A/N: Ok, next ones up, and it's looooong. took up almost 3 pages single spaced! Unfortunately still no Doctor in this one, but i PROMISE he'll be in the next one. Read, enjoy, REVIEW! Let me know how i'm doing!

The last hour of her shift, Lia couldn't help but watch the clock. Between every order she took, every meal she delivered and every counter she cleaned, she looked up at the clock, silently counting down the minutes until she was free. When the clock finally read 6 PM, Lia threw off her apron and practically ran to the back to collect her stuff.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you really didn't want to be here." said Tiff sarcastically as she walked in to get her own things.

"No, it's just that it's Saturday, and if I hurry, I might be able to catch the last hour of the flea market up on Shepard." Lia said excitedly. It had been her grandmother who had gotten her into going to the market every week. You never knew what you could find there, and you could usually get it cheap. Even after her grandmother had died some years back, Lia continued to go in the hopes that she might find something interesting.

"Yeah yeah, go an play with your old knickknacks and junk." Tiff waved her off. "Hey, you coming to the bonfire on Tuesday?"

"Maybe," said Lia, halfway out the door with her helmet. "Uh, I'll call you or something, um later." she waved as she ran out the door.

Lia threw her bag over her shoulder and kick started the motorcycle to life. She sped off around the corner to the other side of town. The flea market was held in an old barn. Most people came earlier in the day, so by the time Lia pulled up outside it, there were only a few cars parked along the road. She tucked her helmet under her arm and walked in, inhaling the warm scent of the old wood.

She began to perusing the stalls and tables that had antiques and books and items of varying ages and conditions. There were trinkets and doodads, old toys and dolls (which quite frankly gave her the creeps sometimes), and a whole other array of things.

Lia looked up from a table and sighed; most of the good stuff had already been bought and sold earlier that day. She strolled over to one of the last tables in the barn, where an old man was starting to crate up a bunch of old books.

"Hey Smitty." she called as she came over to lean against the old folding table from which Smitty displayed his books. "Got anything good for me this week?"

Smitty was an old friend of her grandmother's. He traveled the state buying and selling books, but he always came back here to sell at the market. Lia suspected it was because she was one of his best customers.

"Well good evening, Miss Carter!" he exclaimed as he turned around to face her, wiping his hands on his overalls. "Lets see," he said examining the piles of books surrounding him. "Sold most of the newer things today. Managed to get $18 for an old Stephen King novel!" he grinned. "Well, here's something you might enjoy." he said and heaved a small crate of leather bound tomes onto the table. "Classics, a whole collection of em. Great condition too."

"What ones are in there?" Lia asked trying to get a better look at the books through the wooden sides of the box.

"Oh mostly a bunch of adventure stories. You know, Treasure Island, War of the Worlds, uh Sherlock Holmes, that kind of thing." Smitty said. "Got um off some guy up in Norfolk, who got um off a guy in New York who said they came straight from England!"

A man called out announcing that the flea market would be closing in five minutes, and that all customers were to finish with their shopping and head towards the exit.

"How 'bout I cut you a deal, $40 for the whole set?"

"25." Lia bartered.

"35."

"30."

"Sold." Smitty said with a grin, slapping his hand against the crate.

Lia gave him the money and carried the crate out to her bike. Using some rope Smitty had given her, she secured the crate onto the back of her bike and headed off for home. Getting there took longer then usual, given that she actually obeyed the speed limit because of her extra cargo, and the sun was already setting by the time she pulled into the yard and walked her motorcycle back into the shed.

She carried the crate of books on her hip and used her shoulder to open the screen door to the house. She was greeted by the usual whine of her stepmother.

"Well it's about time you got home! Get the hell back out there and put out those damn horses, they ain't gonna do it themselves!" Deb said from the couch where she had probably been sitting for most of the day watching her soaps.

"Yes, cause it'd be a shame if you had to get off your butt and actually do something." muttered Lia.

"What'd you say?" spat Deb.

"Nothing, I'm going." she sighed and set her books on the kitchen table and headed back outside.

She let the horses out and cleaned out the worst of their stalls with a pitchfork. When she was done, she washed up in the sink in the tack room and went to go watch the horses in the pasture. She leaned up against the wooden fence and rested her head on her hands. Her mind began to drift and it wasn't long until she began to think about the conversation she'd been having earlier with Tiff. No way aliens were abduction people from cornfields, she thought. It was just too ridiculous. It only happened in movies and stuff, not in a small place like here. What would they even do with the people anyways, eat them? She highly doubted it. She watched the horses running around and grazing, as the sun finally set over the horizon. It was actually quite beautiful, that is until Deb called her in for dinner.

"Come get this stupid box off ma clean table, dinner's ready." she hollered out the door.

With a another sigh Lia returned to the house. She grabbed her box of books and carried them up to her room. She dropped them on her bed, where she would look at them later.

She was just walking down the stairs when her father came in the front door.

"Hey dad."

"Hey." he said in return. He wasn't really a man of many words.

They walked into the kitchen where Deb was just setting dinner on the table, which was one of the few things she actually did do all day.

"Welcome home babe." Deb said as she kissed Lia's father on the cheek.

They all sat down and ate.

"So what piece of junk did you buy this time?" Deb asked Lia.

"It's not junk, they're books."

"Books? Whata'ya need books for?" Deb said sounding almost disgusted. "No one actually reads books anymore. It's all TV and those new home computer things now." she turned to her husband. "By the way we should get one a those."

He simply grunted in reply.

"Well I read." countered Lia.

"Yeah and a fat lot of good it's doing you. Got your head in the clouds all day when you should be working, and then you just waist all your money on more books. You should be saving it so you can stop freeloading off of us."

Lia just sat quietly and ate her dinner, it wasn't the first time she'd heard this rant. When Deb had finished complaining, there was an almost awkward silence at the table.

"So," said Lia to her dad, attempting to break the silence. "D'you hear. Another person disappeared last night."

"Yeah Marge said she heard somethin about that today." chimed in Deb. "Her son's on the force. Heard it was Jimmy Wallace."

"Yeah, Tiff thinks it's aliens." Lia scoffed.

"Well that's just stupid. Somethings wrong with that girl. Probably from smokin all that weed and stuff."

"It's probably just...people messing around." said Lia, picking at her plate.

"Well until this is sorted out," her father finally spoke. "I want you to stay outta any fields after sunset."

"Don't know why they'd even want to take her." laughed Deb.

"Can I be excused?" Interrupted Lia, who had finally gotten sick of Deb's backhanded comments.

Her dad nodded. "Be sure to bring the horses back in." he said.

Lia did as she was told and went back out to the pastures, not caring if the door slammed behind her on her way out. She stomped over to the gate and blew a sharp whistle on her fingers, calling the horses over. One by one she led them back into the barn. Eventually there was only one horse left, a particularly stubborn gelding named Jake, who had wondered off deeper into the range.

"Oh, come on, Jake." Lia groaned as she walked over to him, but the closer she got, the further away he moved. "Fine, do it the hard way then." she said, and grabbed a lasso from the barn.

She walked after him deeper and deeper into the field, until the lights of the house were merely tiny dots in the distance. Finally she got the rope around his neck. He protested with a whinny, and she began to walk him back to the barn when suddenly everything seemed to get brighter. Lia looked over her shoulder to see the forest in the distance glowing with an eerie green light. She watched it for about thirty seconds when suddenly the light just stopped.

Lia blinked a few times, trying to process what ever it was that she just witnessed, but decided to just let it go. Shaking her head, she continued to walk Jake back to the barn.

She walked back in the house and kicked off her scuffed up Doc Martins next to the door. Deb was in the living room watching TV, blabbing about some actor to her friend on the phone, and her dad was in his office doing paperwork. She quietly walked upstairs to her bedroom and flopped down on the bed with a huff. Her foot knocked against the wood crate holding her books.

She sat up. "Might as well see what the heck I bought." she said to herself.

She opened the lid on the crate and looked at the spines of the books. There were about nine hard cover books, each a different color, and all pretty thick. She began to grab books at random from the box; she glanced at the covers and flipped through the pages, trying to find one that piqued her interest. She'd read them all eventually. Finally she picked up one of the last books in the crate, a blue one that had gold leafing on the spine. She looked at the cover, which read "A Wrinkle in Time", and started to flip through it. Half way through the book though, she stopped.

Someone, probably the previous owner, had taken the back half of the book and glued all the pages together. In the center of what would have been the start of the sixth chapter, was carved a square hole, which went all the way to the back cover of the book. In the hole was a key, which had been put on a chain so it could be worn as a necklace. Lia set the book down and picked up the key to examine it. It was definitely old, but it looked just like the house key that she had on her keyring. It was turning brown with age, and it looked like it had been hastily and forcibly shoved in a lock repeatedly going by some of the scratches on it. Lia took the key and flipped it over. Carved on the back were the letters 'SJS', probably the initials of the previous owner of the books. Lia looked at the key and then back at the book. Whoever owned the key must have forgotten about it when they got rid of the books. She figured if they hid it in the book it must have been important or something. She should probably try and find the owner, but she didn't think her chances were very good; the books had come all the way from England after all, and by now the owner had probably already found a replacement.

Not knowing what else to do with it, Lia took the key's chain and put it over her head, so that the key was hanging just about her chest. She picked it up to glance at it one more time and then let it drop. She grabbed the Sherlock Holmes book from the pile and stacked the rest of them back in the crate, which she put on the floor by the foot of her bed.

She spent the rest of the night reading, occasionally catching herself fiddling with the key around her neck. She fell asleep thinking about who the previous owner of the key might have been, and what it might have unlocked.

A/N: Well, what'd ya think? like the Sarah Jane reference? that part was probably one of the things that sparked this fic. i was thinking about how the doctor has so many companions, one of them must have lost their Tardis key or something, so what would happen to that key? well you'll find out in the next chapter. For the record, i'm not even sure if Sarah Jane even had a key, unfortunately i only watch New Who, so don't go all angry super fans on me ok? i've always wanted to take a book and carve it out like that, but i'm too much of a bookworm to actually go through with it, plus i'm not even sure what i'd put in it once i did. the wrinkle in time think was just funny cause it has the word time in the title, and i made ti blue, so it's kida like a Tardis book i guess. ok i'll shut up now, mom's kicking me off the computer anyways. Next chapter should be up in the next couple of days or so, so check in often! Now go REVIEEEEEEEEW!