«Thank you.» said the tall man when Chico reached him, smiling at the Mexican while taking a glass. He was clearly out of place, even if he was managing not to show it with grace. His kind green eyes reflected the smile peeking out of his thick dark-brown beard, the same colour of the short, well-cured hair.

«He's a waiter, Fabrice, you don't need to thank him.» said the man beside him, smaller and incredibly blonde, with strange violet eyes and a scar, right over his left eye which was somehow miraculously unscathed. The blonde man looked just the right kind of crowd for the party around him. His overly paid clothing was making sure of it on every possible level.

«Come on, Egon, the man's working, it is only right to...»

«He's paid, he's not a slave, let's get back to our search, can we? I just want to find Eva, greet her and be on my way. You, waiter, have you seen Miss Longbottom?»

«I don't think it would be very kind to escape the party so early, the play hasn't even started yet...» Fabrice tried to protest.

«Jazz is playing. Not to mention we've already lost the first act of tonight's concert of Evgeny Kisin, and I don't want to lose the others. I won't be watching a dreadful pantomime while there's good music out there, somewhere.»

Chico passed his gaze from one to the other, without seeming able to get in to answer the question the man had made him, so he tried to slip away. But the moment he moved, the blonde man glared at him.

«So? Don't you speak English?»

«Desculpame!» Chico exclaimed. «Yo he visto la señora enter her house. Do you want me to go and fetch her?»

«Oh, finally, someone useful...»

«If you'd be so kind, tell her that Egon Brunswick and Fabrice Grasshopper are looking for her, thank you so much.» the nice man managed to cut through Egon's snarky remark, earning a solid smile from Chico and letting him go on his mission unscathed by the other man's upper-classy disdain.

«Smooth Chico! Way to go!» Banshee rejoiced in his ear, as he approached the well-guarded doors of the apartment. He quickly explained to the guards that he had to look for the señora on account of two friends of her who were leaving. The guards just let him pass through.

And, just like that, he was actually in.

The house was a blast of good taste and modernity. Light-wood furniture and some glass well-placed to look tidy but warm, with a lot of inside plants. A true lot. It was an extremely green house, and the entrance alone was roughly the size of the whole Casa Pollos. Chico suffocated a whistle under his breath and started thinking.

«Ok. The music box will never be in any obvious place. Ye have to look either fer a room totally inconspicuous or fer something high-grade, I'm talking security pad and retina scan level. And look for cameras, she will have cameras everywhere.» said Banshee in his ears, instinctively lowering her voice volume while Chico scanned the ceiling of the entrance. He couldn't see any camera, at all.

«Yo no veo cameras.» he whispered under his breath, reaching a wall and walking along it, anyway.

«They could just be very well hidden, stay sharp!» she replied.

Chico said nothing, closing his eyes for a few seconds and focused.

He felt the familiar tickling of magic rustle against his veins, and up to his face, under his skin, and beneath his eyelids. When he opened his eyes again, they were a light shade of orange, and he could see every tech object in the house highlighted with a small orange aura. Which, with the level of automation the house had, was kind of sticking his head right into a disco, but after a while he got used to it, and noticed that there were, in fact, no cameras to be seen.

Still, he proceeded cautiously, trying to focus on the wirings that glimmered softly behind the walls. If Banshee was right, and Eva kept her box under lock and key, the house's tech system would have led him to it.

He passed from the entrance into a small living room, after taking a little wrong turn inside a giant chef-kitchen in full stainless steel and white tiles. The small living room had a long table with a light wooden surface, eight chairs, a sound system that would have made many concert halls cry, and a lot of plants. From there, two doors led one along a narrow corridor, another into what looked like a small study. He left the door to the corridor open and entered in the study.

There was a small brown couch, a desk with an Apple computer that probably cost more than their yearly rent, a whole-wall bookcase and, again, plants. He was starting to understand why they called it "Sylvan Manor."

He kept trying to listen, but he couldn't make out any voices coming from any place of the house. Maybe Eva had already gone. Which gave him just more time for snooping.

He arrived in front of the library and started to look at the books. They were of every kind, from novels to essays, from physics to the complete series of kinky romance-porn novels you usually buy at airports and throw away at the next airport. Apparently, Eva, just like him, kept them all, shamelessly, right after two biographies of USA Presidents.

But he wasn't there to snoop about her life. He kept on searching for any mention of the music box, or something less obvious like a number code written on a well-hidden sticky note, but ultimately found nothing.

Nothing but a locked drawer, so he cracked his knuckles. It was high time to use his magic of something else than his eyes, and even Banshee couldn't protest this.

«Chico what the hell? Ye've gone completely silent!» as if she could read his mind, she reappeared in his ear.

«And this would be strange, if I weren't trying to secretly infiltrate a place!»

«I was getting worried!»

«Leave me be! If something... oh fuck, Banshee! You're such malasuerte!»

While he was talking, he heard the muffled sound of heels on moquette getting closer. Two silhouettes were approaching. One was a tall man, who apparently walked in a very wobbly way, slightly hunched for some steps and extremely straight for the others. The other was unmistakably Eva. Chico closed the study door, as slowly and as silently as he could, and didn't let it click, leaving a sliver open to better listen. At first, their words were unintelligible, but they became clearer while they got closer.

«...will be fun!» the male voice, with a heavy French accent, concluded a sentence.

«I don't know, uncle, is this another of the ideas that come to you when you listen to your cock?» Eva asked, clearly not convinced.

«She's an ibis, and you'll treat Tahmil with more respect!» the other exclaimed, clearly annoyed. «And she always has good ideas. So, if she says the music box has to go, has to go.»

«I don't feel very safe, knowing that's out of the house.»

«Nobody will touch it where it is. In plain sight, isn't it the funniest of places to hide something?» the man let go of a manic, creepy laugh. «You worry too much...»

The study door opened. Violently, in one motion. Chico, crouched behind it, barely had the time to jump up straight and look in front of him, his eyes blasted wide open, his back never straighter.

The man in front of him had short, black hair, and incredibly penetrating blue eyes. If Vopros's eyes were the coldest stare he had ever had to endure, this man's glare was something that chilled him to and through the bone. Something, dancing right in their depths, was so incredibly wrong he could feel it. He looked like he had just been fished out of a dumpster, with his absurdly expensive clothes all wrinkled and crumpled, his tie loose, his trousers' legs one down and one rolled up over the knee. He was missing a shoe in one foot, and the sock in the other, and was smiling like a madman.

Eva, on the other side, was simply quite shocked.

«Alfonso? What are you doing here?» she asked.

«Eva, dear, you didn't tell me you liked Mexicans. Would you like this one stuffed? I have a friend who is simply the best taxidermist.» the man laughed. Chico felt chills down his spine and heard Banshee, in his ear, cock the rifle.

«Bring them near a window. Any window. West-side would be best, but I won't be fussy!»

«Alfonso, I asked you a question!» Eva ignored the other man and fixed her green eyes in Chico's.

Now, Chico was many things. A coward, for starters, a brilliant improviser for second, and so on. Faced with the obvious threat to his life, he decided to go all in.

«Desculpame, señora!» he said, in a whining, almost crying voice. «I was sent to look for you by two of your friends, and I couldn't find you, and I was looking around...»

«So, why were you hiding in my study if you were looking for me? Why didn't you call me out loud?»

«I... entered your study and saw... your library. And I... I... I took one of your books and started flipping through it. They're my favorite series, you know...»

He lied. Fast and to the point, with his eyes down and an apologetic tone. Eva clearly understood which books he was referring to. And a glimmer passed through her eyes.

«This is pathetic even as an improvised excuse. What books could possibly be found...» the man started talking.

«It's ok, Uncle. I understand what Alfonso is saying. Well, I don't like people who go and touch my things without my permission. I will have to deal with you, right now. Uncle, if you can... which friends did you say sent you to look for me?» she asked Chico, with a strange tone. She was clearly pissed, but there was something beneath that. Chico cleared his voice.

«I never said. They said their names were Grasshopper and Brunswick. They were leaving and they wanted to say goodbye.» he explained. The glimmer in Eva's eyes turned even more dangerous when her smile reappeared on her full, ruby-red lips.

«Oh, dearest Grasshopper, God knows why he's dragging that dastardly surgeon with him at all times. Uncle, would you be so kind to greet them for me and tell me that I'll see them soon, while I... have a small talk with the staff about my privacy?»

The man's face shone with surprise. He didn't say anything, he just turned on his heels and went for the front door.

But Chico had more important things to look at than the man. Eva, in front of him, her arms ruthlessly crossed under her very well-rounded breast, was basically daring him to look her in the eye.

«Chico, if ye need it, just say the word "parlay" and I'll start shooting on the guests as a diversion!» Banshee whispered in the earpiece.

Chico opened his mouth.

Right before Eva grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him towards her. She was incredibly fit, and unthinkably strong, even for her not frail frame. In a rapid double motion, she pushed him against the wall of the living room, and stopped forward him, closing his mouth with hers in a fierce, dominating kiss.

As it usually happened, Chico let his instinct kick in, and his instinct was abundantly clear about the fact that if a positively Amazonian, beautiful woman sucks your face as her life depended on it, trying to escape was the worst idea ever.

And along he played, grabbing her forearms with his hands, unable to match her height with the vertiginous heels of her Louboutin's, while she was grasping at his body, ferally, grabbing at his hair and then she ripped his shirt open, scratching his chest with her blood-red fingernails.

«What...» she gasped, locking her eyes in his with half a menace, half impending delusion, clearly not impressed by Chico's half-shocked reaction. «...you're brave enough to snoop around my stuff but when it comes to the real thing you chicken out?»

Chico's eyes blazed.

«Oh, querida.» he wheezed. «I'll show you how I treat chicken.»

But before she could ask what that utter nonsense meant, Chico's instinct and pride had taken helm. He sprung from the wall with a hip movement, ensnaring her in a rabid kiss, and pushing her towards the living room table. He was able to lift her just enough to force her to sit, as she eagerly grabbed at his shoulders, and lifted her dress while she struggled with the belt and the zip of his trousers.