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Cybil rolled her eyes. "I didn't say you didn't know what it was called," she said sharply, but there was a pleased undertone to it - as though she'd finally provoked something she'd been looking for. Whether it was spirit or just a fight was difficult to tell. "I said it sounded like that was what it was. If you're going to get miffed because I didn't respond to you dumbing it down for me, we're not going to get along very well."

Not that she really thought they would anyway - they seemed to have been clashing from minute one.

Undeterred, she almost spoke up again, but before she could Miranda had gotten in her next words. She hesitated, wanting to be snarky again, but then the truth crept in. She had been harsh. Maybe the words had been unfair. If there was one thing Cybil prided herself on, it was being just.

So she paused for a second longer, and then slowly sighed. "Look. Maybe that was kind of uncalled for. You just...startled me." She shrugged. "I've never known anyone else like me, and to have you come waltzing up out of the blue with this 'Hi, I'm like you and I can see' routine...it freaked me."

Now she actually did smile. A small one, a little uncertain, but a real one. "Let's try this again, okay? So you've found me. We'll assume it was for a reason. The reason is apparently that we're both freaks. Now what?"

Cybil frowned, reaching out again. At the last minute, she changed her mind and dropped her hand again. "Okay, okay. Whoa. Hang on a second. So you've been seeing someone else besides me? Who?" She paused, sighed. "Never mind, stupid question. Okay, listen."

Leaning back, she checked the time. Carmen seemed quite content to be lazing at the front desk rather than in the back, where there wasn't much of anything anyway. Just a threadbare old couch and a dying coffeemaker.

She waved, catching the woman's attention, and mouthed, Gotta go. Cover for me? When Carmen nodded, Cybil sighed in relief, hooked her arm through Miranda's, and led her towards the parking lot. Once there, she let her go but kept walking. Her apartment was very close by, and Cybil would rather talk crazy there than here.

"I really don't appreciate that woman enough," she decided aloud. "Now, Miranda, since by a lucky crossing of stars you happened to catch me when I had a friendly assistant willing to finish off my shift for me, we're going to go to my apartment. You're going to tell me everything you know, and I'm going to tell you everything I know. Then between us, we'll try to figure out what's going on. Sound good?"

Cybil caught the second of resistance, glanced back, and laughed. "Sorry," she said easily, letting go of the flash of resentment on her own behalf - the girl was intruding in her life, wanting and needing answers, and then was resistant to getting them? What was this? "Sometimes I forget that I'm not yelling at the waitresses in the restaurant. Half of them wander around like bewildered chickens if you don't instruct them constantly."

She paused by the door of a run-down, seedy-looking building. "It's in here. You coming?" That said, she disappeared into the building, walked across the lobby, and hit the buttons for the top floor. If Miranda wanted to come, she'd come.

In the meantime, however, Cybil casually fished for her key in her uniform pocket. Her frown appeared slowly and then began to deepen as she hunted. At last, with a little cry of triumph, she hauled it out. "There we go."

Cybil, her back to Miranda, lifted a brow slightly. Although Miranda couldn't know it, Cybil was smiling a bit. Heard that one before. I think I'll just see for myself.

The elevator arrived with a creak and a few disturbing cracking sounds. Not seeming in the least perturbed, Cybil stepped onto the worn, ragged, slightly smelly carpeting - perhaps it had once been red, but too much use had faded it to a truly hideous pinky colour. Figuring Miranda would follow, she tapped the required buttons (some of which had gum on them and some of which seemed to stick as Cybil pressed them) and they shot upwards.

"It's not much," she said apologetically as they stepped out of the elevator and onto more once-red carpeting. Then she shushed herself. Why should she apologize? Just because she didn't have any rich folks paying her way and actually paid for herself...

Stopping at a dingy once-white door, she unlocked her apartment and stepped inside.

Cybil's smile flashed quickly. "We'll see if you say the same once you've seen it," was her only reply. She gestured Miranda through the door.

The girl wasn't lying - it really wasn't much. A single room with the basics of a bed-sitting room, a tiny door that presumably led to a tiny bathroom, and a stingy little corner demarcated as the kitchen by a couple of counters, stove/oven, sink and a little fridge. The walls were the same dingy white as the door, and the carpet was a depressing off-beige. It smelled faintly of old marijuana.

But someone had clearly tried to make it comfortable, if not homelike, and since there was no indication that anyone else lived here, that someone had to be Cybil. There were curtains made of some silvery material on the single window (which was open), the bed was made, and the room was clean.

"You can have the chair," said Cybil, nodding at the old armchair upholstered in a faded green velvet - probably a flea-market special. She herself plopped on the sagging bed, which let out a little groan under her weight. "I don't know what I have in the fridge, but you're welcome to raid it if you want."

Those preliminaries over, she leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "So. Let's talk."

Cybil frowned, and reached over to the tiny little square table that seemed to double as a nightstand. From the single drawer, she pulled out a notebook and a sharp-edged pencil. Within the drawer, if Miranda's eye was sharp enough, she might catch the gleam of metal. It belonged to a gun.

Cybil kept a revolver in the drawer of her nightstand.

"So you see the present and a little bit of the past," she murmured, jotting notes while she spoke. "Mostly you see people you know. And you've been seeing me and some boy a lot. Okay. That's cool." She kept writing while she continued. "So I guess we can assume there's some reason that you're seeing a lot of me. Maybe we're supposed to work together or something. Or...you say you get feelings when you see people? What kind of feelings do you get when you see me?"

She chuckled. "Maybe we're actually supposed to be bitter enemies or something. Who knows, could happen."

Sitting up, her tone became more serious. "Okay. As far as that goes, it's great. That means we're pretty well covered - I see the future. I suppose it's technically called clairvoyancy, but I think that only applies if it's any good to you. My visions come on me totally without warning, they're usually pretty horrific, and more than once I've come away bruised and bleeding from a vision - it's so violent mentally that it affects me physically. They're not at all reliable - they tend to be fragments, things that could happen, but not necessarily that will. Mostly they're a pain in the arse."

With a tired little smile, she asked, "Anything else you can think of?"

Cybil didn't seem too perturbed by this description of her, actually chuckling at one point. "You're not the first one who's said that, so I doubt you're crazy, if that helps," she offered, tucking back her long hair. She wasn't sure if that would really be at all comforting, but hey. It was something to say, and Cybil loathed being left speechless.

When she saw Miranda tensing up, she cursed and reached into the drawer again. She clicked the safety off the gun as she demanded, "What is it? If it's that bloody Peeping Tom of a neighbour again..."

She spun around, taking aim at the window.

But there was nothing there.

Perplexed, she lowered the gun a little and glanced back at Miranda. Then it clicked. A scryer who couldn't always control what she saw.

Setting the gun aside, she went to get some water. If Miranda was anything like her, she'd come back to herself very thirsty - and most likely with a killer headache.