The bell over the door to her office at Strix jingled, prompting one Abby Valk to peer up from the rather gruesome spread of photographs she had been studying to the little brunette standing before her. The look on Audrey Horne's face was troubled, her eyes ringed with dark circles and her lips twitching as if she were holding back tears. Before the gingersnap could question her appearance there, Audrey reached into her pocket, fished free a business card, and flung it at the dour woman. It bounced harmlessly off of her forehead and floated into her lap.

"Saffron says you guys are good at finding people."

A copper brow raised up, more of an indication that she had heard the tinny hitch in Audrey's voice than anything else, and Abby's pale fingers flipped the card around and around; a cat bemused by a plaything.

"We can. You'll have to fill out paperwork, a description of who you want to find."

When Audrey didn't reply, when the silence that followed began its long stretch into seconds and then minutes, Abby slowly vacated her seat- the only one in her office- and ushered the girl over with a curl of one finger. A wordless gesture but universally understood, Audrey slowly moved around the desk and took a seat. When Abby placed a chilled hand on her shoulder, the only gesture of comfort that she could think to provide, Audrey's head dropped down as if the pale stem of her neck could no longer support it.

"I don't," she started, and then swallowed hard. Abby could smell the salt of her tears before she ever glimpsed them falling into the smaller creature's lap. "I don't want you guys to find someone. I..I want you to make someone disappear."

That sent the gears in Abby's head turning, dredged up the darker swamp bottoms of her soul, and sent something their prowling as far as its chain would allow. The finality in Audrey's voice, the slate black coldness, fed Abby's Beast just as much as it startled her more human sensibilities.

Perhaps Audrey sensed that she had to elaborate, because after another series of sniffles, another round of tears left to darken the fabric of her pretty blue skirt, she lifted her head up so that she could meet Abby's green eyes with blue. Then the dam broke.

"I want you to make Susie and me disappear. I..I can't do this anymore, Abby. I love Magenta, you know I do, but I can't..I just can't anymore, and I don't want Susie to have to go through this. We watch over Susie like a hawk, and when Magenta is gone then I get extra worried. I can't sleep, and when I do it's just nightmares..like all of the time. I don't know what to do, but I want it to stop."

Abby could feel Audrey trembling beneath her hand, could hear the horrid sound of things rumbling for freedom from her nose. She thought about Magenta, about how much that strange blonde creature loved Audrey and Susie, and then she thought about what Audrey was asking. "Have you spoken to Magenta about this?" Always the level headed thing, Abby was, even when her mind was screaming. Audrey shook her head. "No, and I can't. What if she leads them to us?"

The redhead drifted away from the girl and snatched a pen and notepad from her near Audrey's hand. She spoke as scribbled something down. "Tomorrow morning, I want you to go to this address. If you're thinking Twin Peaks, get that out of your head right now. I'm going to call an associate of mine, a really lovely and quite bookish fellow. Take what money you can, and when he answers the door, introduce yourself. He knows of quite a few places back home where people go simply to drift beneath the radar. He will call me when the three of you arrive..."

Audrey held the note in her shaking fingers, and any hint of gratitude she felt towards Abby was squashed the moment she glimpsed her emotionless face. Before she could utter so much as another word, Abby was helping her to her feet and guiding her toward the door.

"Don't thank me, don't mention my name to anyone but August. If you need anything then tell him and he'll relay the message to me. Now, I know there are people you'll want to tell, but trust me when I say that this is a very bad idea. The fewer people who are involved on this end, the better. Now go, Audrey. Take your daughter and go."

Audrey wouldn't remember the walk to her car, even when Abby's words were still so fresh in her ears.

She just knew she had to run.

An vacant house fairly screams its emptiness to anyone with ears to listen, and the big blonde was in near panic before her hand even touched the door. We all have little ceremonies we offer up to the gods, though, formulae and habits repeated in hopes that they can hold off the things we fear most.

So she opened the door, strolled into the deafening silence.

"Just me, ladylove," she called out in a voice clinging by its fingernails to normal, hanging the droopy-rimmed straw sunhat she'd been sporting on a hook by the door.

The house, of course, offered no reply.

Still, there were doors to open, weren't there? Room after room, in each of which Audrey and Susie might be together, wrapped in mutual slumber, oblivious to the ever louder slam and stomp of Magenta's explorations.

But as with the empty house, she knew before flinging wide each door that nothing living would be found within. The tears were already flowing long before she entered the last possible room.

No sign, only the lingering scents of woman and child, their clothing strewn (there was not a capable housekeeper among this small family), and a meal half-finished still on the table, broken egg yolk spread and solidified into something akin to plastic.

At least there was no blood. She repeated this to herself, a mantra against the madness that shrieked in her mind. If there was no blood there was hope. But Magenta was not a creature long on hope, too many times she had followed the rope of it only to find the end broken and frayed.

There was only one possible explanation, at least to one in her state of mind, and only one possible reaction.

Sobbing, hat left unclaimed on its hook, she slipped the blood-tempered stepping razor from its perfumed tuck in her underthings and, with the thing folded close in her right hand, ready to fly open as quick as a flushing grouse, she charged out into a world turned upside down, determined to fix it or end it.