AN: I've been good this time and completed it before I'm posting. One a day for the next four days culminating on Halloween! And yes this might have been somewhat influenced by the storm that just hit the UK. :)


In a pitch black blur of ferocity the rain clattered the windows of his home and Castle lifted his head, sighed and finally gave up. He closed the lid of his laptop and stared through the glass of the book shelves out into the living room, the loft stood silent and unyielding as the storm raged on.

From there his eyes followed the flickers from lightning flashes that echoed ominously around the room, bouncing from surface to surface, from wooden floors to piano keys with no care where they fell or what shadows they left decimated in their wake.

The bright white light brightened the room for the barest of seconds before the darkness won out again and his pupils dilated and contracted as they bore the brunt of each sudden flash.

The midnight hour as Halloween rolled in and his home subjected to power outages and raging storms seemed fitting and for once not so much cliche as traditional. It was a dark and stormy night and in his life he remembered those as being some of his best.

Another lightning strike nearby sent cascading shards of illumination dancing through his home and drew his attention back to the living room, and to the lone figure perched at the windows edge.

She was silhouetted by the gloom and watery moonlight that slunk in the through rain smeared glass, tumbled past the silken drapes and pooled messily at her feet. The darkness bore her into being and gave her up to another flash of blinding white light.

Unable to tear his eyes away from her as the light faded and the thunder rolled in hard, heavy, powerfully rattling the windows and setting his teeth on edge, Castle watched a lazy hand drift from hip to thigh and back again. She drew her arm about her chest and watched the night race by.

He sensed her movement rather than saw it, felt the waft of her ethereal presence resonate through the room and when the next bolt of lightning hit it appeared to strike his street, his building, perhaps his very heart and he knew instinctively where she would be.

In one beat of time that lasted no longer than a sigh she moved, cast away from shadow and drawn to him. From dark to light, from the window staring into darkness to the doorway of his office, their eyes met and she crossed the threshold coming to dead stop in front of his desk.

Long dark hair spilled down her shoulders, rippled in waves that lapped at the curve of her spine, caressed her neck in ways his fingers longed to. It spilled into the valley of her cleavage, tickled at the edges of the deep vee of her obsidian gown and curled messily about her face.

The satin smooth stretch of material licked her skin as if she had been painted into it. Poured, perhaps. As if both she and the dress had been made as one by an eccentric shaman savant on one long ago dark night similar to this one.

There was nothing of the everyday about her and everything of magic.

When she spoke, he startled, his thick swallow audible in the lightning white of the room before the thunder returned and the rain attacked his windows, screaming for entrance and drowning him out completely.

"It's the witching hour." She spoke, her voice floating to him, deeper than usual and accented in a tone he wasn't sure he had heard before, both new and old wrapped around the way she lay her tongue to the words.

He didn't contradict her, nor comment on the use of her phrase, and the smile that stretched out the width of her bright red lips told him she liked that he stayed silent.

"I have a gift for you, Mr. Castle." She hummed, leaning closer to him, with one hand to the hard surface of his desk as she slid a brown package across the glossy surface.

Unable to hold his tongue any longer he broke his own enforced silence with a single utterance, "Kate?"

She smiled again, a smoky edge to the seductive sweetness, and her fingertips touched his, forcing his eyes from the glowing opal green down to another precious gem that nestled snugly on her finger.

One lone digit teased along the length of his middle finger before she pressed the package further into his hands and stepped back.

"Read it, Rick." She pleaded, though her tone never drifted from teasing, sensual, mystical, "Read it, then come and find me."

His eyebrows knit together and he watched her step around his desk, the long dress whispering her departure with every step, until she paused in the doorway of their bedroom. She turned, slowly, every movement graceful and unhindered by forethought, she laid her tongue to her lip, traced the skin and sighed, her eyes falling to his hands and the package she had placed within them, before slipping into the room and closing the door.

Knowing exactly where she was when she had specifically told him to come and find her held him intrigued, but the packet in his hand had him positively mesmerised.

With slow unfurling fingers and his eyes cast to the bedroom door he withdrew what appeared to be a ridiculously thin manuscript. Cast in withered leather binding he untied a knotted ribbon and pulled loose papers that appeared to be written in her own untidy scrawl.

Casting another glance towards the bedroom door he lifted the pages to his face and inhaled slowly, not even sure why he felt the need to breathe the pages her fingers had glanced. He could almost taste the movement of her pen as it marred and beautified each sheet in turn.

There had always been something of the written word about her, and muse hadn't always done it justice, she was beyond revelation and dalliance and the flighty spirit of inspiration, there was more of magic and mystery to her than he could fathom, light and dark, love and pain, passion and peace.

Castle inhaled once more, imagining the feel of her over the page before he turned his chair closer to the only source of illumination, other than the woman herself, several candles burning and flickering behind him.

A great howl of wind rattled the window frames but before the next lightning flash would come, before it was belayed by a thunderous roar he'd already lost himself in the papers she presented to him.

There was a date at the top and he fought the gasp that wanted to escape free from his chest. The wonderment and natural curiosity set light within him as a lone finger traced the words and he read them again.

It was written two years previously, before they had even begun, accompanied by a simple phrase.

Sometimes I dream of him.