As the clock above her door ticked the seconds away, Myst Eerie leaned back in her increasingly uncomfortable chair and heaved a deep sigh.

I've never actually sat in my office long enough to notice how completely shit this chair is until now...

She pushed her cinnamon red-and-black hair out of her face and reached for a heaping mouthful of coffee, the only thing keeping her going on this dead-end case. Ordinarily she'd be hitting the mean streets, cashing in favours for information from her contacts or pursuing a lead born of some subtle clue found at the scene of the crime. But this scene in particular had already been picked completely clean by officials, and they weren't in the habit of sharing their findings with lowly PIs like her.

Not that I'd ever go crawling to them, anyway. I have my integrity.

But integrity was about all she had right now. Her client - one Norman Lity - had hired her to supplement the search for his daughter's friend-turned kidnapper, who had apparently given the feds the slip and was still at large. She was seriously impressed that he himself had been the one to find her, and almost took on the case out of sheer respect alone. Money was no object for this man, though she'd refused to take more than her usual going rate. No sense in taking advance payment for something she might not even be able to deliver on.

Whoever this Quin girl was... she was good. Crazy, but unfortunately for Myst, not in the way that got someone caught. Sure, the feds had confirmed her identity, but they had nothing else. A crafty enough perp could lay low indefinitely even if their face was plastered all over the news with their finances cut off. And from what Myst had seen, this girl had craft in spades.

It was as if she'd prepared in advance for what to do if she'd been caught before ever even making her move. She had no family to speak of, having lost her parents in a car accident quite recently, and any extended family insisted they barely knew the girl. The van used to move her victim had still never been found. The house she'd been hiding in had been bought and paid for decades ago by an unrelated, deceased individual - Quin had just been squatting in it. And most frustratingly of all, she'd somehow left no cyber-trail whatsoever. The fact that she still hadn't surfaced yet probably meant she'd withdrawn at least a fair amount of cash before committing her crime or else had some other means of income, and had escaped with it to the most unremarkable little town imaginable.

In other words, barring some momentous event that the feds would be all over first anyway, this case was dead-on-arrival. But for some reason, Myst found herself unable to call the man back and tell him as such. There was something about the raw desperation in his eyes, the aching need to do all he could to keep his daughter safe that stilled her hand from dialing his number and giving up the case.

Well, if I can't call him, maybe I could call...

There was only one person who could possibly provide her with a lead now, but to go to her of all people would be in incredibly poor taste. Even so, Myst wasn't a fed, so decorum didn't exactly apply to her. She had at least try to see how much the girl knew before giving up, even if it might be painful for her...

After a cursory web search using some tricks of the trade she managed to track down two numbers belonging to Norma Lity - a new one and a much older one. Myst checked the time, confirming that it was late but not enough to expect a teenager to have gone to bed already, and tried the newer number. It rang a couple of times until a feminine voice with almost no other distinguishing features answered.

"Umm, hello?"

"Hello, is this Norma Lity?"

"Y-yes... who is this?"

"My name is Myst Eerie, and I'm a private investigator hired by your father. If it's not too much trouble, I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions."

"Oh, okay... Go ahead."

"I realize this must be difficult for you, but I was hoping you might be able to tell me anything you can remember about Quin Tessence."

The line went quiet for nearly a minute.

"Norma? Are you still there?"

The girl's voice pushed through tears as she answered.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Myst. Like you said, it's... difficult. To talk about her."

"It's Miss, actually, but right now that's beside the point. I'm sorry for digging up those awful memories, Norma. It was terribly cruel of me. Please forget I even called, and have yourself a good night."

"...Wait!"

The girl seemed suddenly desperate.

"Yes?"

"It is hard, but I still want to do it. To talk about her, I mean."

"Oh? Well if you're sure, I'm here to listen."

There was another pause.

"Umm... not here. Not over the phone. Could we maybe meet up sometime?"

"Sure, if you're okay with that. Somewhere public, like a cafe?"

"If you have an office, that'll be fine. I'll just double check with dad that you are who you say you are."

Myst had been hoping to keep her client in the dark about this, knowing he wouldn't like the idea, but surely even he would understand the value of obtaining the victim's own testimony straight from the source.

"...okay. Are you free tomorrow? I can swing by and pick you up in the morning if you'd like."

"That would be perfect. Thank you, Miss Myst."

"...not to correct you again, but now I'm starting to feel old. I'm barely in my mid twenties, you know. If it's all the same to you, just call me by my first name."

"Ah, sorry about that Mi-Myst! Umm... would you be willing to give me a call before you leave tomorrow so I can be ready for you?"

"Yes, of course. And Norma? Thank you for being willing to do this. It takes a lot of courage to do what you're about to do."

"... yeah. It was nice talking to you, Myst. I'm really looking forward to more of it. Have a good night!"

"And you as well."

With that the call dropped, and despite the rather dry conversation Myst caught herself with a dopey grin on her face.

...why am I so excited to meet her tomorrow? It's not like we're having a girl's night - she's going to be sharing the tragic details of her trauma with me!

But that sense of anticipation stayed with her well into the night, even as she tried to sleep.

God, I'm pathetic. Ever since I devoted myself to this job I haven't really had any friends, and now here I am projecting onto some poor high school girl...

Myst shook her head and tried to force herself to calm down using meditative techniques. They'd worked wonders for her when some of the more disturbing crime scenes she'd left behind had never completely left her...

But right now, her mind was still going a mile a minute, meditation or no. She finally realized that this feeling of restlessness wasn't because of her laughable social life... no, this was hunch!!

Shooting out of bed, Myst raced to her notepad and typed Norma's old number into her phone as quickly as she possibly could. Her pulse pounded through her veins, the sound even louder than the ringing in her ear. There was a click as the connection was established, but whoever was on the other end of the line stayed silent.

"Hello? Who is this!?"

No response.

"Answer me!!" Myst demanded.

More silence. But wait... there actually was something, practically inaudible, coming through the speaker! A few seconds later, however, the call dropped.

"Damn it!" Myst cursed. But luckily, she'd set her phone up to automatically record her calls. It really helped sway things in her favour whenever it came to he said/she said scenarios, so long as her recordings didn't actually have to be used as evidence in court.

Myst booted up her computer and uploaded the audio file into a media player program, enhancing the sound as much as humanly possible before playing it over and over again. After listening to the call nearly hundreds of times, she thought she finally had something, a strange little poem muttered beneath this person's breath...

"Another guest? You'll make me blush! Another pest I'll have to crush! You are a terrible waste of time that I could have used to make her mine!"