There aren’t a lot of places you can meet and avoid being seen doing it. Surveillance is a basic service New York provides, along with clean water, and generally decent sewage and garbage pickup. Still, there are places you can go when you don’t want to be seen. One that gets overlooked is buildings scheduled for demolition. Obviously there’s a ticking clock on this one, but 5:17 on a Sunday afternoon gave me plenty of time to talk to whomever it was that snatched me out of that bar.
My first thought was to say thank you. I worked the whole thing up in my mind. I would say, ‘you got my hoop out of a possibly dangerous situation, so what kind of madness to you think I owe you for it?’ I made a point to lean against the crumbling wall of the lowrise apartment building. The two guards had deposited me on the 16th floor. we walked up. The power was out so the elevator was out as well. When the Johnson arrived I planned to compliment them on how good of shape they were in to pick the spot and then launch into my statement. It was better if I did it while leaning. I looked cooler in the long coat that way.
When the Johnson did arrive, all I thought to say was, “Oh.”
She wasn’t human; hell, she wasn’t even entirely there. The thing that materialized out of thin air had the long scaly body of a serpent. She circled around me once, studying me like I was a prey animal. Maybe I was. My experience with the supernatural is limited to the one time I slept with a mage and there were actual fireworks at the end. I don’t know what magical beings think, feel, or even eat. I was just hoping it wasn’t me.
She said, “I need your help. I need you to protect something very important to me.”