The rain made the new house chilly; she loved this little house by the sea, but it was definitely a bit of a fixer-upper. So when Killian tried to get up to get ready for the day, Emma protested with every skill she possessed. She lay on top of him at one point, pinning him to the mattress, declaring that she couldn't be warm without him to share body heat. He'd smiled. "You know, love, I can very easily just," he grunted, and flipped them, "change this up, and make life very difficult for you."

"Please," Emma rolled her eyes.

"Well, if you're asking, darling…"

She managed to keep him in bed for one more, very enjoyable, hour, before he insisted that he really did have to go and attend to a few things. Killian kissed her forehead. "I'll see you later, love," he murmured against her skin.

Emma reached out from under the covers to grab his hand before he left. "Love you…" she mumbled.

There was a sound like a little laugh. "I love you, Swan."

He squeezed her hand and let it go. His footsteps retreated, leaving only the sound of the rain on the roof. Then, two small impacts at the foot of the bed told her that Killian's cats, Si and Am (seriously) were going to take up his space. It was as perfect a rainy morning as it could be without her pirate. Emma readjusted under the covers, determined to doze for another hour or so under the warm covers. She smiled, breathing in the scent he'd left on the pillow.

Half of the sheriff's station had been converted into a magical study. Elsa was desperate to get home to her sister, to see what had happened to Arendelle in her absence. With the portals closed and magic beans extremely hard to come by, Regina had offered up her books. The two witches were often seen with their heads bent over books, experimenting with their magical styles. Occasionally, and much to Emma's surprise, Henry would show up to help with research. Emma helped when she could, but with Ingrid gone, she was back to her beat as sheriff, and work had been piling up.

Killian had discovered a magical means to defeating Ingrid a few weeks before. There had been a magical hat, one that absorbed a magic-user within it if left tilted. Emma had questioned him on where he'd found it, but he merely said that he'd picked it up the night she'd almost given up her magic. It had been in the abandoned manor, it appeared to be a valuable object, and it was hard to shake his pirate ways. What had been stranger still was that Elsa knew about the hat. She said it was a dangerous magical object, one that her sister had stolen from an evil sorcerer, and that the sooner they got rid of it, the better.

Killian had promised to dispose of it, and Emma hadn't seen hide or hair of it since. The effects of the magical hat had been bothering the back of her head for a while; why had they seemed so familiar? She was sure she'd never seen such a thing. Golden light, a vacuum of sound… The phone rang, startling Emma from her thoughts. "Sheriff's station," she answered automatically. She frowned. "Another one? Okay, give me details…"

Missing person reports were coming in at an alarming rate. In the last two months, seven people had vanished without a trace. Emma had a hunch that, with the ice wall gone, some of them had left—and she didn't blame them. Things got rough in Storybrooke. People had died. But others… A lot of calls insisted they'd never leave, not without telling someone first. So far, two of the nuns and Tinkerbelle were missing, as were two old women named Irma and Margo, and two brothers named Byrun and Bog. This call would bring the total to eight, a man named Arron.

Emma stormed out of her office and to the large map of Storybrooke she'd pinned to the wall after the third missing persons report. She put up another pin and some basic information in the last known location of Arron, and stepped back, trying to see if there was any kind of pattern. She felt David approach. "Another one?" He asked.

"Yeah… It's so frustrating, I can't… I can't see how these would all be connected, but they have to be. This isn't a coincidence, Dad."

They both crossed their arms, leaning against his desk, almost in perfect sync. If she had been less frustrated, she would have smiled: they were astoundingly alike, giving major points to nature over nurture. David pointed. "Look. Five of the victims lived outside of central town, right?"

"Yeah, but the fairies lived at the convent."

"Maybe they found it constricting."

Emma glanced over at him. "You're suggesting they all just left, without a word? Irma and Margo, maybe, but the brothers had family. The fairies should have been in touch with the Mother Superior. And this new guy's wife is practically hysterical with worry."

David sighed. "Just throwing out ideas. What about connections, how are they all alike?"

She stepped up to the map, contemplating over each bit of information she'd put up. "Nothing… I mean, a lot of them are older, so maybe they wanted to see some of the world outside of Storybrooke… wait…"

The last curse had created census books, they'd combed through them trying to see if Anna had ever been in Storybrooke. The books not only had a list of their Earth names, but their Enchanted Forest counterparts. Regina had added that bit in the first curse to make sure everyone was supposed to be where she wanted them. Maybe the clue was in the books… "Elsa?" Emma raised her voice. "Where did we put the census books?"

"In the storage closet down the hall," Elsa responded, her brow knit in concern. "What's wrong?"

"Might have a breakthrough on the case," she said, and hurried down the hall, David a step behind.

They carried the stacks into the main office, and Emma wrote down each name as they found them. Elsa aside, the internet was useful in providing facts about fairytale characters she was unfamiliar with (though apparently there was a movie coming out about Elsa and her sister in a few months, and Emma was torn about taking her to see it; purely for research, of course, not at all for her own amusement) The results came quickly. Yzma. Mim. Chernobog. Belabog. Arawn. She knew the nuns were fairies already, but now she knew that all eight missing persons were also magic-users of some kind. "Magic," she breathed. "Magic-users are disappearing…"

Her stomach felt like the bottom was being sucked out. Like a vacuum… David must have seen something on her face. "Emma?"

Her cell phone rang. It was Belle. "Emma, I need you to come pick me up."

"Belle, this isn't a great time…" Emma felt lightheaded. The image of Killian overturning a magical hat wouldn't leave her head. But why? Why would he…

Belle wouldn't hear of it. She sounded frantic. "Emma, it's an emergency, and we need to go. Something's wrong with Rumple, and I saw Hook…"

Her heart sank. "Where are you?"

"I'm at the shop."

"I'll be there in two minutes."

Emma was tensely silent as she followed Belle's directions. Killian wouldn't, he couldn't be the person behind the disappearances. Her gut told her he wasn't in the wrong. She trusted him, he was there for her at every turn, and he'd promised her he was a changed man… But the magical hat… magic-users disappearing… a long-standing grudge against Gold, the most powerful sorcerer in town… How had he even known about it, what it could do?

A note, half-hidden on her desk under a pile of papers, surfaced in her mind: a John Doe, reported missing almost four months ago. His neighbors hadn't known his name, or who he had been in the Enchanted Forest, just that he had been a kindly old man often seen puttering around in his garden. Until the day he wasn't. Normally, she would have been more on top of it, but it had been called in when the battle against Ingrid had been heating up, not long after her first date with Killian… the night he'd started acting a little oddly…

Her hands gripped the steering wheel harder and she shifted into a higher gear. Belle's gasp at the speed went ignored as Emma recognized the path they were heading to: the manor where she'd almost given up her magic, where Killian had found the hat.

At the gates, Emma slammed on the brakes and threw the Bug into park. She and Belle hurried out of the car and up the path. The door was unlocked, which made things a hell of a lot easier to sneak in. Emma swallowed hard, and drew her gun as they entered. She really, really didn't want to have to use it, but she also really, really didn't like where her thought train was going… No. He wouldn't do that to her. He'd promised.

There were voices not far away, male. Emma held her fingers to her lips. "I need you to stay here," she whispered to Belle.

"What?" Belle cried, and Emma shushed her impatiently. She dropped her voice. "No, no, of course not, I want to help!"

Emma didn't want to tell her that this might end in a way she didn't want to see. Someone was going to get hurt, physically or magically or both. She also knew that if it were her, she would have ignored all orders to stay behind. "It might get ugly," she said. As Belle opened her mouth to argue, Emma rushed on, "But give me five minutes to try to talk them down. If we don't come out, then you can try."

"Okay," Belle nodded, lips pursed in frustration.

Emma took a deep breath to try and calm her racing heart, and crept down the hall. A floorboard creaking behind her said Belle was moving into position to watch her back, and see where she was going. The voices grew louder. Gold's voice was calm, but Killian's was growing more frantic. Emma frowned. She listened for a moment, Gold's calm cadence revealing nothing but control of the situation. Unless they were really good actors, her earlier suspicions were vanishing, and she felt nothing but relief—which was quickly replaced by guilt for even suspecting Killian, but then there were too many questions about what… She ground her teeth together, shutting her thoughts up, and kicked the door down, gun raised and ready.

Killian whirled. "Swan, no—"

He cried out, stumbling and Emma glanced from him to Gold. Gold held a glowing red object in his hand—a heart.

Killian's heart.

Emma's blood ran cold. She raised her gun to her eye line, dropping into shooting position. "Drop it, Gold, if you know what's good for you."

"Miss Swan," Gold was no more rattled than usual. "The captain here assured me he hadn't warned you of any of his ongoing… activities."

"He didn't have to; I put the pieces together this morning. The only thing that didn't fit was him. But this? This makes a lot of those make more sense," Emma challenged. "All those missing people, the magic-users? You were behind it somehow, making Killian do your dirty work?"

He chuckled. "Right as usual, Emma, but don't think your dearest is innocent in all of this."

"Emma, just… go—" Killian cut himself off with another scream as Gold tightened his grip on his heart; he fell to his knees, and Emma took an involuntary step towards him.

She tried to talk Gold down. "What'd he do this time, break one of your toys? Steal a baseball card?"

"Threatened my marriage," Gold's voice hardened.

Emma threw him an incredulous look. "How would he do that?"

"That, dearie, is between the captain and myself. However, I'm afraid his usefulness has run its course. He has but one last use to me," Gold sneered, and raised Killian's heart.

Emma shouted, running to Killian as he fell sideways. His hand went to her hair, gripping loosely; his mouth formed words, but the blood was roaring in her ears and she couldn't hear them, couldn't read what he was trying to say, the word "no" running on repeat in her mind, maybe out loud. "Rumple, stop!" Belle's shrill scream carried across the room.

Emma didn't need to see what happened, because the light was fading from Killian's eyes as he went still in her arms, his breath leaving in a final gust from his body. She knew he was dead when his hand fell from her hair.

This fic will have multiple chapters. It is complete, and I will be posting the rest as edits are completed. Reviews are always encouraged.