Oracles, prophets, seers, diviners, and fortune-tellers are some of the most common minor practitioners of magic in Urban Fantasylands, telling the future and viewing the present with bones, cards, crystal balls, and the occasional set of entrails.

It’s also one of the most hazardous professions to have, as seeing too much often leads to being treated like the witness to a mob hit; sadly, there’s no magical equivalent of witness protection for curses meant to strike down scryers, or even a charity established for oracle-induced blindness or mental illness treatment.

This may well be because the sort of folks who could afford to establish such a charity also benefit the most from oracles being ‘randomly’ struck down for their impertinence in attempting to divine the truth.

--Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.

I was at least on the right track, if the attack today was any indication, but I’d made a promise, so I headed back to the Delacourt estate, and Moira, once the car had repaired itself enough to drive there.

“You are earning your hazard pay, buddy. I’m not sure how to reward a haunted car, but uh...let me know if you want an oil change? Detailing? Whatever.” The car engine vrmmed contentedly, and I parked and headed inside.

Moira was waiting for me at the door, pouting a little. “When I said I’d wait for you, I was kind of hoping you’d be back in a couple of hours, not this late. I had a whole thing about waiting for you in bed,but I started feeling silly after a while.”

“Sorry. I’ve had kind of a busy day. I...do need to talk to you. But I think a shower first, if you don’t mind.” Between running around all over, being run off the road, and the fire, I really needed to clean up.

She smirked, and started to say something that was probably a proposition, but I shook my head.

“I’m...probably going to be the bearer of bad news, after this.”

The smirk faded, and she nodded. “I’ll be in my room. Find me there after.”

I brushed her cheek with one hand. “See you in a bit.”

Once I figured out where the bathroom was, I was surprised at just how big the shower was- I wouldn’t have to sit down to use it or wash my hair. Hell, I don’t even have one big enough for that in my apartment. Maybe whatever bonus I was getting for this gig would let me remodel, assuming we all didn’t get killed by the Carrefours.

I had a lot to process while I cleaned up, and tried to put together enough of the plot to figure out what was going on. So Hugo Delacourt had done a snake-related ritual for his colleague, and then started having visions triggered by it of a ritual that might destroy the town. He hired mercs to try and block whoever was setting up the ritual, even while maintaining a business relationship with the guy who was importing stuff on behalf of the ritualist.

And a key piece of the ritual was coming into town tomorrow. I had two options: Wait for Bastienne to find me again and see if I could get the ritualists’ name out of her, or try to consult a seer.

The regular we employ to play a seer is Belinda Carmine. She’s actually a lich who uses a complicated prosthetics set up to pass for human, both because people tend to react badly to living skeletons and also because it makes for incredibly realistic effects when she pops her fake eyes in her skull.and shrieks that she’s seen too much when playing an oracle.

I didn’t have much confidence in the seer option as a result, but it was something to keep on the table.

I finished the shower, dried off, and headed to Laura’s bedroom. Moira was sitting on the bed, though not undressed; just the same robe she’d been wearing around the house. She looked up at me when I came in, and sighed. “I was hoping the water would have washed away the glamour. I’m...um. Not going to lie, part of the reason I got interested in you was that one play we did where you didn’t wear a shirt and were oiled up for most of it.”

I tried to remember what one that was. “Oh right. That was when whatshisface the luchador wanted to try a mystery play? So they needed me to be hard to wrestle.” Also, I thought, probably unfairly, I was wearing a mask at the time, which probably improved the impression.

Moira nodded. “It was...very impressive.” She looked off into the distance. “Very...impressive.”

I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that, so I coughed. “We should probably get back to character. I actually have info to deliver.”

Moira coughed and crossed her legs. “Right.” She put on a a serious expression, and gave me a concerned look as I sat down opposite her. “What is it, Derek?”

“I found out how Hugo Delacourt died.”

As quickly as I could, I gave the summary I’d just come up with in the shower.

“One of the snakes being brought in has a deadly gaze. It was in a sealed box, he used a spell to confirm it was in there, and didn’t realize that meetings it eyes would still count.even if viewed magically. It matches the symptoms he had, and…” I shrugged. “An accident. A terrible accident, and ultimately one caused by him looking into whoever is performing this dangerous ritual he was having visions of, but I doubt we could even get a conviction for it. So the question ultimately becomes....do you want me to look into this? Do you want me to find out what this ritual is and try to stop it? I mean, I may do that anyway, but you’re my client, and I’ve found what you initially hired me to find.”

Moira frowned as Laura. “I… see.” She took a breath. “Honestly, I don’t want you to risk your life. I’ve already lost my husband, I don’t want to lose the man I’m actually…” She trailed off. “But if Hugo died because he was looking into this, I shouldn’t stop you. Find out what’s going on. Who’s doing this. Stop them.”

“I’ll damn well try.” I rubbed my face. “I’ll understand if you want to be left alone for the evening.”

She shook her head then, and stood up and walked across the room to settle into my lap, arms around my neck. “You are not getting rid of me that easily, Mr. Criss.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough, Mrs. Delacourt.”

She kissed me, but bit my lip slightly in the process. “I told you to call me Laura.”

“So you did. Sorry.”

She rested her head on my shoulder. “You’ve had a rough day. And it sounds like I need to yell at Bastienne.”

“She could probably stand to be yelled at. I don’t particularly like getting ambushed.” I relaxed a little, closing my eyes and tilting my head back and letting Moira do as she liked for a while. “Maybe you can get her to talk about when the next snake is coming in tomorrow. Way she was talking, she’d probably want to pick a fight with me before sharing.”

Apparently, what Moira wanted to do had nothing to do with that. “I’ll see what I can get out of her. But right now I’m more interested in what I can get out of you.” She worked her way lower, and it’s really no one else’s business what she was looking for.

We both got up early the next morning- it was probably going to be a really busy day.

“I’ll call Bastienne as soon as she’s likely be up- she’s probably pouting because she didn’t get to actually hurt you last night.” Moira sighed, and added under her breath, “And will be just as pouty out of character, I’m sure.”

I nodded with a slight roll of my eyes. “Fair. I’ve got a rough idea of where and when this last shipment is supposed to hit town- it’s coming from outside, so it’s either going to be at the docks, or through one of the doors, and given how heavily armed Hugo’s crew was going to be, I figure that it’s probably got to be either by ship or one of the main entrances. If you can get the info I need out of Bastienne, I’ll only have to watch one of those, but failing that I can ask friends to watch the other ways in.”

Moira nodded. “Right. I’ll have the cook prepare you a packed lunch for staking things out, if you like.”

“That’d be appreciated. Hopefully our wild card decides to show up today two so we can wrap up two birds with one stone.”

Moira agreed, and once I picked up my lunch, we went our separate ways. I focused on the docks, and called the number I had for Henry.

When he picked up, I asked, without preamble, “So I need a favor.”

He sighed. “What is it?”

There’s something ‘big’ coming into town, that’s part of a magical ritual. Tied into the circumstances of Hugo Delacourt’s death. All indications are that it’s going to be heavily guarded and hard to move, which suggests it’s going to be very obvious and can’t really be smuggled in by the back ways. So I need someone to watch the main entrance to the neighborhood while I watch the dockside in case it’s coming in by boat.”

Charlie as Henry laughed. “Funny thing. We just got word. Supposed to steer clear and keep folks out of a few locations today. Including the docks and the main entrance.”

“Oh, Jesus, they’re bringing in decoys, aren’t they.”

“Sounds like. Seems like certain shipments of Spider’s have been getting hit by different people, mostly pros in the community. Was that Delacourt?”

“Yeah, he was running his own little mercenary op because he got wind of someone trying a big bad magic ritual with a whole lot of snakes in.” I paused. “And if you say “Why did I have to be snakes, so help me…”

“No Indiana Jones from me, buddy.” Charlie sighed. “I’ll keep an eye on things. Unofficially, of course.”

“Of course. Say, where are the other places we aren’t supposed to be near?”

“The garden maze in the Liminal Society gardens and the Tor.”

“Both good spots for a ritual to be performed. So they’re faking out on that side too, sounds like.”

The Liminal Geographic Society was a little bit like the National Geographic society, but instead of going to the far corners of the world and promoting conservation and funding expeditions and archaeological digs, they sent their people to the forgotten places, where the borders between realities are thinnest. Liminal society anthropologists have discovered most of the major Wainscotting Neighborhoods and released studies on the residents, their explorers know every truckstop and train station where ghost truckers and phantom trains are likely to pull in at, and their zoologists specialize in the sort of monsters that lurk in the border worlds.

Also they kind of hate Mystery Play Companies- something about how we present biased views of liminal spaces that feed the prejudices of the rich- so I’m surprised we even had permission to use their garden maze.

“Well, if we can catch the damned thing coming in maybe we won’t have to worry about which site is real.” I sighed. “Gonna go watch the docks. Let me know if anything comes up on your end.”

All I had left to do was go stake out the docks and see if something happened to come in or if the masked assassin came to try and kill me.

Speaking of liminal spaces, most wainscotting neighborhoods have docks, despite being otherwise self-contained, because the sea itself is one big liminal space. It’s easy enough to get lost at sea and find yourself sailing into a port you didn’t know about that the hidden places have learned to take advantage of it. Sea freight shipping to a wainscotting neighborhood stays out of sght of land and turns off their instruments to get well and truly lost before a specialist aboard sends the signal that asks for someone to guide them to safety. Sailors that work the liminal sea trade tend to always have a lean and half-starved “I could eat a crewmate if I had to” look. Some of them may have.

There weren’t many of those hard-eyed types in evidence on the docks this early in the day though; the police had been through earlier to clear out any loiterers- presumably on the payroll of Spider-Bonaparte or on the payroll of someone who was. I knew they were coming, so I was able to loiter in peace, once I found my way up to a spot to observe. I was sitting on top of a crane, with a pair of binoculars, watching the slip that Spider Bonaparte’s regular crew came through.

It was a whole lotta nothing, so far. Hopefully Charlie would call soon and tell me that they were coming in the main way.