She leads the way.

"Mostly just what I've said? I was looking around a bit, I think someone else in the area might've also not shown up for work without warning - unusually so - but I'm not sure that's related... There was also a dude acting weird last time I went there, which was what got me glancing a bit closer."

He nods.

They reach the park.

”Okay,” he says, when they seem to have achieved relative privacy. “Do you want to tell me the details of the situation first- the guy’s name, what he looks like, the address, the same for those other people, all of that- or should I outline how I’m initially inclined to help, first?”

"...How you're inclined to help, yeah."

“I can turn into almost any animal I’ve seen, turn into mist, let other people turn into animals, do miscellaneous magic. If I have something that identifies the missing man, I can try to scry for him. I can’t get all the way to ‘unlimited range’ off of anything you can give me, but blood or hair would let me find him, if he’s still inside city limits. I’m inclined to scry for people, spy on people, talk to people, act as an extra set of eyes and hands, as you’d like; I’m not inclined to go to anyone official without your say-so.

"How detectable is your magic - druids can turn into animals, too, but you can spot it if you know a lot about animal behavior or if you can detect magic, I heard."

"I mean, he probably can't detect magic, but."

"I might be able to find hair? Blood won't be a thing, though. The suspicious guy is - maybe the missing guy's grandson, maybe someone he's covering for, it's really not clear. He's from the same place as the missing guy, and. Uh. A really bad liar. So I don't know what's going on but I know every excuse he's given was bogus."

“If I tried shapeshifting and didn’t have my particular knack for it, those would be problems. I do, and they aren’t. Have I given you enough information that you can give me a more complete tactical breakdown, or do you have other concerns?”

"Right. So - last night I went in to do my laundry. The laundromat's owner's - let's call him grandson, Gregari - was hanging around. Late at night, no one's around. Gregari starts babbling about how he's the only one there, Mister Petiv is... And then he kind of stuttered around, said sleeping, because that's what you do at night, you sleep, unless you are running an all night laundry like Gregari. I was tired, thinking, okay, whatever, he's weird... Then I tripped over this jacket on the floor. It was damp and sticky and Gregari distracted me before I could look under it, and he cleaned it up while I wasn't looking, but he missed a tooth.

"And he missed the yelling I heard from the employee room, and - I get dreams. Usually they're weird, talking to dead people who give me cryptic but useful advice, but this - this was above and beyond. Partially prophetic, which hasn't happened in a couple generations, but... Petiv is definitely missing. I'm not sure he's in the city. I'm not sure he's - I want to say on this planet, but 'in this reality' might be better because he was in the dream-place. Didn't really get a chance to talk to him, just saw him sitting, trapped. I don't just randomly trust even my dreams, so I did some snooping, and Gregari's been acting weird for a while, and Petiv went missing two days ago. No warning. People heard an argument, but... It's the part of town where you mind your own business. No one intervened, no one will admit to seeing anything."

"I have a thing from the dream-place, if that helps with scrying. My grandmother handed me a scarf, said I'd need it. I also kind of bled there a bit."

“Okay, so that sounds like Gregari went on drugs, had an argument, murdered his grandfather, eventually dismembered the body, and happened to be really clumsy about disposing of evidence, because he was on drugs, but the thing with the dream-place complicates things... I have no idea what to make of all that, honestly. Maybe it’ll click together if I spend a while as a fly on the wall, or if the scrying pans out. I don’t imagine you kept the tooth?”

"I don't have it on me, but I know where it is, I initially figured someone might want it back before stuff started getting freaky."

“It’d be real weird if you’d kept it in your pocket during your shift. Teeth are actually better than hair or blood, might be enough for me to try past-scrying... the scarf might also help, there’s not a ton of precedent. Could you tell me more about the prophetic dream - did it happen before or after the thing with the tooth, what did you see besides Petiv...”

"Before. I got overwhelmingly sleepy at the laundromat - not sure if that was supernatural or not, I hadn't slept in a while - before too many alarm bells went off, and took a nap on a bench. I saw... Not everything is translatable? But for the bulk of it I was a child talking to my dead grandmother. I was drawing a thing I was insisting on keeping from - well, my older self? Because it wasn't done yet, but I know it was green and scrunched up and hard to draw because it's weird, weird and in a lot of places all at once... And kid-me was talking to my grandmother about monsters, and what to do when you're scared and you're facing something bigger and meaner than you. This was - an altered memory. Petiv showed up, arguing with my mom about eyes, there was a dog with a green snake... And then my grandmother gave me her scarf, because it might help, and I woke up with it in my hand."

"This is sounding... grander, than a missing person's case. I'm increasingly suspicious that it’s important for this to be unravelled quickly. Is there anything else we need to cover, before you get the tooth and scarf?"

She hesitates, takes a deep breath, then shakes her head. "I don't think so, but I could be forgetting something. And supernaturally weird stuff's not too uncommon around here, unfortunately. I don't know if it gets any bigger than 'my dreams are communicating he's a doppelganger, but weirdly'."

“I can still see why the city doesn’t put that in their brochures. Lead the way?”

She will. "Less so than a lot of planets. Half the immigrants I talk to are surprised we're so normal."

The laundromat's a few blocks over, in a more rundown part of town. The lights don't all seem enthused about working. Bina lives a few floors above it in the same tower, and stashed the tooth in her room. "Best place I could think to put it. My roommate should be out, but she's kind of - enthusiastic a lot, sorry if she starts chattering at you."

“I doubt that I’ll mind,” he says, following her in and directing no small amount of wariness towards the laundromat. 

Bina's apartment is small and cramped and obviously shared between two people often too busy to do a lot of tidying. She fetches the tooth from her room quickly enough, though, and then leads Shaitiren out and down.

The laundromat looks perfectly normal from the outside - a sign informs passerby that it's open all night, and it's a bit shabby, and somewhere between 'deserted' and 'not too busy.' Bina hesitates outside, but doesn't see the suspect.

"So, here it is. What do you need for the scry?" she asks.

“Nothing that’s not here. I’m going to do a past-scry on the tooth; I can get it to tell us both what the person it was attached to looks like. If we can confirm that it belongs to the missing guy, I can use the tooth to see if he’s still in the city, and, if so, where he is. If he isn’t in the city, I can try cludging something together that takes the scarf and the tooth as reference points and hopefully spits out something usable. If none of that works, I can come up with new ideas... and we should do this in an alley, being conpicuous is a bad idea.”

"Does my apartment work? Amil's in class right now, so..."

“That works.”

And then they can go to her apartment.

“- reitesu rewë shotho, reitesu rewë shotho,” gesture, gesture, a staff slamming dramatically onto the floor-

Who does the tooth - now floating in midair, covered in a semi-translucent illusion of the person it once belonged to, and making a quiet, ominous humming noise - belong to?

An old bald man, around Bina's height. Bina identifies him as the missing owner.

Great. 

Further spellcasting ensues.

Is he in the city?

He appears to be simultaneously in the city, not in the city, scattered as a fine paste across the city, in a hole deeper than the city drilling beneath Shaitiren's feet, and overlapping with Bina.

... he reports this result to Bina.

"Yeah that sounds like weirdness. I'm not certain the dream-realm is classically located in real space? The 'fine paste' might be diffuse magic that's confusing it, I'm the closest link to the dream-realm probably, but I'm really not sure what's up with the hole."