unreflected

Julio compared it to converting to Judaism, that they had to try and talk you out of it first or you lost your guild token from all but the shadiest of orders. It reminded me more of Karen's vetting process for her 'donors'.

Usually he wouldn't have done it for someone he'd known less than a decade, but I had Karen to vouch for me. Karen knows a lot of people.

You'd be surprised how many inventions are reverse-engineered spells.

Karen collects gloves, and almost always wears them. I don't know if it's a holdover from when she was alive or if she just really likes gloves. Usually she wears simple silk ones, but I have seen her in kidskin, velvet, lace, PVC, and cashmere. Some of them are perfumed. It's her only real fashion affectation; she half-heartedly tries to blend in otherwise.

Julio sells his charms on Etsy and eBay. They're mostly pretty crude-looking, stone beads and wire. He's capable of really nice work and if he knows you he'll do some amazing stuff on commission, but for a generic protection charm going to a stranger he likes to keep it simple.

I had Julio clocked even before I heard his ringtone. But from the way he looked at me when his phone rang I could tell he'd clocked me too. We'd seen each other on the bus a couple of times, I think, before we ran into each other in the bulk herbs section of the health food store.

That was the first time we actually talked, though. Turns out he only moved here a few months ago. He was looking for a good place to get some rutilated quartz. I wrote the directions down for him, because the place is on one of those tricky kinds of streets.

The current polite terminology is 'obligate sentivore'. That applies to any being that has to feed on thinking creatures to survive. Vampires, wendigo, redcaps, all the classics, but mostly things most people with a standard consensus reality tunnel have never heard of. The smart ones are good at keeping a low profile.

There's always been an underground grapevine of sorts, a way for suicidal types to offer themselves up. It's a lot easier since the internet got firmly entrenched, but it still takes luck and careful searching to find the real thing. If it was too easy to get a one-way ticket, it'd draw too much attention, and your average OS is all about avoiding attention.