Faint felt a soft brush against her leg as the otter slid past her. She stretched her fingers, as if to catch a passing feel of its fur, before she caught herself and pulled her hand back. 

Unfortunately, there was little chance to share information with the other two people in the room before the floodgates opened. Barely a moment had passed since they had moved into the room before a new arrival interrupted them, followed by another, then yet another, each stranger than the last, with nary a chance to acknowledge one before the next made their entrance.

Faint found herself gravitating towards a corner of the room as the place grew crowded, and she quickly began to feel silly for thinking herself well-armed for the occasion when among the new arrivals there appeared a man with greying hair trailed by a skeletal giant, soon to be followed by a horned, metallic giant. Fortunately, as the regard of each of the new faces fell over the other occupants, they merely afforded her a moment’s attention before dismissing her and studying their more abnormal companions. Which suited her just fine. 

Suppressing a self-deriding smile, she noted that her confidence in her ability to defend herself shrunk the more convinced she grew that that she would not need to.

Until finally, one last person joined them. At the scent of smoke, Faint glanced away from the demure elven lady and the victim of her surprise tackle. A bespectacled, sharply dressed man looking rather advanced in his years puffed from his pipe, studying the bizarre congregation from the entrance. After a moment, the old gentleman made his way towards the bed, announcing what she had already guessed.

Here stood the man who had singled her out, and who was willing to pay a collective four grand for this band of strangers to listen to him. As it stood, the old gentleman wasted no time getting to the point.

Faint grimaced at the picture the man produced from his pocket. [i]Not simply the matter of lost earnings I imagined, then.[/i] The request had quickly taken a more personal cast. To herself, she noted that people had not only gone missing from the town. If the papers were to be believed, a number of corpses had been discovered as well. Were those unrelated incidents, or were those the corpses of the missing? Had she missed that information in the newspaper, or would they have to reach out to the authorities, or the affected families, to confirm that?

[i]How long ago did he say she went missing? Several weeks?[/i] If her premonition was correct, she did not like Abraham’s odds of being reunited with his spouse. Dimly, she wondered if there was a deeper meaning to the presence of a necromancer in their midst.
 
With some consternation, she realized she had already begun to think of ways to approach the problem. [i]This is wrong,[/i] she thought, [i]I should not be here.[/i] She had not exactly been trained to make people reappear. Yet at the same time, she could not help but feel a certain longing for the idea.

Faint shook her head sharply. Before she even considered riding out to see the clues the old gentleman mentioned, she needed to know more about this man, and the reason why he had chosen to invite her. 

As the otter stepped back, giving the others a chance to make their questions, Faint pushed away from the wall, drawing attention to herself. “My apologies if this seems rude,” she hesitated for a moment as their regard fell on her, but she soldiered on, “but who are you, exactly? I don’t imagine many would be willing or able to offer upfront payment like this.”

Their patron turned to look at her, nodding in understanding. He puffed on his pipe before answering. “As I said, my name is Abraham Garrick, and I'm a... realtor, of sorts. You see sometimes people come to Forsaken looking for a place to hide from certain people. This doesn't always work out as they'd hope, so when they find themselves on the run again, I'm the person they call. I help them to find a more permanent state of residence, one that they won't easily be tracked to. This business turned out to pay quite well, and I've been doing it for somewhere around thirty years.”

Faint blinked, trying not to let the surprise show in her face. “I see.” Depending on the situation, she might have business with this man completely unrelated to the current mystery. 

Though, considering her own financial straits, she could not imagine how lucrative such a career could be. [i]Unless that by a ‘more permanent state of residence’, he means the clutches of whoever was hunting them in the first place.[/i] That said, running a scam that dangerous for as long as he suggested would have been suicidal, if not impossible.

Though she could sense the other occupants waiting for their own questions, she couldn’t help but to probe further. “What makes you believe that we could do better than the authorities, or one of those other groups you mentioned? At the very least [i]I[/i] don’t recall having a reputation.”

"Young lady," he started, seeming almost affronted by the question, but just as quickly, he seemed to deflate. Dourly, he continued, "Frankly, I'm desperate, and you're all the best I could find. Each of you has a certain set of skills that I believe could come in handy on this sort of mission. You have the fighters, people who can protect you all, someone to provide food, a guide, people who can track, and people who can get information out of people. If the other groups could do better, they would have by now, and I'm sick and tired of waiting for someone else to do something. I'm too old to go out there myself, or I would, so y'all are the best I can do."

Though she wondered which of those categories she was meant to fit into, the man’s demeanor did not seem like an act of any kind. Faint found herself looking away from the old Abraham. She guiltily reminded herself that the man had approached them for the sake of his missing wife. She could imagine how helpless he might feel.

“I can understand that. I’m sorry,” she said, stepping back to the wall to let another take the interrogator’s role.