# Chapter 4: The Investor's Gaze
The question hung in the stale air of The Gilded Flask, heavier than a tombstone. *Where did you get this?* Relly's mind, already a frantic hamster wheel of panic and disbelief, seized up completely. His mouth opened, but only a dry, clicking sound emerged. The grimoire, his only inheritance and the source of his terror, lay exposed under the predatory gaze of this woman. Her proximity was a physical assault on his senses. The faint, clean scent of ozone and expensive perfume clung to her, a stark contrast to the bar's miasma of decay. It was the smell of a thunderstorm contained in human form.
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of *run, hide, lie*. But his feet were nailed to the floor. Her stillness was more terrifying than any threat he'd ever faced. It was the calm of a surgeon before the first incision, the silence of a sniper before the shot. He could feel the raw, untamed energy of his transmutation still clinging to the bar, the bottle, the very air, and he knew, with a gut-deep certainty, that she could feel it too. She wasn't just looking at an old book; she was reading the signature of its power like a musician reading a score.
"It's… it's nothing," Relly finally managed to stammer, his voice cracking. He slammed the grimoire shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet bar. The leather cover felt cold and dead in his hands, a poor shield against the living threat before him. "Just an old family ledger. Recipes, you know? For… for cleaning solutions." The lie was so pathetic, so transparent, it tasted like ash in his mouth.
Pres Sanchez's lips curved into a smile that didn't reach her honey-colored eyes. "Cleaning solutions," she repeated, her voice a silken purr that vibrated in Relly's bones. She straightened up, her movements fluid and unnervingly graceful, and glided back around the bar to her original stool. The air seemed to rush back into the space she had vacated, and Relly took a ragged, desperate breath. He felt like he'd been holding it for a year. "A family recipe for a tequila that tastes like liquid starlight and forgotten magic. I must say, Mr. Moe, your family has a very particular definition of 'cleaning.'"
She settled onto the stool, crossing one impossibly long leg over the other. Her tailored trousers, the color of midnight, didn't make a sound. She gestured gracefully to the bottle of golden liquid still clutched in his trembling hand. "May I?" she asked again, but this time it wasn't a question. It was a command, wrapped in the velvet of corporate courtesy.
Relly's hands felt like they were made of lead. He fumbled for a clean glass, his fingers clumsy and numb. The clink of the glass against the bar top was loud, jarring. He poured a small measure, the liquid catching the dim light and shimmering with an internal luminescence that was definitely not normal. He pushed the glass across the bar, his knuckles brushing against the sticky wood. He watched, mesmerized and horrified, as she raised the glass to her lips.
She didn't drink it immediately. First, she swirled it, her gaze tracking the viscous liquid as it coated the sides of the glass. Then she brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering closed for a fraction of a second. A look of profound concentration crossed her face, as if she were deciphering a complex chemical formula. Relly could see the subtle twitch of her nostrils, the almost imperceptible dilation of her pupils. She was tasting it with more than just her mouth.
Finally, she took a sip. A small, delicate sip.
And the world stopped.
For Relly, it was a moment of pure, unadulterated terror. He saw her throat work as she swallowed. He saw her eyes snap open, and for the first time, the practiced, corporate mask slipped. A flicker of genuine, unadulterated shock crossed her features, so brief he might have imagined it. Her pupils widened, absorbing the light. Her lips parted slightly. She was tasting it. She was tasting the raw, chaotic, untamed power he had wrenched from the fabric of reality. She was tasting his soul, laid bare in a glass.
She set the glass down with a soft, deliberate click. "Incredible," she breathed, the word a whisper of awe and something else. Something hungry. "The structure is… unstable. Wild. It's like trying to bottle a lightning storm. There are notes of agave, of course, but underneath… it's ozone. Petrichor. The feeling of static electricity before a storm. This isn't a distillation, Mr. Moe. It's a transmutation."
The word hit Relly like a physical blow. *Transmutation*. It was the word from the book, the word that had echoed in his mind when he'd changed the water, the vodka. It was the name of his curse, his power. Hearing it from her lips, spoken with such casual certainty, stripped away his last layer of denial. This was real. She was real. And she knew.
"I… I don't know what you're talking about," he lied, his voice a weak, reedy thing. He felt a bead of sweat trace a cold path down his temple. The bar, which had always been his sanctuary, his small kingdom, now felt like a cage. The mirrors behind the bar reflected his pale, terrified face back at him, a stranger in his own skin.
Pres leaned forward, her elbows resting on the bar, her gaze pinning him in place. The predatory intelligence was back, sharper than ever. "Let's dispense with the pretense, shall we? It's exhausting." Her tone was still conversational, but it held the cold, hard edge of a diamond. "You are an anomaly. A blip on a very sophisticated radar. I represent investors who are interested in… anomalies. They find them. They study them. And they either integrate them or they eliminate them."
The word *eliminate* landed in the pit of his stomach like a block of ice. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to vault over the bar and sprint out into the unforgiving daylight, to never look back. But he was frozen. Her gaze held him, a hypnotic, inescapable force. He was a mouse, and the cat was toying with him, explaining the rules of the game before the final pounce.
"Your 'family recipe'," she continued, her voice dropping lower, "is a form of magic that hasn't been seen in this city for centuries. It's raw, untrained, and dangerous. It's also incredibly valuable. So, I'll ask you again. Where did you get this?" Her eyes flicked down to the grimoire, now lying flat on the bar, its secrets hidden beneath its innocent-looking leather cover.
Relly's mind raced. He couldn't tell her the truth. *It was my grandfather's. I found it in a box after he died. I thought it was a joke until I turned water into whiskey and then vodka into tequila and now a vampire CEO is sitting in my bar threatening to eliminate me.* The story was insane. It was a death sentence.
"It was my great-grandfather's," he said, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush. He latched onto the first plausible lie he could fabricate. "He was a… a bootlegger. During Prohibition. He had a secret recipe. A family secret. It's been passed down, but I… I'm the first one to figure it out." He tried to inject a note of pride into his voice, to play the part of the proud heir, but it came out sounding like a confession.
Pres listened, her expression unreadable. She took another sip of the tequila, her eyes never leaving his. She was letting him talk, letting him dig his own grave. "A bootlegger," she mused, swirling the liquid in her glass. "A family of… alchemists, hiding in plain sight. Making magic whiskey for speakeasies. It's a romantic story." She set the glass down again. "It's also a lie."
Relly's blood ran cold. "It's not a lie."
"Isn't it?" she countered softly. "The magic in this bottle isn't a recipe. It's not a process that can be written down and followed. It's an act of will. A fundamental rewriting of an object's nature. That's not something you learn from a dusty old card in a recipe box. That's something you *are*." She leaned in closer, the scent of ozone intensifying. "The question is, what are you, Relly Moe? And who else knows about you?"
He felt a wave of dizziness. The room was closing in. The walls felt like they were breathing. He could hear the frantic, frantic thumping of his own heart, a wild drum solo against the silence. He had to get her out of here. He had to end this conversation before he said something else, before he gave away the one thing he had left: the truth.
"I think you should leave," he said, his voice surprisingly firm, bolstered by a surge of pure adrenaline. He stood up straighter, trying to project a confidence he absolutely did not possess. "This is a private establishment. And I'm not interested in your… investors."
A slow, genuine smile finally touched Pres's lips. It was a terrifyingly beautiful thing. "You have spirit. I'll give you that. But spirit is a fragile commodity in the world I inhabit." She slid off the stool, her movements as silent as a falling leaf. She reached into her jacket and produced a sleek, black business card, placing it on the bar between them. It was made of some kind of metal, cool and heavy. "When you realize that you can't handle this alone, when the world you've accidentally cracked open comes crashing down on your head, call that number."
She turned to leave, her coat swirling around her like a shadow. Relly felt a wave of profound, soul-crushing relief. It was over. She was leaving. He had survived.
But she paused at the end of the bar, her back to him. "One last thing, Mr. Moe."
Relly froze, his hand hovering over the card.
She turned her head, her profile sharp and elegant in the gloom. "You mentioned your great-grandfather. A bootlegger. What was his name?"
The question was so simple, so innocuous, it caught him completely off guard. His mind went blank. He had no idea. He'd just invented the man on the spot. He opened his mouth, ready to spew another lie, but she wasn't looking at him anymore.
Her gaze had drifted past him, to the shelf behind the bar where he'd hastily stashed the grimoire. But he hadn't hidden it well enough. A corner of the ancient, leather-bound book was sticking out, its gold-tooled spine catching the light. Pres's eyes locked onto it. The casual curiosity in her expression vanished, replaced by an intensity that was almost frightening. It was no longer the look of an investor evaluating an asset. It was the look of a scholar who had just discovered a lost text, of a predator who had just scented its ultimate prey.
Her focus shifted entirely from him to the book. The air grew thick, charged with a new kind of tension. "That ledger," she said, her voice barely a whisper, yet it cut through the silence like a shard of glass. "It's not a ledger, is it?"
She took a step back toward the bar, her eyes fixed on the grimoire as if it were the only thing in the universe. Her professional detachment had evaporated, replaced by a deep, personal, and terrifying fascination. The hunt was over. The discovery had begun.