I adjusted my tie in the rearview mirror, the sun hung like a brass coin in the hazy Los Angeles sky. The burgundy silk caught the light—an investment, not an expense. Poor men buy cheap ties; rich men recognize the power in a good one. And me? Well, I was neither rich nor poor, but rather a man who understood that perception was everything in this crooked world. I checked my watch—a Rolex, genuine, lifted from a drunk businessman in Vegas last month—and smiled at my reflection. “Showtime, Rodney,” I whispered to myself. “The Sham Man rides again.”

  I stepped out of my ’64 Stingray, a gleaming candy-apple red that dominated against the drab suburban backdrop of Anna Davies’ neighborhood. The contrast was intentional—arrive in style, leave them remembering you. The car was the only truly honest thing about me. Everything else was smoke, mirrors, and the peculiar magic of human gullibility.

  Mrs. Davies’ house sat nestled between identical tract homes on a street lined with young trees that hadn’t yet grown into their purpose. Her lawn, unlike her neighbors’, bore the tender marks of obsessive care. Flowers bloomed in precise formations, each one a soldier in her personal war against disorder. I knew her type before I’d even knocked—a widow with too much time, too much money, and a desperate need to believe in something beyond her lonely walls.

  Tommy Vincenzo had called me yesterday about this job. Tommy ran protection rackets in East L.A., but we had an understanding. He’d find me marks with disposable income and emotional vulnerabilities; I’d give him twenty percent of whatever I pulled. This time, he’d gone the extra mile and slipped some sedatives to the old lady’s dog—her ‘precious baby’—to set up my miracle.

  “She’s loaded, Holmes,” Tommy had said, his voice crackling through the payphone. “Husband left her with insurance money she doesn’t know what to do with. Been talking about some fancy spiritual healer in the rich part of town, but I told her I knew someone better. Someone with a gift.” He’d laughed then, a sound like gravel under tires.

  I rang the doorbell, arranging my features into an expression of serene wisdom. The door opened to reveal Anna Davies—seventy if she was a day, but preserved with the meticulous care of the wealthy elderly. Her silver hair was set in tight curls, her makeup applied with precision that spoke of decades of practice, her dress a tasteful pale blue that whispered of garden parties and charity luncheons.

  “Mrs. Davies?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well who she was. “Rodney Holmes. I understand you have a situation that requires… special attention.” I held out my hand, not too eager, maintaining eye contact just a second longer than comfortable. The extra beat made people uneasy in a way that they couldn’t quite place—made them wonder if I could see straight through to the shadows behind their eyes.

  “Oh, Mr. Holmes, thank God you’ve come.” Her hand trembled in mine, paper-thin skin over bird-like bones. “It’s my Cornelius. He’s—he’s just not himself. This way, please.”

  I followed her through a home that smelled of lavender and furniture polish. The walls were lined with photographs—a handsome man in a military uniform, wedding pictures, vacations to places with mountains and lakes. The ghosts of a life well-lived before loneliness set in.

  “Tommy speaks very highly of your… abilities,” she said, glancing back at me as if to reassure herself I was still there. “He says you have a connection to the other side.”

  I smiled my professional smile. “Mrs. Davies, I don’t like to make claims about what I can do or cannot do. I simply help where I can. The universe works through me—sometimes in ways even I don’t understand.”

  The line was practiced, polished over years of delivering it to desperate people in rooms just like this one. Vague enough to mean nothing, specific enough to sound profound. The beauty of my profession was its simplicity; people wanted to believe, and I simply gave them permission.

  A small white poodle lay on a velvet cushion, breathing shallowly in the sunroom at the back of the house. Poor thing probably was confused as hell, fighting through a fog of whatever Tommy had slipped it. Probably phenobarbital—Tommy’s cousin was a veterinary assistant with sticky fingers and flexible ethics.

  “Oh, my poor baby,” Anna whispered. She knelt beside the dog. “He hasn’t eaten since yesterday. He won’t even look at me. The vet says there’s nothing physically wrong with him, but I know my Cornelius. Something’s terribly wrong.”

  I knelt beside her, studying the dog with a furrowed brow that suggested deep spiritual insight rather than the careful calculation it was. The poodle’s eyes were glazed, pupils dilated. Tommy had done his work well—not enough to harm the animal, just enough to make it look ill to the untrained eye.

  “I see.” I nodded, projecting grave concern. “Mrs. Davies, your dog is not physically ill. He is spiritually afflicted.”

  Her hands flew to her throat, pearls clicking against manicured nails. “Spiritually afflicted? What does that mean?”

  I held my hand over the dog, not quite touching it, feeling the warmth of its small body through the air between us. “There are forces in this world that science cannot explain, Mrs. Davies. Forces that flow through all living things. Sometimes, these forces become… imbalanced.”

  The quasi-mystical babble rolled off my tongue with practiced ease. In the corner of my vision, I saw her nodding eagerly, desperate to understand, more desperate to believe. I’d seen that look a hundred times before—people clutching at any explanation that made sense of their pain, any solution that promised relief.

  “Can you help him?” Her voice cracked, and I felt a twinge of something that might have been guilt in a man with a different moral architecture.

  I closed my eyes, breathed deep, and put on a show of communing with unseen forces. “I believe I can, but I will need complete silence. The veil between worlds is thin today, but still... difficult to penetrate.”

  She nodded vigorously and pressed her lips together, eyes wide with anticipation and fear.

  I placed my hands above the dog, moving them in slow, deliberate patterns. I hummed low in my throat, a sound I’d practiced to strike just the right note of otherworldly resonance. My fingers twisted through the air like an artist painting unseen patterns or a sculptor shaping invisible clay. The movements were meaningless, but they looked good—impressive enough to justify the fee I’d collect afterward.

  “I sense a darkness,” I murmured. “A shadow that doesn’t belong. Something has attached itself to Cornelius’s life force.”

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  Mrs. Davies gasped, precisely as I knew she would. People always gasped at the mention of darkness. They all believed in shadows lurking beyond their perception, waiting to drag down the things they loved. And they were right to believe it, though not how they imagined. The real shadows weren’t supernatural; they were men like Tommy, men like me, circling the vulnerable with practiced smiles and empty promises.

  I increased the intensity of my movements and added a tremor to my hands as if I channeled powerful energies. “I can feel it now—the obstruction. It’s strong, but I’m stronger.”

  I reached into my jacket pocket and palmed a small vial I’d prepared earlier—water with a touch of mint extract and a drop of luminescent paint that caught the light in fascinating ways. I secretly uncapped it as I continued my performance, and let three drops fall onto my fingertips.

  With a dramatic flourish, I pressed my fingers to the dog’s forehead. “Begone, shadow! Return to the void from whence you came!”

  The poodle stirred slightly—perfect timing. The barbituates were wearing off, Tommy hadn’t fucked it up after all. I made a show of struggling against invisible forces, my body tensing, sweat beading on my forehead from the exertion of my performance.

  “Mrs. Davies,” I gasped, “I need your help. Place your hand on mine. Your love for Cornelius will strengthen me.”

  She reached forward eagerly, her cool, dry hand covering mine where it rested on the dogs head. I felt her trembling—with hope, with fear, with the desperate need to believe in something magical in a world that had become too ordinary and too cruel.

  “Now,” I commanded, “call his name. Call him back from the darkness.”

  “Cornelius,” she whispered, then louder; “Cornelius! Come back to me, baby!”

  On cue, as if responding to her voice rather than the diminishing effect of the drugs, the poodle’s eyes focused slightly. He lifted his head, blinking in confusion.

  “Yes!” I cried triumphantly. “He hears you! The connection is reestablishing!”

  I made one final, theatrical gesture, drawing my hands upward as if pulling something from the dog’s body. “Be released!”

  Cornelius wobbled to his feet, still unsteady but visibly improving. He shook himself, looked around, and gave a small, confused bark.

  Anna Davies burst into tears, gathering the dog into her arms. “Oh, Cornelius! You’re back! You’re back!”

  I sat back on my heels, making a show of exhaustion. “The shadow is gone, Mrs. Davies. I’ve sent it back to its realm.” I wiped my brow with a monogrammed handkerchief—another touch my clients appreciated. Details sold the performance.

  “Mr. Holmes,” she said, voice thick with emotion, “I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve saved him. You’ve saved my baby.”

  I smiled tiredly. “No thanks necessary, Mrs. Davies. This is my calling.”

  “Please,” she insisted, setting the dog down and hurrying to a writing desk in the corner. “You must let me compensate you for your time and… your gift.”

  I made the obligatory protests—not too many, just enough to seem humble rather than greedy. “Really, Mrs. Davies, seeing Cornelius restored to health is payment enough.”

  “Nonsense.” She was already writing a check, her hand steadier now that relief had replaced anxiety. “Tommy mentioned your usual fee, but I insist on adding something extra. For the emergency house call.”

  She handed me the check, and I glanced at it with carefully controlled nonchalance. Five hundred dollars—a tidy sum for thirty minutes of theatrics. I folded it into my pocket without comment; drawing attention to money was vulgar, and Rodney Holmes was anything but obscene.

  “You have a remarkable gift,” she said, watching me with something like reverence. “Have you always been able to… to see beyond the veil?”

  I gave her the smile that had loosened wallets and opened bedroom doors from San Diego to Sacramento. “Since I was a child, Mrs. Davies. However, I’ve learned to control it better over the years. It used to frighten me, these… connections.”

  “How fascinating.” She leaned forward, eager for more. People always wanted more, wanted to feel close to the mystery, to believe they’d been granted special access to secrets others couldn’t see.

  I glanced at my watch. “I’m afraid I must be going. I have another appointment across town.” There was no appointment, but scarcity increased value. Never let them think you’re too available.

  “Of course, of course.” She escorted me to the door, Cornelius trotting behind us, his energy returning as the last vestiges of the drugs vanished. “But please, take my number. In case.. in case, well I don’t know.”

  I pocketed the card she pressed into my hand, knowing I’d throw it away once I was out of sight. Never return to the same mark twice—that was rule number one in the gospel according to Rodney Holmes. The second visit was where people started asking questions, where the miracles began to look suspiciously like mundane trickery.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Holmes,” she called as I walked down her path. “You’re truly a blessing!”

  I raised my hand in acknowledgement without turning, maintaining the mystique to the last. The California sun was lower now, casting long shadows across the manicured lawns. In my pocket, the check felt warm against my thigh, a tangible reward for intangible services.

  Back at my Stingray, I allowed myself a moment of satisfaction. Another successful performance, another mark left happy in her delusion. Everyone won—Anna had her miracle, Tommy would get his cut, and I had another payment toward the beachfront property I’d been eying in Malibu. The American Dream, one con at a time.

  My hand almost brushed the door handle when I noticed it—a huge ass raven perched on my driver side mirror, glossy black against the chrome. Its eyes, dark and liquid, fixed on me with unsettling intensity.

  “Shoo,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “Get off my car, bird.”

  The raven didn’t move. Instead, it tilted its head, considering me with what appeared to be judgment in its gaze. Birds shouldn’t be able to communicate contempt, but this one managed it with disturbing clarity.

  “Beat it,” I tried again, more forcefully. “Unless you want to be a hood ornament.”

  The raven’s beak opened, and what emerged was not a caw but words—precise, measured, and terrifying in their impossibility.

  “Repent, Rodney Holmes,” it said. The thing spoke with a voice like gravel stirred with broken glass. “While you still have the chance.”

  I stumbled backward, my carefully maintained composure shattered like cheap glass. The world tilted oddly, reality suddenly thin and unreliable.

  “What the hell—” I began, but the raven cut me off.

  “I said repent,” it repeated, ruffling its feathers in what might have been irritation. “Before we have to do things the hard way.”

  My mouth opened and closed without sound. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. Birds could not talk. Birds did not talk. They especially did not deliver ominous warnings like cut-rate prophets from a bad Sunday school lesson.

  “You’re not real,” I finally managed, my voice a whisper. “I’m… hallucinating.”

  The raven made a sound that might have been laughter. “Is that what you tell yourself about your ‘gift’, Sham Man? That it isn’t real? That the people you deceive are merely hallucinating their own gullibility?”

  I felt suddenly exposed, as if my skin had been peeled away, leaving my thoughts naked and vulnerable. “Who sent you? Tommy? Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No one sent me,” the raven replied. “I came on my own recognizance, as they say in your courts of law. Consider this a courtesy notice, Rodney. A warning before collections begin.”

  “Collections?” My voice cracked like a teenager’s.

  The raven’s eyes gleamed with something ancient and pitiless. “Every debt comes due eventually. Or did you think claiming our powers, sullying our names, would come without a cost? Your debt is coming due.”

  It spread its wings—wider than seemed possible for a bird its size—and launched itself from the mirror. I flinched, expecting it to attack, but it soared over my head and away, a dark shape against the deepening blue of the evening sky.

  I stood there beside my car, the check in my pocket suddenly feeling less like an accomplishment and more like evidence. My hands trembled as I fumbled with the keys. I dropped them twice before I unlocked the door.

  I gripped the steering wheel and tried to steady my breathing once safely inside the Stingray. A hallucination. It had to be. Maybe Tommy’s cousin had supplied me with some bad pills—I’d taken a few earlier to steady my nerves before the performance. That had to be it.

  But as I started the engine and pulled away from Anna Davies’ house, the raven’s words echoed in my mind perfectly: Repent, before we have to do things the hard way.