Essential Listening: Drumming Song, Florence and the Machine

0o0

"Sally – get Sheriff Frost in Mesquite out to the flower shop there, and send Joe and Judy to Moapa – call the Sheriff's Office there, too. They'll probably be more use than those jokers, but don't tell 'em I said it. Two weeks before their retirement, no one's on their game. Try not to tread on any toes, mind!"

He ran out of the room, already on the phone to the DA for several high-speed warrants. With any luck they'd be ready by the time they got to the sites.

"Ms Garcia?" Sally asked, as Grace committed the map on the wall to memory.

"Yes, unknown lady person?"

"Sally," Grace mumbled, mentally mapping out routes.

"Sally," Garcia repeated obediently.

"You get me those addresses and I'll get on the radio – Joe taught me."

"I got ya, honeybear – and don't you even think about steppin' out that door until I know you got back-up, 007!"

Grace, whose foot had been hovering over the threshold at that very second, turned and stared at the phone.

"And you say you're not a profiler."

"You're with me," said the sheriff. "We'll be on channel three," he said to Sally, practically running out the door.

Grace grabbed her phone.

"Garcia, call the Sheriff's Office, I need my phone," she barked, before hanging up and haring after the sheriff. He put his hand on her arm as they reached the main door.

"If you can get those girls out alive, then do it," he told her, urgently. "I don't care how you do it, but I would prefer if we didn't have to explain anythin' to the DA."

"The less you have to put in the report, the happier I'll be," Grace assured him, as they hurried towards the car.

She automatically went for the wrong side of the car and had to change direction abruptly. The sheriff had already got the engine going by the time she was in place; they took off with the door still open as Grace flicked the radio to the right channel. They waited at the junction with North Moapa Valley Boulevard, unexpectedly busy with the school rush. Grace drummed fingers against her leg, willing the cars to part; Brandy Demarest's kids would be being escorted home from school by deputies in Moapa, to a horribly empty house.

"Sheriff Hardy?"

"Go ahead, Sal," he said, into the mouthpiece.

Grace wriggled her toes inside her boots impatiently. This was taking too long. They were so close now – and if the women were still alive…

"Ms Garcia has found five addresses," she explained. "A shop in each town, his home address and a warehouse."

The sheriff looked at Grace, who asked where the warehouse was. The line crackled for a few, endless moments after Sheriff Hardy had relayed the question. Sally's voice broke mercifully over the static.

"Out of town a ways," she said, and gave them the address.

The sheriff must have seen the change in Grace's expression because he nodded.

"That one?"

"That one," she agreed. "He'll want privacy."

They were out of the junction and away before she'd even finished her sentence, tearing up the wrong side of the road, the blues and twos warning the startled commuters of Overton out of the way.

"Send Barney to his house and have Paulie meet him there," he barked into the radio, steering with one hand. "Have Garcia –"

"Ms Garcia had to go," Sally interrupted. "Somethin' about Utah."

Grace's heart leapt into her mouth.

"You'll have to do it then, Sal," the sheriff said. "Put a call through to the dig site and get the forensic teams ready to go. Any location we clear they're gonna need to see. Don't let Dr Rappaport give you the run around."

Grace hung onto the dashboard as they whizzed around a corner; Sheriff Hardy was taking a racing line through the town, the roads emptier the further they got from the school. Their progress was still causing a fair amount of vehicular mayhem behind the SUV, like the tail of a comet.

Utah, Grace thought, as they ran the lights at a busy intersection on the edge of Logandale. And a guy with a machete.

There was no point worrying about it now, she reminded herself. There was nothing she could do for her team; she had her own battle to fight.

They shot around another corner, forcing a red pickup to swerve wildly out of the way. In the few days she had known him, Sheriff Hardy hadn't driven over 30mph, but now he was flooring it like a rally car driver.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you," said Grace, shrewdly, as they zoomed along the 169.

"I wanna get to those girls," he said gruffly, focussing on the road.

She gave him a look. Even though he couldn't see it, the corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

"Just don't tell Joe, okay?"

Grace grinned. The expression was rendered slightly manic by Sheriff Hardy's driving and that old, demon beat in the back of her skull.

This time, they would get him.

0o0o0o0

The SUV pulled up at the side of an anonymous looking metal building amidst a cloud of dust, sirens off. It looked just the same as every other industrial building in Moapa, aluminium walls and few windows.

They ran the last fifty or so metres in the kind of law enforcement crouch that gave you persistent back ache if you kept it up for too long, heads down, firearms drawn and in front of them like shields.

Pausing in a clump of scrubby bushes that were more stick and thorn than leaf, they considered their options. There appeared to be a main door on the front of the building. It was business-like, constituting one of the few expanses of glass on the entire building. Sturdy and difficult to creep up on.

"Locked?" the Sheriff asked, in an undertone.

"Probably," she whispered back. "He won't want spectators."

"Could you get it open without him hearing?"

Grace thought about this for a moment.

"Probably," she repeated, "but I'm not a fan of going through front doors – particularly ones that are see-through."

The sheriff grunted and checked his phone.

"Warrant?" Grace asked, eyes on the building.

"Ten more minutes."

Somewhere in the building, someone screamed. The sound was rendered soft by the metal walls and the distance, but Grace heard it loud and clear. From the way the sheriff froze in place, he had probably heard it too.

"Sheriff Hardy," said Grace, tersely. "I do believe someone is in clear and present danger in that building what we've got no warrant for."

"Due diligence," he nodded. "I'll try my luck in the back and call Sal for some back-up."

Silently, they slunk like shadows around the perimeter of the building. Grace paused beside the glass front door, aware that in the afternoon sunlight she would be quite literally darkening it. While she was eager to catch this slippery UnSub and get the women out of their makeshift prison, she felt an experienced reluctance to present so easy a target to the unknown.

It was a brief pang, but a powerful one; Grace squashed it. She placed the fingers of her free hand against the sun-heated metal and waited for the tell-tale click, hoping it wouldn't be too loud.

The door juddered a little as a magnet at the top and bottom of its frame disengaged.

It was unlocked Guv' honest, she thought, and pushed it gently open.

Grateful that the hinges appeared to appreciate the need for stealth, she slipped inside, gun still up, blinking at the sudden darkness within.

Squinting, she surveyed the room with her weapon, moving it in front of her as though it were an extension of her eyes: two doors, one reception desk – unoccupied.

She checked behind the desk first, finding nothing but a swivel chair and a stack of telephone directories. Moving to the door behind the desk, she opened it as furtively as she could, sweeping her already adjusting eyes across the dark room.

Nothing.

The sweet tang of dust, soil and mould lingered in the air. It had been a long time since had Petersen let anyone in this office. He needed it to be separate to preserve its sanctity in his mind. This was his church, and these women's bodies were his communion.

She slipped back into the lobby and quietly nudged the second door, already ajar, fully open. This door did creak – not enough to cause alarm, but enough to set her teeth on edge.

The sound of a man's voice took her stealthily through it. The room beyond was vast. Grace thought it might make up the space of the entire building, except for the little office out front. It was full of shelving units, stacked high with every kind of plant a successful florist might sell alongside his blooms.

The air was cool and slightly bitter; artificial, she realised.

Ahead, the stark, white incandescence of over-bright tube lights illuminated a small circle of shelving. It was darker around the edges – purposefully so. He wanted to be the centre of attention here; he had used the props on hand to set the stage for his little power-play.

Grace took advantage of the shadows, flitting between the sleeping plants to her goal. She could hear the women whimpering now; it spurred her forward. There were two voices there at least, maybe even three.

They were alive.

The sickening crack of wood hitting flesh made her pause. Examining the sudden stillness that followed she used it to pinpoint their tormentor's position. A muffled groan put him approximately twenty feet away, directly beyond a large stand of geraniums. The moan set her jaw; these women had already learned not to cry out if they could help it.

Creeping into place behind the geraniums, she peered through the leaves: Brandy, Summer and Veronica were in a bad way, their hands and feet bound to three concrete columns that supported the roof. Petersen leaned against a fourth column, coiled up like a snake about to strike.

He was swinging a baseball bat between his hands, spatters of blood on his lilac shirt. Their subject was quite a round, inoffensive man. She could well imagine how these women could be taken in; other than the blood, he was immaculately dressed. He was balding and red-faced. Even now, prowling around three women who could neither fight nor talk back, preparing to continue their 'punishment', their blood on his face, he still looked faintly apologetic.

There was no sign of the sheriff, though he could have been in the deeper shadows towards the back of the warehouse; anything outside the circle of light was impossible to see.

Petersen prodded Veronica Luker hard in the stomach, causing fresh tears to coarse down the woman's already bloodied cheek, leaving salt trails behind.

Grace shifted her weight, her jacket brushing against the fragrant leaves. With great force, she felt the cold, grey rage of the professional copper course through her. These women would associate the scent and sight of flowers with this now.

"You'll never be good enough, you filthy little whore," Peterson spat, and Grace understood why she hadn't heard him clearly before.

Even here, where he had total control, nearing the very peak of his rage, he couldn't bring himself to raise his voice above a whisper.

He began to raise his arm high above his head, the pace and vehemence of his muttering increasing. It was now or never. This next swing might be the last for Veronica, and with an uncle like hers she'd already suffered enough.

Grace focussed on a shelving unit at the back of the warehouse, in a direction she hoped the sheriff wasn't in, and twisted. Plants rattled in their pots with startled violence, falling to the floor with a clatter.

Petersen span, shocked, and ran towards the sound, his bludgeon waving wildly, striking shelves along the way and filling the air with showers of soil and bruised leaves.

Satisfied that he was compounding his own fears by making more of a mess, Grace dashed out from her hiding place and made a show of untying Summer Bryne's hands. Her fingers felt clumsy and slow, but she didn't want to use too much obvious magic.

All three women were wide-eyed and completely silent. Grace would have been willing to bet that none of them were breathing, all four of them concentrating on the sounds Petersen was making, trying to gauge when he would be back.

He'd tied his knots well and Grace hissed in frustration; they did not have time to waste. She ran the fingertips over the thick hemp and it unravelled obediently under her hands. She got to work on the cord binding Summer's legs, giving it just enough of a show before using her magic to make it look plausible.

Loose, Summer staggered over to Brandy and started work on her bonds as Grace hurried over to Veronica.

Keeping an ear on the sounds of destruction from the other end of the room, she hissed at Veronica, "It's going to be okay. None of this is your fault," she added, remembering the woman's past. "It's just fucking awful luck."

The woman whimpered in terror as the ropes around her wrists fell to her feet. Grace's heart was hammering against the inside of her ribcage; this was taking too long.

Veronica twisted in the ropes and the women shared an eloquent look. Petersen's sounds of frustration had changed direction – they were getting nearer now. Grace untied Veronica's ankles without bothering to touch them and rose from her crouch with her gun already up. She strafed across the circle of light, keeping Veronica behind her as she stumbled over to help Summer untie Brandy.

It didn't surprise Grace that it was taking them a long time. Petersen's knots were tied with a practiced hand, and these women had been tied tightly for several hours, restricting the movement and blood flow to their hands.

In the darkness, Petersen gave a roar – the loudest vocalisation Grace had heard from him so far; they had been spotted. Behind her, one of the women gave a shrill shriek as their captor rushed into sight, bat raised and mayhem on his round, angry face.

"Put that down!" Grace shouted, gun levelled at Martin Petersen's heart.

She hoped that the women would have the sense to stay behind her – and that Petersen would have the sense not to make her shoot him. Her shout, and more probably her gun, had made him pause mid-step.

"Get out!" he snarled, nostrils flaring. His eyes bulged unpleasantly in their sockets, making him look oddly cartoonish. "You can't be here!"

"I said," Grace responded, in the firm level voice she used on children and drunks, "put that down."

Petersen wavered as she hoped he might; his mother had been such a strong influence on his life, after all. The lump of wood went down slightly.

"But they're mine!" he whined, almost petulantly. His body tensed and the bat rose again.

Grace narrowed her eyes, flirting with the idea of making a ceiling panel fall on his head. She dismissed it outright. As comfortable as Sheriff Hardy was with magic, no one needed to have to write about it in an official report – especially not one that involved several witnesses.

Besides, she really didn't want to have to talk about it. She wasn't sure Hotch's blood pressure could take it.

"Don't make me shoot you, Mr Petersen," she said, in a stern voice. She took a gamble on the profile: "You don't want that, Mr Petersen, I would have to tell your mother."

Behind her, she heard a coil of rope softly drop to the concrete floor.

"My – my mom?"

Petersen's stare had become a little fixed; the bludgeon lowered again, but only fractionally.

"Do you think she would approve of what you've been doing here? Just look at the mess you've made of your shirt!"

"Of course – of course she would," he stammered. One hand went to the bloodstains on his shirt.

"She would want you to hurt women?"

"Bad girls need to be punished."

His eyes darted back and forth between Grace and the three women cowering behind her.

"Like her daddy punished her?" Grace asked.

Petersen faltered.

"My mother was perfect," he stuttered. "I –"

"I think," said Grace, still in what her colleagues back home had referred to as her 'teacher voice', "that she would be ashamed of you."

"Asha-ashamed of – of me?"

The baseball bat fell another inch. He was in trouble now, and Grace knew that he knew it. If she could keep him talking just a little while longer…

"She would say that you were a disgrace," she continued, mercilessly.

"A disgrace?"

Petersen's voice was increasing in pitch; the weapon was wavering properly now. A little further and Grace would be able to disable him. Movement deep in the shadows caught Grace's eye.

She chose her next words carefully.

"Martin Alexander Petersen," she said in a steely tone, "you have been a very naughty boy!"

"B-b-but Mommy!" Petersen wailed. "It was for you, Mommy! None of them were ever as good as you! None of them!"

He fell to his knees; the baseball bat clattered to the ground.

"Now then, Martin," said the sheriff, emerging from the darkness. "You just come along with me."

He kicked the bludgeon away with his foot.

Petersen was blubbering in earnest now, looking so much like an overgrown schoolboy that Grace was almost surprised he wasn't wearing a sailor suit.

"She's gonna tell my Mommy!" he wailed, hands over his eyes. "She's gonna tell my M-M-Mommy!"

It was, frankly, disgusting.

The sheriff met Grace's eyes for a moment and then put his gun away. He took out his handcuffs.

"I'm sure I can convince Agent Pearce not to tell your mother," he said soothingly, though Grace was sure this was making his skin crawl.

Petersen looked up, pleading. He grabbed the front of Sheriff Hardy's shirt; Grace tensed, shifting her weight to maintain a clear shot, just in case.

"Y-you will? Please, sheriff? I'll – I'll be a good boy –"

"You come with me nice and quiet, and tell me about all the other girls down at the Sheriff's Office, I'll see to it."

He put a steadying hand on the man's shoulder.

"You p-promise?" he snivelled.

The sheriff glanced at Grace.

"If you're a good boy for the sheriff and his deputies," said Grace, meeting Petersen's petrified gaze, "then I promise not to tell your mother."

The UnSub collapsed against the sheriff, who had him handcuffed and hauled to his feet in under a minute.

Sure that he was secure, Grace checked her weapon and radioed for an ambulance. She helped the women stumble out of the warehouse and into the empty office, wanting to get them out of their place of torture (not to mention a crime scene that might convict their captor) as quickly as possible.

She had to support Brandy Demarest, who looked like she had a badly broken leg. From the way they were moving and the hitches in their breathing she suspected that they all had cracked ribs, and maybe internal damage.

"What was wrong with him?" asked Brandy, as she was helped into a chair.

"A great many things," said Grace. "Let's concentrate on you three for now, eh?"

"My babies –"

"The deputies in Moapa are with them," Grace assured her. "They're just fine."

"I've known him all my life," muttered Summer. Now some of the terror was wearing off, shock was setting in. "That bastard! Why us? Why us?"

"It ain't our fault, honey," said Veronica, an arm around Summer's shoulder. "It's about him and his demons," she coughed, hard. "Don't go lookin' for a reason, 'cause you won't find one."

Brandy clutched Grace's arm.

"Thank you," she said, fingers gripping the agent so hard it hurt. "Thank you."

0o0o0o0

"Long day," said Sheriff Hardy, settling himself against the cooling bodywork of his department SUV.

Grace nodded mutely. The opening chords of the migraine she was going to have in about a day were just sounding inside her skull. She was hoping that if she could keep completely still for a few minutes, it might buy her a little more time and it might not hit until she landed back in DC. Either way, she knew that by the following evening she would be a complete mess.

"We got him." The sheriff puffed out his cheeks. "Ten years and we got him. Thanks."

"Team effort," Grace shrugged. "And a large portion of good, old-fashioned stubbornness on your part." She shot him a smile. "Nice tactic, by the way."

"Taking a leaf outta yours and Lightfoot's books," he grinned. "Although, jus' between you and me, I would-a preferred to shoot him."

Grace snorted. She didn't believe it for a second.

"Sheriff?"

The exemplary forensic technician from Vegas was bearing down on them and the sheriff sighed. Grace relaxed a little more, happy in the knowledge that they weren't on her manor, and apart from a lengthy report and debriefing, the rest of this case had already drifted firmly into the range of no longer being her problem.

Grace's phone buzzed as they talked. She glanced down to see a text from Garcia, who had had the foresight not to call, just in case.

Team safe, are you?

A part of Grace's being that had been buzzing with anxiety abruptly relaxed.

"Hey," she said, when Garcia picked up. "We got him."

She watched Summer Byrne being loaded into the waiting ambulance as Garcia talked, assuring her that the rest of the gang were safe and well, and that if Grace had been hurt she would have marched all the way to Nevada to kill her herself.

Beside her, the Sheriff and the tech paused in their deliberations, watching the sun begin to set with the contentment of coppers who had brought all their victims home safely this time.

"Hotch wants you to call him now for a debrief, okay?" Garcia told her.

"Right-o," she said.

Garcia signed off as the ambulances zoomed away, replaced almost immediately by press vehicles.

"You want to split the team?" the technician asked. "Or focus our efforts here?"

"Here, for now," said Sheriff Hardy. "The evidence is fresher."

Grace nodded.

"Let the dead sleep," she said.

0o0o0o0

"You sure you're okay to fly?" Lois Hardy asked, concerned.

"Trust me, I look a lot worse than I feel," Grace assured her, though this wasn't strictly true. "I'll go to sleep as soon as we're in the air."

This wasn't strictly true, either, given her continued edginess about being airborne, but Lois wasn't to know.

"Hmm," she said, and Grace smiled at her obvious disbelief.

She was saved from further comment by the return of Sheriff Hardy, who had disappeared to answer a call.

"Just finished tellin' your Agent Hotchner what an operational asset you've been," he said, grinning.

"Oh yeah?" Grace's eyebrow raised itself at the Met management buzzwords.

"Yeah," he said. "I told him you were a proactive resource with active operational flexibility. You actioned your time well, showing due diligence and proper media compliance."

He roared with laughter and Grace afforded him a chuckle that hurt her face.

"Not everyone speaks Met," she told him. "Do you think he believed you?"

"I hope so," he said, clapping her on the shoulder. "Over half of it was true!"

Grace giggled.

Lois stared between the pair of them with all the patience accumulated over thirty years of marriage.

"Seriously though, I owe you one."

"Just doing my job," said Grace, in a passable impression of the 'Just the facts, Ma'am' era of FBI agents.

"I'm pretty sure what ever you did at that grave site isn't in your job description," the sheriff observed.

"Semantics," Grace shrugged. "As far as I know, it's not illegal to see ghosts. I'm just 'utilising my assets' in the fullest sense."

This, of course, sent Grace and the sheriff into a fresh fit of laughter.

"I've met second graders with a better grasp of English," said Lois, tutting. "Your service bulletins must be incomprehensible."

"Utterly," Grace admitted. "Thanks for putting me up – and for putting up with me."

Lois snorted and gave her a warm hug.

"Now scoot," said the sheriff, amiably. "Before you miss your flight and get in more trouble."

"Me? In trouble?" she laughed and headed towards the gate. She thought of all those painful months back in London, bouncing between the IPCC and court, and back again. "Heaven forefend."

0o0o0o0

Spencer Reid walked down the brightly lit street, wondering what to eat.

He'd spent the day wrapping up his case notes from Utah and trying not to speculate on what might have happened if they'd got there even ten minutes later. It didn't bear thinking about.

He'd stayed later than the others and gone to one of his meetings. It had been a good one for him; he finally felt like he was beating the Dilaudid. He was even considering leaving the group behind entirely, feeling that other people needed them more than he did right now. He'd decided to run it past Grace when she got back from Nevada.

She'd been such a significant part of his recovery so far, and often seemed to know when he needed support before he did. If he left the group without talking to her about it, it would have felt very strange indeed.

Stranger still, he reflected, that he could be so open with someone he'd only know for a couple of months. But then, Grace had a way of making him feel like things weren't his fault, and that he wasn't alone. He'd asked her about her occasional oblique references to whatever it was that had made her leave London (other than her father's death), but she'd refused to be drawn.

He'd let it go for the moment. She knew he would listen if she ever felt ready to talk…

Spencer paused, frowning.

As if simply thinking about his friend had called her into being, Grace was standing outside the Vietnamese restaurant across the street, gazing at the menu. Pleased, he made a beeline for her.

"Hey," he said, but she didn't seem to have heard him. He frowned and said 'Hi' again, but it wasn't until he touched her arm that she looked up and stared blearily at him.

"Oh, hey," she said thickly, as though thinking was too much like hard work. "Sorry – in my own little world."

"Are you okay?" he asked, looking her up and down. She looked exhausted, like one stiff breeze might knock her down. It was disconcerting given her usually implacable nature.

She nodded, and then grimaced, which wasn't all that convincing, really.

"Bad headache," she said, by way of an explanation. "Need to eat before I crash or tomorrow will be even worse. Know if this place is any good?" she asked, squinting back at the menu. "The words are misbehaving…"

Knowing a migraine when he saw one, Spencer grimaced in sympathy.

"Yeah, it's okay – you want some company?"

"If you don't mind me confused and uncommuni- uncommuniti- uncommunicative," she smiled, and then winced as if the movement had hurt rather a lot. "And can possibly order for me."

He fell into step beside her, wondering just how bad Nevada had been for Grace to be in such a state.

0o0

Spencer watched his friend sleep, perturbed.

They'd stayed at the Vietnamese restaurant until Grace's voice had started to slur, when he'd made the executive decision to pilot her towards his apartment, rather than the cadet quarters.

For one thing, it was far quieter and he got the feeling that a night of undisturbed sleep would do Grace the world of good. For another, he was quite concerned about how pale she was when they'd stepped out onto the street. She had the look of a person who shouldn't be left alone for too long.

She'd fallen asleep on him on the AMTRACK, her head resting against his shoulder. He hadn't known what to do about it, and had tried to stay as still as possible in case waking her up was the wrong thing to do.

The woman opposite them, with her smart suit and briefcase, had given him a knowing smile. He hadn't known quite what to do about that, either.

Okay, they'd slept together in New Orleans, but that had been a one-off. It wasn't as if they were romantically involved. Even the thought made him blush.

Grace hadn't really woken up when they'd left the train, but he'd discovered that she would walk reasonably steadily if he had an arm around her waist. It must have been a hangover from her earlier career, patrolling the streets of London.

It had felt incredibly strange to be that physically close to someone for such a long period. He had become very good at keeping people at arm's length over the years, but it seemed that while Grace understood his boundaries, those rules just didn't apply to her. He had even actively sought out her proximity at times.

It amazed him how warm she was, and how – even after a week in the Nevada desert – she still smelled faintly of bergamot.

Getting his door open had been tricky, but ultimately less impossible than he'd feared. He had kicked it shut with his foot, taken one look at the couch, which still had the blanket he had come to think of as Grace's folded neatly over one arm, and decided that it was his turn to sleep on it. She had spent too many nights on it this month already.

He had deposited her on his bed as gently as he could and tried to ignore the hot surge of memories of the drunken, desperate night when they had tumbled together onto Grace's welcoming hotel bed. He could still remember the way her skin had felt under his fingertips. Sometimes he woke up with the taste of strawberries in his mouth.

He'd managed to get her earrings and necklace off, lest she stabbed or strangled herself in her sleep, and had been working on her boots, wondering how the hell he'd got himself into this ludicrous situation, when Grace had started mumbling.

A few moments of careful observation had confirmed that she was, in fact, talking in her sleep, and he had gone back to removing her footwear.

When she'd started muttering about the screaming, however, he'd started to pay attention. Grace had rambled on for a good five minutes, about things that a normal FBI agent shouldn't believe in, with Spencer hanging on to one of her shoes, his mouth open. It had mostly been about ghosts. Mostly.

She'd even giggled disturbingly at one point, and told someone called Geoff that 'the less Hotch knew about magic, the better'.

The mumbling had subsided, after a while, and he'd succeeded in getting both her boots off. He'd pulled the covers over her, grabbed his pyjamas and made for the living room.

Standing in the doorway, watching her sleep, Spencer felt distinctly uneasy.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he was harbouring the very real suspicion that his friend might actually be a little bit nuts.

0o0o0o0

Grace woke up slowly.

Everything felt like it was a long way off, as if someone had muted the world. Then the headache kicked in, like someone flicking on a switch. She curled into a ball, as if this would help. The dense throbbing pain retreated after a minute or so, which was a good sign, and soon she felt capable of opening her eyes. She stretched, grateful that she had slept through the worst of the migraine that had gripped her as she'd flown back to DC.

Her face felt a little tender, but she felt if she could just have a cup of tea –

It occurred to her that this wasn't her bedroom.

Grace sat up, confused, and looked around. It really wasn't her room. For one thing, it was a good deal more pleasant than the cadet house. The bed was a decent size and free of lumps, and the walls weren't that horrible institutional beige that they'd thought had a calming effect in the 1990s. Also, whosever bedroom it was had decorated it in blues and browns, which while aesthetically pleasing, wasn't a combination Grace would have naturally opted for.

She squinted down at herself and realised she was mostly fully clothed. Someone, probably not her, had removed her boots and put them neatly on the floor by the end of the bed. Touching the space where her necklace should have been she scoured the room until she located it, and her earrings, on the bedside table. They were on top of a pile of hardback, cloth bound books. She lifted the cover of the first one: The Music of the Primes – Why an Unsolved Problem in Mathematics Matters.

Her internal universe righted itself; now she understood why the whole world smelled like Spencer Reid this morning.

It took her two goes to get to the bedroom door. She opened it quietly, in case he was sleeping on the sofa. As it turned out, the sofa was empty, but the blanket she usually borrowed when she stayed over was screwed up on the floor by the side of it, as if it had been kicked off.

Sleepily, she navigated around the corner. Reid was sitting in his pyjamas, chewing the end of his pencil, a cryptic crossword on the table in front of him. She watched him for a few moments, mostly because she was too tired to think of a thing to say. He looked up.

"Oh, hey," he said.

"Hi," she said, feeling oddly shy.

There was something off in the way he was looking at her. She couldn't quite place it, but she was sure it hadn't been there the last time she'd seen him.

She pulled her sleeves over her hands in that self-conscious way she had seen Alice do in the past. Bizarrely, it helped.

"Feeling better?"

"Yes," she nodded, and then stayed very still until the fireworks behind her eyeballs had stopped. "Although I think nodding might be out for the foreseeable future."

Reid laughed, and the wariness in his features receded.

"Yeah, you were pretty out of it last night," he said, gesturing to the sofa. "I figured it was my turn."

"Thanks," she smiled.

There was one of those awkward pauses; Grace squirmed. She had thought that they'd been friends long enough now to have got past them. As abruptly as it had appeared, the awkwardness evaporated.

"You want some blueberry pancakes?"

Grace's smile slid up the side of her face.

"I think I would kill for some blueberry pancakes."

Spencer grinned and started rummaging in his fridge. Grace took a seat at the table, feeling quite small and out of place. She glanced at the cryptic clues, thought better of it and picked her nails instead. She could feel Reid's eyes on her as he cooked – it was making her uncomfortable.

"How was Utah?" she asked, chewing her lip.

"Pretty bad," he said, and she heard the frown in his voice. "Really bad. We got him in the end."

Grace nodded. In the quiet that followed, as Reid made pancakes and deposited maple syrup on the table, she wriggled her toes inside over-warm socks. To stop herself feeling awkward she got up and found the appropriate cutlery.

"How was Nevada?" he asked, putting a large plate of pancakes on the table.

Grace thought about Melissa Landry's ghost, with eyes the size of dinner plates, and the house overlooking rows of silent, battered women, and the way the screaming hadn't stopped until she was halfway back to Washington.

"We got him in the end," she said.

0o0

Do I fear the sleepless nights? You have no idea how long the dark lasts when you cannot close your eyes to it.

- Tyler Knott Gregson