Lacey sleeps like a baby and wakes early. It's a miracle in and of itself that she'd managed to get any shut-eye at all after the experiences of the thunderous night before, but the running had left her in a state of burnt exhaustion, and her lack of sleep the night before made her head and the pillow an especially intoxicating mixture. Hell, she would've gone back to sleep upon waking just like any other normal day, but this is not, in essence, a normal day.

She's going to get answers today. She's going to be productive today.

Maybe.

Groggily, she slips from between the covers of her bed and pads across the dusty floor of her childhood bedroom, morning light drifting in grey and white through the blinds. Palms rub eyes, palms push open doors. All the windows had been thrown open downstairs - Dad's awake. So early. I'm this close to going back to bed.

As she opens the door to the little makeshift office, she hopes, at least somewhat, that she'll see her father sitting in the chair at his desk surrounded by all his little knick-knack staplers and empty, useless pens, if only to save her from actually having to do anything. But alas, it's empty, and the computer is all hers. As is the printer.

Her face falls but she shakes it off. "I'm doing this. Today is happening. Okay..." With light feet, she bends over the desk and shakes the mouse to wake the screen. Her tab from the night before is still there, and she clicks it, opening the pretty dark face of Erie. He smiles at her with perfect white teeth, large brown eyes, and a cut so short he borders on bald. He's always liked it short, and so she'd kept her words on the document short, too: "Have You Seen This Boy?" and "Erie Mott" and "5'8" and "17 years old" and "last seen wearing a grey shirt, green flannel, and jeans" and "if sighted, please contact" and a whole scribble of numbers thereafter. Lacey had placed her own just in case.

Just in case.

After giving it another once-over, she clicks print. The machine across the room whirs as it prepares to pump out dozens of posters. Step one: done.

Lacey steps back and breathes in the fresh, wet air from outside the window screen. Like mud and grass. Birds chirp in the quiet way they do when spring isn't quite there yet. It's a better sensation than the one she'd gone to bed with last night.

She needs to move faster. Time is of the essence with literal demons lurking about.

Bounding down the stairs toes-first, a crispy aroma blasts her, warm and steamy and crackling against her nostrils. There's a hiss, a pat-pat, the scrape of plastic against metal as she turns the corner into the kitchen. Across the table, at the stove, is Jeremy Waits, too intent on violently scratching the spatula against the pan to notice Lacey's entrance.

"Holy cow. You're actually cooking."

He jumps at her voice, and the heavy end of the pan hits the stove. "Christ, Lacey! You about made me slam the damn pan in my face!" He settles everything down, waits for his shoulders to loosen, then turns around, palms pressed to the counter behind him. "But yes, I'm cooking. Surprised?"

"Little bit. Given your chef's choice the past couple nights, little bit."

Nervous laughter bubbles out. "Yeah, yeah, sorry 'bout that. But hey: you're up. That's good. I don't have to wake you. I was thinking we could ah, we could have a proper meal this time. A real breakfast, just the two of us. I uh, I didn't know how you liked your eggs, so I just went with the classic scramble. And there's bacon, too, if you want some. Plenty to go around."

The strain in his voice is hopeful, desperate, even, and Lacey feels the nerves radiating off of him. It makes her hate saying,

"I was actually just gonna grab something small and then head out. I'm not that hungry, really. You can eat my share, though, it's fine."

He looks at her, works his jaw around, and doesn't say much for a moment. Then, "Are you sure you don't want just a couple bites before you head out? I mean, it can wait, can't it? Just a couple extra minutes? I'm almost done, I-"

"It's important, Dad."

A sigh through the nostrils. "Alright. Alright, that's fine. I'll just, ah...pack it up for later. Maybe lunch. Check in for lunch? We should probably talk about your homeschooling at lunch."

"Maybe." Lacey bounces over to the counter, flips open the cabinet, snatches a poptart, and nods to her father. "I'll see you later, pops." Salute.

He salutes too, weakly, then turns back to the stove, flicking the volume of the radio beside it up.

"...rain has stopped in Carrick, but that doesn't mean that the effects of last night are completely over. While Southwest Carrick is currently not at risk, Northeast Carrick will be under a flood advisory until further notice. Everything north of the Epling River is under flood advisory. If you live in the northeast area, make sure you listen to safety protocol which will play at eight o'clock after your local weather broadcast. Heavy rain has stopped in Carrick, but..."

None of Lacey's concern. They live in the southwest. Higher elevation. They'll be fine. Time to go!

On last second impulse, she turns back to the cabinet and reaches up to grab a small container.

The salt. Impure stuff, but it'll do at least a third of the job for a while. Better than nothing. Dad eyes her strangely as she stuffs the box in her sweater pocket, but he says nothing.

She dashes up the stairs and slips into the office, pleased to find that the printer has finished wheezing and is now taking a much needed rest to recover from its regurgitation. Fingers slip under warm pages. She lingers there a moment, flipping the stack back and forth, considering whether this is something she wants to spend time on. But then she figures she can kill two birds with one stone, pin up posters and further the cause for Erie and ask around about the death of a little girl in town. Someone has to know something, and the sooner she gets ahold of these someones with the somethings, the sooner she can get the brat off her back and secure her situation. Send it all back to normal.

Back to the way it was.

* * * * *

She's only pinned up one poster and already she's exhausted by this endeavor.

In her defense, the morning was especially warm despite the sun only having barely made it past the roofs of most houses - your classic postcard 9 o'clock in the morning sun, bright enough for blue skies but too low to beam and burn. She'd also had to walk to her destination, which she'd only found after an hour of aimless wandering (muscle memory isn't so great after a full decade). The street itself was wider than most in Carrick, and on either side, little connected shops sat looking out at moist asphalt and puddled sidewalks. They all seemed closed, no lights brightening up the windows. Maybe a sign here and there that someone'd flipped, but it looked just as desolate inside those places as it did outside.

That was a Sunday in Iowa for you.

Look at the bright side. No one can yell at me to stop taping crap to their windows if they're all at church singing hallelujah.

Huffing, Lacey readjusts the posters under her arm and crosses the street to some barren brick wall. She tugs an inordinately long amount of tape from the roll with her teeth and tears it off before smacking it against the paper, securing it, somewhat, in place. "Good." She gives it another pat for reassurance. Onto the next one.

For the next twenty minutes she proceeds in a similar manner, pasting pages to windows and poles and doorknobs (they have to pay attention if they want inside). All the while, she glances at a map in one of the store windows, a map of downtown, just a little ways away. There, cogs and gears begin to choke and spin. Surely, if the little girl died recently, someone has something to say about it, and if not by word of mouth, the library would have old newspapers or clippings or whatever it was that old-fashioned small towns used to get their information.

It's decided: this is her first step once she's done with these posters.

Lacey seeks the next place to become victim to her tape-smacks. Down the street there's a small park, home to a fountain and a couple of sketchy benches, but there's also a bulletin in front, plastered with flyers of various bright colors flapping in the light breeze, pinned only by a thumbtack or a staple. She marches towards it.

Gingerly, she works a page out of her own stack, rips a piece of tape off awkwardly, and connects the two, ready to place Erie's face on top of dozens of other notices too old to be relevant. However, before she manages to stick it down, another face peers up at her between a yard sale poster and an advert for juice. "What's this?" she whispers, taking her free hand to finger the edge of the other missing persons poster, holding it still so she could read:

MISSING PERSON, Stella de Almeida, 5'5", 17 years old, last seen wearing a salmon-colored short-sleeved shirt, blue skinny jeans and sandals near the downtown Carrick area, leaving the Midland Theater. If sighted, contact 9-1-1 or the family at the numbers listed below.

Lacey's eyes trail across the words and land on the image in the center, curious. Stella looks like her father, mostly: skin a warm bronze, eyes a dulled rust. Her mouth isn't his, though, and neither is the slender curve of her face, or the gentle build of her nose. She sits in the middle of the picture, in the middle of a room, in the middle of a house, somewhere, squatting on a beige couch and smiling a rich smile that makes the corners of her eyes pinch together. Her black hair ends just past her collarbone, tangled with flyaways, but acting as a veil for small ears to peek through. She's pretty, and if Lacey had seen her before her disappearance, she would've most certainly followed her around, making bad jokes, until she finally got annoyed and agreed to go on a date.

But Lacey had not known her before, not for a long time, so that never happened.

Lacey looks across the board and finds more of the same poster, a few alterations and edits each time, but then her gaze catches the corner of a poster behind Stella's, and she lifts the girl's face to expose another one.

MISSING PERSON, Ro-Anne Foster, 5'6", 14 years old, last seen wearing an orange sundress in her neighborhood down Addle Rd. If found, call your local station, or 9-1-1.

This is a girl Lacey knows nothing of; she's heard her name only once or twice since arriving back in Iowa, and from how Elijah put it, it seems like her family gave up the search a while ago. Granted, this flyer itself was manufactured in early January - it's early March now. Still, Lacey memorizes the girl's freckled face carefully. She's small in many ways. A pointed nose, a skinny chin, a scrawny neck. Her chapped lips are thin and flat, curling into nothing but faint surprise as she realizes a camera is there. Now, Lacey thought she was pale, but Ro truly brings meaning to the word. Her pallor is sickly. It clashes with the distinct red of her hair, a mousy copper. This girl wears no makeup either, like Lacey, but her eyes need none of it, a bright hazel enhanced by the flash. They're eyes that don't want attention; they're sad eyes.

Lacey hmphs. She searches around the board, thinking maybe there are better, happier pictures of this girl scattered around, but she sees only a few of the same one, outnumbered by Stella, and usually hiding behind her, too. It strikes her that maybe this is the only picture of Ro-Anne out there, and that the only ones that care to keep her name out there are her parents. But even they had shied away from looking. Even they had moved on.

"Well," Lacey says, finding a free space at the bottom of the board that covers neither Stella nor Ro-Anne, "that's depressing." She pins Erie there and steps back, making him yet another addition to a wall of desperation, whether it be for money or employees or their children. "Yep, depressing."

She clears her throat. Her hands still hold a sizable stack. There aren't many other places down this street for her to vandalize, and moving around so much had exhausted her already; she's fit to call it a day for this particular venture, and turns to the street back home to do so, but when she does, something is...different.

She squints at a pole she was one-hundred-and-two percent positive she'd stuck a poster to. It's bare.

Her eyes light across the street, looking here, there, and finding nothing. Now, some people in horror movies might take a tentative step forward in search of the person who'd moved it, but not Lacey, no, no, not her. She's smart, and after the run-in with a malevolent entity the night prior, she isn't taking any chances. "Fuck this," she says, already turning to look for another street back home. However, a few pages slip out from under her arm and she curses, turning back to snatch them up quick.

At a half-crouch, arm outstretched for the posters, she sees him. His face is turned away, and a black hood conceals all but the sharp point of his nose as he creeps over to one of the shop windows. He's lanky, and walks awkwardly, but his hands are precise in reaching for a poster and ripping it free of the glass. Even from where Lacey is, she hears the slow unsticking of tape.

He isn't a demon. Just some punk taking her posters down. He's taking Erie down. And now I'm gonna take him down.

"Hey!" she yells from her crouch, immediately bouncing up to her full height. "The fuck are you doing with my shit?"

His head swivels towards her. He's got a pale face and wide eyes. She notices the swift shift of his lips as he mutters under his breath, but it's only for a moment before he takes off in the opposite direction.

If she doesn't catch him now she knows he'll come back later to tear down everything, so she starts after him, marching at first, and then sprinting - well, more like a power-jog, she isn't dedicated enough for a full-blown run - to catch up. "Get back here, punk! Those are mine!"

A panicked noise emanates from the boy ahead of her and he glances back timidly, if only to see how close she's gotten. However, in that split second of not paying attention, his foot plunges into a small pothole (why does Iowa even pay taxes?). It throws his whole balance off, and a knee buckles, the rest of his weight quick to follow it to the middle of the street.

Justice has been served, Lacey thinks, slowing to a walk and circling around so she stands in front of his bowed head. He keeps it ducked for a while, but slowly he lets his eyes settle on her yellow shoes, up to her mom jeans, and then to her expectant face. He blinks a lot, and chews on his lip a lot, and swallows a lot. "Hello, stranger," he says. His voice is deep but cautious.

Lacey licks her teeth and narrows her eyes. "Hello is all you have to say?" She waits, but upon receiving no response, she holds out her hand and wiggles her fingers. "Hand the posters over."

The boy lifts the posters so he can get a good look at them. He stares at them a while, maybe a little too long, but upon being pressured by Lacey's rapidly increasing rate of foot-tapping, he shakes his head. "I don't think I will? I think they'll be much better off in my care. No offense, I'm sure you're great and all, but just, look at these poor things! They're all...wrinkled." His gaze falls to his own crafty stack, nose wrinkling in distaste.

Lacey scoffs. Who the hell does this guy think he is? Some tough shit? Her face flushes pink and she grinds her teeth together even though her dentist doesn't like her doing so. "Excuse me? I'm not the one tearing down missing persons posters! It looked a lot like you were sabotaging the city's efforts to find Erie. Is that what you want? To sabotage the search? Huh, kid? Were you dared to do it?"

"No, no!" The boy finally rises, Lacey lifting her eyes slowly from far beneath her to far above her. She has to admit, he's pretty dang tall, but she won't let that daunt her. She stands her ground.

"Sounds fake. Nobody'll see those if you have them. For the love of God, just hand them over already!"

He holds a hand out. "Can I at least defend myself? You're so pushy!"

Ignoring his last comment, she folds her arms over her sweater-laden chest, jaw set, and then flicks a wrist out. "If you've got a good defense, proceed."

The boy bites into his lip and tugs the hood down, exposing short hair in a tangled mess of honey brown that he swiftly shoves a hand through. He inhales deeply, exhales briefly. "Okay. So, I know this looks bad, but I wasn't taking them down to sabotage. I swear. I just...well, I was gonna take them down so I could relocate them in - no offense - better places. See, I know the best spots because I'm local, and judging by where you stuck everything, you're, ah, not. I've also never seen you 'round before. So duh, you wouldn't know. That's not your fault!" He throws his hands out in defense. "I just don't want your efforts to go to waste, y'know? Like, we're all trying here, to find Erie, and some of us are good at contributing, and some of us aren't. It's just how the world goes. Like, sometimes people get hired at the diner and they're always up your butt about trying to help and telling you what tastes best, but then you take their suggestions and then it turns out the food is absolute trash and you should've just gone with your usual burger and strawberry-banana shake. They should just take the order and not contribute, y'know?"

Finally, he stops talking, but his hands splay out, as if asking her to understand. Lacey blinks a lot, and she tries, she truly does, but all that comes out is a strained, "What?"

"I'm trying to help is all," he says simply, "I don't want to hurt the search. I want to make sure all efforts are working." He shakes the disorganized cluster of papers in his hand. "This is not working. Not here. No offense."

"Okay," Lacey says, pinching her eyes to a close. "You keep saying 'no offense,' but you basically just keep bashing my ability to pin up some goddamn posters. If you're so local and good, why don't you tell me where else I should put them, hm?"

"Easy," the guy peps. "You scatter them downtown and by the lakeside. They've got a whole bunch of stores down there, and the farmer's market, and then you get everything downtown, so everyone sees this face everywhere they go. You can't put them around these suburban-esque areas because let's be real, suburban families really don't give a sh-"

"Okay, fair," Lacey says, "but next time, instead of sneaking around, just come up to me and fucking tell me so I can do it myself, alright? You don't need to like...creep and steal. Now can I have those back?"

"Uh, no." Again, his face slips into wariness, soft brows knit and pink lips pursed. "I don't even know you. Or how you know Erie. Therefore, I am obliged not to trust you, and will redo all of your stuff myself."

Lacey's voice chokes and her hand gestures smack the air. "Well, uh, I don't even know you, either, so! And for the record, I've been his friend since childhood, so you can write that down on those posters and shove them up your-"