Oscar knows a snub when he sees one. He's not going to let it get to him. As soon as they get out the door, he turns to Terrence and makes a face like "You see what I mean?"

That night, Oscar dreams.

Faces look up pooled and expectant. He sits with the others, the violin pinched between chin and shoulder as he's seen others do, his left hand on the strings. The music starts up and the orchestra crashes into its brief life. But is he the only one playing a role? Isn’t the audience applauding and calling out in the wrong places? And the other musicians — they’re competing, sounding their instruments randomly. The conductor points at him. He glances at his music and there is the Yellow Sign — it writhes and squirms and seems ready to reach out for him. He must assuage it. Hastily, he starts to play to its rhythm, building the sound himself note by note.

Oscar wakes up with his heart pounding. He has a vague but compelling sense that something went wrong and that he's lost his only chance to fix it. This is probably the cost of reading Der Wanderer before bed.

That morning, they meet at a very good café. One of those places that's very cozy, where no matter how much the outside world sucks, you know this place will be warm and comfortable and have your favorite cake there. It's frequented by bohemians.

It has the same ceiling as the room back in Wales. This shouldn't be important. The first thing he should notice when he walks in is how nice it is, and ooh, they made their nice orange cake today. But the first thing he notices is the ceiling. The second thing he notices is the rotten fruit smell coming from the kitchen.

Today is not the day he's going to resist putting cream and sugar in his coffee. Or a pastry for that matter.

Sal likes dark chocolate and raspberries in his sweets. He takes his coffee dark and bitter.

He's getting the orange cake, for Old Time's Sake and the vague hope he can power through the sense of unease and disgust. (It has that same rotten fruit smell attached to it.)

He did not succeed in writing down all the bullshit that has happened recently. All he has now is a sense that the occult is much more real than it had felt previously, and the awareness that Inaaya should probably be the one to break that news if she wants it broken at all.

Inaaya has her notes on Roby's mansion and a story for how she got them that involves zero (0) cats and her pencil and her pocketknife; she orders black tea, quietly misses masala chai, and sits down between Terrence and Sal.

Terrence likes his coffee with cream and in quantity. He's forgotten to eat yet today so he is going to shove a large sandwich into his face during the course of this conversation.

"Alright, so. We've identified some of Roby's friends - Ben Best is a historian of old Britain. I have some ideas on how to get a letter to him but haven't had the time yet. Chris Parker is a books dealer who claimed not to know him and kicked us out of his office, and also maybe murdered a tramp. DeVille eludes us."

"I love it when people maybe murder people."

That's tasteful.

She notes down all three of those names. Maybe she can ask Sano about Parker sometime?

"Parker asked for my card and then threw us out right after. I don't know if we could have shown him something else to change his mind or if he just felt like making the snub personal."

"How pleasant of him."

"I'm not sure we need to care about him having a high opinion of us?"

"I don't care what Parker thinks of me. I just expected him to show a bit more concern for a friend. You know, loyalty."

Not everyone is like that, though. Sad to say.

..........wow okay there's some subtext happening there which she is not going to ask about. "If we want him to tell us helpful things we sort of do need him to think well of us, I think?"

"And his dismissal was so immediate, too. Very curious. I suspect he knows more that he's letting on, if they truly were friends, but we'll need some better tack to approach him with. Have any of you learned anything of interest, by the by?"

"Well, speaking of friends, I may have a way to get Roby out. I ended up speaking with Nigel Hugh Smith-- the painter, if you know him. He was a good friend of Roby's, but they had a falling out. But, he is quite willing to pay for Roby's medication on his release, on account of their former friendship."

Terrence is confident that Nigel is an intelligent, competent, hardworking, courageous person who is the best person to trust with this sort of issue.

He claps him on the shoulder. "Splendid!"

Inaaya has vague memories of a eunuch from the Dreamlands, but it's anyone's guess whether it's the same person. Painters are the sort of people who might cross over, though

She allso has suspicions about particular friends and falling outs, but with nothing to base them on she's sure not going to go any further than that.

Nigel Hugh Smith was, uh, a pre-Raphaelite? But this guy's alive, so, probably not. He's glad he avoided guessing in front of everyone.

"In less practical news, I spoke with William Way, who, well, found the bodies of the Roby family, but on a stranger point had a vision of his own death while reading aloud from Roby's book with him."

Roby's friends were a morbid bunch.