Emily startles when Will all but barges his way into the station.

"Sir, you can't—" a local tries to stop him at the door.

"It's okay, officer," Emily calls. "He's with us."

The local looks a little irritated, but he lets Will through.

Will gives her a hard look but at least has the good sense to wait until they have a little bit of privacy to jump down her throat. "Two days, Emily?" he demands, low and angry. He looks stressed and tired, and it's close to midnight, so she's not really surprised by either of those.

"I understand that you're upset," she begins, but he runs his hands through his hair.

"You brought Mustang here, but you didn't even think to call me? What the hell is going on?"

"It's not that we didn't think to call you," Emily says. It's even true. She had thought to call Will multiple times, then contemplated telling him that JJ had disappeared through a magic vortex, and then she thought that calling Will was maybe not the best idea. She may have just been putting off what she knew was going to be a stressful and uncomfortable conversation, but she'd also really been hoping that they could find a way to get their team back before she had to have that conversation.

"Mustang," he repeats, sounding incredulous. She winces because there's just no good way to explain that decision except for the truth.

"Look, why don't we go back to the hotel, get some sleep. We have some extra couches or we can have a rollaway brought in—"

Will huffs, paces away from her, then comes back and stops, looming in her space. "I did not drive straight here after stopping in DC for you, just to be put off till the morning. If JJ's already been missing for over forty-eight hours—"

A throat-clearing cough interrupts them, and Emily almost winces when she looks over at Hughes.

"If I may?" he offers, coming over their way.

"With all due respect, who the hell are you?" Will asks.

To his credit, Hughes doesn't flinch or seem at all irritated by how rude Will's being. "I'm Maes Hughes, a friend of Roy's," he says, holding out his hand. Will takes it on autopilot, looking completely confused. Emily is sure he'd be doing better if he were less stressed and had more sleep and fewer hours alone in a car to work himself up into a good panic.

"Mustang's friend?" he asks, and he sounds vaguely incredulous.

"I'm sure that's not really going to make you feel any better since you're already upset about Roy being informed first, but in Agent Prentiss's defense, I'm sure she was hoping to have this resolved before having to call you."

Emily is reasonably sure that Hughes is trying to help, but she rather wishes he wouldn't.

"So, what? You just wouldn't have told me if you could have avoided it?" Will demands, turning his attention back to Emily.

She resists giving Hughes a really? look, but the temptation is strong. She mostly holds back because it will, in fact, make Will more upset.

"We don't think that JJ or Morgan or Elric are in any immediate danger—"

"And why don't you think that? How are they missing but not in immediate danger?"

"Because we think they're in Roy and my world," Hughes says. This time, Emily doesn't hold back the really? Look, and he damn well deserves it.

Will turns and blinks at him, shakes his head as if he thinks he couldn't have heard that quite right, and then says, "Come again?"

"We think they're in the world that Roy and I are from," Hughes repeats, a little slower but with no less cheer, and Emily is going to strangle the man if he doesn't stop.

"What he means to say is—" Reid tries to interject.

"That we think they're in another world, but we have reason to believe they're safe," Hughes talks over him, which isn't honestly that hard because Reid's ability to lie and make up bullshit appears to fail when trying to find a way to rationalize another world .

Will stares at him for a long moment, and when no one says anything further to try to correct him—Hughes is telling the truth after all, it's just not one they were looking forward to telling themselves—he looks back at Emily. "Is he on drugs?" he asks with alarming sincerity.

"I assure you that I am not!" Hughes says with enough cheer that if Emily had any doubt that he was enjoying pulling their chains before, it just went out the window.

"You," she says to Hughes, "sit back down and shut up." Hughes must have caused as much trouble as he was looking to because he does so with a grin but no objection. She sighs and refocuses on Will.

"Another world, Emily?" he asks in blatant disbelief.

Closing her eyes and holding back another sigh, she says, "If you believe Mustang and Hughes, yes."

He runs his hands over his face like he can't possibly be hearing what they're telling him, then puts them on his hips. "That's what you're going with? Really? That's the best you've got? We're not worried about them because they're in another world but we think they're okay?"

Thankfully for her sanity, Reid jumps in, "As best as we've been able to ascertain, yes." It's nice to not be the sole focus of Will's incredulity, but it doesn't exactly change how completely insane that theory sounds, even to her. She doesn't blame Will for struggling with it. "The alternative and more rational theory would be that whatever circle or ritual our unsub was attempting to complete killed them and decomposed them down to the molecular level. With that being the alternative, we're going with 'they're in another world, and they're okay.'"

"That's your alternative scenario?" Will asks. He winces like he's aware that he's parroting, but she doesn't really blame him for that either. She's done more than her fair share of parroting since Mustang and Hughes got here too.

"Mustang can explain it better," Emily admits. "Apparently it has something to do with him and Elric and how they got here, and some kind of magic that they call alchemy is apparently real. It's… very difficult to believe, it sounds incredibly insane, and yes, I was hoping we'd get it figured out before I had to call you and tell you what happened to JJ, but…" She holds her arms out in a helpless gesture. "... that obviously didn't happen."

Looking even more tired, Will rubs a hand over his face again. "Okay, let's just pretend for a minute here that anything you just said makes a lick of sense. Why call Mustang?"

"Because of Ed," Reid says. "From the minute Ed saw the circle with the victims, it was clear that he knew what he was looking at, and he was… borderline panicked about it. With Mr. Hughes appearing and knowing who both Ed and Mustang were, it made sense to call him and ask for his help immediately."

Will's eyes move to each of them in turn before he shakes his head again. "Okay," he says, sighing. "Let's start with the basics. Why do we think they're okay?"

Trying very hard not to wince—it is way too late in a way too stressful day to be this diplomatic, even with a friend—Emily exchanges a look with Reid.

One of them should have spoken up because Hughes is very happy to inform Will, "Because Roy and Ed have a soul bond, and he had a vision."

Reminding herself that it is, in fact, illegal to kill Hughes, whether he officially exists or not, Emily says, "Reid, why don't you take Mr. Hughes back to the hotel? Will and I can follow in his car."

Seeing a good deal when it comes, Reid pops up and all but grabs Hughes's arm to tug him out. Seaver, Mustang, and Rossi all went back about half an hour before Will showed up.

"You cannot seriously be telling me you believe any of this bullshit," Will says the moment they're alone.

"I know how it sounds—"

"How it sounds?" Will's voice gets uncomfortably high on the last word, edging on hysteria. "Emily, it sounds like you've all lost your God damned minds!"

"I know," she says, raising her hands in a calming motion. "You wanted to know why I didn't call you, well, this is why. It sounds completely and utterly insane, and…" She shakes her head, memories of the floor coming alive and holding her, of blue-white lightning that leaves miracles in its wake, of a glowing tattoo on Mustang's wrist all rolling through her mind as if on repeat.

She glances over at the desks, sees the horse that Mustang made, leans over to grab it, and shoves it in Will's hands. "Two days ago, that was a normal wire pencil holder," she says. "Mustang clapped his hands, touched it, and made it turn into this. We have an unsub who was full-bodied before he tried whatever ritual he was trying, and was missing an arm, a leg, his eyes, ears, and tongue when we found him. There is no sign of any of the missing body parts. The coroner's report came back earlier this evening. Everything was removed with laser precision, leaving absolutely no tool marks behind at all. We have a dozen people who have vanished and only left behind their clothing, and Mustang says they're dead. Disintegrated, or as good as."

Leaning against a desk, suddenly exhausted with the impossibility of it all, she says with feeling, "I know exactly how insane all of this sounds, Will. But Mustang is absolutely sure that Elric is okay, which gives me hope that JJ and Morgan are also okay, and I just… I need to keep believing that right now. Because if they're wrong, if Mustang and Hughes are pulling our legs with all this magical alchemy shit, then half of my team are dead, and that's not acceptable."

Will echoes her posture, sitting on a desk and setting the horse aside, all of the energy seeming to drain from him. He hangs his head, running his hand over his face again while he thinks. After a long moment, he lets out a deep sigh and looks back up at her. "Magical alchemy?" he asks, almost pleading for her to make sense of those words.

"Mustang calls it alchemy and insists it's a science." She pauses then decides to be candid. Will is a friend. "It looks like magic to me, but he can show you."

Picking the horse back up, Will looks it over more closely this time. "This was a pencil holder?" he asks after a minute of running his hands over it, inspecting it for marks before he looks at her again. "Really?"

She reaches behind her to grab another one of the ubiquitous black wire pencil holders that seem to be the go-to in virtually every police department and office she's ever been in. Holding it up, she says, "Just like this one."

Sighing, he sets it aside again, then says, "I guess we need to go talk to Mustang."

"He might be sleeping—"

"Then we'll wake him up," Will snaps. "We're not getting any sleep right now. Why should he?"

For a moment, Emily is tempted to point out that Mustang's partner is missing too, but, well, he's dealing with all of this a lot better than the rest of them are—he at least didn't have to have his whole world understanding rocked along with his partner missing—and he has an honestly enviable faith in Elric's ability to fix this mess that Will doesn't have the luxury of.

"All right," she says. "But I'm driving. You're exhausted."

Will opens his mouth to protest, then closes it, pulling his keys out of his pocket. "Deal," he says, handing them over when Emily gets up and moves into range.

.o0o.o0o.o0o.

When they get to the hotel, Emily knocks on Rossi and Mustang's door.

"Hang on," she hears Rossi call through the door. When he opens it, he's rumpled and looks a little frazzled. "Will," he nods.

"What's wrong?" Emily asks.

"I was just getting ready to call you, that's all," he says, running a hand through his hair as if he can get it into something less of the mess it looks like with that motion.

The light is on in the room and it's obvious that Rossi was up. She looks over at Mustang's bed and sees his wrist laying on top of the blankets. She sighs, exhausted all over.

"Inside," she says, pushing Will in ahead over her. She sees the moment he sees Mustang's wrist, the tattoo glowing that eerie red color.

"What in the…?"

She shuts the door behind them as Will walks over to Mustang.

"He won't wake up?" Emily asks.

Rossi shakes his head. "Just like before. I'm sure we could wake him, but…" he trails, frowning in thought.

"But if he can really talk to Elric, letting him do it might not be the worst idea," she finishes. He nods in agreement.

"Can I… touch it?" Will asks, waving his hand over the light as if he can interrupt it.

She and Rossi trade wary looks. "I don't know that it's a good idea," Rossi says carefully. "Ed was very firm about those circles and how powerful they were. Mustang is too. I don't think touching it while it's active is a good idea."

Pulling his hand back, Will runs his hand over his face again. "Magical alchemy, huh?" he asks, turning to look at Emily.

The smile she gives him is weak and forced. "I told you: it sounds insane."

"You sure did," he agrees. "You sure did…" He doesn't sound happy about it.

Since she's not happy about it either, she can sympathize.