Contractbound

Once he was done showering, he dried himself with a towel and put on a pair of pajama pants and a plain t-shirt. He would like to be bare-chested but he was expecting a client that evening, so he couldn"t show indecencies. Once he was dressed, he went to his office and sat at the chair after taking his coat that was hanging on the rack.

On the desk in front of him were now lying all the battle loots that he had taken out of his coat. There were eleven round objects that resembled rotting eyeb.a.l.l.s placed neatly on the wooden surface. The eyeb.a.l.l.s looked very disgusting and felt soft when he touched them. Aside from its appearance, it also had the consistency of a rotting eyeball without the smell. However, the object would oddly harden when under pressure and wouldn"t break no matter how hard he tried to squeeze it. Graham put back the eyeball that he had picked up carefully; it was an object worth six guilders apiece, so he had to handle it with care.

Next to the eyeb.a.l.l.s, there was a thick leather wallet that probably had belonged to the dead man. Graham had previously used Order to get rid of the decomposition smell sticking to it, so he could touch it without being disgusted. However, he was still careful; he wore a pair of gloves first and then picked up the wallet to check the content.

Inside the wallet, there were a lot of penning and duit coins, with some of the bigger stuiver mixed in; that was why it was thick and heavy. The coins" total value altogether was two hundred and ninety pennings, which was almost a guilder; one guilder equaled three hundred and twenty pennings. Besides coins, there were also two guilder bills, making the wallet an official gold mine to Graham. He took all the money and then checked the remaining contents of the wallet.

There was an ident.i.ty card inside the wallet, kept securely inside the cardholder. The wallet seemed to have belonged to a man named Gerwin van Beek. Graham stared at the name on the ident.i.ty card and he racked his brain hard. He seemed to have seen that name somewhere, either last week or two weeks ago, but he couldn"t seem to recall any face. He retraced his steps in his memory to find out who that man was.

"Val, help me with this one," he said while concentrating hard.

He sat there, staring intently at the small ident.i.ty card that he was holding with his right hand. His mind was revisiting all the spots in his brain from the last two weeks. After thinking hard, he finally remembered where he had seen that name; it was the name of the man whose wallet Luuk had stolen when he was demonstrating his ability for the first time. Graham hadn"t seen the man"s face back then; that was why the photo on the card didn"t trigger any memory in him.

"So it"s that man. Poor guy is dead now-- unless this wallet is a stolen item. Well, the money is now mine, so thank you," he said solemnly.

He didn"t plan to return the wallet to the Police because it could be easily traced back to him. Even if Valentine placed anti-divination on it, any medium he could think of could be removed easily by the Police, rendering his ability ineffective. He would just burn everything else and let the death of the man be solely the Police"s problem.

Ding... dong...

Suddenly the bell rang. Graham quickly put everything inside the safe and locked it securely. Once everything was well hidden, he went to the door to answer. He already had a feeling about who his guest was.

Graham opened the door and standing behind it was the woman from earlier this morning. It was Anne Smit, his client that got impregnated by the adult Tiyanak. He let her in and as they were walking inside, he noticed that her belly had gotten noticeably bigger than this morning. The Tiyanak baby inside her had grown that much in such a short time.

"Good evening, Mr. Hymes. How was the investigation?" she asked worriedly. She seemed more restless than she was this morning.

Anne Smit had commissioned Graham to find out who the father of her baby was, and he had found and killed him.

"Actually, I have found the father of your baby," said Graham heavily.

Her eyes opened wide in antic.i.p.ation, but she quickly controlled herself. Her restlessness gradually decreased and she seemed a little bit calmer. She took out a brown envelope from her purse and handed it over to Graham.

"This is the money for your work. Now tell me, who is it?" she asked inquisitively.

She hadn"t even asked him how much she should pay, but she had already given him money. Graham received the envelope and quickly checked the content. There were ten guilder bills inside, which was a very pleasant surprise to him. For a case like that, disregarding the dangerous element that wasn"t supposed to be present in the first place, he was lucky if he could charge the client five guilders.

"It"s Gerwin with a mole. He lives in an apartment on Oosteindestraat South," he answered, withholding the whole truth.

He watched her expression carefully, and she looked visibly relieved. It was as if a heavy burden had just been lifted off her shoulders.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Hymes," said Anne with genuine grat.i.tude.

She was about to open her mouth again, possibly to take her leave and visit the man, when Graham spoke while looking straight into her eyes.

"I highly suggest you go to the Police right now, and tell them you have a Tiyanak baby inside you. If you don"t go now, your life will be in danger," Graham"s voice was very convincing and somewhat ethereal. His green eyes didn"t break eye contact with his target for even a second.

"And also, you will forget about our meeting, which means I"m not the one who told you to see the Police. You just suddenly get the urge to do so," he added.

Anne Smit was in a daze. Her thought seemed to have lost because of Graham"s persuasion, and after a while, she nodded. She had received his order and was now burying the memory of ever meeting the detective deep inside her mind. After that, she got up slowly and left his office like someone who was spirited away. Only after she had been outside did she come back to her usual self.

Graham wasn"t worried about her as long as there was nothing interfering with his persuasion. The Police would be able to purify the Tiyanak baby inside her and probably even altered her memory to make her forget ever getting pregnant in the first place. Meanwhile, he could enjoy the money that he got from her. She would probably notice later that she had mysteriously spent ten guilders, but it was none of his business.

...

The next morning, Graham woke up feeling refreshed. He had slept earlier the previous night because the fight had drained a lot of his energy. He woke up at eight and quickly went to the kitchen to have a cup of hot chocolate for breakfast. Once he had finished his hot chocolate, he got dressed; wearing a black trench coat and hat, and stuffed everything he wanted to sell at the black market inside his briefcase and locked it securely.

He left his apartment and went next door to fetch Luuk. He had said he wanted to come with Graham to the black market.

Ding dong...

He pressed the doorbell and the sound reverberated inside the apartment, which could only be heard faintly from outside. Not long after, Luuk opened the door and came out. He seemed to have gotten ready long before.

"You didn"t take as long as yesterday," said Graham in a slight surprise.

Luuk was wearing a sweater and a pair of denim pants. There was a pair of sungla.s.ses hanging on his sweater.

"Yes. I slept right away yesterday and woke up early this morning because of that," he explained casually.

Luuk saw the briefcase that Graham was carrying and got curious. He wondered what else the detective would be selling today.

"You look stuffed," he said shortly.

"You mean loaded?" replied Graham.

"Whatever. What"s inside the case?" he asked curiously.

"The eyeb.a.l.l.s we got from the wraiths and some other battle loot that I have obtained so far," explained Graham.

The two of them left their apartment buildings and went to a bridge in Oosteinde, where they would meet up with Ivo. Graham had used a lot of divination the previous night and found out about many kinds of information, including Ivo"s face. Although he had supposedly met him twice, once when he beat up all of Jacco"s men and another one when they helped them with the theft, he didn"t know which one he was.

They took a public motor carriage and arrived not long after; it was not very far from where he lived. The whole trip took less than seven minutes. Luuk asked to split the bill to prevent Graham from running away again, and after paying for the ride, they got out of the motor carriage.

On the bridge crossing Amstel River, a man was already standing with his back against the concrete railing. Graham and Luuk approached the man cautiously and he greeted them.

"Good morning, Mr. Hymes, Mr. van der Meer," the man smiled in a respectful manner.

Graham observed the man in front of him carefully. He was wearing a denim jacket without the usual skull logo on the back, a cap to hide his blonde hair, and a pair of denim pants. He had a pair of sungla.s.ses hanging on his shirt under his jacket, ready to be worn at any time.

"You must be Ivo. Are you ready?" replied Graham.

"Yes. I"d suggest you two cover your faces. It"s safer that way. They don"t care about faces anyway as long as you have stuff to trade," he explained while putting on a facemask and the pair of sungla.s.ses.

Graham took out a black facemask from his pocket and put it on, and after that, he also put on his own sungla.s.ses that he had taken out from his coat pocket and combined with the hat that he was already wearing, he was now unrecognizable. Luuk had done the same, except he wasn"t wearing a hat, but a beanie that he always wore during his thefts. Now the three suspicious men were ready to tread into the black market.

They followed Ivo across the bridge and down the street. There a lot of people out there at the moment, and when they saw the three men, the people stared at them and kept a distance. The street that they were in had a lot of factories, and it was work hour, so people were busy going to work.

Ivo take a turn and went into an alley, followed by Graham and Luuk. There were much fewer people in the alley than in the street. Ivo then stood in front of a brick wall next to a big dumpster, which Graham understood should be the entrance to the black market.

"This is the entrance," he then said, confirming Graham"s belief, "The wall will ask you for a pa.s.sword if you ask to enter,"

"What is the pa.s.sword?" asked Graham.

"Wij Zijn Arm," Ivo said shortly.

"What a peculiar pa.s.sword," responded Graham.

Ivo then looked at the wall in front of him. With a loud enough voice, he spoke, "We want to enter,"

The wall suddenly changed color to a darker shade of grey. After that, some of the bricks started to stick out of the wall very slowly with a dragging noise like when two rocks were rubbed against each other. It was truly mesmerizing to watch. After some time, the bricks that stuck out former the word "pa.s.sword".

"Wij Zijn Arm," said Ivo again loudly enough.

Now all the grey bricks in the wall started to move in unison very slowly. Some folded to the back, some to the front, creating more layers of walls around the sides. In the middle, there was now a gap big enough for two people to enter at the same time.

"Is this a Contractbound power?" asked Luuk curiously.

He was amazed by the show, although it was literally just a bunch of bricks moving around. However, it was more flashy than any Contractbound abilities that he had seen so far.

Graham turned to Luuk and nodded, "Yes, but I don"t know which one. Must be a high ranked one since I couldn"t find anything about it,"

Ivo went ahead of them and entered through the gap in the wall. Graham and Luuk followed him closely behind and they were surprised by the sight they saw in front of them. It was a total contrast with the alley behind them. Ivo, who was in front of them, turned around and looked at his two guests with a proud smile.

"Welcome to Erbarmelijk Bazaar!" he said to Graham and Luuk.