They don't use his name. Never have, not once, not in front of me. Mr. Wick, or if someone's nervous, the one they send for the Boogeyman — and then the room goes quiet, like saying it twice is bad luck. I smelled him before I saw him. Camphor, mint, sharp, the kind of clean that means something is about to go wrong. After, it turns cold. Mineral. Like a door left open somewhere it shouldn't be. Give it an hour and it's worn leather, restrained amber, and smoke that has no business still being there, because nothing was burning. I asked, once, what happened with the pencil. I got one sentence back: it was, by all accounts, an ordinary pencil. Nobody has told me anything since, and I've stopped asking.
