“Usually. I like staying busy,” and Mr. Hill and I said it together, “and I got bills to pay.” We met one another’s eyes knowingly. “What kind?” he asked.

“SHIELD contract. Vamps and werewolves. Black ops. Hush-hush. Hopefully something you can cover and get paid on twice.”

“SHIELD, now.” He straightened up slightly. “Done some work for and against them in the past.” He considered the point, puffing on his cigar. “Why black?”

“The political situation. Government can’t be seen going back on their agreements with the clans and packs, despite the risks. The only thing keeping them in check is the Tribes reacting to a build-up. Director Carter isn’t Murican, so she doesn’t give a fig about that agreement, and I doubt the Patriot or any of the Shielders do, either. But they don’t want to trigger a Blood Harvest or Moon Hunt, which is political suicide.”

“If they only equal Tribal rates, vamp hunting is good, steady pay,” he mused aloud. “I might know one or two good vamp hunters, too, although I never hunted werefolk. Ran into them a couple times.” His ghost of a smile was mirthless. “Ate a bunch of silver and mithral in the past. They didn’t last too long.”

“I can give you her number. You’ll probably need to get another phone.” They’d monitor any number he gave her, of course.

“I’ll get a relay set up,” he nodded calmly. “Talk specs with her.”

“Her secretary is probably a Widow, so be ready for that.”

“Not surprising. Widows and SHIELD always had an odd habit of appearing together.” He waved it off. “Don’t double-deal them, and they’re generally pretty good. If you do, and you’re pretty clever about it, they’re generally good, too,” he smirked.

“I’m gonna wander over to the Sanctorum and see how they are doing.” I held out a business card for him from Director Carter, and he took it and looked it over before tucking it away carefully. “Oh, and weren’t you going to be meeting that Marko kid this morning? How did that go?”

“He’s got a bit of a chip on his shoulder after gaining his powers, but he isn’t an Avatar. Goes back to flesh and blood,” he said as he straightened up. “That said, I had him try a cup of your new coffee in his sand form, and he really appreciated it, but most of it ended up in the sewer, since he couldn’t digest it.”

“Was he interested in going into business with you?”

He gave me another Damn You Schmot Gurl look. “Road construction and rebuilding.” He shook his head. “Well, I started laying out the numbers, and yeah, actually, he was.” He looked thoughtful. “You get a good engineer for us to work with, and I think we might actually have a little something here.”

“Not hard to find in a city like this. I’ll do some calling around for names, try to get someone clean.”

“Construction is a big thing for the mob. There’ll be some resistance,” he noted thoughtfully.

“I’ll leave handling that to you. You’ve definitely got a better feel for that stuff than I do.”

He grinned mercilessly. “Probably.” He walked off as easily as if he owned the place, and I could tell it was amusing him to buy a place in a culturally artsy place like Greenwich Village, right across from the Sanctum Sanctorum, home of the Sorcerer Supreme.

Right. I wandered across the street and up to the door.

------

A slender Oriental man who moved with the controlled grace of a martial artist answered the door. He was trimly built, of average height, and his head was closely shaved. He looked at me, my mask, and my t-shirt, the pants with fashionable holes in them, and asked with a sigh, “Dynamo, I presume?”

I stuck out a hand. “Master Wong?” I replied respectfully. Perhaps delighted to be recognized, he accepted it, and we shook once. “My apologies for intruding upon your home.”

He sighed and waved it off. “Dealing with magical problems is what we do. Having someone unknown just call us out of nowhere seems to be part of it, too. Please, come in.”

Formal invitation extended, I passed the Wards and stepped over the threshold, functions of my Totem intact.

“You are a practitioner, Miss Dynamo?” he asked, as I stepped inside the old English-style foyer. I didn’t have a hat to take, however.

“I am an Alchemist, Master Wong,” I replied politely. Totemic Sorcery wasn’t exactly normal magic.

“Really? Of what Ring?” he inquired.

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“I’ve never been tested for a ranking, but based on what I can make, likely Silver. Do you sling a crucible too, Master Wong?”

“Basic alchemy is part of the training of a sorcerer, Miss Dynamo. However, I believe I would merely qualify for the Lead Ring of an apprentice.”

“With true magic to back you, it’s really all you need,” I nodded without resentment. “How are your guests?” I asked, as he ushered me in a particular direction.

“Ah, I opened up some guest rooms for them, and they are resting fine. The children are at a somewhat, ah, energetic age, but I simply let them into the entertainment room, and they have kept themselves occupied.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Our television is quite a bit larger than the one they have at home, and it shows movies from all over the world. They are currently watching The Epic of Hiawatha, I believe, which isn’t shown here in the East.”

Given how much dimensional folding was going on here, ‘opening new rooms’ likely meant just spinning a whole wing out of nowhere for them to stay in, or something. “Ah, yes. ‘Fantastic drivel, and not even any mass battles. Unsuitable for the theaters here’, I believe one of the famous reviews went.” We exchanged knowing looks as the décor changed to something more modern, even with light bulbs instead of enchanted crystals. “It was the first time they caught actual magic on film. Speaks-to-Clouds killed his performance, and Kollyshimer nailed the Six Spirits interpretation.”

“It is a very popular film in the Orient,” Master Wong admitted. “Very different from the standard European fare, although I admit we love our mass battles.”

“That’s only because you have so many to choose from.”

“This is true,” he sighed rhetorically, and showed me into the entertainment room.

The whole family was on a long, overstuffed couch, kids in the middle, sandwiched between overprotective parents. The drapes were drawn, and the big-screen TV, four times the size and brighter in color and detail than the vacuum tube stuff they probably still had at home, was a couple hours into the seven-hour-long telling of the great Tribal hero, whose tales wound through many tribes and cultures. His bargains with the spirits, championing various tribes, meeting other heroes of the culture, and solemn wisdom were overriding themes Muricans generally weren’t exposed to here.

Lots of sitcoms and detective shows and sports, however.

Frank glanced over as we entered, but the others were too engrossed in the film to really pay attention. He patted his son and rose to his feet, swinging around the couch. His wife looked back at the motion, nodded once at me as if she didn’t know what to think of me, and returned to watching the movie.

Frank stuck out his hand to me again, and I took it and shook it firmly. “You’ve only got half the holes you used to,” he noticed, looking me up and down.

“I should sell the jeans. People pay good money for all these holes in them,” I returned blandly. “The bloody blouse, not so much.”

“Any leads on who or what is responsible?” he growled, grey eyes ready to hunt something.

I looked at Master Wong, who sighed. “The Doctor will be returning shortly. He’s somewhere else, negotiating.” Which likely meant violently discouraging something, or confounding it, depending on how he approached it. “I can sense a rather intense focus of magic about you, but...” he hesitated, looking at me, “I do not think it is a Curse, per se.”

“Really.” Well, I didn’t either, actually. “Well, it was the Fate-bending which caught my eye. What makes you say otherwise?”

“Fate-bending is the primary effect of a Curse, attracting malefic events to the subject. This... is a secondary effect.”

We both considered him, and he could only look back, out of his depth. “Has anything like this series of disasters happened to you in the past, Mr. Castle?” I asked him professionally.

“I’ve been in some hard places and hard fights, but nothing seemed like this, where the world itself was trying to kill me,” he growled back.

I considered that. “A lot of hard fighting, you say?” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Castle, if you were to compare your fighting experience, time in lethal combat situations, and, let’s say, battle toll on the enemy, to all your peers, where would you rank?” I asked narrowly.

He was silent for a moment, thinking over the answer. “Top three?” he hazarded, and I raised an eyebrow. He grunted. “Okay, I might have seen more combat and killed more of the enemy than anyone else among the State forces in Sinochan.”

“Were you ever seriously wounded? Out of combat for more than a month?” Master Wong interjected quickly, seeing where this was going.

Frank Castle thought that over. “I was out of combat for more than a month, but that was due to assignments, not combat readiness.”

“And then orders came along, and you were sent headlong into another shithole?” I asked, following Wong’s line of reasoning.

“Pretty much how it was. I rubbed a lot of my superiors the wrong way.” He shrugged it off. “Is that important?”

Wong and I glanced at one another again, and I held up a hand. “Let me do a Kirlian scan quick. No pain.” I held up my hands in front of Mr. Castle, and arcs of green-white bioelectricity played back and forth between him, just over his face and skin.

I went rapidly up and down him, circling him to do his full arms, legs, and back, ending up where I began.

“Well?” Wong asked.

“He’s in incredible physical condition, like someone pursuing a near-Olympic training regime, the kind it takes hours a day to maintain.”

“He’s Primos, there’s nothing innately magical about him,” Wong confirmed quickly.

“You don’t work out four to six hours a day now, do you, Mr. Castle?” I asked for confirmation.

“A couple,” he admitted, clearly sensing something was going on. “I try to keep them intense...”

“You’re in too good of shape for a man of your age,” I said bluntly. “While I’m sure your wife doesn’t mind, a ‘couple hours a day’ is not able to maintain the physique you have. What you are calling ‘intense’ is indeed high compared to a normal man, but just average for your physical condition.

“Or, to put it another way, I imagine that right now you could go out and pass the Special Forces physical exam with flying colors. I shouldn’t have to tell you how unlikely that is once someone musters out after four tours and time gone from combat. If you keep in contact with your compatriots, you should know the physical abuse you’ve gone through alone should make it impossible.”

“Good genes?” he offered, eyes flashing.

“Hypertrophy is a rare gene among the Primos, and doesn’t stop wear and tear. No, Mr. Castle, something is keeping you at or near your prime in terms of physical ability.”