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ELEVEN

New Haven Police Department
New Haven, Connecticut
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
3:13 PM

There was a long line outside of the New Haven Police Department, spotted with both civilians and news reporters trying to get information for follow-up stories pertaining to what had happened on the Yale University campus. From where she stood in the middle of the queue poking out of the glass double doors, Amy could see a pair of receptionists working behind the desk, handling both calls and people at the same time, seeming to have a hard time juggling the two separate tasks. On opposite ends of the expansive workspace that spanned the front half of the lobby, blocking any way further inside, stood a couple of police officers, standing with their chests puffed out and shoulders rolled back as if to tell everyone standing in front of them that no one would be getting past them unless authorized.

As she stood between two men, journalists, talking around her as though she were nothing but a glass partition dividing them, she listened as they compared notes from rival publications, both seemingly running the same story with the same angle. Apparently the slant of the week was that suicide was out and homicide was in, with the two men coming down with the other five nearby newspapers, and one national one, to interview separate investigators, hoping to dig up dirt on what had happened to explain their newfound discovery. Listening to them, Amy tried to sort through what they were saying, finally tuning them out when she realized that neither of the reporters beside her had really grasped the situation. According to them, "the Richardson girl and that other one" had made a pact to jump one week after another, trying to make it look like a suicide to make a statement—though what that statement was, they were still unsure, or trying to uncover.

By the time it was finally her turn to talk to one of the receptionists, Amy's anger at the obvious smear/sensation campaign had faded into nerves, catching up with her as she attempted to look at the brunette woman before her in the eye and ask for what Taylor had told her to inquire about. Claiming to be interested in it for research on a book, a lie she had conducted while waiting in line, Amy stammered her request, eventually getting her nothing but a point toward the door and a mutter about reporters changing their story to get past the velvet ropes. Walking away dejectedly, Amy was about to leave and return to her dorm when someone behind the officers on either side of the desk called her name. Whipping around, she saw Bailey standing with an older man, looking ecstatic over something unsaid. Nodding past the guards blocking her path, Amy snaked around the labyrinth of workstations creating a maze on the floor, stopping next to her friend after nearly kicking a displaced chair.

"I knew y'all would come around to my side of things," Bailey grinned by the time Amy joined her, looking even more excited while Amy simply bit her lip in confusion over who was standing in front of them. Seeming to notice Amy's puzzlement, Bailey pointed toward the guy before them, a wizened officer whose clothes hung off his bony frame, introducing him. "Amy Winchester, this is former Police Chief Morrison. He was called in as a consultant or somethin' on how to handle cases like these ones here."

Frowning, Amy's eyes switched between her friend and Police Chief Morrison, wondering what kind of reference the guy could provide and what Bailey meant by "cases like these". Asking as much, Amy tried to keep her words kind, attempting to make it seem as though she was merely interested for something innocent rather than trying to help her friends investigate a theory on ghosts haunting the nearby school. As she spoke, Amy noticed that Morrison appeared engrossed in her question, leaning forward to listen more intently until she was finished.

"I guess what I'm saying is that I don't get why everyone's so interested and how you can help," Amy closed. "At first, I thought it was just my friends going crazy, but now that I see everyone here, it looks like more of a phenomenon than I thought."

Nodding when she fell silent, Morrison reached up to touch his bald head, scratching his knobby finger against his scalp in thought. After a long moment, pausing a minute to stare off at the crowd lessening at the door while the receptionists and officers shooed them away, he turned to look at the girls in front of him, not saying anything but beckoning the two to follow his lead down a hallway taking them away from the lobby. As the girls lagged behind, Amy chewed her lip in wonder, curious as to what could be happening that would require them to be directed away from the dispersing queue. Coming to a halt outside of an office door, Morrison pushed it open to allow Bailey and Amy in first, sealing them off from the rest of the police station after all three were inside the room.

"There are a lot of conspiracy theorists in town," Morrison said after a pause, taking a seat at the empty desk inside the sparse office. His voice was crackly and quiet, reminding Amy of a man similar that she had met in a diner stationed in Brewer, Maine; a man who only seemed to come in once a day to catch up on the news and slowly poke at his normal meal of pie and coffee. Thinking back on him, Amy realized that there wasn't much difference between the restaurant patron and the former police chief standing in front of her, except for the fact that this man seemed a few years younger than the octogenarian who had visited Amy every day she had been at work. "They're all trying to pin some kind of crazy story on this place, claiming that there's a connection between those girls and a ritual suicide that had happened at Yale back in 1906."

Frowning, Amy furrowed her brow in confusion. "Those were suicides?"

"I told y'all that," Bailey muttered.

"No, you didn't," Amy scowled, suddenly interested in the tale—though she probably might have learned about it if she had kept with the diary she had been reading back in her dorm room. Realizing that it was possible she could have skipped a step to the police station, though Taylor probably still wanted those police reports, Amy made a mental note to finish reading it later, hoping that it became more interesting as it progressed. Tuning back into the conversation, Amy bunched her jaw and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk Morrison was sitting behind, his frail body leaning up against the tabletop with his arms crossed in front of him as though cold. "How do you know they were suicides?"

"There was a note," Morrison answered with a nod. "I wasn't alive at the time, but my grandpop was sheriff back then, told me stories about it when I got older. According to what he said, the kids were part of some brigade and made a pact as a protest to some sort of law the school was implementing."

"Some statement," Amy scoffed, biting her lip.

Nodding again, Morrison continued. "One after another began to jump from the windows, one a week until the four members of the group were gone. After the second one died, the police uncovered the written oath they had drawn up, trying to jail the two remaining to keep them from following through. Unfortunately, since laws were jumbled and their parents had money, neither kid could be kept there for long. A couple of weeks later and both of them were gone, whatever the motion had been protested disappearing with it."

"That was all there was to it?" Bailey asked, frowning. "I read in a journal from that time that it'd been more'n than that, a pact between 'em that said they were fixin' to return from the dead to make sure the law wasn't reinstated."

Gazing over at Bailey, Amy raised an eyebrow in confusion, wondering what possible school rule could have recently risen that anyone would be against. As far as she knew, student counsel hadn't been established yet, and the student senate hadn't passed anything that would turn heads. However, that didn't mean nothing was happening, especially since she had been so wrapped up in other things that she had forgotten to read the Yale Daily eNews for the past couple of weeks.

"Impossible," Morrison said slowly, grimacing a little as he rose from his chair. "It's impossible that those men could have returned, more or less survived the fall they had endured. If anything is happening to the Elis now, it's not because of a pact that had been drawn up a century ago, Miss Yost."

Smirking at the use of the word "Elis", especially since she knew that was the old word for students at Yale, named after the founder, Amy let the grin fade as she tapped her finger against her knee, glad at least someone was seeing straight in this mess. Unfortunately, even if she could side with Morrison and his rebuttal of a similarity, there was still the lack of explanation when it came to Taylor's invisible attacker and the fact that her disbelieving friend had now managed to glue herself to Amy's laptop, not moving as she searched endlessly for information on spirits. While Amy was still fenced on the idea of whether or not to buy into the fact that there were ghosts on campus, she felt she was the only one leaning back over toward the sane side—though apparently not, with Morrison's previous statement showing his resistence to the tale. Ultimately, however, that could be because she had yet to see anything first-hand and had a sinking suspicion that the tack they were talking was the wrong one.

"Miss Winchester," Morrison's voice said quietly behind her, holding a door open to the hallway where Bailey was now standing. Noticing that she was the only one left inside the room, obviously not realizing it while she had become lost in thought, Amy got to her feet and followed the man out, allowing him a moment to lock the door behind him.

Remaining in place while Morrison's shaky hands tried to fit a key into the slot in the knob, Bailey turned to look at Amy, whispering under her breath as she peered around conspiratorially. "What'd you come here for? What are y'all working on?"

Pursing her lips, Amy chewed on the inside of her cheek for a second before answering, wondering if the old man could hear them from where he stood beside the door. Taking a step away, Amy placed a hand on Bailey's elbow, biting back a weird sensation that felt like a snake sliding through her gut. "Taylor sent me here to pick up a file on what happened—a couple of them, actually. I think she's siding with you on this."

"About time," Bailey grinned. "What'd she want?"

"The, uh," Amy paused to glance around, lowering her voice even more. "The police reports on Rachel and Celia's deaths. Apparently there's something in there that explains a missing piece of a puzzle or something."

Smiling wider, Bailey reached into the book bag stationed around her shoulders, pulling back the top flap to reveal two manila folders with tabs identifying them as exactly what Amy had come for. Dropping the strip of cloth down as Morrison finally managed to twist the key in the lock, Bailey and Amy straightened up to follow him back toward the lobby of the station, Amy staring at her friend's short blonde hair as they walked one in front of the other. Why was Bailey always one step ahead of her?

Shrugging it off as the two were shown through the labyrinth of desks, Amy lead the way out of the precinct and into the fading day. While the sun was still bright overhead, the illumination of its rays seemed less intense, shining down on shadows of buildings that stretched onto the sidewalk around them. As the two headed for a street corner close enough into town that allowed them to hail a taxi, Amy looked inside her own bag, searching for enough money to pay the fare whenever they reached a busy intersection. While they walked, both girls remained silent, with Amy rooting around in her belongings to make her look busy as Bailey stared straight ahead.

Something about her friend was beginning to unsettle Amy, from the way the girl always seemed to be ahead of the curve to the weird feeling she got every time the two touched in some way. It was like something was twisting in her stomach, churning her insides in an attempt to make her nauseated. She had felt that way before, back in Brewer and with Mr. Garrison, the old man who came into the diner every day. There had been a time, though only once, when she had approached him to be overcome with the same sensation, afraid that she was going to become sick before it disappeared on its own and leaving her with the feeling that it had never happened. However, she hadn't dwelt on it then, thinking it something she ate rather than anything else, nor when she had experienced it a second time in the dining hall the day after Celia had died—at that time, she had written it off as her lack of food causing her intestines to squirm. Ultimately, today she was unable to explain it away like she had the other two times, especially since she had eaten an hour before heading down to the precinct and wasn't feeling any ill effects or hungry.

Pausing her thoughts as they reached a two major cross streets, Amy waited for Bailey to throw out her arm to signal a cab, watching her closely as she did. The girl didn't look any different than she had when they first met, and Amy hadn't felt anything strange then, so why was she suddenly under the impression that whatever was going on with her stomach was something attributed to Bailey? Yeah, they hadn't known each other long, just from the time the girl had moved in next door in the middle of August until now, but Amy had grown to like her new neighbor, even considering her a friend. The girl had a good sense of humor, seemed to enjoy spending time in Amy's suite, and aside from the ghost incident, seemed to have a good head on her shoulders. There was no reason for her to place the blame on Bailey, especially since she had no basis or foundation for doing so.

Letting out a deep breath as a taxi pulled up beside them, Amy kicked her suspicions away, climbing in the back with her friend and telling the driver where to go. As she relaxed in the seat, Amy was quickly reminded of the various times during the summer she had spent being driven around inside a cab, whether to work at a diner or to track down the brothers she had been asked to watch. In all that time, she had never considered she would be using one to get around New Haven, more or less to investigate something weird, especially since that was what John Winchester seemed to be doing with the odd news clippings he had placed on the wall of nearly every motel they had stayed at—if he was there long enough to do so, that is. Wondering if maybe there was something to that, maybe some correlation between John picking her up in May and her accidentally stumbling into something bizarre on her own at Yale, Amy frowned, hoping that wasn't the case. In all honesty, all she wanted was for Taylor to find out that both she and Bailey had been wrong, that the police reports in the latter's bag pointed to no foul, ghostly play, so that they could move on with their lives instead of trying to find something in nothing.

Slouching farther back into the seat while the taxi fell into rush hour traffic in Church Street's one south-bound lane as opposed to the three lanes heading north, Amy stared out the window, listening to the music the driver was playing and quickly realizing that she was right back where she started while the tinny sounds of Led Zeppelin carried throughout the cab.

"Mine's a tale that can't be told, my freedom I hold dear. How years ago, in days of old, when magic filled the air."