The driver’s door opened without a sound. You stepped out. You didn’t walk; you seemed to glide, a vision in an outfit that belonged on a runway, not on cracked asphalt. The weak winter sun caught the gold at your wrists and throat, flashing against the car’s tinted windows.

On a weathered picnic table at the far edge of the lot, secluded under the skeletal branches of an oak, Eddie Munson was hunched over a hand-drawn map. Gareth and Jeff flanked him, dice in hand. The sound of the car door made Eddie’s head snap up. His hand, poised to roll a twenty-sided die, froze mid-air. His dark eyes tracked your progress across the lot with a mix of theatrical disdain and naked curiosity.