Chapter 10: November 23nd – New York – Afternoon

 Lengthy chapter... probably poorly written/explained.

Big one though, biggest chapter yet.

Chapter 10: November 23nd – New York – Afternoon

                The thing about magic is it comes at a high cost. Joseph Pierre learned that in the Devil’s Cabal case two years ago where he spent three months of his life in New York. He found the elite of the Upper East Side using potions and creams from the bones of babies, gangsters in Harlem using knives in robberies that have been blessed to steal souls, and Cafés using magically enhanced products from farms causing their patrons to be addicted to their food. Of course no one knew they were using magic, but in the end they had to pay a price to the Cabal. One of the people who helped Joseph Pierre in the case was Natalie le Fay, a woman who claims to be a decedent of the Arthurian legend Morgan le Fay.

                Natalie le Fay is a spiritual advisor to the rich and celebrity. She also has her own fortune teller parlour in the Upper West Side with a sign that says invite and appointment only. Joseph didn’t care for the sign as he opens the parlour’s door and steps into Natalie’s domain. The parlour is called Magika and it advertises everything from knowledge of past lives to future lives, from palm readings to tarot readings, and it’s located between a café and yoga study in a primary shopping district for yuppies and intellectuals. The small one level parlour is painted purple with tinted black windows to block the light from coming inside. The inside of Magika is made to be mysterious with low lighting and incense burning candles, the front part of the parlour is small and compact with almost no room to loiter around. Along the walls of the small waiting room are macabre paintings and figurines. The door which leads to where the readings are actually held is simply one of those long beads that touch the floor with chimes on them so they make a sound when someone passes through. Joseph waits for Natalie, after all barging into her shop unannounced is one of her pet peeves as indicated by the sign on the door.

             Joseph’s back is turned from the doorway as he is looking at the pictures and figurines. The one picture Joseph is looking at is a photo manipulation. The picture of a model dressed as a semi-naked angel with black wings covering up his privates by having the wings curl around him. Small horns can be seen poking from his forehead, little bumps of skin. The angel is sitting on the edge of the building in what looks like to be a mock-up of the New York skyline with the caption on the bottom saying, not every angel is a godsend. Joseph thought about the picture and how disturbingly fitting it is for this situation.

            The soft chiming of beads catches him off guard. He turns around seeing Natalie entering the room. Natalie le Fay appears to be in her mid-twenties but records of her parlour have existed for over fifty years by owners who resemble Natalie but with different names. Natalie is dressed in a short flowery red and velvet blouse with cut up blue jeans, and a black fish-net shawl. Her hands are covered in lavish rings with jewels on them. Each stone on her rings is a different colour, some of the stones on her rings are emeralds, rubies, sapphires, garnet, onyx, and a slew of other stones with supposed magical properties. Her earrings are gold chandeliers with amethyst jewels layering downwards from the gold plate. Natalie’s skin is pale white with makeup highlighting her light blue eyes and black. She is super-model skinny and tall with brunette hair bundled up within her black fishnet shawl to hide how long her hair really is. She looks to Joseph with a smile, “Well not even I can predict seeing you again, what brings you into my lonely part of the world Monsieur Pierre?”

            Joseph casually shrugs, but with a fake Hollywood smile on his lips, “I need my fortune told, and I hear you’re the best in town compared to all of these other scammers.” 

            Natalie gives a nod to Joseph, “Riiiight.” The unnecessary flattery catches her off guard. She knows Joseph isn’t truly a believer and wouldn’t be here if he didn’t really need the help. She moves the beads aside from the door with her body and extends her arm inside giving him an invitation to. “Well then, shall we?”

            “We shall.” Joseph says, going through the doorway into the reading room. The back room of the parlour is where Natalie does her readings. The room is lit by candles on the table giving off intoxicating smells catered to help open one’s mind and soul to Natalie for a more accurate reading. Besides candles, the room is also dimly lit by a projector projecting a map of the stars on the ceiling of the room. The room’s walls are covered with drapes of rugs hiding other doorways into the parlour like her VIP bedroom for intimate readings, kitchen, and her office. Joseph walks to the center of the room where an antique table sits surrounded by cushions. Joseph sits at one end of the table and Natalie sits on the other side with easy access to the tools of her craft thanks to a hidden drawer in the table.

      

Joseph sits cross legged on one of the large purple cushions. The cushion looked exquisite with Arabic like design and tassels at the end of each corner. Natalie sits across from Joseph. She smiles, pulling out a few things from her table like tarot cards and runes. “So, what can I do for you today Mr. Pierre? I’m assuming it’s none of the casual readings I usually give out to my clients.”

           “No, I’m never boring. I’m working on the shooting of the God’s Divinity United and I need information about the shooter. Can you help me with that?” Joseph asked, as if he was challenging her abilities.

            “I don’t know, it’s not like I can just come up with a name through magic. But...” She pauses for a second in thought. Her fingers come up to her chin as she licks one of the jewels from her rings, cleaning it with her tongue. “What I can do… for a hefty price is glances into your future and grab details from events that would fold out. Essentially doing a precognition reading far into the future, grab what I can and then do another one hoping the future will change based on the knowledge you receive from the previous reading.” What Natalie suggests is cheating time and reality, but the kind of magic she needs to pull it off will be costly to him since she has to bear the cost creating new timelines unnaturally. The question is if it’s worth it for a good enough lead to catch this Angel and clear his debts with Paul O’Healy.

            “What’s your price? I’m sure my employers can cover it.”

            “I want five years of your life. You lose five years of your life expectancy and give it to me so I can live longer and stay beautiful. That is my price.” Natalie declared, pulling out a piece of paper along with a pen and a closed inkwell. 

            “So, you take five years of my life. Do I age five years or is it just cut off from what I could have aged to? So if I was going to die at 89, I would die at 84 instead right? You’re just taking time off my biological clock and adding to yours?” Joseph didn’t understand the deal and asked for clarification, magic can be tricky especially people who deal in it.  

            “That’s probably a better way to phrase it, yes.”

            “Under one condition, only after the shooting suspect is in custody, then you may take it.” Joseph says without missing a beat. Natalie smiles, this meant an extra five years of living for her.

            “Deal. Let me draw up the contract.”  Natalie takes the pen and dips it into the inkwell and begins to write. Her calligraphy is beautiful, reminiscent of a time when they actually teach children how to write

                        I, Natalie le Fay will consume five years of Joseph Pierre’s biological clock, shortening his life by five years and extending mine by five. The ritual is done by consent, and Joseph understands all risks associated by performing the ritual to fulfill this agreement. The ritual is for payment of a service I, Natalie le Fay will perform for him. This transaction will be completed after Joseph apprehends the criminal known as the Angel.

            Natalie pricks her thumb with the tip of the pen and places it on the piece of paper, creating a print in blood. She hands the piece of paper to Joseph to read over, and after a quick read, he does the same. This signifies the transaction is binding to the two people and Joseph has given his consent to the ritual Natalie will be performing for the finding of information about the Angel, and the ritual of draining Joseph of his life. This is to protect Natalie from the Brotherhood of the Vigil in which Paul O’Healy is part of, and allows her to track Joseph just in case he decides to skip on their contract they have together.             

            Joseph who normally wouldn’t mess with magic knows how dangerous the consequences are if he fails to uphold the contract. He also knows the dangerous of performing the ritual, because if he is going to die in five years due to health concerns, he would die doing the ritual as his biological clock will run out.              

                Natalie smiles taking the contract back, she is happy. “Great, I’m going to go file this and brew the potion we need so you have find out who you’ve been looking for.” Natalie moves from her seat into her actual office to put the contract away. She will walk back into the room and into the kitchen. Rugs are placed over doorways to hide the doors from the average customer so the illusion of the place being mystical isn’t ruined by modern architecture. She returns with a mug filled with a hot liquid that looks like swamp water with dirt and leaves inside of it.

            “This potion will create an anchor point in your life so I can successfully find my way back here. Drink the potion please.” She asks Joseph, sitting back down on her knees, across from him.

            “How does it do that? Create an anchor point by just drinking it?” Joseph is curious, he grabs the tea and smells it. The warm cup in his hand smells joyful and sweet, almost as if he smelled hot sugar. Just holding it in his hand is comforting.

    

            “The drink will give you something to always remember. It’s like having a first kiss or losing your virginity, the first time you always remember it but the fourth or fifth? You don’t remember. That’s what we’re doing, creating a reference point in your mind. My astral self will be travelling into your future timelines, and it’s easy to get lost and lose the location of my body.” Natalie spoke, trying to tell him all of the risks she’s taking in order to get the information Joseph wants.

Joseph takes the drink to his lips and slowly pours it into his mouth. The taste and smell is sweet, despite it looking absolutely horrid. “Now drink it all up.” Natalie encourages, and Joseph does so drinking the entire potion at once several gulps at a time.

“What’s so memo..orable bo—“ Joseph couldn’t finish the sentence before he clinches his chest in pain dropping the mug onto the floor. His heart is pounding, his veins becoming enlarged and tortuous, and his muscles flexing uncontrollably as his body shakes. He turns his body to the recovery position to try and stop his body from moving without his permission, but he starts to sweat and the temperature in his body increases drastically. He can feel the warmth on his face and the sweat escaping his body. It’s as if he is suffering from a heart attack and a very bad case of the flu at super speed. Eventually the pain gets too much for Joseph, especially in his chest as he passes out on the floor of the parlour. Natalie watched him, unfazed on how he reacted to the potion.

Natalie smirks watching Joseph wither in pain. She finds joy in his suffering, watching as he desperately tries to cling onto life. The potion simulates a near death experience, something that Joseph will never forget and a perfect anchor at this point in time. Joseph lies on the floor, breathing and passed out. She doesn’t know how long she has before he wakes up.

            Natalie closes her eyes and breathes deeply. She remains still and proceeds to clear her mind of all thought. Soon she feels herself slipping away from her body, as if she is levitating towards the ceiling. She opens her eyes and finds herself floating in air, looking down she sees her body still sitting on its knees and Joseph Pierre still sleeping. She’s weightless, as she floats in her astral form, an out of body experience. The parlour brightens up as her green earthly aura from her body illuminates the room, Joseph’s aura is pure black with a slight sliver of white in his chest. As her eyes adjust to the astral realm, more objects, and connections become clear. From the white sliver of Joseph’s black aura sprouts out a rainbow of beams of light shooting out in different directions and through the walls. The lights act like a thread or rope, tying all of Joseph’s possible destinies onto one specific point and time, just like an anchor.

               

            Natalie spiritual-self floats between her body and Joseph’s, the visual representation of his destiny and possible futures is shown by coloured lasers shooting off in different directions. By each minute beams from other beams of life branch off like a spider’s web, trying to connect to each other. Carefully Natalie manoeuvres to a random red beam of light, and grabs hold of it with her hand. The red beam of light becomes tangible to her, like a small rope. With her hand holding onto the red beam she follows it through the ceiling of her parlour. The place she ends up in isn’t her roof, but the remains of the 27^th precinct.

            She floats in what appears to be the back office of the 27^th precinct after a massive fire. The sides of the walls are charred black, office paper and newspaper still smoldering on the now wet office floor. The smell of smoke is absent to Natalie’s senses, but she can see the dark clouds still lingering, it looks like no one has re-entered the building since it was on fire. Natalie floats along the desks as she keeps hold of the red line of light in her hand, bending it to her will. If she loses the red light from her hands, her conscious will be separated from the time and place where the anchor is set and she’ll be drifting the astral plane forever. She hovers of desks trying to find some sort of clue what had happened.

            Finally she comes across a small piece of crumbled newspaper that’s still readable underneath a table that is still standing but blackened by the smoke. She moves through the table as she’s intangible so she can get a better view, it’s dated for February 2^nd, 2014. She isn’t sure if that’s the date for today or not, but she reads the headline, Angel of Death kills 80 in a mass bombing. She isn’t able to read the rest of the crumbled up newspaper. She floats around the office one more time seeing if she can gather any more information.

            She looks at offices belonging to people such as Jonathon Mach, Steven Kwok, and finally comes across Joseph Pierre’s office. She floats inside of it still grabbing the red light. The office didn’t look like something Joseph Pierre would decorate it with, it looked like it was recently moved in. She walked around the office looking at documents lying about, most of them are damaged from the sprinklers when the fire must’ve started. She found a name that referenced the old owner of the office, a man named Michael Morrow.

            With almost no other information she left Joseph’s office. She follows the red line of light home, returning to the anchor point in her parlour where her body currently sits. She lets go of the red line when she is safely returned from her trip, and she looks for another promising thread of fate to hold onto and read. Perhaps one that isn’t too far into the future. She finds a yellow one, and grabs onto it, this time she follows the yellow tangible light through her far wall and ends up in a dimly lit place like her parlour but devoted to flesh.

            The place is known to Natalie, only because she’s seen the place through her clients’ eyes when they seem to have lost their memory of a night of partying to hard. The place is called The Fox Tail strip club a seedy place for cheap women and other sinful pleasure men desire. Floating above the room she can see everything from the girl going down on a group of guys in the VIP room, waitresses taking orders from cheap men who’re here for a free show, and a group of perverted men sitting at the stage throwing dollar bills at a blonde woman with huge tits, ass, and nothing on, dancing on a dirty pole.

            A feeling of fatigue is felt throughout her body. Traveling like this takes its toll and she almost lets go of the yellow threat of light. She stays still, breathing deeply to regain composure of herself, grabbing onto the thread before looking around. She can’t hear or interact with anything in this form but she can watch. She spots Joseph sitting at the bar talking to a small Asian girl with black hair and dressed as a provocative waitress, he seems interested in their discussion. Joseph then jumps out of the seat grabbing the woman and pushes her to the ground. Glasses behind the bar break, and Natalie turns around to see what’s going on. The Angel is standing on the stage where the strippers dance firing randomly into the crowd, he must’ve entered from where the strippers enter through their dressing rooms and onto the stage. The yellow line she holds with her hand begins to pulse and attempts to whip out of her grasp, scared that she’s loosing time she follows it back to the anchor point of her parlour.

            The first thing Natalie notices is her physical state, sweat is already showing off her forehead and drips down onto her legs. She knows she doesn’t have much time in the astral realm before she is forced to return back to her body.

  

           Natalie watches as the beams of light slowly dwindle down to a few with the knowledge she’s gathered, among them is the first red beam of light she used. It meant that particular timeline, a possible future will not occur. She finds a light shade of blue light going and decides to follow it through another wall. She floats slowly, the longer she’s in her astral form the more fatigue she feels and the slower she flies. Through the wall, holding onto the blue light she finds her next destination.

            She’s in a small room with wires all over the walls and floor, there is no carpet or wallpaper that can be seen. The back of the room is a cross covered in wires and computer parts with the monitor on top of a cross. Natalie approaches it, leaning down and looking up to see what the monitor says. It looks like it recently had a conversation, with the words GET OUT the last thing said on the screen. Her hand and body is pulled back and she is flung through the walls and into her parlour. All of the lights in the room are being sucked up into the white splinter inside his black aura, and Natalie would’ve do if she didn’t let go in time. The quick and sudden withdraw from his time stream indicates that he’s waking up, and so it’s a good idea for her to return back to her body.

                Natalie’s eyes opens, Joseph is already awake his hand holding his head as if he suffered from a horrible headache.

                “What the fuck was that?” He asked.

                “I put you out for a bit, so I can see where your future is headed. If you stayed up, the future would’ve constantly changed as you think, and it would’ve been unsafe and impossible to travel. As soon as you woke up the possible timeline I was in faded away.” Natalie is also dizzy from her experience. She may’ve not worded her adventure to him correctly.

                “So what did you see?”

                “My first trip is a warning. Red is a symbol of anger and rage. I followed it to a police officer freshly set on fire. I found a piece of paper that said February of next year and the Angel is now called the Angel of Death in the media. I think the place may’ve been set on fire or there was a bomb and people got out just before it exploded.”

            “So, what does that mean for me? How do I use that knowledge?” Joseph asked, sitting up now on the cushion rather than lying on the floor.

            “You take it as a warning. He isn’t just a normal everyday psycho, it’s possible he is smart enough to avoid you for months. He’s smarter than you think.” She pauses for a second, she wished she had brought some tea over so she can rehydrate herself after traveling through the astral realm, but she remains in her spot.

            “The second vision I received followed a yellow light, which is used for fear. You were at the Fox Tail strip club when the angel attacks, I’m not sure why you were there or when, but he attacked and you were there. I was then brought back here before I can find any more information.” This is probably the most useful information to Joseph out of this whole experience, he knows where the Angel is going to attack.

            “So he is showing up there for sure? I can have an officer stake out the place and we’ll be able to snatch him?” He asked, he knew the warning of this is only a possible future out of thousands that could happen.

            “He should, I’m not affecting his choice, only yours. Eventually he’ll show up at that strip club.” She stated before revealing what she saw last.

            “Lastly, I followed a blue light of clarity into a.. weird room. It was covered by wires, and an odd shaped computer is in the center of the room. It looked almost religious, you woke up before I could see what’s on the screen but I believe that’s where this angel is hiding.” Natalie said, standing up after delivering her final vision to him. As she stands up from her spot her legs shake and almost give out from being asleep for nearly thirty minutes. She catches herself against the wall, leaning on it. Joseph gets up to grab her, she pushes him away.

            “Let go of me, I don’t want you to touch me. You’re corrupted, cursed, call it whatever you want, but bad things seek you and I don’t want your residue on me. Be careful, stake out the strip club and stop this before it gets too out of control. Then I better see you back here for your end of the bargin.” Natalie threatened. Joseph let go of her, careful not to drop her but so she can stand on her own. He readjusted his clothing including his black coat before heading out, exiting the parlour.

            Joseph now not only has video evidence of the angel to show the people at the station, but a possible location on where he will strike at some point in the near future. It was better off than what he had earlier in the day, and it only costs five years of his life if he arrests the angel.