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There was a dusty crystal ball on one of the tables, and a teenage girl behind the counter on the far side of the room. She was on the phone.

“Eros is out,” she was saying. “What do you think? Alistair has him riding the subway from here to the other side of the city. I don’t know why. You’d almost think it was just to get him out of the shop for a few hours. What? Yeah sure, I’ll tell him when he gets back.” She grabbed a pen, and scribbled a note. “See you, Crow. Have fun on the play date.” There was no way to tell whether that last line was sarcastic or not, without knowing her better. Maybe not even then. She hung up the phone, and looked up as the bell rang.

“Can I help you?”

Maxine tucked herself around Maya’s arm. “Yeah, we were hoping—you know—to get a reading? For my friend. She wants to know what her mom’s up to.” A slightly nervous college-girl giggle accompanied this. The girl behind the counter showed them a price list, ranging from a surface reading to the annotated bibliography of their futures.

To Gawain, this place might have looked familiar, though he’d come through the back door last time. Maybe Maya would recognize the joint, too, even if she’d never made it to the front rooms.

Maxine smirked. “Rex is a lady’s octoclip. Really, you get off easy, when you’re Gawain. He’s usually not so friendly with the gents.” Thus began and ended her dating history. Minus a few nights where strong magnets had been involved.

“So. What does this other person do? Who is helping out with the investigation.” The redhead casually glanced at Maya, then turned her gaze just as casually ahead. It was the mirrorwalker’s investigation. He/she could invite in as many people as she/he wanted, and forget to tell Maxine about it if he/she/it pleased. No hard feelings. Certainly no pangs of professional competition.

“Did he find anything out?” Another casual, casual question.

Down the block, a sign board was coming into view: Future Sight.

>> "Yeah. Well, we'd better make damn sure it's a precog before we build a combat plan on what he says."

“And that,” the red head said, “is exactly why I’m not going to tell you anything. Fake precogs are like fake psychics—they work off what people give them. We’re going to have you sit in that chair knowing nothing, and I’ll see if what he’s saying makes any sense with what I know.”

It wasn’t fool-proof, but it was as close as she could get. They’d see whether this Oracle knew his stuff.

It was clear that Maya’s next question got Maxine’s attention. And her hopes up. “Do you know anyone who could help?”

Personally: Maxine didn’t. That was always the problem, when your day job included alienating every contact you made.

Two tentacles had failed. Rex retracted its arms, curling up into a brooding mass in Maxine’s hood.

Oh that reaction was cute. Not that she’d planned for it to be, not that this was a situation where she should be grinning at cuteness, not that Maya was someone who could even qualify for Maxine’s cuteness scales—

(Though out of the corner of her eye, it was easy to forget she was with Maya. All Gawain’s little quirks and mannerisms were there, and as adorable as always.)

--aaand enough of that.

Maya didn’t immediately ask where her mother was. That was good, because Maxine wasn’t planning on answering yet. As soon as Gawain—as Maya knew—she’d probably be on the next cab to the airport. Or the next mirror to the West Coast.

“We’re going to see the Oracle,” Maxine explained, with an air of great common sense, “because you and I are not exactly a combat team.” She didn’t explain that line. “If we can get a precog’s advice on how to go in, we stand a lot better chance of getting out of this alive and with your mom in tow.”

Of course, it was assumed that Maxine would be going as well. Gawain had enlisted her help: a little Maya wasn’t about to scare the red head off from seeing this through.

…The octoclip’s poke was met with a poke. If Rex could understand this sensation as familiar, then it certainly was… familiar. A bipedal who baffled its tentacles. But that other person was a male. This person was a female. This was the superior gender, in what passed for a tentacle monster’s mind.

Rex brought another tentacle to bear, and tried to get enough of a grip on Maya’s shirt to drag itself onto her shoulder.

“Well,” Maxine said, grabbing her purse and artfully ducking it under the tentacles, “either this Oracle will know their crap, or they won’t, Maya.” The red head smirked a little at the name. Maya. Why was that name familiar…? Something about white hair, and a Brit. Meh. It would come to her.

She shut the door behind her, and locked it. Oh, locked doors: possibly the most overrated security feature known to mutant kind. Still, it kept out the humans, mostly.

They acted like normal people in the stairwell—no running, no banister sliding—and found their way out onto a sunny side walk. The oppressive summer heat was starting to lift a little, heading into Fall.

Maxine brushed a paperclip tentacle out of her face like other girls brush out a lock of hair.

“Gawain. Maya, I mean,” she said, as they walked. “I know I asked already… but are you sure you want to keep poking into this?”

She said it like a girl who’d found something that another girl might not like. She might not like at all.

((ooc: Continued in Fairest of them all.))

Mr. Holloway was just full of compliments. Maxine was just full of… not complaining, really.

>> "Well well, adorable and useful."

“I am a practical lady,” the red head said, zipping the fanny pack shut with another blush. With her cell phone added to his, he might have enough light to spot it this time.

The school of clips spread outwards, into the shadows. They were a bit like a blind man’s cane: she couldn’t actually see where they were, but she could feel it. Their exact locations, and any resistance they met. She let them swim freely, in her twenty foot range, trying to sense anything odd in their flight path.

“…Hmm?” Oh: what did she want to do. “I vote moving, too. We should try and get out of here. I’d be more worried for spiders with Rex, then for Rex with spiders.” Judging by Nate’s earlier display, these things were definitely flesh and blood. It was a disability the octoclip didn’t share.

The problem, of course, was that they were on the Northeast end of Central Park, by the Lasker swimming pool. There weren’t any quick paths out from this spot. Unless they cut their own, through the trees. Her clips were already swimming somewhat erratically, dodging branches.

Except that they were on the path.

“…There aren’t any branches above us,” the red head whispered.

Maxine’s hand tightened around Nate’s as she pointed her cell phone’s light upwards.