"I haven't been sleeping right. Nightmares every night, feels like something's following me around the apartment. What am I supposed to do about that?"
"Have you tried a church? Holy water, maybe?"
"Already did. Didn't help."
"Then I don't know — find an exorcist? I heard there are people who do that kind of thing over in Manhattan..."
The voices faded with the footsteps, swallowed by the evening street noise at the end of the block.
Klein's hand stayed on the shutter handle.
He turned around slowly.
The empty ground floor stretched out in front of him, bare concrete and residual afternoon light, purpose still undecided.
He looked at it for a long moment.
Exorcist.
Haunted by evil spirits.
Something in his brain clicked into place so cleanly he almost laughed.
Of course. How had this not occurred to him immediately?
New York — and America broadly — wasn't just superheroes and alien invasions and government agencies with too many acronyms. That was the surface layer, the part that made the news. Underneath it was something older and more persistent: a population of millions of ordinary people who lived with fear, superstition, and a genuine hunger for something that could explain what science left unanswered.
Haunted houses. Unexplained events. Feelings of presence. Objects moving. Dreams that felt like more than dreams. A whole spectrum of experiences that didn't fit into any tidy category, all of them generating the same desperate question: is there someone who can help?
And America, specifically, was a uniquely fertile ground for this — a cultural melting pot where Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, folk traditions from every continent, indigenous spiritual practices, and imported belief systems from dozens of countries all coexisted and layered over each other. The demand was real. The client base was enormous. And the existing supply — priests, local mediums, self-styled psychics working from scripts and props — was, generously speaking, not impressive.
Klein had actual abilities.
Five Elements Talisman Crafting. String manipulation. Enhanced senses. The capacity to walk into a space and genuinely assess what was happening in it at an energetic level, and to affect it.
He wasn't a fraud. He was, by any reasonable measure, the most qualified person in the city to do this job.
Add the presentation layer — East Asian aesthetic, classical elements, the particular weight that "ancient Eastern mysticism" carried for Western clients looking for something beyond their own tradition — and the positioning essentially wrote itself.
High barrier to entry. Strong margins. Clients motivated by genuine distress who valued their privacy and wouldn't publicize the details. A single significant job could pay more than months of other work.
Klein looked at the empty ground floor and felt the whole shape of it come together.
I'm opening a paranormal response agency.
The name needed to be right. Not too niche, not too campy.
Liu's Hall of Purity — no. Too on the nose, not enough weight.
Five Elements Pavilion — too cryptic, too much explanation required.
He thought about it for thirty seconds and then had it.
Meridian Paranormal Consultancy.
Clean. Professional-sounding. Unusual enough to stick in the mind without being strange. And it said exactly what it was.
The space itself needed to match the positioning — not gloomy, not obviously mystical in a theme-park way, but carrying a specific quality. Low-key, precise, with the calm confidence of something that didn't need to prove itself.
Dark wood at the entrance. Controlled lighting — ambient low, with focused spots on display areas. A partial screen near the door that blocked the full view from the street and created a moment of transition before you were fully inside. The walls in a neutral textured finish that read as deliberate rather than decorated.
A display cabinet wall along one side — glass-fronted, dark wood, for talismans and tools that were functional rather than decorative. A long solid worktable along the opposite wall. A small consultation area near the back: two comfortable chairs, a low table, enough space to have a real conversation.
On the walls: a few landscape pieces — he'd paint them himself, infuse them lightly with Five Elements energy. Primarily for environmental calibration, secondarily for atmosphere.
He'd need a receptionist. Someone calm, presentable, good at the initial intake conversation. He couldn't run the front desk and the actual work simultaneously.
Custom clothing — two or three sets. The visual register of the work mattered; he'd thought about this enough to know that presentation was half the credibility.
Business materials. A website, eventually.
Klein pulled the shutter down hard.
Clatter.
The metal door dropped. He turned and walked to the truck with the particular energy of someone who had just figured out what they're doing with their life.
Early the next morning he called Tony.
"I need a renovation contractor. Fast and good. You mentioned knowing someone."
A chewing sound on the other end. "Renovation? You just closed on the house—"
"Can you make the introduction or not?"
"Yes! Yes." More chewing, then: "His name is Joe Miller — Old Joe. Solid work, his crew behaves, a bit above market rate but he delivers. Here's his number."
Klein noted it and called immediately.
Six rings before it picked up. A graveled, half-awake voice.
"Yeah?"
"Is this Joe Miller? Tony referred me. I've got a building that needs renovation, some specific requirements, and budget isn't the constraint. Can you come look at it this morning?"
A pause. The voice warmed noticeably. "Yeah. Send me the address. I'll be there in an hour."
Klein was getting out of the truck in front of the building when a white Ford van pulled up beside him. The man who climbed out was stocky, around fifty, gray at the temples, work pants and a tape measure already in his hand before his feet hit the ground.
"Mr. Liu? Joe Miller." He extended a calloused hand. "Just call me Joe."
"Thanks for coming fast." Klein shook it, pulled out the key, and lifted the shutter.
Morning light came in diagonally across the bare floor.
"First floor is the business space. Second floor is residential. Let's start here."
Joe had his notebook open immediately, pen moving.
Klein walked him through it, using his hands to sketch the space as he described it. The entrance screen — solid, partial, creating transition without blocking. Dark gray matte tile for the floor. Light textured wall finish, neutral. Controlled lighting scheme: ambient low overall, focused spots at the display wall and workbench.
"Built-in cabinet wall here — full height, dark wood, glass-fronted. Long solid worktable against that wall." He moved to the back corner. "Consultation area here. Two chairs, small table. Enough privacy that someone sitting here can't be seen from the entrance."
Joe was writing steadily, glancing up at the structural elements as Klein spoke.
"The overall feel," Klein said, "is professional restraint with a specific atmosphere. Not dramatic. Not obviously themed. But when someone walks in, they should feel that this place is serious about what it does — and that it has weight behind it."
Joe lowered his pen and looked around the space with the focused expression of someone constructing the image in his head.
"Like a high-end private consultation firm," he said slowly. "But with an older sensibility. Something that feels like it's been doing this for a long time."
"Exactly." Klein pointed at him. "That's exactly it."
"Alright." Joe flipped to a fresh page. "Materials?"
"Quality over cost. Eco-friendly, durable. I need it fast and I need it done right — if you can give me both, the budget conversation is easy."
Joe nodded once, clicked his pen, and started measuring.
They spent the next hour on the ground floor, then went upstairs.
[End of Chapter 18]
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