Washing his mind off of the latest of the countless mysterious supernatural incidents he had witnessed, Elmer dropped down from the carriage he had boarded and set himself onto the walkway on the opposite side of the Glowing Eye bureau.
Almost immediately, after his highlighting, he caught sight of a well polished black steam car, which had remained parked for a few seconds before driving away, and creased his eyebrows.
The walkway of the Glowing Eye bureau was usually empty, and even now it still was, so having seen a car parked before it struck him as something that was worth his notice. And most of all, the car looked quite expensive.
It had seemed to be of a different model than the public ones constantly roaming the streets.
The rims of its tires had not been of the mere plain colors of steel but had instead been coated with gold. Its boiler had also been thinner, and its height lower.
Everything that he had caught glimpses of belonging to the steam car motioned the notion that it belonged to someone of a very high societal class. And if so, then…
What could possibly have brought someone of such a high status down to the bureau…? Even if they were struck with some sort of supernatural incident they could have just used their money and connections to get it sorted out privately… Seeing as the Church collected bribes from those in the high societal class for a quicker process to certify them as Ascenders, then I doubt something of this caliber should be hard to process from the comforts of their home… Maybe something different…? Tch… Why am I even thinking too much about it, it's none of my concern…
Elmer closed his eyes and shook his head, then with the weathered journal of the past emperor of long ago, along with the translation paper of the mysterious Reynold, he crossed over to the other side of the street as soon as the road gave him a moment or two to surf through it.
He was about to push the door of the bureau open when his mind suddenly whirled about to bring to his recollection the events of his first day here.
Ms. Edna had warned him to always knock first, and he had already seen that warning unheeded twice or thrice, he was not about to make that mistake again. Especially after learning about the charms she had in her possession. Maybe the next one would kill him before he even had the chance to plead for her to stop.
Elmer knocked, waited for at least five seconds, then entered.
Again, empty… Elmer mumbled to himself and only himself as the door shut behind him.
He had been somewhat expecting that today might have been the hopeful day he'd had in mind to catch another bounty hunter that was not him, and Eddie of course, but alas no one was here. Also, Ms. Edna did not count since she had already made her profession clear to him.
There was not a single person except the lithe woman of pale alabaster skin and neatly packed red hair, who was currently not behind her desk, but seemingly putting up a poster on the wooden board that stood down at the other end of the hall.
She obviously had heard the door shut, and as a response she momentarily ceased her work as she glanced over her shoulder at Elmer.
"Mr. Elmer? You're back." Ms. Edna turned her spectacled eyes away from him soon after her words and resumed her work. "Give me a moment."
"Good morning, Ms. Edna," Elmer greeted, his bow directed toward the woman's back. "Hope your night went well?"
"Somewhat," she answered. "Yours?"
"Better than I thought it would."
"The job went well? You had seemed to be in a hurry to get it done yesterday, so I'm suspecting you already went on with it. Or did you not?"
She finished what she was doing then and turned around, prompting Elmer to smile before joining her as she took her time walking back to her desk.
"Yes, I did go ahead with it. I'm no longer inexperienced now."
Ms. Edna chuckled as she fell on her chair, taking a moment to lean backward with a soft grace of air heaved out of her thin lips.
"One job doesn't grant you too much experience though." She straightened herself.
"It was quite a daunting job." Elmer shrugged.
"More daunting jobs exist." Ms. Edna smiled weakly, and Elmer did not fail to take notice of it.
Is she tired…? Now that I think about it, she had answered with 'somewhat' for my question about her night… Is it the clerk job, or is she also being bothered by something supernatural as well…? If it was that she should be able to take care of it despite not being a bounty hunter, right…? She's an Ascender, an Echelon 10 at that, and she interacts with a lot of bounty hunters, surely she could…
"And I suspect that's why you're here, is it not?" Ms. Edna asked, her question coming out of thin air to pull Elmer from the concerned thoughts he was having for her. "To take on another?"
"You are right," he answered after clearing his throat.
"Shouldn't you be resting if exorcising your friend's curse had been quite daunting? And you look tired as well."
Elmer pursed his lips. "I could say the same for you. You look fairly tired too. Is there something wrong, if you do not mind me asking?"
Ms. Edna suddenly shrank backward with her brows upturned over the frame of her spectacles. The guise she now wore made it seem as though Elmer had said something weird. That reaction also gave him a wondrous expression.
What was it?
"That was unexpected, Mr. Elmer. I had not expected you to be someone to worry about how I looked," Ms. Edna knowingly let slip those words, and that caused Elmer to question in his mind why she was of such a thought.
Did I come across to you as a person so non-observant, or is it that I look like someone who doesn't care about others…?
His lips twitched indistinctly.
With Elmer remaining silent due to his thoughts, Ms. Edna took off her spectacle and sighed.
"Thank you," she lauded the care he had shown for her through his question. "It's just as a result of me being here to attend to work and bounty hunters. Nothing much. I was just a bit earlier today."
Elmer paused for a few seconds before asking, "By earlier, what time are we talking about here?"
He had always been curious about the exact time the bounty hunters came to take their jobs. Ms. Edna had simply told him 'early morning' when she had been explaining her time for getting off of work, now he wanted to know what part of that 'early morning' it was. And most importantly, why it was by that time.
"3:00. A.M.," she answered, prompting Elmer's eyebrows to pull in.
That's… That's too early…!
"Why so—"
"Early?" Ms. Edna cut Elmer off from speaking. "It's usually by 4, but I had a bunch of unfinished paperworks to complete so I came in an hour earlier." Her eyes had been dropped to the table during her talk, now though she took it up to Elmer, allowing her to catch a view of his slightly tightened countenance, and as a result, she said, "I've been doing this job for a while now, there's no need to be bothered about a little bit of tiredness. After all, the average human can go three days without sleep before experiencing severe symptoms, and we are well above average." She smiled.
Elmer knew that. He knew she would be alright. His question had just been one of pure courtesy that came with being concerned for a person's wellbeing, so he was not exactly too bothered about her tiredness. She also seemed to be a strong woman.
"I'm sure you'll be fine," Elmer told Ms. Edna after relaxing his face and brightening his tolerably knackered expression with a soft smile. Then he asked what had really bothered him, "Why do the bounty hunters come to take the job at such a time though? It seemed to have slipped my mind all these times, but isn't that hour too early?"
Well, it involved the supernatural, and everything about the supernatural was always different in one way or another…
Elmer was barely surprised because of that notion which had come to be drilled into him.
"As I told you, the Baseborn Echelon is the most saturated of the Echelons, which means less jobs for a lot of bounty hunters. It's first come, first serve."
Elmer instantly saw the sense in that.
"And as you might guess, bounty hunters want the jobs that pay the most, so they come to take it on time before anyone else. That is why whenever you come in you don't ever meet anyone else. Usually, by this time, there are either no jobs to take on at all, or they are all low paying jobs."
"Usually?" Elmer blurted, well aware of his lips going loose.
"Yes," Ms. Edna replied. "The jobs ran out quicker today, but somehow you came when a new one was put up. You're quite lucky. I think that was one of the reasons I had the impression that you were a prodigy. Prodigies are always lucky." She leaned back on her chair, resting her tired body.
Elmer had also begun to believe in his luck, seeing as he got to be at the right places sometimes, but he was not having it for this one.
A job being put up the moment I arrived…?
"Is it from the owner of the steam car I saw parked outside?"
Ms. Edna shrugged vaguely from her languid position. "That I do not know. I never came out of the building so I cannot say. But the man who put up the job offer was very well-to-do, so I won't rule that possibility off." She remained silent for a few seconds before suddenly pointing toward the direction of the wooden board on the far end of the hall. "Unless you want to wait till another day when there are more jobs, bring the job poster and let's get the due process done."
Elmer nodded and walked to the wooden board, his hands shuffling the weathered journal and translation paper between themselves until he arrived at his destination. It was then that those items went under his left armpit as he unglued the poster from the board through its edges.
Reading through the italicized words that had been inscribed intricately in black ink on the brown parchment, Elmer further had his brows nudged downwards.
Job posting to search for a stolen item. Fee: 2,500 Mints.
If it was under any other normal circumstance Elmer would have found his heart skipping a beat at the sight of such an amount, but now it only made him somewhat uneasy for a reason he could not really put a finger on.
He needed seven hundred mints to replace the money he had stolen, and somehow the random job that had been put up exactly at the moment he arrived at the bureau offered him just enough.
It would not have been weird if he'd had to shuffle through a few jobs before finding the perfect one that would pay his debt, but now it only troubled him.
A high paying job put up the moment I walked in… This is quite a coincidence, isn't it…?
Well, he was not going to reject it either way.
With a deep exhale he returned back to Ms. Edna, who had been having a shut eye, and slid the poster to her after tapping gently on the table.
"Pardon me, I just took a moment to rest," she apologized.
Elmer shook his head. "Ah, no. You deserve it."
"I do, no doubt." Ms. Edna chuckled softly as she brought out the agreement form and they went ahead to complete the due process of assigning Elmer as the bounty hunter for the job.
As Ms. Edna rose up from her seat in an attempt to go and bring out Elmer's forty percent pay, Elmer recalled his main reason for taking on Lev's job.
"The Warlock's Torch," he said, his voice clear and unnerved, making Ms. Edna take a momentary pause halfway through her rise. "I found out about an artifact with that name while I was researching on how to exorcise Lev's curse…"
"From Dick?" Ms. Edna chimed in with some sort of confused tone before Elmer could carry on with his words.
Dick…?
"Eddie, I mean." Ms. Edna tittered. "He obviously hadn't presented himself with that name to you."
Elmer remembered Eddie's warning and blew a silent bit of withheld air.
Wait, so that was why he gave that warning…?
Elmer's eyes widened and he almost found himself snorting into a hearty laughter, but he did well to suppress such a reaction.
Ms. Edna chuckled. "You can laugh if you want. It's not good to keep some things in."
Elmer shook his head, saying with a sigh, "No. No, it's fine. I did not get the information from E… Eddie." It was proving hard to keep his sudden amusement caged. "After getting the materials I needed from him I tried to get some personal research done and I stumbled upon that. Do you know anything about something with such a name?"
Ms. Edna waited for a few seconds, her eyebrows gone low, but soon after she replied, "No."
At that moment it was as though someone came to squeeze hard on his neck, his amusement from Eddie's other name vanishing at once. He almost found his breathing going awol, but he made sure to restrain himself from such a behavior. Ms. Edna would grow suspicious then.
He lowered his head for a moment and nudged his glasses upward, relaxing himself in return.
"Alright. Thank you. I was just engrossed by the name and I thought you would know something."
"Sorry I couldn't be of more help." Ms. Edna went on to bring the money he was to receive.
During that time Elmer had grazed his eyes on the Enochian symbols engraved on the doors behind the desk. It was just a little bit more of learning he needed then he would be able to translate what they meant.
After receiving the double bundle of mint notes with the number '50' printed to the left of their edges and strapped together by a cash strap, Elmer dipped them into his waist bag and returned his eyes to Ms. Edna who had gone ahead to take her seat.
He had one more question.
"I was wondering, Ms. Edna, if there was a way to divine the exact location of a person?" The exhausted lady cocked a brow as her eyes assessed him. "It's just that Eddie gave me a pendant that can divine if something or someone existed in an exact location, and I was wondering if there was such a way for my question as well. The pendant does not seem to have a wide range. It would be a pretty handy ability to have when taking on jobs."
Ms. Edna sighed and nodded. "There is."
Elmer's eyes gleamed for a moment. With this he could find the boy in dungaree and return his money. "Do you mind telling me how?"
"I don't mind. It's a fairly complicated process though. It's not as easy to do as using the pendant."
"I'm all ears," Elmer told her.
"A pristine white paper, four red candles, and an item the person you're planning to find has touched. Those are what you would need for the process. Write down whatever description you have of the person you're looking for on the paper and place it in the center of the four candles, all lit up.
"The item should be placed in the center too. As for the prayer, it's fairly similar to the one you learnt for the pendant's use, in fact, it's the same, you only have to remove the last bit and replace it with 'show me what I seek'. Also, and very importantly, there should be no light making its way into whatever room you'll be doing the divination in, unless it won't work." Ms. Edna sighed and let her head slump backward onto the frame of her seat. "That's all."
Her exhaustion was too evident now.
With that, Elmer had his next route ready. First to the Black Market to purchase the items he would need, and then his home to divine the location of the boy in dungaree. It was when he was done with those he would then go to the house of the mysterious man who had coincidentally put up the job he had taken.
He bowed to Ms. Edna. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," she gave him a mumbled reply before he took his leave of the building.