Strange Aeons [Book 1]

3.The Heist [part III]

The Boston Historical and Archaeological Museum was a majestic building, right in the heart of the cultural center of the city, in the outskirts of the Boston Common. The woman, waiting in a turquoise Simca 1000 inconspicuously parked in a side road, could see the people rushing out from the Wilbur Theatre.

From her position, the closed doors of the museum were very visible. The long banners advertising the exhibit were flapping loosely in the crispy night air, the picture of the fateful music box deformed by the wind. The tall Greek-looking columns of the façade were dimly lit by the yellow night lights, shining briefly on the great external staircase before fading in the darkness of the surrounding gardens.

The back door opened and closed, and Vopros's tall figure crumbled on the backseat of the Simca 1000 with a polemic expression.

«So, everything's set?» asked Banshee from the shotgun seat.

«Don't know if plan sound so easy because it is, or because is stupid.» said the Russian, with his usual tact and delicacy, shrugging under his fur hat.

«We'll only know it when we try, no? Let's do this and go back home volando, can we? Andale.» sentenced Chico on the common channel on their military-grade walkie-talkies.

«All right, Chico ye know what ye have to do, right?»

«I got it. See you at the exit. And por favor, be careful!»

The Mexican sighed and left the driver's seat, starting strutting down the road with an innocent, half-drunk expression. He was nervous, and his jitters had started to pass to his familiar. Soballende's black cat's form, the form anyone could see, had its fur on edge and his eyes jolting all around. He looked like a big cat, draped on Chico's shoulders like a tippet.

It was far less terrifying than his spiritual form, the black, red-eyed shadow climbing up and down the walls of his house, but the empathic contact they had with each other implied that everything Chico felt, the familiar felt too.

It hadn't happened so often they had to plan a heist in something so central and popular. The Order's recovery missions were usually set in discomforting mysterious places untouched by man, and for good reasons. If they had to acquire an already discovered object, possessed by someone, they usually found a way to buy it, without excessive fuss.

Chico stared at the innocent electrical junction box in front of him. The alley was a little and rather clean one, not the kind of rape alley one would fear to be assaulted in. Behind him, a quite populated road was swarming with people rushing home. Typical of Banshee to choose a Saturday evening for a heist, and not a more pacific night in a city that hardly slept anyways.

He used the trash can as a cover to be sure not to be seen from the main road, but even if he was, he was simply a well-dressed Mexican man, going home from tonight's theatre evening, who suddenly felt very lightheaded and stepped away from the pavement traffic to try and catch his breath.

He put a hand on the junction box as if he just needed to hold on to something. He felt the conventional rush through his veins. In front of his black eyes, reality started to take the already familiar look of a writhing mass of shiny filaments, a twisting tangle, breathing with that energy that permeated the world, unseen by the eyes of the mortals.

He pitied them. He started to since the day he discovered he could use magic. To be able to see the true blueprint of the world, the connections between every living and unliving thing, was an astounding sensation. Its marvel never really grew old.

He concentrated on the kind of magic he was going to use, feel the energy pass through his body, to his hand, and from his hand to the fluxes all around the target. It was one of those things that took more time to explain than to do. Simple, plain gestures.