A fox being an ingredient of some witchcraft, eh? Now that isn't something that I have seen happening often. Then again, my 'happening often' is all about knowledge from fiction and not any witchcraft I have seen with my own eyes so well, I don't know if this actually is rare or not. Hell, I don't even know if they are talking about some witchcraft or not. For all I know, these guys could want cook and eat fox. I wouldn't do something like that but I don't judge, especially not people from other planets.
Okay, I take that back. I do judge. I think that Fox is far too cute to be made into an 'ingredient' for anything.
"What are you going to do if mom finds out?" The boy asks. What a wimp! I wanna save that fox so I am not gonna criticize him much but man, what a wimp!
"I never really thought about it but I'll think of something." Wow! You didn't even think the question on your own and you are going to be able to think some answer for it when it happens?
I see now that saving that fox might be easier than I thought. I mean, I up against a couple of idiots here. And they are not even Isaac-Miria-type idiots; they are Jessie-James-type idiots.
*****
"Alright, so where should we start? What do we have to go on?" I ask, reinvigorated to find Cartel and help Danny and Roswaisa.
"Nothing." Jessica says, also reinvigorated about the same thing.
"Ah! That's a good place to start."
I mean, everyone and everything starts from there. Funnily enough, they also end there. Okay, this is not the time for philosophy but I think that concept is pretty cool.
"So what do we do, Jessica?" I ask.
"I have no idea, Grey." Jessica answers.
Ah, it's okay. Because we are so full of determination now, we'll find a way … probably.
"By the way, Grey, why are we so full of energy now?" Jessica questions with a hand on her chin.
"Well, it's probably because our profits rose up by 60%, Jessica." That is a huge rise in the profits, especially for a gem shop chain contained in one city. How can we not be happy and full of energy now?
"Yes, yes, that is so great." Jessica says, dancing around.
I join her and we start dancing, not minding the fact that we are still at zero progress in the search for Cartel Hopkins and also in the middle of a street. People around probably think we are drunk or something but well, who cares about them? We should just enjoy life and-
"Am I to assume you two are the ones this letter is addressed to?" And then we suddenly hear an old guy saying that to us. We freeze. We back up. And then we realize there is no reason to be cautious of an old guy like him so we take the box he is carrying and see the one line of instruction written over it.
'Take this to the two people who are doing the most idiotic thing on New Town Street on 5 p.m. today.'
Well, did we win a voucher or something? That'd be nice.
"Well, I'll be going now." The old man says and goes away as we wave him.
"Such a great old guy, giving us these vouchers even though we weren't doing the 'most stupid thing' on the street. How sweet of him!"
I nod to Jessica and we open the box and see what vouchers we got then.
"Such a stupid old guy, giving us these vouchers even though we weren't doing the 'most idiotic thing' on the street. How idiotic of him!"
I nod to Jessica and we throw the damn thing away. This voucher is for our shops. What are we going to do with it? Buy from our own shops?
"Well, that spoiled the mood." I say.
"Yeah, let's just go. Danny and Roswaisa are smart. They'll find Cartel on their own." Jessica says and starts walking away. After a moment, I start doing so too.
But then,
"Hey Grey, when did we start giving any vouchers for our shops?" Jessica asks with a confused expression.
"You know when, dear?" I say with an equally confused expression. "Never."
We look at each other. And we look back at the box and the vouchers in it. And then we look at each other again. And then we start running.
Ten minutes later,
After having picked up and brought the vouchers to a park to study it, we see that the vouchers only have the name of our shops on them – they aren't anything like what we do. The font style and size and coloring we use in any advertisement or cards or anything is never like the one in this voucher. While that may not look like anything important on a normal basis, we have made these things are trademark.
"What's going on here?" Jessica asks.
"I don't know but this voucher is exclusively for our shop on Old Street, right? So, let's go to that shop and check it out." I propose, and she accepts.
Another ten minutes later,
We are standing on the old street, staring at what should be our shop but is, in place of it, a pile of rubble. It takes us several moments of just standing in shock to be able to finally break out of it and run and see if everyone and everything is okay. But, we find out that they are not.
Blood is all over the rubble that our shop has become and shine of the gems we had in there is also coming from beneath the rubble. Someone destroyed our shop. They killed our employees. They buried our gems. They did it on purpose. But why?
"Hey Grey, I found something." Jessica hands me a piece of paper as she says that. Something is written on it with ink. And that something is –
'Tomorrow at 6 p.m., your shop at the New Street will suffer the same fate. But you have the chance of stopping it if you want to. Just find and kill the little birdie'.
The sender didn't give his name but I think I know who the 'birdie' is.
*****