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Cybil took a long, slow breath and tried to get ahold of herself. She didn't know why the suggestion had riled her so much. Just...something about it had hit her the wrong way, and she'd had no way of expressing just why. But she'd have to get over it, she thought. Whatever Abigail had done to get it that way, the powers were theirs now, and she had to find their Abigail and find out what, when, who and how.

Then they had to get rid of whatever had killed Abigail.

"Hey, Miranda?" she said absently when the girl spoke up about going home. "Just one thing before you leave. Do you think that tonight, you could write up a description of Abigail? As much as you saw of her. Hair, face, clothes, height, weight, everything."

Mark looked up with an ingenuous smile. "Then I can draw her for you, right, Cyb?"

"Yeah," Cybil confirmed. "Yeah, then you can draw her. Then I can try to match her using photos and portraits if we still don't have anything by the time we meet up again tomorrow. See you after school tomorrow, I guess, Miranda. I might not be off work yet, but Mark'll be here." She glanced at Mark, who nodded, and continued. "And I'll get back as soon as I can."

Plans spelled out, she went back to her computer, waving an absent goodbye over her shoulder.

Cybil waited until Miranda was gone, then flicked her attention to Mark. "You're staying here tonight." It was not a request, and they both knew it.

Mark wrinkled his nose a little. "Your neighbours won't like it," he pointed out. "That old lady thinks I'm gonna sneak through her window like a cat burglar and cop all her silver."

Cybil rolled her eyes. "Screw the neighbours. If we're all in this together, I want you here where I can find you. And where the things can't. You can have the bed - I'll use the loveseat." She grinned. "I'm shorter than you."

This was true - Cybil wasn't a small girl by any means, but Mark still had about three inches on her.

"Okay," said the boy reluctantly. "But don't make that an excuse to stay up all night doing research. There's time, right?" He shrugged. "Miranda will be back tomorrow, with a description. And then you can use it for pictures. So don't think it all has to be done tonight.

The blonde snickered. "Okay, Mom," she replied. "Now go to bed. I'll just wrap up these pages."

As soon as he was curled up - and off in dreamland in very short order - Cybil turned back to her computer.

((OOC: Timeskip?))

Cybil had indeed, as Mark had figured, stayed up ridiculously late into the night searching for any leads - on Abigail Lavalle or any other Abigail of the right time period that could, in turn, lead them to their Abigail. It had been a long, tedious and irritating process.

Now the blonde was at work, and had left Mark to deal with the results - as well as continuing the search.

So he sat in Cybil's desk chair while he stared blankly at his shaking hands. He was starting to ache, and he knew the signs. The boy needed a fix.

It was three in the bloody afternoon. Cybil wouldn't be home for a few hours yet. He was trying to talk himself out of leaving the apartment, going down to the street, making a score, coming back. Miranda would be here soon, and they were trying to track...someone. Something. He couldn't quite remember.

God.

His eyes swept from the door to the computer and back again. He couldn't quite focus. After a second, he curled his trembling fingers around the arm of the chair and fixed his eyes on the computer screen. Cybil wanted him to beat this. He had to try.

So he kept one hand wrapped around the arm of the chair like a lifeline and focused on Abigail as best he could.

The door creaked open at last, and Mark's ghostly pale face peeked around the edge of it. When he spotted Miranda, he blinked several times as though assimilating her presence, and then nodded weakly. "Hi," he rasped, stepping back on legs that were threatening to stop holding his weight.

He made his stumbling, shivering way back to the computer chair and dropped into it like a stone. The boy looked miserable, and felt ten times worse. While he stared unseeingly at the screen, he waited for Miranda to come inside.

"Is it hot in here, or am I just imagining things?" he asked when he heard footsteps that he figured were hers.

She was supposed to have something. Wasn't she? Something he was supposed to do something with? He couldn't remember. All logical memory and thought processes had begun to escape him around noon, and by now he could barely remember a thing.

Hopefully she would fill him in.

Mark stared at her for a few blank seconds, then laughed weakly. "Draw. Was that what I was supposed to be doing?" He picked up the pencil and frowned determinedly at his fingers until they stopped shaking. It seemed that despite Cybil's fears, the boy had plenty of willpower when he wanted to.

"I'll be all right," he muttered. "Could use some water, though. Should probably go get it." Setting the pencil down again - too slowly, too carefully - he staggered to his feet and shuffled into the kitchen in search of a cup. With his hands shaking the way they were, he'd probably break anything more fragile than plastic, though.

He'd seen the worry in her eyes, and it made him twitch a little. She thought he wasn't capable of doing what he'd promised he would do. Well, he'd show her.

And hopefully Cybil would bring something home with her to help with the symptoms. She'd done it before - tried to ease him off. It hadn't stuck.

But then, he'd had no reason to want to make it stick before.

After a few minutes of aimless searching, he stopped in the middle of the stingy kitchen floor and looked pleadingly at Miranda. "What did I come in here for?" he asked.

Mark's skin was unnaturally warm to the touch, and he was jumping and quivering as though there were needles randomly stabbing him everywhere. He glanced at Miranda uneasily as she led him back to his chair. "I don't...I should...Cybil," he said abruptly. "Cybil had some stuff for me somewhere. To...to ease the pain, she said. I don't know where she keeps it. I should..." He trailed off as his train of thought vanished.

Then he shook his head and carefully seated himself in the chair once again. As he picked up the pencil - dropping it twice before managing to force his trembling fingers to tighten around it - he looked up at her.

"You said you brought something? For me to draw?" he asked.

As attempts to change the subject went, it was obvious and pitiful. But Mark didn't want to talk about his symptoms anymore. He just wanted to get the drawing done so that Miranda would go away and he could suffer the first wave of withdrawals in peace.

Of course, if she left him alone he'd probably go down to find his dealer as soon as it got to be too much. But he was so deeply in denial about that it almost amounted to the same as refusing to go.

Mark's eyes were desperately young and pleading as he looked up at her, but his voice remained steady. "I know," he said. "Didn't think you would." When she wrapped his hands around the cup, he flushed a little bit, embarrassed that she had to help him.

He took a moment to wish that the water was something a little stronger, but he drank from the cup with the same careful concentration he was bringing to every movement. "Okay," he murmured at last. "Okay." Equally carefully, he set the cup aside and turned to read the description.

Instantly, he frowned. "You're going to have to...to work with me on it," he said hesitantly. "There isn't enough...shape. Forms. Textures. What face shape did she have, what eye shape, like that." He picked up his pencil after a couple of tries, and took the sheet of paper he'd set up earlier.

"Let's start with face shape. Was it like a...diamond, square, oval, heartshape?"

Mark's gaze stayed determinedly on the paper as he began to sketch in an oval face. Following the written description as well as her words, he added long hair, long bangs, delicately shaded to give the impression of blonde or light brown. "Eyes," he said when she stopped talking. "More than just...colour. Shape. Distance apart. Lash length. Eyebrow shape. Whatever you can remember." He managed a weak smile. "I know it's tough to...to describe in that much detail."

He kept sketching while he spoke, reading off the paper. Though each stroke was slow and determined, a face was gradually taking shape under his hands. A pretty face. Nothing groundbreaking, not a stunner, but a quietly pretty woman. The eye area remained blank so far, as did the mouth.

"Mouth shape," he continued. "Curvature, fullness. Pressed together, you said. Makes it...makes it hard...harder. But it..." He trailed off and returned his attention to the picture, following Miranda's written instructions. Although he wasn't doing a full-body picture yet, he might end up doing so, so he paid careful attention - well, as careful as he could manage at the moment - to the girl's description of Abigail's clothing and stance as well.

Substituting in what he felt would work best given the current look of the face, he eventually turned the sketch around and offered it to Miranda. "Is this...her?"