She will reflexively dismiss the phone-call and go back to chatting with internet-friends on her phone; only spammers call at this hour. 

Moments later a text message appears on her phone, it reads " Hello, this is Wilson Abernathy from Abernathy and Jones. We tried to reach you by phone regarding your uncle Johnathan Collins. Please call us back at your earliest convenience at [Phone Number]. Thank you" 

Okay that is actually the name of her legal guardian's lawyer she should probably get that. 

She calls the number. 

After a few moments Alecto makes it past the secretary on the other side of the phone and through to Wilson, who answers, voice calm and deep, " Alecto thank you for calling back, I want to apologies for the late hour but the circumstances necessitate timely action. Last night your uncle passed away, I'm sorry for your loss". He pauses for a moment before continuing " while as the executor of your late uncle's will I am able to manage affairs, the process would be smoother if you came back home"  

What. 

"What. How? When?" 

"They think it was a stroke of some kind, he was found by a group of his graduate students invited to dinner"  sigh " we shouldn't expect a coroners report for several days at least". 

"Okay. I'll be in Melbourne as soon as possible. Is there anything else I need to know?" 

Well. No. First, she should confirm the story. She doesn't know the phone number of her uncle's graduate students, but she does know the names of any of the ones he liked enough to invite to dinner, and half of them have linkedin and half of the rest has Facebook. She sends out a flurry of texts, without dropping the call. 

The next few minutes blur past as Wilson starts to wrap up the call reiterating the importance that Alecto return home to Melbourne with all haste. Her messages get swift replies, condolences and offers of assistance confirm her worst fears. She will never see her uncle again, never wonder at his insights, cringe at his jokes or revel in his pride. Johnathan Vincent Arman Collins is no more, remembered only by his beloved niece. 

Well, also remembered by a seemingly endless stream of enthusiastic grad students, apparently. Did the old bastard have any friends his own age? The thought sends a wave of grief flooding through her; maybe he did and she just never met them. 

She starts to pack, being more thorough than she'd normally be for the need of suitable funeral dresses (not that this is a problem, given her propensity for outfits which are black, lacy, and far too expensive) and in anticipation of shenanigans regarding her own possessions, scattered as they are over three residences in two countries, two of which are owned by a dead man (and one by a man who may as well be dead for all the good he's done her). Everything important, she's going to keep on her person, or at least in her checked baggage, unless it really won't survive travelling, and even if it breaks her heart to pack up a collection of knick-knacks mainly from Jonathan's journeys around the world that he will never look upon again. 

And because he (sob) taught her to be careful in such situations, she deems it wise to transfer a chunk of money out of his emergency credit card to her own account, and to withdraw a similarly large chunk of cash (in pounds and dollars) to conceal on her person and in her baggage. If the worst that happens is a lawyer making her give it back, then, well. That's a pretty good outcome. She wishes she could carry a knife, or really anything.

And sigh, because she really probably has to. She texts her dad, saying where she's going but not why. Either he already knows or she wants to get to the lawyers first. 

Hours pass. With bags packed, a flight from Heathrow to Melbourne booked, and a growing sense of unease, Alecto sits in the back seat of a black cab, staring at a text from her father. It reads, "Have fun. I'm really under the gun at the moment. We should find time for dinner together soon." The past few years remind her that "soon" probably means some time this quarter. Her father wasn't always this distant. In moving to London, he fled reminders of his deceased wife, with Alecto being the only one he couldn't run from.

A light drizzle matches the mood as the cab pulls into the international departures drop-off. After a flurry of motion, Alecto is left standing alone under the sterile light, bags by her side, and the familiar departures lounge ahead of her.

She reads self-indulgent fiction on the plane. Too many of her nonfiction books were recommendations. 

She's going to head straight to the lawyers office, on the principal of dealing with this as swiftly as possible. She's mastered the art of sleeping on planes (rich family helps), so she's not that ill-equipped to go bother lawyers immediately. She freshens up her appearance in the business class lounge bathroom first, though, the rote action a pleasant distraction, and then she calls an uber to their office.

As the Uber driver helps her load luggage, Alceto is jostled by a young lady who rushes past to greet a group looking for a taxi. No matter how many times Alceto makes this trip, the reversal of seasons always comes as a shock. Even in the morning, the Australian heat is already making itself known.

Well, the sooner she can get into proper air-conditioning the better. Lawyers are hardly going to go without in that respect. 

She checks her pockets after being jostled, not that anything genuinely important is in any pocket susceptible to picking. 

Her fingers brush an unexpected object, cold to the touch. Pulling it from her pocket, she finds an engraved silver coin polished to a near-mirror finish. Both sides of the coin are engraved with a web of interlocking symbols, devoid of any mark of denomination or origin.

What the fuck. She is going to rapidly pocket it so people don't see her marvelling at the possibly-stolen coin of not actually a language anyone has found significant enough to write a book about. She will try to memorise what she can about the mystery woman. 

And then, once she's safely in the uber and driving away from the airport security system, she will take it out to examine it more closely for mechanisms or tracking devices or makers marks or such. 

The coin is a marvel. Upon closer inspection, the many dots incorporated into the design that she first thought might be diacritics in some unfamiliar language are, in fact, minuscule engraved eyes staring up at her

That's sorta creepy. She loves it. Why did a stranger secretly give this to her? She is going to wrap it carefully in a spare handkerchief and keep it in a spare pocket. 

She should show it to her - Hmm. No. 

It's a short ride from the airport to the offices of Abernathy and Jones, and in no time Alceto finds herself once again alone with her luggage, facing a threshold. A modest two-story building, the office looks like it belongs on the heritage list. A large double wooden door with a brass plaque reading 'Abernathy and Jones' is the only detail proving she's reached her destination.

She'll try the door first and knock if it's locked. She's eager to get this over with. 

The door swings wide, soundlessly on well-oiled hinges, to reveal a small foyer and a graying, thin woman behind a dark wood desk—presumably the secretary Alceto spoke with briefly on the phone.

"Hello miss, may I help you?" she asks, noticeably curious about the bags in a pile just beyond the threshold.

"Alecto Collins. I called ahead?" 

Embarrassed that she didn't put two and two together, the secretary rushes to bring Alceto's bags in before gesturing for her to sit on one of the leather couches and disappearing down a hallway.

Before long, Alceto finds herself in Wilson's office. A study in mahogany and leather, the room is adorned on all sides with bookshelves laden with pristine bound books. Across from Alceto sits Wilson Abernathy, an owl-faced man with round glasses adorning his round face.

"Thank you for coming so quickly. I want to start by giving you my heartfelt condolences; your uncle was a great man," he says, pausing a moment before continuing. "According to your uncle's will, you are the sole beneficiary of his estate. While the state has yet to provide a death certificate, your uncle left very specific instructions that I hand this to you in person as soon as I learned of his death."

Wilson reaches behind his desk for a moment to retrieve something. In this moment, Alceto realizes that there is no computer on his desk, no laptop, and no tablet—just an ornate writing set and a stack of books. Before she has a chance to wonder at how odd that is, Wilson turns back and places a manila folder on the desk.

She still hasn't figured out how to politely accept condolences, so she just sort of moves on. She's glad to see that her lawyer is presumably not using chatgpt to save himself some effort. She's also glad to hear that there will be a relatively unambiguous lack of soul-sucking legal battles over ownership of various places she considers her homes, assuming he didn't have any secret bastards floating around to contest the will. 

She'll take a look at the folder. 

The folder has a weight to it that shifts when she picks it up. The plain manila envelope bears a stick-on label that reads 'For Alecto, from Jonathan.' Otherwise, its surface is unblemished.

And as she opens it to reveal that it contains blank paper and a key, Alecto manages to get the most godawful paper cut - like the paper itself was out to get her, a distracted portion of her mind notes, and spilling drips of blood across the paper. 

Her blood wicks into the paper, forming first a spider web of thin, crimson rivulets. Then, before her eyes, letters materialize, her blood as ink.

The letter reads:

Hi Alecto,

I must admit I have thought long and hard on how to introduce you to my world. This would not have been my preference, but as circumstances change, so must methods.

First, magic is real. Vampires, werewolves, demons, and witches all reside among us.

Whether you believe me or not, I will be brief because if you are reading this, the gears have already begun to turn. Don't fret, this is not the only note I have left you.

If you are reading this for the first time anywhere but the offices of Abernathy and Jones, my plans have gone drastically wrong. If, however, Wilson Abernathy now sits across from you, you need to draw up a contract with him.

Wilson is not only a reliable attorney, he possesses the ability to produce magically binding contracts. You need to get him to sign a binding retainer entering him into your service. Offer money; he likes money, and we have more than enough. If my estate is not yet in your hands, offer the location of one of my dead drops. There he will find ten troy ounces of gold bullion.

[address to a storage locker and what looks like a 4-digit code]

Do not sign away anything but money or gold, not just now but ever. Ensure the contract includes his services as an attorney and as a witch, contingent on further payment.

The key also in this envelope opens a safety deposit box in the Melbourne vault. In the box, you will find another note.

Try not to be followed.

Sorry for the first of several nasty paper cuts.

Love, John

She looks up at Wilson Abernathy in a new light. Who is this man, then, who is apparently a witch and a steward of a glorified ARG of her Uncle

"Do you have access to any unambiguous proofs of the existence of magic?" 

Wilson's tone carries a hint of surprise as he speaks. "Give me a moment. My practice isn't flashy, I can't conjure fire or vanish into thin air," he says, reaching for a sheaf of cream-colored paper from his desk. He dips an elegant quill into a silver inkwell, adding, "I do, however, have one party trick."

With several swift, practiced strokes of his quill, he completes his task and turns the paper towards Alecto. Her eyes are drawn to the margins, filled with intricate cuneiform writing, clearly transcribed with painstaking care beforehand. In the center of the sheet, written in a crisp, clear hand, the letter reads:

Contract made on this day, [DATE], between the undersigned parties:

PARTY A: Alecto Collins, hereafter referred to as "the Performer" PARTY B: Wilson Abernathy, hereafter referred to as "the Initiator"

TERMS OF AGREEMENT:

1. The Performer agrees to execute the following action: a) Stand upright b) Click heels together once
2. The aforementioned action shall be performed by the Performer immediately upon the Initiator's utterance of the phrase "There's no place like home."
3. In consideration for this performance, the Initiator agrees to provide the Performer with one (1) piece of barley sugar confectionery.
4. Upon completion of the described action and the exchange of the specified confectionery, this contract shall be considered fulfilled in its entirety.
5. Both parties acknowledge that this agreement, once executed, leaves no lingering obligations or responsibilities on either party beyond the scope of this document.

By signing below, both parties indicate their understanding and acceptance of the terms outlined in this agreement.

Alecto Collins Wilson Abernathy The Performer The Initiator

Date: __________________ Date: __________________"

The bulk of the text was evidently prepared in advance, the names 'Alecto Collins' and 'Wilson Abernathy', along with the current date, are written in fresh, still wet, ink.

Alecto thinks for a moment. What worlds are there, and what does signing this contract imply.

First world, magic isn't real. Signing the contract is irrelevant.

Second world, magic is real, her uncle was in on this. In which case, signing this contract would directly contravene her uncle's advice. It appears harmless, given what context she has, but she hasn't anywhere near enough context to actually be certain that her uncle actually meant "don't commit to magically enforced contracts unless you're only paying tolerable and fungible prices in them." And not say "he has the ability to devour the souls of anyone who makes a physical motion as a result of his contracts." or some such similar abstract side channel to the core principle of the contracts. The counterargument is that her uncle did apparently trust Abernathy to some extent. Was that trust magically enforced, or a relationship backed up by present force? She wouldn't have thought so, but there's a lot about this situation she wouldn't have thought, so. 

Third world, magic is real, but her uncle wasn't in on this or at least Abernathy isn't relaying an actual message. In this world, she has negative reason to trust the contract. Evidence against that: why? If the magic just needs a signature, why reveal magic exists. If the magic has a sense of justice to it such that she needs to know it's a magic contract, why not a sense of justice sufficient to require knowing what that contract does? Well, she supposes there's a version of this world where Wilson is a bad actor and also the contract in front of her is magical and it's what it seems, and this is just the first step forward to some more complex entrapment. Sje thinks in this case that she probably benefits more from knowing magic is real than from the costs of taking one step further into a social trap she's looking out for. 

She would like to be in the second world. The first world doesn't matter. But even in the second world, this is questionable. 

"My uncle specifically wrote that I should not sign any contract with you that had a price other than money or gold." 

"Jonathan was a smart man," Abernathy says, a fleeting smile crossing his features.

He shrugs and takes the sheet back. "How much change do you have in your pockets?" he asks, striking through sections of the contract with fresh ink.

She has no Australian denomination less than ten dollars on her person, but she has three pound coins in her purse and 6.5 riyal in various small change courtesy of an impulsive desire for icecream while waiting for a flight transfer. All things considered, she'd rather use the riyal for this experiment. 

"If this suits you, please counter-initial the changes and sign below," Wilson says, passing the document back with one hand while offering a fresh quill dipped in red ink with the other.

The contract now bears numerous modifications: sections have been struck through, and cramped additions squeeze between lines. Each change is marked with Wilson's elegant initials.

Contract made on this day, [DATE], between the undersigned parties:

PARTY A: Alecto Collins, hereafter referred to as "the Performer" PARTY B: Wilson Abernathy, hereafter referred to as "the Initiator"

TERMS OF AGREEMENT:

1. The Performer agrees to execute the following action pay the following fee WA: 6.5 riyal a) Stand upright b) Click heels together once WA
   
2. The aforementioned action fee shall be performed by due WA from the Performer immediately upon the Initiator's utterance of the phrase "There's no place like home."
3. In consideration for this performance fee WA, the Initiator agrees to provide the Performer with one (1) piece of barley sugar confectionery.
4. Upon completion of the described action and the exchange of the specified confectionery, this contract shall be considered fulfilled in its entirety.
5. Both parties acknowledge that this agreement, once executed, leaves no lingering obligations or responsibilities on either party beyond the scope of this document.

By signing below, both parties indicate their understanding and acceptance of the terms outlined in this agreement.

Alecto Collins Wilson Abernathy The Performer The Initiator

Date: __________________ Date: __________________

That barley sugar candy is a worse deal than icecream bought in the Dubai airport, but what can she expect, she's buying it from a lawyer.

She will sign the contract, having no idea what consequences she might have forestalled with this insistence.

"There's no place like home," Wilson says, a brief touch of smugness coloring his tone.

The effect is immediate. Alecto feels a cold pressure at the back of her neck and an intense, almost irresistible desire to fish out her foreign change and present it to the owlish man in front of her.

She will resist to the greatest extent possible without actually harming herself, and then relent, giving him her change. 

Well fuck. Magic is real. Or there's an alternative explanation, but "the mind control ray used to implement this is totally technology." Would be nonetheless sufficient to make her aware that the world contains wonders and horrors beyond her imagination.

"My uncle also suggested that I should hire you on retainer for your services both as a lawyer and as a witch. Do you have standard rates? And is it permissable for me to see the analogous contract you had with my Uncle." 

Wilson nods and hands over a leather-bound folio containing several contracts similar in design to the one Alecto signed earlier, except that the symbols encircling the margin are embossed in gold leaf.

These contracts document Jonathan's initial retainer with Wilson, along with several amendments. The first amends the remuneration from negotiated in-kind services to an eye-watering amount of money, and the most recent amends the confidentiality clause to include limited disclosure to Alecto in the case of Jonathan's death.

arcane terms pepper the contracts, but a few stick out. Jonathan originally agreed not to 'scry' or 'charm travel' within the offices of Abernathy and Jones; this was removed in a later amendment to be replaced with his agreement not to surveil other clients.

The folio also contains older, more mundane documents. One of these older documents has an elaborate house crest: three bees encircling a stone tower that looks more at home in the 1400s than in modern-day Melbourne. It appears to be a family tree. Down one branch, each generation has one member of the family with a small bee drawn next to their name, each bee looking different, clearly scribed by a separate hand.

Wilson puts aside a notepad.he had began writing in while Alecto investigated the contents of the folio "I tailor retainers to each clients individual capabilities," he explains. "For you, I propose a provisional arrangement: $20,000 upfront, plus negotiable service fees, for one year."

How much money does she actually have right now, inheritance included but disregarding plans for extracting money from her father. 

The emergency credit card her uncle gave her has a $30,000 limit. After questioning Wilson, she learns the estate she's set to inherit is valued between fifty and sixty million dollars, with modest real estate holdings in Melbourne, London, and Tucson, Arizona.

She's honestly more worried about losing access to the ?magic lawyer? than by the cost of him, then. But she can't force him to stay; there's a clause right there about exit rights (and what a good and desirable clause it is too.). She'll just have to be a good and desirable client. She'll read the contract in close detail, asking any questions she has, but taking this deal is a foregone conclusion - she needs allies, ones more topical to the problem at hand than her miscellaneous internet and university friends. She'll sign the contract. 

Also, apparently her Uncle owns land in a city she's barely even heard of. She makes a mental note. 

The contract she signs is nearly identical in design to the one bearing her uncle's signature. The moment her pen lifts from the paper, a cold chill wraps her bones from head to toe, momentarily intense before fading to a subtle presence.

"How would you like to settle payment?" Wilson asks. "Sadly, the state has yet to release your uncle's estate, so funds will have to come from elsewhere".

It can go on the credit card. Her personal savings could cover it, but that'd take time to liquidate. So would the gold.  If she's not solvent by the end of the month, she has bigger problems. (Her father would have to be also dead, or out of contact, at a minimum).

"I'll pay on my card, for now." 

After the payment goes through. 

"The contract is now officially in effect?" 

"After briefly glancing at his phone, the only piece of technology present in his office, he says 'It is. My services are at your command. What can I do for you, Ms. Collins?'"

She pulls herself up to her full height of seriousness and importance. 

"I have three questions off the top of my head. In order of difficulty: First, where, in your opinion, can I most effectively convert gold bullion into currency?" 

She pulls the mystery coin out of her pocket. She takes care not to touch it, holding it by the handkerchief it was wrapped in. 

"Second, Have you the faintest clue what this coin represents? Someone planted it on my person at the airport." 

"Third, what in the names of the hopefully fictional nine hells sort of mess did my uncle get himself into?" 

As soon as she sets the coin on the desk, Wilson snatches it up, momentarily forgetting her other questions.

"Not good. We are being watched," he says, standing from his desk, coin in hand. "Will you allow me to dispose of this?"

"If doing so is in my best interests, do so." 

Well, it's not like she hadn't considered the possibility. And the disregarded it, because who can use a limp of solid silver as a surveillance device? Witches, apparently. 

When the coin has been disposed of, she asks: 

"Do you know what they could see? Could they hear?" 

Wilson steps into the hall briefly to hand the coin off to his secretary, instructing her to incinerate it. He returns to the room, leaving the door open.

"I don't know the specifics of their practice," he says. "What I do know, however, is that through those coins they can see and hear practically anything. Having one on your person is not good for your health"

"That's a problem, then." They probably know the password to her phone, if they were paying attention. Her password manager would have concealed everything else, at least. She starts fiddling with her phone to change her password. "At least I feel that planting it in such an unsubtle way implies that there's not any other magical surveillance of that quality, because otherwise it would have been better to simply remain entirely unnoticed. Unless your next advice is a ten step program for magical information security that includes several potential leaks I couldn't possibly be anticipating right now." 

" I am aware of the existence of at least one more subtle tradition for surveillance but the are likely more of which I am unaware" Wilson sighs. " They would have seen whatever your uncle wrote to you in that note, along with the details in our contracts. You should know that each magical practice is a walled garden. No matter how hard I tried or who taught me, I could never see through one of those coins." 

"So our surveillance guy can only surveil and you can only do contracts? What's the more subtle guy's trick? What could my uncle do?"

Based on the content of the letter, she has lost the following secrets: what Abernathy can do and how the two of them are related, the location of both of the caches she was supposed to seek out, the passcode of one and the appearance of the key to the other. The fact that her uncle had plans at all, if they didn't know. Several of those were also lost by the conversation more broadly. 

"Not necessarily. Some traditions are more versatile than others, but yes, I can create magically enforced contracts, and that is the limit of my power,' Wilson explains. 'I don't know about our eavesdropper, but I would assume they don't have too many more tricks up their sleeve."

He pauses briefly before adding, "Jonathan was a practitioner of Phoenician charm traveling. He could travel instantly between linked carved cedar tokens."

"To go back to my initial questions. What sort of mess was my uncle in, that I have sinister plots coming up like mushrooms around me as his heir?" 

That explanation reeks of incompleteness - why would he forbid a travel witch to scry on him? But she's not going to push. 

"I don't know what your uncle got himself into. he was a bit of a fixer in our community he sometimes acted as a mediator between groups and would ask me to draw up contracts to settle disputes"

"to answer your earlier question, there are plenty of perfectly mundane ways to turn gold into cash, I do however know one group that would be more than willing to buy any gold your uncle left you in bulk and for fair market rates" 

"I'll keep that in mind if I manage to even get to my Uncle's caches before whoever's watching us clears me out. I should probably call the storage company." 

"Can you summarise the magical political situation as you understand it? Why aren't you going public with this stuff?" 

Wilson returns to his desk and sits down. He begins to explain:

"Let me give you Magic 101. There are broadly four categories that all magical entities fall into."

"First, you have practitioners. Some call us witches or hedge witches. This is the category that I fall into. We learn a magical tradition and use it to our own ends. Traditions are diverse, and no two are exactly the same."

"The second category are ritualists. Not usually worth mentioning, these are people who are aware magic exists and have found some scrap of it to cling onto."

"Then we have creatures. Vampires, dryads, goblins, and faeries - if it's inherently magical, it's a creature."

"Finally, we come to The Order Arcanum. They're the longest-standing magical institution. They call themselves classically trained magicians, somehow having managed to unlock the key to learning multiple traditions. They impose one absolute rule: you cannot establish a school for magic. Hope you never meet a member of the Order - they have been known to nearly wipe out covens that grow too large."

"Now, as to why I don't just reveal magic to the world, the answer is twofold. First, it would be all I spent my life doing. Without experiencing magic firsthand, most people are unnaturally resistant to abandoning their disbelief. Secondly, we police our own. It's better for everyone that magic stays underground. If ever a coven decides this isn't the case, they are usually dissuaded by other covens. And if not, you can count on the Order to come in and make sure they stop running their mouths."

So, cope, the fact that Order would murder him, and more cope. She barely knows two things about the magical world and she has a strong first contender for who killed her uncle, the professor of anthropology. She wonders how many of his students will drop dead in only barely plausibly deniable manners over the next month. Also, the order can teach people multiple types of magic, so that's her main method of threat mitigation out the window already. 

"What other things will people get murdered for doing?" 

" don't go to Perth, don't deal with the fey and don't trust anyone with mirrored eyes"

"... Perth. Really?" The other two make perfect sense. 

" I don't know why but Witches who try to leave Perth just die"

Never visiting one of Australia's most ecologically distinctive forest regions will have to be her tragic cross to bear. If she wants iron mines, she can go somewhere other than Perth. She's not technically a witch (yet), but even so. 

"And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that for every mysterious city-wide death field that you personally know of, there are five or a hundred you've never heard of?" 

" possibly, but most everyone knows about Perth and I'm unaware of any others" 

"Naturally." 

What else does she need to know. What does her enemy know? Too much. What can they do? Possibly anything. Are they the sinister conspiracy murdering anyone who doesn't fit into the vision of the world they have? She gives the best odds, with the rest split equal ways between 'it was a normal stroke and she's paranoid', 'he made an enemy in an ordinary coven as a magic broker' and 'residual incomprehensible magic outcome'. Possibly she's underrating residual incomprehensible magic outcome. 

What can she do, then? She could close this letter, go back to london, and pretend magic doesn't exist. She can imagine as many as several possible foe-motivations who would give up at that, and as many as several who would kill her because she made it cheap to do so. Also then, she'd never learn magic or get to the bottom of this mystery, and that'd be awful. 

She can go for the vault right now, follow her uncle's clues with every drop of skill and alacrity she possibly can. Can she outplay someone with actual experience at the game and god knows what magical advantages. Maybe. The world is full of teenage girls stumbling into occult power, probably, and a sinister conspiracy can't put their full weight behind only the competent ones. Unless they have precogs. Which they might. It's arrogance, but she feels well-equipped as far as amateurs go; she assumes that security shenanigans and world mythology were not an accidental preoccupations for her uncle to instil in her. But she's not better than a professional. Even with the edge that she's law-abiding and has nothing to hide and her hypothetical assailant is neither of those things.

Same proposition for the dead-drop, except it has all the risks and forty thousand dollars is worth less risk to her than answers. If she needs forty thousand dollars, she can get it in about two days by insinuating that a sufficiently nice car will make up for her father missing her eighteenth birthday dinner. Her father thinks himself a master of efficiently using money to make up for his inability to pay attention to things other than his work. He had gardening leave once when she was twelve, it was nearly worse than when he was properly employed. 

What else could she do, that her assailants wouldn't think to do. Visit her uncles house, his university office, the old family home out of the city. If she thinks they have dozens of people, or the magical ability to obviate that level of manpower to surveil every location (coins buried in every doorway?), then she's just uncomplicatedly screwed in the middle term unless they all get tossed in jail. She needs a bodyguard, probably. She probably can't afford to pay cash for one, even with her inheritance, in the long run. What does she do if she goes there and the signs all just point towards the vault, because her uncle couldn't afford - or wasn't able - to leave multiple entirely parallel chains of indicative letters for her. No, she's under time pressure, to obtain something which her uncle presumably thought was worth the risk of this entire setup in the face of whoever would be trying to kill him. So she'll have to be as subtle as she can about doing the straightforward and stupid thing, and run like hell if things look like trouble.

... She also needs to remember that not every suspicious magical thing is the direct avatar of whatever killed her father. She needs to not alienate every other possible ally under the possibility that there is a sinister conspiracy involved. That's fine, she can track conspiracy-membership and friendship-potential separately in her head, for now. 

So her plan is, tentatively, to go in disguise to The Melbourne Vault (what a confusing name for a glorified rent-a-locker facility) after calling ahead to clarify the situation there with security, and hope that her Uncle had an actionable plan.

This doesn't seem like Abernathy's skillset really, but she may as well ask. 

"Is there any other advice you want to give me, before I follow my uncle's advice and seek out his vault?" 

"Trust is hard to find, but not everyone is out to get you," Wilson says, getting up from his desk and proffering a hand

Obviously. The problem is, it only takes one person and she doesn't know who they are yet. She takes his hand anyway as she also stands up. 

"I'll remember." 

"Now, may I make use of your bathroom? I need to be less conspicuous." 

"please it's just down the hall"

She will go down the hall and get changed then, from her own perfectly stylish and elegant outfit into some jeans and a tshirt and a hoodie. It looks bad, but most people's outfits look bad, and blending in is the point. 

She comes back out.

"Do you mind if I leave my luggage here until I've confirmed it's safe to go to my home?" 

"Of course, I can have it delivered to a hotel or back home for you when you need it, just give us a call"

"Thank you very much. I'll be on my way, then." 

She takes a minute to move some stuff she might need into a backpack, then she orders an uber for the street on the other side of the block and goes to jump the fence and leave that way. 

Minutes later, a Toyota Camry arrives.The make and plate number match expectations, as does the driver's appearance.

Wonderful. She'll get in. 

The driver engages in brief small talk before pulling away from the curb toward Alecto's destination. The cityscape moves steadily past the window, and soon the car halts on a busy street, a few blocks from the vault. A trendy café with a mostly convincing minimalist aesthetic welcomes her.

Right. Now, she is a normal non-paranoid person who has a perfectly normal need to visit her bank. Normally. 

She does her best to not glance around constantly trying to see if anyone is watching for her as she walks there. 

The few-block walk from the cafe to the Melbourne vault is uneventful as Alecto weaves through the bustling sidewalk traffic.The vault resides in the subbasement of a sleek high-rise in the heart of the city. 

Parked on the curb directly across from the entrance is a blacked-out Range Rover, its tinted windows concealing any occupants. A large, hard-case roof box sits atop the SUV, which sits low on its suspension. 

Oh, wonderful. She makes a note of the plate number in her phone but generally does her best to pretend she didn't see that. She has a mysterious legacy to pick up.

She'll go to up to the staff member in the reception area.

"Hi, I'm Alecto Collins" (she shows her passport.) "We talked on the phone?" 

She's greeted by two professionally dressed individuals. As her passport is examined the young lady at the desk addresses Alecto" Yes, we have been expecting you, unfortunately both of our private rooms are currently occupied with other clients but if you are able to wait richard here can escort you down once one of the rooms is free" she motions to the man beside her then to a small waiting area " please take a seat, can I get you anything to drink?"