The door to the shop was opened carefully enough, but it still set the bell above it ringing in a cheerful ‘someone’s calling’ fashion. The man who entered threw the offending object an irritated glare and then redirected the look into the interior of the building. The early morning light was bright and full of the promise of sunshine. It streamed through the window and filled every corner of the empty shop. Echoingly empty: a startling contrast to the cluttered, incense scented muddle it had been before. The place had been totally stripped. The counter was clear, there were empty rails standing around in muddled disarray, a number of equally empty hangers were strewn across the floor, and a few battered cardboard boxes occupied one corner.
Nothing else remained.
Nothing, that is, but a neatly folded sheet of paper, sitting on the otherwise empty counter.
The man in the doorway frowned, glancing this way and that as he cautiously made his way further into the abandoned shop. For a moment – just a moment – a sense of movement caught his eye. A shadow flickered across the inner doorway, and then vanished as if it had never been there. The man took a hasty step in that direction then broke into a run as a hoarse, wheezing sound drifted out from the back room.
“Damn,” he exclaimed, arriving just in time to see the outline of a highly decorative magician’s cabinet vanish into nothingness. He should have known the Sorcerer would have kept his TARDIS close to hand. If he’d been less incensed and paying a little more attention to details the night before, he’d have had a chance to disable it. But concern for his Slayer and her friends had sent him back out onto the street, leaving his victim of righteous violence to groan and nurse his bruises in peace and quiet.
Too late now.
Too late, in fact, to do anything but walk back to the counter and pick up the note that lay there.
Be seeing you, it read in a jaunty and far too familiar a hand.
The paper crumpled as the Watcher closed his fingers over it. The look of anger that painted his face would have made even the Slayer take a step backwards in alarm. He’d hoped – foolish hope, futile to consider and folly to contemplate – that this had been a one off visit, a passing whim for a creature who rarely bothered to account for anyone except himself.
He should have known better. The note wasn't just a taunt, it was a promise - and if there was one thing he'd learned from bitter, personal experience, it was to be wary of the Sorcerer's promises.
He rarely made them.
But when he did, he liked to keep them.
In the most twisted way that he could.