I took Sonata to a Mexican diner a couple of blocks away from the school, after prying from her that her favourite food was 'tacos'. I had a hard time believing that of all the foods she could've sampled in her extensive lifetime, tacos were top of the list—when cheeseburgers were so blatantly superior. To each her own, I guess.
We sat at a booth beside the long window looking out onto the street, and ate in silence. It was a small place, buzzing faintly with chatter from other patrons and the news show on the TV behind the counter. Nice enough atmosphere. It was a lot quieter than it would've been at school right then—since lunch hour had just come around.
I'd barely finished my meal when I got a text from Pinkie Pie. It read, 'With girls in cafeteria. WRU?' and was signed with a heart. As was necessary with Pinkie, I suspended my disbelief that she'd managed to run all the back to school in time for a second lunch, and tapped in my reply.
'In town. Helping Sonata. Don't worry, I'll be back tomorrow. Xx ~Sunset.'
I got another message three seconds later.
'Okie Dokie Lokie. Call if you need help.' And another heart.
I smiled, put the phone down and looked across at Sonata. It'd taken some coaxing to get her to order something, and though at first she'd seemed excited to see it in front of her, she was having trouble getting past a few bites.
“Is there something wrong with it?” I asked her.
She glanced up at me, then shook her head. “No. It tastes okay. It just doesn't feel right.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's tough to explain,” she said. “I guess human food just isn't doing it for me, lately. Sorry, I'm probably just being fussy.”
“It's fine,” I said. “Just try and finish it all? I promised I'd get you to eat something, and I really don't need you passing out while we're looking for your sisters.”
Sonata nodded and made herself take another bite. She chewed for a moment, then spoke around her mouthful. “Where d'you think we should start?”
“That's up to you,” I said. “Do you have any idea where either of them might be?”
She thought about it, then shook her head.
“Alright, then. Can you pass me your phone?”
She did. It was a delicate-looking pink smartphone, with old butterfly stickers on the case. She gave it to me unlocked, so I went straight to her address book and found 'Adagio cell' as the first entry.
'Please let it be this easy,' I wished as I hit the call button and put the phone to my ear. There was a brief connection tone, then it went straight to a generic answer phone message without ringing. I guessed that meant the phone was off.
'Aria cell' was next down the list, so I tried that as well. That one did ring, but there was no answer. After about ten seconds, the answering service kicked in and prompted me to leave a message. I hung up.
'Worth a shot,' I thought, but I wasn't out of ideas. I put my phone next to Sonata's and copied the numbers over. Then I started flicking through the apps on my phone, looking for one I hadn't used in a while.
Sonata gave me a funny look. “What're you doing?”
“I'm going to see if I can track your friend's phone,” I told her.
“You can do that?”
“In theory,” I said. “Give me a second.”
I brought up the 'Find My Phone' app and met with an old but familiar user interface. I'm not a tech wizard, so I couldn't tell you how it worked, but basically the app dialled a given number and used GPS to pinpoint its location—ergo helping you find a lost phone. It'd been publicly available online for all of a day before being taken down for the obvious security implications. The new version required you to go online and register your phone before it would work.
But I used to date the guy who wrote the program, so I got my hands on the original. Perfect example of what a flutter of the eyelashes used to get me. I just hoped that it still worked after all this time.
It did. I typed in Aria's cell number, hit 'Find' and watched a satellite picture of Canterlot appear on the screen. A blinking green dot flashed up in the centre, which represented me in the café. A moment later, a red dot appeared too, marking a spot across town from where I was. I frowned when I recognised the neighbourhood.
“What is it?” said Sonata.
“I found her,” I said. “She's in Downtown. What the heck is she doing there?”
Sonata frowned. “We live there.”
I raised my eyebrows at her.
She shrugged. “Well, it's not like we wanted to. Adagio said we had to downsize after we lost our magic, and apartments there are cheap.”
“Wow, okay,” I said.
Downtown apartments were cheap, and with a name like that, I'm sure you can imagine why. Downtown was the seediest district of Canterlot, bar none. That wasn't to say you'd get your shoes stolen just walking through there, but it wasn't somewhere you wanted to get lost after dark. In any town, no matter how safe and well-policed it was, there were always the nooks and crannies where the creeps and crooks bled down into. In Canterlot, that place was Downtown.
So of course that's where Aria was. Heaven forbid the universe make my doing a good deed easy for me.
“Does it say where she is exactly?” Sonata asked.
I shook my head. “It's an alleyway just a couple of blocks into the district. Which probably means she's inside one of these buildings next to it. It's not a big area though—we should be able to figure it out when we get there.”
Sonata's lips curled into a smile. “So, we can go find her?”
“Yeah,” I said. That was assuming she was still attached to her phone, of course. For all I knew, it could've been lost, stolen and/or pawned. With Downtown, any of those were just as likely as it still being in her pocket.
If she didn't have it, finding her was going to be a lot more difficult. The phone might give us some idea of where to start looking, but Downtown was a big place, and Canterlot much bigger. Not to mention that I wasn't exactly a private investigator—I had no idea what I was doing.
I shook my head, deciding to cross that bridge if I came to it. Trying to think about it now wouldn't get us anywhere, and if we were lucky, it wouldn't even be necessary. If we were lucky.
“What about Adagio?” said Sonata. “Where's she?”
I shook my head. “I can't track her phone until she turns it on,” I told her. The guy who made the app was a tech wizard, but I guess even tech magic had its limits. If I knew how it worked, I might've been able to figure out a way around it. I made a mental note to start taking computer classes.
“Oh.” Sonata's smile flickered. I got a gut feeling that told me she was more interested in finding Adagio than she was Aria, though for what reason, I had no idea. I guessed they were just closer. Either way, she latched back onto the good news a second later. “Okay. Let's go find Aria first.”
“You ready?” I asked. She crammed in the last bite of her food, and nodded emphatically. “Alright then.”
I passed Sonata's phone back to her, put mine in my pocket and climbed up out of the booth. She followed me up, and we left the diner together in search of her wayward sister.
It took us about an hour and a half of bus-hopping to get us to Downtown. It would've been a lot quicker to take a cab, but public transport was free for students. I wasn't strapped for money, but there was no sense in wasting it.
I could tell when our bus entered Downtown, because of the way the city shifted outside the windows. Canterlot is an absolutely beautiful place—there's nowhere else like it—but I watched that beauty wither and die the further we got into Downtown.
The lines of pristine, white buildings either side of the street began to grey and dull, as if they'd had the life sucked out of them. Pedestrian traffic thinned out all but entirely, replaced by a few shady or rough characters, walking with their heads down or under hoods. Bent and broken street lights, boarded up windows, potholes in the road—the whole place was a dump.
We got off at a small bus stop, with two of the shelter's three plastic windows replaced by ply wood boards. We weren't that far into the district, so while the streets were grey and devoid of life, they weren't dark and threatening yet. I knew it'd be a different story when the lights went out, but I hoped we wouldn't be there that long.
The GPS led us down a few different streets, past a man walking a dog, and finally to an alley between two tall buildings. One was a dingy corner shop which looked like it had flats above it, and the other was a full-blown apartment building. The alley itself was about twenty feet across, with a couple of green dumpsters on the corner closest to us, and it ran down a good way between the buildings before ending at a high, brick wall.
“Is this it?” Sonata asked, leaning to the side as if to get a better look. “I don't see her.”
I glanced at the phone. We were practically right on top of the marker now. “This is definitely the spot. I didn't see her in the corner shop window, so she's either in the apartment building or in the dumpster.”
Sonata furrowed her brow. “Why would she hang out in a dumpster?”
I shrugged, and decided to call the cell. I waited for the call to connect, keeping my eyes on the alley and listening for a ringtone. I didn't hear one, but after a second, I saw a faint light flicker on underneath the nearest dumpster. “Huh...”
“What?”
I stepped into the alley, knelt down and looked underneath the dumpster. I found the phone, which vibrated in my hand as I picked it up. It was cheap, black and without decoration, with the words 'unknown caller' flashing on the screen, along with my phone number. There was also a thin matchbook stuck to the back of it with chewing gum. Gross.
Sonata stepped up beside me as I got to my feet. “Yup, that's Aria's. Why's it under a dumpster?”
“Well, she obviously lost it,” I said, redundantly.
“What does that mean?”
My lip twitched in irritation. “Do I look like Sherlock Holmes? I don't know what it means. She just lost it.”
Sonata looked away, at the ground. “Sorry...”
I huffed and looked away, too. I felt bad for snapping at her. From the sounds of it, she was getting enough of that from the girl we were trying to find. I still didn't know what we were going to do when we did find her. It sounded like Aria didn't much care about worrying her sister. Getting her to agree to come home wasn't going to be easy.
I idly peeled off the matchbook that was stuck the phone and looked at it. It was black, with a basic image of a bird printed on the front—yellow with black wings—faded as if it'd been rubbed against the inside of a pocket. I opened it and found five matches still inside, one missing. I also saw the words 'Golden Oriole—Public House' in white print, along with an address and phone number.
“A bar,” I said, out loud. Sonata hummed and looked at me. I showed her the matchbook. “Aria smoke?”
Sonata quirked her head. “She used to, sometimes. I dunno if she still does, 'cause she doesn't do it at home.”
'Helpful,' I thought. I vaguely recognised the name of the bar, but I didn't think I'd been there before. It was a lead though. If Aria had been carrying the matchbook with her, we knew where she'd been, at least, if not where she was.
I blew out a breath, slipped Aria's cell into my pocket and punched the number into my own phone. Sonata put a hand on her upper arm and waited, looking idly off down the street. She looked concerned, and I couldn't blame her. If I'd just found one of my friends' phones under a dumpster on the rough end of town, I'd be worried, too.
The phone clicked, and a pleasant woman's voice answered. “Good afternoon! Golden Oriole, how may I help you?”
I rolled my neck. “Hi there. I'm looking for my friend, Aria—” I glanced at Sonata, and she mouthed a word. “—Aria Blaze. Is she in the bar, by any chance?”
“I'm sorry, there's no-one in the bar at the moment. We're usually pretty quiet on weekdays, at least until the evening.”
“Oh. Well, is there any chance you might've seen her over the weekend?” I asked. “She disappeared on Friday night and I haven't seen her since. I'm getting worried.”
“Oh, goodness, I'm sorry. I'll help if I can. What does she look like?”
I described her from memory. I didn't have a perfect picture, but Sonata didn't jump in to correct me at any point, so I was pretty sure I got it right.
The woman on the other end thought about it for a moment, then hummed. “I don't think I've seen her, but— Hold on.” The receiver went muffled, as if she'd covered it with a hand.
“Well?” said Sonata.
I shook my head.
After a moment, the receiver was unmuted, and a man's voice answered the phone. “Hello. This is Half Pint, landlord,” he said, and I tried not to snicker. “I saw your friend, Friday evening.”
I smiled. It was a start. “Oh, fantastic. What time? Was she with anyone?” Sonata looked up at me, hopefully.
“Yes, a group of young men, barely old enough to be in here. All wearing those awful hoodie things. They all seemed to know each other, I don't think she'd just fallen in with them that night. But they got rowdy around nine o'clock—starting bothering the other patrons—so I had to kick them out.”
My smile left as quickly as it'd arrived. “Is there any chance they mentioned where they might be going?”
“One of them mentioned the Flagon on the way out,” he said, and my face fell. “The Empty Flagon. I'm not sure if that's where they went, but that's what I heard. And, er, not to worry you, but if your friend went missing around the Flagon—”
“Yeah,” I interrupted. “I know.”
“Would you like the number?”
“No thanks, I've got it.” I thanked him for his help and hung up. Then I huffed and walked over to lean against the wall of the apartment building. Sonata followed me. “Breadcrumbs,” I muttered.
Sonata bobbed on her heels as she waited for me to elaborate. When I didn't, she rolled her tongue. “Soo, did they say they'd seen her?”
“Yeah. Apparently she went to a bar called the Empty Flagon on Friday night,” I told her.
I knew the Flagon. It was a little deeper into Downtown, and I used to go there all the time a couple of years back. I don't really remember why I liked it. It wasn't exactly the nicest of places, especially compared to those in Central Canterlot. But then, I wasn't exactly the nicest of people. Maybe I enjoyed the company.
“That's before the weekend,” said Sonata, frowning.
“It's a start.”
“Can we use it to find her?”
“We're about to find out.”
I found the Empty Flagon in my contacts and called it. I recognised the gruff voice of the bartender on the other end. “Yeah?”
“Hey, Stiff Drink,” I greeted. “It's Sunset.”
Stiff grunted. “Long time.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I'm looking for someone.”
“Lotta 'someone's.”
I described Aria. He grunted. He did that a lot. He hadn't changed much.
“Seen her in here the past few nights,” he confirmed. “With a kid called Jet. Cocky prick. Got money though. Got here about half-nine on Friday, half-six on Saturday and Sunday.”
I tilted my head, impressed. I guess his memory and attention to detail hadn't dulled, either. “Remember much about her?”
“Drinks a lot,” he said. “Troubled. Snappy. Grieving, maybe.”
That pretty much confirmed what I'd suspected. She was in denial, and acting out. Falling in with a bad crowd, by the sound of it. I guess even age-old Sirens can act childish sometimes. “Did they mention whether they were coming back tonight?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Call me if they do?”
“Will. Then we're even.” He hung up.
'And we have a solid lead,' I thought. Sonata was starting to look impatient with me, so I told her what he'd told me. She was clearly pleased to hear that we knew where Aria might be tonight. When I mentioned Jet though, she looked confused.
“Aria never mentioned someone like that,” she said. “I didn't know she had a boyfriend.”
I shrugged. “That's something for the two of you to deal with. I'm already involved way more than I'd like to be.”
She frowned at me. “Does that mean you're leaving?”
“No,” I said, annoyed. “It means it's none of my business. But I said I'd help you find your sisters, so that's what I'm gonna do. Besides, I'm not gonna let you go to somewhere like that on your own.”
I saw a flicker of a smile on her lips, but it went back to a lost frown a moment later. “So, what now?” she asked.
“Now we need to wait until he calls us back,” I said. “And if he's going to, it won't be until six or seven.” I looked around, up and down the street. It was empty, except for a man in a hooded raincoat on the opposite side of the road, walking along with his hands in his pockets. A chill wind blew past, and I shivered a little. “I'd rather not be waiting out here for four hours. Or in the Flagon, for that matter.”
“Wanna come back to my place?” said Sonata. After a beat, she added, “Just as friends, I mean. Not in a weird way.”
I raised a brow at her. She pursed her lips and stared at me, waiting. In that moment, she reminded me very much of my friend Pinkie Pie.
I took a moment to weigh the idea of following a Siren back to her lair. Wasn't that how sailors always ran to their deaths in the stories? I didn't think I was being affected by mind control. My friends and I had been all but immune to that last time around, thanks to the Equestrian magic that protected us. Sonata didn't have her amulet anymore either, and she hadn't even tried to sing to me. I was safe on that end.
There was nothing to Sonata physically, either. I could tell just by looking at her that she'd be totally useless in a fight. She'd spent her whole life relying on her voice to carry her into and out of trouble without ever having to lift a finger. I was pretty sure that if push came to shove, I'd be able to overpower her and get out of there. I wouldn't really be able to call myself a badass if I thought otherwise.
“Okay,” I said.
'What's the worst that could happen?'
“Uh, you live here?” I said, looking up at the run-down, five-story apartment block. We were still in Downtown—it'd taken us about fifteen minutes to walk there—and you could really tell. More than half of the street facing windows were patched up with ply wood, and it didn't look like anyone had bothered trying to fix them. The concrete was crumbling off in big chunks. The guttering was hanging loose. The whole thing was one big health and safety field day.
“Like I said, we had to downsize after we lost our magic,” she explained, though she was smiling at the building. “It's not so bad once you get used to it. And it's prettier inside.”
“If you say so.”
“Come on.” She led me up a couple of steps to the security gate over the wooden front door. It was the only thing about the building that looked solid. There was a keypad to the right of the gate, and Sonata's finger hesitated over it. “Um...” She punched in a code. “Three, four, eight, nine,” she said out loud.
I raised an eyebrow, wondering whether she even realised she was doing it.
She seemed pleasantly surprised when the pad buzzed in acknowledgement. The gate opened outwards and she stepped inside, unlocking the front door and holding it open for me. I followed her inside, making a silent prayer to the gods of architecture as I did. 'Please don't fall down on me...'
She'd been lying about the inside being prettier, too. She led me down a dull, grey corridor, past half a dozen wooden doors, a couple of which had red 'x's on them. I assumed that meant that they were empty, or scheduled for repairs. Both, I hoped. There was a grated metal staircase leading up to the higher floors, and Sonata started skipping upwards, making loud clangs with each step. She slowed down to a walk after two turns, apparently thinking better of it, since it was a big climb.
We followed the stairs round, and round, until we reached the top floor. Sonata was out of breath, which was a little odd, since it wasn't that many stairs. I followed her down another narrow corridor, until we came to a door marked with a brass '5' on the left side of the hall. “This is it!” she reported, still panting a little. She presented a key and unlocked the door. “Come on in.”
I stepped inside her apartment.
Now, I'm not sure what I was expecting from an apartment shared by three immortals. Maybe a lot of eccentric carpet and wallpaper, some post-modern paintings on the walls, weird and wonderful artefacts from travels around the world. Classical music playing from a radio. A pristine, widescreen TV which they'd charmed some unlucky salesman into giving them, gratis.
I wasn't expecting a typical, dull, grubby Downtown apartment.
The door opened into a small living room, done in grey and grey. There was a couch-bed directly in front of me, in the couch position, with a too-small coffee table beside it. Empty takeaway boxes were on top of and strewn around it. There was a TV, but instead of a big widescreen number, it was a small, archaic box TV—one of the heavy ones with the clearly unnecessary big backs—balanced on an even smaller wooden stand, with DVDs stacked to one side.
There was kitchenette on the left-hand side, divided from the rest of the room by a waist-high counter, covered in yet more fallout from takeaway night, along with soda cans and a few empty glass bottles. From all the mess, I was surprised that the place didn't stink. There were stains on the carpet, the wallpaper was peeling, and there were still-taped cardboard boxes stacked just to right of the door.
All in all, it looked a temporary student dorm, which no-one had bothered to turn into a home, either because they were too lazy or didn't expect to be staying for long.
“Wow,” I said. “Um...”
“Yeah, sorry it's kinda messy,” said Sonata, stepping over one of the empty takeaway tubs rather than picking it up. “It just... gets like this.”
“Uh huh,” I said, as the door clicked shut behind me.
Sonata skipped over and into the kitchenette to rifle through the fridge. “Wanna soda or something? We've got cherry or normal.”
I questioned the hygiene of taking her up on that, but private investigation was thirsty work, and I was parched. “Cherry, thanks.”
“'Kay.”
I looked around the place, and noted three doors leading off from the main room. One was open, leading into the bathroom. The other two presumably led off into bedrooms.
“Mind if I take a look around?” I asked, as she passed me a soda. I broke the seal and took a sip.
“Um, why?” Sonata said.
“Well, we still don't know where Adagio is,” I said. “Maybe we can get some idea where she went if we look around her room.”
Sonata frowned. “Adagio doesn't like people going in her room. Especially if she's not here.”
“Your call,” I said with a shrug. “But it's going to be pretty hard to find her as it is. I guess we could just wait for her to turn her phone on.”
Sonata looked down at her feet, and thought about it. She obviously wasn't comfortable with invading her sister's privacy, but I guess the worry of having lost her won out. “Fine,” she sighed. “But she'll be mad if she finds out, so don't touch anything, 'kay?”
I make a granting gesture and put the hand that wasn't holding my soda into my pocket.
She led me to the furthest door and inched it open, peering through the gap as she did. When she'd convinced herself that something terrible wasn't going to jump out at her, she stepped inside and flicked on the light. I followed her in, and she stood to one side with her arms folded uncomfortably across her chest.
Adagio's bedroom was... minimalistic. Like the rest of the apartment, it had dull carpet and wallpaper. There was a single bed against one wall, with the small dresser beside it doubling as a bedside table—atop which was a stack of three books and a reading lamp. A cluttered writing desk stood off against another wall. The only other thing in the room was an open duffel bag, stuffed unceremoniously underneath the bed.
'Boring', I thought. It would've been rude to comment on the décor, since I wasn't even supposed to be in there in the first place, but I couldn't help feeling curious. “So, what was it like where you lived before?” I asked, thinking that was sufficiently subtle. “I mean, you said you had to downsize.”
“Yeah. We used to live in proper Canterlot,” she said. “It was prettier, and bigger—we all had our own rooms, and a bunch more stuff—but we couldn't afford it after what happened. Like I said, we couldn't sing to make people let us have stuff for free any more. So now I have to share with Aria.” She made a face.
I started meandering over to the bedside table. “You relied on it that much, huh. I'm guessing none of you work, then?”
Sonata snickered. “Um, no, that's for humans, silly. Adagio says we're better than them, so we shouldn't have to do it.”
“Work?”
“Yeah.”
I waved my eyebrows at the wall. 'Sounds about right. Cocky, snobby, let the mere mortals do all the hard work...'
“Do you think that, too?” I asked, looking back at her. “That you're 'better' than humans?”
She cocked her head at me, then went timid. “Oh, um. I dunno. I mean, Adagio's really smart, and she always takes care of me, so she's gotta know what she's talking about, right?”
“Not exactly what I was asking,” I muttered, but it was answer enough.
I leant down to read the titles of the three volumes on her bedside table. “'Witchcraft and You', 'Super-Naturals' and 'Everything you need to know about Magic',” I said. “You weren't kidding about her, huh.”
“Yeah,” said Sonata. “She's always reading stuff like that, even when she does come out to eat with us.”
'Guess I was right about the obsession,' I thought, as I looked down at the open duffel bag, filled with half-burned candles, packs of incense and empty salt shakers. It looked like she'd been trying out this 'magic' in her efforts to fix her amulet.
I made my way over to the writing desk and looked over the documents. There were tracings of magic circles, notes on what sounded like 'witchy' rituals, photocopies of pages from a spiritual guide book. None of it was real magic, in the sense that I was used to. I doubted any of it actually worked—it was just a lot of symbolism and metaphors. Not that that didn't have power in itself, but not the same kind of power as physical magic. It wouldn't be good for restoring an Equestrian artefact.
A piece of note paper caught my eye, and I lifted it up. It looked like a to-do list, with half a dozen items crossed out at the top. 'Return books to library, get new ones. Call wizard from phone book. Eat. Eat?' That she had to remind herself to eat on a to-do list was a little disturbing.
At the bottom of the list were two items left uncrossed. 'Do grocery shopping' and...
“'Meet White Wind for tests',” I read aloud. 'Well, that's interesting.'
“What kind of tests?” Sonata asked.
“It doesn't say.” I looked across at her. “Who's White Wind?”
“He's Adagio's doctor friend. I only met him once, but he seemed nice.”
I made to sit down on the bed, then caught myself as I remembered I wasn't supposed to be touching anything. “A doctor,” I said. “So he works at the hospital?”
Sonata shook her head. “I think he's still a student. At, uh...”
“...Medical school?” I guessed. “Or university?”
“Yeah. One of those.”
“Which one?”
“I dunno,” she said.
I curled my lip. “Any idea where we could find him then, or get in contact? Phone number?”
She shrugged and grunted.
I huffed and got an impatient edge to my voice. “You know, you're not being very helpful.”
She gave me a grumpy scowl. “Hey, if I had the answers, I wouldn't have needed to ask you for help.” She folded her arms across her chest again, and looked away as she grumbled, “What does she need tests for, anyway?”
I thought about that. I was assuming they were medical tests. 'Why would she go to a student doctor instead of a hospital for that, though?'
'Because she wants to keep the results a secret?' I wondered. 'It'd make sense to go to a friend, rather than somewhere the tests results could be seen by a lot of people.' As to what she might be testing for, or why said tests might keep her away for so long, I hadn't the first idea.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said, putting the list back where I found it.
We checked Aria's room too, which she shared with Sonata, and found nothing. The room was just as dull as the rest of the apartment, without any of the witchy nic-nacs to make it more interesting. The only mildly interesting thing was the contrast between the two posters on opposite walls—one was of an album cover for some kind of scream metal band. The other was of a rainbow pony. I bet those two loved sharing a room.
Sonata told me that there was nothing in there, and she was right. Once we'd finished searching, we wound up sitting on the couch and finishing our drinks while I thought.
We still had a good few hours before we could expect a call from Stiff at the Flagon, if we were going to get one at all. And I seriously hoped that we were. If Aria didn't turn up that evening, I was going to have to start asking questions around the Flagon, and that would be clutching at straws. The chances of anyone there having even a rough idea of where Aria and her friends went were slim to none.
“Whatcha thinkin'?” Sonata asked.
“That this is going to be next to impossible unless we get lucky tonight,” I said. Then I sighed. “Wow, that came out wrong.”
“D'you think she'll really turn up?” Sonata said.
'Probably not, knowing my luck,' I thought. It was a long shot. Just because Aria had been at the bar over the weekend didn't mean she'd be back during the week. I didn't want to get Sonata's hopes up, but at the same time, she was worried enough about her sisters as it was.
I figured a little optimism couldn't hurt, so I flashed her a smile and said, “Yeah, hopefully.”
She smiled too, even if it was just a little one. “Cool.”
“And as far as Adagio is concerned, maybe her 'tests' are just taking a little longer than she thought,” I said. “I'm no doctor, but I know things like blood tests can take a while to return results. That could be all there is to it.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “I just don't know why she wouldn't tell me she was going to see a doctor in the first place. I didn't even know she was sick.”
“Well, she's not necessarily sick,” I reasoned. “I'd say it's more likely that this has something to do with her magic research, if that's really all she's been talking about lately.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” I said. And, once I thought about it, I actually did. It'd make sense, in the context. Although it didn't explain why Adagio wouldn't have at least texted to say she wouldn't be home. Unless she was so obsessed that the thought that her sister would be worried didn't even occur to her. I didn't know enough about Adagio to say whether that was the case. But again, I had personal experience with obsession, and if hers was as bad as mine was, it wouldn't be a stretch.
Either way, the thought didn't seem to occur to Sonata. She stared down into space for a while, thinking it over. Then she huffed and slumped her shoulders. “Sorry about all this,” she murmured. “It's pretty dumb, huh? Freaking out just 'cause I've been on my own for a day.”
Something in her tone reminded me of myself, a long time ago. I had a good feeling that I knew how she felt.
“Not really,” I said, rolling my empty soda can between my hands. “It's not easy when the things you take for granted suddenly disappear on you. Believe it or not, I know how it feels to wind up alone in a strange new world.” I looked across at her. “It's not dumb to need someone there with you when that happens.”
She turned her eyes away and didn't say anything, but I think the words gave her some small comfort. I wasn't really sure what else to say, or whether to say anything at all. Like I said before, I'm not the best with comforting words. So we sat in silence for a while, and I hoped it'd been enough.
I wasn't exactly fond of the idea of hanging around doing nothing for the rest of the afternoon. I'd been thinking about heading home—at least then I could get a shower and play video games while I waited for Stiff's phone call. But I needed to stay in Downtown so that I could get down to the Flagon quickly if Aria did show up. If my options were 'risk getting bored' or 'risk losing the trail', I guessed it was probably best to stay put and wait.
And seeing Sonata like that, I thought she could do with the company anyway.
“Wanna watch something?” I asked her.
She found a smile. “Sure. Um, the TV only has a few channels, but we've got movies and stuff over there.”
I went over to the stack of DVDs by the TV, knelt down and flicked through their admittedly quite small collection. My eyes latched onto a colourful, cartoon box set almost straight away. I picked it out and looked closer. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sonata said, face flushing. “That's mine. I don't get to watch it much 'cause Aria and Adagio think it's dumb. There should be cooler stuff in there if you want.”
I grinned, stood up and put in the first disk without a word. Then I settled in on the couch for a very surreal afternoon of watching cartoons in the 'evil Siren's lair'.
The hours drew on. Sonata kept the soda coming. Somewhere along the line, I started sketching while listening to the TV in the background. But I couldn't help stealing glances across at my 'companion'.
Last time we'd met, it hadn't been for all that long, and I'd only ever seen Sonata as one of the bad guys. I never had the opportunity to see who or what was behind that label. I'd never really cared to think of her as anything other than a threat. But the girl I was sitting next to now—smiling and humming along to songs in a cartoon series—was just that. A girl. Either that or she had the best poker face I'd ever seen, but I was still leaning towards the former.
Which, in hindsight, was pretty reckless and stupid of me, but I'm not perfect. I wanted to believe that just because everyone saw a person as the bad guy, that didn't mean that they were a bad person. If I could put aside my preconceptions about Sonata, then just maybe, everyone else could do it for me.
We didn't talk much except to comment on parts of the show.
I got the call from Stiff around seven o'clock. “They're here,” he said, and hung up.
We decided to head straight there. I left my backpack by the couch, since I really didn't want to be seen carrying it where we were going. Sonata put up her hood, I did up my jacket, and we headed out onto the darkening streets.
* * *