They stay mostly out of sight, and alternate which is in front and most visible, but the three of them keep recurring the whole way back.

Uh huh.

He reaches his apartment building, then. Do they follow him in? How near the building are they if not?

Almost as soon as he's through the front door there's a knock on it. It's predictably one of the three.

They don't know he knew they were there, so of course the timing was sheer coincidence.

...uh huh.

He can't call anyone, he can't text people—why, forties, why—he can't very well do what he was planning to do—he sighs and opens the door.

The woman on the other side is wearing a somewhat forced friendly smile, but when she sees there's no one else in view she stops bothering with it and goes back to being visibly on high alert. "You're Sam, aren't you. The disguise slowed us down a bit. Is here safe to talk?"

"Disguise—is that what you're going to call it when it's a boy day," he sighs. "You have been obviously following me for a while, I'm not positive I should give you the benefit of the doubt."

"I meant when you're dressed as a girl, actually." She's briefly confused and then remembers it's irrelevant.

"I don't expect the benefit of any doubts. You can call me Margaret, if a name would help. But there's a rather big doubt around you, and what you might have been messing with."

"And what, pray tell, might that be?"

"I'm not speaking the name, but it's one of the worst."

 "It looks like we're doing this one the easy way. Show him." The other two have appeared out of apparently nowhere, which probably just means the door. One of them unbuttons his long coat (incidentally revealing magic items and weapons) and removes what looks like the end of a tree branch. Or like a black and white photo of one. Part of it is a normal brown, but most of the piece they brought is covered by a splotch of absence of color that the eye rounds off to gray. "Someone's been dealing with something that degrades the things around it, leaves them less, and unless they were aiming at random sticks it's powerful enough that it can do it just by being around. And the trail led to you."

"I swear I had nothing to do with whatever could have caused this branch to be so affected, except in the broad sense that it was probably magic, and have not to the best of my current knowledge any evidence that my memories might have been tampered with at any point," he sighs. "I also swear the obvious understanding my current best model of you would have of the previous oath in the context of this conversation is the one I intend. Is this sufficient to allay suspicion or do you need me to make any more oaths?"

There's an objection from another of the three, a man with a cross tattooed across half his face. "Whoever did summon it wasn't careful enough or it wouldn't have come to our attention. Could even be they didn't—or don't—know this would be a side effect. Swear you haven't dealt with any demons or diabolism and I'll buy it."

"I swear I have never dealt with any demons or diabolism."

"Okay." They don't apologize for the invasion. "That leaves the question of who did. We traced it straight to your workplace. Any other practitioners there that we might have missed?"

"Not as far as I know."

"And it's probably not following you or we'd have seen signs between there and here. You might be being framed. Who would know where to find you?"

"I could give you a list of all the practitioners who I know are aware of my whereabouts but I'm not sure that'll be useful at all to you, it's probably not a small list and probably does not include every practitioner who is in fact aware of my whereabouts."

"How many know where you're working? That's probably fewer, since you're new here."

"Here, probably just you guys and whoever tipped you off and the Lord's priests. But the Behaims in general would know—and I believe they're all chronomancers."

"Established family with a specialty. We'll look into it of course, but they're not the likeliest suspects. Priests even less so; no Lord wants diabolists around."

"That's my understanding, yes."

"Yeah. We aren't his inquisitors, but we do have his support. Anything potentially relevant you could tell us before we report to him?"

"Potentially relevant? Sure, lots of things. I don't think I know anything you don't, though."

"Lots of things like what? Someone probably just tried to frame you for diabolism, maybe they were even hoping we'd go in guns blazing. I don't have to remind you this is serious."

"I'm aware it's serious, I'm just saying—lots of things are potentially relevant to lots of other things, if I'd just said 'no' that'd be a lie. I also can't say I've told you everything I know, I haven't told you about, like, quantum mechanics—I'm just not sure how much to hedge these things. I'm new to the 'no lying' lifestyle."

"Most relevant thing that you don't know if we know?"