Percy stood before the open gates of the Union Law Syndicate building and pulled out his pocket watch.
3:40 AM.
The first sun had not fully risen yet. It sat low and pale at the edge of the sky, turning the street a dim gray. Everything was quiet except for the distant sound of a cart somewhere several roads over.
He clicked the watch shut and stepped toward the entrance.
"Hold."
One of the guards stepped forward, hand raised. Percy reached into his coat without a word and produced the badge. The guard looked at it, looked at him, and then stepped aside.
Percy walked through.
He thought about that as he crossed the grounds. A badge. That was all it had taken. The thing wasn't particularly complex looking either , engraved metal, a symbol, nothing that seemed especially difficult to reproduce for someone with the right tools and enough patience. Any halfway competent craftsman could probably manage something close.
Then again, he had been seen walking in here with Lyro yesterday in broad daylight. The guards had watched them come through together. Probably that counted for more than the badge itself.
He filed the thought away and pushed through the main door.
The entrance hall was almost unrecognizable at this hour. The daytime bustle had been replaced by deep quiet.
The chandelier above still burned but lower, casting softer light across the empty floor. Behind the long reception counter sat the old man, working through a stack of documents .
He looked up when Percy entered. Percy nodded. The old man nodded back and returned to his papers.
Percy made his way down the corridor from memory, counting the turns the way he had noted them the day before. Second left, past the noticeboard, third door on the right.
The office was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped inside. It was smaller looking at this hour without Lyro filling it with noise.
A wide desk at the center, two chairs across from each other, bookshelves lining the walls with documents arranged in varying states of order.
A map of the city was pinned to one side, several areas marked in different colors. A second smaller desk sat near the window, this one considerably neater, which Percy suspected belonged to someone other than Lyro.
The three stacks of documents Lyro had placed in front of him yesterday were still on the desk exactly where he had left them.
Percy sat down, pulled the first stack toward him, and opened it.
He had perhaps forty minutes before he needed to leave for Beningham Styles. Gareth and Miss Gracy were expecting him at the shop before work to see George Eats, and arriving late would produce complaints he did not have the patience for this early in the morning.
He turned to the first page and began reading.
The document was dry in the way official things tended to be, precise and without much warmth, but the information was plain enough. Spirits and souls. Basic definitions, neatly laid out.
Souls were what remained after a person died. That part was straightforward. What happened next was less so. Most souls passed through into the Spirit Plane, which sat within the Passive Plane, unseen by ordinary eyes. Some did not make it that far. A soul that lingered in the Active Plane long enough, for reasons the document listed as unclear or contested, could become a spirit without ever crossing over.
Percy read that part twice.
He had assumed spirits existed only in their own plane. The idea that something could become one here, in the same streets and rooms that ordinary people moved through, settled uncomfortably in his chest.
Spirits themselves were divided loosely into three natures. Harmful, neutral, and harmless. The document was careful to note that these were tendencies rather than fixed states, and that a spirit's nature could shift depending on circumstances the writers seemed reluctant to specify in detail.
He turned to the second page. More on the Spirit Plane. Its relationship to the Active Plane was described as layered rather than separate, which he took to mean they occupied the same space in different ways rather than existing in different locations. A spirit moving through the Spirit Plane could, under certain conditions, become partially visible in the Active Plane.
He thought of the thing in the alley. The way it had looked solid and not solid at the same time.
Third page. He had barely finished the first paragraph when he checked the watch again.
4:17 AM.
He closed the document, squared the stack carefully, and stood.
There was enough there to think about for now. He would come back tomorrow and read further.
He was halfway to the door when he stopped and turned back toward the corridor instead, making his way to the reception hall.
The old man looked up as he approached.
"Am I required to come at specific times?" Percy asked. "Or report to anyone while things are as they are?"
The old man regarded him for a moment.
"Until someone from the Eclipse Syndicate gives you instruction," he said, "you are not required to do anything."
"So I can come when I'm able."
"You can do as you wish."
Percy nodded.
"Thank you."
The old man had already returned to his documents.
Percy walked back out through the entrance, across the quiet grounds, and through the gate onto the street.
The first sun had climbed a little higher while he had been inside. The gray had warmed slightly toward the pale gold that came before proper morning.
He adjusted his coat and started toward Beningham Street.
---
Gareth was leaning against the wall outside Beningham Styles with his arms folded when Percy arrived.
Miss Gracy stood a few feet away, not leaning against anything, her posture suggesting that leaning against walls was something other people did.
Silia was between them, which meant she had probably been mediating something already.
She looked at Percy when he appeared.
"You're on time," she said, which from Silia functioned as a greeting.
"Told you," Gareth said to no one in particular.
Miss Gracy said nothing, which was its own kind of comment.
Percy stopped in front of them.
"Good morning," he said. "It's not far. Follow me."