Standard disclaimers apply. Thank-you to my readers and followers, and a special thanks to safe. from. harm and shireling for your reviews. I'm terrible about replying to reviews, but I really do appreciate your comments! :) Keep 'em coming!

This is a short update, but it's taken me an unseemly amount of time to write it, which is sad. Alas...


My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

---Emily Dickson, "My Life Closed Twice Before its Close"

CHAPTER TWO

Nervous Conditions

The small neighborhood of Logan Circle was silent in the early morning. The air was still and weighted down by residual moisture from the weekend's storms. Reid could feel his hair beginning to frizz in the humidity and he ran his hand through it self-consciously as he surveyed the area. The houses on the block were an amalgam of architectural styles and seemed almost incongruous with one another. The house in question was brick, and the three-story façade was completed with a whimsical turret. The townhouse was surrounded by other brick buildings, as well as a few faced in stone or painted a collage of colors: navy, sea green, even pink.

Prentiss surveyed the block. "So this is where the Disney princesses move to retire." Indeed, the street did look rather like a row of castles. Even the stairs leading to the oaken double doors where paved in flagstones and a small brick path curved around the side of the house. The overall effect was charming.

"What did Neve Williams do?" Hotch asked as they passed through the entry gate and the police tape cordoning off the house from the street.

Prentiss shrugged. "A senator's daughter? Probably nothing."

"Do I detect a note of cynicism in your voice, Prentiss?" Reid asked.

"Me? These are my people, Reid," she replied dryly. "The political elite."

"And they say there is no royalty in the US," Hotch replied.

Reid paused on the walkway, gazing up at the house. "Princesses in a castle," he murmured. Privately, he wondered if Neve and her roommate were locked in the castle or if they lived there willingly.

The double doors at the head of the stone staircase flew open and young woman in a pant suit appeared in the doorway. "Are you the FBI agents?"

Hotch, who often seemed to fall into his old role of team leader when Morgan wasn't around, nodded and climbed the stairs to meet the woman. "I'm Agent Hotchner. This is Agent Prentiss and Dr. Reid."

The woman shook his extended hand before waving to Prentiss and Reid, still at the bottom of the staircase. "Detective Crosby. I'm glad you're here. We're all scratching out heads with this one."

Reid frowned, wondering if Crosby would have been so quick to call the BAU if Neve Williams had been another prostitute, not the daughter of well-respected senator.

Crosby waved the trio into the house. "The coroner already took away the body, and the CSI crews have also come and gone, so don't worry about disturbing anything. The victim was found upstairs, in her bedroom." She nodded to the staircase in the middle of the foyer. "I suppose that's where you want to start?"

Hotch nodded. "She was found by her roommate?" he clarified as Crosby led the agents down the hall.

"Right. Nastia Eldridge. According to Nastia, they've been friends since they were in college together."

"Where was that?"

"USC."

USC. Reid found this development quite interesting. If both Nastia and Neve had gone to school in Los Angeles, chances were good that both of them had at least heard of Faye Reynolds. Perhaps the unsub's choice of victims was less random than he had originally thought.

The group found Neve's bedroom bathed in sunlight from the series of windows encircling the room. The room, with its delicate lavender-painted walls hung with smiling photos of Neve and her family and friends, seemed chipper, inviting even. The effect was unsettling, belying the gruesome remnants of the murder: the bloodstained bedclothes and the thick blood spatter on the carpet and the headboard.

Reid glanced around the room, trying to get a feel for Neve. The photos dominated room and most of them where unframed, taped to the wall the way a college freshman decorates her dorm room. The large closet on the opposite side of the room was open and stuffed with clothing. Most of the clothes were light colored – pastels and pinks. A small bookshelf ran along the same wall as the bed and Reid crouched before it, reading the titles. Many of them where children's books, ranging from picture books to easy chapter books.

"What did Neve do?" he asked, looking over the bed at Crosby.

"She was an elementary school teacher."

Reid nodded and started to straighten when he noticed that Neve had several copies of the same book, standing side by side on the top shelf. He reached for one of the books: Every Little Thing by Joey Hennessey. He flipped it open. It had been autographed: "To Neve, who kept us all sane. All my love – Joey."

"What is it?" Hotch asked.

"I'm not sure." Reid replied. He replaced the book on the shelf and turned to Crosby. "Do you mind if I take a look around the house?"

"By all means."

Hotch and Prentiss continued to examine the crime scene, while Reid wandered back down the hall. Some blood drops had bled into the carpet – the unsub must not have wiped his knife after he killed Neve, and blood had dripped from the knife onto the carpet when he left. The hallway was lined with a few paintings. He examined the one closest to him – he could make out the heavy brushstrokes and the shiny, slick effect of dry oil paints. It was an original, a painting of the DC dogwoods in spring.

There was a shared bathroom about halfway down the hall, filled with the normal accoutrements of female life. At the other end of the hall was a second bedroom, the roommate's. Whereas Neve's bedroom was fairly clean and lively, this room was a complete mess. The bed was unmade, clothing was flung haphazardly on the floor or draped over the furniture and magazines sat open on the window sills. The walls were painted black, but someone had been sketching designs in white pencil, almost like a chalk board. Other drawings hung on the wall and on the mirror nearby. Nastia must have also done the paintings in the hallway, Reid decided.

On the bedside table was a single photo, of a woman (Nastia?) and a man, sitting on the trunk of a car with California license plates. Neither of them were smiling, both were dressed in black and seemed to share the same intense, emaciated expression, the type of look long-term heroin addicts had. The man's eyes were dark and hard – almost humorless. The same book he had noticed in Neve's room was sitting on the table. It also had an inscription: "For my Nancy. – J"

Reid flipped through the book. About midway through, he found a folded newspaper article.

Joey Hennessey Found Dead

Author Joey Hennessey, best know for his neo-noir novel, Every Little Thing, was found in his Georgetown apartment early yesterday morning, dead by an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. The death comes as a shock to the D.C. writing community, who considered Hennessey one of its greatest rising literary stars.

"We all thought Joey had such talent and showed such promise," said Ivy Redman, one of several local authors who had worked with Joey in recent months. "We were all eagerly awaiting his second novel."

Hennessey's body was found by his housekeeper around 8 o'clock yesterday morning and he was declared dead at the scene an hour later. No note was found at the scene…

Reid glanced from the article to the photo and back again, rereading the article to ensure that he'd remember it. He tucked the article back into the book and returned it to its spot on the bedside table, before pulling out his cell and dialing Garcia's number.

"What can I do for you, lover boy?" Garcia asked by way of greeting.

Reid chose to ignore her comment. "I need you to look up a book for me."

"A book?"

"Yeah. It's called Every Little Thing, by a guy named Joey Hennessey."

"That sounds vaguely familiar."

"Both Neve Williams and her roommate have signed copies of the book in their rooms."

"That's one hell of a coincidence. Well, maybe not a coincidence, but at least it's curious," Garcia noted.

"That's what I was thinking," Reid replied. "See what you can find out about the book and the author. One of the women has an article about his suicide in her book, but I want to know more."

"Sure." He could hear Garcia already tapping away at her computer. "I'll call you when I know more."

"Thanks." He shut the phone and left the bedroom. Hotch and Prentiss were waiting for him on the landing. "Find anything?" Hotch asked.

Reid shrugged. "I'm not sure yet. Detective Crosby, where is the roommate now?"

"Nastia Eldridge? She's staying with another friend, Autumn Aldrin. I have the address here." Crosby pulled out a notebook and scribbled the address onto a blank page, handing it over to Reid when she had finished.

Hotch thanked Crosby and promised to keep in touch before the agents left. No one spoke until Hotch had pulled the black SUV away from the house, guiding it towards the Georgetown address.

"The roommate's an artist," Reid said finally, from the back seat.

"What are you thinking Reid?" Hotch asked, glancing at his colleague in the rear-view mirror.

"I'm not sure what to make of the unsub's choice of victims. I know it's dangerous to make snap judgments, but just going off of our basic knowledge, I would have figured the unsub to choose the artist, not the elementary school teacher. I mean, Neve and Nastia seem like polar opposites, judging by their rooms. Of the two, I'd say Nastia better fit the femme fatal motif."

"But if the unsub believes that debuting is synonymous with prostitution, he might have felt targeting Neve was justified."

"Could be." But Reid was troubled. Something didn't make sense, though he had yet to figure out exactly what puzzle piece was missing.