1.14

As Doro stepped inside, he ran his fin­ger along the side of a black, twist­ed cross hang­ing near­by. It was as he had thought. He could still feel a man­u­fac­tur­ing seam on this occult-look­ing orna­ment beneath the black resin that cov­ered its sur­face. Some­one had gone through the trou­ble of sand­ing it down, but they’d still missed the cor­ner. Cheap goods meant cheap builds.

Still… he straight­ened it. Even if it was fake, there was no need to call down bad luck.

“I got­ta say,” he said, nod­ding approv­ing­ly. “You’ve got quite the nice set-up here. Cool decor, con­ve­nient place­ment, and it’s nice and chilly too.”

He wan­dered around for a bit, fan­ning the sum­mer heat out of his jack­et, then flashed Arghus a grin. It was not returned.

To his cred­it, the scam­mer was pro­fes­sion­al enough not to break char­ac­ter, how­ev­er much that mat­tered. To run a scheme like the fake for­tuneteller was, the man had to con­trol every­thing his mark saw and heard. Paint a pret­ty pic­ture with word and lies. He might as well have had thrown gaso­line on the build­ing, with a lit match, bustin’ in like he had.

The girl her­self just seemed curi­ous. She was look­ing him up and down, at least until Arghus stood between him and her, hold­ing his arm--nay, his whole body like he was ward­ing away a demon, all dra­mat­ic-like.

“Begone stranger. You are inter­rupt­ing a sacred ses­sion.”

…yeah. That’s kin­da the point.

With a scoff, Doro kicked aside a pil­low and brushed past lit­tle man. He walked over to a tapes­try on the wall and ran his fin­ger over the pen­ta­gram on it to see if it was embroi­dered or dyed.

It was glued. How embar­rass­ing. He let his dis­dain towards that choice bleed into his voice as he kept idly perus­ing the var­i­ous knick-knacks clut­ter­ing the shelves and tables in the space.

“Do you want to know what I spot­ted in the mar­ket today, Arghus? A ghost.”

Arghus opened his mouth. “If you want an exor­cism—”

“Guy. Did your dog of a moth­er nev­er teach you that it’s rude to inter­rupt? Shut the hell up.”

Doro laughed inter­nal­ly as he took one stomp of a step towards the man, and he near­ly went tum­bling. Not so much about the bul­ly­ing, which was a lit­tle bit fun­ny, but his own shame­less hypocrisy. A med­dler sham­ing some­one inter­rupt­ing. It was kin­da like when a par­tic­u­lar­ly stu­pid thief went to the police to com­plain about their own stolen goods being stolen by anoth­er thief. Except in reverse.

With his back to the girl, the ‘war­lock’ let his facade fell for a moment, replac­ing with an expres­sion that said ‘hey, what the hell man?’. It seemed a scoundrel rec­og­nized a fel­low scoundrel, even though his home was miles away.

When Doro took a near­by mir­ror and start­ed angling it towards the girl--the expres­sion van­ished. No loy­al­ty between thieves. Any­one who thought oth­er­wise was stu­pid.

“Fine,” the ‘war­lock’ scoffed. He sat back down and flicked a piece of dust off his shoul­der. “Say your piece, vil­lain. It will be easy work­ings to dis­pel your lies.”

As if you have any oth­er choice, when some­one a foot taller and fifty pounds heav­ier is threat­en­ing you.

“Thanks!” he replied with cheer­i­ly.

With the man no longer pre­tend­ing to stand in his way, Doro went buck-wild fid­dling and play­ing with all the toys set up in the shop. He turned them over, wound ran­dom dials, popped open stop­pers, toss­ing and scat­ter­ing them about when he was done, with­out a sin­gle care for their orig­i­nal place­ment. He could see Arghus hold­ing back winces, every time some­thing del­i­cate hit some­thing hard.

“Any­way,” he said, over his shoul­der. “I fol­lowed this ghost around for a bit, and it turns out, it’s not a ghost! It’s just the palest girl I’ve ever seen. And she’s walk­ing around, chow­ing down on every dish offered in the mar­ket. Shit, she might actu­al­ly be super­nat­ur­al; what with that extradi­men­sion­al space she has in place of a stom­ach. I mean, this brat is eatin’ like she nev­er heard of get­tin’ fat, and payin’ full price like mon­ey ain’t noth­ing but a con­cept.”

“Maybe she’s some rich lit­tle bon-bon spoiled out of her mind. Maybe she’s some sick kid going out with a bang. I don’t know. All I know is that she’s the biggest, juici­est mark this side of the moun­tains, and every­one knows it.”

This was the point that he expect the girl to bolt. He raised both hands guilti­ly.

“I know, I know, I’m an unscrupu­lous moth­er-effer. Sue me. But you ain’t heard noth­ing yet.”

The girl, weird­ly, sat there and nod­ded, like this was not of a sin­gle con­cern to her. It almost threw him off bal­ance. He shook his head and con­tin­ued.

“So’s I start tailin’ her, ‘kay, look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce myself. My plan was to be her pre­tend tour guide; walk her around town, BS her out of a cou­ple hun­dred cterls with a bunch of made up non­sense about Cam­mec, then scam­per off before she could do any­thing about it. Not my favorite move, scam­ming a kid, but I’m a lit­tle low on cash right now, and she seems to have plen­ty, so what the hell, right?”

“Just then, the worst hap­pens. Right as I’m about to intro­duce myself, she walks into a store. Yours.”

“I’m thinkin’, real­ly? She’s gonna go into the one dis­hon­est place in this whole mar­ket and let some half-rate char­la­tan take all her mon­ey? You got­ta be kid­din’ me!”

“So I’m stand­ing out­side the door, think­ing about what to do--but what can I do? Bust in and inter­rupt? That would just scare her off. Noth­ing for me to do but wait for her to leave, and hope to try for the scraps.”

“But then, through the crack of the door, I hear some­thing crazy.”

“This for­tune-teller is try­ing to charge the girl fif­teen hun­dred cterls for a good luck charm. Fif­teen hun­dred! I’ve lit­er­al­ly bought beat­ers for that kind of mon­ey. Bet­ter yet, the girl’s about to say yes! At this point, I start think­ing, screw the girl, I got­ta see what that char­m’s all about! She’s gone and found the one legit for­tuneteller in the whole damn world!”

“But that’s when the for­tune-teller makes a mis­take. Do you know what that was?”

Doro dropped the cheery tone and stared, dead-eyed, at Arghus.

“He says that the charm is made with djinn dust. Real­ly, my guy? Djinn dust?”

Gen­uine djinn dust, my ass. That was as out­ra­geous as claim­ing he could turn lead into gold—without any class of the clas­sic. A tinge of embar­rass­ment leaked into Arghus’s expres­sion, before he papered it up with indig­nance.

“I don’t know what you’re try­ing to imply, but this charm—”

Doro snatched the swirling crys­tal charm from the war­lock­’s hand before he could fin­ish what­ev­er lie he could con­coct. There was greed, and there was greed. The for­mer was a care­ful, cal­cu­lat­ed scheme at the pok­er table, the lat­ter was rig­ging the game so hard that you scared the play­ers away. It was stu­pid, short-sight­ed, and, in his eyes, absolute­ly war­rant­ed an ass-whoopin’.

Doro dan­gled the charm in front of his eyes and nod­ded. It was exact­ly as he had thought.

“Gold dust and ash,” he announced. “Hon­est­ly, it’s a half-con­vinc­ing repli­ca, if I did­n’t know exact­ly how rare the stuff is. If there were even half a gram of actu­al Djinn dust in this damn thing, you’d have sold it off to a research con­glom­er­ate as soon as you found out.”

And made enough mon­ey on the deal to fund a few decades of easy liv­ing. There was a whole sub-cul­ture of antique hunt­ing, sell­ing fakes, and false val­u­a­tions because of how rare and in-demand the stuff was. He only wished he’d grown up in a place where he’d had a chance to play in that game. Oh, the mon­ey he could’ve made.

Arghus scoffed at the impli­ca­tion.

“A true majick-user like myself does­n’t do this work for the mon­ey. We do it to help peo­ple. Guide them. A self-admit­ted low-life con­man like you would­n’t under­stand.”

“Uh-huh. So now you want me to pre­tend all of thi­iss--” Doro waved a hand at all the occult dec­o­ra­tions sur­round­ing them, end­ing with sev­er­al loops up and down Arghus’s face and out­fit. “--isn’t about prof­it. Yeah, total­ly. Then how about you explain this?”

Doro walked over to the clos­est wall, put his hand on one of the cur­tains. Arghus eyes widened, and he threw his arm out to stop him.

“Wait--!”

Even with a dra­mat­ic pause, Arghus was too late to stop him. Doro tore the fab­ric down.

Pins flew flew from the wall, and the cur­tain col­lapsed in a muf­fled cas­cade of papers and orna­ments, reveal­ing what had been hid­den behind them all along. An out­dat­ed, dull-yel­low flo­ral wall­pa­per, and more impor­tant­ly, a line of smoke machines and air con­di­tion­ing units, vibrat­ing with the soft hum of elec­tric­i­ty.

With no fur­ther obstruc­tions in their way, a wave of chill-induc­ing air swept over the room. With a grin, Doro walked over to the exten­sion cord pow­er­ing all of them and lift­ed his foot over it. He shut them all down.

A mea­sure of the store’s mys­tique died there and then. It felt like just a flat ol’ ordi­nary room, now.

Rage filled the eyes of the fake war­lock and he lunged at Doro. Doro, for­mer street thug that he was, calm­ly caught the small­er man and hoist­ed him up to his toes. With one hand on his col­lar, his oth­er searched the neck of Arghus’s robe until his fin­gers found the sec­ond piece of damn­ing evi­dence: a mic clipped on the inside of his robes. His fin­gers quick­ly found it, slid down to the switch, and turned it on. With a click, his voice began boom­ing from what was obvi­ous­ly--at this point--a sound sys­tem hid­den in anoth­er part of the room.

“You see?” he said, tri­umphant­ly pre­sent­ing the lit­tle black lava­lier to the girl. “The cur­tain’s been peeled, and the wiz­ard revealed! This Arghus fel­low’s a fake!”

As the man grasped and clawed at him, Doro stood proud­ly, chest out, and wait­ed for applause from the girl he was res­cu­ing. Look at him. A real knight in shit-shin­ing armor, he was!

But the girl just stared at him with a ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed expres­sion. Even­tu­al­ly she sighed, got up, and--

“Ow!”

—thwacked him on the shoul­der. Hard. He dropped Arghus and the charm in sur­prise.

For some gold-for­sak­en rea­son, the girl seemed to be mad at him, out of all par­ties in this sce­nario. Her hand was a vice on his bicep, and very con­fus­ing­ly, Doro found him­self being dragged out of the door.

“Sor­ry, Mis­ter Arghus!” the girl called out, effort­ful from heav­ing him. “We’re gonna have to inter­rupt our ses­sion…”

“…I need to talk to this dum­my for a sec!”