Not really sure what to say. My grandfather died last week and I've been pretty out of it the last few days. I'm only posting this tonight because I had it finished ahead of time; I've barely been able to concentrate on my writing. I'm still a few chapters ahead, so you shouldn't see any interruption in the posting of this story.

For those who read the original, you'll notice a couple changes in this chapter.

Enjoy!

Tuesday

Shawn leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He was at the Psych office doing something vital to every case: research. Gus was busy with his pharmaceutical route that morning, trying to sell his company's drugs to local doctors, leaving him to work on this alone. He didn't understand why Gus still had that job; Psych was way more fun. But every time he brought it up, Gus started going on about bills and health benefits and pension plans and he inevitably tuned it out.

As for the research, most of what he had found so far were articles full of unpronounceable scientific terms that he couldn't even begin to understand. There were tables of numbers with accompanying graphs which he supposed proved something or other. There were also a couple pictures he recognized as molecule diagrams (which he vaguely remembered from high school chemistry), though he had zero idea what the actual molecule was. He guessed some kind of plastic; that was one of the few recognizable words that popped up regularly in the papers.

Gus really should have been the one doing this. Not only would he understand the articles, he would probably enjoy reading them. The geeky bastard loved to learn new things. "New rule," Shawn muttered to himself. "Gus does all research on any science related cases." He glanced at his phone sitting on the desk, wishing it would ring. Anything to relieve the boredom; even a phone call from his dad would be preferable right now. Unfortunately, it stayed stubbornly silent.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He had been staring at a computer screen for the last two hours and it was giving him a headache. He wasn't uncovering anything useful in Sanders' research. Maybe he should look into his coworkers at the university, see if he had any rivals. In retrospect, that is where he should have started, instead of trying to understand those indecipherable research papers. He groaned as he leaned forward again, calling up the university's website. "Chemistry, chemistry," he muttered to himself, looking for a link to that section of the site.

He froze as he heard a faint sound behind him. When it didn't repeat, he carefully turned around. Nothing was there. "Hello?" he called out, just to be safe. No answer.

Having had people break into the Psych office before, he got up and checked the other room. The front door was still closed and nothing seemed out of place. No one was there. Still wondering what the sound could have been, he returned to his desk.

He found a link to a list of staff members in the chemistry department and started perusing it. There was only one other professor performing the same research as Sanders, a Dr. Lyle Pratt. Shawn was just pulling up Pratt's page when a voice sounded behind him.

"Watchya doin'?"

Shawn gave a manly squeak and spun around. Standing behind him was Nikki Peterson. "What are you doing here?" he asked, trying to calm his pounding heart. "And do you have to stand right behind me?" He could understand why Lassiter was so upset when he did the same thing to the detective yesterday.

She pouted. "I said I'd come back today to see how you were doing on my case," she reminded him, coming around the desk. She was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and either the same ratty jeans as yesterday or an identically ratty pair. She stood in front of him, arms crossed, a disappointed look on her face. "Did you forget?" She glanced over his desk, gaze landing on the bag of chips he had been munching on. "Hey, are those regular nacho cheese or spicy?" she asked, pointing to them.

"Regular." He took out a yellow legal pad, glancing at Nikki as he gathered his thoughts. The truth was Nicole Peterson was a pretty common name. Common enough that a Google search had turned up thousands of worthless results. Even adding that she was from North Carolina hadn't helped. He needed more information from Nikki in order to find her, let alone her father.

"To answer your first question: I'm a psychic. Of course I didn't forget," he said, feeling a bit insulted. He had just spoken to her yesterday, after all. "The spirits just have – "

"How does being psychic have anything to do with remembering something?" she interrupted, a puzzled frown on her face. "That doesn't make any sense."

"You need a good memory in order to remember all the things the spirits tell you," he said, annoyed at being interrupted. He tried again, trying to inject more authority and mysticism into his voice, "Now, as the spirits wanted me to say – "

"I have a pretty good memory," Nikki interrupted again. She raised an eyebrow. "Does that make me psychic?" she asked mockingly.

"A good memory doesn't make you a psychic," he said exasperated. "Talking to spirits does. Can you please just – "

"How does the whole talking to spirits work exactly?" she asked, warming to the subject. Her eyes darted to the Doritos bag and back to him, so quickly he almost missed it. "You say they talk to you," she continued, as if thinking aloud. "They can't be physically talking or everyone would hear them. So they must be talking into your mind." She crossed her arms and looked down, brow furrowed in thought. Shawn stayed quiet, interested to see where she would go with this. "Let's say that is what their doing, but there is more than one spirit, so you must have a way to tell them apart. Maybe they 'sound' different in your head. Is that how you recognize the victims when they contact you?" She looked to Shawn for an answer. Before he could even think of one, she shook her head. "No, that wouldn't work. You haven't met most of your victims, so what would there be to recognize? Maybe you see an image of them in your head when they speak, or can sense their identity through their auras. But that would have the same problem as their voices. You haven't met them." She shook her head, then turned to face him. "I just have one question for you," she said, looking very serious.

Shawn was impressed. She had seriously thought this psychic thing through. She had exposed more holes in his act in five minutes than Lassiter had discovered in the seven years they had been working together. He hoped her question wasn't if he was psychic. This girl had the smarts to ruin him if she wanted. "What's the question?" he asked with some trepidation.

Still looking serious, Nikki asked, "Can I have some of those?" She pointed to the bag of Doritos on the desk.

Relieved, he nodded. "Sure, go ahead." Before he had finished speaking, she had grabbed the bag and started eating. He watched her in horrified fascination. She was inhaling the chips so quickly he thought she was going to choke on them. He started mentally reviewing the steps to the Heimlich maneuver in his head, just in case.

Noticing his stare, Nikki paused in her eating. She blushed. "Sorry," she said with embarrassment, looking down. "I had to skip breakfast in order to get out of the house before my mom woke up." She tried to hand the bag of chips back to him.

He waved her away. "Keep them. I've had to do the same thing a time or to growing up with my dad. Besides, I heard it's best to swallow your food whole without all that time wasted on chewing. That's how snakes do it." She glared but started eating again, though much slower. He nodded approvingly, and continued. "Let me guess; you got caught sneaking around with a boy and your mom grounded you." He waited to see what her answer would be. He had heard a slight waver in her voice when she mentioned her mom. He had heard it yesterday too. She was lying about something connected with her mom, and he was hoping to figure out what it was.

"Something like that." Her voice was steady, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "Didn't you have something to ask me?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Not me," he said, letting the matter drop for now. "The spirits had some questions in order to better locate your father."

"Shouldn't the 'spirits' already know everything?" she asked, using air quotes. She was clearly still skeptical. As if her long speech hadn't made that abundantly clear.

"They don't know everything," he elaborated, winging it. "They know where to go to find the answers. Unfortunately, they are a little stumped with you." He grabbed the legal pad and a pen. "They need a little more information in order to find the correct essence trail." He thought that might sound suitably mystical for her.

"Essence trail, right," she said sarcastically. Apparently not. "So what do the 'spirits' need to know?" She pulled a chair in front of his desk and sat down.

He cleared his throat. "Just some basic information. Date of birth. Also where you were born." At her look he continued. "So the spirits know where to start looking."

"November 23, 1997 in Columbia, North Carolina," she said.

Shawn did the math in his head. So that puts her father in Columbia late February or early March. That at least narrows it down. "Did you grow up in Columbia?"

"No, we moved around a lot," she said, sighing. "My mom had to go wherever there was work." She looked at him sadly. "It was always just the two of us."

"You didn't have any other relatives who could help out? Or friends?" he asked, surprised. He remembered his grandfather hanging around when he was a kid, and of course his Uncle Jack, the treasure hunter. Gus had been like a brother to him, so he never really felt like an only child. They spent so much time together growing up the Gusters had become like a second family. Whenever he got into a fight with his dad, he always had someone he could turn to.

"Nope. Mom is an only child and her parents died before I was born," she said, picking at a hole in her jeans. "We moved around too much to make any permanent friends. Since my dad wasn't in the picture, that just left the two of us." She shifted in her seat, avoiding eye contact. "Are there any other questions?" she asked uncomfortably.

"No, that should be all for now." The questioning was obviously making Nikki uneasy and he should have enough now to make some decent headway. He could understand why finding her father was so important to her. She didn't get along well with her mom and had no friends. Her father was her last chance to find someone who might understand her. That is, if Shawn could find him.

His musings were interrupted by his stomach growling, and not a quiet little gurgle growl either. Rather, it sounded like a loud, ferocious beast about to pounce on his next victim. He glanced at the clock. He hadn't eaten before starting his research this morning and was surprised to see it was already after 11.

Nikki giggled, turning back to her cheerful self. "I guess I wasn't the only one to skip breakfast this morning," she said, grinning. She tilted the bag of chips towards him. "Hungry?" she asked impishly.

He drew himself up, trying to look imposing. "A psychic learns to ignore the demands of the flesh when communing with the spirits," he said with dignity. "A little hunger is small price to pay for knowledge." She just rolled her eyes and handed him the bag. He managed to maintain his dignified pose until he looked inside. "It's empty!" he exclaimed.

"It is not!" she protested indignantly.

He looked at her and turned the bag upside down. A scattering of crumbs and a single chip landed on his desk. He raised an eyebrow.

"OK, now it's empty," she said, grinning back at him.

He shook his head, "You must be fun to live with," he muttered, wiping the crumbs off his desk. He ate the single chip, but it left him far from satisfied. "That was the last of the food," he said, whining. Being hungry always made him cranky. "Gus won't buy any new snacks until tomorrow." He pouted at Nikki, blaming her for the food shortage.

Nikki rolled her eyes. "So go out and buy something."

Shawn sighed dramatically. "I guess I don't really have a choice." He stood up and grabbed his phone off the desk. "All right, let's go."

"Go?" she asked in surprise.

"To get breakfast. Though at this point it's more of a brunch or possibly an early lunch." Shawn was walking towards the door, but stopped when he realized Nikki was still just sitting in the chair. "Are you coming?"

Nikki stood up slowly, looking uncomfortable. "You don't have to buy me anything."

"And leave you to starve?" He pointed at the bag of chips. "Judging by how fast you ate those, you're just as hungry as I am."

"I just. . . I can't pay you back or anything," she said helplessly.

"I'll put it on your tab," Shawn said in exasperation. "Once I find your dad, he can pay me back. How about that?" He had never seen someone more reluctant to accept a free meal (except maybe Lassiter). He could understand not wanting to feel like she owed him more than she already did for taking the case, but going hungry because of it was just stupid.

Nikki nodded slowly. "Okay. That could work."

"Good, now let's go," Shawn said. She still looked uncomfortably, but she got up and followed him out of the office.

Nikki took a long sip of her smoothie. "These are really good," she said approvingly. "Not many places can make a good smoothie."

"There's a place across town that makes the best smoothies of all time," Shawn said, sipping his own. "I'll take you there some time."

"OK." She turned to look at him. "Thank you for breakfast."

"You're welcome." He watched her out of the corner of his eye as they walked down the boardwalk. She had been very quiet since they left the Psych office. He had tried to get her to relax and open up a bit, but she kept her responses to one word answers. When they got to the diner, she only wanted to order one small thing off the menu. He had to push her to order more and even then he added an extra couple items 'to share' to make sure she was getting enough.

A good thing too, because she had plowed through every thing that was put in front of her. She didn't eat as fast as she did the chips in the office but with a steady, single-minded intensity that made him believe she hadn't had a full meal in a while. It made her reluctance to let him pay even more strange. Even street kids don't generally turn down handouts of food.

She had seemed more relaxed after the meal and accepted his offer to buy them both smoothies without protest. She sipped hers quietly as they made their way back to Psych.

"So," he said, never liking silence himself, "Do you always turn down free food when you're starving or do you have something against me?"

Nikki blushed. "It's not you. I just don't like to take handouts from people." She shrugged, glancing at him. "Sort of a pride thing. My mom and I managed fine on our own without having to rely on other people."

Shawn nodded. "I can understand that. Doesn't mean it's bad to accept a gift every once in awhile though."

"I guess." She was quiet for a minute, then turned around and started walking backwards in front of him. "So, how's the police case going?" she asked. She sipped her smoothie, grinning at him cheekily.

"What makes you think I have another case?" he asked, hiding his surprise.

"Please," she said, rolling her eyes. "You got a call yesterday while I was in the office. I distinctly heard Gus refer to the caller as 'chief.' Unless you're part of a clan or something, he was likely talking to the chief of police. You left immediately after I did, so the Chief probably called you in. Since you were playing video games when I first met you, she probably called about a new case, not an existing one. This morning you were looking at the UC Santa Barbara website. Unless you decided to go to college late in life," and here she looked doubtfully at him," you were researching the professor who died a few days ago in one of the labs. I read about it in the newspaper." She looked at him smugly. The effect was ruined when he had to grab her arm to keep her from tripping over a couple walking their dog.

She stiffened at the contact and he quickly let her go. "Thanks," she said, turning around to walk normally. When he didn't respond, she looked over at him. "So, was I right?" she asked.

Shawn was amazed. He picked out clues from his surroundings and deduced the truth from them on a daily basis. It was what led to him pretending to be a psychic in the first place, but he had never met anyone else who could do the same thing, besides his father. It was kind of freaky, being on this side of it.

Pondering this, he realized Nikki was still looking at him, waiting for an answer. Considering his options, he decided to go with the truth. Sort of. "I may or may not have been given a case, which could possibly involve a local university, that involves the untimely ending of an individual who might have been working in a field taught at said school, under suspicious like circumstances." He tried to make what he was saying sound as convoluted as possible. He couldn't just admit outright she was correct, after all.

She looked blankly at him for a minute, then frowned in concentration. She muttered under her breath, trying to figure out what he had said. After a minute her expression cleared, and she looked up at him. "Have you looked at persons who may have been present at the event that possibly transpired at the previously mentioned location?" she asked, in an attempt to be as convoluted as him.

Sensing that this way of talking would make the conversation take twice as long and cause headaches, he dropped the act. "I'm meeting up with Gus soon to investigate the crime scene and talk to witnesses," he said.

"Cool!" she said eagerly. "Can I come?" She stopped in front of him and gave him a pleading look.

He sighed. "Shouldn't you be in school?" he asked irritably.

She shook her head. "Nope. Some kind of teacher's conference thing. I have the whole day free. How about it?" She resumed the pleading look, adding a puppy dog whine.

"Come on," he said condescendingly. "I perfected that look. There's no way it's going to work on me." He crossed his arms and stared back at her. After a minute she threw up her hands in surrender.

"Fine, I can't come," she said crossly. She turned serious and looked him right in the eye. "But promise me you'll work on my case too, OK?" she said, poking him in the chest.

"I promise," he said, crossing his heart.

"Good," she said, all smiles again. "Then I will see you tomorrow." She skipped off down the boardwalk.

Shawn continued on to the Psych office alone, thinking about the events of that morning. Nikki Peterson was a unique and strange individual. She acted like nothing was wrong, hiding behind a cheerful front, but he had noticed a few things. She wouldn't accept gifts from strangers, even when she was starving. Any time he touched her or got to close to her, she froze at the contact. Whenever she mentioned her mom, it was with a mix of suppressed anger and sadness. It all added up to a worrying picture. She needed help and the best way for him to do that was to find her dad. With renewed determination, he entered the Psych office.

Gus was sitting inside at his desk. "I was just about to call you," he said, putting down his cell phone. "The police are down at the university, re-investigating the crime scene and looking for witnesses. We should go." He looked at the smoothie in Shawn's hand and frowned. "What have you been doing all morning?"

"That is not important right now," he said, slurping up the last of his smoothie. What Gus didn't know wouldn't hurt him, or Shawn when Gus found out he used his friend's credit card to pay for breakfast. He threw out the empty smoothie container and clapped his hands. "Let's ride!"

I'm going to be posting Monday nights instead of Monday mornings from now on. I usually have more free time after work than before.