Rin parked the car and made her way into the house past Shane's various automotive repair projects. There was the motorcycle and the two cars with their engines spilling out across the floor, plus a number of other sundry items strewn about at the back of the garage. There were old toasters, broken television sets, lamps in various states of disassembly. Apparently Shane was quite the handy man. He was also a very neat individual. At first the garage was a dizzying array of hardware and spare parts but a closer inspection showed that each piece was laid out in an organized fashion. Hoses were coiled and neatly stacked, nuts and bolts were in labeled bins. Tools were meticulously placed in chests.
Rin spent a good half hour poking around looking for any clues about Shane's origins but wasn't able to find anything. She got excited when she detected an extremely faint magical aura emanating from some of the disassembled electronics but the excitement faded when she found the exact same aura permeating everything in the garage and, in fact, the entire house. It was just residual magical energy from the enchanted map Ilya had set up. Rin dropped the handful of washers that she had been examining and thrust her hands into her pockets morosely.
When she made her way into the house proper she found it largely deserted. Ilya and Estavio were nowhere to be found although Melva was busy in the kitchen where Rin had been healed just the night before.
"Where is everybody?" She asked.
Melva was doing something with a paring knife over a steaming pot. She looked over her shoulder with a friendly smile when Rin entered the kitchen and shrugged at her question.
"Senorita Ilya left on an errand later in the afternoon, she took Senor Estavio with her." She said.
Rin was a bit surprised by the formality in her address.
"Senor Estavio? You mean your husband?"
Melva looked surprised but quickly mastered herself with a laugh.
"Ay, yes. We are very old fashioned."
Rin thought it a bit odd but pushed the incident to the back of her mind. She wasn't as familiar with Spanish customs and courtship, perhaps old married couples really did refer to themselves in formal terms. She had more pressing questions. Like many wealthy individuals Rin often found herself ignoring her servants and other hired helpers. It wasn't arrogant or dehumanizing, simply long habit of being waited on that inured her to the presence of servants. It was easy to forget that they went everywhere and saw everything.
"You know Shane, the driver?" She asked.
Melva's face brightened with a smile, her eyes crinkling, and she reached for another potato.
"Ah, yes, Senor Shane. He is a very pleasant young man. Always polite to me and a great help around the house. You know, young men these days can be so disrespectful. It's pleasant to see one with such good manners."
"How long has he worked here in the mansion?"
Melva paused her peeling and tapped a finger against her chin.
"Hmm, four, no, six weeks on Thursday."
Rin was surprised.
"So short? I was under the impression that he had been a member of the household staff for much longer than that."
Melva shook her head.
"Oh, no. He is very new to the household. And from his accent to the country, eh?"
"Do you know where he comes from? What he's doing in Valencia?"
"No, he never talks much about himself. Why, are you interested?" Melva asked. She gave Rin a sly wink.
"You might have to fight Senorita Ilya for him. I think maybe she only hired him to watch him fix cars with no shirt on, eh?"
Melva let out a matronly cackle when Rin blushed down to her roots. She couldn't deny that Shane was attractive, but she didn't know him at all. Add to that what she had just learned at the restaurant: he had likely been lying to her best friend for weeks and had sinister ties to the Burial Agency. Rin was definitely, positively, most emphatically…
"I am definitely, positively, most emphatically, NOT interested in Shane." She huffed. "And Ilya should stay away from him as well. He isn't what he seems."
Melva laid a bony finger alongside her nose and winked at Rin knowingly.
"Ah, but who of us truly are what we seem? Maybe what's important isn't who he was, but who he is, eh?"
The thought gave Rin pause. Hadn't she told Berserker the much same thing just that morning? She gave Melva an odd look but the aged housekeeper had already turned back to her boiling pot. She saw a lot more than she let on.
"Hmph. I'll be in the study." Rin said, and swept out.
…
Rin didn't let her mind dwell on her odd and somewhat embarrassing conversation with Melva. Her mind was always active but she redirected her thoughts from the mysteries of Shane's origin to finding everything she could about the Omega Weapon. With a quick stop in her room to collect a pair of black candles and a magically treated mirror she made her way into the study so she could keep an eye on the enchanted map while she worked.
Before she set to work on the mirror something occurred to her and she turned back to the map. With a brief chant of self hypnosis she cast a light magical detection field over the maps surface. Her brow furrowed in concentration and she grasped around for something to tie the field off to. The only item handy was a wide metal washer in her pocket, probably something she had accidentally picked up from one of Shane's pet projects in the garage. She quickly cast an anchoring spell on it and then tied the anchor to the detection field on the map, tying it off with a low grade movement spell. If everything was working correctly the detection field would sense any magical spikes from the map and make the washer vibrate, a handy little detector that would let her know when the map was going off without having to keep an eye on it.
With that done she lit both the candles and set the mirror up on a desk near the wall. The mirror had already been linked with an aural summoning spell so all Rin had to do was feed a thin stream of prana into it to reactivate it. She stared at her own reflection for several minutes, taking the time to adjust a lose strand of hair. Suddenly her own reflection looked her, smiled, and then spoke in the deep voice of an elderly man.
The enchantment was fairly ingenious. Rendering the image of the person you were speaking to required both a communication spell, a clairvoyance spell, and an illusion spell. By linking the message to the reflection already apparent in the mirror the prana cost of the spell was cut in half and the range was nearly doubled. It was a bit disconcerting to see your reflection speak with someone else's voice but the inconvenience was more than made up for by the benefits of the spell.
"Mistress Rin, what a pleasure to see you, after a fashion!" Her reflection said.
"It's good to see you too, Genjo. You answered quickly, were you already in the archives?" She said back to herself.
She knew that in the matching mirror hanging on the wall of the Tohsaka family archives Gejno, the wizened old records keeper, would see his own image talking with her voice. As a keeper of knowledge and secrets he had been facinating to Rin ever since she was a child. Luckily he was tolerant of a youngsters explorations, making the vast library of Tohsaka files available to her from a very young age. She had always liked him and he had always considered her close to a daughter.
"Oh, I'm always in the archives these days. Someone has to keep the cobwebs away, no?"
Rin smiled briefly before allowing her face to sober.
"Could you find something for me? I need all the Tohsaka family files on something called the Omega Weapon."
Her reflection nodded respectfully to her and then, suddenly, slumped forwards as if asleep. Genjo must have walked away from his mirror leaving nothing for the spell to project. Rin waited several long minutes until he returned, her head popping back up. She saw that her brow was furrowed with concern, the reflection mimicking Genjo's facial features.
"There is no information here about an Omega Weapon, but I did find a file about a Project Omega. Perhaps they are the same thing? It looks like there was a file box in that location but someone has already removed it. More secrets, I fear. There was only a single file left, probably entered after the original document was removed. Would you like me to send it to you?"
Rin nodded.
"Yes, please. How soon can you get it to me?"
"I can haul my old bones down to the post office and have it sent out in the morning. We're nearly seven hours ahead of you, the post has already come and gone. You should get the file tomorrow or possibly the next day."
Rin bit her lip. For a moment Kirei's words echoed with her. 'You mages have some terribly out dated ideas.' If the Mages Association was a little more technically adept Rin could have the file instantly. But she doubted that Genjo would even know what a fax machine looked like, let alone how to use one. She filed the information away in her head. When she returned to the Tohsaka household she would see to it that the Tohsaka family and its agents took a step towards the modern world. Magic could bring about miraculous happenings but Rin was learning more and more that there was no beating technology for minor conveniences.
"Very well," She said out loud. "Send it as soon as you are able."
Her image glanced from side to side before leaning in conspiratorially.
"So, how is the War going?"
"There have been some...complications. But I'm hoping that file holds the key to solving those. I don't know Genjo. Sometimes it seems that..." Rin was interrupted by a sudden movement from her pocket.
She reached into it and drew out the washer that she had enchanted just a short while before. It was vibrating like an egg timer.
"I have to go!" She said, severing the thread of prana that animated the mirror before whirling on the map.
There was a massive spike of magical activity centered over the crowded shopping district. Rin dashed to the hallway and was surprised to catch a glimpse of the night sky out of a window as she passed. Darkness had fallen while she had been working and conversing with Genjo. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and yelled,
"Berserker! Berserker! Quickly, there's something happening down town. Probably a Servant battle, judging by the amount of magical energy. We need to go!"
Berserker thundered down the stairs after her and she dashed out to the car, slamming it into reverse to peel out of the garage before speeding off towards downtown Valencia.