October 30, 2005
7:00 am
Terry peers out the peephole in the door of his hotel room, wondering if he should cast a defensive spell. The two cops out in the hallway have a third person with them, and it looks like Scarpedin. Hoping he's ready for the worst, Terry opens the door.
"Terry," Scarpedin says, putting on a show of toughness, "tell the five-oh to get off me man. You and me, we was playing poker all night. Tell 'em that."
"What's this all about?" Terry asks.
One of the officers smiles at Scarpedin, then back to Terry. "We talked with the manager here. Said you and your friends came in last night, around midnight."
Terry yawns and nods.
"Well," the cop continues, "your friend here, a mister . . . Clarence Thomas . . . he didn't waste any time starting the party. We got reports from Tricou House – one of the clubs on Bourbon Street – that mister ‘Thomas’ here punched a dancer, then fled the scene. One of the other dancers chased him back to this hotel."
Terry laughs, then shrugs. "Well, y'know, I'm sorry you got up so early this morning officers, but I'm even more sorry you had to wake up me and my friend. I don't know if you can tell, but we had a bit of a late night, playing poker. And, well, y’know, drinking a bit. So unless Clarence went running off after I passed out at, oh, what was it, 4 am?"
"More like 4:30," Scarpedin says. "This man's a hell of a drinker."
"Yeah," Terry says, feigning a hangover. "So I don't know what to say, but you got the wrong guy. Hell, check room service. We were pestering them all night long."
“Nice try son,” the cop says, “but we spoke to one of the doormen who was on duty last night, and he corroborated the dancer’s story. Boy said your friend Clarence here came in at 2 a.m. ‘plainin’ ‘bout some. . . ,” he pulls out a notepad and reads the quote, “ ‘Son of a b*tch got what she f*ckin’ had comin’. Take my advice: don’t ever go to a club called Tricou House. They’re f*ckin’ f*cked up there.’”
“He,” Scarpedin says.
“What’d you say son?” The cop shakes Scarpedin’s arm.
Terry can’t believe it for a moment, but Scarpedin looks embarrassed.
“It was a he, man,” Scarpedin says. “Not a she. The dancer was a guy, okay homes? I could deal with that, but the son of a b*tch put his hand on my junk. I wasn’t gonna abide by that sh*t.”
The second cop laughs, lightly hitting his partner until he too starts laughing. Terry bites his lip, but he lets a few laughs out. Scarpedin glares at them all, waiting for them to finish.
“Alright son,” the cop says, still chuckling. “I can’t take you in for that. Hell, boy, you just made the day of every uniform who has to work Bourbon Street. Sh*t, keep up the good work.”
The cops laugh and walk away.
“So,” Terry clears his throat, “did that actually happen?”
“Terry, I don’t ask
you about your life. I don’t tell you how to live, man. But if a dude puts his hand on your junk, you don’t stand by that sh*t, okay? You take that bastard
down.”
“Sure thing,” Terry says. “Holy crap, that was not what I was expecting to wake up to. Agh.”
Scarpedin glances into Terry’s hotel room, then back into the hallway. “Any men in black around?”
“Not yet,” Terry says. He starts to go back inside and close his door. “The men in black don’t come until I’m showered and dressed. Meet me downstairs in half an hour.”
* * *
When Terry gets down to the hotel’s continental breakfast, Nathan is pestering John, Belladonna is smiling at their argument, and Scarpedin is watching TV.
They discuss their plans over breakfast. Belladonna offers them a place to stay at her own home, just east of the French Quarter, and invites them to a costume ball her uncle is hosting. Belladonna’s father, Adrien Lee, is a very wealthy New Orleans businessman, and Belladonna’s uncle Maurice is the man in charge of Mr. Lee’s shipping company. Tomorrow night a lavish Halloween ball for New Orlean’s upper crust will take place on the banks of Lake Ponchatrain, and Belladonna wants them to come.
The first order of business, though, is the Bureau. Terry finds a local phone book and flips through the yellow pages, looking for a particular entry – Brief Marketing Management. The Bureau for the Management of Magicks is easy to get in touch with if you know what you’re looking for. Terry calls, and after a bit of careful questions to verify that Terry is actually calling about magic, he arranges to meet a local Bureau agent in the French Quarter, at 9:30 a.m. He warns them that they have a prisoner they need to turn over - Morgan McCool, currently stuck in the form of a raven.
Terry tells the others that he couldn’t help but notice that the woman on the phone sounded nervous. Hardly a good sign.
With some time to spare, they start talking about their plans for the next few days. Scarpedin doesn’t want to get asked any questions, so he walks off and calls a biker buddy from New Mexico named “Whitey.” Belladonna just wants to repay them for saving her life, and to make sure that whoever was trying to kill Terry won’t keep on going after her. Nathan is just going to hang around until he gets his next vision. Terry has no idea what he’s going to do after talking to the Bureau.
When Nathan tries to get an answer out of John, though, the chain-smoker (currently stuck in a no-smoking section) is evasive and irritated at the question.
“I’m here on my own business.”
Nathan smiles. “Are you a priest? Fasting? Because you sure aren’t eating much.”
Terry sees that John’s plate only has two pieces of celery on it. John rolls his eyes at Nathan’s question, and then Terry senses magic at work. It’s subtle, a psychic energy, and Terry frowns as he realizes Nathan is doing a reading on John.
“That’s rude,” Terry says.
“What?” John asks.
“He’s reading you,” Terry says. “Doing a psychic thing, you know?”
John’s face takes on a look of repressed rage. “Get out of my mind.”
Nathan blinks and shakes his head. “Sorry chap. I wasn’t in your mind. I just read your aura. I was just curious, to see if you were trouble. And I have to ask John, why are your wings missing?”
“What?” John, Terry, and Belladonna all ask at the same time.
“I don’t know,” Nathan says. “I just had a vision, and I saw you were getting your wings clipped off. Are you an angel?”
Suddenly Scarpedin comes up behind Nathan and clamps a hand over the British man’s face. “Don’t look into his eyes. He might be a vampire!”
Everyone starts talking at once in a commotion, trying to figure out what’s going on, but then Nathan struggles free of Scarpedin and slumps face down onto the table.
A moment of quiet passes.
"Um," Scarpedin says, "
I didn't do that."
Terry is just about to poke Nathan when he hears a shout.
“Oh hey, Terry!” calls Robert, staggering into the hotel’s restaurant.
Everyone turns and takes in Robert’s appearance. For some reason he’s wearing jeans a few sizes too large, held on by a belt that has a buckle in the shape of an oil derrick, and a workman’s shirt with oil stains. His eyes are bloodshot like he hasn’t slept all night, and his shoes are caked in mud. In one hand he holds several Walmart bags filled with clothes. Despite his cool exterior, Terry sees something almost frightened in the man.
“Robert,” Terry says, “I thought you never wanted to see us again.”
“Yeah,” Robert says, “I had a bit of bad luck, as you can see. Tell you all about it later. You guys still have rooms here? I could really use a shower and a nap.”
John pulls out his room key and tosses it to Robert.
“Thanks.” Robert smiles, and he’s gone before anyone thinks to ask what happened.
Nathan sits up stiffly, and everyone around him leans back.
“I had a vision,” Nathan says.
“Yay,” John sighs.
“Monkeys,” Nathan says. “And jaguars, and smoke. There were people smoking, and French people trying to buy a key, and then they started to shoot at each other. A man in a black trenchcoat came in, and so did all of us, and the French man shot Terry.”
“Better than his last vision,” Scarpedin says, slapping Belladonna on her back. “At least you’re not dead this time.”
John grumbles. “That vision is worthless.”
“It was very overwhelming,” Nathan says. “There are lots of ghosts here. It makes things a little hard to understand. At least we know we should avoid French people.”
“In New Orleans?” Belladonna laughs.
John grimaces. “Let’s just hope that this Bureau actually knows what they’re doing.”
* * *
Robert wakes up with a start, checking the balcony and front doors immediately. No one is in the room. He checks the clock. It’s just after nine in the morning. He’s in John’s hotel room, in New Orleans, having gotten barely an hour of sleep. At least the blood from under his fingernails is gone. He really needed that shower.
He hears it again. Thumping, rumbling, coming from the next room over. He’s pretty sure that room is one that was checked out to the group of people he’s stalking, possibly Terry’s. Before thinking, Robert is on his feet, opening the drawer next to the bed and pulling out his taser and straight razor. He gets dressed in the dark and considers his next move.
It sounds like someone is next door, rummaging through the room. He can’t ignore it, so his two options are to either go out into the hallway and just knock on the door, or to go out on the balcony and try to come at the person from behind and get the jump on him. Robert opens the balcony door slowly and tries to gauge that plan.
Below the balcony, Canal Street, the New Orleans artery that borders the French Quarter, rumbles with engines and shouts and the dull, distant sweep of waves on the Mississippi. Ten stories up, the noise and the sudden sunlight gives Robert a moment of vertigo. He shakes it off, and turns to check the distance to the next room over.
He’s not sure if he could make the five-foot jump, or if the balcony door into Terry’s room would even be open. And, on the off chance it’s actually Terry rummaging through his own room, jumping in and scaring the man would raise too many questions.
He mutters to himself, “Let’s not make another mistake today, okay Robert? Just play this cool.”
And then he’s back inside his room, out the front door and in the hallway. He tries to peer through the peephole into Terry’s room, but it’s too dark to make anything out. He tries the door, quietly, and the knob is unlocked but the door is deadbolted. He peers at the keyhole and sees the telltale scraping of an automatic key opener having been used.
Grimacing, he heads back into his room, intending to gather his stuff and make a run for it. He gets inside and closes the door before he notices that the curtain to the balcony doorway has been pulled shut. Robert flicks the lightswitch, and sees a black-clad man crouched in a dark corner of the room, holding a pistol.
Oddly, Robert can’t help but think the man looks a lot like George Clooney.
End of Third Session