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xp_logsAmanda, Marie-Ange and Mark meet with the apprentice of one of the missing mages, who appears to have committed suicide.
Glockenbachviertel was something of a nice district, almost trendy with its cafes and bookstores. Certainly not what you'd expect for a mage of Jane's power, but Amanda had learned a long time ago that the magical underground believed in hiding in plain sight. After all, no-one really believed in magic, did they? Stamping the snow off her boots, she rang the doorbell with a short, almost violent movement, her scowl habitual by now.
Hesitant footsteps could be heard on the other side of the door; the noise that followed was someone obviously checking through the peephole and double checking the locks. The door was cracked open as far as the chain would go. "~Can I help you?~" The voice was soft and low.
And nervous.
"Tell him who we're looking for," Mark whispered to Amanda. "He'll probably slam the door and run away if some random person starts asking for her in English, and I'm not wearing my running shoes."
"~We're here looking for Jane Burr,~" Amanda replied in German, not bothering to sweeten her tone. She snapped her fingers briefly and made the werelight appear, sending it into the room with a flick. "~That ought to be enough ID for you.~"
If anything, it made the man behind the door flinch even more but he considered his options. "~A person willing to out themselves in public,~" he sighed, closing the door to unlock it the rest of the way before opening it wider, "~is never a good sign.~" He glanced at the rest and gestured. "I can speak English for the American, if that will help. My name is Kristoph and Jane is ... not here."
"You have no idea." Marie-Ange muttered. "About outing ones self." She was slightly surprised Mark hadn't commented on it, but regardless, magic users weren't the only people who had to worry about that sort of thing. They weren't even the first in most people's minds. "Not here, or 'not here' as in 'dead and or possibly missing?"
Kristoph's mouth thinned and he turned, heading back into the apartment. "The police have already been by, as have - others," he said shortly, rustling through papers before he found a book. He turned back to them, gripping it tightly in his hands as if it were a shield. "Forgive me if I do not wish to speak as freely as I might have a few days ago."
"Well, it's not about what you want, sunshine," Amanda retorted, catching the werelight out of the air and extinguishing it in her hand. "So you're going to be speaking plenty. We're here to find out what happened to Jane Burr and what she was into. And I don't care how rough I have to get to get answers."
"What my good friend here is trying to say," Mark began, glaring at Amanda admonishingly, "Is that we need to know what Miss Burr was doing because we suspect foul play. And it may have dragged in others."
The book was clutched tighter to his chest. "What do you want me to say? The official report is that, despite Jane's rising through the government ranks, her recent engagement and no previous signs of depression, her great stress caused her to drive her car off the road and into the river. That is what the police are sticking to."
Even if Kristoph knew that wasn't the truth and it was obvious.
"Well, obviously your local law enforcement has managed to come down with a very serious case of Extremely Stupid." Marie-Ange sounded about as unimpressed as Amanda did, with only slightly less outright disgust. It looked to her like Mark and Amanda were about to play Good Cop, Bad Cop, and she was somewhat content to watch and come to whichever side seemed to be working more.
"There's stupid and then there's wise. I think I shall stick with wise." He glanced around nervously, as if afraid someone was going to break through the door. "I - I think you should leave now. Jane was particular about who came in here due to the ward."
"Oh for fuck's sake..." Amanda pushed forward and grabbed Kristophe by the shoulder of his shirt. "Listen here, you wanker, you are going to tell us what you know about Jane's death and what she was up to, or so help me I'm going to shake the fucking answers out of you. After I'm done hanging you out of the window by your feet. Now, talk you miserable little fucker."
Mark bit back a sigh and placed a hand on Amanda's. "You really should listen to her, you know. It's not been a good few months for any of us and she's not taking it well. So. Let's try this again. We're not retarded. It's blindingly obvious that Miss Burr didn't kill herself. Has she been doing anything lately to bother anyone or attract attention?"
"Amanda, maybe you should not try to break him -before- he can answer any questions?" Marie-Ange raised an eyebrow at Kristophe, and shrugged apathetically. "Perhaps we should go have a sit down for a moment before you throw this man out a window, and see if he perhaps would like to change his mind about the questions?"
"We don't have time!" Amanda retorted angrily, shaking Mark's hand away. "Wanda could be dying and this little twerp could have the information we need and we're going to sit down over tea and fucking biscuits to ask nicely?" She seemed ready to launch herself at Kristophe to make good on her threat.
"We do not have time for you to scare him off!" Marie-Ange grabbed at Amanda, and pulled her back roughly. "If he does -not- answer our questions, then you can defenestrate him all you wish, but I would much rather not have to bail you out of jail for assault unless it is strictly necessary." She kept a tight grip on Amanda's jacket and turned towards Kristophe. "You have ten seconds to change your mind or, I am going to let her go, and walk away."
When the attention settled back on the apprentice, it was as if a different man stood before them. Gone was the hesitation and the nearly palpable dread that had hung around him like a cloak. He started forward, eyes bright, as if he meant to grab Amanda by the hand. Kristophe paused and obviously thought better of that plan.
"Wanda? As in Wanda Maximoff?" he asked eagerly. "~Obviously, Kris,~" he muttered to himself in German, as if he had forgotten they were there, "~if Miss Maximoff were inclined towards the magical, this would be her apprentice.~" He shook himself. "Sit, please, all of you. This changes everything."
The book was tossed onto the nearest surface and he clapped his hands together sharply. It was reminiscent of Amanda's hand gesture for her shielding spell but no shield appeared. Instead, a slight tingle ran through everyone's bodies and he nodded with satisfaction.
At the gesture, some of the tension drained out of the witch. Nodding to Marie-Ange, Amanda waited until her friend had let go of her jacket before moving to sit in front of him. "That's right, I'm Wanda's apprentice," she said, fixing him with a stern gaze. "Now, you've got your wards up, so let's talk frank, shall we? Something mystical's attacking Wanda, and it's tied to the three mages who helped anchor her down with the Shadow King business."
Kristophe sat on the coffee table so he could face the couch. "Let me start out by saying that I really do not know much, though I wish I did. About a week before her 'death', she told me that a stranger had come to see her. He had been very charming and had asked her for something in her collection." He held up a hand to stop the questions. "No, she never said what it was he wanted. He left her in peace but she became suspicious and believed that he was following her. And then they found her car in the river."
He scowled. "I've worked with Jane for ten years, since I was thirteen, and she was ... well. Not suicidal. Everything was going her way and she was happy. I have been suspicious and, obviously, paranoid but the fact that the other two magi are tied up in this leads me to believe that someone was out to hurt her."
"Now we're getting somewhere," said Mark. He spared another glance at Amanda before turning back to Kristophe. "Who were her enemies? She must've pissed someone off during her career."
"She was very good at what she did but she was not a powerhouse. None of them were. What's the word ... ah, subtle. Very subtle and strong in the sense of stability but not so powerful she would draw attention to herself." He scratched the back of his head. "But. She collected things, if that helps." His hand drifted down to the book, almost protectively. "And Jane is not the only thing missing."
Marie-Ange gestured, rolling her hand in a "Yes, go on." gesture that implied that she was not interested in waiting or prompting him to keep talking. Which she wasn't - she wasn't as visibly impatient as Amanda, but nor was she willing to sit around and wait. If there was information, it needed to be said without needing to play prompting games.
Instead of answering, the book levitated in front of them and it fell open, the pages fluttering faster and faster until it hit the middle of the book. Words grayed out and blurred before exploding in a sudden light. Where there had been text lay something else - a map.
The book settled in Kristophe's hands and he handed it to Amanda. "Jane was a collector of ley line maps. She was - is. She is fascinated by them. Someone was in the apartment and they managed to not only get past her wards but also find certain maps. They left everything else behind." He tapped on the paper. "The day before they found her car, she came to me and told me to guard this. The only other copy she had of Ghana's ley lines."
"Ley lines..." Amanda's lips pressed together as she pondered what they'd been told. Then she glanced at Marie-Ange and Mark. "Sounds like this visitor of hers and the missing maps aren't a coincidence."
"I don't believe in coincidences," Mark mused. "If people came to ransack her apartment, then the security tapes might've caught 'em. We should go there next and see what we can find. Hopefully they haven't taped over them by now."
"If the police have written this off as a suicide, they may not have spoken to her neighbors. I wonder if any of them have seen anything?" Marie-Ange said, thinking aloud. "I can call Doug and see if he can check the police reports, and we can speak to some of the neighbors in her building as well."
"Here, take this." Kristophe patted through his pockets, pulling out a surprising number of small objects that he had crammed in there at one time or another. Finally, he pulled out a silver chain and a key swung on it. "I do not know what you're going to do but this might help - it's to her apartment and even if you don't go in, well, it will make you look like you should be there. And..."
He hesitated but he gently closed the book in his hands and held it out to Amanda. "~Take this and find her, please. Will you let me know what you find? Whatever you find, I want to know.~"
Amanda's face was set as she took the book. "~We'll let you know. Thank you for your help.~" Then she paused, and her expression softened minutely. "~And I'm sorry, for your loss. It's not easy, losing your mentor.~"
For a moment, Kristophe's eyes were filled with tears but they were gone when he blinked. "God willing, be safe, all of you."
Marie-Ange and Mark go through the security tapes and notice something odd.
"We're probably here just in time," Mark said as he followed Marie-Ange into the small cubbyhole of a security office. "Place like this, probably writes over the tapes every week. I counted three cameras on the ground floor, so we'll look at those." He pulled a cassette from the bookcase and popped it into the small bunny-eared TV/VCR on the desk. "Angie, wanna get some popcorn? Could be a while."
"I brought granola bars." Marie-Ange patted the outside pocket of her shoulder bag. "The kind that are not health food and have chocolate chips." She pulled up one of the rolling chairs and sat down, pulling her knees to her chest. "We should have brought blank tapes and taken these with us. Then we could watch them on our own time. I think the next time that is what we should do, and you can have all the popcorn you want."
"Where the hell do you even buy blank cassettes anymore? A good security system would've gone digital years ago." Mark pressed the button to fast forward through the tape. Every time a person appeared he peered in to get a good look, but no one matched their description of the witch's visitor.
"The next time we do this, you and Doug should build something to transfer these to a laptop so we can watch boring video tapes and raid the minibar at the same time." Marie-Ange's opinions about sitting around and watching now made firmly known, she unwrapped one of her granola not-health bars and took a bite. "Ew. Carob." She muttered, dumping the bar into a trashcan and making a disgusted noise. "Wait, pause, rewind a little bit?" Once Mark did, Marie-Ange pointed at the screen. "He is not blond, but that man has walked by the building twice."
Mark jumped up and and pulled another tape from the bookcase. "There's no camera near Jane's flat, but this is the one near the front entrance. What's the time stamp on that?" he asked, indicating the playing video.
Marie-Ange leaned closer to the screen, and absently chewed on a fingernail, trying to do the math to figure out when this was, based on the 24-hour digital clock in the bottom corner of the video. "Five thirty in the evening, I think three days before she went missing?" She shrugged a little. "But he is not blond and Kristophe said that the man Jane said came to visit her was blond. Maybe this is just someone's boyfriend?"
"No, this is right after. We're in Europe, gotta switch the day and month, Frenchie." Mark peered closer, and then replaced the tape with the one he'd just taken and fast-forwarded it to the same time. "Here he is leaving, and it's a better view." He paused, examining the mysterious figure, and then scoffed. "That's a fuckin' wig. And a bad one at that, like from a costume store."
"I did not sleep last night. I am allowed to be confused." Marie-Ange protested. "And that is really a very bad wig. Which makes him suspicious to me already. No one wears that kind of wig if they can help it, and anyone who has to wear a wig does not wear a bad one. Unless they are Clarice and she did it on purpose to prove a point, I think." She stabbed at the VCR to pause the tape as the man very blatantly walked past the camera and stared at it. "Why would someone wear a wig that ugly, and then look at the camera like that?"
"Because he knows someone's gonna be watching," Mark replied darkly. "He's baiting us." He ejected the tape and dropped the two into the satchel they'd brought. "He picked the wrong people."
Amanda, in the meantime, goes through the missing mage's apartment and finds her own item of interest.
Jane's apartment was not unlike Strange's office, lined with books. Unlike his place, however, there were signs of life beyond study - a series of plants in the window, an easel set up in a sunny corner, the men's pants lying across the corner of the bed... For a moment Amanda felt a pang for the woman whose life had apparently ended so mysteriously, but then the expressionless mask dropped back over her face and she began looking through things a bit more methodically. There were a lot of books on African magic and mythology, she noted, more than she'd seen anywhere else for some time, but the collection wasn't complete. In fact...
Amanda frowned, and leaned closer to a shelf. The pattern in the light layer of dust suggested that something had been there, but wasn't any more.
"Kristophe?" she called to the apprentice. "You didn't move anything, did you?"
Kristophe, who had decided that it would be easier if he came with the witch, looked up. A small frown crossed his face and he shook his head. "Not since the police came to give it a cursory glance, no. Though they would not have seen what we are seeing. Jane's very particular about who can actually See the things in here. Why?"
"There's something missing, here." She pointed out the marks in the dust. "And over there, too. Nothing big, but there's definitely something gone."
The apprentice peered at the spots she indicated. "How strange..." he murmured, mostly to himself. "The maps are gone. But they were here before..." He glanced at Amanda. "It would have taken an adept to even know they were here, let along get past Jane's wards."
"Fan-fucking-tastic." Magical thieves. Amanda ran her hand through her hair. "What's missing?"
It took him several moments to finally be able to answer that question, as he walked around the various bookshelves muttering to himself. Finally, he turned to her with his hands tugging at his hair in frustration. "All of the leyline books," he confirmed. "Those were taken and most replaced with other books from around the apartment but some are like you found, just empty."
"Leylines?" There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of Amanda's stomach. "I really don't like where this is headed. Was Jane looking at any particular part of the leyline net in her research?"
"Ghana," Kristoph said, rubbing his chin. "Ever since she first started to communicate with Monona, she became obsessed with African magic. That book I gave you was the only thing that I had in my apartment of hers, which is why it wasn't stolen with the rest I think..." He looked only too glad to have it out of his care at the moment.
"Ghana," Amanda repeated. She moved to a table and opened the book he'd given her out on it, fllipping through the pages. "Are there any African maps about? Don't have to be the leyline sort, just regular ones'll do. As long as you don't mind me drawing all over them."
He smiled at that and it was a little sad. "Jane's a horrible scribbler, so I doubt she would mind..." Kristoph frowned and looked around, eyes lighting upon a hope chest that had been hidden under half a dozen potted plants. He gently removed them, sitting them in a place where they could still get their sun before he opened the chest. "Here's where she kept all her bits and pieces and - aha, here are the maps!"
"Brilliant." Together they spread the largest map available out on the table, weighing it down with odds and ends. Pulling out her PDA, the blonde paged through various documents until she came up with the leyline imager she and Wanda had worked on with Doug. "Right, now we're cooking," she said with a hard, tight grin as she reached for a ruler and a pencil. "Let's see where these fuckers have gone, shall we?"
Glockenbachviertel was something of a nice district, almost trendy with its cafes and bookstores. Certainly not what you'd expect for a mage of Jane's power, but Amanda had learned a long time ago that the magical underground believed in hiding in plain sight. After all, no-one really believed in magic, did they? Stamping the snow off her boots, she rang the doorbell with a short, almost violent movement, her scowl habitual by now.
Hesitant footsteps could be heard on the other side of the door; the noise that followed was someone obviously checking through the peephole and double checking the locks. The door was cracked open as far as the chain would go. "~Can I help you?~" The voice was soft and low.
And nervous.
"Tell him who we're looking for," Mark whispered to Amanda. "He'll probably slam the door and run away if some random person starts asking for her in English, and I'm not wearing my running shoes."
"~We're here looking for Jane Burr,~" Amanda replied in German, not bothering to sweeten her tone. She snapped her fingers briefly and made the werelight appear, sending it into the room with a flick. "~That ought to be enough ID for you.~"
If anything, it made the man behind the door flinch even more but he considered his options. "~A person willing to out themselves in public,~" he sighed, closing the door to unlock it the rest of the way before opening it wider, "~is never a good sign.~" He glanced at the rest and gestured. "I can speak English for the American, if that will help. My name is Kristoph and Jane is ... not here."
"You have no idea." Marie-Ange muttered. "About outing ones self." She was slightly surprised Mark hadn't commented on it, but regardless, magic users weren't the only people who had to worry about that sort of thing. They weren't even the first in most people's minds. "Not here, or 'not here' as in 'dead and or possibly missing?"
Kristoph's mouth thinned and he turned, heading back into the apartment. "The police have already been by, as have - others," he said shortly, rustling through papers before he found a book. He turned back to them, gripping it tightly in his hands as if it were a shield. "Forgive me if I do not wish to speak as freely as I might have a few days ago."
"Well, it's not about what you want, sunshine," Amanda retorted, catching the werelight out of the air and extinguishing it in her hand. "So you're going to be speaking plenty. We're here to find out what happened to Jane Burr and what she was into. And I don't care how rough I have to get to get answers."
"What my good friend here is trying to say," Mark began, glaring at Amanda admonishingly, "Is that we need to know what Miss Burr was doing because we suspect foul play. And it may have dragged in others."
The book was clutched tighter to his chest. "What do you want me to say? The official report is that, despite Jane's rising through the government ranks, her recent engagement and no previous signs of depression, her great stress caused her to drive her car off the road and into the river. That is what the police are sticking to."
Even if Kristoph knew that wasn't the truth and it was obvious.
"Well, obviously your local law enforcement has managed to come down with a very serious case of Extremely Stupid." Marie-Ange sounded about as unimpressed as Amanda did, with only slightly less outright disgust. It looked to her like Mark and Amanda were about to play Good Cop, Bad Cop, and she was somewhat content to watch and come to whichever side seemed to be working more.
"There's stupid and then there's wise. I think I shall stick with wise." He glanced around nervously, as if afraid someone was going to break through the door. "I - I think you should leave now. Jane was particular about who came in here due to the ward."
"Oh for fuck's sake..." Amanda pushed forward and grabbed Kristophe by the shoulder of his shirt. "Listen here, you wanker, you are going to tell us what you know about Jane's death and what she was up to, or so help me I'm going to shake the fucking answers out of you. After I'm done hanging you out of the window by your feet. Now, talk you miserable little fucker."
Mark bit back a sigh and placed a hand on Amanda's. "You really should listen to her, you know. It's not been a good few months for any of us and she's not taking it well. So. Let's try this again. We're not retarded. It's blindingly obvious that Miss Burr didn't kill herself. Has she been doing anything lately to bother anyone or attract attention?"
"Amanda, maybe you should not try to break him -before- he can answer any questions?" Marie-Ange raised an eyebrow at Kristophe, and shrugged apathetically. "Perhaps we should go have a sit down for a moment before you throw this man out a window, and see if he perhaps would like to change his mind about the questions?"
"We don't have time!" Amanda retorted angrily, shaking Mark's hand away. "Wanda could be dying and this little twerp could have the information we need and we're going to sit down over tea and fucking biscuits to ask nicely?" She seemed ready to launch herself at Kristophe to make good on her threat.
"We do not have time for you to scare him off!" Marie-Ange grabbed at Amanda, and pulled her back roughly. "If he does -not- answer our questions, then you can defenestrate him all you wish, but I would much rather not have to bail you out of jail for assault unless it is strictly necessary." She kept a tight grip on Amanda's jacket and turned towards Kristophe. "You have ten seconds to change your mind or, I am going to let her go, and walk away."
When the attention settled back on the apprentice, it was as if a different man stood before them. Gone was the hesitation and the nearly palpable dread that had hung around him like a cloak. He started forward, eyes bright, as if he meant to grab Amanda by the hand. Kristophe paused and obviously thought better of that plan.
"Wanda? As in Wanda Maximoff?" he asked eagerly. "~Obviously, Kris,~" he muttered to himself in German, as if he had forgotten they were there, "~if Miss Maximoff were inclined towards the magical, this would be her apprentice.~" He shook himself. "Sit, please, all of you. This changes everything."
The book was tossed onto the nearest surface and he clapped his hands together sharply. It was reminiscent of Amanda's hand gesture for her shielding spell but no shield appeared. Instead, a slight tingle ran through everyone's bodies and he nodded with satisfaction.
At the gesture, some of the tension drained out of the witch. Nodding to Marie-Ange, Amanda waited until her friend had let go of her jacket before moving to sit in front of him. "That's right, I'm Wanda's apprentice," she said, fixing him with a stern gaze. "Now, you've got your wards up, so let's talk frank, shall we? Something mystical's attacking Wanda, and it's tied to the three mages who helped anchor her down with the Shadow King business."
Kristophe sat on the coffee table so he could face the couch. "Let me start out by saying that I really do not know much, though I wish I did. About a week before her 'death', she told me that a stranger had come to see her. He had been very charming and had asked her for something in her collection." He held up a hand to stop the questions. "No, she never said what it was he wanted. He left her in peace but she became suspicious and believed that he was following her. And then they found her car in the river."
He scowled. "I've worked with Jane for ten years, since I was thirteen, and she was ... well. Not suicidal. Everything was going her way and she was happy. I have been suspicious and, obviously, paranoid but the fact that the other two magi are tied up in this leads me to believe that someone was out to hurt her."
"Now we're getting somewhere," said Mark. He spared another glance at Amanda before turning back to Kristophe. "Who were her enemies? She must've pissed someone off during her career."
"She was very good at what she did but she was not a powerhouse. None of them were. What's the word ... ah, subtle. Very subtle and strong in the sense of stability but not so powerful she would draw attention to herself." He scratched the back of his head. "But. She collected things, if that helps." His hand drifted down to the book, almost protectively. "And Jane is not the only thing missing."
Marie-Ange gestured, rolling her hand in a "Yes, go on." gesture that implied that she was not interested in waiting or prompting him to keep talking. Which she wasn't - she wasn't as visibly impatient as Amanda, but nor was she willing to sit around and wait. If there was information, it needed to be said without needing to play prompting games.
Instead of answering, the book levitated in front of them and it fell open, the pages fluttering faster and faster until it hit the middle of the book. Words grayed out and blurred before exploding in a sudden light. Where there had been text lay something else - a map.
The book settled in Kristophe's hands and he handed it to Amanda. "Jane was a collector of ley line maps. She was - is. She is fascinated by them. Someone was in the apartment and they managed to not only get past her wards but also find certain maps. They left everything else behind." He tapped on the paper. "The day before they found her car, she came to me and told me to guard this. The only other copy she had of Ghana's ley lines."
"Ley lines..." Amanda's lips pressed together as she pondered what they'd been told. Then she glanced at Marie-Ange and Mark. "Sounds like this visitor of hers and the missing maps aren't a coincidence."
"I don't believe in coincidences," Mark mused. "If people came to ransack her apartment, then the security tapes might've caught 'em. We should go there next and see what we can find. Hopefully they haven't taped over them by now."
"If the police have written this off as a suicide, they may not have spoken to her neighbors. I wonder if any of them have seen anything?" Marie-Ange said, thinking aloud. "I can call Doug and see if he can check the police reports, and we can speak to some of the neighbors in her building as well."
"Here, take this." Kristophe patted through his pockets, pulling out a surprising number of small objects that he had crammed in there at one time or another. Finally, he pulled out a silver chain and a key swung on it. "I do not know what you're going to do but this might help - it's to her apartment and even if you don't go in, well, it will make you look like you should be there. And..."
He hesitated but he gently closed the book in his hands and held it out to Amanda. "~Take this and find her, please. Will you let me know what you find? Whatever you find, I want to know.~"
Amanda's face was set as she took the book. "~We'll let you know. Thank you for your help.~" Then she paused, and her expression softened minutely. "~And I'm sorry, for your loss. It's not easy, losing your mentor.~"
For a moment, Kristophe's eyes were filled with tears but they were gone when he blinked. "God willing, be safe, all of you."
Marie-Ange and Mark go through the security tapes and notice something odd.
"We're probably here just in time," Mark said as he followed Marie-Ange into the small cubbyhole of a security office. "Place like this, probably writes over the tapes every week. I counted three cameras on the ground floor, so we'll look at those." He pulled a cassette from the bookcase and popped it into the small bunny-eared TV/VCR on the desk. "Angie, wanna get some popcorn? Could be a while."
"I brought granola bars." Marie-Ange patted the outside pocket of her shoulder bag. "The kind that are not health food and have chocolate chips." She pulled up one of the rolling chairs and sat down, pulling her knees to her chest. "We should have brought blank tapes and taken these with us. Then we could watch them on our own time. I think the next time that is what we should do, and you can have all the popcorn you want."
"Where the hell do you even buy blank cassettes anymore? A good security system would've gone digital years ago." Mark pressed the button to fast forward through the tape. Every time a person appeared he peered in to get a good look, but no one matched their description of the witch's visitor.
"The next time we do this, you and Doug should build something to transfer these to a laptop so we can watch boring video tapes and raid the minibar at the same time." Marie-Ange's opinions about sitting around and watching now made firmly known, she unwrapped one of her granola not-health bars and took a bite. "Ew. Carob." She muttered, dumping the bar into a trashcan and making a disgusted noise. "Wait, pause, rewind a little bit?" Once Mark did, Marie-Ange pointed at the screen. "He is not blond, but that man has walked by the building twice."
Mark jumped up and and pulled another tape from the bookcase. "There's no camera near Jane's flat, but this is the one near the front entrance. What's the time stamp on that?" he asked, indicating the playing video.
Marie-Ange leaned closer to the screen, and absently chewed on a fingernail, trying to do the math to figure out when this was, based on the 24-hour digital clock in the bottom corner of the video. "Five thirty in the evening, I think three days before she went missing?" She shrugged a little. "But he is not blond and Kristophe said that the man Jane said came to visit her was blond. Maybe this is just someone's boyfriend?"
"No, this is right after. We're in Europe, gotta switch the day and month, Frenchie." Mark peered closer, and then replaced the tape with the one he'd just taken and fast-forwarded it to the same time. "Here he is leaving, and it's a better view." He paused, examining the mysterious figure, and then scoffed. "That's a fuckin' wig. And a bad one at that, like from a costume store."
"I did not sleep last night. I am allowed to be confused." Marie-Ange protested. "And that is really a very bad wig. Which makes him suspicious to me already. No one wears that kind of wig if they can help it, and anyone who has to wear a wig does not wear a bad one. Unless they are Clarice and she did it on purpose to prove a point, I think." She stabbed at the VCR to pause the tape as the man very blatantly walked past the camera and stared at it. "Why would someone wear a wig that ugly, and then look at the camera like that?"
"Because he knows someone's gonna be watching," Mark replied darkly. "He's baiting us." He ejected the tape and dropped the two into the satchel they'd brought. "He picked the wrong people."
Amanda, in the meantime, goes through the missing mage's apartment and finds her own item of interest.
Jane's apartment was not unlike Strange's office, lined with books. Unlike his place, however, there were signs of life beyond study - a series of plants in the window, an easel set up in a sunny corner, the men's pants lying across the corner of the bed... For a moment Amanda felt a pang for the woman whose life had apparently ended so mysteriously, but then the expressionless mask dropped back over her face and she began looking through things a bit more methodically. There were a lot of books on African magic and mythology, she noted, more than she'd seen anywhere else for some time, but the collection wasn't complete. In fact...
Amanda frowned, and leaned closer to a shelf. The pattern in the light layer of dust suggested that something had been there, but wasn't any more.
"Kristophe?" she called to the apprentice. "You didn't move anything, did you?"
Kristophe, who had decided that it would be easier if he came with the witch, looked up. A small frown crossed his face and he shook his head. "Not since the police came to give it a cursory glance, no. Though they would not have seen what we are seeing. Jane's very particular about who can actually See the things in here. Why?"
"There's something missing, here." She pointed out the marks in the dust. "And over there, too. Nothing big, but there's definitely something gone."
The apprentice peered at the spots she indicated. "How strange..." he murmured, mostly to himself. "The maps are gone. But they were here before..." He glanced at Amanda. "It would have taken an adept to even know they were here, let along get past Jane's wards."
"Fan-fucking-tastic." Magical thieves. Amanda ran her hand through her hair. "What's missing?"
It took him several moments to finally be able to answer that question, as he walked around the various bookshelves muttering to himself. Finally, he turned to her with his hands tugging at his hair in frustration. "All of the leyline books," he confirmed. "Those were taken and most replaced with other books from around the apartment but some are like you found, just empty."
"Leylines?" There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of Amanda's stomach. "I really don't like where this is headed. Was Jane looking at any particular part of the leyline net in her research?"
"Ghana," Kristoph said, rubbing his chin. "Ever since she first started to communicate with Monona, she became obsessed with African magic. That book I gave you was the only thing that I had in my apartment of hers, which is why it wasn't stolen with the rest I think..." He looked only too glad to have it out of his care at the moment.
"Ghana," Amanda repeated. She moved to a table and opened the book he'd given her out on it, fllipping through the pages. "Are there any African maps about? Don't have to be the leyline sort, just regular ones'll do. As long as you don't mind me drawing all over them."
He smiled at that and it was a little sad. "Jane's a horrible scribbler, so I doubt she would mind..." Kristoph frowned and looked around, eyes lighting upon a hope chest that had been hidden under half a dozen potted plants. He gently removed them, sitting them in a place where they could still get their sun before he opened the chest. "Here's where she kept all her bits and pieces and - aha, here are the maps!"
"Brilliant." Together they spread the largest map available out on the table, weighing it down with odds and ends. Pulling out her PDA, the blonde paged through various documents until she came up with the leyline imager she and Wanda had worked on with Doug. "Right, now we're cooking," she said with a hard, tight grin as she reached for a ruler and a pencil. "Let's see where these fuckers have gone, shall we?"
