Minutes after the meeting Isaac returned to his stool at the bar to make good on his beer pass. The bartender brought him a free sampler—a wooden paddle with holes cut to hold twelve miniature steins of beer. He read the little descriptions of each brew, but the info faded immediately from memory as his mind drifted elsewhere. He almost didn’t even enjoy the beers.

The assignment didn’t sit well with him. Rarely had he been tasked with safeguarding life—the basement full of dead vampire hunters crossed his mind—and none had ended well. Failing to protect a bunch of drunken louts voluntarily undertaking a dangerous mission seemed a far cry from watching a group of unwitting contestants get slaughtered. To top it off, he didn’t for a second believe he’d be some kind of untouchable guardian angel. As soon as the game was afoot, he’d be just another contestant at best. At worst, he’d wear the primary bullseye for a cabal of necromancers eager for a bigger challenge.

More than once he debated marching back down to the workshop and reneging on the offer, but that meant more than saying no to Hutchins and his cabal. He’d be saying no to Arrangement. He didn’t know if anyone had ever refused the Voice and walked away intact. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought as he drained another pint.

The scenario the necromantic crew had cooked up this year, while horrid, was at least creative. They had faked a horror-themed reality show. Aspiring actors, artists, influencers, and famewhores from across the country had applied as contestants. As far as the lucky chosen ones knew they’d be competing for prizes, not for their lives. All of the contestants would be transported (all expenses paid!) to a luxurious rural mansion. Finest food and accommodations. Hot tub and pool. Full bar. For a few days, they’d be treated like royalty until the monsters stormed in and tore them to pieces, in a theatrical sense of course.

Isaac admired the group’s nefarious planning. They’d have victims lining up to compete. The reality show guise would allow them to put up large, obvious cameras to watch the action, as opposed to the small, hidden ones they’d been previously forced to rely on. The contestants would be sworn to secrecy to ostensibly protect against spoilers being leaked during filming. Their location would be unknown.

Isaac figured that even when the stitches showed up the contestants would think they were costumes or special effects. And finally, who would care if a bunch of fame-chasers disappeared? Isaac almost worried more about effectively pretending to be a reality show member than he did about the stitches.

One benefit this job did have, besides the beer, was significant prep time. Isaac had a week before the phony producers wanted him on the fake set. Usually, his assignments had immediate starts, often violently so. But now he could scheme ahead, buy supplies, strategize and taste eighty-eight more beers.

After polishing off his sampler Isaac drove back to his hotel. Maloc’s truck, while a motorized eyesore, farted black smoke and made terrible grinding noises when braking, but the engine started without fail. The homesick demon must have been a capable mechanic.

More tired than drunk, he flopped onto the bed.

The wrong bed.

Testiculies appeared from nowhere, landed on the center of the comforter, hissed, and bared fangs. “Fine, fine. You need to relax. You’re going to have a stroke someday.” Isaac didn’t consider himself easy to startle, but the freaking cat did it on a pretty regular basis. Still, as far as pets went, he found him fairly easy to care for. In fact, Isaac didn’t really do much for him at all. The only concession he routinely made had been a private cat bed, and that was entirely done for genital self-preservation. He didn’t even have to deal with a litter box or letting the cat in and out. Testiculies had a knack for coming and going as he pleased, and Isaac had yet to figure out his trick.

TV remote in hand, he stretched out on his own bed, the cat still eyeballing him warily. It had taken some time, but Isaac had finally learned to ignore the sentry-like silver eye. Before long the cat snored, lips twitching with each grumbling breath, revealing the lone snaggletooth each time. Isaac clicked on the TV and scrolled through channels until he found a reality show.

The premise was a horribly fake and banal contest with people on a deserted island, trying to lose weight while being naked and not dying. He assumed it would be beneficial research, but he could only bear a few minutes before he switched to a cartoon about anthropomorphic eel police officers that patrolled an undersea reef. He tried to stay awake long enough to see how the eels managed to handcuff the crooks, seeing as how they didn’t have arms, but within minutes he nodded off.

***

Something rare happened that night.

Isaac dreamt.

Most magicians were trained early on to repress such unintentional sensory experiences. A cautionary tale told to many was that of a young magician who dreamt of fire and woke up in flames. The subconscious could be a powerful thing, the emotions it provoked even more so.

He awoke, long before the sun, disappointed in himself for the dream and disturbed by the subject matter. He remembered little more than bits and pieces that leaked into his conscious, like quicksilver through grasping fingers. It seemed unfair that the only dreams strong enough to punch through the repression training were nightmares. A dream about being retired on a yacht? That one never made the cut.

A face, crisscrossed with scars, the skin a patchwork of different hues, like scraps of different blankets sewn together into a new whole. His name was Ludworth and he stood at the right hand of Isaac’s former master. Enforcer, assassin, errand boy, torturer, garbage man, whatever his lord commanded.

Ludworth had also been Isaac’s first encounter with a stitch. A perfect creation, he could only be differentiated from a normal human by the scars. The stitch looked different every time Isaac had seen him, the result of their master replacing damaged parts. But Isaac would always recognize the eyes, cold and hard, and the wicked smile he always wore. Isaac wondered if their master had sewn the smile there or if Ludworth just enjoyed his horrid existence that much. He’d set the stitch on fire one time, and the smile had remained as clothing burned and flesh melted.

He flashed to that night, years ago. A deadly game of cat and mouse. Isaac amongst a group of apprentices, tasked with surviving one full day with the master’s deadly stitch servant on their heels and the snow-white owl floating above. There’d been eight of them to start the game. Three survived. Ludworth had taken the rest in the name of their mutual master.

He sighed, threw back the blankets. All the talk with Hutchins about stitches must have stirred the old memories to the surface. He groaned with frustration; he could have slept for several more hours and made the upcoming drive well-rested. He may as well take advantage of it and get an early start. One thing for certain, a reassuring thought—Hutchins’ warning about this Dr. Menclewski and his perfect stitches...well, Isaac had already met a perfect stitch.

***

Several hours of driving brought Isaac to a small resort town called Harris Hills in upstate New York. Picturesque and secluded, the kind of place where vacationers came to rent secluded cabins, hike in the warm months, and ski in the cold. He parked at a small, touristy boutique called Zee Consignments. Testiculies hopped out of the truck bed, sauntered towards the wooded area behind the store.

“If you’re not back when I’m done then here you stay,” he yelled at the animal. Testiculies hissed without turning around and disappeared into the greenery. Isaac sighed. Testiculies would be there when he finished, angrily sitting in the truck bed, like he’d been forced there against his will. The cat always knew somehow not to get left behind.

The door had bells on it that chimed whimsically through the store when he entered. A genial old woman looked at him from the counter and greeted him with a first-customer-of-the-day enthusiasm. The inventory consisted mainly of secondhand clothing—old garments no one wanted, given new life with a higher price tag and a vintage label. The attendant’s smile faded when Isaac informed her that he had no interest in clothing. She nodded, a face of indifference now, at a door in the rear, then proceeded to disregard him.

Taking her dismissal as an invitation he passed through the next door into another store; this one much larger. This alone always impressed Isaac because more store should have been impossible. The vintage clothing section matched the same size of the building itself. Everything through this door physically shouldn’t exist. But it did.

Row upon row of shelving stretched out before him, each crammed with all manner of jars, boxes, books, and objects, benign to horrific. Spellcasting materials, magical items, components to lift curses or cause them, a cornucopia of sorcerer paraphernalia. He walked down the first aisle, bowls of powders to his left, jars of colored liquids to his right. Not everything had a label. If you didn’t know what something was then you didn’t deserve to know.

The aisle dead-ended at a square counter. At it, next to an antique cash register that had probably never been used, sat the true shop propitiator, Zenora Toussaint. Isaac knew little about her. He thought she hailed from Trinidad and guessed her age at about mid-fifties. Aside from that he only knew that she ran one of the best magic shops in the country. Maybe some of the pricey stores in New York City or New Orleans could match quality but none could also match the quantity.

“You again,” Zenora said, only peering over her glasses at him for a second before returning to her reading. “Buying, selling, or both?”

“Buying. Need some supplies.”

“List?”

Isaac slid a handwritten note across the counter to her. She closed her book, pushed it aside, and put the list down in its place, moving the items to her gaze instead of vice versa. She scanned the list, mentally check-marking things. “I don’t have any powdered devil horn.”

Isaac frowned. “Any demon horn?”

“No.” She set the list aside, reopened her book. “Everything else I have. Help yourself.”

He picked up a basket, hooked it on his arm—an oddly mundane action, similar to buying bread and milk at the corner market. He moved up and down aisles, checking things off his list. Anaconda scales. Fresh grave dirt. Jar of sand. One-hundred-year-old bone powder. Crematorium ash. Pine resin and charcoal glue. In a glass-topped freezer, he picked out a frozen finger wrapped in foil. A tag labeled it “frostbite”. He pulled down a length of rope tied into a noose and kneaded it in his hands. It had stretched at least one neck. He could feel the death on it. Not an innocent death, which made it foul but not the foulest, just the way Isaac preferred.

Next, he passed a tray of rocks, paused to examine them for identification. An aura of hate washed off them, like heat waves on pavement. Stoning rocks. Probably Middle Eastern in origin and used to bludgeon some half-buried victim to death. He moved his hand over them, searching for the worst. The kill stone—the final one to do the deed. He didn’t find one, so he settled for a stone that fit well in his hand, practiced throwing it like a baseball, and dropped it in the basket.

“Been a while since I’ve seen you,” Zenora called out.

He didn’t respond right away. He’d visited multiple times, but she’d never volunteered any idle chitchat. “Been busy.”

“Arrangement keeping you tied up then?” The shopkeeper asked it plainly like his employment had become general knowledge to the world.

Isaac froze, wondered what lie he could quickly spin, and then flushed that thought and debated if he should bother lying at all. No doubt that Zenora was a sharp one. Trying to pull the wool on her seemed pointless.

One thing he hated about the Other World—the damn secrets, rumors, and gossip. Everyone knew too much. “What makes you say that?”

“Information defies gravity. The heaviest rumors float the farthest.” Without looking up from her book, her eyes still moving left and right with each line, she said, “Be careful of them. Puppeteers ready to cut the strings when they grow tired of pulling.”

He didn’t bother now to even try and make any denial. He may as well run with it. “What do you know about them?

Her deep hazel eyes darted up briefly. “Besides what I just said? Did you miss my easily interpretable line about puppets and strings?”

“Yeah. No. I mean, I caught it. But you ever work with them? You seem to be pretty knowledgeable.”

“I know smart people don’t do dirty work for beings they never met.”

Ouch. A sharp, if accurate, dig. “You must know more.”

With an annoyed sigh, she set the book down and took off her glasses. Her sharp gaze made him wish she were still reading. “I know nothing more than you about Arrangement itself. But I have met a few of its employees. And I’ve heard stories about others. Arrangement hires all shades. The good, the bad, the strong, the mean, the ugly, the pure, and the wholly corrupted. There is no rhyme or reason to its work. Arrangement has saved many and killed many. Done much good and undone much good.” She slid her glasses back on, licked a fingertip to turn a page. “And that’s all I know.”

“Fair enough. Thanks.” The information kind of surprised him. He’d expected the part about evil employees, but not the good ones.

He set the basket on the counter. Zenora leaned over, taking silent stock of what he had, doing the calculations in her head. Then she nodded and waved him off.

During his last visit, he had traded in a vial of Maloc’s blood. That had amassed a sizable amount of store credit. He supposed he could simply slap one of the Black Tarot cards down and get a lifetime of free purchases, but it seemed unwise to part with any of them.

As he exited, she called after him and Isaac looked over his shoulder, expecting to have forgotten something. Instead, she gave him a soft look; not quite caring, but with something more like pity on her face. “No one grows old working for Arrangement. That much I know.”