AN: Chapter four! Weee, I'm on a roll here!

                                                                                                                                               

Snitch

            Skittery still hadn't awakened, and it was beginning to worry us. In fact, everything was worrying us right now. It seemed that Specs had a dead Dutch girlfriend whom he'd never met who was still obsessed with him that enjoyed trying to use Blink as her boy-toy. Things were getting very confusing very fast.

            "Kloppman knows somethin'." Dutchy said, his arm still set firmly around Specs' shoulders. It seemed to have been super-glued there ever since this ordeal started. I was sitting on the edge of Skittery's bunk, taking it upon myself to alert the others if he woke up. I wished I had the guts to comfort Skittery as openly as Dutchy comforted Specs…but I might get my arm bit off.

            "I'll go get him." Jack said. He was the only one with enough…well, authority to wake Kloppman up this late. We basically were silent while he was gone, except for a whispered conversation between Mush and Blink.

            Jack walked back in, followed closely by a very sleepy, very angry looking Kloppman. At first, he claimed he had no idea what we were talking about, but eventually he gave in.

            "Her name was Hendrike…but I just called her Rika. It was my pet name for her."

            Race leaned forward. "Who was she?"

            Kloppman sighed. "She was a prostitute. She was also my daughter."

            Complete, dead silence. Then Jack just lost it.

            "You had a daughter? Who was a prostitute?"

            "And what does dis have to do with me and Blink?" Specs blurted.

            Dutchy looked more confused than anyone. "And how does she know Dutch? You's not Dutch!"

            "Hold on, hold on! One at a time!" Kloppman said forcefully, sitting down on the end of a bunk. "Her mother was Dutch, and she taught it to Rika before her death. And Specs…you just happen to be he one she chose as her Tanner."

            "Tanner?" I asked gently.

            "Tanner was a client of Rika's for a while. Then…Rika admitted that she loved him. She wanted a steady relationship, maybe marriage, but she was having trouble giving up prostitution. Tanner couldn't deal with it, and he dumped her."

            "I'm not seeing where dis is goin'." Blink said.

            "That's not all. She became obsessed…following him around, showing up at the lodging house at all hours of the night…eventually threatening and attacking any girls he dated. And one night, she tried to kill him." Kloppman took a deep breath, and then continued. "Tanner got away with only a few scratches, but he split town soon after that. And a few days later, Rika slit her wrists in the lodging house washroom."

            Another silence followed. He was allowing all this to sink in.

            "And…so now…she thinks Specs is Tanner? And she just likes Blink for his looks?" Mush asked, and Kloppman nodded.

            "If she found a good looking guy, she wouldn't hesitate in getting him into bed. That was just the way Rika was. And if she was denied what she wanted…let's just say she had one hell of a temper."

            "And what does Skittery have ta do with all dis? Why is she using him?" I asked.

            "I honestly don't know about that."

            "Wait a second…are you saying dat she's going to kill me?" Blink asked, finally getting it. But before Kloppman had a chance to answer, Skittery groaned and his eyes fluttered open.

            "Man…I don't even remember gettin' drunk…dat must've been some strong beer…" he muttered, and then he realized that everyone was awake and that I was sitting on his bed with him.

            "Um…what did I miss, guys?" he asked as I helped him sit up.

            "Ya mean…ya don't remember kissing Specs?" I asked him, and his mouth dropped open.

            "I what?! Was I really dat drunk?"

            "I'm gonna ignore that comment…" Specs muttered.

            "Ya weren't drunk, Skitts." I said, and he looked at me in confusion.

            "Then why da hell don't I remember dis?"

            We explained the whole thing to him, from the séance (which Kloppman wasn't too happy about) all the way through what we found out tonight. At first he thought we were insane, but slowly he began to realize that we were telling the truth.

            "I kissed Specs?" he asked, obviously not having believed us the first time. He slowly turned to look at Specs and Dutchy. "Dutchy, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to move in on your boyfriend."

            "He's not my boyfriend!" Dutchy insisted, which was kind of a hypocritical statement, considering his arm was still around Specs. He noticed this and removed it quickly as we just laughed at him.

            "Come on, guys. Dis is hardly funny." Specs said. "Rika is out for blood, if you hadn't noticed. Mine and Blink's in particular."

            "What can we do, Kloppman?" Race asked.

            Kloppman looked around at our expectant faces, his own face looking much more weary and worn than usual. "I don't know. I don't know what she wants, really. She changed too much…I didn't even know her."

            "We need ta hold another séance." Jack suddenly said.

            "Oh, yeah…look where dat got us da first time!" Blink said.

            "Do ya have any better ideas? Maybe she'll lay off if we talk ta her!"

            And so we did the whole set up again. The two candles, the circle…even Kloppman joined in. Skittery sat between me and Dutchy, just in case he needed to be restrained and to have the translator close by. The process was begun again, and at first, we thought it wasn't going to work.

            Then, quite suddenly, Skittery's hand got ice cold in mine. I looked up at Dutchy, who obviously noticed the same thing.

            "You're all fools."

            It was that voice again, minus the New York accent. Skittery's hand tightened on mine and he began to tremble. I was surprised I wasn't hearing him speaking in Dutch again.

            "Why do you say dat?" Dutchy asked gently.

            "You think you can keep him from me, but you can't. He will die for me. He loves me."

            That sounded very strange, coming from Skittery. And somehow, deep inside, I was a bit jealous. No idea why- I mean, it was that girl talking. Not Skittery. Just keep remembering that, and it won't matter…right?

            "What's it going to take to make you give up this up, Rika?" Kloppman suddenly asked, his voice weak. But Skittery didn't reply. His hand was holding onto mine so tight that it was painful, and he was shaking now.

            I couldn't stand it any longer. "Skitts? Are you okay?" I asked, and I didn't get a response. I broke hands with the person on the other side of me and laid my other hand on Skittery's shoulder.

            "Skittery, look at me. Are you alright?"

            "Snitch…you've gotta…tie me up…" he suddenly begged, his voice actually cracking in mid-sentence.  

            "What? Why?"

            He suddenly lunged at Specs, and if Dutchy and I hadn't been right there, he would've been soaking the poor guy in half a second. Mush jumped in to help us wrestle him to the ground, and Jack ran to his bunk and got his rope belt, quickly using it to tie Skittery's hands behind his back and to the leg of a bed. He wasn't going anywhere, that was for sure.

            "How will we know when she's gone?" Race asked, eyeing Skittery warily as he sat and sulked.

            "We can't know for sure. We just can't untie him until we can be certain."

            "Tying him up won't stop me." Skittery suddenly said. Or, should I say, Rika said it. She had finally referred to herself as separate from Skittery. "You boys should know that by now."

            A bunk abruptly slid across the floor and slammed into Dutchy, pinning him painfully between the bunk bed and the wall. He struggled to get out, but that bunk was solid oak- not easily moved. And before any of us could help him, we had problems of our own.

            For one thing, the temperature dropped about fifty degrees. At least. I could see my breath, for Christ's sake. But I wasn't half as worried about the temperature as I was about the girl standing in the middle of the room, holding a least five or six large knives in her hands.

            Mush was the first to move, herding Snipeshooter, Boots, Tumbler, and a couple of other younger newsies toward the door. And just as they made it out Rika let one knife fly.

            Mush screamed as it hurtled toward him, but it ended up pinned in the wall in-between his arm and torso, about a centimeter from ripping into his chest and having torn through the fabric of his shirt. In other words, if he moved an inch, he would end up slashed open in some form or another.

            Blink immediately made a huge mistake, letting his recklessness take hold and sprinting over to make sure Mush was okay- from his angle, he couldn't see if the knife had hit or not. Rika reached toward him with her hand, and he was dragged backwards across the floor by an invisible force before slamming into her hand.

            "None of you move." She demanded, putting a knife to his throat, "Or you'll have one less newsie selling papers tomorrow. Or…make that two."

            She threw a glance at Dutchy, who was now struggling to breathe- the bunk seemed to have moved again, pressing him even harder into the wall. She said something curtly in Dutch, and he responded very angrily, "Vuile hoer!"

            She began to laugh, and then the bunk slid even more towards the wall, and Dutchy groaned and hissed, "Godverdomme!"

            "Don't call me a whore, klojo."

            I saw my opportunity. Mush had pried the knife out of the wall and he now held it in his hand, only a foot from mine. And Rika's attention was concentrated on torturing Dutchy at the moment. I grabbed the knife from him and let it fly, hoping that my aim was as good as my pick pocketing. It went straight at her head, but just as it reached her, she vanished.

            Mush rushed forward to help Blink up from where he had fallen, and Specs and I ran to the bunk that was holding Dutchy captive, needing help from Kloppman to move it. Dutchy collapsed and could finally breathe again, and Specs helped him sit on another bunk as the temperature slowly got back to normal.

            But we were all at a loss. We couldn't kill her- she was already dead. But she had proven that she was fully capable of killing us. And she could show up anytime, and we had nowhere else to go. Not to mention that Skittery seemed to be the only one she could directly control, therefore, we couldn't untie him. He was her unconditional prisoner, unable to escape as long as she had access to his mind.

            Things seemed hopeless. Absolutely, utterly hopeless.

                                                                                                                                               

AN: I love chapters with both funny and serious stuff! Oh, man…I'm gonna remember these two lines forever! Poor Specs, seeing things deeper than they really are…

            Skittery: I kissed Specs? Was I really that drunk?

            Specs: I'm gonna ignore that comment…

Oh, listen! Your muses are telling you to review! And it's healthy to listen to your muses, I promise! *snickers evilly in background*