It had been a long night.

Finding a place to sleep and hole up had been my first priority, but it hadn't been easy. The girl's parents had lived in a strictly middle class area, and I'd had to drive around for a while before I found a neighborhood that had parks that were overgrown and not well maintained.

I'd have to ditch the car soon; while I had the credit cards from the wallets, I didn't know whatever pass codes they used, and it didn't look like very many gas stations let you pay at the pump.

I spent three hours searching the area before I found an abandoned storm drain. It looked as though the drain hadn't seen any water in a long time, and the back of it was blocked off. The grate in front of it was loose, and I managed to pry it off with my tools, enough to make my way inside so I could set up my camp and sleep.

This wouldn't be a good place to stay once the weather got cold; I'd have to find some place more secure by then. But it was the best I could do for the moment.

It was an uncomfortable night, and I had nightmares about the fight against Scion.

I woke to feel something crawling on my hand. It was a ladybug.

Staring at it, I couldn't feel a sense of loss at the thought that I would never be able to feel the swarm again. I'd been the master of insects, and now my mind felt empty.

I focused; it was a fantasy, but part of me hoped that I could somehow will my power back into being.

For two minutes I strained, but despite all my efforts, I couldn't feel anything. It was like trying to lift something with an arm I no longer had.

The ironic thing was that I would have rather kept my power and not had the arm. I felt a moment of crushing depression.

If I really was in another world, and in another body, the odds were that I would never see anyone I had ever known again. I wouldn't see Rachel or Lisa or Dinah or Brian again. I'd be forced to relive life from the time I was a child, and until I found out who had killed me, I wouldn't ever be able to rest of relax.

I let myself stare at the metal sides of the culvert blankly for ten minutes. However, my stomach growled, and I realized that ruminating over things I couldn't control wasn't going to help me.

Peeing behind a bush wasn't ideal; if I was going to do this for long, I needed to find a better solution. For the moment it was all I could think of.

Next was breakfast.

I couldn't risk cooking anything; people's senses of smell weren't good, but they could detect fire easily enough. Fortunately I'd brought food with me.

It had taken a couple of trips from the car to carry what I'd brought from the flat; it didn't amount to much. It was just canned foods that I could eat without heating. I'd brought a hand can opener too. Opening the can, I tipped the beans into my mouth and grimaced.

Bottled water wasn't all that good warm, but I had known better than to bring milk or anything that could spoil. Finishing the can, I gulped down half a bottle of water, and then I carefully slipped out of the storm drain.

I checked the outside carefully before I slipped out. The sun was high in the sky already. I moved underbrush behind me, and I slipped the grate back into position. From here no one could see any of my stuff.

Half my money I kept on my person, and the other half was hidden in the backpack. That way if I was mugged, or if the pack was found I wouldn't lose everything.

I was carrying a Swiss army knife. I'd have preferred a switchblade, but there hadn't been any that I could find in the dead people's flat. I hadn't found any mace or pepper spray either, and I wasn't even sure whether they'd been invented yet, or whether they were even legal on this side of the pond.

It was summertime, which meant I probably didn't have to worry much about truant officers. The one advantage I had was that this wasn't 2013. It was 1991, and if Dad was to be believed, parents had been more lenient about letting their children out to play alone.

In my day, no parent would have allowed their kids out until they were at least a teenager. Of course, given that the streets of Brockton bay were filled with murderous gangs that made a lot of sense. But in most places in the United States parents pulled their kids in and didn't let them out.

This was an earlier, more innocent time, and I could use that to my advantage.

I had no idea how to find the people who were trying to kill me. They'd used some unfamiliar terms, talking about muggles, aurors and Hogsmeade. I couldn't be certain whether these were Britishisms that I didn't know, or whether they were something more sinister.

My best bet would be to hit the library. There probably wasn't an Internet I could check, but if there was, maybe I could find something there.

I'd seen a hotel nearby, and a library. Their proximity had been part of the reason I'd settled here.

It was too late to get breakfast at the hotel, but tomorrow morning, I'd try to slip in and mingle with the groups of tourists getting the free continental breakfast, or whatever it was called over here. No one would expect a child to be homeless, and they wouldn't notice me slipping food into my pack for later. Even if it was just cereal it would help to extend my food.

It was farther to the library than I'd realized while I was driving. One of the first things I was going to have to do was figure out some method to transport myself around the city. Walking would take up all my time and it would expose me to more danger. Even something as small as a skateboard might help, but I really needed a bicycle.

I slipped inside the library, and to my relief there were other children there. I blended in quickly, and I quickly found the British dictionaries.

There were no mentions of mudbloods, or Hogwarts or Hogsmeade. The latter two sounded more like places than names.

"Miss," I began, talking to a librarian.

"An American?" she asked.

Apparently my accent hadn't changed with my body. I don't know why I thought it might.

"My parents are visiting here from Boston," I said. "And I heard somebody talking about a couple of towns...Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. Have you ever heard of them?"

She frowned. "No, I haven't."

What followed was thirty minutes of frustration as we searched through maps and reference books. In the Internet age it was a search that could have been done with a few clicks of a keyboard. Ultimately we found nothing.

"I'm sorry dear. Someone must have been having you on, or maybe you misheard them."

"That must be it," I said. "I must have misheard them."

Either I really had misheard, or these places were secrets. Where was I going to get more information? I didn't have anything to go on.

They had people in the police department, but I had no idea whether those people were coroners, beat cops, or the police chief... or maybe all three. I hadn't gotten a look at either of the two men, and they hadn't dropped any convenient clues.

I was at a dead end.

My next step would be survival. I'd need a way to make money; something that wouldn't seem out of place for a ten year old to do.

Transportation was next. I had vague recollection that London had a subway system...possibly called the Tube, and I knew they had those weird three story buses. Public transportation was supposedly better in Europe than in the states. I needed to learn my way around that system, and I needed something portable that I could use to travel in the spaces in between.

Finding free food would be a bonus too, but I could hardly ask a librarian. For one thing, she would likely call Child Services, and for another thing I would likely have to use this library again in the future. It had a real bathroom that I could use to do a sponge bath in, and it was nice to use the restroom without having to hide behind a bush.

It suddenly occurred to me that there might be one avenue of investigation. The men had planned on killing three other families. If I could watch the news for the next few days, I might be able to figure out some sort of common factor in the deaths.

I stole a newspaper from an old man on my way out, and I headed south. I'd seen a bulletin board for a car boot sale. When I'd asked the librarian about it, she'd told me that it was something like a flea market, an informal gathering of people in a field where they brought things in their cars that they wanted to sell.

It sounded ideal for me. I had two hundred pounds on me, and it might be enough to get me items I might need to survive.

There hadn't been any bicycles in the flat, or I'd have tried to take one. It was probably too much to hope that someone might have a good deal on one now, but it wasn't like I had much else to do.

It was a two hour trip.

I was already tired by the time I reached the place. I was going to have to take up jogging again; this body was in worse condition than my original one before I'd gained my powers. It was thinner, without the small pot belly, but it had a lot less muscle tone.

Without video games or computer screens, how had this girl gotten so flabby?

The flea market was larger than I would have thought from the librarian's description. It covered the space of maybe half an acre. It made me a little nostalgic for the Lord's Market back at home.

I wandered around, looking carefully for anything I could use. Back home at events like this there always seemed to be someone selling knives and swords. There was nothing like that here. Was it illegal, or was there some other reason?

There weren't any guns either, but I knew those were illegal.

Even back home I wouldn't have been able to buy either one as a ten year old.

A bicycle was at one stand; it was bright and pink, which wasn't ideal when you were trying to hide it, but it was cheap; just thirty pounds. As near as I could tell, a British pound in 1992 seemed to be worth anywhere between three or four dollars in 2013. I didn't like spending that much money, but while I could have stolen a bicycle from another kid, it would have possibly gotten police attention that I couldn't afford.

I was leaving the swap meet when I noticed a large, heavyset man following me.

Was he with the people who had attacked me, or was he another sort of predator. I couldn't be sure. The swap meet was on muddy, grassy ground, and I hadn't ridden a bicycle in a while. If I tried to ride on this kind of terrain I wasn't sure whether I would be any faster than he was.

I knew how to fight, but this body was weak, and I wasn't sure how well it would stand up to a man who was four times my current weight. Pepper spray would have been ideal, but there hadn't been any at the swap meet.

There were people around still, although many of them were beginning to pack up and move out. I could call out for help, but that would raise questions about where my parents were. I could lie and say that I lived nearby; that might be the wisest course.

The one advantage to being a ten year old girl was that people would look out for you. They would try to help. The only question was whether I wanted that sort of help.

In this situation, the bicycle was as much a hindrance as a help. It was an older bicycle, and heavy.

I saw an artist who was using spray paints on an old vanity.

"Hey, lady," I said. "Could I pay you to help me?"

"What?"

"I just bought this bike, but I don't like the color. I'd be willing to pay you to help me."

The woman smiled and we dickered for a little bit. I kept an eye on the man, who was pretending to look at some cheap art in the corner. She spent the next hour working on the bike, and I paid her ten pounds. She was happy to offer me something to drink, and we sat and chatted.

Apparently it would be another thirty minutes before the pain dried enough to touch, and one or two hours before it was dry enough to handle... and a full day before it was fully dry.

I simply needed it to not be a bright pink, and I needed an excuse for the man to go away.

The woman agreed to hold my bike for me for a couple of hours, and I slipped away. The man began following me again, and I ducked away.

I spent the next thirty minutes trying to lose him, but the swap meet wasn't that large, and I wasn't that hard to find. I was crouched behind a table staring at him as he walked by a trash bin.

There were bees flying around the bin; apparently one of the stands was selling lemonade, and people had been throwing the leftovers inside. The bees had been attracted by the smell of the sugar.

If I'd had my powers this would have been easy. I would have sent the bees directly at the man, and he wouldn't have even remembered that he was after me.

I could almost imagine the bees stinging him right in the eyes. That would keep him from following me.

A bee swooped in, and a moment later the man was screaming.

I stared, my mouth wide. Had I done that?

It hadn't felt like my usual swarm sense, but I'd felt... something. People were gathering around the man, and I quickly moved away. I returned to the woman, took possession of my bicycle, and I left.

She'd painted it in a camouflage pattern. With luck I'd be able to hide it in the grass and it wouldn't be noticed. If not I'd have to hide it in the bushes.

It took me a little time to get used to riding a bicycle again; I hadn't done it in years. But what had taken me two hours of walking was an easy thirty minutes of riding, and I knew that once I got used to it, things would probably go even faster. The bicycle had a basket on it, too, which meant that I might be able to carry things from the grocery store, assuming that I could find one.

I spent the rest of the day exploring the neighborhood.

Finding a Little Caesar's was a bonus; I'd heard they'd pulled out of Britain in my world. Here, either it hadn't happened yet, or it wasn't going to happen at all. I bought an entire medium pizza for the cost of a McDonald's meal, and I ate as much as I could before giving the other half to a homeless guy on a street corner. I had no way to preserve it, and there was no reason for it to go to waste.

I hid the bicycle under the bush, and as I went to sleep in the culvert that night, I stared at the beetle that had decided to take up residence with me.

After an hour of trying, I finally made it stand up, and begin to dance.

It was horribly clumsy; nothing like the refined elegance of the powers that I'd once had. I couldn't control more than a single bug at a time, and whatever feedback I was getting from the bug was even worse than it's limited senses would suggest.

It was like trying to use your arm when it was numb because you slept on it. It was clumsy and would barely follow your commands, but you could still do some things with it.

I felt much more optimistic.

I was up earlier the next morning, in time to reach the hotel and pretend to be one of the children of the guests. I ate a hot meal, and I looked over a newspaper that someone had left.

There were headlines screaming about three murdered families.

Part of me felt guilty; could I have helped them in some way? Most of me was more pragmatic; I knew better. In this body, with no powers and no weapons, I'd have just been murdered again.

I couldn't even have warned them.

There were addresses, and I'd bought a map at the Swap meet. I'd just have to check out the sites of the murders so I could find out if there were any clues to the people who had murdered me.