She lets out a breath, and shakily reloads, relying on muscle memory instead of conscious thought.

"... Damn, I missed one of my shots," she observes, a little annoyed with herself.

"This was a very good job for your first time!" he says, standing up and gently picking up the man to move him back into the room with the other three. James doesn't want to jostle him too much, with the bullet wound there, he'll need to clean it and all. "Check on the kid?" he asks Elaine as he walks. "Children are more comfortable with women than men."

"Thanks," she says, not really feeling it. She did not want to shoot anyone today, or preferably ever...

Regardless, there is a child to rescue, so she re-holsters her derringer and starts heading towards the appropriate cupboard.

Elaine stops mid-pace, brow furrowing.

The... fuck was that...?

James puts the man down and grabs the alcohol they had been drinking to start cleaning the gunshot wound so he can properly dress it.

Elaine holds up a finger to ask him to wait, and be still and quiet for a little while.

He stops and waits.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" asks a muffled voice coming out of the closet.

... no, probably just the weird voices in her head again...

She gives James a vague 'carry on with what you were doing' motion, and then goes to kid retrieval.

"Hey," says Elaine, gently. "We're," fuck what was the name of the company again, she doesn't usually interact with that side of things, "from Blackthorn Security Company, your father hired us to take you home." She opens the cupboard Elliott was stuffed into, and offers him a little reassuring smile.

The well-being and return of the child to his father, and handing over of criminals to the non-occult police, takes precedence over any and all weird feelings that might have occurred. Mostly Elaine is on child comforting duty, and James is on 'drag criminals around and address police' duty.

They're working under the guise of the Blackthorn Security Company, so they're not police. After James has securely tied all four kidnappers (not that he expects they'll wake up anytime soon), he goes back outside to find some patrolling officers and explain what happened.

He can soon find two policemen who, once told what happened, split up so that one can go look at the scene while the other leaves to gather reinforcements and inform the Vickroy family.

After about forty minutes James calls Elaine out of the room. "Police should be arriving any minute now," he murmurs. "I think we ought to leave before they do, otherwise we'll be dragged to the station and it will be a huge waste of time."

That does mean leaving Elliott alone with the police officer, when literally all of her protective instincts say to stand over the child and growl at anyone that comes near, but - she doesn't really want to deal with a huge waste of time trying to interface with the police as not-the-occult-police. Importantly, Elliott has calmed down quite a bit, and is even trying on the policeman's hat. She nods, and they can play hooky. With the police. (When they are also the police.)

As they sneak out leave, James might notice Elaine giving one of the nearby houses a bit of an odd look.

He does notice it. "Something the matter?"

"... Maybe," she says, brow furrowing. "I don't know if it's legitimate Diviner extrasensory knowledge, or, you know." She wiggles her fingers vaguely. "Creepy voices of the occult trying to tempt me into madness."

"Do you have your Sight active?"

"Not currently. I could activate it, but..." She trails off, fidgeting with her sleeve. It seems like objectively a terrible idea, to turn on her magic-o-vision when she's concerned about the magic that's embedded in her soul is fucking with her.

"No, don't. I'm asking because if your Sight isn't active, then it's less likely to be whispers of the things that hide behind our eyes. Not zero likely, with how this stuff works, but... If you don't feel like you're losing control and you're not using your spirituality right now, it might in fact be Diviner intuition."

"Noted. I'd still like to be away from it and do some personal safety divinations where I'm unlikely to be influenced, though." Her mouth twitches. "Before poking it, I mean."

"Clever and reasonable!"

They should hire another carriage because they are actually pretty far from the Nightwatch headquarters, so James will get on that.

Elaine is so incredibly on board with plan: not walking. Not walking sounds great right now.

Relatedly, the minute they are in the carriage she very nearly starts nodding off. Divining is hard work, okay, and she's tired...

Yeah, that happens when you're a new Empyrean. James is fine, so he can stay awake until they get to HQ.