Franklin left Kelly behind quickly and rushed back to his abode. He, too, was shaking.

To think that the Harpy came to town, in the daytime and went straight for the new girl.

Why was everything acting out today? Even him.

He had made Kelly cry.

Why couldn't he just have asked if she were alright?

That was obviously the correct course of action but when she looked up at him all surprised that he had been her hero he remembered just how scared he was to hear that bell and realized the idiot was on the streets. Then that terror multiplied the second he got her in sight and found her stone cold frozen in the street with the Harpy descending on her.

She scared him, and that made him angry so instead of being nice he yelled at her. The girl who literally almost got picked up by a harpy, the girl who probably stared down her own possible demise and he yelled at her.

Way to go, Franklin.

Franklin stormed up the steps that lead to his house that tripled as a Mayor's office, a dance hall and his personal quarters. In the foyer was a grand staircase and at the foot of it a small desk and a row of comfortable seats for people to sit in as they awaited to meet with him. Very rarely were those chairs needed.

Sitting at the worn reception desk was his faithful receptionist Margaret. Cursed to be a cyclops, the woman had one muddy brown eye, a sallow pale complexion and a stringy boring plain brown hair that was always pulled back in a ponytail. She liked to wear floral print dresses that went out of style ages ago and usually read romance books pilfered by the Headless Horseman Book Shop. Today she was staring straight at him nervously.

"Is everything alright?" she asked him but Franklin mostly ignored her. He wanted to shut himself in his office and do his breathing exercises until the fire in him died down and he could talk to people in a normal fashion. Maybe he could try talking to Kelly again, apologize maybe? He made it three steps up the staircase when he heard Margaret gasp.

Franklin turned back to her and watched as she scampered out from behind her desk and rush over to him. She put a hand out but Franklin shied away from her.

"You're bleeding," she said with a pout on her face.

Franklin figured the Harpy had gotten him but since he usually didn't feel pain he wasn't certain where it had, or if it even had. Franklin put a hand over his shoulder and found the leak, he was oozing from his shoulder, and he would have to assess the damage once he got to his office.

"I'm fine," he snapped. "I'll deal with it."

He then whirled away. Margaret was smart enough not to follow him and even if she did she got the door to his office slammed in her face.

Franklin paused when he got into his familiarly comfortable room and he let out his frustration in one long breath. He prided himself in not screaming in frustration and instead letting it out in a long hiss. He stood there breathing until he felt the anger burn out of him and only then did he walk over to his desk peeling his blazer jacket off of his back.

There were three jagged holes ripped through the back of his jacket, starting from his mid back up to the top of his right shoulder. He peeled off his shirt and saw that the rips were worse and the whole crisp white dress shirt was soaked with the black ooze that was now his blood, it had been years and he still wasn't used to it.

He sighed. Great, he'd have to find a way to stitch himself up but his shirt and jacket were ruined.

He heard the door open and close and Franklin frowned. He whirled around to tell Margaret to get out only to get slapped before he could say anything. The door opened again and Margaret came running in as Franklin glared down at Elsa Silk who was glaring up at him, all eight of her arms on her hips as she did so. Franklin still didn't understand how such a small woman could walk so fast in heels six inches high.

"I'm sorry Franklin, I tried to tell her you were busy but..."

"It's okay," Franklin said interrupting Margaret. He glared down at Elsa his own hands on his hips. "What do you think you're doing slapping me? What did I do to deserve it?"

Both women said nothing. Margaret seemed stunned into silence by Franklin's bared chest. Elsa looked too angry to say anything to him. Franklin glanced at Margaret who was coloring with an unflattering red colour on her cheeks and said: "You may go, be sure to close the door after you."

As soon as she was gone Elsa slapped him again. "HEY!" Franklin cried, realizing that she was a lot angrier than usual. "Will you quit doing that?"

"You made her cry!" Elsa snapped and Franklin lowered his eyes. Ah, so that's what this was all about.

Out of all his exes, all two of the ones that lived in town with him, Elsa was probably the only one that he was on good terms with. With Selena they were either on and in love or off and hating each other's guts.

Elsa's approval meant a lot to him and he was always grateful that she was willing to tell him just what she thought of him even if he wasn't that grateful as it was happening.

"I know," he muttered. Because he did and he did feel bad about it, just like he felt bad about everything else he had done to the poor girl in only a matter of two days.

"Well, if you know you're wrong why do you keep doing it?" she cried.

Franklin shrugged to her because he had no idea how to explain to her what was going on with him. He had no idea what was going on with him. He was always so calm and composed, he never lost it around the opposite sex and yet here he was stumbling over words and acting out like a preschool child with their first crush.

Elsa tsked loudly and then grabbed his oozing shoulder and forced him to turn. She took in his injury and said: "Looks like someone needs a patch job," and then forced him to sit down.

Franklin sighed but hunched himself over so she could get at his lower back while she rummaged through his desk drawers to find the sewing kit.

Franklin ran his hands over his face as he waited for her to start. He thought about how he felt, how much guilt he would have to carry and why this girl made him act the way she did. Elsa wiped him down with his destroyed shirt before her nimble fingers went sewing away quicker than he ever could. He could feel her moving up the length of the first of the three gashes quickly.

She was half way up his back when she whispered: "You like her," and Franklin nearly jumped out of his skin.

His non-beating heart skipped a beat but he firmly growled: "No, I do not," and hoped that would be the end of it.

Elsa merely chuckled, her slim warm fingers tracing a pattern along his back in a way that used to be sensual but now just made his skin crawl. "Stop that," he hissed. "You know how I feel about you reading me."

Elsa's gift was that of psychic touch. She could feel the feelings of others in her fingertips, sometimes she could hear whole thoughts even dreams if she concentrated hard enough or the dreams and thoughts were vivid or loud enough. She had always had this gift according to her but everyone else's talents had been gifted by Lydia.

Franklin couldn't help but wonder if the sparkles were maybe Kelly's curse, maybe Lydia put that curse on her to drive her mad?

"Doesn't sound like Lydia, she's more into transformations as you well know," Elsa said. She had moved on to the second gash, starting at the top of his shoulder and working down.

Franklin scowled, he just told her to stop doing that. "Not my fault you think about her loudly," Elsa replied, being sure to flick his ear in a way that annoyed him.

"I don't like her," he hissed knowing that he didn't but not knowing why her insisting that he did was bugging him. "I'm dating Selena you know that."

He could practically hear her rolling her eyes at him though Franklin couldn't see her. He knew how Elsa felt about his current on-and-off-again girlfriend. Not that Elsa wanted to get back together with him, just that she thought Selena to be using him more to elevate her status and that she didn't like him for himself and only when he wore his mask.

Franklin agreed with her, though he never voiced that to her. He guessed that she already knew. Along with knowing that he was still with Selena because she was easiest to get into bed.

"We've confirmed that the sparkles she sees are magic correct?" Elsa asked softly as she moved to the third and last gash. He nodded in confirmation. "Has it occurred to you that if she can see magic, maybe she can help us find the missing pieces we've been searching for?"

Even though she was stitching Franklin straightened and then half turned to her.

No, no it had not occurred to him.

Elsa smiled at him patiently and forced him to turn back around as she went back to work. "Don't you wish you had been nice to her now?"

Franklin sighed mentally cursing himself a million times over. "What do I do then? How do I fix this?"

"She's scared Franklin, not just of you though. I think something's chasing her, she seems frantic to escape here before she's found," Elsa replied quickly. Quick enough for him to realize that she had probably gotten a glimpse of Kelly's emotions too. Problem was none of this helped him.

"So what do I do?" he repeated more firmly trying to hide how happy it made him to hear that she wasn't just afraid of him, that there was some other outside force that seemed to be scaring her just as much, if not more.

"The boy," Elsa said as she finished up stitching the last few stitches. "She loves that boy more than anything. If you can get the boy to like you, you'll probably win her over too."

Franklin scowled. Great. Just great. Elsa knew kids hated him. So basically what she was saying was that he was screwed. And in the process he had screwed over the whole town.