Author's Notes:

I felt something stirring.

I’d never been involved in a mysterious adventure before. I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Unfortunately, neither did Adagio. She seemed drained, downtrodden and a bit on the listless side. I kept having to wait for her to catch up as we wandered through town looking like we knew what we were doing.

I suppose this was to be expected given all that had happened to her. What little improvement I’d seen from her having stayed at mine had evaporated. Poor girl just struck me as lost. Made me quite upset to see, if I’m being honest.

But then I always was a softy.

“Where did you see them last?” I asked, breaking the silence that had settled over both of us as we’d wandered. To me it felt like the proper thing to ask, the sort of thing that might have a useful answer.

Adagio just shrugged, not looking up. It was genuinely starting to affect my composure seeing just how heartbreakingly morose she looked. I sighed and stopped so that her glacial pace brought her up beside me, whereupon I put an arm around her shoulders.

Forward? Maybe, but then again she fell asleep on me so fuck it I think we’re a little beyond that at this point. Certainly she didn’t pull away or object. If anything she pressed against me.

“Come on, you, what’s up? Beside the obvious.”

I felt another shrug. The last refuge of any conversation, the shrug.

“Just feel bad,” she mumbled.

“About what?”

“That I would have, you know, done that to you. If I could have. Manipulated you. Got into your head. I would have done it. Wouldn’t even have thought about it, if I could have,” she said, voice small, face down.

This was an odd topic of conversation. Not every day you were talking to someone who could, you know, sing to induce a form of mind control. And who was telling you they would have willingly done it to you were the circumstances different.

Adagio sounded contrite enough - astonishingly sincere, in fact - but they was that to be trusted? If I were a mind-controlling creature from a world beyond, wouldn’t I want to sound convincing?

Probably the sort of thing you could just keep worrying in circles about for hours.

Moot anyway. I hoped.

“You didn’t though,” I said. This at least was indisputable.

“But I would have.”

I sighed and released my arm from around her, turning to take her gently by both shoulders. I hoped that was reassuring and not overbearing, especially when I had to tilt her head up so she was actually looking me in the face. This was all very new to me, but eye-contact struck me as important at a time like this. A time of reassurance.

“But you didn’t, so let’s not get all down in the dumps over stuff that didn’t happen, eh? Onwards and upwards, that’s the spirit. Hey, think about it this way: you feel bad about it, right?”

She nodded and I gave her a pat.

“Well there you are then. That’s progress, right?”

I wasn’t wholly sure what we were meant to progressing towards but I guess on a base level a sense of guilt about the prospect of working mind control nonsense on an unsuspecting stranger could only be a good thing. At least in my book. For an emotion-eating creature, who knew?

All of this was really unusual territory for me.

Adagio seemed to take something from it, at least.

“I’m getting better?” She asked.

“Uh, well, better is relative. Less evil? That has to be good! You’re a whole new person, have to start somewhere. Assuming not being evil is a good thing for, uh, you?” I asked. On the plus side Adagio immediately looked less morose. On the downside that appeared to be because I was putting my foot in it, and the look on her face spoke volumes.

“Could you not call me evil,” she said. Not a question. I delicately released her shoulders.

“Yeah, sorry. I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Look, bottom-line is that you’re fine, you’re good, I’m helping you out and everything is going to be Jim Dandy. So let’s get on with that. Still no idea where you saw them last?” I asked, trying to steer things back on course. Adagio shook her head.

“At the battle of the bands, but I was running away so I don’t know where they went after that,” she said.

Well that was a dry hole. Time to try a different angle, something new, best not to get bogged down and lose momentum. I thought for a moment and then it hit me - inspiration!

“The way I heard it you were the uh - and don’t take this the wrong way - ringleader?” I asked.

I got a sharp look but no disagreement, and felt it best to quickly get to the point.

“What bad behaviour did the other two have that you kept in check?”

Adagio raised an eyebrow at me. A potent gesture from her. I think it was the quality of her eyebrows that did it, really.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what sort of trouble might they be getting into without you there to keep them out of it?” I asked, feeling very proud of myself for being so whipcrack smart. Such a cool guy, me.

That got it for her, and her expression lightened.

“You think we might be able to find them because of the stuff they’ll do without me there to tell them not to?”

Not sure why she was explaining my own idea back to me, but then again she might just have been confirming it out loud. I held my hands apart.

“Just an idea.”

Frowning in concentration and tapping a finger against her chin Adagio thought to herself. I let her to it, casting an eye around and just watching the world go by. The world continued much as it always did. Although now magic was a thing, or at least I was aware of it now.

Probably not really over that, yet. It’ll sink in eventually.

“Sonata did develop kind of a thing about tacos,” Adagio said at length I blinked.

Honestly, out of all the possible answers to the question I’d asked this was not one I had prepared myself for.

“Tacos?”

I was passingly familiar with tacos. Crunchy shells? Fillings? Never had one, only heard of them.

“Yeah, kind of a weird fixation. Comfort food, whatever. Don’t ask me why.”

“We all have our vices,” I said.

“Does that help?”

“Doesn’t hurt. Let’s go find tacos, see where that leads us.”

It was a start at least, and until proven to be a complete waste of time it felt like progress.

Looking up the nearest places that actually sold tacos we headed over to them and, well, starting browbeating the staff. Or gently questioning them, whichever seemed to work best. Gentle questions worked alright. I lead, and once they were amenable Adagio would supply a description of Sonata, in the hopes this might dredge up a memory or two.

A solid plan, I thought, and workable in practise.

Sometimes we found ourselves questioning someone who knew who Adagio was, and things tended to get uncomfortable. At those times I stepped forward to take the brunt of their sudden bad mood, glean whatever we could from them - usually nothing as they usually clammed up - and then moved us both on.

If it was just someone coming at Adagio unprompted because they spotted her and knew her I stepped in immediately. People seemed a lot less keen on starting shit with me than they did with her. Couldn’t think why. Not that having angry people around you is anything less than deeply unpleasant.

Thankfully that only happened once or twice, and she seemed pretty solid about it all in all. Poor girl, having to put up with this nonsense. No wonder she was meandering about in the rain when I saw her first. I’d be unhappy too!

Amazingly, and in defiance of what I thought was going to happen, we actually started getting somewhere. I’d expected nothing but befuddlement and nothingness, a landscape of shrugs and ‘We see tonnes of customers what do you want from us’, but no. People did remember this Sonata girl! And for a pretty good reason, it turned out.

Not long ago she had engaged in ‘despair-driven crawl of taco consumption’ that had apparently shocked and appalled all who had witnessed it. I had very little idea of what this would mean in practical terms, but it sounded pretty bad. Helpfully though, it turned out to be the sort of thing people would remember seeing, which could only be good for us.

When questioned, the staff at the various establishments we went to still shuddered at the mere memory. Yes, they remembered her alright. How could they forget? One chap I spoke to in particular seemed to have some sort of mini-flashback the moment I mentioned it.

How bad had it been?!

“I can still hear the crunching...” he murmured, a faraway look in his eye. I turned to Adagio who seemed unsurprised by all of this, like this was normal behaviour one might expect from Sonata. Jesus Christ, did I really want to find this girl?

“You see which way she went after she was done, by any chance?” I asked. He took a moment then snapped back to the present, a faraway look still in his eye.

“Oh she wasn’t walking out of here after that, no - she got picked up,” he said.

Unusual. I glanced to Adagio but she knew as much about this as I did. Which was to say nothing.

“Picked up?” I asked and the guy nodded.

“Yeah. By a delivery driver. New girl, only just started seeing her around. You notice these sort of things when you’re in the trade,” he said, with what sounded a lot like pride.

“Uh, I’ll take your word for it. Picked up by a delivery driver, you say?”

“Weird, right? Just slung her on the back of her scooter. New girl, like I say. Kind of scary, actually. She had spikes. More than what I’m comfortable with and I’m okay with spikes, you know? And she just seemed angry, even at a distance. Then again if I had to pick up my friend who’d just eaten her bodyweight in tacos I’d be pretty angry, too.”

Most people would, probably. Not that it was something most people would probably run into. Personally I’d be pretty impressed and horrified, but that might have said more about me and my own standards. I let strangers sleep in my house - I was hardly a reliable baseline.

“Don’t suppose you saw where they went?” I asked, hope springing eternal.

He shrugged. I spent half my life dealing with people who shrugged, and that was because I did it, too.

“Away? I didn’t know I was meant to be paying attention.”

“Fair, fair,” I said, thinking. Then I asked: “Who does she deliver for, this new girl of which you speak? If you know.”

“Uh, Red Planet Pizza I think it was? What it said on the scooter, at least.”

I wrinkled my nose.

“That shitty place? I know where that is. Surprised it’s still in business.”

“Oh it’d take more than a corpse in the kitchen to shut that place down.”

That particular event I’d heard about. In their defence the corpse hadn’t been theirs and hadn’t been ‘made’ - as it were - on the premises, someone had just been storing it there for a brief period while they worked out what to do with it.

Of course, when it comes to food those sort of distinctions don’t really go a long way. People can be so picky.

Generally, when I wanted pizza, I looked elsewhere. Personal preference.

“Again, I’ll take your word for it. Either way though thanks you’ve been a big help,” I said, turning to Adagio and motioning with my head towards the door to indicate we could move on.

“I was helping?” The guy asked, a little lost, apparently not having been privy to the conversation we’d just been having. I nodded to him.

“You were indeed, so thank you.”

“You’re not ordering anything?”

“Not today, no.”

He looked disappointed, but such is life.

Outside, grinning, I rubbed my hands together. I honestly could not believe we’d actually made progress. And significant progress, too! From the flimsiest of beginnings, following a plan I’d made up on the spot we’d somehow learnt something useful and had somewhere we could go to maybe even get actual, proper, definitive results! Amazing!

“I’m going to take a wild guess that the delivery driver who picked up Sonata is your other sister?” I asked. Adagio nodded but then - just for kicks - half-shrugged to. I swear to God this shrugging stuff is getting out of hand.

“Definitely soudned like Aria. Not sure who else would pick Sonata up like that,” she said. Then adding: “Red Planet Pizza?”

“Yeah, terrible place. Lazy name. Not far from here, either. If she’s delivering for them - and kudos to your sister for getting a job in, like, a day or two by the way - then we can just roll on over and, uh, ask them! Or hang around and wait for her to show up. Either way. We can play it by ear.”

I chuckled and grinned wider. Was this what it felt like, when a plan came together?

“I feel like a bonafide detective! Heh. Come on Dagi, let’s follow up on this hot clue,” I said, turning and heading off down the street, pausing only when I got the sense that I wasn’t being followed. Looking behind me I saw Adagio standing where she’d been the whole time, just staring at me.

“What? We going?” I asked, pointing.

“You called me Dagi.”

Whoopsie. How embarrassing.

“Oh, did I? Shit, sorry. Didn’t even think about that, just slipped out. Sorry.”

She kept on staring just long enough for me to start sweating, before smiling at me. Just a little, but enough for me to know I was off the hook. I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding.

“I like it,” she said.

Well that was a relief, and the joy of not getting in trouble for accidentally giving someone a dumb nickname mingled with the joy I was still experiencing on account of my half-baked plan working out, the combined effect leaving me grinning like a loon.

“Good! I’ll try not to wear it out. Now come on, daylight’s burning. Let’s go track ourselves down an angry delivery girl! And, uh, another girl who might well still be stuffed with tacos.”

As far as days off went, this one wasn’t working out all that badly, really.