Sprawled unceremoniously on the final resting place of some beloved father or doting mother, Booth evaluated his situation. He felt nothing that signaled the presence of another vampire; no twinge at the back of his skull or a colored thrum that tended to pulse uncomfortably through his consciousness.
He'd received no warning, corporeal or intangible, that someone was coming for him or even that a member of his exsanguination-fond kind was in town…well, aside from the handful of covens that held unreasonable sway over the governing of the country. He'd extracted himself from the daily whirlwind of demonic intrigue and planetary rescue. Los Angeles was no longer trapped in a hell dimension and, even if it were to return through some mechanism of the Senior Partners, there was no reason for him to care. That responsibility, with its terrible consequences and soul-expanding highs, had been passed to those not so tired of the whole thing.
No, the only sensations he was feeling were a flood of panic and a dull, throbbing ache in his posterior that would become embarrassing to treat in the short term. The sigil was an unexpected development. He hated those. They almost never ended in an outcome that he didn't need to drink away in the comfort of his own bathtub. This needed a full-out investigation that he couldn't do right now. Okay, distraction techniques were needed pronto.
"Booth?" Bones was standing over him, her pale face scrunched with worry, blue-grey eyes cast down at him with a glimmer of fear at the corners. "Are you injured?" She extended a thin arm, which he didn't take.
Instead, he emitted a strangled, "We can't dig that up." Yes, that was exactly the argument that would not dissuade his insatiably-curious partner.
"But why not?" Sure enough, she slightly cocked one eyebrow, regarding him warily.
He tried again, but all that came out was, "We just…can't."
Now he saw her face transform into a deeply-suspicious frown. For him to be even vaguely interested in not picking up evidence, well for something other than laziness or impracticality, was profoundly out of character. Okay, she needed to be told the real reason…but here? In public?
She withdrew her arm, bent down, and looked into his eyes, waving a finger back and forth. He swatted her hand away, which only meant that she went into her pocket and withdrew a metallic blue penlight. With uncommonly fast reflexes, she went for his eyelids and attempted to shine the tiny light directly into his protesting pupils. He again flailed his arms half-heartedly in an attempt to halt the neurological exam.
"Bones, stop that, okay? I'm fine." The press behind him had begun snapping not-so-surreptitious photos of his interactions with the doctor.
"No, you're clearly not fine." She stood up, replaced her hands on her waist, and looked down at him with a face not out of place at the head of a misbehaving kindergarten classroom. "You're being more irrational than usual. It could be a sign of the tumor."
Booth grappled with a nearby slab of granite and pushed himself to standing. He cleared his throat and smoothed the bumps out of his tie. "It's not the tumor, Bones. It's…" He fumbled for the right words, still trying to craft a plausible reason on the fly. "There could be something under there from that guy. You know, the Gorgonzola."
"The Gormogon," she chided him. "You know I hate it when you pretend not to know his name."
"Right, him," he pressed on. "You said it yourself that the marking was out of place. Maybe it's a marking of another skeleton or some lost relic. Don't you need to research it first before attacking it with a jackhammer?"
He watched her pale blue eyes scan his face. He tried a wry smile but it felt as forced as his excuses. She pursed her lips and cast her gaze down towards a bare patch on the lawn, looking profoundly uncomfortable with the thought she was forming.
"Of course. I'll…consult with someone in the antiquities department to make sure that we're not missing anything. Thank you for thinking about the potential significance."
He couldn't make out whether this was sarcasm or part of the elaborate lie he was forcing her to accept. "Bones, lis-"
"No, Booth, it's okay." She looked up at him, put her hand lightly on his wrist, and gave him a slim smile across her perfect features. "You obviously have very good reasons for whatever this is. I trust you. Meanwhile, let's get the judge back to the Jeffersonian."
She released him from her cool touch and strode purposefully up the hill, calling out to the techs to bring everything nearby to the Jeffersonian. Booth stood there for a moment, rubbing his wrist thoughtfully. Her trust, he thought ruefully, which he was going to shatter in the next few hours. He pulled out his phone, dialed a disused number, and had an undesired conversation with a decidedly unsavory contact. He closed the phone and nearly threw it into the pit beneath the tent before realizing that coating his electronics with corpse gunk was going to void the warrantee.