Completely awake now on the plane, Amelia balled her free hand into a fist, "Fine...now let me talk to A-"
She heard AJ's giggle, made to sound like she was a little kid. And then, as if this was supposed to creep her out, AJ sang,
"Tick tock goes the clock, and all the years they fly. Tick tock and all too soon, you and I must die."
Normally this would have creeped Amelia out, but she knew better that AJ was only quoting a nursery rhyme from Doctor Who.
"AJ, I'm finding you and I'm not going to hesitate to kill Beck-"
She noticed the line had gone silent. So much for getting any information on the location...
The next thing Amelia knew, Mikey was shaking her awake.
"Come on, Mimi, we're back."
She got off the plane and grabbed her stuff from the concourse. The drive back to the house was silent.
When they got back to the house, Amelia went to her room and slammed the door. Mikey and the others went and sat in the living room, where Gerard, Ray, Chuck, Pierre, and Bob were waiting.
"Well?" Gerard asked once they all got situated.
"Well, we found AJ, eventually. They were in Slane Castle in County Mead, Ireland. And Beckett's definitely alive. I saw him with my own eyes, and Sebastien fought him," Mikey began.
"Where's AJ?" Ray asked.
"Well, she's still with Beckett," David explained. "Before we could get her, the castle collapsed and the cops thought we did it. We got arrested."
"You got arrested?" Chuck repeated, shaking his head.
David gave him a cheeky smile. "Yeah, we kind of did. But a friend of Amelia's helped us and got us out of jail."
"Speaking of Amelia, why did she slam her door?" Pierre asked.
Mikey looked right at Bob when he said, "Jon Walker got to her. He manipulated her emotions enough to make her almost transform into the demon."
"I'll go talk to her," he offered and got up.
Bob walked to her room and knocked on the door.
"Amelia? It's Bob. Can I come in?" he asked.
"Sure," came a small voice from inside.
He opened the door, walked in, and closed it behind him. Amelia was sitting on her bed, staring out the window. Bob pulled up a chair from the desk and sat down. He knew better than to approach Amelia right now. She was in a fragile state. For a while, Bob didn't do anything. He just sat down and watched Amelia as she sat on the edge of her bed, her chest rising and falling with each breath.
"Do you know what it feels like, Bob? To have no control over your emotions or your actions? To feel completely vulnerable like that?" Amelia asked quietly, at last.
"Yes, I do. I know exactly how that feels. Jon's done that to me before. It doesn't feel too good," Bob agreed.
"After he did that, is it normal to feel so numb? So violated? I could have killed someone."
"At least you didn't actually kill someone. I did," Bob said and Amelia finally turned around to look at him.
"What?"
"Jon Walker made me kill my wife, Laura. It was almost 80 years ago."
"What happened?"
"Well, we had just gotten back from our honeymoon. At that time, Jon was a good friend of mine. He had let us stay in a lake house he owned out in California and he had come over that afternoon to help us unpack. What I didn't know though, was that he was secretly in love with my wife. I didn't find out about that until much later. Anyway, that night, before we went to bed, I just started getting angry. I didn't know why, but I kept getting angrier and angrier. Two or three days after we came home, I reached my breaking point. Jon had come over to check on us, and I was just screaming and yelling at Laura. Poor Laura, she didn't deserve it at all. I...I was so mean to her...so horrible," Bob explained, his voice trailing off.
"What happened next?"
"Well, this anger that I had, it just kept building and I had no idea where it came from. I mean, Laura, she just kept crying and yelling at me to stop. I was pretty scared that I was going to do something stupid, so I kept telling Jon, 'Jon man, I gotta get out of here. Take me away from here.' and all he kept saying was 'We all have to face our demons some day, Robert.' I had no idea what it meant. Well, then, I started getting violent. I smashed things, I used as many spells as I knew. Laura was a cursebreaker, so she could easily avoid my spells. Then, I snapped. All of the sudden, it was like I was momentarily blinded. I couldn't see anything, except this red color and a voice that told me to give into my anger. Well, I did, and I used an Unforgivable Curse. I used Avada Kedavra on her. The Killing Curse. When I finally regained my sense of self, Jon was gone, and she was dead. I'll never forget that feeling," he said, his voice thick with emotion as tears began to fall down his cheeks.
Amelia, not knowing what else to do, hugged Bob and said, "Don't worry, Bob. We'll kill them. I swear."
The next few days were actually normal. Amelia had come out of her room and was even joking around with the other guys. For a moment, she almost forgot that they were all in serious danger with Beckett at large. Almost a week after the incident in Ireland, Gerard asked Amelia to get the mail for him. She obliged and got the mail.
Most of the mail was bills and stuff, but something bright caught her eye. It was a postcard. On the front, it had an immaculate white house. There was no return address on the back, and it was only addressed to Amelia. In a neat and fancy script, someone had written, "In the end, we all return to our roots."
"Hey Mimi, what'cha got there?" David asked when she walked in the room and handed the mail to Gerard.
"I dunno, it's a postcard from somewhere. Wonder who it's from?"
"Is there a return address?" Chuck asked as Mikey grabbed the postcard from her hand and sniffed it.
Amelia shook her head. "Nope. It's only addressed to me, and it just says 'In the end, we all return to our roots.' Mikey, why did you just smell it?"
He shrugged. "I wanted to see if I could track a scent. There was nothing."
"Do you think it could be from Beckett?" Ray thought out loud.
"Could be. Let's do some research," Frank suggested.
Amelia grabbed her laptop, as did Mikey. Sebastien, David, Chuck, and Ray went to the local library to use their computers.
Gerard, Frank, Pierre, Jeff, and Bob gathered around the two with the computers.
"So, how should we go about this? It's not like we can just type in 'big white house' to Google and expect to get a good answer," Mikey stated.
"Well, most of you guys are pretty old, no offense. Do you recognize the architecture at all?" Amelia asked as she opened up a Youtube page. She put on some music and went back to Google as the guys stared at the postcard.
"Hey Mimi, what are we listening to?" Pierre asked as they inspected the postcard.
"Oh, it's called 'Roots Bloody Roots' by Sepultura," she replied as she typed some stuff into Google.
"So if Beckett sent this, what do you think it could mean? I mean, trees have roots. Trees are symbolic of power, so maybe he went somewhere with a lot of trees?" Ray asked, trying to come up with an idea.
"Maybe, but that seems too easy for Beckett. What if he -" Gerard started to say before Amelia cut him off.
"Wait! I got it!"
"What do you mean?" Mikey asked.
"Well, I was listening to the song, and in 'Roots Bloody Roots', Max Cavalera says "I'll take you to a place where we can find our roots bloody roots". What if Beckett took AJ to his roots? Where he originally came from? That would make sense as to why the postcard says that we all return to our roots in the end," Amelia hypothesized.
Everyone looked at one another and sort of nodded in agreement. It was better than anything else they'd thought of so far.
Amelia grabbed her phone and called Seb.
"Hey Seb, it's Mimi. Listen, can you do some research and try and uncover where Beckett is originally from? We think he took AJ back to his roots and so we need to find out where he came from. Think you can do that? You can? Great, call us if you find anything," Amelia said and hung up.
"You guys keep researching. Look for anything that include William Beckett or where he came from. I'm going to make a phone call," Amelia said as she got up.
She walked into the kitchen and walked out onto the back porch. She flipped open her phone and called Patrick. He picked up after two rings.
"Hello?"
"Hey Patrick, it's Amelia."
"Hey Amelia, how's it going?"
"Not too good, Patrick. We've got a situation here in Jersey. It turns out that William Beckett never died when we killed him last year. And now he's gone and kidnapped AJ." Amelia said in one breath and Patrick choked on whatever he must have been eating.
"Jeeze, Amelia, way to just drop the bomb on me. That doesn't surprise me, though. I've been hearing rumors of that for years. Anyway, where is he now?"
"Well, we don't know. He took AJ and just recently sent us a postcard that leads us to believe he might be going back to his original homeland, wherever that is. I was calling because I hoped you had some inkling of an idea as to where he's from."
Patrick was silent for a moment as he thought. "Well, I don't know anything personally, but I have some associates who might know some stuff. Let me ask around and I'll get back to you in a few days, okay?"
"Sounds great, Patrick, thanks."
Amelia closed her phone and went back inside.
"Anything?" she asked, and the guys all shook their heads.
"Well, we'll just have to keep looking. Patrick said that he didn't know anything, but he'd talk to some people and let me know," Amelia said as she sat down at her computer.
Three hours later, Seb returned with the others.
"Did you find anything?" Frank asked.
"Nope, not a damn thing. There were little blurbs on Beckett here and there, but nothing significant. He hardly has a paper trail," Seb reported as he flopped down onto the couch next to Mikey.
"We checked and cross-checked everything. It's like he's a goddamned ghost!" Chuck fumed.
"Well, if it makes you feel better, we didn't find anything, either. Amelia called Patrick and he said he'd look into it, but I doubt he's going to find anything. Is there anyone else who would possibly know anything about him?" Gerard questioned.
"Gabe Saporta would have been our best bet, but we killed him. Who else do we know that was close to him?" Amelia asked as her cellphone rang.
"Hello, Amelia? It's Patrick. I have some good news. One of my associates has agreed to talk to you. How soon can you guys make it out to Milwaukee?"
********************************************************************************************************
The next night, Mikey, Amelia, Sebastien, Chuck, and Bob were on a flight from Jersey to Milwaukee. They collected their things from the concourse and walked outside. The spring rain fell around them, and Chuck used his waterbending to deflect the water.
"Do you have the address?" Mikey asked Amelia.
"Of course I do. It says that he wants to meet in the lobby of the Pfister Hotel," Amelia said as she flagged down a shuttle that was leaving the airport.
The five of them walked onto the bus and told the driver where they wanted to go. 20 minutes later, they stopped in front of the hotel. They thanked the driver and walked into the lobby.
The hotel was immaculate, with lavish Victorian art and a grand staircase in the middle of it. Amelia stared in awe. Who knew that something so beautiful was located in Milwaukee?
"So how do we know who this guy is?" Chuck asked.
"Patrick said that we'd be able to identify him by smell. He said that, according to Pete, he smells like a combination of oil paints, sweat, and woodworking," Amelia said as she looked to Mikey and Sebastien.
The two of them sniffed the air and then walked away from the group. Everyone else followed behind them. They stopped to rest at a large plush chair that was situated in front of a roaring fire.
"Are you our contact from Patrick?" Bob asked.
"I am. Glad to see you showed up," the man said as he stood up and turned around to shake someone's hand.
When he turned around, everyone gasped, and the man himself turned as pale as a sheet. Patrick's contact turned out to be none other than The Butcher, one of William's old men.