Chapter Three~
The beauty of the dying, red sunset filtered through Mayberry's apartment window, but it only annoyed her with its reminder that time...Leverage's time...was limited.
Sitting up on her couch, Mayberry watched the Full Moon Mirror floating silently by the coffee table. At the same time, she held up the photo of Langston, constantly glancing at it to keep his features sharp in her mind whenever she focused on the looking glass.
Its magic activated, she and the room's reflection quickly faded away. In its place was a persistent, silvery fog clouding the center of the Mirror as if the glass were a tv that had lost its signal.
"Where are you, dammit?" she grumbled.
She frowned, concentrating on the boy's face even harder, but the miasma didn't relent.
Finally, she looked away in frustration and slouched further into the couch. She scooped the remote control from the couch's closest arm and turned on the tv to settle her mind before trying again.
"...Child abduction had occurred in Pentagram City, the last being in neighboring Imp City last month," said gas-masked 666 News host Tom Trench.
Mayberry glanced at the chroma key behind him that showed a Hellborn girl of at least nine years of age, the daughter of a local entertainment mogul.
"Damn. I guess kids have it tough here, too," she commiserated.
"Police detectives have been hard-pressed to find clues to her whereabouts. However, they are certain that ransom may be the motivation because her parents are fucking loaded," Tom continued.
"No, duh," the Sinner muttered, still looking at the happy, last-known photo of the victim.
She glanced over at the Mirror for a moment. "I hope they find-"
"Hungry," a sad, feminine voice said from the Mirror, making Mayberry start.
Her shock waning, Mayberry tried to work out what had just happened. Unless Langston's voice was higher than she remembered, that was a girl's. But, why? How?
A moment later, the cause and effect struck Mayberry like lightning, and she quickly looked at the picture of the little demon girl before switching back to the mirror.
"Hell-o! Hell-o!" she called out to the glass. Silence.
"C'mon, c'mon. Make it work! C'mon!" she half-prayed as her head swiveled from the tv to the Mirror, retaining the girl's face and pouring her will to find her in the center of the magical artifact.
It remained misty.
Then, the girl's face disappeared. The studio camera's POV cut to co-host Katie Killjoy relating more stories, making Mayberry panic, trying to recall the girl's features from her short time seeing them.
"No! NO! Dammit, Katie!"
"...Please?" The voice was distorted and faint, like an out-of-range radio signal. Still, it startled Mayberry enough for her to concentrate again.
Trying to pinpoint this little life was wracking the teacher with more anxiety than she had felt in a while. In the back of her mind, she knew that she was not following Leverage's orders.
Gritting her teeth at that risk, she stared hard into the looking glass, hoping to clear the sound and get a lock on a solid location.
"C'mon, give me something," Mayberry muttered, trying to ignore the pressure of possibly failing and the fact that she was jumping into this, feet first. Everything she was doing right now could decide whether a girl lived or died.
The fog suddenly cleared away in a miraculous rush, showing with the clarity of an open window, one side of a small, spartan room.
From the lackluster furnishings, like the large, dirty mirror that sat over the sole chest of drawers, the bland walls, and a lone tv off to one side,
Mayberry could reasonably deduce that she was spying on a typical motel.
Or, perhaps, a hotel? The simplistic décor was universal for such accommodations, and it felt logical that the call for help would come from there. A place for a hunter to stay a night or more before probably moving on meant that she didn't have much time before any trail to track the girl would be as cold as the child would be.
In her frantic search for a body, however, she almost failed to notice the two beds separated by a small desk in the mirror's reflection.
A red-skinned moppet sat on one of the beds, her fidgety body language telegraphing her fear, confusion, and homesickness.
Grateful upon seeing her, the memory of how Langston sent his Influence powers out to his victims via the Full Moon Mirror's connection with mundane mirrors struck Mayberry.
The boy had said before that one could not speak to the person on the other side. However, since he was giving marching orders to his thralls through his end, it was a good bet that he was lying.
Apart from scrying, direct communication seemed only possible mirror-to-mirror. So, Mayberry experimentally focused her desire not to see the room via the Mirror's invisible eye, but through the other glass.
The artifact's point of view of the room's interior quickly whip-panned into its new angle based on the orientation of the wall mirror, which faced the beds.
Mayberry couldn't see anyone else in the room, and a risky idea came to her.
'Now or never,' Mayberry thought, leaning into the mirror and whispering, "Hey, can you hear me?"
The girl lifted her head to the disembodied sound in the room. "H-Hell-o? Who's there?"
"Shhh...I'm a friend. I'm...in the mirror. Can you see me?"
Looking across at the broad, smudged mirror, the girl's eyes met Mayberry's, the teacher's face filling the breadth of the glass as if it were a wide-screen television. "Wow!"
"Quit talkin' to yourself, in there," came a male voice from the bathroom nearby, grunting in abdominal exertion for his troubles.
"I can help you," Mayberry eased. "But, you have to be quiet. Just shake your head for no and nod for yes, okay?"
The girl nodded.
"Do you know where you are?"
A negative head-shake.
Mayberry studied the area, then hope sprang when she noticed a small, white square in an equally white ashtray sitting on the squat bureau by the beds. "Do you see that white thing on the desk next to you?"
Upon seeing it, the girl nodded again.
"Bring it to the mirror and hold it up so I can see it."
The girl slid off the wide bed and plucked up the ashtray and its contents. She then padded over to the mirror, holding them up.
"No, no, dear," Mayberry amended. "The thing in the ashtray."
The girl took the object and held it to the glass.
Like an extreme close-up, the image of a matchbook cover filled the Mirror, displaying the name and address of a motel outside downtown.
"Hold on!" Mayberry commanded, not believing her luck as she bolted into her bedroom and came out again with a pad and pencil. She plopped back down on the couch, scribbling fast. "Alright, I know where you are now. Thank you. Look out!"
"What are you doing by the mirror?" asked the male voice behind the girl, giving her a start.
"Uh...uh..." the girl turned and stammered, her mind blank with panic. She peeked at the mirror for help, but only the room's reflection was shown.
The large, male Hellborn reached down to her.
And took the matchbook from her tiny hand. "Don't play with this," the male scolded. "It's dangerous. I ordered some food, so get back in the bed, and we'll wait for it."
"Y-Yes, sir," the girl said as she climbed back onto her assigned bed and glanced expectantly at the mirror.
Off an expressway, miles from Pentagram City's downtown, an artery guided Mayberry to a street dominated by a strip mall on one side and her destination on the other.
The decades-old Hell's Bells Motel appeared drab and lackluster. Its rusty, dented, and barely presentable 1950s Googie Style architecture seemed to be designed to do its best to stay out of the public eye.
Clad in her trench coat, gloves, and a pair of sunglasses for concealment, Mayberry picked up a small, rolled-up paper bag and nervously stepped out of her rental. As she had on the drive there, the teacher continuously saw herself from the outside, having trouble coming to terms with what she was actually doing.
The car door closing felt like a death knell in her stomach. Despite her weak knees, only the sturdiness of her hooves kept her from collapsing in the quiet, littered parking lot before she slowly turned in the direction of the manager's office.
She walked towards it like the condemned, each step prompting a soliloquy that barely goaded her to the next step.
"What I'm doing?" she whispered aloud. "It's bad enough that I'm out here trying to pull a Chris Hansen, but I'm not even doing what Leverage told me to do. I'm disobeying a direct order from an Overlord. An Overlord who knows where I live!"
She noted fretfully that she was halfway to the building. Her struggle to convince herself had now devolved into a full-blown self-argument.
"It would be something if I was on her mission; then, she could use her magic and step in if things went sideways," her cautious side offered. "I should call the cops; that's the smart thing! But what if they won't listen to me because I'm a Sinner?"
"Idiot!" her more daring side countered. "What are you going to do? Tell them over the phone? God, I sound like a schizo!"
She would reach the windowed façade in another few yards, depressing her. Time and space would not avail her if she tried to delay her approach.
"It's too late to back out, now!" Daring said.
"No, it isn't!" Cautious argued.
Thoughts of disagreement and debate crumbled after that. 'I'm here, now! Turn back! I can't! You can! I can't! That little girl called to me! Me! I can't turn away! She needs my help! I have to try, dammit!'
With a gulp, she touched the door handle and stepped through the threshold, giving the dour lobby a furtive look. Even in Hell, this place gave her understandable pause.
Under the weak, fluorescent ceiling lights, a palpable history of surrendered inhibitions, secret shames, and old regrets hung in the dusty air and clung to the moldy plaster and faded wallpaper. Infernal versions of cockroaches had claimed dominion, while dingy, cracked floor tiles and dusty pots holding dead plants in corners added to the dreary ambiance.
A dented cardboard box filled with odd clothing and knick-knacks that read "Lost and Found" in weathered marker ink sat on an end table between the front door and a torn couch in the lobby.
Mayberry then caught sight of the only thing to rival the scuzziness of the place. Slouching behind the reception desk, the manager, a slovenly, overweight, stubbly-bearded specimen of demonhood, looked up from the dog-eared pages of his dirty magazine to notice her.
A hand reached down to relieve the proprietor of a sudden itch when Mayberry finally walked into the room.
"Can I help you, lady?" he grunted.
"Uh, yeah," said Mayberry, hoping she could pry information from him by her approach, which was unsure, even at a glance. "Did a guy come here with a girl and pay for a room?"
"Guys come here with girls all the time, lady," the manager surprisingly answered, honestly, if not apathetically. "It's a motel."
"The girl was young," she pressed, fearing she might scare him into silence.
"They usually are."
"About school age."
He thought a moment. "Only one this week, and who are you?"
Mayberry froze inside. She hadn't come up with a cover story on the way over there, had nothing to say if he wanted to know why he was being grilled by some stranger off the street. It was only when she remembered the seedy nature of the place that inspiration found her.
Slouching against the desk in as slutty a demeanor as she could clumsily muster, she purred, "Oh, I'm the one he called earlier for a private party. Y'know what I mean?"
The manager's expression relaxed at that. "Oh, I thought you were a private dick or something."
'I'm in!' she thought. 'Keep it up!'
"Believe me, he's the only...uh, dick..." She furiously wracked her brain, trying to make a low turn of phrase. "For my...uh, privates...I think. Anyway, he gave me this address, but forgot to give me the room number."
"What?" the manager asked, the lewd situation dawning on him. "You're sayin' the kid's the appetizer and-"
"I'm the main course, honey," she finished, tapping into Ms. Tombs' lechery as a muse. Somehow, that landlady made it look easy.
"Uh, tell you what," he negotiated, glancing at her closed coat and imagining there was nothing underneath but nude Sinner Demon. "How about I give you the room number if you show me a sample of the goods you got under there."
As overjoyed as Mayberry was that the slob was finally being fooled, the depths of his horniness could still make things pear-shaped. She had to deflect him.
Or better yet, frighten him, but what could scare a certified scuzz-ball?
Perhaps a bigger scuzz-ball.
"Well, I'd love to, sport," Mayberry shrugged apologetically. "But, as they say, time is money. Well, actually, it's, uh...Valentino's time. Y'know what I mean?"
Fear poured ice water on his libido as he choked in his understanding. "Wha-Y-You're one of Valentino's girls? H-Hey, I don't want to get on his bad side. Look, it's room twenty-one. Y-You have a good time, and you tell Valentino that his girls are always welcome here, okay?"
"Oh, definitely," Mayberry said, satisfied, as she turned to walk back to the front door.
Now confident, she filed the motel in her memory. Other children weren't spared from its illicit use. If things actually worked out, she now had a target to focus on in the foreseeable future.
Mayberry gave the creep a casual glance. "I might come back here again to see if other guys with kids want to invite me to their parties."
She then gave herself an incredulous blink in the gloom. A place to target in the future? Who did she think she was?
Hers and the manager's attention was then torn away by the sudden ringing of the desk phone.
"Sure, sure," he stammered as he reached over to pick up the receiver. "E-Excuse me."
Mayberry started to take her to leave while he chatted with whoever was on the line. She would give herself a stern talk about the future when she got back home.
But for now, she was here, and she still had this nagging notion that she wasn't quite prepared or better equipped. She felt unready...too exposed.
She glanced over at the Lost and Found box. Half-buried in the other clothing were a dented fedora and a cheap party mask. Without preamble, she grabbed them and exited the office.