Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed.


A scowl was still firmly fixed on Claudia's face when she returned home from school, and Steve bit back a sigh. She'd made it pretty clear why she was irritated with him, but he had no idea what was making her take the whole thing so personally. It wasn't like he'd said anything about her, or even teenagers—or barely-more-than-teenagers—in general, just what he'd observed in his career. Which, whether she liked it or not, was longer and considerably more varied than hers. She did brighten when he mentioned her brother, though, making a beeline for her computer, and rather than listen in he headed into the kitchen to see what they had for dinner. Leftovers, mostly, and they were running short even on those…a few slices of pizza, half a sub, and some of the teriyaki that Claude hadn't finished last night. They didn't even have any milk left.

He shut the fridge and headed into the living room where Claudia was sitting with her computer balanced on her knees. "Hey, Claude, I'm going to make a run to the store and then pick up some dinner. Is there anything in particular you want?"

"Hm? Oh," she glanced back at him, apparently forgetting to be irritated for a moment. "I think we need milk, I used up the last on my cereal this morning, but whatever's fine for dinner."

He nodded, and the sense of something off returned as he saw her and her brother's faces side by side. He still couldn't place what was off about the picture, though, so with a nod of acknowledgement he turned for the door.

The store was crowded, not really a surprise given that people were getting off work about now, and he grabbed a gallon of milk and some sandwich supplies and then joined when looked like the shortest line. Which, of course, turned out to be moving the slowest. No point in switching lines now that he was in one, though, and he shook his head and spent his time doing some people-watching. It was a small town, that was pretty obvious…people all knew each other, knew the cashiers, all of that. He'd gotten out of the habit of expecting that when he'd been in the city, and while the same thing was probably true in Univille, Leena was the one who always made the grocery runs.

He'd only moved up two places in line when he realized that the cashier was familiar to him too, although he couldn't immediately place her. She wasn't anyone's parent, obviously, so not someone he'd talked to directly, and he was trying to decide which of the victims' sibling she had to be when he realized that she was the girl Claudia had planned to speak to today. Her hair was much shorter than it had been in the picture Claudia had found, but she'd definitely been Brandon's date for the dance a few weeks back. Jenny something. Jenny Robinson.

He glanced behind him, but the line had only lengthened, and as much as he wanted a chance to speak to her, this obviously wasn't the place. And he had no idea whether Claudia had already spoken to her at school today. Damn.

On the off chance he would see something, he watched her behavior with the remaining customers ahead of him, but nothing stood out about her. Nothing to indicate that she might have been affected by an artifact, nothing to indicate that she'd seen anyone else be affected….

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked, and he shook his head quickly as he realized that the line had finally moved while he'd been staring.

"Ah, no, I just needed…." He gestured at the items on the belt. "Sorry, you just look familiar. Maybe you go to school with my sister?" It wasn't precisely a good excuse for staring, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice.

She seemed to accept that, though, since she nodded and started to ring him up. "Probably. Only the one high school so we pretty much all go to school together."

"She's a redhead, about so tall," he said, measuring it out in the air. Given that it was a small town, nobody would think anything about him taking a few minutes to chat with the cashier. After all, everybody else in line had been doing the same thing. And it wasn't like she wasn't ringing up his order while they talked. "We just moved here."

"Oh, yeah, Claudia." She gave him a cautious look. "She's in one of my classes. She said her brother was an ATF agent."

"I am," he agreed with a nod.

"I…."

He tilted his head as she trailed off, but before she could say anything else—or not say anything else, as she seemed to be reconsidering whatever she'd planned to say—the register beeped.

She shook herself and glanced back down at it. "That'll be fifteen ninety."

All professional, now, and he glanced at the line behind him again and then swiped his card quickly. Asking her to take a break now would be just a little obvious, but given the look that had crossed her face, if Claudia hadn't talked to her, he was definitely going to find some time. .

Claudia's computer was sitting by itself on the coffee table when he returned, and he turned towards the bedrooms. "Claude, I've got chicken!"

"Coming!"

"Hey, did you talk to Jenny today?" he asked as she joined him, before she could remember that she was angry with him.

"At lunch, yeah. Turns out we have trig together, but we don't sit anywhere near each other."

"Did you find anything out?"

"That Brandon's a nice guy," she said, a scowl returning to her face.

"Anything else? It turns out that she works at the grocery store—she was my cashier when I bought the milk and stuff—and when I told her I was your brother it seemed like she wanted to say something. Even though she knew I was with the ATF." Or maybe especially because she knew.

"Maybe," she said after a minute, grabbing a drumstick as her scowl faded into a look of concentration. "It's…when we were talking, I asked if she had a boyfriend, and she said sort of, but since she has to work most days after school and he spent a lot of time on their project, they didn't get to hang out as much as she'd have liked. And then he got sick."

"Who's 'they' and what project were they off working on?" Steve asked as he dished himself out some macaroni salad.

"Don't know about the project; I tried asking but she just said that it was some crazy idea they had. But she did say that they were all sick now, so I'm kind of figuring it's the other kids in comas." She dropped down at the table to eat.

That sounded pretty promising, and he took a seat as well and then glanced over at her. "Do you think you can get more out of her tomorrow or is that when she stopped talking?"

"That's when the bell rang to go to our next class. And if I can come up with a way to ask, maybe, but asking about a boyfriend as part of a casual conversation over lunch is one thing. Asking about a boyfriend's mysterious illness and then randomly about his hobbies is another. Especially since I'm supposed to be just a normal high school student." She shrugged. "I'll try even if I can't come up with a good lead in, but I'm afraid I'll just creep her out."

She had a point there, and he hated to see her do something that might mess up her cover at the high school if this Jenny didn't know something. "At least see if you can find out when she isn't working, and I can drop by then in official capacity and just claim I'm following up with known acquaintances " he suggested. "Like I said, I think she might have had something she wants to say to me anyway."


"Got something!" Claudia yelled as the front door banged open.

"Clearly not a good citizenship award," Steve shot back.

"What?"

"I'm way too damn young to be getting called into parent-teacher conferences. What did you say to him?"

"Well, if someone's going to be that much of an idiot, I can't help but call him on it," Claudia said, joining him in the kitchen.

Steve debated pointing out that this was one of her teachers that she was talking about, but since it was her physics teacher and she probably could solve rings around him there didn't seem to be much point. "I put him off until next week so please tell me you've solved the case and we'll be gone by then," he suggested. Because most of the parent-teacher conferences he'd been involved with had been one of his parents, usually his mother, coming in to talk to his teachers about him getting the crap beat out of him. Again. And considering that 'Why don't you tell him not to be gay anymore?' had come up as a solution more than once…well, the whole concept just wasn't something that brought back fond memories.

"I don't know about that exactly, but I kind of know what their project was. The kids who got sick, I mean. She wouldn't say at lunch, but she wanted to talk to me privately after school, and..."

"Spill," he said.

"You were right, she did have something to say to you—or something she wants me to pass on to you, anyway—but first, she wants you to know that she's not a snitch. And that Brandon is a good guy, that's why she didn't say anything when the police were asking all their questions. Apparently some people think the fact that he's in foster care automatically makes him suspicious."

"Claudia." She glared, and he sighed. "Would you just tell me what she said?"

"I guess some guy from town was on one of those auction-type reality shows last year and got quite a bit of money for it. You know, like he found something in his attic that his great grandpa bought back from so-and-so back in the day and now it's worth like a million dollars?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Well, I guess there are a lot of old barns and that kind of thing around here, and Brandon and the others were thinking maybe they could do the same thing, so they've been all over town—and outside of town—digging around a bunch of abandoned properties. They invited Jenny to go with them, but like I said, she has to work a lot and usually can't go. And so far she didn't think they've found anything good anyway."

"But it wouldn't necessarily have to be valuable, or at least anything they recognize as valuable, to artifact them," Steve finished. "That's what she thinks happened?"

"Well, she doesn't know anything about artifacts, obviously, but she is afraid that they might have gotten sick from something they found or touched or whatever. And like I said, she was afraid the police would blame Brandon if she said anything about what they were doing when everyone started getting sick." She paused. "That, and I think she figured that the doctors would figure out what was making them sick and fix it and it wouldn't matter anyway. Since that hasn't happened, though…."

"Right. And I guess since I'm an ATF agent and not from around here, that makes me safer to tell."

"Especially since she didn't have to tell you directly," Claudia said. "But here's the bad part: I asked, but she doesn't know exactly where they were searching last. Just that it was some abandoned property outside of town. Off to the west, she thinks, but she's not a hundred percent sure."

"Damn." That did make things a hell of a lot harder. "Well, if you can get me a list of abandoned properties in the area, I guess I can start searching. Or maybe back and talk to Brandon's foster brother and see if he can narrow the list down some." He paused. "And make sure that there wasn't anywhere they were searching that wasn't really abandoned." Having a place to start would help at least a little, since things never seemed to come with signs that said 'artifact' on them.

"I think I'd better be the one to talk to Danny if you're going to say things like that."

Steve almost groaned as he realized that her scowl had surfaced again. "Claude, why are you taking this so personally? Whether you like it or not, I've had some experience dealing with kids who grew up in the system, and they aren't always squeaky clean."

"And like I said, so have I. And not everyone's a thief, either."

"Like what kind of experience?" he challenged.

"Like being one of them."