Rhia followed Cameron to his office. It was a large corner space with large, tinted windows and a stunning view of the Rocky Mountains west of the city. Two people were already waiting for them. The male stood up from his seat to reach out and shake her hand. "Rhia, this is Tom Ballard," Cameron introduced the male. "Tom, this is Rhia Kincaid."

"Nice to meet you." Rhia reciprocated his smile.

"And you," he nodded. "This is my partner, Rowan Chambers."

He indicated to the female staring out the window. She was a small, mousy woman, and Rhia had to blink a few times. The woman's outline seemed to flicker, like it was glitching out. When she turned, her movements were twitchy and hesitant. Her eyes immediately narrowed when they landed on Rhia. She scanned Rhia's face before slowly lowering to her extended hand. "Sorry," she said in a strained voice. "I don't shake."

"Rowan is kind of a psychic." Cameron's eyes sparkled with clear affection for the pair. "Physical contact triggers her... episodes."

"Psychic?" a thrill of excitement rushed through her. She'd never met a psychic. They were heavily guarded in the Ancient communities.

"No," Tom said quickly. "Psychic really is the wrong word, as Cameron well knows. It's closer to the opposite. Rowan can't see the future, but she can see the past in specific situations."

"Oh," Rhia perched on the edge of the second chair. "So that's how you're able to find people?"

"Exactly." Tom's smile returned. "So, let's talk about you. Who are you looking for?"

"My birth parents," Rhia looked hesitantly at Cameron, who had pretty much removed himself from the conversation by sitting back behind his desk. "Didn't Cameron tell you anything?"

"We prefer to hear it directly from the client. A middleman never really tells the story right. So, your birth parents," Tom pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. "Do you know anything about them? Any memories?"

"I was abandoned when I was five, but I don't remember anything about them."

"Were you adopted?"

"Yeah, Richard and Madeline Kincaid, and my adopted brother Maddox. There was a police investigation and I tried hiring a human P.I. a few years ago."

She pulled out an old file of papers and handed them to Tom. He considered it for a minute before placing it on the coffee table without looking at the contents. "What are you hoping to get out of this?" he asked carefully. "We will probably be able to find them through your past, but it's been twenty or so years at this point. We might not be able to find them in the present."

Rhia shifted uncomfortably again. "I just want to know who they were. If I could just get a name or a face... I can figure out what I want to do with that information then."

Tom nodded and made another note. "That brings us to the matter of price."

She stiffened, and he did not miss it. "Tom," Cameron said with a slight warning to his tone. "I thought you said you would do this as a favour."

"We have to put food on the table, Cam." Tom raised an eyebrow. "We can offer a discount, but our services aren't-"

He suddenly stopped as Rowan took a step forward. She carefully maneuvered around the coffee table and reached out and touched the bare skin of Rhia's arm. Her eyes glazed over. Power crackled at her fingertips and she jerked back. Once again, she searched Rhia's eyes silently without blinking, and successfully making her feel generally uncomfortable. Finally, she went back to her spot and looked at Tom. "We'll do it." Her voice was softer than it had been. "Don't worry about the cost."

"Rowan," Tom hissed. "We've talked about this."

"We'll do it, Tom." She said again.

Tom let out a strained breath and looked back to Rhia. "We'll need an item. Something you had before you were adopted."

Rhia pushed the shopping bag towards him. "It's the blanket I was found with. It's the only thing I have."

"It'll do. Do we need anything else?" he glanced at Rowan, who shook her head silently. "Alright then. Cameron will act as the middleman. If we find something, we will contact him to arrange an update."

"Thank you." Rhia stood up with him and shook his hand again. "I didn't think there was any chance of knowing what happened, but... thank you."

Tom moved across the room to hold the door open for Rowan, but she didn't move. She continued to stare at Rhia with glazed eyes. Her outline seemed to shimmer again. "Cameron," she said softly. "Do you have a notepad?"

"Uh, yeah."

Cameron pulled a fresh pad from a drawer. Rowan looked meaningfully at Rhia, who picked it up and snagged a pen. "Seek out Dáithí," She pronounced it 'Dah-Hee'. "He can help you. Whether or not he will, will depend on you."

She rattled off a set of coordinates and then walked out the door without another word. Rhia looked at Cameron. "You keep strange company." She told him flatly. "What did she mean, he can help me?"

"I have no idea. But I've also never seen Rowan touch any of her clients, so maybe she saw something special."

"This is in the middle of the desert!"

She stared at the map on her phone. It was at least a three-hour drive. If she left right now, estimating a minimum of two hours to figure out who this Dáithí guy was and if he could or would help her, she would make it back home by nine or so in the evening. Late, but she didn't work until the next afternoon. "No." Cameron snapped, seeing the thoughtful look on her face. "Don't even think about going alone. You don't even know what's out there."

"Yeah, okay," she muttered, not really listening, and started for the door.

Before she could touch the doorknob, Cameron appeared in front of her and rested a hand on her shoulders. His blue eyes glimmered intensely, so much like his father's. She couldn't help but wonder how strange it was to be speaking to her boyfriend's fully grown son. "Rhia," he said gently. "Please don't do anything stupid. Let my dad worry about Constantine. You just need to be there for him."

She shook her head. "No. I need to do more. I don't want him second guessing the decision every time he leaves me alone. I'll be fine."

She pushed past him and walked out the office.

~

The car slowed and pulled over to the curb. Tom looked at the file, then at the map on his phone to confirm they were at the right address. He stepped out and walked around to open the door for Rowan. "Can you tell me why we took this case now?" he groused.

She took long slow steps down the sidewalk, looking up at the old brick buildings and the alley between them. "She needs us." She said quietly. "More than the others."

"What did you see?"

She didn't answer. She was already beginning to let her barriers down. She staggered as information flooded her senses. The urge to rush to her side had long since faded from his instincts. The scent of everyday garbage was the most prevalent, as was the unfiltered noise of the world. The already oppressive sun felt more intense and the world wobbled in various colours. She blinked rapidly and waited. She only needed to go back a few decades. The present timeline would soon flash by.

There wasn't a word for what she was. She was a mutt of excellent breeding. There were several species in her bloodline that ordinarily could not reproduce with each other. When he learned what she could do, Cameron called her a glitch in the Matrix, but that wasn't quite right. It was more like she perpetually lived in the past. Literally. The longer her senses were open, the further back she went. The further back she went, the harder it was to come back.

According to the file, Rhia's adopted mother had found her in this alley about twenty years ago. She took a tentative step forward, finding her steady foot again. Like rewinding an old video cassette tape, people flashed by her in a blur of jerky movements and a hum of sounds. The buildings remained the same. Once a year, the mural on the left would be painted over and redone as something different. It was always the same female human who painted over the wall, and always a different group of younger humans who participated in making the new one.

Rowan backed up again to the street side of the building and strained to slow the rewinding. The same human female that painted over the mural entered the building every morning and left every evening. The owner of the building. Rhia's mother, perhaps. That would explain why she found the girl. She forced time to crawl and described the woman out loud so Tom could take notes.

After that, she left time fly backwards faster again until she reached roughly the right year. She started sorting through the weeks carefully, watching for any sign of a distressed adult abandoning a child in the alley with a blanket that was more the size of a quilt than a baby blanket.

That was not what she saw when she finally found the right night.

A black car stopped at the street and two male humans stepped out. The driver opened the door to the back seat and lifted out a small child wrapped in the same blanket Rowan had been waiting for. She called out the license plate number and followed the men walk nearly to the back of the alley near the side door of the building. The male might as well have dropped the child on the ground for all the lack of care he seemed to give her. He stepped back and Rowan weaved around to get a good look at the two men.

She dictated their appearances. The first, slightly taller, could have been in his mid-twenties. The second, the driver, was older, but not by much. He was very good looking for a human, with a strong jaw and dark, military-cropped hair. His eyes were a darker shade of green than Rhia's had been... but his were cold. Completely void of emotion. A shiver went through Rowan. There was something about this one. She couldn't explain it.

"Are you sure she'll find it here?" asked the younger male, and Rowan repeated his words for Tom to record as well.

"Yes." Said the driver, already walking back to the car. "You know Madeline. She has a routine. She'll be out here tomorrow painting over this wall."

"It's about to rain, though." The second male looked up at the dark sky as if to confirm it. "Maybe we should come back tomorrow night."

"You're worried it's going to get wet? After all the shit you already did to it?" the driver snapped, clearly irritated with his companion. "We shouldn't even be letting it live, that wasn't the deal. Capture, study, kill. This isn't a catch and release program."

"I mean, we're not really releasing it. It's still under our watch. We're still studying it."

"Then you take it. You're the doctor. You're the one who wants to study it. I don't want it in my house or anywhere near my family."

"You're the only one who has a family." The second male said with condescending patience. "It would look weird for me or Landon to take it."

The driver sneered up at the sky as thunder rolled over them. "I'm done here. If you want to wait for a better day, that's your problem."

He strolled back to the car. The second male glanced down at the child one more time before jogging to catch up. The car door slammed shut just as the first drop of rain started to fall. Thick, fat drops splattered against the ground.

Rowan knelt down to get a better look at the child. The blanket was tucked around her like a nest. They hadn't even bothered to cover her to protect her from the heavy rain, and she didn't move to cover herself. Rowan felt the timeline wobble as she described the five-year-old Rhia. The child was way too small for her age. Malnourished and atrophied muscles stretched across her skeleton. Her hair was in short, uneven layers like it had been cut off carelessly when it got unruly or in the way. The insides of her arms and top of her hands were bruised and peppered with injection scars, old and new. Her wrists bore marks of being bound for long periods of time. Her eyes, the same impossibly bright green they were twenty years in the future, were as empty as the driver's had been. She stared into the distance unmoving and uncaring.

Rowan felt the same pain emanating from this child she felt from the young woman in Cameron's office. It was a blessing that Rhia couldn't remember anything before this moment. What hope was there for a species that did this to a child. Lightning cracked overhead, and Rhia finally moved. She tilted her head up to look at the grey sky, the rain starting to come down harder. She closed her eyes, and something like peace washed over her face.

It rained for two days straight. Rhia never once moved to cover herself with the blanket and never appeared to shiver. A full third day passed before the side door finally opened. The same woman who came to the building every day shuffled out to the alley with a bucket of white paint in each hand. She took them to the middle of the alley and looked proudly up at the mural. She turned back to the door and froze, her eyes finally landing on little Rhia. "Oh my god." She gasped.

She rushed forward and dropped to the ground in front of the child. "Honey, are you alright? Where are your parents?"

Rhia didn't even blink. Madeline took in her appearance before putting a hand to her mouth and her eyes widening in horror. She rushed back inside the building and reappeared carrying a stained, but dry towel. She wrapped it around Rhia before lifting her up and carrying her inside, leaving the drenched blanket. Rowan assumed she would come back to get it at some point.

She slipped a hand into her pocket and rolled a small piece of glass between her fingers. The sand had been melted that very morning, therefore the glass itself was less than twenty-four hours old. She used it as an anchor to the present timeline and pulled herself back. Tom stood loyally beside her, waiting for further instruction. "One of the men you described sounded like Rhia's adopted farther." He said, holding up a picture from the file.

Rowan had to blink a few times to secure her hold on the present. The picture depicted an older version of the same man. "That's him." She confirmed and met her partner's concerned look. "What the hell is going on?"

~