(no subject)
Here be chapter four! Enjoy!
The night’s research had yielded no information about what might be happening to Vicki. With nothing turning up, the trio had given up late in the night and gone their separate ways.
Vicki had decided to take a look at the case file Mike had given her earlier that day; she was in no mood to even try sleeping and figured she should probably do something constructive with her time. The crime scene photos were harrowing, but nothing the ex-homicide detective wasn’t used to. She studied them carefully, and then had a look at the autopsy report. She nodded as she came to the same conclusion as Mike - something just wasn’t adding up. The scene was just too textbook to be acceptable, and the body they’d ruled as suicide was just too perfectly placed…Vicki remembered reminding Mike several times over their careers together that getting a case wrapped up too neatly usually meant you’d been handed a package. And that meant someone was trying to cover something up. She took a look over the statements transcripts, and picked out one, from the next-door neighbour, that she thought ought to be followed up. He seemed to be too precise about the whole thing, so she made a mental note to make sure Mike questioned him again.
Putting the file into her desk drawer, she headed toward her bedroom. She reckoned she should at least rest her eyes, even if she didn’t sleep.
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As soon as Coreen got in her front door she frantically searched for the book with the spell in it. She needed to know if she’d missed something; a translation error, a loophole, anything that might explain why the stupid thing backfired on her. She found the heavy, leather-bound book and, sitting on her couch, leafed through the pages in question. After reading over them several times, she was sure she’d done it right.
“Ok, one possible mistake down…” She thought aloud.
She went through the words, re-translating the text using another book. She couldn’t find any mistakes, but then maybe she’d misinterpreted something. Ancient texts were a bitch for those kinds of errors.
“So that’s a maybe…”
She felt awful - if she had made a translation error and something bad was happening to Vicki because of her…No; she refused to let herself panic. She started to leaf through the book looking for some sort of counter-spell or way to remove it; dawn found her asleep on her couch, head lolled to one side and the book still open on her lap.
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Vicki woke the next afternoon to the not-so-sweet sound of Michael Cellucci’s booming voice. She was so tired the night before she had crashed at the office, and was beginning to wish she had gone home...
“Wake up, sleeping beauty!” he poked her in the ribs and she swiped at his hand unsuccessfully.
“Screw you, Celucci!” She would’ve said that anyway, spell or no.
“Aw…you’re so cute in the morning…” He smiled playfully at her, chuckling to himself. “I brought coffee. I need to talk to you about the case file I gave you.”
She groaned and punched her pillow before getting up and heading straight to the shower - rude awakenings aside, she was glad she could at least clean up. After getting dressed she joined him in the office. He had her coffee ready, and she smiled gratefully at him as she took the paper cup of steamy, hot goodness.
“I had a look over it last night - my money’s on that next-door neighbour Mr…Taylor I think? Story’s too tidy. You should definitely check him out.”
“Right - that’s what I thought.”
They halted their conversation as Coreen came through the door.
“Hey, you two…” she flopped into her seat and sighed.
“What’s up, Coreen?” Vicki enquired, noticing the behaviour of her assistant.
“Hmm? Oh, nothing. Just the late night and all, I guess.” She shrugged, “Better get back to that…uh…thing I was doing for you yesterday…”
“What’s the case?” Mike asked, his interest piqued.
“Nothing you could or would even want to understand, Mike.” Vicki’s voice sounded tired. Coreen’s head appeared in the doorway, her eyes meeting Vicki’s for a moment before Vicki’s attention was pulled back to the detective.
“What the hell was that supposed to mean, Vic?” Mike was slipping into fight mode - her remark had stung.
“It was supposed to mean that what you don’t know won’t piss you off.”
“Vicki, how the hell…What do you want me to do? I just asked a question! A fairly normal question, I thought, now you’re giving me grief for god only knows what!”
“Damn it, Cellucci, power tripping again? Just because you don’t know every little thing that’s going on you get all antsy with me. Well maybe it’s just something you can’t help with.” Her grey eyes were stone cold.
“Oh and I suppose Fitzroy can, huh?”
“Maybe he can, Mike. Or maybe you could get your head out of your ass and realise I don’t always need someone to ‘save’ me.” Before he had a chance to respond to her all three people in the office jumped at a sudden loud crash.
“What the…” Coreen was staring at a pile of broken glass on a shelf.
Mike got up and walked out, unable to put the anger he felt into words. She was never that harsh with him - that was no ordinary Cellucci/Nelson argument. And if she thought she could insult him like that and he’d stick around she was sadly mistaken.
Vicki turned her attention to the source of the loud noise.
“Did you throw that?” She asked Coreen, wondering how the glass vase had managed to shatter like that. If it had been Coreen there must be something seriously off with her - throwing ornaments around wasn’t exactly her style.
“No, Vicki, I didn’t. It…” She hesitated, mentally running over what she had seen, “it just…exploded!”
“Do you think this has anything to do with…” Vicki trailed off. They had no name for it yet.
“I don’t know…How often does stuff like this turn out to be a coincidence?” Coreen prayed that that was exactly what it was.
Vicki sighed and folded her arms, still looking at the pile of glass.
“Never.”