Her room didn't have a television, and sitting alone in the room all night wasn't something she thought she'd like to do tonight. The look on Henry's face when he realized who she was bothered her and she didn't want to spend all night thinking about it.
She slipped downstairs at the B&B and found the shared living room, with the television, at around eight that night. The show wasn't too interesting, but it gave her something to watch. Granny and Red were still at the diner, and Christy was the only guest at the moment. As the odd game show continued, Christy found herself worrying about the fact that her secrets were going to come out in this world, just like in the last, and it wouldn't take long at all. No one would believe Henry now, but after the curse broke people would start to wonder who Christy really was and the boy had the answers and an incredible need to be the center of attention. Christy was pretty confident that her story was graphic and detailed in this world, the names Henry called her were hint enough, and she was going to have to face judgment. It was tempting to just start over somewhere else rather than deal with this again, but Annie's power influenced her jump and put her here and that meant there was hope and probably a reason to stick it out. The difference this time was she knew it was coming, and Christy ignored the fact that the TV show ended and another began as she considered that. She knew it was coming, and the curse was breaking, how could she use that?
Forty minutes later the front door opened and Christy looked over to see Ruby giving the room Christy was in a curious look. "Oh, hi." Ruby smiled at her. "Sorry, not used to having someone in the main room. Most people stay a night and keep to the bedroom." Ruby looked tired and her feet were probably hurting with the shoes she was wearing, Christy noticed as the woman slipped into the room and sat down heavily in the chair. "What you watching?"
"I don't know." Christy told her honestly and sighed, before lying. "I'm switching around trying to find something." She'd been lost in thought for a while now as she came up with a strategy for dealing with this world and these people. She did not want to be locked up or run out of town right along with Regina when the curse broke and that was going to take planning on her part to avoid.
Christy gave Red a glance, and watched the woman tug a shoe off and rub her foot with a hint of amusement, because the waitress could pick more sensible shoes and wasn't doing that, in spite of being a waitress for a long time. "Do you have a computer? The library didn't have one."
"The B&B doesn't have one, but I have a laptop." Ruby tugged her other shoe off.
"I need to borrow it." Christy had to find out what this world knew about her, and she had to see how bad it was. "I might even need to borrow a credit card, but I can pay cash. I just don't have any cards."
"Well you sure aren't shy about asking for things." Ruby frowned at her a little.
Christy grinned flirtatiously. "I'll rub your feet for a week when you get back from work if I can have your laptop while you're at work and you use your card to buy me a few things. I worked as a masseuse for a while, I know what I'm doing."
"Now we're playing Let's make a Deal?" Ruby leaned forward in the chair and gave Christy a hint of a smile.
"I can recognize a desperate sole." Christy pointed to Ruby's feet and teased. Ruby did chuckle.
"Granny would kill me if I handed over my credit card, even if, for some crazy reason, I trust you."
"I could just bookmark the stuff I want and you could buy it when you get home." Christy offered. She expected she'd be buying comic books, and there wasn't a need to hide that. Depending on how those were written, she might actually need to try and get someone to read them before the curse broke. If she could explain herself, in explaining a 'fictional character', maybe it would get around the problem of people not wanting to listen when it was real. She just had to pray that Annie's luck power would include at least a few stories where she wasn't portrayed like a complete villain. Based on Henry's response to her, she knew there were some stories where she wasn't the hero, but then she rarely ever got to play the hero.
"Okay, you have a deal 007." Ruby grinned wickedly and put both feet up on the ottoman. "Now let's see those magic fingers."
Christy moved to sit on the floor in front of the ottoman, ignoring her lack of oils, and firmly took one foot into her hands. She'd had a mission where the best way to get close to the target was to pose as a masseuse, and she'd been stationed there for a month. Her knowledge of anatomy was morbidly earned, but she knew how to use it. Ruby groaned as Christy pressed her thumbs into the sole of her left foot. It was a sexy sound and Christy smirked as she decided to try and get that sound out of Ruby often in this next week. It made doing a massage much more interesting.
"I work the early shift tomorrow. We could hit the town tomorrow night, and I'll show you what little there is to do for fun around here." Ruby muttered as Christy switched to her right foot.
"Sounds good." Christy said before giving the foot in her hand a slight smirk as she pushed just right to get that groan out of Ruby again.
"The men in this town are going to drool over you." Ruby said once the massage wasn't as intense.
"But I'm not interested in men." Christy admitted and watched Ruby's face, seeing a wicked smile cross her lips even as the waitress had her head leaning back on the chair and her eyes closed.
"This little town isn't a lesbian paradise. Maybe you'd be happier in a city like New York. I don't even know if there are ladies that swing your way here." Ruby's eyes opened and she studied Christy with a teasing smile, "So tell me, 007, are you a James Bond with the ladies too?"
"I can be." Christy admitted, while taking in the woman in front of her. "I can also last all night, which I think has James Bond beat."
The front door opened again and Christy was rolling Ruby's toes gently in her massage when the older woman stepped into the room. "What is going on in here?" Granny sounded baffled and unsure how to act.
"Granny, Christy is a masseuse. I say we rent that room to her forever." Ruby leaned back in the chair, completely unashamed looking, in spite of the odd look on Granny's face.
"Oh, well then." The woman looked a little awkward. "You open in the morning Ruby, you asked for that shift, so you might want to get to bed."
Ruby gave a sexy groan and pulled her foot away from Christy. "I'll drop the computer off in the morning." Ruby told her with a smile and then wandered out of the room with her shoes in her hand, leaving Christy on the floor looking up at Granny.
"Masseuse?" The older woman asked skeptically.
"One of the many jobs I've held." Christy told her while standing, using the ottoman that she'd been sitting in front of to help her up slowly.
"Okay then." Granny watched Christy's back as Christy made her way upstairs, but she didn't say anything about touching her granddaughter, so that was something.
….
The next morning, there was a knock on her door and Christy shifted some pajamas on before opening it. The laptop was handed to her with a wink and Ruby continued down the hall. "I'm late. Have fun 007."
"You too Red. See you for breakfast in a few." Christy smiled when that only got a backward wave, that proved to her Ruby was running really late. She pulled the laptop into her room to get started. She'd looked like she was sleeping so she'd need to kill at least a half hour if she didn't want questions about how quickly she got ready, maybe even an hour. Still, other than meals, Christy was going to be in her room for the day doing research on herself for the first time.
…
Henry POV
Henry's eyes burned a little as he blinked, so he blinked a few more times, but he didn't look away from the computer screen. He'd heard about Christy Darkholme in his comics, and he'd seen the covers of a few comics he wasn't allowed to buy, the adult kind, with her on them as well. Last night he'd looked through all his comics for what he could of her, but it wasn't like his 'book'. It just had bits and pieces about her. He knew she was a spy and she'd killed people. He knew she worked with the villain Mystique. He even had a comic where she'd gone behind the xmen's back and assassinated someone they were trying to save, even though the guy was a jerk. She was so good she hadn't been caught. He considered her a traitor, but reading the bits and pieces about her on the internet made him wonder. Apparently she was told to do those things by the Professor, he told her to be a bad guy. It didn't make sense, because the Professor was a good guy, he was supposed to be, but he was in charge of the bad guys as well?
Henry found a website that listed all the comics that Christy 'Darkholme' featured in. It turned out that she wasn't Mystique's sister, which he'd assumed she was. Darkholme wasn't even her real last name. She wasn't even from the same world as the Xmen, she was from somewhere that was destroyed. He'd never really looked into her character that much before, she was a minor character in the comics he read. He didn't get to read the Xmen's full series, just the team up comics that the convenience store had.
A search for comics about 'Demise' came up with a good size list but Henry felt his heart speed up when he found the listing on Ebay. It was a bundle, even called the "Demise is a sexy goddess" bundle. He looked at the list of comics that were a part of it and it had most of the list he'd seen earlier, even the Origins series about her. The time remaining for bidding had his heart sinking.
"Oh no." He had minutes left to bid. He didn't have an account with ebay or a credit card but he knew where his mother kept her card and her passwords.
He quickly and quietly ran down the stairs to try and see if he could sneak into her home office to get both the card and password, and grimaced when he saw the door closed.
"You are just telling me this now!" Her voice was angry and cold and Henry slowly moved a little closer to listen in. "A stranger in our town, MY town, and you waited two days to tell me? I thought you were a newsman Sydney, surely a stranger is news."
"Well, with the Sherriff's death I had to run the memorial article about him, and she's been pretty quiet. I didn't think…" The deeper masculine voice was exactly the one Henry expected to hear.
"No you didn't think, did you Sydney? You did not think!" Henry grimaced at the anger in her voice, glad that it was Sydney that spilled about Christy first, because he didn't want to imagine the scolding he'd have gotten for talking to Christy now. "So what have you learned about her?"
"Her name is Christy Darkholme." Sydney sounded scared. "And I'm researching her now. She's staying at Granny's B&B."
"So nothing, you know nothing."
"I overheard Granny saying that she plans to move here permanently."
The room became silent and Henry moved a little closer to the door to try and listen harder.
"Move here. Another outsider moving here." Henry imagined the Evil Queen was pretty stunned that her curse wasn't keeping Emma or Christy out, but while Emma had driven across the town line, Christy just appeared in the middle of the town with her powers. "Sydney, I want you to find out everything you can about her, don't even bother sleeping until you can give me something." The door opened suddenly, and Henry jerked back as Sydney rushed out to do his mother's bidding.
"Henry, is your homework done?" She tried to trick him by calming down quickly, but he knew better.
"Yeah, done." He looked at the clock on the wall and let out a disappointed breath. He'd missed the deadline to bid.
Once he went back up to turn off the computer for now, as he wasn't allowed to use it very much, he saw that wolfrider had the winning bid and that he or she had gotten it for cheap. He growled in frustration quietly before grabbing his comics to read again. He'd have to wait and try again later for some comics, because his mother was not leaving her office. She was on the phone trying to find out anything about Christy and she was never going to find anything if Henry was right.
He almost wondered if he should warn Christy that Sydney was looking into her, but why warn a bad guy? The articles about Christy online were split, people couldn't even agree on if she was a bad guy or not, but the things they said she did were horrible, things that the bad guys in his fairy tales did. She ate people like the witch in the ginger bread house, she killed people, she lied and stole, but then she'd saved people, she'd risked her life, and she always tried to protect the people she cared about. She was capable of love, everyone agreed on that one, and one article said something about selling her body for the Professor and while he didn't understand what that meant it was clear it wasn't a good thing. If she wasn't a bad guy, she'd had it rough and that wasn't right. He needed those comics to know what she was, because the adults writing about her couldn't agree. He'd have to try again tomorrow, or even late tonight after his mother went to bed.
"Henry?" He looked up to see his mother looking into his room with a little disgust at the way comics were all over the bed. "I was thinking we could go out to eat tonight. It's apple pie night at Granny's." She smiled at him as if it was a treat, but he knew that the Evil Queen was trying to get a glimpse of Christy and with Christy staying at the B&B she'd be having dinner at the diner as well.
Still, now with some of this new information he'd learned about her, he wanted to get another look at Christy himself. She'd been right, she was a 'gray hat' and he didn't know if that made her trustworthy or worse than evil. Some of the comments online made him a little hopeful that she wasn't evil and that perhaps she could still be an ally in Operation Cobra. Emma was stuck, she wasn't even trying to find a way to break the curse yet, but Henry couldn't wait to see her and tell her that someone in town knew as well now. Maybe Emma could interrogate Christy and find out how to break the curse from her. Christy knew about the curse, she got passed it to end up in town. He needed to know what she knew. "Sure. Sounds good." He gave a weak smile back and ignored the slightly surprised look on the Evil Queen's face, before she nodded.
"Alright, get cleaned up and put on your shoes and we can leave."
…..
Christy pov
Christy slipped into the diner with Red for a late dinner before heading out for a night of dancing with Red and her friends, who Christy hadn't learned the names of yet. Apparently it was the welcoming committee taking her out and Christy expected a bit of an interrogation.
"Comics, really?" Red teased her again. "I always thought as soon as I moved to a new city the first thing I'd need to buy is comics about some sexy spy character."
"Hey, I'm not dating anyone yet. I need something to do with my nights." Christy joked a little and wiggled her eyebrows at the waitress. It was a little creepy, but Red had no idea who those comics were really about yet, she just knew that half of them were considered too adult for kids.
"Sad, truly sad." Red shook her head and led them to a booth that was opened in the busy diner. "What you want? I'll put the order in."
"It's your night off." That didn't get the waitress sitting down so Christy sighed and gave Ruby her order and then relaxed and glanced around as Ruby grabbed a ticket from behind the counter and wrote it down for the chef.
Because she was looking around she saw the brunette in very sharp looking clothes stand up and tell the little boy that Christy recognized to finish his dessert before heading toward the booth with Christy in it. This had to be the Mayor, Christy thought with a glance toward the counter to see Ruby was still giving directions to the cook. "I don't believe we've met." A deep and surfacely friendly sounding voice spoke and Christy looked back up to see Regina standing at the end of her table. "I'm the mayor around here, Regina Mills." A hand was held out for her, so Christy took it and shook it politely.
"Christy Darkholme." Christy gave the mayor a rueful smile. "I don't have a job to tell you about just yet."
"Just yet, so you're planning on finding work here?" There was a hint of fishing in those words and Christy was pretty sure the mayor had heard Christy planned to stay.
"I'm moving in." Christy stared into brown eyes. "This town seems just like what I need."
"It is a great town, I'm very proud of it, but sadly with the economy the way it has been the job market here isn't what I would like." The mayor spoke slowly, and Christy pretended not to get the message behind those words. "I hope you're prepared for a lengthy job search."
"Oh, I'm resourceful. I can make what I have stretch long enough to make my own niche here." Christy gave a fake looking smile to the mayor.
"What kind of work do you do Ms. Darkholme?"
"Oh, she's an amazing masseuse." Red spoke up with a hint of a smile as she brought their plates to the table. "Madame Mayor." She nodded to the woman in the way and slipped the plates onto the table and slide into her own seat easily. "Right now I'm her only customer."
"Masseuse?" There was a hint of a smirk on the mayor's lips and Christy could see she was being underestimated. "Well, good luck finding work in that Ms. Darkholme." Regina nodded to Red, "Ms. Lucas.", before she left.
"Wow, that was almost as tense as her conversations with Emma."
"So you know masseuse is only one of my potential careers here, right?"
"Yet you're so talented at it I don't want to see you waste that. You could make money doing that." Red smirked. "And meet girls, lots of girls."
"Giving 'happy endings' in a massage is illegal my dear, fun, but very illegal." Christy grinned wickedly when Red's jaw dropped.
"Oh my god, have you done that?"
"Not to paying customers, but I did have a girlfriend visit my work a time or two." Christy remembered Mystique coming in to find out her progress on a case and Christy let that massage go a bit further than normal.
"Oh my," Red grinned widely and her face was a hint red. "What's part of a 'happy ending'?"
"What's a lesbian?" Henry asked as they were getting close to the door and Christy looked up to see Regina looked a little flustered, as she glared at some man sitting in the booth behind Red. It was obvious he'd said the word where the kid could overhear.
Regina's eyes moved to catch Christy looking at her and Christy mouthed 'sorry'. "Well apparently that's what Ms. Darkholme is dear. Let's talk about this later."
"With that out and about I might not be able to make that masseuse career you think I have go." Christy said with a sigh and took a drink from her beer.
"Don't be so sure, the novelty of it in this town might make you very busy." Ruby teased. "In fact, what does it cost to book you for tomorrow after work?"
"I'm already rubbing your feet tomorrow."
"But I've never had a full, proper massage." Ruby's expression was teasing, but Christy got the impression that the waitress was interested in the novelty of it.
"Dollar a minute." Christy made that rate up on the spot. She had two women booked before they left the diner, Ruby and the waitress running the tables that night. Christy was pretty sure that girl was Cinderella. It was a little stunning how that money fell into her lap and Christy decided to blame both Red and Annie's powers for it. Apparently Christy was going to be a masseuse here.
"Are you sure Granny won't be upset with my running a business out of my bedroom?" Christy asked with a hint of a smirk.
"As long as you don't word it that way when you tell her." Ruby chuckled as she held the door open to her car for Christy.
"I guess I'll see if there is a massage table on sale around here somewhere." Christy sighed and considered that she wasn't going to make enough money with this job, but considering the source of it, perhaps she would. Actually, if she could just line up three hours a day of clients, for four or five days, she'd survive pretty well. The problem is the size of the clientele she'd need for that, because people didn't go daily for massages.
She was actually going to run a business out of her bedroom. Christy chuckled at that thought. She'd have to buy some clothes to put in the closet, in case anyone got nosy and she didn't catch them. The room was large enough, and if she found a massage table it would easily fit into the room. She wouldn't have to do this on the bed she slept in, which was good, because the message this was sending clients was already a bit scandalous, since there was a bed in the room. She'd have to be very clear what the limits of a massage were, unless she was tempted to go beyond them with someone.
One very good part of this new job was that she was going to be the harmless, helpful, woman that made people feel good. It would be harder for the people of this town to turn on her if she'd been that woman before the curse broke. The woman whose shoulder they could cry on, the woman that helped them with their lives, the one they go do for advice, it all could grow out of this and Christy could build her own safety with this new cover. Physical and emotional therapist; she found her job, and the lack of job listings and the control the mayor and Mr. Gold had over that, wouldn't interfere with going into a business like this for herself.
…
"So you're the one that the Mayor is bugging me about." The blonde woman at the table said with a smile as Christy sat down.
"Right, 007 this is Emma, she's the Deputy." Red frowned just a little, but then her eyes moved to the other woman at the table, "And this is Mary Margaret."
"007?" Mary Margaret's eyebrow rose and Christy held a hand out.
"Ruby's idea of a nickname. Christy Darkholme." She noticed that Emma sat up a little straighter when Christy said that. It took her training not to grimace when Christy suspected that Emma's ability to tell when someone was lying might actually be a superpower, like she claimed, Emma's own brand of magic. If it were just experience, Christy was a good enough spy to say that name and not have it set off alarms in Emma's head. Christy would have to be careful what she said from here out. "The name is actually pronounced Darkhome, but I like it my way better, and people spell it right when I say it that way. It sounds like a house without electricity otherwise." Christy grinned as she dodged that moment of doubt from Emma.
"Darkholme like Mystique from that Xmen First Class movie?" Emma teased and Christy felt a bit startled for a moment, she didn't know the movie, but she knew the woman.
"Exactly." Christy nodded. Mystique had given Christy that name to help Christy protect her real identity. It was the fake identity that Christy used most often. Christy took a moment to study Emma while the blonde took a deep drink from her glass and she could tell the soon to be Sheriff wasn't sleeping well.
"I didn't know you watched superhero movies Emma." Mary Margaret teased.
"I don't, a mark I was following went into that movie and I had to sit through it. Wasn't too bad, but I was mostly watching him." Emma replied.
"Aw, Henry will be disappointed. He loves his comics as much as he loves his fairy tales." Mary Margaret, his teacher, joked, but Christy did not find that funny or good news at all.
Ruby's chuckled. "Well, 007 here loves comics too. Maybe they can bond over it."
"I don't think so." Christy muttered and took the drink being offered her. "So this is the nightspot here?" She glanced around to see the club wasn't too bad, compared to clubs she'd seen around the world. "Not too bad."
"Yeah, for here." Ruby grumbled a little.
"Actually it's not too bad for anywhere." Emma replied and Christy nodded. "Where are you from?" Emma focused on her again.
"I was a wanderer. My job was a lot of traveling and I stayed in hotels all over the world. I didn't have a home address." Her answer had Mary Margaret leaning in with a small smile.
"Where have you been?" The schoolteacher asked.
"Ugh, where haven't I been?" Christy sighed and glanced up as she made a mental list to share. "I've been to every country in Europe, half of the countries in South America, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt and South Africa." Crimes against mutants were worldwide, so the fact she had such a list was actually a sad thing. She'd been all over that world fighting.
"Oh my god." Ruby spoke loudly and slowly, her eyes wide as she stared at Christy.
Christy smirked at the obviously impressed look, knowing that Red wished she was a traveler. "I told you I traveled a lot for my work. I spent ten years of my life on the move."
"What did you do for a living? I move around a lot, but nothing like that." Emma asked.
"Classified." Christy teased, but no lie would work so she was sticking with that.
"Oh my god, have you seen Paris?" Ruby asked a little breathlessly.
"Yes, it's nice there, but I think the ruins of Italy were more beautiful." Christy remembered seeing those old ruins and wondering if they still existed in her world. They might have survived the asteroid, since it appeared to have landed in the United States. "Paris was in the middle of a rainy period when I was there."
Her words turned the interrogation into a direction she could handle. Christy spent an hour talking about the travels she'd taken, while never talking about the work she did to travel around like that.
"So what are you planning to do here?" Emma asked, sounding a bit puzzled at Christy picking this place to live.
"Well, apparently I'm starting to do work as a masseuse tomorrow." Christy told them. "I did that for a while, and Red here assures me I can make my fortune in it."
"Red?"
"Little Red Riding Hood, isn't that cute?" Ruby explained. "She calls me Red." Ruby moved to get them another round of drinks, her waitress background showing up in how often she decided she was the one that needed to get the refills.
"Met Henry did you?" Mary Margaret nibbled on her lips, while Emma just grimaced.
"We're keeping that on the down low. I don't want trouble with the mayor. That boy is a stalker." Christy sighed and felt a little bad doing this to the little kid, but she was doing it anyhow. "He LOVES strangers, and I'm glad he lives here, because he would have been kidnapped in a city with that attitude."
"Oh god. Did he tell you who he thought you were in the book?"
"Why no Snow White, he didn't get to that." Christy teased the teacher, while also lying blatantly. Mary Margaret knew who Henry thought she was, but had no idea she really was Snow White.
"I'm going to go to the bathroom before Ruby gets back with those drinks." Mary Margaret blushed and got up to help Red, who was flirting a lot with the bartender.
"Who did he say you were?" Emma spoke more softly, and scooted into Red's open chair to ask. It was clear proof to Christy that Emma's powers worked on her, but Christy was just going to be more careful and she could make that work for her as well.
"I'm the Queen of Death." Christy admitted quietly, because he'd undoubtedly tell Emma at some point soon. "And I wasn't too fond of the titles he says I have."
"I'm so sorry." Emma looked like a child herself in that moment, when she scrunched up her face in regret. "He's got an active imagination and he's in therapy. Dr Hopper says we shouldn't squash his imagination as he works through this."
"It's fine." Christy sighed. "I understand." And she did, more than Emma did. "Still, I think he might stop following me around now. You didn't see his face once he 'realized' who I was."
"I don't know how he came up with that." A warm hand rested over the hand Christy had on the table.
"I share a name with the character." And every word was true, and yet Christy was working to undermine the boy once he started talking. Poor kid was playing spies against a professional. "She's actually one of my favorite comic characters, so I know exactly who he thinks I am."
"A comic book?" Emma's eyes widened. "But everyone else is a fairy tale character."
"Well, I am from out of town." Christy rolled her eyes and gave Emma a weak smile. Red danced to the table and set the glasses down.
The rest of the night was fun, they joked and drank, and Christy pretended that the alcohol affected her. Before they left Mary Margaret was talked into making a massage appointment by a very forceful salesperson, Red. Emma was still holding out though.
Right before bed Christy jotted down the appointment times she had with people and made plans to shop for a massage table, oils, and an appointment calendar in the morning. It was late and as she pulled the sheets back on the bed she found herself laughing just a little. "I'm going to be massaging two princesses and Red Riding Hood. Man, I wish I could tell Mystique about this one." She could just imagine the teasing her mentor, her best friend, would have about this cover. Especially since Snow White and Red were way hotter than they seemed from Disney, way hotter.
Christy's smile faded as she considered the differences from the show, and how both Red and Snow were much meeker here, more unsure of themselves. It kind of reminded her of herself before the world fell apart. It was a sad reminder to Christy that everyone was a result of their experiences, and how no matter how much time she put into getting to know these people, she'd end up having to redo it all after the curse broke.
….
Christy woke up relatively early, in spite of the late night. She rolled out of bed and picked up the hotel stationary to start working on her list for today. She had shopping to do, both for her new business and for the room so it looked like she actually owned somethings. Red would probably take a look in her closet, and there needed to be some clothes in there.
Once the list was made she pulled the cash box that came through the portal with her out from under the bed to take a look at it and see if she could use it for her own business. If she didn't destroy the lock when she broke it opened it would still work. The silver metal box was the size of a large shoe box and Christy laid it on the bed beside her while she carefully inspected the lock. It looked good. She'd need to make a key to fit it, or at least pretend fit it.
Counting out money she placed just enough cash in the box to make change, and she pulled out the papers that had been left it in. Invoices for credit card purchases and a tally sheet with the guys inventory were stuffed in the lid, so she tossed those into the garbage. She then pulled the cash tray up and took a look at the black bank bag underneath it. When she pulled it out from the box she could feel something slide around inside it. Thinking she might have something useful Christy unzipped the bag and frowned as she pulled a small stack of DVD's out of the bag, along with a few thumb drives labeled "Once".
There were 6 dvd's without any case in her hand and Christy imagined that some packaging was damaged and the booth owner just shoved the dvd's in here for safe keeping. She flipped the stack over and her eyes widened in shock. "Oh my god, Annie, what have you done?" Staring back at her from her hand was the first DVD in a season of Once Upon a Time.
Christy put them back in the black bag and did the most secure thing she could think of with them. She created a pocket in her body and slipped them inside her chest, because she couldn't risk these getting out for any reason. Something new was added to her list of things to do today and Christy was going to have to see if she could make time to see some of these today on Red's laptop. She couldn't watch them in the TV room where anyone could walk in on her, but this was the second season and Christy hadn't seen any of that. There would have to be something useful to know in there, or the sheer craziness of the luck wouldn't have happened. Annie's powers thought she needed this information. If she still had a real heart it would have been pounding right next to the DVD bag she'd placed in her chest.
Christy shifted clothes on quickly at that point, because she had little time to waste if she wanted to see some of these shows before her appointment with Red that afternoon. Her to do list was already very large, and her deal with Red for the laptop was only for this week. Christy still had to create a fake identity, something she wasn't that good at and she could only do a basic identity, nothing that would stand up to much scrutiny. That would take a few days with the laptop all by itself.
She walked into the diner just five minutes after deciding she needed to rush her day along. Ruby was wearing sunglasses in the morning and Christy chuckled when she saw that. "Hangover bothering you?"
"How are you fine? That's just not fair." Ruby sighed heavily and plopped the menu down on the table in front of Christy.
"I never get hangovers." Christy rubbed it in, and laughed at the disgusted look she received right before Red walked away, as if in protest. She came back eventually and Christy put in her breakfast order.
Christy ignored the rest of the newspaper for now and focused on the help wanted pages and the for sale pages. No job was standing out, but Christy almost chuckled out loud to see a massage table and massage chair set being sold. Annie's powers were stronger than Christy would have expected by a transfer, she hadn't even expected they'd have transferred at all if it weren't that Annie's power was luck. "Ruby?" She asked when the waitress stopped writing down the order of the people in the booth beside her. "Can I borrow your car to pick up something?"
"My car now?" Ruby moved to stand in front of her table and shook her head in what was apparently supposed to be disbelief. "My computer, my car, what next?"
"Your body?" Christy smirked evilly at the waitress. "But seriously, I see a massage table on sale and you want me to have it. I know you do. You're lined up for a massage at 4 and I want to make sure it's in good working order and all cleaned up for you."
"Oh, so this is for me." Ruby rolled her eyes. "How could I say no now?"
"I know." Christy made her eyes really wide, like a child and nodded up and down slowly. "You have to give me your car now. You just gotta."
"Here." Ruby tugged her keys out from her pocket. "You better not scratch it."
"I won't." Christy took the keys with a real smile and tucked them into her own pocket. "I'm getting some oils and candles. Do you like any specific scents?"
"Lavender." Ruby replied before wandering off to drop her orders off with the kitchen.
Christy's smile faded a little as she stared at the ad again. She didn't need to call, because it was a company ad. She was going to Mr. Gold's Pawn Shop. He apparently used these ads to drum up customers, and Christy was a little apprehensive about introducing herself to him right now.
At least without magic, he couldn't reach into her chest and take anything out of it.