The cigarette dangled from his mouth like a toothpick between the lips of an old-school detective as Tom watched the wheels go 'round and 'round. BAR...BAR...BAR. Gee, how'd the machine know his next move? Oh, well. There was an easy five hundred in his pocket. He put up a flag and it wasn't long before someone came over with a bucket. It only took a few minutes for the cling and clang to stop and not much longer for Tom to scoop it all into the bucket he'd been provided with. Turns out they were pretty big buckets, no matter how small they seemed when you first accepted them. With a salute to the machine and a ten-dollar tip to the man in the dark-red jacket, he headed over to get his coins exchanged for bills.

As he walked into the lounge a richer man, his harness boots making a whole hell of a lot more noise than his comfortably snug jeans, he looked around and saw that he wouldn't make too much of an impression. There were only a few ladies in the room and they all seemed to be taken. There was some kind of Badminton tourney being broadcasted by ESPN at the moment; that meant there probably weren't any races on at the moment, or none that were very important anyway. He sat down at the bar and the barkeep put an ash tray in front of him. He ordered a Miller in the glass and put out the Marlboro.

There were only two other people at the bar, but one of them seemed to smell of something half-sour and half-stale. He wasn't sure what it was, though it did seem oddly familiar. Ignoring the man at first, or trying to, he focused on the two nameless (and rather attractive, despite the copious amounts of sweat) female competitors. They were playing singles, it looked like. Had he been less of a runner, he might have gotten involved in Badminton himself as a high schooler. Oh, well.

Elves could be right bastards sometimes. The Elven Mafia, on the other hand were right fu-- they were great people. Ethan never had anything bad to say about them. Especially when dealing in such large sums as he had just recieved. The Elven Mafia needed more than just bodies disposed of. Ethan had the know-how. He tried his best to stay out of it, but sometimes they were quite persuasive.

He'd been called to a room in the casio's hotel where a young elf had gotten a little carried away. Their usual guy was on vacation. That left Ethan to clean up.

That was two hours ago and Ethan was still recovering. He was abstaining from alcohol at the moment. Years ago he'd found out the hard way that his magic use and alcohol made for a projectile mix. As such, he sat at the bar nursing a pint of ice and some soup crackers found in one of the pockets in his jacket. The badminton was boring, but it gave him something to stare at.

Then someone walked in who smelled of recent magic. He could feel the small remaining tendrils still hanging onto the caster disturbing the ambiance of the room. As the man sat down, he couldn't help but stare. It was a reaction, like when someone walks in wearing just a little bit too much of a wonderful cologne.

He didn't even realize he was staring, really.

Most people don't typically use their peripheral vision all that much, Oh, sure, they say they do - but when do they ever really use it? Well, some people used it a little too much and forgot to pay attention to where they were going. Tom was somewhere in the middle; he knew what was going on around him because he kept his eyes and ears wide open, but he also knew what was right in front of his ugly mug. At the moment, he couldn't help but notice out of the corner of his right eye that he was being stared at. Apparently, his good luck charm extended to getting a date with gays.

Actually, though, he didn't think the guy was gay; he didn't seem gay. Actually, he seemed interested in Tom for something else...wait a minute. That smell...of course. Something had been burned recently; it was an incense of some kind, but it was a potent mixture that he couldn't quite place. In any event, there were really only a few reasons to burn incense. The most common reason, of course, was to get rid of a bad smell. Tom seemed to have a sixth sense for magic or he might've thought just that. No, something told him this guy wasn't trying to get rid of rotten eggs or a wet dog.

He'd been practicing the craft.

After a moment of trying to make it seem like he might know he was being stared at but really didn't give a f***, he finally looked at the man casually while he sipped his beer. When he put it down on the bar, a soft clunk that could only be heard because the conversations going on in the lounge weren't too overly loud, he decided it was time to say something to the man.

"Witch?"

Not really knowing quite what to say about the guy staring at him, he'd said the first thing that came to his mind. A male witch wasn't actually that far-fetched, at least not as much as people seemed to think it was; Tom was one, after all.

Ethan blinked, smiling sheepishly and frowning a little. "Which what?" he replied, taking another piece of ice and chewing on it. "Left or right? Badminton player? Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean."

Habit. When Ethan was called a witch, it was generally good sense to play dumb or deny it. You'd be surprised how many people were still ready with a match when they found out you summoned demons in your spare time.

Yeah, the guy was an idiot all right. Either he was an idiot for really not knowing what Tom was walking about (which Tom doubted) or he was an idiot for thinking that he could fool Tom into thinking that the guy didn't know what Tom was talking about. Either way, the guy was a complete idiot. Well...maybe not a complete idiot. Anyway, he figured he'd better show what he meant rather than saying it.

He flicked his medallion lightly, as though it were just a habitual or casual act that meant nothing. Then he shrugged and took a sip of his beer. Yeah, that was clear as day. It couldn't possibly have anything at all to do with witchcraft, right? It wasn't like the pentacle was a universal symbol of the craft or anything.

Riiight.

Ethan's eyes were drawn to the medallion. Nice. Magical too, smelled strong. A few mental calculations later and he decided, hey, why not?

"I know people, you know, who would pay a lot of money -- a lot of money -- for that. Or if money's not your thing, a favor. Or power, I can get you a power trade for sure. If it's a soul you're looking for, well, that's a little trickier, but like I said, I know a lot of people." He paused long enough to crunch through another piece of ice and then smiled. It was his salesman smile, the kind that flashed by and made the general customer feel a little better about the world and Ethan. "Sorry. I haven't seen a piece like that in a long time and people are looking."

"People can keep looking. This one's not for sale. It's a family heirloom. But it looks like you and I are in the same business, if for different reasons."

Yeah...his reason being money, Tom's being that it was what he was good at. His grandmother had been a powerful witch and a brilliant herbalist; his mother had studied the same things she had, but Tom had expanded that practice to other forms of magic. The medallion had been forged to protect against a local coven that didn't like witches acting on their own in what they considered "their territory". In the end, she died of a heart attack - supposedly. But the medallion was taken by Tom's mother on his grandmother's death bed, for she had been with the old lady when she died - something the witches hadn't counted on. As a result, the medallion escaped them.

Now it was Tom's and he wasn't about to give it up. But he didn't need to say any of this aloud. All this guy needed to know was that it was a family heirloom. The less people knew about the medallion, the safer it (and Tom) was.