Raoul

We pulled up outside the Black Garden in Elie's car. I sat shotgun with Tyler and Ren in the back seat.

"This is it," Elie said. "We going in?"

"Give me a minute," I said.

I scanned the building with my magic eyes.

"What are you doing?" Tyler asked.

"Checking the place out," I replied. "He's not here."

"Are you sure?" Tyler asked.

"Yep," I said, looking around the rest of the neighborhood a bit.

"So we'll wait," Ren said.

"No point," I said. "There's a court house a couple blocks from here. Let's swing by there."

Elie gave me confused look, before shrugging and putting the car into gear. We arrived at the court house shortly after and I stepped out of the car.

"You guys wait here," I said. "This shouldn't take long."

I walked into the court house. A few seconds later, Elie came in after me.

"Couldn't stay put?" I asked.

"You're hiding something," Elie said.

"Whatever," I said. "Do what you want."

I Approached one of the court rooms and entered. No one bothered to stop me. Elie and I stood in the back of the room as a case unfolded before us. A young man was bein tried for a murder that had occurred the previous Friday. I heard Elie gasp when he noticed the man's defense attorney.

"Is that-?"

"Yep," I confirmed.

The man acting as the Defendant's attorney was dressed in a fine black suit, with neatly combed black hair with red highlights. He wore a pair of solid black glasses, and tapped the ground in front of him with a cane as he paced in front of the witness stand, questioning someone who had been near the scene of the crime.

"He's a fucking defense attorney?" Elie hissed under his breathe.

"Watch the tongue," I said. "We're in a court room."

The witness was dismissed from the stand, and Raoul turned to face the judge.

"As you can see, your honor, there is plenty of evidence to suggest my client's innocence," he said.

"We haven't seen anything concrete yet," the prosecutor interjected. "Mr. Krane could still very well be guilty."

Raoul smirked and adjusted his glasses slightly.

"You're a very hard man to convince, Mr. Harrison," he said. "Your honor, if it's all right, I have one more witness to call to the stand."

"Very well," the judge said. "Call your witness forward."

"Mr. Kallaway," Raoul said. "Would you please take the stand?"

Well, shit. Not what I was expecting to happen. And I certainly wasn't a "witness". But I sucked it up and walked over to the witness stand. Raoul stood before me, and smirked yet again. He then adjusted his glasses, and things suddenly shifted.

I was now seeing the would in photo-negative. Everything except for myself and Raoul was frozen solid.

"It's been quite a while, Mr. Kallaway," Raoul said. "How have you been?"

"What did you do to them?" I asked, scanning the room.

"Don't worry, they're fine," he said. "And no, they can't hear us."

"I read about Daniel's encounter with you," I said. "If you can apparently freeze time, why didn't you then?"

"This particular magic trick suffers a few too many drawbacks," he said. "It's good for private chats like this, but impractical for battle."

He adjusted his glasses again, and suddenly the scene changed. We were outside my favorite diner in LA, late at night. Time still seemed to be frozen, and the world around us was still in negative. A couple blocks away, I could see three figures frozen solid.

"What is this?" I asked.

"The scene of the crime," Raoul said. "From a distance, of course. I'm sure you must have a few questions for me..."

"That would be an understatement," I pointed out.

"I know," he said. "But we can deal with that later. For now, I need you to observe."

With another tweak of his glasses, time started back up, and I witnessed the event take place. A brawl broke out, one of the figures was shot and killed, while the killer fled. The third figure hesitated for a while, looking in horror at the fallen figure, before fleeing as well. Some passerby witnessed him as he ran away from the scene.

Everything froze again as Raoul spoke.

"That last man was Mr. Krane," he said. "My client. Last seen running from a corpse. Naturally, some assumptions were made."

"How do I know any of what I just saw was true?" I asked. "After all, you never told me the truth about who you really are."

"I'm a good secret keeper, but also a terrible liar," Raoul said. "I may have hidden my true nature from you, but I have never directly lied to you. I assure you, everything you just witnessed was accurate."

"Yeah, sure," I said distastefully.

"Now that you've technically witnessed the murder, are you willing to testify?" Raoul asked.

"Fine," I said. "Just cut out the magic tricks, all right?"

He adjusted his glasses one more time, and everything returned to normal. We were back in the court room. Raoul questioned me on what I had seen, and I answered truthfully. OR at least, truthfully enough that I didn't look like a lunatic who had just been shown crazy negative visions from a magic attorney. Once it was over, the judge called for a recess. Raoul and I walked out into the hallway, where Elie was waiting.

"What the hell was all that?" Elie asked.

"Ah, Mr. Graves," Raoul said. "How have you been since... our last encounter?"

"Just fine," Elie replied. "Kallaway, how did you know about-"

"Long story," I said. "Let's just do what we came here for, okay?"

"Of course," Raoul said. "You lot need access to the Path of Black Leaves, correct?"

"How did you-?" Elie started to ask, before being cut off.

"Oh please, you think people like myself don't monitor the Doctor's blog?" Raoul said. "I'll assist if it means putting a dent in the machinations of that troublesome growth of foliage. But it will have to wait a bit. Meet me back at the Garden later. For now, I have a case to win."

He turned around and walked back into the court room, leaving us alone.

"So... how exactly do you know this guy?" Elie asked.

"Well, um...," I said, a little bit embarrassed. "You know how he's a defense attorney?"

"Yeah?" Elie said.

"He sort of... got me out of trouble a while back," I said.

"What'd you do?" Elie asked.

"I killed the woman running the orphanage I spent a bit of time in," I said.

"You what!?" Elie gasped.

"Look, forget it," I said. "I don't wanna talk about it. Let's just get back to the car."



We'll be meeting with Raoul tonight. Hopefully this plan of ours works out. Jane and Kimiko are on their way down to assist us. Wish us luck, Daniel.