“You're insane.”
“Well, from your point of view, you haven't told me yet. You see, my dear little boy, you get caught. The Agents catch you, truss you up like a pretty little turkey and send you back in time. Then, some years later, you tell me about all of this. You tell me what you are up to. You tell me in which dumpy dilapidated house to find you.” She leaned in close to him. “You tell me how to keep you from failing. Again.”
“Why... why would you help me? You don't even want him back.” His eyes watered as he scowled at her. “You never loved him.”
“Let's just say that I've had ninety years to think about things. And when you're a few years older you're actually incredibly less annoying, which does wonders for your conversational and diplomatic skills.” She lowered her wing from his throat and pulled a Trumpet Fest poster from her purse, unrolling it for him to see. “I'm putting on this festival for you. Well, it's your idea really – all part of your intricate plan. In a matter of days we'll be calling your father back to this world, and then we'll have a little family reunion.”
The Axeboy took the poster from her, looking it over as he massaged his neck. “A family reunion,” he repeated. “That implies that we were together at some point.”
She shrugged. “Well, family union doesn't have the same ring, does it?”
He rolled the poster back up. “Ok, I'm listening – but ninety years or not, I don't believe you. Not completely.”
“That's not a problem. You don't have to trust me – all you have to do is not fail again. If you at least think about the things I'm going to tell you, we should have a decent shot at bringing your father back.”
“Why?” He reached down and grabbed his axe from the floor, then slipped it into the sheath on his belt. “Why do you want to bring him back? You were trying to stop me before.”
The Angel turned away from her son, looking out the window at the branches of the giant oak trees. “Because it's my fault. I did love him, in spite of what you believe. I loved him once. I'm the reason he became what he became – I'm the reason for everything he's done. He doesn't deserve Oblivion like that, not while he's alive. No one does.” She wiped a tear from under her eye, making sure her son couldn't see her do so. “Ninety years is a long time to live with that.”
File 43 :: [Adelaide LaCoste]
Walking back and forth between Frenchman Street and Bourbon, Adelaide scanned the past and present layers of sound for those haunting hints of floating trumpets. She hadn't found much evidence of The Axeboy since the night before, which led her to believe that he had already figured out that the best time to hunt was in the evening and night. That was good – it meant that he might try to find more victims in a shorter amount of time, which could make him easier to predict.
She'd told Edith that she would check in with her on the hour, but when she walked by Cafe EnVie she found Edith so engrossed in the glove that Adelaide didn't wish to disturb her. It wasn't until the third time passing by that Adelaide spoke to her, but Edith's thoughts lay deep in the world of others' memories and in figuring out and manipulating the glove, so Adelaide left her and continued patrolling the streets.
Adelaide liked Edith and enjoyed training her for this future version of the Agents, but Adelaide also enjoyed working alone – she found her mind working much faster at deciphering all of The Axeboy's possible strategies when she didn't have to think about explaining what she was doing.
She thought of the sounds of trumpets she'd found late the previous night, playing them over and over in her head – how they'd move into a darkened side street and then suddenly vanish amidst the sounds of struggling. He was obviously moving into the ghostly world, but there were also no signs of murder – no blood and very few screams or yelling in the sounds she'd found in the past. He must have been taking his victims into the ghostly world quickly, sneaking up on them first.
Adelaide wandered down a side street off of Frenchman, jumped onto a plastic trashcan and leaped up to pull herself onto the roof of a shotgun house. She got to her feet and quickly walked down the length of the house along the slanted roof, towards Frenchman, then leaped onto a neighboring roof and made her way to the roof's end, where she was left facing the back of one of the Frenchmen Street clubs. She backed up, ran and jumped forward onto a thin brick wall, using her momentum to spring up through the air to grab onto the bottom of a third floor balcony. She swung forward, then back and pulled herself up, letting go and grabbing onto the top of the balcony's rail, which she pulled herself up and over. Scaling up one of the wrought iron posts to the balcony's roof, she then easily pulled herself up and onto the roof of the club.
This was the roof that she'd figured was the most strategic lookout point – the roof she'd been using since she'd left Edith at the coffee shop. She'd found a couple easier ways to get up, but they carried a higher probability of her being seen if The Axeboy happened to be around – and she wanted to reserve those other methods of scaling the wall for getting down quickly if she needed to.
Adelaide walked to the roof's edge and looked over, pulling her bag of gear off her shoulder and setting it at her feet. The street filled up more and more as the sunlight dwindled. She listened to the past hour or so of sounds, dipping her hand into the sounds instinctively and pivoting her wrist in circles, coiling the sounds like rope around her wrist and open hand. A large brass band started playing on a corner down the street, and her eyes kept flicking between the trumpet player and the rest of the street as she sifted through all the sounds of the growing night.
After a while she saw a familiar figure shuffling along the sidewalk through the churning crowds. Well, kind of familiar. It was Bes, or Julius.
Adelaide whispered, “Julius, it's Adelaide. Look up.” Then she plucked the sound from before her lips and flicked it down at him.
He shook, startled, then glanced up nonchalantly for just a second before looking away. She saw him move his lips, and she sifted through all the sounds and found his whispered words. “Don't come down. I'll meet you on the front balcony.” Then Julius walked toward the front of the club and out of her sight.
Adelaide looked down on the long balcony a floor below her. Some kind of noisy music poured out of the doors to the balcony and several people were leaning on the railings, smoking cigarettes or talking while looking out at the street below them. There were a couple of benches, one of which harbored two girls who were kissing. People can do that now without hiding? she thought. That's refreshing. She climbed over the ledge of the roof and lowered herself down, using a drain pipe to climb down to the balcony. She walked up and leaned forward on the balcony's rail to scan the people below, and a moment later Julius walked out of the club to join her.
“Have you run into him yet?” he asked.
“No. But I'm getting closer. How is the search going on your end?”
Julius leaned on the rail and looked down at the street below. “I've been searching all over. Bywater, Treme, Uptown, Midcity. No leads. He's either centralized around The Quarter and Frenchman or he's hiding it very well.”
Adelaide shook her head. “This is the brush.” She looked down at the wandering people, listened to the pounding brass band. “This is where he can hide and hunt.”
“Then I should stay here and help you. Where is Edith?”
“She's at Cafe EnVie. I left her there to train with the glove. She's making outstanding progress, though I'll have to go and get her soon. I could use the extra set of eyes.”
Julius nodded and was silent for a moment before he spoke. “Adelaide...”
“Julius, don't.”
He looked over at her. “Adelaide, I'm sorry.”
“Julius, I've always known the dangers that come with this job. I've never carried any hope that I would live a long life – but a long life is not what I need.” She looked out over the street below. “What I need is this life, the one I have, no matter how long it lasts. So don't apologize for anything.”
“I just...” She
looked over and his gold eyes were peering through her as he spoke: “There are so many of you. No matter what pieces of my lives I forget – parents, lovers, teachers – still I remember every single person who died on my team. And I don't get to tell them that I'm sorry – I don't ever get to apologize to them – except for right now. So I'm telling you that I'm sorry. And I'm glad you're the one I get to say that to. It makes sense to me, somehow.”
She looked at this stranger with a friends' eyes, put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I'm glad too. And I'm glad you remember me.”
Julius smirked. “Now, how can I help you hunt down The Axeboy?”
“Well, I can't send Edith out on her own. What would really help is if you could take Bourbon so that I can stay and watch Frenchmen. All the loud lights and sounds of Bourbon are very distracting, and it's hard for me to concentrate.”
“I'll take Bourbon then. I bar backed on Bourbon as a kid – all that nonsense is nothing new to me.”
“This might help.” She used two fingers to reach into her mouth and pluck out a sound she'd kept curled up between her gums and the side of her cheek. She shook the spit off of it. “Ready?”
Julius nodded and she saw the hairs raise on his arms and neck as he pulled forward the animalistic aspects of himself in order to hear better. She let the sound go and it twirled above her open hand like a ballerina, emitting the soft melody of trumpets that followed behind The Axeboy.
Julius closed his eyes as he listened. The sound slowly withered away like a dying flower as it spun, losing its petals to the evening's gentle breeze until it was nearly gone. Adelaide shook her hand and it dispersed into the coming night. The sound was more than half a day old – much too old to keep around any longer.
“As of last night The Axeboy was combing Frenchman and Bourbon. The sounds would travel down side streets, sometimes only to return further down from another side street. Maybe he got scared off or there were too many witnesses.”
“Maybe he thought he saw an Agent on Bourbon and ducked down a side street to hide.”
“That could also be the case. He's also taking his victims into the ghostly world before killing them, which means that if we find him we'll have to sneak up on him fast, before he has time to shift.”
Julius nodded. “If that's all, I'll head to Bourbon now. Hopefully we'll take him down tonight and get this over with.”
“Do you mind going by Cafe EnVie and telling Edith to meet me here?”
“I can do that.” He turned and walked back into the club.
Adelaide took one more look down at the growing crowd, then climbed up the drain pipe and onto the roof.
File 44 :: [Mars]
“Special delivery!” Mars yelled out when she entered the fake movie set followed by two other Noisco members, each of them holding multiple trays of coffee from Le Croissant Cité. She'd gotten to the site a little after six in the morning, but had to wait until Edith's shop opened at seven before getting everyone coffee. The Noisician Coalition members were changing shifts, some of them taking off to go home and sleep or to work, while others were just rolling in. In the last day and a half the space had been successfully altered into a real-looking movie production. There were walls of tents, tarps and lights near the intersections so that no one could really see in or out. Since the population of '30s people was steadily growing, Mars had moved the “ropes” farther out, widening the area of the quarantine zone. Noisco members had erected tents with cots inside, as well as porta-poties and hand sanitation stations. They had raided their personal libraries for books published before 1934 and made a small make-shift library for the time refugees (of course the publishing dates would be more current, but she hoped they wouldn't notice). It was turning into quite the little camp. One of the Noisco members used their laptop and speakers to play sports games from '34 outside one corner of the quarantine zone, and on the other side they played jazz music. There were mattresses near one corner of the zone where newly found '30s people would suddenly fall from nowhere, as Collectors were dropping them off and running out to scout for more.
One of the Noisco members had constructed a tall pulley system out of rope and two-by-fours with a basket, and Mars began sending over one tray of coffee at a time, the basket traveling up over the “ropes” and down the other side. The other coffees were handed out to the Noisco members.
She'd already given the '30s people the “update” from the city and the construction crews, telling them that only The Central Business District was compromised, that most citizens were unharmed due to the city's quick actions and response teams, and that all the survivors were being kept in areas such as this while the huge structural problems in the street were being fixed.
Currently Roman was inside the quarantine area. He had eaten Wonder so the '30s people didn't notice him, and he was taking readings of the time rip with different instruments, the main “instrument” being a pocket watch dangling from a long string. Mars could only see him when she wasn't looking directly at him, just like looking at the Collectors. She watched him walk her direction and up to where one of the “ropes” was connected to the building, pocketing the watch on the string and staring down at the screen of a device in his hand. Without taking his eyes off the device, he leaped up nearly two stories into the air, grabbed onto the brick wall somehow with his free hand, hanging there like a spider for a moment before swinging his legs over the “ropes” and dropping down to land right next to her.
“Whoa!” she yelled at him. “What the hell was that!”
“What was what?” Roman's eyes were still on the screen.
“That ninja shit you just pulled! This whole time you were Yoda from the original trilogy, then suddenly you get all Pokemoned out and jump all over the place like Yoda from the prequels. Well, except not all CG and stupid.”
Finally he looked up at her. “I'm afraid I have no idea what you just said, but I'm assuming it has to do with my physical capabilities. You already know that I'm only half-human.”
“So you can just goblin out any time you want? You just choose to move slow?”
“I wasn't aware that I move slow.”
“Well, at human-speed, I mean.”
“If I moved faster than 'human-speed' when I'm working with you, then you wouldn't be able to keep up. It wouldn't be logical at all.”
Mars shrugged. “Alright, I'm just gonna shut up and drink my coffee. I'll process your super powers when I'm properly caffeinated.” She took a long drink of her mocha. She'd brought a bottle Crystal hot sauce to Le Croissant Cité so they could make her mocha the way the baristas at Who Dat Cafe made it. The drink was definitely better at Who Dat, but it was still pretty good.
Just then Julius walked up.
Mars pulled a rolled up newspaper out of her back pocket, unrolled it and held it out to them. It was the Times-Picayune with four people pictured on the front and a large caption above that said: SEVENTEEN MUSICIANS VANISH IN TWO DAYS. The four people pictured were particularly famous musicians in the city. “Y'all seen this yet?”
“No,” said Julius, “but it was expected.”
“I guess they haven't linked up that they're all trumpet players,” said Mars. “Probably because most musicians play several kinds of instruments.” Mars had trouble believing the front page of the paper. The article really brought what they were doing to a different level of realness.
“You get used to it,” said Julius. “And you get used to not looking at the paper. Anything that pertains to us is at least a couple days old, if not weeks old.”
Mars sighed, rolled it up and shoved it back into her pocket. She turned to Roman. “So what's the scoop on the time skip, boss?”
“The time skip doesn't seem to be opening on its own anymore. It's also slowly dissipating. I can open it up, but I'm afraid opening it will diminish the last of its energy faster, meaning that it will heal up and then we won't be able to get everyone else back. So unfortunately these people are going to
have to wait for us to catch The Axeboy – then we'll send everyone back at once.”
“That makes sense with what happened in '34,” said Julius. “It only opened up once, right?”
Roman nodded.
“Well, things are under control here,” said Mars. “You want me to go and help you catch The Axeboy?”
“We need you to stay here for now,” said Roman. “The Noisician Coalition have proved themselves in the past, but there needs to be an Agent here. We are responsible for this area.”
“Yeah, kind of,” said Mars. “But we're just helping the city. It's not like we caused the time rip.”
“Technically, no,” said Roman. “But there are many in the city who would disagree.”
“What in the hell does that mean?” said Mars.
“The Function,” said Julius, motioning to all the '30s people. “The Function did this.”
“What?” Mars laughed. “What do you mean he did this?”
“It is not a coincidence that Dean Smith was distilled into his gun in 1934,” said Roman, “and that immediately after he was let out, a rip in time appeared between now and 1934. The Function's schemes are often incredibly complex, multifaceted and jerry-rigged. They are often so complicated and quickly thrown together that he could not possibly know all of the consequences.”
“He does a lot of good,” said Julius, “but we're sometimes left to mop up his messes.”
“Well let's get him to watch over the movie set then,” said Mars. “Let him mop up his own mess.”
Julius shook his head. “You've obviously never seen The Function try and use a mop. Best to never let him get near one. Him and cleaning don't mix well.”
“But he's not even an Agent, right? So it's still not our fault.”
“No,” said Julius. “He and Scape work with Serendipity and her alone. But he was an Agent once, and our goals often line up. There are entities in the city that don't take kindly to the Agents, so they will pick and choose what they believe and when. If Serendipity's little crew do something positive, then these entities will not publicly associate their deeds with the Agents. But if her crew screws up, then all of a sudden it's the Agents who have screwed up.”
The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1) Page 25
