Ian
It was the kind of miserable spring day that makes you want to pick fights with meteorologists about the definition of seasons. Water hung in the air like rain run through a fine cheesegrater, its fall dictated more by the wind than gravity. I hunched against the tree, sharing the curled misery of its barely-budding branches and peering through the grey at the farmhouse two hundred yards away down the hill.
This was as close as I could get and be sure of remaining unnoticed. It was open field all the way from here, probably only recently planted. I hadn't seen anything to indicate the presence of security personnel, but the location was so perfectly and simply secure that I couldn't be sure there weren't people inside watching on cameras. This last tree was close enough that I could see if activity down there picked up, and I had my binoculars if it did.
Collected water was starting to drip from the brim of my hood. The waterproof was scratchy and sweaty but for now at least it was keeping me dry. I could feel the lumps of the tree's bark imprinting themselves on my shoulder. The base of my spine was slowly turning to stone.
The road past the farm's driveway was pretty quiet, so when a dark van slowed to turn up the drive, it stuck out despite the distance. I slipped my binocs out of their rainproof cover, wiped moisture off the lenses anyway, and peered through them.
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Magnified, the van didn't look quite so black. It was more a dark, old-timey brown, and there was something ornate written on the side in gold. It parked up in the yard by the barn, the angle just too narrow for me to read the logo. Probably a delivery from some swanky boutique.
I was about to put the binocs down again but the man who opened the van door and dismounted was anything but what I'd expected. His hair flipped and curled in at least three improbable directions, a huge blonde cowlick standing up from what I assumed was his natural black mop. The flickering purple haze around his head was unmistakably sorcery. Not a normal delivery, then.
He certainly acted like a normal delivery guy, though, going round to the back of the van and reappearing with a large box. He hunched his shoulders and headed for the house, out of my line of sight. I waited, squinting through the binocs at the van as if I could magically spin it in place to look at the writing on the side.
The sorcerer returned to the van and I heard the engine growl distantly to life. As he worked through his three-point turn to get out of the yard, I finally got a clear look at the logo and shivered. The extravagant cursive read 'PURE DARKNESS', which seemed like a pretty ominous thing to name a business, especially one where a sorcerer was low enough in the pecking order to be the delivery driver.
Maybe I'd get lucky and find something in the business directory about them. God forbid I had to actually find the place and check it out myself. Somehow I doubted that magicians would be open to taking my bribes. What had Lachlan gotten me into? He was odd enough as a client that his interest in the farm might be magic-related.