«Aaaand this is where I turn the earpiece off.» Banshee said, with a disgusted expression on her face. «Damn Chico and his hormones! We know jackshit and he starts playing "hide the stick" with Milady's bush!»

«You vulgar woman.» Vopros commented, in a reprimanding tone. «I like.»

«Uh? Thanks?» she raised an eyebrow. «Still, we need intel! That box isn't going to find itself. And if it's not in Eva's house, where the fuck could it be?»

«Man knows.»

«You mean the Uncle? Fat chance at that, I hadn't seen him even coming out of the doors.»

«He going to valet parking.» Vopros informed her, with his drunken Russian aplomb.

«What? Ye scried him?» she asked, baffled.

«No, lift just left upper floor with just one man inside. Probably him. A car just arrived in front of door.» he summarized, void of any enthusiasm, while beside him Banshee was completely on fire. Still metaphorically, luckily.

«Fuck, he has a car!» grunted Banshee, standing up from her half-spread out position and starting to stretch, while down on the street the Frenchman was withdrawing from the valet a blue Jaguar XE.

«What you do?» asked Vopros, with no intention of moving whatsoever.

«I'm following him. Ye stay here and cover fer Chico if needed. Not that I think it would be necessary, still. Please bring me rifle home.»

Down on the street, the roar of the Jaguar's engine was unmistakable. Banshee looked down to see the blue car jerking towards with a sporty sprint. She took three or four fast breaths and started running towards the end of the roof. The next building over was four stories shorter than theirs. She ran, reaching her top speed, and then with a deep breath charged her legs and jumped over the rail.

She walked in the air for infinite seconds, then she squinted her eyes and concentrated on her feet. She could visualize the fluxes floating furiously around them. Her crazy leap lasted not more than ten seconds, but they were plenty. She never landed on the second roof. She just kept running in the air, her speed incredibly busted by the wind blowing over the buildings, making her reach the exact same speed as the car she was now chasing, only above.

Of course, it wasn't ideal, running from roof to roof, playing with air pillows. Everyone could just peek out of their windows and see a woman running on the roofs, or even in the air. But at that time, Banshee couldn't care less. They couldn't afford to lose sight of him. Beside her, the grey, chubby figure of a fattish pigeon with crossed eyes, perfectly in his element, was helping her to keep the car under surveillance, and checking the surroundings too.

The Frenchman was speeding like a madman. It was incredible that the police still hadn't pulled him over. He drifted in any possible curve, passed at least for red lights, almost killed two pedestrians on zebra crossings and nearly provoked an incident at an intersection.

She couldn't understand what was he running from. He couldn't have possibly seen her, she was way above him. And the fact that he was proceeding in such a circuitous manner was what let her keep up with him. She darted from roof to roof, getting her grip on the wind itself. It was a majestic sensation. The thrill of the chase was something deeply embedded in her own blood, whether she was the prey or the predator.

And the chase went on for half of Boston. They went all west, just to turn and come back east. She was starting to tire down when she noticed her pigeon was gone. She shrugged, thinking he could have maybe found some pigeon friends, and resumed her race.

But something had changed. Suddenly the Frenchman was driving in a more cautious manner, much slower, and respecting the road signals. She barely had to run. They took some turns backward, changed road again in an illogical manner another couple times, and then he stopped in front of an apartment building in a very rich zone of the city.

Banshee landed on the building on the opposite side. Either that was his home, or he had finally gotten to the place where the music box was hidden. She kept her eyes on the black windows of the façade.

Finally, a light turned on, on the floor before the last. She could even fathom a silhouette shaping against the window, and that silhouette was indubitably the Frenchman. It looked like he was watching outside his window. Banshee laid down on the roof. He remained there for a couple of minutes, as if he was breathing in the sweet, polluted air of the centre of Boston, then closed the window and disappeared inside of his room.

Banshee waited a couple of seconds, then closed and reopened her eyes, now shining of a dim green light, and pointed them at the room.

There was no one.

It was a well-lit, very nicely decorated room. Too modern for her taste, even if probably one of his chairs was worth as much as their block.

The Frenchman was nowhere to be seen.

«Calm down, Banshee. He's probably in the loo.» she theorized. It did sound reasonable.

So, she waited.

No sign of the Frenchman.

She looked left and right. The road wasn't congested by cars, and yes, someone was passing along the road, but at 2 a.m. the masses were mainly asleep.

She had to try.

She searched for the fluxes. Then, she took a deep breath and started walking in the air again. She walked towards the window and hid against the wall just outside it. She peeked inside. The room was still empty.

As quietly as possible, tried prying the window open.

It slid right up, fluidly, with no resistance and no noise at all.

Banshee blinked.

She waited some more seconds, and then slid inside. She landed inside the well-lit-nicely-decorated room and looked around her. It wasn't any different from what she had seen on the other side of the road. She stood still and listened carefully.

The house was eerily silent. No steps in the corridor or in the nearer rooms, no water running in the bathroom, no things moved in the attached study, no pans sizzling in the open space kitchen. Nothing.

That made no sense at all. She had been looking at the front side of the building until two minutes before: no one had entered or exited apart from the Frenchman.

She felt a shiver run down her spine.

Oh don't tell me...

She squinted her eyes and focused, and the fluxes' web slowly faded in before her eyes, now shining a dim red light. The living room looked pretty clean and peaceful, fluxwise. Tiptoeing, she started moving towards the study. Still nothing. Neither in the corridor or in the kitchen. The house looked as normal as any other house inhabited by a normal person.

Until she got to the bedroom.

And the fluxes started going crazy.

Someone used magic, here. Displace magic, to be precise. This much she could ascertain. But from there to understand where... that was another matter entirely. Retro-engineering a Displace spell took skill, time and material, all things she didn't have, especially not at that moment.

She passed a hand over her own, tired eyes.

They failed. Again. Kind of spectacularly, too.

Suddenly, the pigeon arrived, and perched on the windowsill, looking inside.

«Alzheimer! Found something?» she called at her familiar, her brows furrowing in thought.

The pigeon cooed and landed on her shoulder. Using their mental link, he sent her the image of a big bird following them for a good part of their chase. Then it showed a massive bird fight between him and the bird, right around when the French started to follow the traffic laws again. The fight had concluded abruptly a couple of minutes before when the bird had simply vanished. The images were rough and confused, but Banshee was used to having a not perfectly performing familiar, and she loved him all the same.

«A fucking familiar. That's how he knew. He put on the show just to fuck with me.» she muttered, clenching her fists.

Still, she refused to break to the desperation of that clear defeat. He had clearly led her to a place he owned, and that house looked kind of lived-in. There was a book on the night-table, the wardrobe was open by a sliver and she could see it wasn't empty, and there was some clutter all around.

She started searching the place, top to bottom. Emptied every closet and drawer, look into all the pillows, even overturned the bed.

She found an awful lot of stuff. Letters, bills, personal objects. Still, nothing particularly interesting, investigation-wise. There were a lot of flyers of underground parties and art shows, many art catalogs in the library, and the PC in the small study was not password protected. In it, there were everyday searches in the browser, tax documents perfectly filled up by a "Wellington-Harrower" firm in Kentucky, very disturbing porn absolutely not hidden in the taxes' folder, and, in the printer, a series of sheets of paper.

Banshee picked them up, gathered some of the books, flyers and the smaller stuff she could find, threw everything inside a pillowcase and then looked back at the house, muttering something very disrespectful under her breath.

Then, she launched out of the window and started flying towards home.