I know, I know, this chapter took forever to upload. Sorry to everyone who's been waiting for the next chapter. I kept getting stuck, then unstuck, then stuck again, because a lot of problems cropped up while I was trying to write it. I finally managed to find a way that it all worked out, though. So be happy.

This chapter's fun. It includes Psyche-Lock busting, lots of Phoenix, a very brief cameo from one of the original cast members (no, I'm not telling you; you've got to actually read the chapter to figure that one out), and a really bad pun that I made up. (Technically, I stole it from a hotel I saw when I was in the US last year called the AmericInn, but whatever. Feel free to laugh at my terrible name skills.)


Chapter 9

Busting The Weasel

Trucy was beginning to wonder if their fool-proof plan was so fool-proof after all.

She'd stayed up all night thinking about it, worrying that their whole plan was going to derail. Maya's sudden declaration of elopement had caused certain... implications for their whole "keep Maya and Phoenix together" plan. If Phillip's parents hadn't objected, everything could have gone terribly, terribly wrong.

True, they'd gotten rid of the first candidate. He was no longer an option – this left one more standing in their way. If anything even remotely similar to last night happened when Jeffery Ewens showed up, they were toast.

When Trucy saw Apollo the next morning, she dragged him away from the TV (up until that point, he had been wrapped up in a boring courtroom documentary) and related the night's events to him. When she finished, he just shook his head and headed back toward the TV room.

"Why aren't you worried?" Trucy asked indignantly, running after him and grabbing his arm. "Tonight could be disastrous! How dare you be so unconcerned!"

"Calm down, Trucy," Apollo ordered grumpily, pulling free of her grip. "That was just a set up, to get Manella's parents off his back. I overheard her explaining everything to your dad last night. Maya has an annoying tendency to be really loud when people are trying to get to sleep."

Trucy sighed, relieved. "See, this is why I'm glad to have you around," she said, patting him on the arm. "Sometimes, anyway."

"Gee, thanks," Apollo replied sarcastically. As Trucy made to leave, he grabbed her arm and added quietly, "Listen, there's something important I need to tell you. It's about that Ewens guy who's coming tonight."

"Yeah?"

"See, I was trying to look up stuff about him. There seemed to be something wrong with that application he sent in. It seemed kind of suspicious to me."

"When did you see his application?" Trucy asked, ignoring the serious tone in Apollo's voice.

"His was the one I used as a basis for 'Nicholas W.'s' application," he replied, rather impatiently, "but that's not the point. I couldn't find a trace of him anywhere on the Internet – no Facebook, MySpace, nothing. Plus–"

Trucy rolled her eyes, not understanding how Apollo could be so concerned over that. "He might not like social networking sites. Ever think of that?"

Apollo ignored this and continued, "Then I looked him up in the LA phonebook. That's where it said he lived on his file, but I couldn't fine anyone named 'Jeffery Ewens.'"

"Maybe he doesn't have a landline?" Trucy suggested weakly.

Apollo raised his eyebrows.

"Okay, I get your point. It's suspicious," Trucy admitted, raising her hands in defeat. "So, what do you want me to do about it? Keep an eye on him? You do remember that I'm a human lie detector, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm better at perceiving things than you are," Apollo reminded her smugly.

Trucy bristled at this, as his being more skilled at perceiving lies had always been a sore spot with her. "That's only because you have that fancy bracelet-thing! And it doesn't really matter who's better."

"I guess you're right," Apollo conceded, "but I think it's a good idea if we're both on the lookout. That way, if he is lying to us in some way, we're sure to catch him."

"I get the picture. We both keep an eye on Ewens," Trucy said, spotting a problem in their plan, "but what do we do if he lies about something big? We can't just say, 'Hey, we can see your eye twitching! Liar!' It works in court because the judge is too flustered to object, but I think Mai would throw us out on our ears if we said that. And we can't really have that, since I'm posing as Rina Watanabe and all."

Apollo furrowed his brow in concentration. Slowly, as if he was weighing his words carefully, he said, "We can tell Mr. Wright."

"Are you kidding? Mai and the other elders wouldn't listen to a word he said! They think he's a worthless, lying hobo! And no wisecracks," she added sternly, seeing Apollo open his mouth.

"I wasn't going to make a wisecrack," Apollo said innocently.

It was Trucy's turn to raise her eyebrows.

"Okay, fine, maybe I was," he conceded. "But you have to admit he looks like one. Aside from that though, I actually think Mai and the elders would be more likely to listen to him than to us."

"How do you figure that? They hate Daddy – they at least semi-respect you."

Apollo smacked himself on the forehead with his hand. "You know that Maga– Maga– that green thing shaped like the number nine, the one he got from Maya that can detect lies?"

Trucy nodded, not because she actually knew what he was talking about, but mostly because she didn't want to risk Apollo's further exasperation.

"Well, they charge that with power here, in Kurain, so that it can detect those lies," Apollo said, very slowly and patiently, as if he were addressing a very stupid child. "If Mr. Wright were to show that Ewens was lying by using that power, the elders would have to listen to him. On the other hand, if we were to point that out with our perceiving abilities, they'd think we were crazy. Do you understand now?"

"Oh!" Trucy said, a look of comprehension dawning on her face. "Yeah, I get it!"

"Good," Apollo said, sounding relieved. "But remember, this is only if he lies, okay?"

Trucy nodded eagerly. "Right."

"All right. See you tonight.

"See you."

With that, they went their separate ways, Apollo returning to the TV room, and Trucy thinking about taking a nice, long nap.

Maya Fey—

Maya peered around the corner to see if Jeffery Ewens had arrived yet. All she could see was a crowd around the front door – no since of Mai, Tallia, Watanabe, or her date for the night. She turned around to look at Phoenix, who had escorted her here.

Smiling weakly, she said, "Well, this is it. Again."

Phoenix nodded. "Yeah," he replied, trying to look calm. "But look on the bright side: if the next two nights go as well as they did last night, you'll be home free."

Yeah, but what about after that? Maya wondered to herself. Will Mai give up, or will she make me do it all over again until it finally works out?

She refused to think about it any further. She would deal with it when the time came. Instead, she asked, "So, what are you going to be doing tonight? Still gonna try to break into Pearly's room."

"Actually, no. I thought I'd watch TV or something. Though I'll probably check in on them later." Phoenix paused for a moment, then kissed her and added, "Good luck."

Maya smiled and waited for him to leave, but he stayed put and watched her expectantly. After a moment, she asked, "So. . . are you going to leave, or what?"

"Nope. I'm making sure you don't bolt," he replied cheerfully.

Maya sighed. "You just ruined a perfectly nice moment, you know that?"

Phoenix just grinned at her.

Rolling her eyes, Maya turned and walked around the corner, feeling Phoenix's eyes boring into the back of her head.

The first thing she did when she rounded the corner was catch a glimpse of the guy she was supposed to be dating tonight.

The second thing she did was turn around and walk quickly back around the corner.

The third thing she did was run straight into Phoenix, who hadn't moved an inch in the past five seconds.

"He's here?" Phoenix asked simply.

Maya nodded. "I'm going, I'm going," she said, then reluctantly turned and walked back around the corner, only to be greeted by an obviously-impatient Mai.

"Finally, you're here!" she snapped, grabbing Maya's arm and almost dragging her toward the place where Ewens was standing, surrounded by the other elders. "I was about to go looking for you myself!"

Maya ignored the elder and took a better look at Ewens. He wasn't that tall, maybe a head taller than she was, with close-cropped blond hair, wearing a gray suit and a black tie. His face, long and pallid, faintly resembled a weasel's, and his blue eyes were small and beady, flicking restlessly back and forth. He had a habit of twitching, furthering Maya's first impression of a nervous weasel.

Watanabe, who was standing just behind Ewens, took a step forward and smiled encouragingly at Maya. "Miss Fey, this is Mr. Ewens."

Ewens focussed his attention on Maya, who glared at him, not even bothering to hide her dislike of him. He didn't seem bothered, just nodded to her, smiled, and twitched.

"Well, let's begin!" Mai said, trying to sound cheerful. "To the dining room, then?"

As Mai led the small group away, Maya glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see Phoenix looking around the corner. And yet, there was no one there.

Feeling hollow, Maya forced herself to walk down the hallway, not looking forward to the next two hours in the least.

Trucy Wright—

All during dinner, Trucy kept a close watch on Ewens. He didn't seem to be in the mood for talking, but rather shovelled ramen noodles in his mouth at an alarming rate. Maya, who was sitting across from him, hadn't even touched her plate – she too was watching Ewens, though in disgust. The elders were making small talk further down the table, and Trucy could see that Apollo, who had convinced Mai to let him come by saying that he'd always wanted to watch a miai, looked thoroughly bored as he picked at his plate.

After Ewens had cleaned his plate, Trucy saw her chance to possibly ease a lie out of him. Setting her own dinner aside, she asked curiously, "So, Mr. Ewens, what do you do for a living?"

Mai stopped eating, her chopsticks suspended halfway to her mouth. Evidently, she was shocked that the matchmaker, of all people, would forget one of her client's occupations. Trucy knew very well that Ewens owned a "successful" hotel, but she wanted to see for herself whether he had lied on the application.

Ewens didn't look bothered by this question. "I own a four-star hotel in LA," he said smugly, still twitching. "The CalifornInn. Haha. Get it?"

Some of the elders chuckled, but it was more of a polite laughter rather than one borne on actual humour. Trucy, who hadn't noticed anything odd, glanced down the table at Apollo. He was staring at Ewens with a puzzled look on his face that Trucy recognized – the same look he wore in court when he was trying to perceive a lie.

Knowing that Apollo needed Ewens to repeat his remark, Trucy asked again, "I'm sorry, I'm not sure that Mr. Justice heard you." She gestured toward Apollo, who gave an absent-minded wave in Ewens's general direction. "Could you repeat that, please?"

"I said that I own a hotel called the CalifornInn," Ewens repeated, a little louder this time.

Trucy exchanged a glance with Apollo. He shook his head slightly, signalling he hadn't caught any hint of a lie. And yet, he was touching his bracelet, still looking confused.

Mai, who had just noticed Ewens's empty plate, asked him, "Would you like some more ramen?"

Ewens nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I would. I swear, these are some of the best noodles I've ever tasted, or my name isn't Jeffery Ewens."

At this, Apollo's eyes widened, then narrowed as he scrutinized Ewens's face. Trucy, frustrated at her lack of sensitivity to lie perception, wondered what he was thinking. Surely, if he had noticed a liar's sign, then he would have signalled for her to go out in the hallway to talk?

At that moment, Apollo piped up, "May I be excused for a moment? I need to use the–"

Mai waved a hand dismissively, cutting off the rest of his sentence. As Apollo stood up, he raised his eyebrows at Trucy, who understood that he wanted to talk to her. She waited for a few minutes after he left, then asked to be excused as well, under the guise of retrieving some pills for a headache.

Apollo was waiting for her just outside the door. He was rubbing his bracelet, looking distracted. As soon as she closed the door, he said in a hushed voice, "I don't know what the hell is going on with my bracelet. It keeps reacting for no reason."

"When he was talking about the hotel?" Trucy inquired.

He shook his head. "Well, okay, it has been," he admitted. "But as soon as I met him, it's been tightening like crazy. I think it's going to cut off the circulation to my hand."

"Ever since you two were introduced?" she asked, ignoring his last comment.

"Yep," Apollo confirmed. "And I can't tell whether or not he's lying. All he does is twitch, and twitch, and twitch some more. I almost want to say that those twitches are signalling that he's lying, but he does it even when my bracelet doesn't react."

"That's kind of weird. I never noticed anything wrong," Trucy admitted. "Maybe you're bracelet's malfunctioning?"

"I don't think it can malfunction," Apollo said, almost defensively. "We need to do something. Find a way to check that he's lying, for sure."

Trucy, having a feeling that she knew what direction this was taking, said slowly, "You want to take Daddy's lie-detecting thing, don't you?"

Apollo wordlessly nodded.

"Well, we'd better go find him and ask," Trucy said firmly, leading the way down the hallway and around the corner.

"Trucy – no, Rina! Hey, wait!" Apollo called after her.

Unfortunately for them, Phoenix was just down the hallway, apparently on his way back from the bathroom. At the sound of Apollo's voice, he looked up and caught sight of Trucy – and instantly, it seemed that he recognized her.

"Trucy? I thought you were sick. And what the heck are you wearing?" he asked, walking down the hallway toward her.

"If your dad sees you, he's going to–" At this point, Apollo ran around the corner, saw Phoenix, then said, "Never mind."

"Aw, crap," Trucy said to herself, realizing what she'd just done.

Phoenix looked first at Trucy, then to Apollo, then back again, his eyebrows knit together in a frown. Trucy waited for that familiar look on his face, the look he got whenever he'd just figured something out, and the reprimand that would go with it.

After a few seconds of silence that felt more like an eternity, Phoenix said, "I'm torn between demanding to know what's going on, or pretending this conversation never happened and walk away."

"I think you should go with option one," Trucy said in a defeated voice, recognizing the fact that her father was going to figure it out sooner or later. He did used to be an ace attorney, after all.

Phoenix gave her a confused look.

"No, he shouldn't," Apollo corrected her, stepping forward and elbowing her in the side.

Trucy gave him a shove. "Yes, he should."

"No, he shouldn't," he retorted, pushing her back.

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes!"

"No!"

"Okay, I'm leaving," Phoenix said, trying to skirt around their little shoving match. Before he had gone very far, Apollo stepped in front of him and asked, before Trucy could interfere, "Mr. Wright, can we borrow your, um. . . whatever you call that little green thing you have?"

This just made Phoenix even more confused. "What green thing?"

"That thing Maya gave you that helps you figure out when people lie. We need it," Trucy butted in, pushing Apollo to the side.

A look of comprehension dawned on Phoenix's face, to be quickly replaced with one of suspicion. "Why do you need my Magatama? You two don't need it, with that special power of yours."

"See? I told you that he needs to know!" Trucy exclaimed triumphantly. "He won't give it to us unless we tell him what's going on."

"Yes, but then he'll know what's going on, and then the whole plan is out the window!" retorted Apollo, rather impatiently.

"And how else are we supposed to prove that Jeffery Ewens guy is lying?" she shot back, crossing her arms and glaring at him.

Phoenix's eyes widened in recognition at the name. Quickly, he interjected, "Jeffery Ewens? Isn't that the man Maya's supposed to be meeting tonight?"

Trucy nodded energetically.

"And you say that he's lying?" Phoenix pressed.

Again, Trucy nodded.

Phoenix scratched his head in confusion. "So, um. . . how would you know that? I was under the impression you were on your death bed, the way Pearl kept going on and on and on about how I wasn't allowed inside her room to see you. . ."

Trucy scuffed the ground with her shoe. "Yeah, well, we kinda had to lie about that," she said, staring at the floor.

Apollo grabbed Trucy's arm and smiled at Phoenix. "Excuse us for a second," he said, his voice unusually cheerful before he pulled Trucy out of Phoenix's earshot. In a heated whisper, Apollo asked, "What are you doing?"

"Daddy's going to figure it out sooner or later," Trucy replied just as quietly, glancing at her father, who looked utterly bewildered as he stood in the middle of the hallway. "Tomorrow, 'Nick W.' comes to visit, and we're going to have to fill him in on the whole thing anyway so he's not in complete shock when the time comes."

Apollo gave her a strange look.

"What?" Trucy asked, exasperated.

"Nothing, it's just. . ." Apollo tapped his chin for a second, as if trying to think of the right way to phrase what he was thinking. Finally, he finished, "It's just, you actually made sense for once."

Trucy rolled her eyes at this, but taking it as a sign that she had his permission, Trucy walked back to her father. "Listen, Daddy, I haven't been sick at all," she admitted, smiling as innocently and sweetly as she could. "You know how that matchmaker person was supposed to come and destroy yours and Maya's love lives?"

"Um. . . yes," Phoenix replied, looking taken aback at this strange statement.

"Well, I've been impersonating her for the past few days. Our plan was to slip you into the list of candidates without anyone, not even Maya, realizing it was you. We said you were a successful business owner–"

At this point, as if he couldn't let the opportunity pass, Apollo cut in and said, "Obviously, no one would call you a successful business owner."

Phoenix gave him a fierce look. "Hey, remember that I'm the one who signs your paycheck," he replied sternly.

Apollo nodded meekly and shut up, obviously worried that he was going to have a cut to his pudding salary.

Trucy coughed and continued, "Well, anyway, we managed to get Maya to pick you as the final candidate she was going to meet. After that, we kind of hoped that the other guys she was going to meet would be total creeps or something. Thankfully, neither Maya nor Phillip wanted to take it any further, but we're not so sure about this Ewens guy."

"Yeah. I tried to look him up online, then on the phonebook. No luck," Apollo piped up, a little more seriously this time. "Then, while we were eating in the dining room, my bracelet kept reacting, but I couldn't see him lying. He twitches a lot, so it's hard to tell if it's a liar's sign or just normal twitches that my bracelet's reacting to. It went really crazy when he said he owned this hotel called the CalifornInn, and even crazier when he said that his name was Jeffery Ewens, though."

Phoenix's brow was furrowed, evidently thinking this over. After a pause, he said slowly, "So you want to borrow my Magatama, just to make sure that he really is lying, and to prove it to the elders?"

Both Trucy and Apollo nodded.

Phoenix let out a sigh and shook his head. "I'm in," he said. "I'll go get the Magatama, but on two conditions. First, you tell Pearl that I know you're really not sick. There's something I want to ask her, but every time I try to talk to her, she pretends she can't hear me. Second, you let me break Ewens if he's got Psyche-Locks."

Trucy and Apollo exchanged confused looks, only having a faint idea what he meant by "psyche-locks." After all, their knowledge of the Magatama and its powers (except for the whole lie-detecting part) was limited.

Phoenix shrugged. "I haven't done a whole lot with my Magatama since I finished investigating Kristoph Gavin," he explained, mistaking what their confusion was about. "I need my fun."

"Well, I guess that's fair," Trucy conceded. "Apollo and I had better get back to the dining room. Come by with the Magatama, okay? It's time to bust a weasel."

A few minutes later, when Trucy and Apollo had long since returned to the dining room, there was a knock on the door. Everyone looked up from their plates, surprised as the door opened and Phoenix walked into the room. When he saw the group of people sitting around the table, Phoenix's eyebrows shot up so high that they almost disappeared beneath his hat, and he said, "Sorry, I thought this was the door to the kitchen. This place is like a maze."

Maya smiled, though she looked a bit confused as to why Phoenix was here and why he'd gotten lost, after spending almost a week here without getting lost. "Hey, Nick," she greeted him, trying to force herself to sound cheerful.

Mai, on the other hand, gave Phoenix a dirty look. "Well, head off to the kitchen, then," she said, rather rudely.

Ewens was staring at Phoenix, scrutinizing him carefully. "Who's this?" he asked politey.

Tallia stepped in here, saying, "Mr. Ewens, this is Mr. Wright. He's just visiting for thbis week. Perhaps you've heard of him? He used to be quite the defence attorney."

At this, Ewens's eyes went wide. "P-P-Phoenix Wright?" he stuttered, beginning to twitch violently.

Phoenix blinked. "Yes, that's right," he said. "You've heard of me?"

"Y-Yeah. Who hasn't?" Ewens replied, giving a nervous laugh. "The Forgin' Attorney, right?"

Trucy saw Mai give Ewens a very approving look at this statement, while Maya looked as if it took considerable restraint for her not to fly across the table and tackle him. Phoenix, on the other hand, didn't react to this insult – instead, he asked Ewens, "And you would be. . .?"

"Jeffery Ewens, owner of the CalifornInn," Ewens replied snidely.

By the way Phoenix's hand went to his hoodie pocket, Trucy had a feeling that they'd just struck gold. However, the next thing he did was very bizarre. He turned to Mai and pulled a nine-shaped object out of his pocket. Handing it to the elder, he said, "By the way, I found this lying in the hallway. I think it's yours." Then, quickly, before Mai could try to return the object – the Magatama, Trucy realized – Phoenix added, "So, you own the CalifornInn?"

"Yes," Ewens answered with yet another twitch, evidently thinking that Phoenix was incredibly slow.

"Mr. Wright, this isn't–" Mai tried to say, but then she stopped, staring at Ewens in shock. Everyone turned to look at her, all with varying degrees of confusion on their faces at her sudden silence.

"You saw it just now, didn't you? The Psyche-Locks?" Phoenix asked her quietly, pointing in Ewens's direction. "I'm sorry for the lie, but that Magatama's actually mine. . . though I think you'll forgive me when you find out the truth about him."

Maya looked at Phoenix, then at Mai, then at Ewens. After a moment, she asked, "How many?"

"One," Mai replied quietly, staring blankly at Ewens. "Just the one."

Trucy and Apollo exchanged confused looks – it seemed that they, along with Ewens (who seemed to be twitching more than usual now), were the only ones in the room who didn't know what was going on. The other elders were nodding, eyeing the Magatama, or staring at the empty space in front of Ewens's face, as if they could see these mysterious Psyche-Locks.

Phoenix glared at Ewens as he said, "I recognized your name from around nine years ago. It was on a list of con-artists, taken off the phone of another con-artist, Richard Wellington."

Maya's mouth popped open. "I remember that case!" she exclaimed. "That's the one where Maggey's boyfriend was killed, wasn't it? And that Wellington guy was convicted of killing him, right?"

Phoenix nodded in reply, though he didn't look away from Ewens. "Now, the cops got most of the men and women in the con-artist ring that Wellington was affiliated with. But there were a couple of people on that list who were smart and didn't use their real names. One of them was this 'Jeffery Ewens.' The detectives thought that he probably only used the name when he was defrauding someone, or so I was told by a. . . well, pal on the force."

Ewens shook his head. "You're crazy," he said. "Psyche-Locks, accusing me of being a con-artist. . . what's wrong with you people?"

Everyone ignored him. They were too absorbed in what Phoenix was saying, even Mai, who seemed to have come out of her shock. "I looked this all up earlier today, because I'd heard your name and recognized it immediately," Phoenix continued, now reaching into his pocket and pulling out a cell phone. "According to the court records, this 'Jeffery Ewens' was never caught. And then, because I knew that you owned a hotel called the CalifornInn, I ran it through about three different search engines. No hits. No results out of the phone book. Seems like it doesn't exist, huh?"

Slowly, Phoenix dialled a number, then waited. Trucy, expecting him to have called 911, was surprised when a cell phone rang, piercing the silence. Suddenly, Ewens looked very panicked, and his hand went straight for his pocket.

Phoenix actually looked surprised that the phone had rang. "Huh. I thought I'd forgotten the number."

Apollo shook his head. "Mr. Wright, you have an amazing memory," he said in awe.

Mai stared at Ewens. "The Psyche-Lock broke," she announced. Then, turning to Phoenix, she ordered sternly, "You'd better call the police."

Maya Fey

An hour and a half later, two detectives led the handcuffed Ewens out of the Fey Manor and into a waiting cop car. Mai had been yelling at Watanabe all during that time, blaming her for daring to be fooled by a con-artist, even though she'd done the exact same thing.

Maya, on the other hand, was ecstatic. She watched from the doorstep next to Phoenix and Detective Gumshoe, who'd come along to help out with the arrest.

"Thanks a bunch, pal!" Gumshoe said for the umpteenth time, pumping Phoenix's hand violently. "We've been looking for this guy for a long time!"

Phoenix grimaced and managed to wrest his hand free of Gumshoe's grip. "No problem, Gumshoe," he said. "No problem at all."

Maya smiled at the detective. "It's great to see you again, Gumshoe," she said cheerfully.

"Same, pal," Gumshoe replied with a grin. "Well, I've got to head back to the precinct with this guy. He's one of the last from that list we got off the creep who killed Maggey's boyfriend. Stop by sometime, you two!"

"Right. See you!" Maya said, waving at Gumshoe was he got into the police cruiser. As it began to make its way back to LA, Maya turned to Phoenix and asked, "Listen, something's been bugging me this whole time. Why would that creep bother to enter his name in for the miai?"

"Well, Kurain's starting to make a comeback, so you're getting a lot more money now, right?" Phoenix said, a smirk on his face that he'd figured it out and she hadn't. "He's probably heard of Kurain at some point or another, and decided it would make a great opportunity to get some cash. Maybe he was hoping the two of you'd end up married, and then he'd run off with a good deal of money, which would be why he'd generate the lie about his owning a hotel, and why he'd use his con-artist alias. Just a theory, though."

Maya shook her head. "This has been a crazy night," she admitted, "but on the bright side, this means I've only got one more guy I've got to deal with! Then the torture will be over."

At this, Phoenix let out a snort.

Hurt, Maya asked, "What was that for?"

Phoenix just shook his head. "Don't worry too much about the final candidate. I've got a feeling that match-up is going to work out."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Maya asked bewilderedly. "I thought you were on my side!"

Phoenix grinned and kissed her on the top of the head. "You'll find out. . . tomorrow night," he promised, a wicked gleam in his eye.

Maya sighed. She wanted to press him for more details, but she knew that he wouldn't give her any more details. "Fine, Mr. Know-It-All," she said. "Let's go inside."


. . . Holy shit, 5k? That ended up to be a lot longer than I'd expected. O_O

So, we only have one chapter left. On the one hand, yay, and on the other hand, it kind of sucks. :( But on the bright side, the next chapter includes Mai ownage and physical violence. Can't get much better than that. XD