A Birth day

Aria watched as Ginger and Anise walke dup with their dirty clothing but as Anise moved to Angus and handed him something she also watched as Angus moved to get dressed and stood up looking to Marcus then to Yu " is he okay to do that?" shea sked  both of them." thought he was on bed rest?" she asked . Ruby watched and stood up taking the tea to the kitchen placing it with the rest of the tea's they had. She would try it next time she made a cup of tea.

"I'm guessing since Robert never told him not to hes good to do that" she said smiling a she walked back into the room seeing Angus now heading up the stairs " huh, guess hes feeling better?" she said and looked to Yu but said nothing knowing once Angus sets his mind to something he does it..Hearing Marcus she nodded and sat down waiting " that explains it." she said smiling.

(Robert actually left already. He left at the end of the post I made two posts back."

"You know muggle banks are not at all like Gringotts, right?" Anise asked. "Our mum had a couple muggle accounts. No subterranean mine cars and such. Most of the muggle banks are all on one floor. There's nothing to them, and when one goes to open a safe deposit box, they're taken to a room with a table and chairs. The teller gets the box, and then the owner of the box is left in privacy until they're finished with whatever they need to put in or take out of the box. Then the teller locks the box back up and the customer is free to go. It should be a rather painless, low energy errand, I should think. Hopefully, if they find anything, they don't get a wild hair to go out and pursue it. that might be quite another thing, depending on what they find. Anyway, we're ready to go when Evan gets here. Ginger and Poppy are on their way up. Poppy doesn't want to be down there by herself, so she's coming upstairs, and Ginger's coming up with her just to keep an eye on her as she tries the stairs by herself. She says she feels up to it, so I guess we'll see."

Angus came back down in a few minutes in a pair of olive green canvas summer trousers and a thin cream colored v neck summer sweater with the sleeves pushed up, along with his slip on canvas shoes. It was cool and comfortable. Marcus was only a couple steps behind him in jeans and a black polo, with black sneakers.

Angus felt all eyes on him, and he frowned.

"What?" he asked.

"They're not sure you should be doing it," Anise said.

"Well, he said I could be up doing what I felt like for short periods. This won't take more than a few minutes, and, yes, I feel up to doing it," Angus said. "So I'm not breaking any instructions. We won't be gone long. So far as I know, its the only place we're going, so we should be going straight there and straight back. Fair enough?"

Aria looked at Marcus an nodded " true, hes resilient that's for sure" this made Ruby chuckle and made Yu smile knowing those words were true. Seeing Angus return and Marcus tell him that Aria didn't think he should go Ruby stood up and walked over to him with a smile.

"I know you better and I know you're able to go." she said straitening out his collar and kissing his cheek then she looked to Marcus " I'll have lunch ready for when you get back, any preferences or maybe you'll stop at the leaky for fish and chips?" she said as she looked at both men.

Aria looked to Yu who chuckled and shrugged at her before he spoke " what?they do have good fish and chips" he said and chuckled seeing Aria sit back down on the couch before a small box landed on her lap with a card showing it was from her father " oh what does he want now?" she said picking it up and heading outside.

"I could do fish and chips," Marcus said. "Sounds fine to us." 

Marcus and Angus had made note of the tiny symbol engraved on the bow of the key. That told them clearly which muggle bank, but that didn't necessarily help much. There were other engravings on the key that didn't make any sense to either of them. They went to a loan officer who was sitting at her computer looking almost bored to death as she typed in pages and pages of numbers onto a digital spreadsheet. 

Angus noticed she wasn't wearing a ring on either hand, and she wasn't far from his age by the look of things. He decided to approach her with a tiny bit of harmless flirting. Standing on Angus left, Marcus slapped Angus's hand, and then Angus saw what Marcus was triggering him about--his wedding band. Angus carefully dropped in into his trouser pocket for a few minutes. Then he tried just a bit of flirting, and she seemed to grab onto it as if he were handing out a big wad of cash, so he flirted a bit more. And before long, she took the key and was able to decipher the markings, saying the box was quite old, but it was still there. She took them into a vault room, where Angus and Marcus both sat and waited while she fetched the old safe deposit box.

It was a very large box, even as safe deposit boxes went. They opened the box and saw it was chucked full of paperwork, some keys, and some strange puzzle boxes. They had made a note of where the cameras were, and they positioned the box so that the camera couldn't see into the box. Then they simply shrank everything that was inside the box and removed it so that Marcus could tuck it into his jeans' pocket. When the box was empty, they locked it back up and turned it back into the teller to lock back up again. The two of them left the bank together, and Angus put his wedding ring back on so he didn't lose it out of the pocket of his trousers. 

They took a detour to Hogsmeade to Michael's place. Michael and Orin were up and had had a lovely breakfast of Eggs Benedict. They'd both showered and changed, and were just deciding on how to while away the day leisurely when Angus and Marcus showed up.

"Escape from your keeper, did you?" Michael asked, motioning for them to come in.

"He's headed to work by now, I'm sure," Angus said. "Anise found a key in an old box that came from the Tyler stuff. It just so happened to be a safe deposit key to a London bank, and it was chockablock full of papers and some old puzzle boxes. Interested?"

"Am I?" Michael said, "Absolutely. Let's see what you've got." They went through, put the objects on Michaels' coffee table and resized them. Orin set to work on the puzzle boxes, and the rest of them started to sift through the papers. Each of them had taken a random stack of papers to sort through.

"What's this?" Marcus asked. "Looks like a deed." He opened the envelope and unfolded the papers. "Yep. It's a deed alright. It's to a property owned by someone named Nevil Newton. It's...wait. Let me get this straight. It's to a medieval tower in Ireland..."

"On the northeast coastline?" Michael asked, "north of Derrybeg?"

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"Because I have a deed here to the same property, and this one's a phony. A damned good phony, but a phony nonetheless. And this says the property was a gift from Gideon to Charlotte."

"So did Gideon steal the deed and fabricate a new one?" Marcus asked.

"I wouldn't be so quick to accuse him of that. Remember, he was murdered just like Charlotte was."

"Then maybe this Newton fellow did it," Angus said.

"Well, maybe. We'll have to check him out."

"I have a will," Angus said. "Charlotte's. She gives everything to Gideon if she dies, which is standard, but if he dies before her, then she leaves everything to her mother,  Pearl."

"That makes no sense. Why wouldn't she leave it to Suzanne?" Marcus said.

"It doesn't say," Angus said.

"So, its possible that if Pearl actually survived somehow, she inherited the tower."

"Well, that's what it would look like on paper, but I'm starting to think Pearl manipulated it all to get the tower from the outset," Michael said.

"Why do all roads point back to Pearl?" Angus sighed.

"Well, they do, but only when we look hard enough to look behind all the tracks someone's trying to hide."

"Pearl," Marcus and Orin said at the same time. 

"I'm really starting to doubt that we're going to find a grave with Pearl in it," Michael said, "because this is all pointing towards Pearl being yet alive."

"And if she is, she's extremely dangerous," Angus said.

"You leave this stuff with me," Michael said. "If Pearl is alive, she's seen you in your dream state. Your place isn't safe anymore to leave any evidence in. I'll make sure she can't possibly get to any of this stuff, and you package up anything else you have in this business and get it to me. I'll get it secured too."

"In the meantime, we need to get home," Marcus said. "They might not be safe if Pearl is alive. And they don't know that."

"Agreed," Angus said. They got up in a hurry. "Thank you, Michael."

"We'll let you know if we find anything else. And, do not go to that damned tower until we discuss all this with Robert."

"I wasn't planning on it," Angus replied. He and Marcus apparated back home, landed in the front yard and went inside. 

"Sorry we're a little later than we planned, but only by a few minutes," Marcus said. "We didn't think we dared to bring home the contents of the box. We need to not get lazy with the protections on the house here. It's starting to look like perhaps Pearl might be very much alive, and if she is, she could be far more dangerous than we took her for. It isn't cause for panic, but just stay at the ready, just in case."

Ruby watched Angus and Marcus leave and walked to the kitchen to start making snacks for every one . Aria took out her book and began to read while Yu went on his patrol, Ruby finished making chocolate stuffed bread when she head Angus and Marcus return " did you bring the fish and chips?" she asked smiling a she wiped her hands clean of the flour from her lates batch of bread.

" did you find anything interesting?" Aria asked marking and closing the book as she turned to look at them both from the couch one leg now propped up on it . Ruby quickly went back to the kitchen taking out the sweet bread she placed them on a cooling wire to cool as she then added the second batch.

"We decided we'd order them delivered here so they were hot and fresh when they got there," Angus said. 

"I'll put the order in," Marcus said.

"Well, as we expected, there was a lot of paperwork," Angus said, as Marcus wrote a note to the Leaky and sent the order into them. "We haven't begun to sort it all, and there were a number of puzzle boxes. Since Michael has been doing the lion's share of following the paper trail, we took the stuff to him in Hogsmeade. We didn't stay long but when we were there, we found a deed to a medieval tower in Ireland, owned by a chap that is an entirely new name in this affair, and then a phony deed giving that same property to Charlotte and Gideon. As if that isn't weird enough, we found a copy of Charlottes' will. It gives everything to Gideon--unless Gideon is also dead, in which case, everything was to go to Pearl. So, if the authorities accepted the phony deed and the will, then it's possible that Pearl has had this tower since Charlotte's death at least. And it's hard telling if Michael will turn up anything more in that stuff, but he does not think we should keep any evidence of this case here at the duplex because he feels that if Pearl is alive, she could trace me too easily here. He thinks we'll all be safer if I give him everything we've found, for safe keeping. I hate to say it, but I think he's probably right."

"Fish and chips should be here in a few minutes," Marcus said. He looked out and saw Poppy sitting out in the garden. "I should have known. She wants to be close to the Fae. That's my girl. She'd live with them if she could. I'm glad she's feeling better."

"I hope the girls got off to school on time today," Angus said. "They've only got a couple days left before summer break.

Aria listened to Marcus and nodded then looked to Angus as he explained what was in the safe deposit box " hum, good that Michaels on the puzzle boxes. " she said then heard him mention about the rest of the paperwork and letting Michael look after it " hum, makes sense for him to look over it he might spot something that the boys and Jessie might have missed " she said and Ruby chuckled as Marcus said the food was on order.

" that's good Marcus I'll have drinks ready " she said making fresh lemonade." she said and headed back into the kitchen. " do you think Edward and Simone will join us or have they taken the girls someplace good again" she asked smiling as she poked her head into the living room from the kitchen.

"Well, you realize that the only paperwork he has so far is what he found at the department of mysteries and the paperwork we just found in the safe deposit box," Angus said. "but I do think we need to give him all the rest of it. Everything we have downstairs. he'll get farther with it than we will."

"How about after lunch Aria and Ruby and I can shrink it and then maybe Ruby and I can take it over to Michaels, and Aria can stay with you so that you aren't alone. Or Ruby and Aria could go. Whatever they want to do is fine with me," Marcus said. "That way, if Pearl comes, either as a live witch or a dead one, she still isn't going to find a damned thing here except you, Angus."

"That's a good plan," Angus said. "Ruby? Any objections? I think, if Michael has a thought that might keep us safer, we should be willing to at least consider it."

"And as long as we're putting our cards on the table, let's admit it right now. Angus and I are both chomping at the bit to go check out that damned tower to see if Pearl might be at home, but, we promised Michael we wouldn't, not until Robert knows we're thinking of going."

"He's just saying we'll try to be good," Angus said, "but if Michael drags his feet longer than our ability to behave...well, you know. Marcus and I have been naughty before, so we might be tempted to be naughty again. Just saying.'

"You really thought we should tell them we can only behave for so long?" Marcus laughed, looking at Angus.

"You really thought they didn't already know?" Angus laughed.

Ruby listened to Angus and nodded " I like that plan" she said then heard him mention going after lunch " oh , please been a while since I saw snidely." she said smiling Aria looked at Marcus and nodded.

" that's fine with me, we've not really had time together for some time" she said to Marcus  " and I should explain about my dad" she said then heard Angus mention about helping shrink the boxes. Ruby nodded and looked at Angus smiling.

" oh, could we get some fudge while were there?" she asked with a chuckle as he looked to Angus " pleeease?" she extended the E and looked at him like a puppy chuckling. A knock came from the door and Jessie pushed it open slowly peeking around it and seeing them all talking he stood up.

"Hey guys, um sorry to bother you was curious as to what you found out?" he asked as Ruby stood up ad moved quickly to the kitchen taking out her brad and placed it out

" that was close" she said  and chuckled as she took each roll from the tray to the cooling wire.

"By all means," Marcus said. "Go and enjoy yourselves. Go buy all the fudge my dad has in the shop if you want."

"Just bring the kids some chocolate frogs. That's still their favorites," Angus said.

'Not Poppy, I'm afraid. She prefers the sugar quills. Not sure why, but that's just her," Marcus said. "She likes it all, but she likes the sugar quills best. For Valentines Day, I bought her a pink glass pencil cup and filled it with sugar quills like a bouquet and sent it to her at Hogwarts. She'd never had a Valentine's Day gift before, so she was over the moon about it. I bought the other kids a bunch of chocolate frogs, and of course they like as much chocolate as they can get."

"Hi, Jessie. How'd you know we were out?" Angus asked.

"Well, if you mean the results of the trip to Shetland," Marcus said, "they found Charlotte and Gideon, but both of them were murdered, Robert said. Died by having some sort of magic power thief drain them of all their magical powers and damaged their magical systems irreparably. Well, that's what Robert said he found, anyway." 

"This morning, we found that Pearl had or has control of some sort of old medieval tower in Ireland and she did it by forging a deed to it," Angus said. "Michael is starting to doubt that Pearl is dead. He's starting to think she's alive. I don't know what I think."