The investigation concerning the death of Terri Leoni and her classmates, was all but closed. Only one woman, the unlikely hero Raven, continued to pursue what few leads she had. Unfortunately, trailing nursery rhymes and spirits weren't the easiest of things to do. Finding young Emily Eisele was a simple task, she got good marks in school and had few friends, she was exactly how Meredith described her.

The surveillance that Raven was able to do though, showed few signs of a troubled youth.  She sat alone on the playground, but other than that she didn't seem like she was entertaining an invisible friend. It would be several hours before the dark vigilante could speak with her alone, and she decided to follow up on a contact that Henry Hudson had provided Raven.

Henry Hudson's hole-in-the-wall diner served arguably the best burgers in Hudson City, and definitely the best burgers anywhere close to the courthouse. So even at 4 p.m. Henry invariably had to chase out the last few customers grabbing either a very late lunch or an early dinner so he could close up. Sometimes he stayed open a little late during the summer, but not often--and always the place was locked up in time for Henry to safely at home by dusk. Kate had often wondered what Henry knew--or believed--to motivate his behavior but she'd never asked. Henry didn't welcome personal questions.

Raven appeared just before closing time, loitering in a shadowed spot until she saw Henry shoo the last customer out and lock the door behind him. She vanished from her hiding spot and reappeared inside Henry's--for just an instant. She felt a terrible wrenching sensation, followed by a brief moment of nausea--

--and Kate Sutherland found herself standing in the diner. She gasped, pressing a hand to her rebellious stomach until it settled. When she could pay attention to her surroundings again, she found Henry staring at her with wide eyes and an upraised meat cleaver. A slow grin spread across his face and then turned into an amused chuckle.

"Well, well, well," Henry said. "Someone's been keeping secrets."

"I--you--what...happened?" Kate asked. The nausea had passed but her thoughts felt muddled.

"This is what comes of barging in uninvited, Miss Sutherland," Henry said. "That is why vampires don't enter homes uninvited. It renders them powerless. If you're stupid enough to invite them, on the other hand...." Henry shrugged. "Think of it as evolution in action."

"But this shop," Kate said, "it's not a home--is it?" And she wasn't a vampire, for that matter.

"Nope," Henry said. He'd turned his back on her now as he began washing the last few dishes and wiping down the counters. "But the principle is the same, if you know how to employ it. And it doesn't only work on vampires, as you can see."

You knew?" Kate asked.

"That you were Raven?" Henry asked. "Nope, not a clue. Still wouldn't if you'd knocked like a civilized person." Henry turned to give Kate a meaningful look. "Behavior like that will not win you a place at the counter."

"I apologize," Kate said, abashed. She was also angry--at Raven, for her impetuous act. Kate knew that Seinfeld's 'Soup Nazi' had nothing on Henry, who was prepared to throw anyone out of his restaurant for any reason that suited him--and often did. It cost him nothing and saved him--he said--endless aggravation. Certainly he had more would-be customers loitering outside everyday than he could serve in a day.

"So why are you here?" Henry asked. "I know you weren't here to threaten me, so I assume you wanted to ask something of me?"

"Yes," Kate said, "I had a question. How did you know that I wasn't a threat?"

Henry smirked. "If you were here with hostile intent, the effects would have been a lot worse."

"Oh," Kate said.

Before she could contemplate that, Henry spoke again. "So what's your question?"

Henry provided Kate with the name of Professor Xavier Rellaford. Rellaford owned a curiosity shop in Hudson City. He was, Henry said, said to be a bit peculiar. Kate had had to struggle to keep a straight face at that--Henry describing someone else as 'a bit peculiar' was the pot calling the kettle black. But if there was a device or a way to find or trap a spirit...Henry believed Rellaford would know about it. It might have been a long shot, but if Emily was in contact with this mysterious force, it seemed like a good idea to be prepared and find a way to contain it.

Kate had walked out of Henry's and looked around as Henry relocked the door behind her. It was not yet five, given Henry's early closing time. With any luck she could get to Rellaford's shop before he closed. Henry's Hamburgers was directly across the street from the courthouse so there was considerable foot traffic. She walked several blocks until she found a sufficiently isolated spot to make the shift.

Raven glided up to a nearby rooftop, then began bounding from building to building in the direction of Rellaford's shop. She reached the right street in only a few minutes. Raven stopped on a rooftop across the street from Rellaford's shop and looked down to get her first glimpse of the place.

The sign over the door read simply "Into the Mysteries"  and gave no clue as to what sort of goods might be found in the shop whose door was below street level and marked simply with the address 405 1/2. The steps that lead down to the door were clean and well maintained, and the handrails showed a fresh coat of paint, but other than that, there was nothing about the entrance that seemed designed to encourage foot traffic or interest in the shop.

Raven translated down to street level and, mindful of her experience at Henry's, walked across the street to the top of the stairs. The newly painted handrail was cool beneath her fingers as Raven walked down to the entrance, the stairs clean swept and with no hint of the musty scent she often encountered in such below-ground level doorways. Raven turned the knob and pushed the door open, half expecting the jingle of a bell.

Compared to the bright afternoon sunlight outside, the shop seemed dark as a cave. Raven closed the door behind her and stood quietly, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Inside, the shop was lit by too few incandescent bulbs, mostly from free standing lamps and hanging fixtures, and dust motes swirled in the air, giving the place a feel more like a den in a private home than a place of commerce. Bookshelves lined the walls supporting books, and bottles, and statuettes whose artistic value were dubious at best, and innumerable other bits of the flotsam and jetsam of the world outside. Bookstands and a few  tables with comfortable chairs were placed seemingly randomly on the carpeted  floor.

The place smelled of fresh coffee that emanated from an old fashioned percolator that sat on a hot plate behind the counter, and fine pipe smoke, and that odor seemed to match perfectly the music that played quietly from the hidden speakers mounted into the walls and ceiling. Beethoven's Symphony #3 in E-flat Major, opus 55,  performed by the Nicolaus Esterhaus Symphonie, not that very many people these days would know it from any other classical work.

As was usual, the only person in the place was the shops proprietor, Professor Xavier Rellaford. A pale, slight man, whose salt and pepper hair went well with the dark thin frame of the glasses that framed his brown eyes. His suit was a dark blue affair, impeccably tailored, and his shoes were obviously italian, and very expensive. He wore a handmade white shirt under the jacket, and his tie was red silk and pricey, though the windsor knot that held it in place was loosened and the button behind it undone. He sat at a chair near the back of the shop, his foot tapping along absently with the light string aria and an old book in his hands, leather bound with pages yellowed from age.

Raven approached the man she assumed was Professor Rellaford. "Busy day, I see," she said.

The shop's proprietor started a bit, and looked up from the book, his brown eyes betraying his surprise at having a customer, any customer, let alone an attractive female one, in his shop. He seemed to recover quickly enough, and stood up, shutting the book as he rose from the chair.

"Yes, ... well... no.. " He began, looking back to the cover of the book briefly. "That is, it's as busy as any other day, if you take my meaning." His smile seemed forced, or an expected affectation, rather than any genuine indicator of his mood.

Raven smiled wanly at Rellaford's discomfiture. He didn't at all fit her stereotypical image of a man who was alleged to know all there was to know about spirits and the trapping of same. On the other hand, Henry had said he was peculiar....

"I'm Xavier. Xavier Rellaford, welcome to my store.... er.. well, my shop." He said, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose properly. "Would you care for a cup of coffee? or... well, coffee is all I have, though there may be some spring water in the fridge, if you'd prefer it, though a glass may be hard to find." His words seemed to tumble from his mouth as soon as the thoughts for them formed in his head.

"No, thank you," Raven said.

"What can I do for you? I mean, what brings you here? Are you looking for something in particular, or just generally shopping for something you've not defined yet?"  A confused look slid over his face, as if he was asking himself some silent question he didn't know the answer to.

Rellaford seemed to be getting more rattled by the moment. Raven had already decided to play nice, at least initially. Even if she hadn't, though, she was beginning to fear that if she got her spook on, he'd faint dead away or maybe scream a little girl. Maybe there was more to him than there appeared to be, but so far she wasn't seeing it.

"I have reason to believe that a young girl is being haunted by a spirit or spirits. The spirit may already have caused one young girl to kill several people as well as herself. I'm looking for a way to find this spirit, if it exists, and to trap or destroy it.

"Can you help me?"

The little bookworm looked up, and for a moment, he appeared to be looking through the dark haired woman that stood in front of him. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he took off the glasses, and straightened his tie, fastening the button at his neck.

"A spirit, you say?" He asked, as he walked behind the counter, and poured himself a mug of the steaming coffee. "Tricky business, dealing with those who won't move along. Do you believe this 'spirit' actually possessed the unfortunate girl,or just drove her mad?"

"Maybe a little bit of both," Raven said. "The girl spoke of hearing music--music nobody else could hear--and of voices telling her to do terrible things lest even more terrible things happen. She killed herself in the end, and a witness told me that when she was bleeding the...voice passed through her.

"That witness hasn't heard the voice since, nor has she heard the music. But she told me another child has mentioned hearing the music."

Xavier listened carefully, his brows furrowing as the woman finished.  "This doesn't seem like your run of the mill spirit, to me." He said, lifting the mug and blowing across the rim. "It may be possible to deal with the entity, and it may not. Before I commit myself to a course of action, though, there is something I must know."

Raven silently raised an eyebrow.

"Who are you??" He asked, gesturing with the coffee mug, as the affected smile returned to his face.

"Oh," Raven said. "I'm Raven."

"So, now that you know who I am, what do we do about the spirit?"

Rellaford sipped at the coffee, and nodded to himself, his brown eyes nver quite leaving Raven. "I know your name, or, at least an alias." He said as he strolled out from behind the counter. "But if that's all I get, then, it will have to suffice for now." He had noticed her use of the word 'we' in her last question, though that could wait.

"There are several things that can be done about a stubborn soul." He said, as he plucked an ornate cane from an unbrella stand at the end of the counter. Leaning against it for support, he made his way to a bookstand set near the back of the shop. "Sometimes you just have to show them the way to move on. Others, need convinced, or coerced. A rare few," setting the coffee down he looked over his shoulder briefly, "must be trapped, or banished, or bound, to be effectively dealt with."

"If this entity is a powerful as you suspect, Madame, it is likely to be quite headstrong about remaining here, and therefore likely to need trapping." He opened the book, and began flipping through the pages carefully, his fingers handling the pages at the very edges. "This is always a messy business, imprisoning a sentience for all time, and I'm afraid that I'll have to insist that the prison remain in my custody, once its done, if ,we are successful."

"Works for me," Raven said. "I'd rather destroy it, but if that's not possible and we have to simply confine it, sure. You want to be the custodian? Be my guest."

Rellaford stopped flipping through the pages of the book, and  leaned over the tome, nodding. Just as his guest was beginning to wonder if he had forgotten she was there he turned back to her. "Destroy it? I suppose that would be one way of dealing with it. But it is only partly here, and partly..... well.... somewhere else." He pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose, and  leaned on the cane once more.

"One may be able to damage the part of the entity that is here.... perhaps... anything is possible, but the part that lies outside of our perception is out of reach."  He lifted the coffee mug, and sipped at it again. "Of course that is assuming that it is a spirit or ghost... this is all conjecture, you understand. If one can trap the consciousness that is projecting into out plane from the outside, then you can keep it confined, and harmless."

"On to the pracitcalities, I suppose. How do you mean to find it? ... I mean, we have to know where it is to trap it."

"One symptom of contact with the...spirit," Raven said, "was hearing music--a nursery rhyme--that nobody else was hearing. The girl who died spoke of hearing it. Another girl who was present when the first girl died says that she heard it briefly. And she named a third child who has mentioned hearing the tune.

"Her name is Emily Eisele, and I think we'd do well to pay her a visit."