Jason gaped at the tall, tan man Gunther had become. With his strong build, handsome face, glossy black hair, and brilliant blue eyes he looked more like a film star than a government employee. He offered Jason a dashing smile and Jason felt a flush spreading across his cheeks. He was beautiful.

Embarrassed, Jason turned his attention to Falk.

His transformation was more subtle but in a way stranger, because Jason had grown almost used to the luminous quality of the man. Now his eyes and mouth looked like dull shadows beneath the harsh angles of his sharp brow and crooked nose. Blond stubble mottled his jaw and his pale hair jutted out as if it hadn’t been brushed or washed in days. He stood several inches taller than Gunther, but where Gunther looked toned and healthy, Falk seemed rangy and hungry.

Above all else Jason noticed that, devoid of his radiance, Falk seemed worn—not gray haired or wrinkled—but weathered and scarred like the rundown rooms of the flophouse where Jason slept these days.

Jason took a few more moments, allowing himself to accept the full impact of these plastic glasses and the new world he viewed through them.

I’m not crazy. It’s just the way I see…

It seemed almost too relieving to believe.

“Mr. Shamir?” Gunther prompted and then he glanced to Falk. “Did you do something really weird to him?”

“I’m fine,” Jason said quickly. “I just…This is unbelievable.”

“But true, all the same,” Falk said with a certain finality. He lifted his flask but then dropped it back into his coat pocket without drinking from it. Jason absently wondered what else he secreted in those pockets.

“Having true sight probably hasn’t been all that useful to you,” Falk said. “Most of the folks with it end up in mental institutions.”

Jason felt the color drain from his face at the memory of St. Mary’s. If either of the agents noticed, they didn’t remark on it. Falk went on speaking.

“But the ability to see the truth can be valuable when it comes to magics. It’s particularly useful in dealing with the sidhe, the fae in particular, who traffic in illusions and glamours. Even the best technology we have can’t pierce the faerie glamours that you could see past at a glance.”

“Faerie glamours?  Like magical litltle faries?” Jason tried not to sound skeptical because he was wearing what appeared to be some kind of magic glasses. But still…faeries?

“Nah, not just faeries.” Falk replied. “I mean not unless you’d call a troll or a goblin a faerie.”

“We prefer to be called the Luminous Ones,” Gunther commented. Falk smirked at that.

“Yeah, and I’d like to be called Prince Charming, but it isn’t what I am.” He scratched the blond stubble of his chin. “The point is that you, Mr. Shamir, have a great talent and value. Your employer, Mr. Phipps, made it his business to trade in such things, and when you fell into his hands, he put you up for auction—”

“For auction?” Jason wished that he could stop feeling shocked and out of his depth.

“Yes. He sold you,” Falk said as if this sort of thing happened every day and warranted no more surprise than a parking ticket.

“And someone actually bought me?” Jason asked. He couldn’t imagine them paying much.

“Someone certainly tried to.” Falk nodded.

“Who?” Jason asked.

“That we don’t know,” Gunther admitted. “The buyer paid in gold dust—half up front, apparently—but we can’t reliably track it back to a source. And the brownie sent to retrieve you and make the second payment is too infected with spells to be able to tell us, even if he wanted to.”

“Which he doesn’t,” Falk added.

“No, he really doesn’t,” Gunther agreed and he looked oddly grim for a moment. Then he picked up his coffee cup and frowned into the depths of its contents.

“So, it boils down to this,” Falk went on while Gunther drank, “we’re pretty certain that Mr. Phipps made previous illegal sales to this same buyer—possibly previous employees. We need to track the buyer down before he can find a new supplier or, if the goods exchanged were human beings, before he decides to dispose of them to hide his crimes.” Falk’s shadowed gaze settled on Jason. “We’d like you to help us.”

For just an instant Jason stole a glimpse over the top of his glasses. Falk’s eyes shone like the blue flames of a gas stove.

“How?” Jason asked.

“We’re betting that Phipps will attempt to turn you over to his buyer; he’ll want the second half of his payment. We’ve shut down all of his accounts. He doesn’t have any other source of revenue open to him and he’ll need money if he hopes to relocate to another realm.”

“So…” Jason considered this as best he could without getting caught up on the idea of faeries and gold dust and brownies. “Are you asking me to let him abduct me?”

 “You’d be protected the entire time,” Gunther said quickly. “We’d have agents tailing you and at least one planted with you.”

“But that’s what we’re asking,” Falk replied.

Jason scowled down at his hands. Flecks of his own dried blood pebbled his right palm.

“You’re free to refuse,” Falk told him with another of those crooked smiles, though now the expression looked dark and cynical. “But the fact remains that Phipps is likely to come after you whether we’re protecting you or not. If you were smart, you’d invite us along.”

Jason nodded, not because he agreed so much as he couldn’t disagree. He could hardly process all of this. And it felt suddenly like the first night he’d spent in St. Mary’s, half out of his mind with horror while soft-spoken doctors and nurses had told him what would be best for him and locked him in a small room where the bed was bolted to the floor.

He wondered how it could be that, in discovering that he wasn’t insane and never had been, his life had actually become more unbelievable and farther beyond his control? At least before there had been a real world where monsters didn’t exist. A real world that he could hope to one day belong to. Now that was lost to him.

Jason closed his eyes and for a moment cast his thoughts back past all this confusion to the moment he’d first woken this morning, when everything had been calm and hopeful. He thought of the melody that he’d planned to perform for Mr. Phipps’s special customer. The soothing refrain played through his memory and Jason let it calm him.

At last he forced himself to look up and face the two agents in front of him. “So, how will this work? You guys stake out the place where I’m staying and I wear a wire or something?”

“No wires.” Falk shook his head. “They’re too unreliable where magic is concerned. Too conductive to outside influences.”

Gunther nodded in agreement with Falk and then went on, “We’ll place agents around you, and since Falk’s with us, we’ll also be able to have him shadow you through the shade lands.”

“Should I ask what the shade lands are or will it just confuse me more?” Jason inquired. “Because I’m feeling pretty close to my limit of confusion right now, but I need to know what’s going to be happening to me.”

Gunther looked slightly concerned, but Falk just gave a rough laugh.

“Have you had anything to eat this morning?” Falk asked.

“I didn’t have time—”

“Why don’t we go grab us a couple sandwiches or something?” Falk suggested. “Maybe somewhere a little more comfortable. And NATO will foot the bill.”

“Sure.” The suggestion struck Jason as relievingly mundane. “I’d like that.”

“Carerra hasn’t gotten back in—” Gunther began in a low whisper to Falk.

“Just tell her I felt I needed to relocate to a point of greater personal geomantic power. She’s already sure I’m a kook.” Falk smiled in that oddly knowing manner. “And who knows, it could be true.”

“What geomantic location are you thinking of?” Gunther asked.

“Mac’s joint.” Falk sounded almost wistful. “Is it still around?”