"Valium, Mulder. If you swallow them back like they're M&M's, you die."

They were eating, or rather waiting to eat, in the village's small diner. Mulder had no idea what to call the meal they were about to have. It was too late for lunch and too early for dinner; what's more, distrust of the menu had compelled him to order the all-day breakfast. "But you said there were teeth marks..."

"Which, Principal Waters assures us, were likely caused by rats."

"Come on, Scully..."

She held up a forestalling hand. "She swallowed a handful of pills, Mulder. She went into respiratory arrest and then she died. Her body wasn't found until the next morning. The rats gnawed on her during the night. End of mystery."

Mulder opened his mouth to reply -- argue, really -- when their young, leggy, and oh-so-teenaged waitress dropped his plate in front of him with an unnecessary thud and frowned rather fetchingly. "We, like, didn't have any more hash browns."

"What?" Mulder glanced down at his plate. Home fries. Whatever. "Oh. That's fine. Now, Scu -- "

The girl rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, holding the tray in front of her like a particularly ugly melamine shield. "And no, um, white bread, so you've got, like, whole wheat."

"Yes, I see that." He did, too. "That's okay, that's great. Really." He flashed a quick *everything's-fine-here-now-go-away* smile and turned back to his partner. "Scully, I -- "

"And I don't think the cook knew what you meant by 'overheard,' so, like, he made the eggs sunny-side-up. Sorta. See?"

Mulder looked down at the mess on the plate before him, really looked this time, and all but cringed. Sorta was right. Yuck. Insufficiently toasted toast, too-browned potatoes, and he half-expected the seeping yellow slime to resolve itself into yolky worms, crawl up his left nostril (or maybe the right; it was hard to guess what semi-sentient yolk creatures might do, given half a chance) and attempt to infiltrate his brain.

Not, he thought with a mental sigh, that brain infiltration would necessarily be a bad thing, right now. Not that it would in any way make the day worse.

He'd asked, of course, for eggs *over hard*, something he hadn't done in years, probably since Oxford. The English had an interesting knack for overcooking everything that should have been, maybe, a little undercooked, and undercooking anything that, by all the laws of god and man, should have had the living tar flamed out of it. He'd learned to ask for his eggs *over hard* after his first nauseating encounter with a couple of underdone ones and the startling realization that semi-congealed egg white looked alarmingly like --

"Is that okay?"

"S'fine," he assured the waitress without much conviction. Whoever said the all-day breakfast was always a safe bet had clearly spent no time in Craftsbury Common, Vermont.

"Oh and, like, we only had orange juice." She twitched her head from side to side with what was becoming a grin, and her ash blonde ponytail brushing from shoulder to shoulder. Across the table, Scully almost choked on a mouthful of BLT.

Mulder was not a stupid man. Slow, sometimes, yes, but not stupid. The light having dawned, he put on his best smile and pinned her with what was meant to be a flirtatious gaze. "You aren't from around here, are you" -- he made a show of eyeing the name tag pinned to her shirt-straining left breast -- "Kandee?"

"Nuh uh," she beamed, shaking her pretty, apparently vacant head and setting the ponytail in motion again. "My family just moved here, like, about a year ago, right? From California? And, like, you, you're from the FBI, right?"

"Yes, *we* are," Scully chimed in, her eyes still down. Mulder sensed that if she looked up at him or at Miss Congeniality, Scully was in serious danger of losing it.

Kandee glanced over at Scully as if she really hadn't expected to find an especially unattractive warthog sitting at her station, then turned her attention back to Mulder. "Brittany, she's in my gym class? She said you're here investigating Mrs. Chernoff's murder."

"Your gym class?" Mulder repeated absently, wondering if there was anything edible on the dessert menu.

"Uh huh. She said the school board called the FBI in 'cause they think there's a serial killer loose in the school. Like 'Scream' or something."

"'Scream' or something?" Maybe the coffee -- no, Mulder could see a fine film of oil swirling on top of it. "They do, do they?"

"Uh huh. First Mrs. Stiller, and then Mrs. Chernoff. That's, like, a pattern, right? An accelerating pattern. I saw that on 'The Profiler.'"

Mulder gave Scully a significant look. He'd been suggesting a connection between the two deaths -- albeit not this connection -- and had only gotten some comment about putting his overactive imagination to better use for his trouble. Fabulous mouth on Scully, no question about it, but the things that came out of it, sometimes...

"We're here looking into Mrs. Chernoff's death," Scully answered. "It seems to have been an unfortunate accident. Could I get another Coke, please?"

"Yeah, right." Kandee flipped the tray over to her right hip. "No way that was a accident. Mrs. Chernoff is -- was -- a really hard grader, you know? Everyone hated Mrs. Chernoff."

"Did they?" Scully sounded even more bored than usual.

"Well, okay, not everyone." Kandee took a step closer to Mulder. "But someone must have, right? 'Cause, like, they killed her."

"That's an interesting theory, Kandee." Mulder pulled out his notebook. "Let me take your -- "

Mulder was interrupted by the sound of ice hitting glass. "Coke?" Scully asked, and rattled the tumbler again. "And no ice this time, please?"

Kandee took the tumbler with a tight little smile that said she knew Scully wasn't much of a tipper, and turned on her platform sneaker-clad heel. "Certainly." She tossed Mulder another jailbait grin and bounced off to the kitchen.

Scully arched an eyebrow in the direction of Mulder's notebook. "What was that about?"

"What was what about?" Mulder tucked the pad back into his pocket. "She could have some information, some insight. She seemed eager enough to talk."

"Eager is right." Scully took another bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed. "Please, Mulder. She's young enough to be your daught -- well, definitely to be your daughter's really good friend."

Mulder's mouth twisted. Another crack about his age? Yesterday she'd idly mentioned, post-coitally, that she wished she could have known him "when he was still in his prime." The remark wouldn't have bothered him so much, maybe, if he hadn't just been congratulating himself on having given what he'd thought was a pretty energetic performance.

As if that weren't bad enough, she'd twisted the knife early this morning in the shower. Without warning she had not-so-delicately yanked a hair from somewhere in the vicinity of his right nipple. Then she'd frowned at it thoughtfully, said "Hmmm...a gray one," and let it wash unceremoniously down the drain.

"I'm guessing she was born in about 1984," Scully said, staring off in Kandee's direction. "That would have put you...where, Mulder? At Quantico?"

"Oxford, actually," he said, trying to sound not at all bothered by the question.

He looked down morosely at his runny eggs.

****

The demon made its presence known as Mr. Kopeck approached a stop sign. The bag stirred, and a voice, muffled but nevertheless horrible and otherworldly, rumbled "Expedi me."

Mr. Kopeck almost rear-ended the Volvo in front of him.

"Expedi me," repeated the voice -- set me free.

"No!" said Mr. Kopeck, his heart beginning to pound wildly. "I told you before, I'm never letting you out. If I could send you back to wherever it is you came from, I would."

"Expedi me!"

"No." Mr. Kopeck shook his head emphatically, the hair on the back of his neck bristling. "Tibi non licet exire."

"I will crush you utterly. I will feast on your flesh!" snarled the demon in Latin.

It can't get out unless I let it out, Mr. Kopeck reminded himself fearfully. It's like a genie in a bottle.

"Carnim tuam epulabor!" repeated the demon, his voice booming through the car.

"I know what you did to Mrs. Chernoff," Mr. Kopeck said, gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles showed white. "Why would you do something like that?"

The gym bag shook with the demon's evil laughter. "Latibulum meum aperuit," he said -- she opened the drawer.

Mr. Kopeck shivered. "Jesus, you're an evil little shit."

The demon just laughed harder.

Damn, Mr. Kopeck swore to himself. What was he supposed to do? Nothing in fourteen years of teaching had prepared him for handling warty, foul-mouthed spawns of Satan.

High school students were frequently foul-mouthed and sadistic, but very few of them had horns and came from the dark netherworld.

****

Mulder moved his eggs around on his plate. There was no sense fooling himself; he was pushing forty. He *was* getting old. It was only a matter of time before he was watching Matlock reruns and playing shuffleboard in Bermuda shorts.

"Mulder?" Scully interrupted his wallow in self-pity.

"Hmm?"

"What was it you were saying before Hurricane Kandee blew through here?"

"What? Oh -- Kandee. Did you notice the desk blotter in Principal Waters' office?"

She shook her head. "No."

"There was a note for an appointment. 'Kopeck re: K. Caine, 7th p."

"So?"

"Mrs. Chernoff was killed right after seventh period, in Mr. Kopeck's room. And I'm willing to bet that's K. Caine, who just told us everyone hated Mrs. Chernoff, on her way over here right now with your Coke."

He paused as Kandee set the tumbler in front of Scully. She turned to him. "Anything else I can do for you?"

"Just the check, Miss Caine."

She beamed at him. "Certainly. I'll be right back."

Mulder wore a smug look as he watched her saunter off. The smirk was half self-congratulation at having correctly deduced her name, and half appreciation of the view. Kandee had the kind of perfect ass found only on sixteen year old cheerleaders.

"So what does that prove?" Scully's voice suggested a scowl, so her face wouldn't have to.

"It proves her parents had a weird sense of humor, or really high hopes she'd have a future in lap-dancing."

"I meant the appointment."

"Oh." He half-shrugged. "Nothing, yet, but it seems a little too coincidental."

"Nothing, yet? Look, Mulder, I think you're trying to make connections that don't exist."

"It's possible," Mulder agreed, inwardly discounting the possibility. "But, statistically, the violent deaths of two teachers in a tiny little nowhere high school in the span of six days is suspicious."

Scully didn't quite roll her eyes. "It's anomalous, I agree." A glob of mayonnaise hung mesmerizingly at the corner of her mouth and she swiped it away with her tongue, a move Mulder found rather distracting. "But anomalous is not the same as suspicious."

"Mrs. Stiller called her priest and complained she was having visions of demons..."

"A psychosis which no doubt explains how she got hold of a prescription for 60-odd diazepam."

"...and Mrs. Chernoff had complained to her doctor only a few days before that she was hearing voices that weren't there. 'Weird chanting, and after all the students had gone home' were her exact words."

"I know, I heard her doctor, too." Scully frowned. "So, fine. She said she was hearing things. Chanting. From this we can conclude that she was -- what? Fantasy prone, maybe? Suggestible, if she knew all about Mrs. Stiller, with whom she was apparently friends? In the early stages of an organic or mental illness? Delusional?"

Mulder half-shrugged. Some days he wondered if they were going to play these games forever. "Maybe. But both of them..."

"So, yes, statistically it's an aberration, but that's all it is."

He took a deep breath. "Possibly."

Scully hesitated. Then she sighed and her expression softened. "Mulder, I know why we're here."

"Oh? You do?"

"I do." She nodded. "And I appreciate it. I appreciate that you were actually listening when I said I wanted to get out of DC for a few days." She startled Mulder by reaching across the table and brushing his knuckles, quickly, with her fingers. "And I appreciate that you tried to find an official excuse to use as a pretext. I know you take this work seriously and it has to be hard for you to chase these pretend leads. But there's no case here. There's no X-File. There's nothing here but a couple of unfortunate, unrelated deaths." Her lips quirked into a tiny grin. "And a really useful king-sized four-poster back at the bed and breakfast."

Mulder contemplated this sudden, unexpectedly pleasant assault. Even he had to agree that, while strange, the evidence didn't point to a whole lot of anything. There were some odd elements to the deaths, true, but they weren't all that odd. And to be honest, his Spidey-sense just wasn't tingling the way it usually did when something weird was going on. "Really useful, huh?"

Scully gathered her coat and stood, brushing a few crumbs from her suit jacket. "Pay the bubblehead and I'll show you how useful." She smiled, instantly inflating his ego, and promising to do the same for regions lower.

Mulder returned her smile with one of his own as he threw a twenty on the table and placed his hand squarely on the small of Scully's back. No, he thought wickedly; this no-longer-in-his-prime guy is going to show *you* just how useful.

****

End 02/10

Plausible Deniability & Amanda Wilde (MaybeAmanda)
Address: pdeniability@hotmail.com / maybe_a@rocketmail.com