Raphael waited until the nearby crowd cycled through, then walked at an unhurried pace to the corner table where Miguel had been waiting.

"What did you find?"

He’d barely sat down before Miguel pressed the question, the urgency in it visible in every line of his face.

"The victims were brought in by bounty hunters. Humans and beast-kin both. They’ve been fitted with collars that prevent them from disclosing anything, detection or forced removal triggers a blade at the throat.

The involvement goes deep. There are signs of high-ranking municipal officials providing cover.

Whoever the bounty hunters are working for has official backing, which is the only explanation for how open abductions have been happening in a city this populated."

Miguel’s expression darkened. The bounty hunter involvement didn’t surprise him, those organizations took whatever contract paid, conscience entirely optional, the only question being the rate.

"Bounty hunters. And the timing is almost predictable."

He pressed his fingers together.

"A year ago, Zexi’s municipal government passed a regional ordinance authorizing the use of bounty hunters to apprehend beast-kin.

The official justification was public safety and Secrecy Legislation compliance.

But what happened to the beast-kin after they were caught, whether they went to detention facilities or somewhere else entirely, nobody tracked."

He drank.

"As for the people at the top... I can’t move against them on my own. The Church carries significant weight, but I’m one deacon.

I can’t speak for the institution, and we’re hardly unified internally, the power struggles within the Church have been running for centuries.

Convincing the archbishops to get involved would require considerably more than what I can bring to them alone."

He looked at Raphael without stating the obvious. If you’re actually Black Gloves, you should have other channels.

Raphael made a short, amused sound and let out a tired exhale.

"You think IFSA is more capable of addressing this than the Church? Do you know who Black Gloves operatives typically receive their commissions from? And who their targets typically are?"

Miguel waited.

"The commissioners are local politicians, businessmen, people with influence and enemies.

The targets are whoever represents a threatening enough competitor. Anyone with the right kind of rival and enough money to pay didn’t have any particular hesitation about asking us to resolve the problem physically."

Miguel looked at him with the expression of someone hearing a textbook revised into something unrecognizable.

"But that means your targets weren’t always guilty of anything. Political opponents. Business rivals. Not necessarily evil people."

"Who told you IFSA was a great and righteous organization? That it operated like law enforcement, pursuing justice and protecting the innocent?"

Raphael raised an eyebrow.

"It’s an officially sanctioned mercenary organization. The ethical ceiling isn’t significantly higher than a bounty hunter’s. Whoever pays, whoever the important people decide they want removed.

The Black Gloves remove them. It just so happens that those targets usually had some... disagreement with the people doing the hiring."

Miguel sat with this for a long moment, drinking steadily, saying nothing.

"...So there’s nothing we can do about the people at the top. And nothing we can do about this place."

"You’re a church deacon. By your rank, you’re a transcendent of meaningful capability. You came here without any preparation at all?"

Miguel smiled faintly, without humor, and looked at the ice ball in his glass.

"I came expecting a local criminal operation. A group of ordinary people with weapons. A handful of Demons at most, nothing that couldn’t be handled or called in.

I wasn’t prepared for the possibility that the people guaranteeing all of this, providing the cover and the protection, would be the ones sitting in offices in the city center."

Raphael understood the rest without needing to hear it. Miguel had arrived thinking this was a simple investigation, worst case, some combat, then a call to the Church for support.

But the picture was now tangled enough, and the adversaries official enough, that one deacon’s testimony wasn’t going to bring the archbishops into open conflict with a municipal government.

Unless there was evidence that made them impossible to ignore.

Raphael thought about the cameras in the private booths. There was no more powerful evidence than the footage the nightclub had been collecting precisely to bind its influential clientele to silence.

People with names and faces and reputations, on record, doing things they could not afford to have public.

He laid out what he’d learned from Janna in detail, emphasizing the surveillance system, and offered his suggestion at the end.

"I have a way to reach the owner directly. He’s a vampire, and he’s on my list regardless. If I can get him under control and force the footage out of him, the rest follows from there.

Anyone who can afford regular visits to this place has standing in some field, business, politics, whatever. Apply the right pressure and you trace the line back to whoever is at the top."

Miguel’s expression showed residual distaste for the methodology, and his conscience pushing back against it, and his conscience losing.

"You’re right. Once that footage exists as a threat, the risk of ruin outweighs everything else, no one in a position worth protecting would hold out against it. I don’t fully endorse the approach, but I don’t have a better one. You’re right."

He looked at Raphael.

"But I think there’s a however you haven’t said yet, and it involves me. You’re clearly experienced at this kind of investigation, more than I am.

But someone with your experience and your resources is still taking a calculated risk by approaching a church deacon. So say it, where do you need me?"

Raphael nodded.

Dealing with someone intelligent was considerably easier than dealing with, for instance, a certain young woman whose name was now attached to his membership card.

"I need your annual membership to get me into the underground level. I accepted a commission, completed it, and in exchange I have a private meeting with the owner. That’s where I act."

He paused.

"I know what you’re thinking. I can handle it, you don’t need to worry about capability. But my situation is sensitive, and the method needs to stay quiet. Noise is bad for both of us."

Miguel set down his glass and nodded. His alcohol tolerance, it turned out, was considerable, he’d been drinking steadily since they met and showed no trace of it in his eyes.

"If it serves the believers of all Gods, I’m willing to help."

He thought for a moment.

"Your reason for approaching me isn’t only the membership access. You want a third-party channel that can pass evidence to the Church without it being traced back to you.

That’s why you mentioned your sensitive situation, you need a credible intermediary, and you need it to be me."

Raphael smiled slightly. He pulled off his right-hand glove and stood, extending his hand.

"Exactly. A pleasure working with you."

Miguel looked at the ungloved right hand, not the black glove, and let something settle in his expression. He shook it.

"A pleasure. Raphael. I hope that when this is over, we don’t end up on opposite sides."

They looked at each other for a moment, and the rest of it went without being said.

---

Underground. Raphael walked half an hour of stairs before arriving at the deep space below, the members-within-members level.

No wonder the wraith-form couldn’t reach it. Not just offset from above, it’s genuinely far down.

Beside him, Miguel wore a complicated expression. A formally trained Church operative, walking in deliberate cooperation with someone operating entirely outside the law, this was not the kind of partnership his worldview had made easy provisions for.

At the bottom, he separated without a word, found a sofa, and settled into it with the patience of someone prepared to wait.

He quietly produced a forearm-length gilded wooden case from inside his coat, holding it in his lap with the ease of someone who had made sure something was within reach.

Raphael came to the door marked 04 and knocked.

"It’s me. Black market contact. The commission is complete, I have Count Jestan’s badge."

"It’s me. I’m here to see the owner of this place. I’ve already completed the task he assigned me."

Silence from inside the booth, then a sound difficult to classify, muffled, indistinct.

"Come in, gentlemen."

Gentlemen? Raphael’s eyebrow went up slightly. The vampire who looked down at everyone from his chin, since when did he have manners?

The door wasn’t locked. He pushed it open and stepped through.

The booth was modest in size. No bed, just an ornate desk, two chairs, and a sofa, the dark wood trimmed in golden thread that looked like it might actually be gold.

The lighting was dim, a single desk lamp providing just enough to illuminate the pale, slender hands resting on the surface.

Most of the room faded into indistinction, the rest hidden in shadow.

Two people inside. A short, stocky middle-aged man sat on the corner sofa, watching him with a closed, appraising expression.

And at the desk, the figure in the main chair, hunched over at an odd angle, wrapped in a black robe that covered the face entirely, only a narrow, pale chin visible beneath it.