Serrin turned his mind back to the matter at hand and heaped a Wedgwood plate with bacon and eggs, hoping that the steam rising from the yellowed eggs would live up to the promise of some residual heat in them. The suits settled for coffee, toast, and what the jar label claimed to be Scottish raspberry jam. The mage vaguely recalled some blight having wiped out Scottish fruit-farming several years ago, but maybe the druids of the Wild Lands in the Grampians had restored the land of late.

The leaner suit, Jones, saturnine and with an almost polished skin, interrupted Serrin’s meandering thoughts. "We require a skilled operative to conduct some low-risk surveillance, sir."

The opening gambit was not unexpected: nice and vague. Serrin nodded without speaking. Let them come to the point.

"Our client has an interest in a certain key area of research," Jones went on. “And such research is being conducted in facilities in a city not far from London. Naturally, our client observes the proprieties, while aiming to conduct multimodality surveillance.”

Serrin winced mentally, hoping it hadn’t shown on his face. Where did these people learn to speak like this? He nodded once again, gratified to find that the eggs had retained just enough heat to warm the toast.

“It would not be frank to fail to apprise you that our client has initiated observations in the cybersphere.”

Cybersphere? Come on, chummers, cut the gibberish. I know what computerized snooping is and I’m sure you’ve hired a good decker. But what do you want from me?

The other man, Smith, took up the patter. As he began to speak, Serrin was intrigued by the small ruby embedded into one of the man’s teeth. Not exactly standard-issue for a faceless British corporate mouthpiece.

"Our client is anxious that these observations be enhanced by magical surveillance," Smith was saying. “Our client is aware of your reputation in such matters. He has heard among the knowledgeable that you are one who can deal with watchers. If I may put it so, those spirits who exist in the etheric plane in astral space. At least, this is what I gather that philosophers on such matters say."