It was a box of room with an open and engraved frame door at its back, veiling the world beyond it with a curtain of beaded strings. It was more or less a pawn shop and apothecary of Others' wares and items of interest. 

At its center, two men stood in mid conversation. Several items were in the midst of changing hands. Noticing a darkness standing in the doorway, everything stealthily slipped into waiting pockets without another word. Silence took the room. 

When their eyes met the hollow black of Silas' gaze and  the ghost of Sky appearing over his shoulder, the visiting Other looked to the floor and quickly crept out the door. 

The owner of this shop, Victor, whom the Collector only had his interest set, was left standing alone with a playful frown across his face.

"You know, you both are terrible for business." He said with a wry grin. Deceptively looking the same age as Silas, age meant nothing in the world of Others. Victor was old. An 18th century vampire gypsy from France, having escaped the 'surplus', he always said, of the vampire hunters in Europe. America became the only choice for freedom. Upon landing, he founded his shop in the Markets, quick to establish himself as a hub of information to anyone who could pay his price.

Welcoming them both in, he returned casually to the back corner of his shop, to the cluttered desk and chair in the corner. Settled in between the shelves and tables of dark wares, Victor sat and signalled them forward out of the doorway and the direct sight of curious eyes.

"So, what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Did my name pop up on that list of yours? I hope not, I had so much planned for this evening." He teased sarcastically. He wasn’t in the least scared of Silas. Afterall, Silas was a paying customer.

From his pocket, a smoking pipe appeared in his hand. Pinching his fingers into a small leather pouch at his belt, sweet grasses were lifted out and packed into the pipe's bowl. Silas approached. He gave some slack to the chains, allowing Sky to remain floating close to the thick wooden beams of the open entrance but away from direct view of those in the hall. Already there were many in the Dark Markets who had seen them come that way.

Before long, figures began to linger in the Galipot's end of the hall. Remaining at a distance, gathering shadows waited on the bits and pieces of anything of interest they could catch. Information that could be sold.

"What has Victor heard?" Silas asked, curling wisps of his shadow reaching out to the Vampire. Victor was silent and calm but smiled in a nod to the Collector before lighting the pipe with the quick puffs of a few inhales and the fire of a match to the grass in the bowl. The flame lit his rugged features as smoke left his lungs in a stream of a long exhale.

"I don't talk for free." Victor said. There was a slight narrowing of the Collector's eyes, but he didn't object. He knew exactly what Victor wanted and as the Gypsy leaned back in his chair, legs spread as he relaxed, he took another long draw from his pipe.

Sky on the other hand was scanning Victor's wares, specifically, the half dozen recently dusted jars sitting on a shelf on the wall, each containing its own trapped fairy that fluttered against the glass. Their eyes pleading to the ghost for release from their clear prison.

Lining the walls, bottles and jars filled with the ingredients needed for a witch's spell or wizard's collection. Victor wasn't a witch or wizard but he haggled in any rare item that he came across. If someone wanted it, he would get it for them. Nothing was an impossibility with his far reaching connections. 

And there was only one thing Victor ever wanted from Silas.

"How much?" asked the Collector. Victor appeared to contemplate, tapping the end of the burning ash onto the floor. Relaxed in his chair, he cast a glance to Sky who was absorbed in his shop's trinkets and then back to the tall Collector in black.

"Two." Victor answered. Sky's head craned in his direction. Her immediate opposition was apparent.

"That's too much!" She blurted out, her hair rising on end. Silas held his hand up to silence her voice in his transaction. Pressing her lips together, Sky went quiet although it was clear she wasn't happy to do so. Victor appeared less than pleased that Sky had ever opened her mouth. Despite the words she spoke, she did not have a voice. Victor’s true feelings on the ghost in his shop were not a secret. Ghosts were a nuisance. Because she belonged to Silas, she was tolerated. 

"Your Sky seems to think that I am overcharging. I thought by now you both were very well aware that information is priceless in this world. The poor fools who lack connections are those that are devoured first." Victor's suave air and smirk never faded. He had a strange indifference about what Silas was. For him, business was business. "Two is being generous."

"What do you know?" The Collector's voice remained low and very cold. It rarely ever changed. Victor closed smile split open to playfully reveal his sharp canines.

"Enough to be worth three, my friend." He answered. Two was more than Silas would ever offer but this wasn't a usual deal. This was a deal with a vampire Other that had a taste for something very particular. Something that only Silas could give him.

"Tell me everything," Silas hissed, stepping forth as a tower before Victor who appeared very satisfied.

"You know what to do." Victor said, signaling discreetly to the elaborately engraved doorway at the back of his shop, where a black obscurity greeted him behind hanging strings of red glass beads.

Silas took a step through but Sky did not follow. She remained in the front of Victor's shop to keep any new customers from entering.

It was a small room at the back of the Galipot, kept as an area for Victor’s private dealings. There were fine rugs and two weathered leather arm chairs on which to relax and entertain a guest. Within reach on the small square room's center table were needles, vials, and the basics of some medical equipment. Silas sat on the closest chair to the door as he always did, the chains slowly settling to the ground.

As Victor took another inhale of the sweet grass from his pipe, he wasn't in a hurry to follow. He worked at his own pace and everyone else had to wait. When Silas' gaze wasn't on him, Sky's was on Victor instead. She was the Collector's second pair of eyes and she always watched the Gypsy with a fierce attention and a wide eyed suspicion when Silas wasn't looking. It was unsettling, knowing full well what she was capable of. His eyes narrowing ever so slightly, he did not like feeling uneasy in his own space.

Exhaling the final breath of smoke before the pipe's ember went out, he stood. Breaking the watchful eye he had on Sky, Victor turned into the strings of beads, and brought his attention to Silas.

The Collector was rolling up his sleeve of the hand that held the chains. Victor sat opposite to him, setting to prepare the needles laid out neatly on the table. To his side, the gypsy vampire reached into the drawer of a small table to grab an empty collecting bottle, quick to hook it to one end of a long thin hose while readying a needle at the other.

With a mastered knowledge of needle insertion, Victor worked fast. With eyes widening with intent, the vampire brought the tip of the needle coming to the white skin of the Collector's inner arm. Human blood was indeed the Gypsy's favorite and it didn't come along very often.

The needle point was pushed into the skin and inner vein of the arm of the hand that held the chains. Silas' blood flowed. A red snake travelling the length of the tube to where it flowed into the waiting glass bottle. Sky was staring at him and Victor could see it out of the corner of his eye, peering through the hanging beads in the doorway.

"Just promise your Sky will not try to consume me." He said in a low voice to the Collector, not caring if Sky heard or not. Shifting uneasily in his chair, he tried to block out Sky's unwavering gaze through the beads.

"Start talking." Silas spoke in a hiss, a warning to Victor that the Collector would promise him nothing. Victor brought his line of sight back to Silas' precious blood.

"Ah yes, well," Victor pulled his thoughts back to what he knew Silas had come for. Reaching back to the side table where another plate of sweet grasses was waiting, he tapped his pipe empty and repacked it. "I knew you'd show up considering the rumor floating around."

Silas' dark expression didn't change.

"What rumor?"

Victor expression was knowledgeably smug, preparing himself another pipe full.

"Lucifer's Soul Collectors have been disappearing..."

That was something Silas already knew. That rumor had been rampant for nearly a year.

“As the story goes, you are the last Soul Collector left.”

Silas’ lip raised in a sneer. There was no shortage of mortal men who would sell their soul to the devil for their desires. 

“I have heard the rules have changed between the Divine Authority and Lucifer.” 

This piqued Silas’ interest. There were things he was never told by Ms. Yona. Despite knowing there were other Collectors across the realm of the Others, Silas had never in fact met one. Now, he was being told he was the last remaining one. Why? 

Blood continued to fill the bottle. As Victor spoke, he kept a close eye on the red stream. Soon it would be his. Precious human blood. 

"I know who you are looking for, Silas,” Victor’s voice became quiet. “One would have to be an ignorant fool not to know.”

Sky peered through the beads. 

“Johannes Faust, the man who betrayed the Devil and was imprisoned within the Frozen Lake of Hell's Ninth Level, has done the impossible and escaped." Victor said. There was an insinuation in those words and Sky didn't like Victor's underlying tone. Swimming back and forth behind a barrier of beaded strings, she remained out of Silas' business dealings but very much aware of what was being said. Lighting the pipe with another match, Victor was staring at Silas, trying to ignore the ghost. "I heard he managed to do this with four others in tow. Now, the story is, Faust is about to perform his next trick."

"That would be?" Silas' tone remained frozen.

Victor appeared somewhat surprised as the Collector did not know. Everyone knew. Taking a moment to answer, knowing full well neither Silas nor Sky were going to like the answer he gave, Victor exhaled another slow stream of smoke.

"Kill Silas Meier."

As the words left Victor's lips, the ghost woman was suddenly through the beads and inches from the Gypsy's face. With hair raised and eyes as round moons, she didn't like Victor and he knew it. He didn't like her either. Ghosts were nothing but trouble as far as he was concerned. Their hunger proving more of a problem than they were worth. In her eyes and her vehement expression, the desire was real to rip his voice from his throat so that he could never speak again.

"I am not in the business of creating rumors. I only sell them." the Gypsy said, keeping his stare with the ghost inches from his face. He wasn't scared of her. The repercussions of Silas allowing her to do anything against him were not in the Collector's best interest. Silas knew that without question. If his name wasn't on a folder given directly to a Collector, signed by the Devil, killing him would certainly be a breach of Contract. An unsanctioned death would risk punishment from both Lucifer and the Others of that city. Lawless Collecting by the Devil's employed was not how business was done. "If such threats against your Keeper anger you so, I suggest putting your energy into stopping your due collections. Devouring me will only stop my voice, not your Silas' death."

His words pushed Sky back beside Silas.

"Who are the ones that escaped?" The Collector asked. He was dealing in a very precious trade and there was a very small window of time to get the information he wanted. He didn't have time for Sky and Victor's disagreements and there was only so much blood he could give.

"I've heard through the vine that they are the worst of what the old world of humankind had to offer. And that world has a long interwoven history so if its titles you're after, I can't help you. No one knows. Not that anyone's saying anyway," Victor replied as he prepped to switch to the second empty bag as the first was almost filled.

"Where are they?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Victor was not being helpful. Especially for the price. When full, the bags were changed, the full one placed in a small fridge near Victor's chair.

"What is Victor's guess?"

"They are everywhere and nowhere."

Silas didn't like that answer. In no way was any of the things Victor saying useful in finding Faust. Sky's expression hardened with concern as she floated closer to the Collector and he opened his mouth to speak his dislike but Victor spoke first;

"Faust will find you." Victor said. "You are, after all, the one he seeks." His smile had returned. He leaned in closer to Silas, who had not flinched the entire transaction. "Didn't you know you are the last? It would seem that Faust is looking to add you to a collection of his own."

Suspicion. For there to be no Soul Collectors was a bold statement as Lucifer's reach was far. It wasn't possible in Silas' mind that he was the last or even of a rare breed, despite Victor planting the idea. The world of the Others was filled with unwanted souls. The Soul Collectors were the final hands of death for the Others that Hell wanted. There could not be none.

The bottle was nearing half full and time was running out for his questions to be answered. When the collecting bottle was full, the question and answer period, brief as it already was, would be over.

"What warnings do the Others whisper?" Silas asked. Victor's attention remained on the filling bottle. To answer that question would bring them to their end of their little session.

"You give me too much credit for my knowledge. But I shall tell you this, Soul Collector Silas Meier, beware the crows and ravens."

Silas didn't give him that much credit. There was a look of skepticism in hearing him speak of murders of black birds as an omen. Yet in the parallel world of the Others, corvids meant something more than simply birds of black feather. The carriers of souls to Heaven and Hell.

"They will deceive you."