“It’s not all that spicy,” Jason assured him and Henry tried not to smirk at the young man’s concern.

They seated themselves at the narrow bar. While Jason mulled over the variety of hot sauces, mustards, and soy sauce on offer, Henry studied the place more closely. It was cheap, run down, and certainly quirky, but for all the exotic menu items and condiments, it remained utterly human.

Not a trace of otherworldly magic hung in the pungent, oily air. Not a single nixie lurked among the newly delivered boxes of napkins. No restless ghosts lent their unearthly chill to the wheezing beverage cooler. The place was clean, at least in terms of supernatural activity. The countertop seemed a little on the sticky side.

Still, Henry could understand why Jason felt comfortable in this cramped dive. It was entirely free of illusions. And in a city like San Francisco, seated atop so many portals and populated by such a diverse variety of both the unearthly and undead, Jason probably tripped over a displaced ogre, a slumming djinn, or an out-of-work kelpie every time he stepped out his front door. After only one supernatural encounter the average man generally flipped his lid. More than a few ended up on the evening news, wearing nothing but tinfoil beanies and screaming at invisible pixies.

Hell, a good fifth of NIAD’s recruits were picked up en route to psych wards.

But somehow Jason had eluded detection for years. It could have been a coincidence, but Henry didn’t think so. Too much about Jason seemed designed to be overlooked, misfiled, and forgotten. Henry didn’t think he’d ever met a man who better embodied the average nice-guy qualities that so easily melted from memory. Just one more in a sea of boys next door who claimed no fixed address in anyone’s awareness.

Henry stole a sidelong glance at the young man as he briskly anointed his burrito with bright red sriracha sauce. A subtle dexterity played through his long hands. The speed of his motions brought to mind a few of the genuine magicians Henry had known—not those flashy con men on darkened stages, but the rare people whose bodies pulsed with magic.

And yet, Henry couldn’t catch even a whisper of power from the young man. So, either he was the best fake Henry had ever encountered or the power within him had been hidden very deeply indeed: carved into his bones and then buried beneath layers of anonymity spells. Jason was definitely too young and too inexperienced to have done such a thing himself.

“You have much family here?” Henry asked.

“Me?” Jason glanced to Henry as if he expected him to be addressing someone else.

“I wasn’t asking myself.”

“No, sorry.” Jason flushed a little and Henry recalled that in their questioning earlier Jason had also seemed surprised to be regarded with any importance. Most men his age would have betrayed a trace of excitement at discovering they were so unique.

“I’m pretty much alone. I moved here with my dad…” For just an instant something like fear flickered through Jason’s expression, but then he just shook his head. “He’s gone. So it’s just me now.”

“Yeah, same here.” Henry remembered his childhood dog better than any of his surviving relations. “So you grew up in the city?”

“Yeah. My dad and I moved here when I was seven and I’ve lived in the Bay Area ever since.” Jason supplied the answer with a telling kind of tension in his voice. This was painful for him, Henry thought.

“Never wanted to travel?”

“I don’t know.” Jason relaxed a little. “San Francisco’s familiar. I like that.” He took a bite of his burrito, effectively evading further questions. And Henry decided to let it go for now.

He sampled his Mongolian cheesesteak. His silver tongue drew in far more of the slaughterhouse from the succulent meat than Henry would have liked to swallow. That was always a problem with fresh food, traces of memory persisted in the flesh.

Beside him, Jason ate like a neat machine. Even after he’d finished his food Jason’s furtive gaze flickered over other men’s meals.

“You want these fries?” Henry offered. It wasn’t his habit to let other people eat off his plate, but he’d never cared that much for the common french fry.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Have ’em.” Henry pushed the fries to Jason and watched in fascination as Jason drenched them in hot sauce and disappeared them like so many gangland snitches going into the East River.

Either the guy had a tapeworm for a dietician or he was half starving. In that, he reminded Henry a little of Frank but not so much that it hurt. They’d all been hungry young men back in the day.

“Can I ask you a question?” Jason glanced up at him from over the rim of his glasses. Henry wondered just what he saw.

“Sure, you can ask anything you like,” Henry replied.

Jason smiled slightly at his response.

“But you might not answer, right?”

Henry shrugged.

“Well, either way,” Jason replied. “There was something kind of fluttering in your coat pocket earlier. I’ve been wondering what it was all morning.”

“Can’t you see it?” Henry lowered his voice. “If you take the glasses off?”

“Not through your coat,” Jason responded as if Henry were dense. “I don’t have X-ray vision.”

“Good to know.” True sight was so rare that not even Henry knew exactly how far it extended and, as a rule, those who possessed it—and didn’t go crazy—generally kept the limits of their vision secret to protect the value of their services. Jason seemed oddly sane and forthcoming.

“So what is it?” Jason took a swig of his coffee. “The thing in your pocket.”

“It’s the remains of a little girl’s heart,” Henry replied. Jason blanched and set his coffee down.

“Why do you have…that?”

“Because she was murdered to create a curse. She died so alone and so terrified that her heart became a grasping, poisonous little thing.” Henry kept his tone neutral and low. “She needs be carried and kept company before her terror will fade and let her pass through the shade lands.”

Henry considered showing Jason the tiny cinder that remained of her. The girl would probably have liked to be held by someone as gentle as Jason. But Henry wasn’t sure of just how terrible her visage would be to Jason.

“Gunther mentioned the shade lands earlier. He said you could watch me from there, didn’t he?” Jason kept his voice low. “You never told me what they were.”

Henry frowned. All around them the clatter and rumble of more earthly pursuits rose and fell. Two construction workers debated their fantasy football picks. A scrawny Asian boy tried to convince the plump white girl next to him to come clubbing with him later tonight. And over it all the cooks at the grill kept up a steady stream of conversation and bursts of song as they shouted along with the classic rock drifting down from decades-old speakers.

And here was this fresh young man sitting beside him, so obvious in his longing both to know the truth and also to belong to a warm, mundane, human existence.

But the truth could change everything in this little sanctuary. It would make this diner—this whole city for that matter—seem like a world of happy insects frolicking on a fallen leaf as it drifted over the surface of an immense sea.

“Is it bad?” Jason asked quietly and Henry realized that the truth had to come out because it wouldn’t do anyone any good to keep it hidden. But it didn’t need to be grandiose. The hungry dead and the voracious darkness that held them weren’t Jason’s concern.

“The first thing you should know is that there are lots of other realms. The guys up in the labs like to call them infinite dimensional planes, but as far as I’m concerned they’re realms. Some are very small, others vast enough to contain countless worlds folded up within them. Some are nearly too far to reach, others sit right on top of our own. Irregulars deal with interactions between the populaces of those other realms and our own earthly realm.”