The wall cracks and the plaster parts, forming a vulgar mouth-like gash of fleshy tissue from which an eyeball emerges and, blinking a hideous membrane, regards you. It drizzles out honey-like drops as it stares. The gash closes, leaving behind a harmless crack in the plaster and a gooey stain.

Mordred -- doesn't scream. Couldn't scream if he wanted to. Can't make his voice work. Can't really move. Doesn't know if anyone else is home, or here, or what's happening, except that there is a mouth in his house, his house which he shares with his brother who he promised he'd stay safe, and there needs to not be one.

The stain on the plaster oozes slightly.

He goes to the kitchen. He gets a sponge. He cleans up the oozing thing.

He makes a mental note to find a different place to stay so that if this continues to happen it won't be around his loved ones.

He should really have done that already. It's -- stupid, and selfish, even more stupid and selfish than he was already being -- that he hasn't.

Moving with Lev, because he's the person who agreed to take care of Lev. And also because Lev might be the reason there are mouths in the walls and therefore he should probably not leave Lev with Agravaine.

Until he leaves New York, he continues to see mouths out of the corner of his eye, but he's not sure whether they're really there.

Meanwhile--

Oswald's only really leaving his hotel room to see Lev and also presumably Anemone for tarot and non-occult book purposes, so he is probably going one of those places. Today he is going to see Lev. The walk is good for him. There's a refreshing chill in the air and he needs the exercise and when he's moving he can enjoy the outdoors without thinking about all the possible threats of being outside the small enclosed space he's arbitrarily declared safe and he's not going to lose track of where he is if he's got a destination in mind.

A man appeared on the street corner. He's wearing a very nice suit.

He has a face. His face has features, probably. It has a nose, and ears, and eyes, and all of the other traits a face conventionally has.

He has... hair?

Which is... blonde? Or brown? Or red? Oswald can confidently declare that it is in fact some manner of color.

He approaches Oswald and says quietly, “Hey… hey there, traveler. I have something for you.”

"..........What do you have for me."

Suspicious glare. Conveniently for plausible deniability purposes this is almost identical to the glare he is almost always wearing by default.

He holds up a waterlogged tome. "This is for you. I brought this for you."

"If I touch that am I going to catch fire. Or drown. Or otherwise end up bodily harmed. Or mentally harmed."

"You will not be physically or mentally harmed by touching the book. Whether you are mentally harmed by reading it is a matter of your point of view."

The man's face has an expression of some kind. Presumably it is expressing an emotion.

"Who are you. Why do you think I'm going to take a horrible book from you."

“Just the messenger. Someone thought you should see this,” he says, patting the tome, “and I’m delivering.”

"Is that someone" he cannot pronounce that goddamn name "the Black Man. Or one of his servants."

"Perhaps."

He looks at the waterlogged tome again. Shakily, he says, "I'm not touching that thing without gloves."

Gloves appear. They were in the purveyor's pocket, presumably, because things do not suddenly appear out of midair. "These are safe to touch. Perfectly ordinary gloves."

...He gingerly takes the gloves and pulls them on, making steady eye contact with the place he is pretty sure the man's eyes are. (Okay, more the place he's pretty sure the bridge of the man's nose is, but that's beside the point.)

"The cost of the book is a secret. A true secret."

"You should give your prices up front. Any size secret?"

"Any size."

"What happens to it afterwards? Do I forget it? Does this give you power over me?"

"Neither of those things."

"......When I first taught Lacie how to play chess I would deliberately lose to make her smile. I never told her I was letting her win."

The man hands Oswald the book.

He winks once and wanders away.

He takes it very carefully, holding it away from his body.

And then he takes a detour to store it with the other books and another detour to fill Mordred in on this encounter.