“Alright, she’s sent me the address.” Graham grunted as he clapped his own phone shut and stuffed it unceremoniously into a coat pocket. “I have a spot near there we can pop in on. Though, I haven’t used it in a few years, so be prepared to act casual in case it isn’t as private as it used to be.”

After they had been excused from Hope’s office—which Albert thought was strange, as it had been a rather formal affair—Graham had led him towards the other side of the front office where there was an open doorway without a placard in front of it. Albert could hear Graham clatter through something, possibly a locker or a filing cabinet, before returning to the central room of the office and nodding towards the front door.

“We should get going before anyone tries to get in our way.” Graham grumbled.

Albert nodded in silent agreement and held the door open for his new co-worker. The action garnered silent looks from the several people doing busy work behind the few desks in the office. Outside the door, Amy gave the two a nod of approval as she maintained her post. The whole thing felt so official that Albert was more than a little nervous.

Graham led Albert to the side of the office, and Albert expected them to make it around to the back of the building before departing. It would have given them the most cover. But a quick halted step that forced Albert o bump into Graham’s side, and an accompanying sharp pain in Albert’s wrist, signaled their unexpected departure.

If it weren’t for the pain Albert might not have noticed the shift in their surroundings. The sting was familiar, however, and the subtle shift from one narrow passage between a single story building and chain link fence to another similar passage. It was the way the sky looked that tipped Albert off first. The pain certainly helped, but the shift from a mid-day overcast sky to bright blue morning sky was the most obvious sign.

“You could have warned me.” Albert muttered, massaging his wrist where Graham’s quill had jabbed him. “I would have had to stab me in the shoulder.”

“I wanted to keep it discrete in case anything had changed or anyone was watching.”

“Wouldn’t it have been more discrete if I knew it was coming?”

“Maybe.” Graham said with a shrug.

Albert let out a groan at the obtuse response, but didn’t let the attitude get to him. Something told him that was just eh way Graham was. Even if the collector didn’t have a problem with Albert specifically, it seemed he had a problem with people in general.

“How long of a walk will it take to—” Albert cut himself off as he felt something brush up against his leg. “—Really?”

“What?” Graham slouched into a more prepared stance as he spoke. His voice had changed on a dime into one far more serious than he had been moments before.

“Pincushion followed us, somehow.”

Albert looked down at the cat as it a figure eight around his legs, its tail wrapping closely as it moved in tight circles. It didn’t seem at all bothered that he was busy, or that he hadn’t wanted the cat to tag along. But there seemed to be no stopping the beast.

“Geez, kid. It’s gonna give us away.” Graham growled and slouched further into more aggravated posture. “If a half-dead, or a contractor, or anyone else with spirit sight catches us interacting with the cat at all, they’re going to know that we’re probably exactly what we are.”

“Good point.” Albert said, still looking down at the cat. “Pincushion. I need you to be discrete.”

It was a futile effort, or so Albert thought. When he’d addressed the cat directly, it had been more an act of comedic coping. If there was no way of actually getting rid of the thing, Albert was prepared to figure out a way to cope with its presence. But, to his surprise, the cat spirit took a step to his side and sat down as it was ordered.

“Huh.” Albert frowned in confusion. “Graham, I don’t suppose you know much about animal spirits?”

“Amy had a crow spirit dive bomb her for a few days straight once, but apart from that it’s just guesses and secondhand stories.”

“Ever heard of one being trained before?”

“I don’t think they last long enough to be trained. But I guess it’s possible.” Graham furrowed his brow as he spoke. “Hold on.”

Albert watched patiently, as did Pincushion, as Graham rummaged through his own pockets for a contact lens case much like Amy had used before. The man carefully dropped an lens in each eye, blinked rapidly for a moment, and then knelt down to look more closely at the cat.

“It looks like it was a domestic cat before it died. And the collar is odd. It’s got a bell, but I haven’t heard it jingle once this whole time.”

“I figured there was probably a reason for that I didn’t know about.”

“Not one I can think of. It’s probably property.” Graham scratched his head as he leaned back on his haunches to address Albert. “But I guess that is a reason, isn’t it. I just don’t couldn’t tell you what kind of property or why it’s making it not jingle.”

As Graham leaned back down to get a closer look at the tag on Pincushion’s collar, the cat batted his face gently with a paw. The collector didn’t look phased at all, though it did confuse him.

“And it seems able to make contact on its own. Which is unusual for any kind of half-dead.”

“I’d been wondering about that too.” Albert knelt down as well, his curiosity was finally too high to actually care about the spirit being potentially dangerous.

Graham sighed and stood back up. The collector pointed an accusatory finger down at Albert as he said, “It’s always the weird folks that attract more weird stuff. This is the kind of thing you don’t see often, but really only happens to people like you that don’t know what they’re doing. I would have never paid it any mind and it never would have latched on to me.”

“I guess it’s just my luck, then.” Albert groaned. “Can you at least be useful?”

Albert’s question had been levied at the cat, which seemed to acknowledge it with a faint mew. It didn’t do anything else, but it felt like it knew it was being talked to at least.

“Maybe you can sniff out other spirits for us.”

“I doubt it, cat’s aren’t exactly known for their ability to track by scent.”

“I know you know I wasn’t being literal. Spirits don’t smell like anything.” Albert pressed a finger to his temple in frustration. “But don’t you think it could maybe alert us to a spirit nearby?”

“I dunno.” Graham shrugged. “I wouldn’t trust it to lead us to anything useful. But maybe.”

With a rolled eye that Pincushion seemed to mimic, Albert rose to his feet as well and lowered his head towards Graham. “You’re a real optimist aren’t you.”

“Nope.” Graham coughed. “But we should get going. It’s about a ten minute walk to the address we’re supposed to start at.”

With a hand wave signaling the collector to lead the way, Albert made it clear he was ready to finally get along with things. Pincushion followed quietly behind the two as they walked. After a few minutes, Albert almost completely forgot about the spirit that seemed intent to go wherever he did. It was almost a comfort to know that it was there too, like an added extra ally even if all it could provide was a pet-like degree of moral support. Even if it understood him, it was stuck in the form of a house cat and there wasn’t much it would be able to do that could really protect him.

After Graham signaled they had reached the address Hope had sent them too— which Albert was baffled by, as it was just an intersection on the outskirts of an urban area—the collector nodded in the direction of what looked like a food district. Restaurants that looked like they wouldn’t open until at least 5pm, lined both sides of the road. Most had some kind of outdoor patio seating or wide windows with a view of the street. Albert imagined it was probably a pretty nice place to spend an evening, but in the morning light he could see clear signs of a rowdier night life than he wanted to ever experience.

Further down the street there were a series of building that looked less like fine eateries and more closed off. No outdoor area, less windows and a heavy tint to the glass of the windows that were there. Albert guessed night clubs, but he was only most right.

“I figured there’d be one around here.” Graham grumbled in his low throaty voice that brought Albert to a stop long before the collector held out his arm to stop him. “We should head back in the other direction.”

“Why, what’s wrong with this direction?” Albert looked around himself cautiously, expecting to see something revealed by the lenses of his pair of glasses. But there was nothing unusual to be seen.

Graham wrapped a large hand around Alert shoulder and attempted to steer him in the direction they’d come from. “It’s not so much what you can see as what you can’t. That brick building on the end of the street is a contracting den. I’d bet my life on it.”

“What?” Albert resisted the shove he was receiving and stared down the street at the building in question.

By all accounts it was a normal pub. Maybe a little old, but it was probably just a local staple that hadn’t been bought out to host a more modern venue. Nothing stood out at first, and that was what Albert suspected might have been the giveaway, but even then there was nothing he could really discern deeper than that that might give it away.

“There’s no address on the front of the building and the brick doesn’t match the foundations of the other buildings on the street. It looks like it might fit in, but like it could also fit in pretty much anywhere.”

Albert narrowed his eyes, trying to make out more details about the building even as Graham was practically dragging him away. “Wow, I didn’t see that at all.”

“Yeah, and you won’t see anything at all in a bit if you don’t get going in the other direction.”

Graham had devoted his full effort into pushing Albert now, but it was the pushing of Pincushion at Albert’s ankles that told him there was something genuinely dangerous about lingering in that area. The collector might have had some ulterior motive, but the cat didn’t seem to. And if they were acting in unity, there was something to be worried about.

As they were waiting for a street light to change so they could cross an intersection and leave the restaurant district altogether, another pedestrian caught their attention.

“You two lost?”

It seemed a natural enough question for a stranger to ask, and it seemed like the kind of area where you might actually make absent conversation with a stranger on the street. But something about the stranger was off. He didn’t seem have the attitude to match it, but he towered over Graham. His height and obvious muscle mass were jarring. He was clearly well built, though he didn’t have that level of muscle definition that a body builder has. Still, his size was enough to be intimidating. Yet, his demeanor seemed perfectly pleasant and friendly.

“Just took a wrong turn is all.” Graham responded brusquely.

“Yeah, it happens. They redid the roads around here a while ago and a bunch of new restaurants kind of popped up out of nowhere.” The man leaned casually up against the post where the button to signal the crosswalk was, carefully obscuring their access to it. “You guys look kind of worn out. I know a place that’s open early and serves spring water cheap. Let me get you some.”

“We’re good.” Graham responded again.

“You’re clearly new in town, so you probably don’t know, but McClellan’s is a landmark. You should at least check it out.”

“Oh—” Graham swore under his breath as he turned back to Albert. “That’s not good.”

Albert finally picked up on what was happening after probably far too long of being confused by the pushiness of the stranger. “Are you a promoter for McClellan’s then?”

“I guess you could say that.” The man nodded. “Yeah. I’m like a promoter.”

“We should bail.” Graham whispered quietly towards Albert in such a way that his mouth hardly moved.

Albert seriously considered it. But this stranger was easily within grabbing range, which brought to Albert’s attention the biggest flaw he had never considered about quill travel. There didn’t seem to be a way of controlling who accompanied you when you decided to go somewhere. Pincushion had been tagging along this whole time, probably by gently and quietly pressing up against his leg at each point of travel. If this stranger grabbed hold of Albert as he tried to bail, he’d probably get dragged along with him. And then he’d be separated from Graham and have a whole new problem to deal with. Even if he managed to make it to Death’s office with this stranger in tow, there was no stopping this stranger from dragging him back to that brick building with a quill of their own—assuming they had one.

The situation called for a more tactful approach.

“You know, I think I am a little parched.” Albert announced, nudging Graham casually in the side. “Why don’t we give McClellan’s a shot.”

Graham closed his eyes slowly and let out a deep breath as he tried to calm himself from what was clearly a great deal of internal frustration at Albert’s decision. The stranger didn’t seem to care. His eyes were locked on Albert now, and they looked greedy.

“Good choice.” The stranger said with a grin. “Follow me. It’s just that brick building at the end of the street."