MARICK POV
Cheap motels always smelled the same, a mixture of stale cigarette smoke soaked deep into curtains that had probably not been washed in a decade and cheap industrial cleaner that tried, and failed miserably, to mask the sour ghosts of strangers who had passed through the room before me, leaving behind sweat, desperation, and the faint residue of lives that meant absolutely nothing.
I hated places like this.
They were small, ugly, and painfully ordinary.
But they were also useful.
No one asked questions in places like this, and when a man paid cash and kept the curtains closed, the bored clerk behind the counter usually preferred not to notice anything that might complicate their shift.
I sat at the little circular table in the corner of the room with the crystal sphere re
