Midnight Shadows
Nicolette couldn't sleep.  She'd gone to bed a little early having physically worn herself out flying the skies of some more rural areas of Louisiana to get used to the heft of a new mace, but physical tired wasn't drawing her into sleep.  She tossed and turned.  She tried to sleep with her wings out and with her wings in, upside down in the bed and right side up.  She'd even tried warm milk (and warm milk was something that she hated.)  Nothing was doing the trick so, finally, after hours of trying to doze off Nicolette simply gave up.  She just couldn't sleep and lying in bed wasn't going to do anything but make her grouchy.  Her only option was to sneak out and for once Nic was glad Rex was often distracted these days.  It made it so much easier to crack open a window, swing outside and then with a swoop, lift off into the air.

St. Roch was beautiful from high above with all the streets dotted with somewhat charming street lights.  They looked like tiny strings of diamonds or pearls in some of the older parts of the city.  They all lead somewhere, but Nic knew where she wanted to go.  The Museum was the closest thing she had to home outside of Egypt.  Since lots of the items in the Museum had come from Egypt it wasn't much of a stretch and even from her youngest years, the time before Rex's father had disappeared, Nicolette could remember sitting cross-legged in some of the galleries of the museum with her father and just feeling the ancientness of the artifacts.  They didn't exactly call to her in the literal sense, but she'd always felt drawn.  Just like tonight.

She entered the code on the security panel, slipped inside the building, and made her way through the darkened halls.  First it was the public galleries and after she finished those she rounded the corner, went through the big double oak doors to the private gallery and...stopped.  Directly in front of her was an empty case.  An empty case that wasn't supposed to be empty.  Nothing had been visibly broken, but the contents of the case hadn't been taken out properly.  The Diminsiometer was missing, it's holder knocked to the bottom of the case.

This wasn't right.  After a quick search of the facility, Nic grabbed her phone and made a surprising phone call: she called Wendi.

"How fast can you get to St. Roch's?"

She didn't even attempt pleasantries.