Graham or Albert said anything. They’d been given directions to the location of the other contractor, a small psychic business called Madame Offry’s Psychic Services, and they were headed in that direction—at least, according to Graham—but they weren’t comfortable saying anything until they felt confident they were out of the area of the McClellan’s direct influence. And even then, they weren’t sure things were safe. But they had to speak up at some point, and Graham did just that.
“Your luck is terrifying, kid.”
“What do you mean? Was I in over my head that badly?” Albert wasn’t sure what to make of the implication.
“No.” Graham shook his head as he walked, his voice low as he was careful to try and avoid any unwanted ears. “I mean that you got lucky, and you just barely scraped by. A little less luck and you’d be dead. And I’d… I’d be split to ribbons, stuffed in a box with concrete, and sent to the bottom of the ocean.”
The detailed description of the horror Graham described as his worst case scenario was both mortifying and informative. Albert had no doubt that such a punishment would be possible and maybe even likely, but it also meant that that was around the effort that someone would have to expend to truly deal with Graham. It might have even been a necessary effort for all collectors if they were as durable as Albert had seen thus far.
“I’m sure it wasn’t that clo—”
“No. You don’t understand kid.” Graham interrupted, louder now. “I know them. They got me started in all this mess. I mean, technically I got them started in it first. But I wouldn’t have been the first man they sent to a watery grave with stones in his boots. And you wouldn’t have been the first kid they fed to the dogs either.”
“What do you…” Albert stopped on the sidewalk and put his hand to his face to cover up the confusion he couldn’t hide. “What do you mean that you got them started in this?”
The rest of it, the murder, Albert could believe. It made him incredibly nauseous to think about, and he was actively trying not to think about it at all. But the part about Graham being the reason that two contractors were doing what they were was confusing. If he had gotten them where they were, then surely he wouldn’t have been in a position where they had so much more power over him. And yet, he was a collector, an underling—albeit an incredibly durable one—while they were contracting and siphoning the power of people souls to fuel their heart’s desires.
“You don’t know how collector’s get their jobs, do you.” Graham turned back to Albert as he spoke. “It’s not really a pleasant situation.”
“Are you allowed to tell me?”
“I could probably figure out a way to tell you, but its a pretty universal command for collectors to never reveal the nature of that relationship to the uninitiated.”
“So how does it happen?”
“Not now.” Graham shook his head and Albert watched as his neatly arrayed waves of hair became more chaotic in the motion. “It would take too long and I want to get this done as soon as possible so I can drag you back to the office and stop having to worry about you.”
“Then, tell me later.” Albert demanded, though his demand was voiced quietly and with hesitation. It felt strange to demand something so bluntly from someone who was so much his senior. And yet, the power dynamic seemed to fit. Graham was older, wiser, and probably a great deal stronger, but Albert was in control of the work. That was the sense he’d gotten at least. As the arbitrator of the pair, he was just barely a run above a collector.
“Easy, kid. Don’t get too big in your britches.” Graham grunted as he turned back to walk the way they had been headed before. He didn’t seem to care if Albert followed.
And Albert did follow, but he didn’t drop the topic. He merely added the magic words. “Please?”
“Hell, kid. You gotta stop saying please and thank you when you’re on the job. You make demands and expect them to get done, or you get a knife in the back or a bullet in the gut. Might happen anyway. And I never said I wouldn’t.”
“Right, right.” Albert muttered. “Sorry.”
“And stop saying sorry.” Graham growled. “I’m not going to keep correcting you if you keep acting your age. You need to kick it up in the maturity department fast, kid. I’m not going to play the role of your old man, either. I’m just telling you what you need to know to survive, and I’m only going to tell you once. That’s my burden of care here. If you decide not to listen, then I’m not at fault and you can die with my conscience clear.”
“Alright. Chill.” Albert growled. “I don’t need you to act like my dad. I’m not a child.”
Graham sighed at the retort before dismissing the whole line of conversation. “I wish you were right, kid. Things’d be less tragic that way.”
Albert didn’t know how to respond to that. And he didn’t want to linger on it either. He knew he’d gotten himself into something he really didn’t want to be a part of, but he didn’t have a choice. The tragedy was that Death was after him no matter what—that he was doomed for just existing.
That thought lingered in Albert’s mind for the remainder of their walk. It was so all consuming that Albert didn’t fully realize when they’d come to a stop. He didn’t even process what Graham was saying when he started talking again. He just slowly zoned back into the world around him.
“—it doesn’t look too secure, but it’s definitely a contracting den.”
“What?” Albert asked as the world came back into focus around him.
“The psychic shop, it’s a contracting den.” Graham repeated. “Same signature giveaways as the McClellan’s pub.”
Albert eyed the store across the street from him, taking it in for the first time.
Madame Offry’s shop was a standard brick building conjoined at the sides to the other older buildings on the strip. It was, however, the only store with a scattering of gray bricks among the red ones that otherwise dominated the construction on that side of the street. Unlike the pub, however, there was an address painted on the front of the building that matched the numbering of those around it. From the street, that was about all that Albert could see. The large shop window in the front revealed a display of ephemera that one would expect from a store that professed to help with spiritual ailments—crystals, potions, and occult tools of varying appearance—but the interior of the store beyond the display was obscured with black curtains. The front door, while mostly glass, was also obscured by similar curtains that prevented either Graham or Albert from seeing inside.
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“I feel like it’s been here longer than the pub.” Albert muttered.
“The address makes me think the same thing.” Graham mumbled in agreement as he craned his head to get a different perspective. “But I think it may actually be about as dangerous.”
“What makes you say that? Didn’t the McClellans say that the contractor is just helping the living communicate with the dead?”
“They also said they helped people look the way they wanted.” Graham snorted. “Which about as much of a bald faced lie as you can get. They’re the contracting equivalent of a dealer at a gym. They basically sell soul steroids.”
“They might have been telling the truth about this contractor though.” Albert carried on like Graham hadn’t actually basically proven his point.
“There’s no such thing as an altruistic contractor. They all serve their own interests, and they all take advantage of the people they claim to help.”
That much had already been pretty obvious, and Albert wasn’t about to argue. He only had a small sample size to base his reasoning on, but it was a very consistent result. Everyone in this hidden world of contracts and souls seemed to act nearly identically to their counterparts.
Albert let out a brief sigh before giving his final lament. “It’s just that this place looks so normal. And I want it to be normal. I want to hope that it’s a level headed and reasonable contractor that we can just talk to and leave.”
“Kid, the only hope you need to worry about is your boss. And I’m pretty sure she doesn’t keep you around for your optimism.”
The comment made Albert narrow his eyes at the collector. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying, I’ve been around her long enough to know the boss has a type.”
“Death’s the reason I’m in this mess. Not Hope.”
“Uh huh. And you didn’t see Hope at all before her daddy handed you your nice cushy arbitration job?”
The insinuation made Albert pause. She had talked to her father about him, Death had let slip as much. And she’d given him a glowing review, or so Death had said. Was it really possible that he was still alive because Hope had put a good word in for him?
“I’ll take that silence as a confirmation that nepotism is real.”
“But I’m not—” Albert protested but Graham gave him a light tap on the cheek to shut him up.
“Don’t think about it too hard kid. It’s all nepotism when it comes to family members pulling strings.”
There was a moment of awkward silence as Albert trawled his memories for any other indication that Hope had interceded on his behalf. All the while Graham seemed intent on looking at the storefront from as many angles as possible. By the time that Albert had regained confidence that he’d managed to do just fine without Hope’s influence, Graham began to walk down the street towards the nearest crosswalk. But when Albert started to follow, the collector stopped him.
“No, stay here. By that newspaper box actually, that’ll keep you mostly hidden. I’m going to check around back and I don’t want to have to worry about you if I need to make a quick exit.”
“If you need to escape, how are you going to get back to here?”
“Your quill can take you to me. Mine can take me to you. Like it or not, we’re on the same designated work team and that means we get a little extra access to each other.”
The thought hadn’t crossed Albert’s mind, but it made sense. Of course there’d be a way for Graham to get to him if the situation called for it. It made complete sense. But it also made Albert all the more uncomfortable. It meant that Graham could potentially pop in on him while he was at home. And that was the last thing that Albert wanted to happen. Even with the order in his file restricting who could visit his home, there was still a chance that Graham would escape to Albert’s location at any time.
“Just don’t do anything else until you come back and let me know what you see, okay?” Albert tried to order to collector, but his attitude still wasn’t right. He was a far ways off from sounding like the kind of person that could take charge.
“Sure thin, kid.” Graham answered dismissively. He was already walking again.
Albert watched the man cross the street and make it around to the end of the block closest to the end that Madame Offry’s shop was on. He couldn’t see much after that. The collector was out of sight and the only company Albert was left with was the silent presence of Pincushion.
“You’d think these glasses would give me a headache after wearing them so long.” Albert muttered to the cat spirit. “But I know the second I take them off you’re going to do something.”
Pincushion meowed in response but didn’t move otherwise. She just maintained her idle stare at the boy she had chosen to follow for what he could only imagine was a completely arbitrary reason. Albert was about to talk back to the cat, out a mix of boredom and anxiety, when he caught sight of Graham again.
The collector was leaning around the corner of the building at the end of the street and waving for Albert to come around to where he was.
“How about you go on ahead of me and let me know if the coast is really clear?” Albert muttered to the as he started to walk in the same direction Graham had.
There had been no expectation that the cat would obey the command, and Albert hadn’t fully intended it to. But the spirit trotted ahead of him as requested, though it stopped for Albert at the crosswalk before taking the lead again. It was yet another piece of evidence that the cat could really hear him and understand what he was saying. And while that was an unsettling prospect, it was fascinating to think about. It might have even been possible that it would do other tasks upon request, but Albert wasn’t going to push his luck.
“Did you tell it to do that?” Graham asked as Albert came close, indicating the strange behavior of the cat as it trotted ahead and peered down the alleyway behind the stretch of buildings that lined the street.
“I think so.” Albert answered, though his answer paled in importance after he too peered around the corner after Pincushion. “What’s going on?”
“Weird, right?” Graham said calmly, more calmly than Albert was called for.
“There’s got to be at least twenty—how?”
Behind the stores, along the full length of the back alleyway, clogging nearly every inch of space and sometimes overlapping, was a procession of human spirits. Their auras were all slightly different, but they they all had enough vibrancy to have a clear presence. It was almost overwhelming for Albert, as the glasses did little to shield his eyes from the chaos he now saw or the strange ethereal light that the spirits shed.
“I’m guessing they all know they’re dead somehow and that the contractor here can help them contact their loved ones.”
“Why doesn’t this sort of thing happen to Death?” Albert stammered, baffled by the sheer volume of spirits. He’d had to spend days searching for two that were willing to make a deal that could have well involved what the medium was doing here.
“It probably did at one point. But Death doesn’t exactly advertise anymore. He’s an opportunist and he doesn’t like to stay in one place for very long. This looks like an institution.”
“Wow.” Albert said with a low whistle.
The sound attracted the attention of one of the spirits near the end of the alleyway, but upon seeing Albert and Graham it turned its attention back in the direction of the back door to Madame Offry’s. Clearly it didn’t have any interest in an alternative method of doing whatever it had come here to accomplish. If it realized that Albert could see it, it wasn’t showing it either.
“I don’t think they’re exactly at a loss for souls.” Graham said, his tone a mirror of Albert’s. “And that makes me nervous. If this contractor wants us gone, they can make us leave. They very likely have the means.”
“What about if we just go in honest and ask to talk?”
“That’s probably our only option, honestly. Any kind of lie will probably come off as a threat and it’ll all be down hill from there.” Graham said as he gave a nod to head back around to the front of the shop. “I think you’ve picked up how fickle some contractors can be.”
“Fickle?” Albert furrowed his brow as he tried to place the word.
“Wishy washy.” Graham clarified. “Say the wrong thing, move the wrong way, wear the wrong clothes, and bam. You’re dead.”
“I’m dead.” Albert said with a roll of his eyes. “You’d probably be just fine.”
“And that’s why I think I should go in alone again.” Graham said with a mildly condescending nod. “Don’t want you risking your precious life just talking to some old toad.”
“By all means. Get in there and woo the toad, old man.” Albert cackled as he followed Graham to the front door of Madame Offry’s.
Graham chuckled at the joke but there was a small sigh at the tail of his laughter. “I sure hope that’s not how this goes.”