By week four, I wasn’t failing anymore.

  I was refining.

  The brew held longer. Cleaner. Stronger.

  I tested it on objects around my apartment first. A chair. A lamp. My coat hanging on the wall.

  I’d apply the brew, let it dry, then walk around the room like I was seeing it for the first time.

  My eyes slid past the treated objects like they were painted into the wallpaper.

  Not invisible.

  Just irrelevant.

  I started testing it outside my apartment.

  A trash can on the corner. I brewed it, walked past it six times. Nobody looked at it. Nobody used it. People walked around it without seeming to notice they were avoiding it.

  A newspaper stand. Same thing. The owner stood right next to it, but when a customer asked where the papers were, he pointed across the street.

  It was real.

  Undeniably, dangerously real.

  And I felt something I hadn’t felt in years.

  Pride.

  Not the fake kind you get from lying to yourself.

  The real kind. The kind that comes from doing something difficult and doing it well.

  I could make things stop existing in people’s minds.

  That’s power.

  Small power, sure. Useless power, maybe.

  But it was mine.

  And I was good at it.

  That’s when I made the mistake.

  I opened my mouth.

  I told Milo.

  Milo wasn’t just any loan shark.

  Milo was the loan shark Dimitri had borrowed from.

  Of course he was.

  Men like that don’t disappear. They outlive people.

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  I found him at his usual spot—a bar off Fifth, the kind where the lights are too dim to see what you’re drinking and nobody asks your name. He was in the back booth, same as always, counting money with the kind of focus most people reserve for prayer.

  I slid into the seat across from him.

  He didn’t look up. “You got my money, Garrett?”

  “No.”

  “Then get out.”

  “I have something better.”

  That got his attention.

  Milo stopped counting, set the bills down, and looked at me with the kind of patience a cat gives a mouse before it gets bored.

  “Better than money,” he said. Flat. Not a question. A dare.

  “Better than money,” I confirmed.

  I pulled out a small cloth bundle and set it on the table between us. Inside was a coin—nothing special, just a dime—but it had been treated with my brew that morning.

  “Pick it up,” I said.

  Milo stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Pick it up,” I repeated.

  He did. Looked at it. Looked at me.

  “It’s a dime.”

  “Now put it down and look away.”

  He did.

  “Now find it again.”

  Milo’s eyes went to the table. Scanned once. Twice. His hand moved like he was reaching for it, then stopped. His face tightened.

  “Where is it?”

  “On the table. Right in front of you.”

  His hand moved again, slower this time, fingers searching. Then they touched it.

  He picked it up, stared at it, then at me.

  “What the hell did you do?”

  I smiled.

  Not a nice smile.

  “I made it irrelevant.”

  Milo stared at that dime for a long time.

  Then he leaned back, folded his arms, and said the words that changed everything.

  “Oscar’s going to want to meet you.”