Rude awakenings

Who: Nic, her mother
Where: The Haverstrom home
When: Late night

"Nicole?" came the soft call, accompanied by a light push against her door. She wasn't asleep yet, but Nic rarely was before two or three in the morning. Maybe that had something to do with her usual sunny disposition at school. Nic didn't think so, she just figured that it was from hating ninety-eight percent of the people around her.

So she was up, sitting crosslegged on her bed with a soda in hand. Her white magic primer was open in her lap, her ashtray resting on one knee with the remnants of a cigarette burning as she read the components for one of the first spells listed. It was a minor trick of sorts, a simple charm meant to ease someone's pain, but to Nic? It seemed silly. She couldn't buy the idea of putting lavender in a silk pouch and binding it in white ribbon, couldn't believe that it would act as an anesthetic.

But if Caleb could shed some blood, chant a little, and make blades appear? Maybe this would work too. But that was neither here or now, here and now was her mom's voice on the other side of the door and the gentle push opening it. Nic acted quick, stuffing the ashtray down under the bed and waving a hand around to try and dispel the smoke as her door eased open. "What's up?" she asked as her mom peeked her head in with a look of distress plain on her face.

"Shh!" came the reply, the door pushing open wider to reveal her mother holding her rifle, still clad in her pajamas. She stepped in quick, pushing the door shut quietly and rushing towards the bed. "Mom?" Nic asked, plainly startled as she started to hop up, "What's going on? Why have you got your--"

"We need to go," her mother blurted before Nic could finish, "We need to call the cops, someone's in the house! I heard them in the kitchen!" Nic blinked disbelievingly, looking from her mother to the door and back. "Mom, you sure?" she asked of Emily with a frown, looking to her window. It'd be the easiest way out, but Nic wasn't quite buying it. Sure, there'd been some break-ins when things got weird in town, but aside from the spirits' appearance? Everything had been relatively sane.

"I'm sure, now come on," her mother Emily repeated, grabbing Nic's hand and tugging her towards the window. Nic let herself be led for a second before tugging her hand away, shaking her head. "Mom? Did you see someone? Maybe it's nothing. I... I'm gonna look," she said, taking a step back towards the door. "Nicole, no. We're getting out of this house and we're calling the police."

"Mom! Come on, you don't even know who's out there! If it is a robber or something, maybe you already spooked him! Shit, mom! You've got your rifle, you really plan on shooting someone?" Nic argued, twisting the door open before her mom could answer. "Look, I'm gonna peek, okay? If it's some psycho, I'll kick him in the balls and grab the phone. If it's nothing? Well, it's nothing." She didn't feel scared, though maybe she should've been. But she'd seen a werewolf die, she'd talked to ghosts, seen magic be performed. Unknown mystery noises? Didn't hold much terror for Nic.

"Nicole, no," Emily repeated at her daughter as Nic stepped out. Nic just raised a finger to her lips, turning and skulking down the hall on bare feet, hands raised to smack the first unknown person she saw. She glanced back as she moved, catching her mother's silhouette as the older woman moved to watch her go, and that was when Nic first heard it. A soft clatter from the kitchen, the sound of some piece of silverware hitting the floor.

She froze when she heard it, flinching when her mom gave a nervous gasp, and Nic shot a look back at the older woman and shook her head. She started forward again, pausing with the creak of what sounded like something being dragged across the kitchen floor. The house was draped in varying shades of darkness, and as Nic moved for the entry to the kitchen she caught a dark patch moving in time with the noises, indistinct and elongated. Picked the wrong house to rip off, she thought as Nic suddenly snapped around the corner, lashing out a foot at hip level.

Pain flared up her leg as she connected and caught sight of the chair she'd just kicked upending and hitting the floor with a clatter. Nic blinked in surprise as she lowered her foot with a wince; the kitchen was empty, the silverware drawers were open, knives and forks littering the ground. "I think whoever it was ran," Nic whispered back at her mother, shoulders going slack with relief. "They kinda thrashed the kitchen, though."

"How bad?" Emily asked as she moved to join her daughter, clicking the safety on her rifle. "Not too bad," Nic answered, moving over to give her mom a look at the kitchen. "Looks like-" she started, the words dying as the chair shuddered and suddenly lurched back up on it's legs. "Oh god!" cried the elder Haverstrom, scrambling back in surprise as Nic raised both hands defensively, watching the chair.

Unbidden, it started a slow slide away from them and across the kitchen floor, stopping at one of the counters. "Nicole? What... what is this?" her mom murmured as they both watched one of the cabinets snap open above the chair and plates began to cascade out one after the other, shattering on the floor. Nic was speechless for a moment, just watching in stunned amazement as she reached out for her mother's hand, giving it a squeeze. "I think... I think it's a ghost, mom," she eventually said, thinking on what she'd read in her books from Nevermore. And of course her love of the movie 'Poltergeist'. "Stay right here, okay?"

"Hon, no," her mom protested as Nic let go of her hand, padding into the kitchen warily. She was ready to react, though to what, Nic didn't know. If the chair came her way, she could just knock it over again, but beyond that? There was only the crudest of plans in her head. She edged along the kitchen, moving for the stove and grabbing the shaker of salt that sat on the back of it as plates crashed down on the floor and counter. Holding her breath, Nic gripped the shaker and started to twist off the cap, then set the cap on the stovetop. A chill ran through her as the plates stopped for an instant, the chair sliding over a foot before another cabinet flew open.

With a slow approach, Nic started towards the chair, flinching when a glass tipped out and cracked on the floor. She moved each foot carefully, watching the broken glass in the lowlight that came through the windows from the streetlights outside. And when she was close enough? All at once Nic moved, dropping low and tipping the salt shaker, spilling its' contents in a messy circle around the chair. The glass stopped falling, the chair slid back to the interior of the circle, but nothing else happened. Sighing in relief, Nic looked to her mother who stood watching, wide-eyed and slackjawed. "What did... what did you do?" she asked Nic, hugging herself tightly.

"Maybe nothing," Nic told her as she headed back over, as confused as her mom but not showing it. If it was a ghost, wouldn't she have seen it? She could see all the others, after all. "But I think I trapped it, for now," she went on, setting the salt shaker down and moving to hug her mother. "I... it's a lot to try and explain, mom. You might not believe me if I try." She hadn't believed in the werewolves or the vampires, after all.

"Hon, just tell me," her mom insisted with a distressed frown, looking past Nic to the wreckage of the kitchen. Nic let go, looking Emily in the eye and nodding. "Okay, just... go get dressed? I want coffee, and we're not making it in there tonight. Gas station, I get to smoke in the car." Tomorrow? She'd be extra-bitchy at school if her mom made her go. But this? This was a start.