Who: Abraxas Vex & Jonathan Lockwood What: A warlock goes to see a man about a book. Where: The Agency, London office, O&R When: Wednesday, April 13, afternoon Warnings: Probably pretty PG. Likely ridiculous amounts of flirting and angst.
It wasn't exactly like Abraxas had misplaced the Book of the White. He was certain he had it not all that long ago. A few years ago, at least. Well. Maybe a decade. Or two. It wasn't the sort of thing that you broke out to use every day, after all. It had a little too much juice for that, and as much as Abraxas liked juice, there was packing a punch and then there was punching a crater into the ground to swat a fly. Using the Book for every little problem that cropped up would be very much akin to the latter. So, no, he hadn't exactly checked to make certain that it was still where it ought to be as often as he probably should have, when it came to something like one of the most powerful spell books in the world. What could he say? It just slipped his mind. He was a very busy warlock.
The point being, of course, that Abraxas had absolutely no idea when the Book went from being safely tucked away in a locked box in his apartment to wherever it might have been roaming about in the world, or who precisely might have liberated it from him. Exes could be quite vindictive when they realized that they weren't going to get whatever it was they wanted (money, power, love) out of Abraxas, and that their grand love affair was doomed to be a casual fling, on his end. Then, of course, there were the occasional fellow magically inclined that he liked to chat with, once in a while. Any one of them could have gotten greedy, he supposed. And when you took clients in your own home, you really couldn't be too certain who it was that you were inviting in. Really, there was no way of knowing, and Abraxas was good, but he wasn't that good when it came to tracking down something with absolutely no clues to go on.
Wasn't it fortunate that he didn't have to?
There was, after all, an entire department of the Agency dedicated to finding reincarnate items that had wandered off from where they ought to be, and keeping them safely stored until their proper owners could come back to claim them. Abraxas didn't think he was fortunate enough that someone would have retrieved his book for him while he was busy with not getting into the sort of trouble that would lead to him requiring it, but it was their job. Surely they had some sort of resource at their disposal that he simply didn't, when it came to finding something as innocent as a missing book.
The rather nervous young lady at the desk didn't seem to be certain of that, though. Perhaps Abraxas had made a mistake, making sure to scry to be certain that he was visiting during a time when the deity in charge of the department wasn't present. He'd thought it would be best to avoid dealing with the dour god of the underworld, if he could avoid it, but his request, or the fact that he was there for something more complicated than retrieving neatly labeled objects that were waiting for him, seemed to be unnerving the girl far too much for her to actually do anything about it.
That, or it was the fact that Abraxas was wearing vividly purple jeans and a chevron-patterned black and white silk shirt, hair spiked high, perfect cat eye eyeliner, and purple polish with a top coat of chunky silver glitter on nails that were tapping against the desk, impatiently. His smile, though, was still completely charming. At least, he thought it was. "So you see, my dear, I'm only trying to cut out the middleman, and keep what I'm certain is valuable space on your shelves clear."
"I should, um." The girl was still staring at him, like she wasn't certain what to make of a flamboyant Asian warlock popping into her department and demanding that they find his book. Well. Honestly, he can't really blame her. "Let me just... get someone..."
"Take your time," he called out after her as she disappeared into the back. Not really, though. He hoped she would hurry. The sooner the Book of the White was back in safe hands, the better.