"What do you mean, 'JJ's missing'?" Will demands.

Emily sighs. "We think we know where she is—"

"Then why haven't you gone to get her?"

"It's complicated—"

"Then uncomplicate it for me. Just because I talk slow doesn't mean I'm stupid, Emily. Either you know where she is or you don't."

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. "I promise you, we will have her call you as soon as she can."

Will's frustration makes his accent thicken. "I didn't ask for platitudes, Emily. I asked you to explain to me what happened and where she is and what you're God damn doing about it. 'We will have her call you' doesn't answer any of those questions."

"I can't explain—"

"You know as soon as I get off the phone with you, I'm calling Penelope," he warns.

Emily rubs her forehead in frustration, knowing that Penelope is likely to give in and spill to Will, even if Emily gives her strict instructions not to. Even if she somehow manages not to, she's going to call Emily in a tizzy about how bad she feels about keeping secrets from Will. Understanding the necessity of it won't change how upset she's going to be. None of them like keeping things from one another, no matter how necessary it is sometimes.

"All right, then. I'm coming up there."

"What? No," Emily tells him. "There's nothing you can do here and you have work and the boys—"

"I can get a sitter for the boys for a few days if I have to," Will tells her, sounds of him moving around and prepping in the background.

"You being here isn't going to help anything," she tries again.

"Well, it's not going to hurt anything either," he points out logically.

"If Mr. LaMontange is coming, I would greatly appreciate it if he can stop by our place to pick up a few changes of clothing," Mustang says, appearing around the corner. "Maes is close enough to my size that my clothing would work for him too."

She can practically hear Will freeze on the other end. "Is that Mustang?"

Giving Mustang a did you really have to look, she says, "Yes, Mustang's here—"

"Is Ed also missing?"

"Well, that's—"

"Ed and Agent Morgan are also missing," Mustang says, pitching his voice to carry, and Emily might actually shoot him, truce or no truce.

"Were you just going to leave me in the dark about that too, Emily?" Will asks in her ear.

"You know we can't disclose—"

"I am not just some random bystander or suspect. JJ's my wife, but Morgan and Ed are also friends! I'm a cop! You think I don't deserve to know that not only my wife but also friends who are as good as family are missing?"

The stress headache that had been building is getting worse with every word out of Will's mouth. They're both right: Emily was well within her rights to keep the fact that Elric and Morgan were also missing from him, but at the same time, this team—and by extension, their significant others—are a family, and will is a cop, even if he's not related to this case, she can disclose more to him than she might to a civilian.

"I'm…" she trails off, trying to decide how she wants to do this. "Look, you know that we trust you, and you know that you're family. If this were anything like a normal case, I'd have called you yesterday, but it's not, and it's…" She rubs her forehead again. "I don't even know how to explain it to you, other than the fact that you will not be of any help here."

"But Mustang is?"

Emily bites back another sigh. "It's complicated."

"Damn it!"

"I know!" she says. "I know how frustrating it is. Trust me, I know. But you being here is not going to help anything."

"It won't hurt anything," Mustang says.

Putting a hand over the phone, she hisses, "Will you stop helping?" Mustang raises his eyebrows as if she's being the irrational one and not him.

She uncovers the phone, opens her mouth to speak, and Mustang says, "Ed gave me your cell number. I can text you instructions on how to get into our place, if you'd be so kind."

"I am going to lock you in a fucking cell," she snarls at him.

"That would be absolutely useless," he points out, a cold, haughty arrogance on his face.

"We don't actually need your help," she snaps.

"Are you trying to convince yourself or me?"

"Emily?" Will sounds like he's said her name several times.

She shoots Mustang another warning glare and turns her attention back to the phone. "I'm here."

"I'm coming. JJ gave me the address—"

Why does she feel like they just went over this? Oh, right, because they did. "Will, there is nothing you can do here—"

"You don't know that."

"I know that you coming in as a Virginia cop—"

"I'm not coming in a professional capacity. You brought Mustang up there. Spencer's already there. I'm coming too."

She wonders if Will would have listened to Hotch anymore than he's listening to her, and decides that he wouldn't have.

"I honestly would appreciate if he could swing by our place and pick up some spare clothing," Mustang repeats. "I'd rather not take the time or the attention of any other officers, and I doubt you'd prefer me to be out of your sight long enough to pick up spares."

If looks could kill, Mustang would have been dead three times over. "I don't really care if you have clean clothing or not. Can't you just… clap or whatever?"

He sniffs. "It's not the same."

She is honestly going to murder him. How can a grown fucking man behave like such an irritating little brother? "Will, you do not need to come. We will let you know as soon as we have JJ or have more information. I promise. If you want to help, there is something you can do," she continues before he can override her again.

There's a pointed pause before he says, "I'm listening."

"Would you mind taking a trip to DC and coordinating with Penelope? We believe that our unsub may have met a partner in the Library of Congress, and we could use someone there to assist."

"You know, I may know someone in DC, if you need another—"

"I don't," she cuts Mustang off sharply.

Will huffs again. "I'll swing by DC and see if I can coordinate with Penelope and the Library, but I'll also stop by Ed and Mustang's place for him. Have him text me. I'll bring some spare clothing for him. Have Mustang text me." He hangs up before Emily can protest, and she pinches the bridge of her nose as she sighs in frustration.

"So he's coming?" Mustang asks.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?"

Mustang raises an eyebrow, looking supremely unimpressed. "I believe that Mr. LaMontagne deserves to know what is going on. Dr. Reid and I are both in the know. It seems cruel to keep it from him."

"That is not your call to make. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Do you want the run down topically or alphabetically?" he asks with definite snark.

She stares at him, trying to throttle her outrage. She knows what's he's doing, can tell that he's deliberately trying to wind her up. What she doesn't understand is why? Why now? He was all but bending over backward when they were borderline attacking him. Now they've apologized, and he's being—

The logic of it clicks into place. "You don't need to be an asshole just because we were," she says.

"Moi?" Mustang asks, pressing his hand to his chest, his face a caricature of affront. "Would I?"

"This isn't going to get us anywhere," she points out.

"Well, it seems to me that we don't have much we can be doing at the moment anyway, so I may as well amuse myself somehow."

Refusing to stare again she says, "You have older sisters, don't you?"

He actually looks a little taken aback. "What gave me away?"

"No man who doesn't have older sisters has that much obnoxious little brother energy," she informs, pushing past him to go back into the room they've been using as a base of operations.

Mustang grabs her arm, stopping her in her path.

"Let go of me before I really do arrest you," she snaps.

He releases her, but it's more like he decided that he didn't need to stop her any more than because he honestly feels she'll arrest him, which is irritating.

"I do believe I do know someone in DC who might be able to help," he says, a little softer, not quite an apology, but his tone seems to imply it. "I can get Ms. Garcia their information if you'd like."

"Yeah. Send their info to Penelope. I'll take any help I can get." Even from you, she doesn't say, but she can tell he hears it.

This time Mustang is the one to side, which feels a little bit like a victory, and it honestly makes her even more irritated. She has better things to be doing than playing games with Mustang. "Look, we obviously got off on entirely the wrong foot," he begins, "We're all stressed. We all miss our people. I do understand, and I know that I'm not… helping at the moment."

Emily reminds herself that she is, in fact, the lead agent on this team and that snapping back with ya think, would be neither professional or helpful. Instead of saying anything, she waits for him to go on.

He seems to realize what she's doing with the silence game, judging by the upward twitch of his lips, which makes her sure he's amused by how agitated she is. His amusement at her expense is not winning him any additional points. She barely knows Elric, but she's honestly not sure what he could possibly see in someone this smug and smarmy.

"Finding Kimblee is our best course of action at the moment. I honestly don't think we'll learn much—if anything—from the library. Since it's not a lending library, I don't think it'll have the records we'll need on what they may have been researching, and, to be honest, I don't know that whatever they were researching matters all that much."

She raises her eyebrows in surprise at the concession. "I would have thought you'd want to know whatever information they've dug up on alchemy."

Shrugging, Mustang says, "We've always known there is alchemy in this world. Ed's automail runs off it to some extent. Since it didn't die when we got here, we were sure it was a possibility here, we've just never been able to tap into it. How Kimblee has done it, intriguing as it may be, isn't really that important."

"Even if it could get you home?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "I don't think that we'll find our way home through this side. Stopping Kimblee is important, yes, but Ed's the one who will solve the puzzle."

"You believe," she says. He nods. She crosses her arms and eyes him for a long moment, taking in all the nuances. Not overly tall, but the way he holds himself makes him seem taller than he is. Good-looking enough and more than charming enough to worm his way into anyone's good graces, as evidenced by the fact that he managed to secure a teaching job with such a spotty background. Mustang strikes her as the kind of man whose plans have plans, so she's not sure she really buys that he's not concerned about what Tucker Maes and Kimblee may have been looking into. "Are you sure you shouldn't be looking into finding a way back from here?" she asks, watching him closely.

Gaze going distant for a moment, Mustang shudders and seems to come back to her. She notices that he's fingering his right wrist where the soul-binding tattoo rests as if it's a comfort gesture. "No," he says. "The kind of alchemy that we're talking about, crossing worlds, going through the Gate…" He shakes his head and shudders again. "These aren't my areas of specialty. In fact, they're quite… taboo."

"They're taboo, but Elric has the experience?" she asks.

"I don't think anyone has ever had as much experience with the Gate as Ed," he says, and there's something thick in his voice that takes her a moment to recognize as fear. Whatever this Gate is, which she doesn't really understand at all, it terrifies Mustang. "Unless I have reason to believe that Ed is unable or that we have to open the way from this side, I won't touch that kind of alchemy."

"But your partner who last practiced alchemy when he was a teenager, that's who you'll trust?" she asks.

"I may be quite a bit older than Ed, Agent Prentiss, but Ed is actually the more proficient alchemist, something I'll thank you not to tell him should you get the opportunity to. Believe me, his hands are the ones you want this in, not mine."

She resists going after the obvious opening he gives her in deference to them all trying to work better together. "Well, then I think we need to find Kimblee," she says instead.

He nods, steps aside, then holds his hand open, gesturing her forward in a way that might almost be flirtatious, but feels more like habit than intention. "I'll be right behind you. Let me text Mr. LaMontagne with directions," he says.

"I'll wait," she replies. She doesn't trust him that much yet.