Author's Note: Just a brief one. Sorry for the slow update, I'm trying to finish the final chapter of Loyal Traitor so I can focus on this more. Also, I will have another story posted up in a week. I have several ideas posted on my profile, so for those of you who asked what was coming, that's what's coming.

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Ordinary

Chapter Two: Limbo

The room she sat in was silent. Miroku was busy making some calls, trying to postpone times for her viewings until later dates. She was due for another signing at a large bookstore tomorrow and the day after she was supposed to be on the Late Night Show discussing her books. On the final day, she was supposed to be doing some research with her publishers to talk about future books and a possible movie translation for one of her books.

Then it was time for her to go home.

Unless the cops got suspicious.

They shouldn't, of course, Kagome told herself. There was absolutely nothing physical that connected her to the murder in the room below her. Nothing physical.

But a shit load of mental.

So there Kagome sat on the little chair in her hotel room, waiting for something to happen –whether it was the police checking to see if she heard anything or her new imaginary friend.

And what about that dream? She was without a doubt that in her mind that night was the killer. He was taunting her with the song, taunting her with her life. He told her that she was going to die. Eventually, as he phrased it. And that everyone was going to die –Inuyasha and Miroku. He was the killer, and not only had she touched his mind, but he touched hers. She was positive that the voice was male. So the person who murdered Sasara was male.

But what gender was her imaginary friend? When they spoke the first time, it was like the voice was far away, so that it echoed. Kagome couldn't figure out if it was a man or a woman trapped in her head, and she wondered if that information would help her anyways. Even when she knew the gender of her first imaginary friend was female, she didn't learn that it was Kikyo until she was almost dead.

A knocking on her door stirred Kagome from her thoughts, and slowly she made her way over. She could hear Miroku and Inuyasha's steps behind her.

"Who is it?" Kagome called, staring into the peephole and seeing a middle-aged man with light hair and a permanent frown.

"Officer Maiho from the BPD." His badge could be seen on his shirt.

Kagome opened the door. "Of course, come in."

Officer Maiho stared at her with sharp blue eyes before looking at Inuyasha and Miroku. He didn't come in, but asked her a question instead.

"This room is only registered for having one guest, not three." His tone was questioning.

"We have a joint bedroom," Miroku explained, making his way up towards Kagome and slightly shielding her. He continued by lying, "This gentleman over here is her fiancé."

Officer Maiho stared at Kagome's left hand. "You're not wearing a ring."

Kagome knew that going door to door in a very large hotel was probably not the best or most fun job there was. However, Kagome knew she wasn't a suspect and therefore, his suspicious statements were offensive. "My ring is a car," she snapped. "The Maserati. I lose rings within days so he bought me something I couldn't lose. So do you have any questions for me regarding the murder? Because if not, I would rather attend to what I was doing before I was interrupted."

"How did you know it was a murder?" Officer Maiho snapped back.

Kagome rolled her eyes. "Oh give me a break. If whoever it was down there had died from natural causes, I'm sure you wouldn't be here right now. As you know, I'm Kagome Higurashi, and I write murder mysteries for a living. With full co-operation from the TPD –Trite Police Department– they have discussed with me protocol for how my stories would work. I'm no fool Officer Maiho, and I find your tone extremely offensive."

For a long moment, Officer Maiho just stood there and watched her. He referred back to his notes and then returned to looking at her. "Alright," he said, his tone slightly gruff but less interrogating. "Would you allow me to start this again?"

Kagome looked at Inuyasha, who nodded. He would know how much trouble it would cause if she didn't co-operate. "Yes. Question away."

"Where were you last night at around midnight?"

"Here in my room," Kagome said, and then she looked at Miroku. "Since our room is joined, Miroku was talking with me."

"So you were awake?"

"Yes."

"Did you hear anything out of the ordinary? A cry, a noise, banging…anything like that?"

Both Kagome and Miroku shook their heads. "We didn't have a clue about anything until we left earlier this morning and passed through the lobby."

That was a lie, but it was necessary. It wouldn't sound too good if the answer was Oh we didn't hear anything, but my friend Kagome is actually psychic and she writes the murders as they happen. So we were aware of it long before you were. Actually, we were the anonymous phone call.

Yeah. The day.

"Alright then, thank you for your time. Enjoy the rest of your evening," Officer Maiho said, scribbling down his notes. He finally looked up from them, looking sheepish. "And I am sorry about earlier."

"Apology accepted, have a good day."

With that, Kagome shut the door and sighed.

"That was interesting," Inuyasha commented, grabbing Kagome's hand and pulling her up. "He obviously worked straight through the night."

"He still had no excuse," Miroku said, heading towards the chair Kagome had been earlier sitting on.

Inuyasha agreed, "No there was no excuse, but it does show me something about this case."

"Another thing?" Miroku raised his eyebrow. "Before you said something was up, but what is it this time?"

Inuyasha looked long and hard and Kagome. "The captain is pushing his men into overtime. Briscoe isn't exactly a small town, but their resources probably aren't much better than the resources Trite has. All of the men are pulling double shifts and this wouldn't be happening unless…"

Kagome closed her eyes and swallowed hard. "He's killed before."

"It's a he?"

"You knew?"

The two questions thrown at her by the different men weren't startling. She knew it was going to happen. "First of all, yes, it is a he. Inuyasha would remember that voice, I think he's the killer." She looked at Inuyasha who nodded; he had the same conclusion. "However, I didn't know that he had killed before. But it would make some sort of sense that I didn't know."

"And how's that?" Inuyasha asked, amber eyes probing. "Last time, you wrote all of the murders."

"But I was connected to Tsubaki through blood. She was my half-sister and we had a connection, whether we knew about it or not. But whoever this is… There's no relation. There's no further connection than this hotel."

"So you connected with him here," Miroku said. "Which makes things harder. This hotel has 20 stories and is probably close to fifty rooms per floor. You could've connected with anyone. We all know this place is busy and I've accidently bumped into at least twenty people in three days."

"Then we have to go back," Kagome said. "Start with a layout of what happened and what…exchanges I had with others. Maybe we can figure out who it is and send the information anonymously."

"Even then we'll have to be careful," Inuyasha interjected, and then he froze. "Wait a minute, Kagome did you call them about the body?"

"I did," Miroku said. "I blocked my ID and called them anonymously. I told them that there had been a screaming noise in room 9-C. Sounded like an attack."

"Shit," Inuyasha cursed. "They can still trace the call…if they're desperate enough."

Miroku looked white. "Are they?"

Looking grim, Inuyasha sighed. "I was, wasn't I?"

"Okay, look guys," Kagome started. "We don't have much time anyways. Let's go through my past two days and figure out how in the hell I connected with a killer." Grabbing a pen and notebook, Kagome sat on the bed and titled the page.

"Okay, Saturday… We got here at what time?"

"Five in the afternoon."

"And we talked to our receptionist, what's her name?"

Miroku shrugged his broad shoulders. "I don't know. But she's female, so what does that matter?"

Kagome didn't really know the answer to that one, but she felt it was important to get everyone she had some sort of exchange with. She wrote down the receptionist and the name she could vaguely remember.

"We had a bellboy," Miroku added. "His name was…Kai."

"Okay. So we have the receptionist and the bellboy. We ordered in but you answered the door because I was in the shower, so nothing there. I stayed in the room the rest of the night so then on Sunday, what happened then?"

"We went to the park so you could scope out a scene."

"Oh that's right. And we bumped into a woman with her boyfriend later in town. Tsuya and Nobunaga, I think."

Miroku nodded. "Yeah, that was them."

Kagome scribbled the down too. "But that venture took the majority of the day so we went out to a restaurant for dinner. Our server was named Akio, but he was so nice…"

"Wasn't it you that said evil wears a beautiful face?"

Kagome sighed and wrote his name down. "And then we got back and you were flirting with the receptionist…"

"I was not! My heart belongs to my Sango!"

Kagome rolled her eyes. "I know that, but she was flirting with you. Anyways, that's not the point. The point is when you were dealing with her, I went to the lobby's bathroom. There was a woman sobbing in there and I handed her some Kleenex through the stall."

"Again, a woman. Didn't you say the killer was a man?"

"Right, right," Kagome agreed, writing down the exchange anyways. "She seemed so upset."

"Did you ever find out what was wrong with her?"

"No, but she thanked me. I didn't get her name but she wanted to know who I was. I think she was hiding from another woman and didn't want to give her the satisfaction of seeing her cry."

"It's possible, but not important. Anything else?" Inuyasha asked.

"Not really. It happened that night."

"So there are only…three males. The bellboy, the waiter and that boyfriend."

"Or none of them," Kagome sighed. "It could've happened and I hadn't even noticed. There're just so many people out there."

"Then we'll start from the very beginning," Inuyasha stated, turning around and booting up Kagome's laptop. "From Sasara's background to her death."

"Read it over," Kagome agreed. "But if I remember correctly, there was very little information from her death. She was stabbed seven times, all around her stomach and her breasts. Her face was left untouched and her hair was fanned out around her. She had been almost asleep when she realized that someone was on the other end of the bed. She was about to scream but…there was too much blood in her mouth…"

Kagome's words broke off, becoming quieter and quieter. Her dark chocolate eyes dilated and her face went white. The voices screamed in her mind.

But her mouth didn't open. The voices didn't speak for her. They didn't use her like they usually did, to bring out their deepest, darkest secrets and fears.

"Kagome? Give me your hand," Inuyasha said calmly, in a hushed tone.

Weird. Even Inuyasha's voice could be understood. She looked around the room and realized that everything was still processing in her brain. She knew where she was. She knew who was with her. The voices… They were no longer controlling her. They weren't screaming out of her.

But everything was…grey. Inuyasha's silver hair was tinged grey, his amber eyes just a dark grey and his blue shirt was, again, grey. Miroku too. The room was surrounded in grey.

Why was everything grey?

Inuyasha was reaching for her now, trying to grab her hand and give her a lifeline before she fell too deep. But she didn't need one. Everything around her could still be processed, still be understood… It was just grey. Different shades of grey, but grey none-the-less.

"Kagome, give me your hand," said Inuyasha firmly.

Kagome shook her head side-to-side slowly, as if she was warming her neck up. She wished she could warm up. Suddenly, she felt very, very cold, as if the air conditioner had turned on full blast and she was under the vent.

And that's when it happened.

Everything went dead silent, with the exception of a high piercing noise that was almost in the background. It was the noise you heard when your ears were plugged, where everything was muffled and a high noise shrieked in the background. Her world was grey, and not in the metaphorical sense. Colour still hadn't returned and with the lack in noise and colour, it felt almost surreal –like she was no longer living.

No longer living.

No.

Kagome swung wildly to look at Inuyasha, who tried reaching for her. She wanted to touch him so badly, to hold is warm hand and have that lifeline…

But she couldn't, this was important and she knew it.

She was no longer a special medium.

She was a fully-fledged medium.

And she was in the grey time.

Kagome had to communicate with Inuyasha or Miroku. She held her hands up as a sign of no worry. She looked at them both pointedly, watching their wary reactions to her movements.

"Don't touch me," Kagome said, but she wasn't sure if that was given across. She couldn't hear her voice. It sounded like she couldn't speak. "Give me a thumbs up if you can hear me."

Inuyasha and Miroku exchanged glances. Then slowly, both of them gave her thumbs up. Miroku, this time, tried to grab her.

"Don't," she ordered. "Not yet."

"Yet?" she read on Inuyasha's lips, though she couldn't actually hear him. Miroku said something more, some parts to her and others to Inuyasha. She couldn't keep up with the movements of his mouth and shook her head.

"I can't hear you."

They both just stared.

Kagome would've said more if she hadn't suddenly shivered violently, sending chills raging down her spine as she crumpled to the ground. The breath was knocked out of her, like she had just been punched in the stomach, and she thought she had cried out in pain.

She grasped the bed tightly, all the while making sure that Inuyasha and Miroku didn't touch her, but again, it was off. They were hardly there anymore, as if they were fading like ghosts in the mist.

Because now, that was what she was in.

It was strange, the transformations that she was being put under. First, everything went grey. Then the sound faded. And then… the mist. The mist was like a thin cloud that was produced out of a smoke machine. It wasn't wet, just blinding. It wasn't like the thick clouds heaven promised either, but that was because this wasn't heaven.

This wasn't even hell.

This was the grey time. This was the limbo that souls who couldn't let go, who had unfinished business, who were afraid to leave their loved ones behind, were forced to live in. Hell seemed like the better choice.

But she didn't have time to dwell on that. Her surroundings were gone. No longer did she feel the soft mattress but a hard, cold surface. No longer did she feel heat, but a pure bone-chilling cold. No longer did she feel the presence of warm-blooded creatures, but of…

That was when Kagome realized what she had been trying to avoid for so long.

Sasara Fumito emerged from the mist.

And she was dead.

Sergeants Hari and Ruri stared ruefully at their captain.

"How long?" asked Hari, toying with her ponytail of light hair.

"Soon enough."

"How long?" Ruri pressed.

Captain Menomaru Seki eyed the both of them, irritation clear in his eyes. "The M.O. was completely different, but the vics are the exact same. Physically, no."

"But their lifestyles," Hari agreed.

Ruri added to her friend's comment. "And the stab wounds. Seven of them –all of the attacks being primarily in the chest or uterus. A crime of passion and rage."

"I needed to the call them in. The FBI has so many more resources. They could help us catch this guy before he moves on and kills again."

"So what do you want us to do?" the sergeants asked.

Menomaru gave a heavy sigh. "Hari, I want you to check up on forensics. See if you can rush that order in. I know they got a few fingerprints and I want to make sure they're run through AFIS. I need a lead. Ruri, I need you to keep trying to contact the boyfriend and her family. Neither of them has answered and I need resources now. DNA, photos, anything."

"Anything else?"

He thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, actually. Tell Maiho to get his ass busy. I want him to see if he can track where that anonymous phone call came from. That's who called the murder in right?"

The girls nodded.

"Then get Maiho on it. Now."

"Yes, sir," Hari and Ruri chorused and they left Menomaru to stir in his thoughts.

"Ms. Atsuko?"

The familiar voice whisked Tsuya out of her troublesome thoughts and to the person standing before her, concern on their face.

"Yes, Koume?"

"Are you okay Ms. Atsuko? You've been sharpening that pencil forever!"

Tsuya pulled the once dull pencil out of the sharpener sheepishly, realizing that it was nothing more than a stub now. "I'm okay Koume," she clarified, patting the girl on the shoulders. "I'm just thinking about all of that work I have to mark."

"Well you don't have to mark mine," Koume said, smiling. Her dark hair and dark eyes were an astounding combination. She was going to be absolutely gorgeous when she was older. "I got perfect."

"Did you?" Tsuya said, playing along with the girl's thoughts. "Every question was right?"

Koume couldn't have looked more proud. "Every question!"

Tsuya could feel the happiness radiating off the girl in waves. She was a constantly happy person, that worked extra hard at everything she did, even though she was only in grade four. "Do you need help with anything?"

"No Ms. Atsuko. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I am. Thank you." She smiled at the girl before watching her run towards her friends. They were sitting in the corner doing a craft that Tsuya had the entire class doing. Everyone was having fun and regardless of the activity, the class was relatively quiet. There were no students making a fuss or crying, and that was both a blessing and a curse to Tsuya. She needed the distraction but she needed to remain focused too.

Tsuya sat back down at her desk, grabbing a stack of papers that had to be marked and starting on the first one. She was done the ninth test only a few minutes later when she felt a strange emotion omitting from the room. She looked up, her green eyes softly examining the room. Where was it coming from?

And that's when she noticed two of the children bickering over a piece of paper.

"It's mine!" the one shouted, while the other merely pulled.

Tsuya got up and walked over to the two of them, gently grabbing the paper from both of their hands to see what was on it. It was a drawing of something she couldn't describe. It was a series of black, hard lines, drawing what seemed to be a face.

That face was unmistakably evil.

The hard dark eyes, the sharp pointed lines that created the body and the head… All of it looked just too menacing for a child in grade four to draw.

"Who's is this?"

The children looked down at the floor but said nothing to her question.

Tsuya shook her head. "If you can't play nice, then you won't play at all. Apologize to each other, please."

The two children looked at each other with burning eyes. They mumbled their apologies and Tsuya sent them away to do another activity, far away from each other.

"How strange," Tsuya said, her eyes unfathomable. She couldn't understand what the picture meant. It was cold, chilling… That's how the paper felt to her. But she couldn't pinpoint where the cold came from. Where did that evil originate?

In which child's mind was this evil face haunting?

Tsuya quickly walked over to the two students' desks, noticing that there were colouring pencils on both of them. Carefully, she picked each one up, one by one, until she found what she was looking for.

The pain that crushed her made her want to cry out.

Instead, she dropped the pencil like it had suddenly combusted and then walked back to her desk immediately. She would have to talk to the parents and get to the bottom of what was happening.

Because not only was evil knocking on her door, but it was knocking on the door of the child's too.

Please Review! I'll post the next chapter soon!