The Masqueraded

6

When they got to the Office, the door was slightly open and there were voices coming from inside. Two male voices and another female voice; and they sounded pretty concerned. Wes stopped Stefan from walking in through the open door just in time, by grabbing the door handle and blocking his way. Mel rolled her eyes at Kira who smiled.

'We can't go in without knocking!' Wes hissed at him. Stefan looked at her sideways and then stepped back.

Wes stood closer to the door and looked over her shoulder at her friends, wide eyed. 'It's the police!' she whispered, 'And there's this other woman'.

'Probably about what happened yesterday', Mavis said thoughtfully. Mel saw Stefan glance at her sideways, with an unmistakable 'I told you so' look. Mel scowled at him and looked away angrily.

What's wrong with him?

Just then the woman in the cashmere coat saw them standing there hesitantly.

'Hey guys!' The woman waved at them. 'Alan, they are here!'

Feet shuffled and Mr. Rothman walked to the door and opened it wider, 'come on in, now', he said, smiling pleasantly.

Wes hesitantly stepped inside the Dean's office and the rest of them followed. There were two people in uniforms, a man and a woman and there was another woman, the one who had waved at them, comfortably leaning against the high top table in the corner of the office, smiling pleasantly at everyone. She was tall with pretty brown curls falling about her shoulders and her fringe neatly sitting on her forehead.

Wes looked at her closely. So did Ru, she couldn't place her in a setting of a potential crime. Unless she was a relative of the girl, of course.

Kira's eyes widened when she saw the woman, properly now, since she was far away from the door earlier and hadn't seen her waving them over. A grin broke across her face. It was mirrored in the woman's face as she stepped forwards. The girls stared at Kira as she hugged her tightly. Then she turned to the rest of them.

'This is my cousin. She's...' she stopped midway and looked up at her as if she was waiting for her to say something. The Dean spoke up on her behalf,

'Detective Quinn is handling Cassie Rouge's case'. He smiled at the confused faces, who having realized that Kira's cousin was a detective and was now in charge of the case, looked at Kira with wide-eyed admiration. Ru had heard about Kira's cousin who "worked for the police" but had not known she was a detective. She was every bit as pretty and impressive as Kira had told her.

Kira quickly introduced her friends to Detective Quinn who pleasantly and somewhat eagerly greeted the girls. She had heard of them before and as she was very attached to her little cousin, she was very happy to meet the girls. She even introduced Stefan, who was surprised but very happy to be introduced so he smiled at her gleefully. After the introductions were out of the way the Dean sat down heavily on the chair.

'I called all of you here because of what happened yesterday' he began grimly, 'I heard that all of you helped Cassie yesterday and I'm proud of you. Cassie is fine, she's still not in a position to give any clear information but whatever we told the police so far turned out to be a bit strange. Strange enough for us to suspect someone in the College premises did this. Since you kids helped this in some way or another, I thought I should call in all of you and let the police explain what they have so far and Miss Quinn here has promised to work with us in the future because she suspects that it has connections to some other cases she has worked with and her line of work is to commit to this sort of incidents'. They looked at each other, surprised.

Melanie looked over her shoulder at Stefan immediately, for she was shocked that it sounded a lot like what he had told her that morning in the hallway and even before that. Stefan didn't grin at her this time but merely gave her a knowing look.