The cigarette tasted like shit, but Rowan smoked it anyway. Aside from giving her an excuse to lounge around a broken lamp post, the smoke helped mask her scent. Fortune probably didn't have the extrasensory sense of smell some of the Others have been blessed with, but why take chances? For all Rowan knew, Fortune's BFF was a blood hound on two legs. Improbable, but not impossible.
For the past hour, Rowan found herself eying Fortune's studio from different locations. Few minutes spent on a roof, in the shadows, in a "borrowed" car. And now smoking a cig out in the cold winter night. No one paid the Baroness any attention. She wasn't the only one in this part of the city enjoying a midnight smoke. However, she was the only one about to burgle a place.
After Fortune went out for the night, Rowan took some time to make sure that was indeed the case. Nothing more embarassing than jumping the gun and going in too early only to have the mark return and go "Surprise!." God if that were to happen, the other thieves would never let Rowan live it down. She could see it now. It wasn't pretty.
Dropping the cigarette to the ground, Rowan ground and with slow circles of her heel, ground the glowing end to death. It was business time, and she was wearing her business socks. The offbeat song, was playing over and over in her head like her own personal soundtrack, as Rowan quickly crossed the street and ducked into the little alley that ran between Fortune's building and the one next door.
Here the Djavo could work in peace, away from prying eyes. Lifting her hands, Rowan set them against the brick wall, feeling the hum of the electricity that ran through the wires just on the other side, and promptly moved herself through space and time into the empty studio above her. It was so easy it made her want to cry. Freezing where she stood, she shoved that urge to the back of her mind and instead took in her surroundings, comparing what she saw now, to the mental map she made when she visited Fortune's studio earlier.
The cameras remained as they were, as did most of the light equipment. Recalling the wires that she saw, Rowan ducked down, and moved slowly against the wall. Motion sensitive cameras were pointed in her general direction, and before any good photo or video was recorded, Rowan found herself on the other side of the line of cameras. Smiling as she absently yanked the obvious cord out of the power plugs. Slowly, she arranged them in a way that would make it easy for her to plug them back in on the way out. Best thieves rarely left a trace of their presence, and Rowan wasn't about to half-ass it just because Fortune's place didn't happen to have a big, expensive security system that needed to be circumvented and outsmarted. Although, that couldn't have hurt. Would have made things more fun.
And now, onto business.
Thirty minutes later (according to the glow in the dark dial of her watch) Rowan was standing there with empty hands. She had managed to dig through every folder, every box, every tin and paper bag she could find in search of the negative. Alas no dice.Slowly growing frustrated with the whole thing, the Djavo had the urge to light the place on fire. Let the cleansing flames of an righteous inferno wipe the slate clean. But she didn't. It wasn't her style. Maybe it could be a last resort if the evening's scavenger hunt didn't pan out. And the more Rowan searched the more likely it became that she'd just fire the place.
That was till she stopped looking in the obvious places, and began to seek out hidey-holes. Everyone had one. The wall safe, the lamp bulb that isn't a lamp bulb. A faux electrical outlet. Some people hid jewels in the legs of their dining room tables. Those were tricky since you had to lift the whole table to get to the leg, but thanks to Daddy dearest, Rowan wasn't deterred much by physical labor. Not to say she thought it out where she could, but it just wasn't an issue. Right now, seeing how there were no dinning tables to be had in the studio, her search turned to the wires. Trailing her fingers along the main power cable for a light flash, she followed its winding path to where it burrowed into the floor. "Interesting. I do believe we have something here."
Speaking to oneself wasn't a sign of craziness. Answering oneself was. So Rowan simply set her hands against the floor and felt. Felt the space beyond, the dimensions of the room she found there, and promptly invaded that space. Sometimes, it was good to be a Demon. Standing in a bedroom which looked as if a tornado hit it. Rowan frowned. It was wrong to assume things, and she had. Bellow the studio was an apartment. A perfectly un-groomed space full of things she could have been looking through rather than searching in vain in the studio. Lesson learned, Rowan wasn't about to cry over spilled blood and got to work.
"Now, if I was a negative...where would I be."
Staring her in the face that's where. Cautiously Rowan approached the dressing mirror, another picture and the negative film tucked into the minute space under the frame. Bold as you please, staring the Baroness directly in the face. Not one to trust her luck, Rowan pocketed the items non the less. If they weren't the originals, at least this way Fortune would have limited capacities for reproduction. Again that thought of just burning everything around her came to the forefront of her mind. Tempting, oh so tempting. There were enough flammable objects around, all she'd need is a spark and... Telling that impulsive part of herself to shut it. Rowan checked her watch instead. Time was fleeting. Already she overstayed her welcome by ten minutes. No job should take more than half an hour. It was a rule, and the fact that Rowan broke it so readily was not a good sign.
With her treasures in hand, Rowan let herself in back into the studio where it took another minute to reconnect the cameras. If a cable was out of place, well then so be it. She didn't care beyond the professionalism of her craft. And even the most perfect of people made mistakes sometimes. That done, she was gone. The alley was just as dark as when she entered it. Empty and quiet. A car drove by, it's stereo leaving an echo of pop music behind. All in all not a bad night's work. Now all that remained was research. And with a visual to go on, that should be easy breezy, beautiful.
