A/N: This is the first Castle fic I'm posting. I know almost everyone's doing it, but I just had to, because I had a dream with a brilliant idea for it. Buahahahahaha. Not nearly as good as Marloww (usually) is, but it's just a fanfiction, so it's not supposed to be, right? I'm putting in some of the things from the spoilers and whatnot for accuracy, but not all of them because it would mess with my plot. Either that or I'm too lazy to fix/write it in exactly.

Anyway. Enjoy. Please review. They're my best friends. :D

William walked in the door and, out of habit, nearly tossed his keys onto the counter where he usually kept them, but instead, he caught himself, tossed them in the air, and caught them.

"Tessa, you ready to go?" he called out to his roommate, and waited a minute but got no respond. "Tess?" he asked again, figuring she was probably listening to her music, and couldn't hear him. But when he wandered into the living room, and then the dining room, and then the bedroom, and found no sign of her, he began to get worried.

"Tessa!?" he called more urgently. "Come on, Tess, this isn't funny! Let's go!"

He entered the room again, and that was when he saw it. His roommate was all dressed already; complete in the white dress she had bought just the other day.

And she was tied to the ceiling, dead. William dropped everything he was holding, and nearly fainted before he could grab his cell phone to call 911.

"Mother, I'm going out now. Beckett called with a case," Rick Castle said, just on his way out of the door.

She came up to meet him before she answered. "You sure you'll be all right, Richard? Do you maybe want to stay off just once case?" she said, looking up at him with concerned eyes.

Castle put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. "I'll be okay, mother. It's probably good to have a case. It will keep my mind off of it."

He didn't need to say what "it" was. They both knew.

No, Rick thought as he approached the scene. No, no, NO! His gut wrenched in his stomach, but he didn't dare let it show. He let Beckett open the door, and he followed her in. He followed her to the room where her body would lay, but slightly slower than usual- barely noticeable to the unobservant eye.

He both wanted and didn't want to see her. To see how her body lay. Mangled on the floor, perhaps, she would be, bloodied and cold. But could he even stand to see her again? Even if she was face down on her mattress?

But he was soon forced to see her, following Beckett into the bedroom- the bedroom he had already seen one too many times. When he entered the room, however, he got confused. He saw no woman stabbed to death in her chair, no body lay in the bed, on the floor, or hiding in the closet. So why were they there? Had they found out? Had they brought him here as a sick joke?

His stomach continued its twists and turns, and he very nearly felt as though he'd throw up. Yet he still couldn't let it show.

"Where's the body?" he asked casually.

Esposito nodded up slightly in response.

That's when he saw her. Fastened to the ceiling as though she were a Christmas tree on the roof of a car. On her forehead there was some sort of symbol scratched or seemingly engraved into it, almost like a branding on an animal. The symbol looked slightly familiar- although he couldn't place it exactly.

"Who puts a body on the ceiling?" Castle racked his mind, searching for something. The scene . . . it was so familiar. Something about it made him feel a pang in his heart.

"Looks like something out of one of your books, right?" Esposito responded, jarring Castle out of his thoughts.

"Oh, so you've actually read them?" Castle teased, putting a face but convincing smug grin on his face.

"No," he responded mockingly. Both he and Castle knew he had, in fact, read the books, but they were looking for any excuse to lighten the heavy air in the room.

"Well then, if you boys are done flirting," Beckett interrupted, "I believe we have a murder to investigate. Ryan?"

Ryan nodded, and relayed the information he had received, "Vic is a twenty-five-year-old Tessa Horton. She's been living with her roommate, William Gavethon, for three years. He found her early this morning when he came to get her for their friend's birthday party they were attending. I now pass the baton to Lanie," he said, grandly gesturing towards the ME.

"Can't tell much 'til we her down, but the prelim COD looks like strangulation, at least from what I can see down here. You wanna take a closer look, Beckett?"

And so the female detective ascended up the step-ladder the uniforms had brought in. She grabbed the small flashlight from her coat, shining it both on and around the body.

"Well, it looks . . . interesting, I suppose," she said. There wasn't much for her to report. There wasn't much she could see.

"Looks creepy is what it looks," Castle retorted. "Who would even do something like this?"

"Well, CSU is dusting for prints right now, so hopefully we'll be able to find that out for you," she answered his supposed-to-be-rhetorical question.

Prints.

PRINTS.

PRINTS!? Castle's mind went wild as he thought back to the night before. What had he touched? What did I touch, what did I touch!?" He looked around desperately yet discretely. But there were too many people around to do anything. He looked around again, and realised that it would be too late any way. CSU had already scrubbed the place clean, and wherever they hadn't, they were working on now.

"Well, let's get her down, then," and Beckett nodded to the CSU guys standing my as she climbed down off the ladder.

Castle moved out of the way, trying, once again, as hard as he could not to give away his thoughts.

Beckett and the three boys all stood side by side as they watched and waited for CSU to place down the body for their further examination.

The five of them- Beckett, Castle, Ryan, Esposito, and Lanie- all hovered around the body once it was placed gently on the gurney.

Castle stood and watched as mostly Beckett and Lanie observed the woman who lay dead in front of them. Lanie took out her tools, and poked and prodded. She looked the body over carefully, turning herself and the body, walking all around. Beckett looked closely, and noticed the smaller, finer details Lanie would no doubt get to very soon. Castle, in his writer's mind, saw it as something resembling a dance. The two women working diligently in perfect harmony like two partners dancing a slow, interesting dance together, weaving around each other at just the right time, together perfectly, their timing spot-on.

Were they not at a murder scene- maybe just not this specific one in this specific apartment- Castle would have smiled at the thought. Or nearly, anyway. He would have kept the idea stored in his brain for later use to write down when he at last got home.

But being here, now? The thought disturbed him. It made him feel sick inside, it made him feel hollow and empty. He could barely believe his own thoughts, his own feelings. He felt like he needed to get out of there- he just needed t o get away- but how could he? He'd never walk out on a murder as odd and strange as this one. One which seemed to come straight from his own mind. Like with their first case, with the Tisdales, when he had murdered them as though re-enacting Castle's books. It would entertain and enthral him. On this first case not only had he helped when asked to come in, but he had come back, nearly begging to know more of it. A case like this one would keep him entertained and interested until the very end.

He needed to escape. But he couldn't. He'd never get out of there now. He was trapped. Not only that- but he was trapped . . . with her . . . .