...or not?

Well, Elaine is going to do chores around the apartment. There's laundry to do, and laundry is a rather all day affair. Between steps, she'll get her family's stuff in order in preparation for moving out, and clean the apartment up for the same reason. With her new salary, they can absolutely afford a better place to stay, and sharing a bathroom with everyone else in this apartment complex is. It's a trial, is what it is, and she will not miss it one bit. She was tempted to go apartment hunting, but Benson will be back any day now, and has a better feel for the renting market than she does.

She has a modest lunch, finishes her apartment cleaning efforts, brings in and folds the laundry, then. Hm. Really seems to have run out of things to do. Mending of clothes, maybe? It needs doing, and no one had been doing it, so. She can, she supposes.

James continues to follow the unskilled Diviner, but sends Dunn a message about what he's seen so far.

He seems perfectly content to not do anything suspicious at all. He's still hanging around near the Moretti household, but he's grabbing lunch at a bakery and no longer keeping close watch of his target.

Well, Elaine is of the opinion that the rest of today will be a boring day, mostly spent in. It includes, but is not limited to: mending, sweeping, scrubbing, studying some of her old notes, and eventually making dinner. At one point, it involves taking advantage of having a policeman stalking her, and taking a slightly questionable walk through the not-great neighborhood, just to get some air.

Eventually, after her sister has come home and eaten, she goes to bed.

And after he's confirmed using divination that everyone is asleep, he quietly stalks into her apartment.

He's so cute!

Captain, would you do the honours?

Indeed.

Hello, Ms. Moretti's stalker, you have now officially broken the law, and are accordingly drawn into a Nightmare.

(This is a little overkill for a Sequence 9, but they are concerned of attempts at suicide to escape questioning, so. They're being careful.)

He... resists? It seems like he's resisting somehow. Being Sequence 9, that almost certainly means he's got an Artefact on him that's protecting him.

Hmm.

"Captain," James murmurs, in the hallway outside Elaine's apartment, "draw Ms. Moretti into a Nightmare and ask her to spook the man outside with her gun," he suggests. "We can probably subdue him if we have no physical barriers between us and him, and he doesn't seem to have noticed you."

He gives a nod.

???? weh?

Okay? Okay. She can do this.

Conveniently for Elaine, she and Melissa sleep in the far room of the (tiny) apartment, and Benson is still away. So she can quietly draw her gun from the safety of behind the door, and then open the door with her gun already pointed at the intruder.

"Good evening, sir. Do you often make it a habit to creep into the apartments of sleeping women in the dead of night?"

The man freezes from where he'd been looking through the contents of Elaine's desk and slowly lifts his hands up, his eyes going from the gun to Elaine's face and back as his expression goes from surprised to angry. The crimson moonlight turns his expression almost colder and scarier than it already is.

Hers, too.

"It would have been smarter to break in when no one was home, you realize. Now you've gone and threatened my sister," that part comes out as a snarl. "Out."

He seemed to be running a calculation in his head about his next move but whatever Elaine sounded like when she said "sister" probably decided it in favour of going meekly. He still doesn't say anything but just slowly backs away, keeping his eyes on the gun, then slowly reaches behind himself for the door handle so he can turn it and open the door.

She will just keep staring him down, gun trained on him, furious.

If looks could kill, he'd already be dead.

Then he should probably be thankful she is not one of the kinds of Empyreans that can do that.

He walks through the door, without turning around, so he can keep watching the gun, and then shuts it.

As soon as he does, James throws a Requiem charm at the wall next to him and incants, "Crimson."

With zero barriers, whatever protective Artefact the stalker is wearing isn't strong enough to completely nullify its effect, so he only gets a bit drowsy.

(Inside, Elaine also gets a little drowsy, but resists falling asleep. Adrenaline and anger has that effect on people.)

And then James recites,

"Calm is the morn without a sound,
"Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
"And only thro' the faded leaf
"The chestnut pattering to the ground."

From the very first word the man starts having difficulty moving, thinking, or reacting. The Lullaby Midnight Poem layered on top of the Requiem charm are too much, and his reaction times too sluggish, for him to actually be able to reach for his own gun, although he tries. As the verses are sung, his hands and fingers get clumsier and clumsier, and he quickly slumps against the wall and starts sliding down, unable to resist the call of slumber.

Which of course opens him up to Dunn.

A third Nightmare in the span of an hour is definitely pushing his spirituality's stamina, but he didn't push very hard in either of his earlier uses of it. The first failed attempt was more expensive; entering Elaine's dream was fairly easy and straightforward, since she was already asleep. And, of course, James has now set this one up for him.

Into the Nightmare with him, where he will not be able to escape via suicide.

Dunn doesn't include James in the Nightmare, this time, as it would be expensive for his spirituality and this time they don't need to keep up pretense with the target. He checks that the man is well and truly asleep, then knocks on Elaine's door.

"Ms. Moretti?" he calls, in a soft enough voice as to not wake Melissa in the other room but loud enough to be heard if Elaine is still in this room. "It's James."