Brian stepped out of the door and disappeared, leaving Macy behind to bite her lip thoughtfully. She glanced over her shoulder to peer out of the window and saw the police and other emergency vehicles barricaded on the street outside of the old boarding house. The sight of them made her got still for a second. The screaming that had rung through the night was still very present in her memory.

Tim was fitful on the couch, so Macy left him a glass of water, a couple of pills, and half of a plain bagel on the coffee table in front of him. Then she pulled a thick black sweater on over the paint splattered button up and trudged out of the door.

There was a respectably sized crowd standing on the lawn watching the police work. Jennings was either not yet awake or too caught up in figuring out what was going on to yell at them all about standing on his grass. Many of onlookers were Macy's neighbors from the boarding house, but there were some who looked like they lived nearby or had been passing by on their morning walk or jog and had stopped to see what all of the commotion was about. Everyone looked very pale and the whisperings among the clusters of people were quiet. That couldn't have been a good sign.

Macy paused behind one cluster of her neighbors. Among them were Kenny, her upstairs neighbor. He was fairly young, not too much older than Macy herself, and was a thrill seeker of sorts. Rock climbing, backpacking, and spelunking were among his various hobbies, and he told anyone that would listen about the big Australia trip he was saving for. Mrs. Emerson, who was a widow with a few too many birds that lived down the hall from Macy, was also among them. Macy joined the cluster of people who all knew her as Taylor Rose, and they nodded to her solemnly before turning their attention back to the police cars.

"What's going on?" she whispered to her neighbors. She spied Brian walking with the sheriff, and the two of them looked to be deep in conversation. She watched them for a few moments before turning back to her neighbors.

"Some kinda murder, I think," Kenny said. He was typically a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but under the circumstances his trademark grin was gone. "They must have been the one screaming like that last night." He shivered, and Macy didn't blame him.

"Poor soul," Mrs. Emerson commented sadly, and the others nodded in agreement. "Dreadful, dreadful thing. I've lived in this town my entire life, and this sort of thing would have been unheard of. Before..." She trailed off, but she didn't need to finish her sentence for everyone to know what she was going to say. Before the Emergents. Her neighbors were, for the most part, decent people, this Macy could see. But everyone had their fears and suspicions. She was still trying to get used to reading auras and deciphering their meanings, but Macy knew that they were wondering if an Emergent had done this. 

It made her nervous. Understandably. For her and her two house guests.

Brian was walking back towards the house, having finished his conversation with the sheriff. He rejoined her, and then they disappeared back into the sanctuary of Macy's apartment. She closed and locked the door behind them, then leaned against it as she exhaled.

Brian told her what he had found out from the sheriff, and it made her feel nauseous. "Jesus Christ..." Maybe Mrs. Emerson had been right, and something like this would never had happened before. Or maybe it had always been like this, and now whatever it was just didn't need to hide.

Macy glanced over at Brian after he suggested that she take a look and bit her lip. "I'm not sure if it works like that... I'm still not sure how it works at all." It was just color and light, and being outside a few moments ago had exposed her to a lot of it. If she hadn't had practice in seeing past the auras it would have overwhelmed her, and truthfully it had still started to give her a headache. She crossed the room to pull back the curtains a bit more to peer outside. Swirls of color is what she saw, and in various shades. It all meshed together to create something rather unpleasant, and her eyes started to ache.

Macy looked away, turning her back on the window to face Brian. "A lot of fear, suspicion, and mistrust. I think. I'm not sure what all of the colors mean, but it wasn't pretty." She crossed her arms and closed her eyes, trying to will the headache away. "I'll look again, but I'm not sure what you want me to see. Plus we still have..." She nodded her head towards Tim. "It's gonna be crazy like this for a while. And moving him will be very conspicuous. Which isn't good for me, personally."

[@HeySeuss]