«Of course you failed again! What was I thinking!» roared Garaham, the fist clenched before coming crashing down on the desk, provoking a landslide of forms and pencils. «Who but my Coven could mistake a fake for a powerful, priceless antique artefact! You didn't even check if it was it? You just took it and ran away?»

The three looked at each other, in perfect silence.

«Chico! You're the one who studied here! The only one of them who actually ever opened a magic book! Didn't you, at least noticed, something?» Garaham went on, focusing a flaming gaze on the Mexican.

Chico shrugged.

«They didn't even show it to me. It has been under Vopros's hat todo el tiempo. How could I check? I only drove the car.» he said, without even flinching, as if Garaham's rage couldn't possibly include him as well as the other two. The clear culprits.

Garaham swallowed a scream, a hand pressed against his eyes.

«You're a disgrace. You're the worst disgrace an Enforcer could ever endure. You have it all: magic, experience, wits, and every time, without exception, you mess up as if you were a group of uncoordinated teenagers acting by attempts.» he said, his voice reduced to a mulled, monotonal despaired tone.

«So, what now? Do they have the box? What happens now?» Chico asked.

«And how, you, depressing caravanserai of drunkenness-mongering inepts, would I ever know what happens now? I barely understood what had just happened!»

«A black hood dwarf came out of fake music box and told us we didn't find the right music box, and then disappeared.» Vopros summarized.

«Aye, Vopros, this don't help.» Banshee pointed out.

«All right. Panicking is for the weak. We have to find out who this bloody man is, and how is he connected with the music box at all.» Garaham took a deep breath.

«We're on it, Chief!» Banshee exclaimed.

«Not so fast!» he blocked them. «You don't truly think that I would pass over this utter and embarrassing failure, do you?»

«Our plan didn't fail! We got the music box. It's not our fault that wasn't the right one!»

Garaham's voice sounded unquestionable. And they weren't strangers to his punishments, at all. They all sighed in unison.

Once he teleported them right in the middle of the Order's parking, and they had to wash all the cars there. Another time, they had to trim the hedges of Versailles' labyrinth in the night, so no one could see them. And without magic, of course.

Banshee had just opened her mouth to say something, and Garaham was ready as a rugby receiver to block whatever would have come out of it when heavy steps started approaching the office's door from far in the corridor. It was just a normal background sound, at the beginning, but then it was unmistakably aimed at their door, that burst open, in just a matter of seconds.

«Garaham, what the hell!» shouted a feminine voice.

The tall and muscular figure of Mariposa, with her shining silver armor and her light chestnut hair gliding on her back, passed through the lined-up Pollos to stop in front of the Enforcer's desk and stomp her hands down on it. «It's true? Your Coven attacked the Museum?»

«Mariposa, this is not the proper way to come and face a fellow Enforcer.» in front of the feminine fury in front of him, Garaham suddenly regained all his British stiffness. «Storming my office like a teenager is way below you.»

«Cut the crap! Nobody could believe this, but who else could have devised such a half-assed plan like blowing up the motherfucking Museum? So! Did you really do it? Did you really get the music box?»

Garaham glared at his underlings with a fiery gaze, and then went back to look at the furious Enforcer in front of him.

«I don't know what you're talking about.» he lied, straight to his face. Mariposa's eyes wandered on the improbable trio beside her.

«Listen, my Coven was offered your same deal, some time ago. Guess why the task was still on the market? Because no-one in their right minds would ever go against the D'Yves. But how long do you think it took us to find out that the music box was in the Museum? Mere days.»

Chico was faster, and his hand reached Banshee's mouth before she could blatantly flaunt a very noisy "it took us 24 hours".

But none of them, because of the rarity of the event, missed the extremely approving glance Garaham shot them.

«I don't see your point, Mariposa. Why a First Coven Rank Enforcer would blast inside my office to offer me such informations?» Garaham kept his poker face.

«I'm not offering anything, I'm telling you that I know you did it. Even if God knows how your sorry excuse for a Coven could pull something like that. Your magic is ridiculous!»

«Not everyone needs magic even to wipe their asses, lady.» blurted out Banshee, her arms crossed on her chest, taking a step to interpose between her and Garaham. «Ye heard the Chief, suck it and go back to yer oversized mansion.» as to stress her menacing tone, Banshee's pigeon perched itself on her head. And cooed menacingly.

Mariposa stopped a murderous glare on the Irishwoman's face. Then turned her expression into an ironic smirk and looked back at the Enforcer.

«Call back your dog, Garaham. Stated that you're a lowlife as well, I didn't think you were the type to hide behind mutts.»

«Hey! Wash yer mouth before ye talk to the Chief that way, bitch!» Banshee's arms rapidly ran along her sides and her hands closed into fists, as she moved another step towards Mariposa. She didn't even look at her.

«Very well. We'll see who's best then.» she conceded, before sniffing audibly and then ostentatiously waving a hand in front of her face. «My God, I knew you're knee-deep in shit all the time, but to get to the point to smell like it...»

It took just a slight movement of Banshee's hand. The dark liquid trembled for an instant, and then, as if she'd knelt and slapped it, it flew in a black wave across the room, splashing right in Mariposa's face, terminally staining her perfect Enforcer armor.

She shrieked with incredulity even before than with horror, passing a hand on her face to regain sight. Shell-shocked, she looked at Banshee, then at Garaham, then at the other two, finally at her figure, dripping with that horrendous liquid.

«This is war.» she hissed. And then marched out of the office.

The room remained silent. And suddenly smell-free.

Banshee realized that at least two people were looking at her only after some moments.

«What?» she asked, puzzled.

«Banshee, what the bloody hell was that?» asked Garaham.

«That what? Now I have to stay silent while miss Beautiful Hair comes here and insults me, me friends and me Chief? Don't ye know me yet?»

«Not that that! That spell!» growled Garaham, trying not to raise his voice again. «That Displace spell you just used to... splash Mariposa!»

«Oh that!» Banshee moved a hand in the air, as if it all was unimportant trivial matter. «I think it's some kind o' telekinesis. Last week I came back from work late in the afternoon and I didn't feel like doing the dishes at all. But, lo and behold, I found a way to use magic so the sponge and dishes moved by themselves, so I could do me chores while reading the new Armalite AR-50 manutention manua... what?»

Suddenly everyone was looking at her, even Chico.

«You already have shown abilities of Destroy, Enhance/Worsen and even Heal, even though usually Mages have one, top two Natural Magic disciplines. Are you telling me that you just happen to have developed Displace magic abilities out of the blue because you're lazy?» Garaham exploded, his eyes as wide as saucers.

Banshee shrugged, unimpressed.

«It's not much more difficult than Destroy, is it? It's not like, dunno, Summon for instance. Ye learn to Destroy things and then to move them, don't ye now?» she said.

Garaham took the root of his nose between two fingers and sighed. Well, it wasn't that strange after all. Maybe it was just a lucky break.

«You're all dismissed.» he groaned, finding his composure again. «But be aware. Mariposa won't rest until she'd gotten her revenge on us. Dismissed now! Be here at eight tomorrow morning.»

He was starting to grow a splitting headache, and it unusually stuck even after the probable causes of it had left his office. He sat at his desk and massaged his temples.

Then, his phone rang.