Rick went home and tried to immerse himself in playing with Alexis, but he couldn't stop thinking about Beckett, and Mickey, and magic.
He'd been half-kidding when he asked if Mickey was magic; he'd expected Beckett to scoff, laugh it off, roll her eyes, tell him he was being ridiculous. But she hadn't done any of that, and he didn't know what the hell to make of it.
Rick himself was willing to believe any number of things - and yes, he definitely believed in magic, the occult, the supernatural, purely because he wanted it all to be true - but he hadn't really expected Beckett to believe in it, let alone to have a magic dog.
(It sounded so corny when he thought of it that way, and yet... he'd said, Is your dog magic? and she hadn't denied it. His head was spinning.)
"Daddy," Alexis scolded, "it's your turn."
"Sorry, pumpkin."
With an effort, he forced himself to put it all out of his mind and focus on his daughter. By the time she had beaten him at almost every board game on the shelf, and they had done her whole bedtime ritual, complete with knocking on Martha's bedroom door to collect goodnight hugs, he had almost - almost - managed to stop thinking about Beckett, witchcraft, magic, and the mystery of the selectively-invisible dog.
But no sooner had he tucked Alexis in and walked back down the stairs than the doorbell rang, and there was only one person it could possibly be.
"Hey, Beckett. Come on in."
"Hey, Castle. Is this an okay time?" She looked small and tired and very anxious, and he didn't quite know why.
"Sure, it's fine. Alexis just went to bed. Can I pour you a glass of wine?"
"Got anything stronger?" she countered. Rick felt his eyebrows go up.
"Scotch?"
"Sounds great," she said with feeling. He gave a reassuring smile and gestured her toward the sofa while he turned to pour the drinks.
When they were both settled with glasses in hands, Beckett took a deep breath and began.
"Castle... when I say I've never told anyone about all of this, I mean I've never, ever told anyone," she said. Her expression was as solemn as he had ever seen it, though her eyes betrayed her nerves, darting around the room without ever settling on anything. "Not even my dad. No one."
"I'm... honored?" he said slowly, studying her face, trying to figure out how to relate to this new side of Beckett. "But you know you don't have to tell me anything."
"Yes, I do," she replied steadily. "It's part of the deal." She gave a sigh. "The thing is... my family is... I mean, I'm..."
"You're a witch," Castle supplied helpfully. Her flickering eyes jumped to his face, widened slightly, and then she gave a rueful shake of her head.
"I never should have said that, the night we first met. Halloween makes us reckless sometimes."
"So it's true though?" Eager, he leaned forward, as if he could pull the words out of her. "You really are, like, an actual witch? A witch who does actual magic?"
She grimaced. "Probably not the way you mean. I don't really do magic. But yes, I have some abilities. It runs in the family." As if predicting his next question, she added, "Both sides. But neither of my parents had much talent, so I was mostly trained by my Aunt Teresa, my dad's sister."
"The witchy aunt. A literary classic," Rick observed, fascinated.
Beckett rolled her eyes and huffed lightly. "Anyway, after I spent some time with her, I decided it wasn't what I wanted. I just wanted to have a normal life. So I learned from Aunt Teresa how to control my abilities, but I had no intention of using them."
"What kind of abilities?" Castle asked, his eyes glued to her face.
She put up a cautionary hand. "It's not anything glamorous, Castle, not like you're thinking. Little things, like finding a lost piece of jewelry, or making a headache go away. I can't fly, or levitate items, or anything really big like that."
"I think you do more than that," he murmured, thinking back to the times he had wanted to ask her out but the words just wouldn't come; or the way no one seemed to notice Mickey when the dog showed up at crime scenes. "But the details don't matter, Beckett, you can do actual magic! That's so cool," he gushed, bringing a small smile to her lips.
"You would think so. Anyway," she continued, "after my mom died, I... I asked Aunt Teresa if she knew a spell for bringing someone back from the dead."
"Oh."
The humor dropped away abruptly, as Castle felt goosebumps prickle up all along his skin. This was an unexpected twist... although now that he thought about it, he supposed he should have guessed.
"Is... is that possible?" he breathed.
"Not really." She gave a slight grimace. "If you can catch the person's spirit, soul - whatever you call it - soon enough after their death, you can put it into another living being temporarily. But it doesn't last, and anyway it was already too late for that, with my mom." Her voice shook briefly. "By the time they found her... it was too late. Her soul was already gone."
"Kate," he murmured, full of sympathy, but she turned her head away to compose herself, and all he could do was give her the moment.
Then she turned back, took a careful breath, and continued. "Another thing you can do - some witches can, I mean - is summon a demon and ask it to bring back your... the person."
"A demon?" He thought his eyes must be as big as saucers. "Really? You can do that?"
"Yeah." Beckett gave him a strange look, part embarrassed, part defiant. "It turns out I can, although Aunt Teresa warned me not to. She said, if a demon does bring someone back who has passed away, it isn't really them. The demon can't put the person's soul back into their body. So it would just be their body, brought back to life, but not really... them."
"That makes sense," Castle agreed, nodding. "I've seen that kind of thing." At her sharp look, he clarified, "I mean in books, movies. Fiction. But still."
"Right. Of course." She sighed. "Anyway, I should have listened to Aunt Teresa, but I didn't. It was so stupid of me." She shook her head slowly. "I don't know what got into me. I just... I thought..."
"Kate." This time Rick took a chance on touching her; reached over and covered her hand with his own. "You don't have to explain. You were just a kid, you'd lost your mother, of course you weren't thinking clearly. Who could blame you?"
She took another deep, shaky breath, and mustered up a small smile. "Thanks."
She wasn't making any effort to pull her hand away, and he wasn't sure whether it was that, or the story she was haltingly telling, that had his pulse pounding and his skin tingling with anticipation.
"So?" he urged. "You did the spell? Summoned a demon? What was that like?"
Slowly, she nodded. "Yeah. I did. And what was it like? Well..."
An apartment in shadow, the very air thick with grief. A father passed out in his bed, insensate with drink. A dog, big and black, cowering outside a closed door, whining a wordless plea. And on the other side of that door a demon, eyes bright as it peruses the tear-stained form of the young woman who summoned it.
"Why hast thou called me here?" it oozes, although of course it knows the answer. It knows all. Its forked tongue tastes the girl's despair. The dog in the hallway growls an impotent warning.
"My mom," the girl says, her voice wavering, though her gaze holds steady on the unearthly form trapped in her chalk circle. "I want her back."
The demon hisses its amusement. "You know so little, child witch, but this you know: your mother is gone. I can return her to you, but not unchanged." It tilts its head, eyes glittering. "'Twill be but a shell of the mother you knew."
"I don't care," comes the reply, though uncertainly. "I need her."
"There is a price," the demon adds, baring razor-sharp teeth in a gleeful grin. A thud echoes loudly through the room, making the young woman jump: the dog is throwing himself against the door, alternately growling and whining in his urgency to protect his person.
"What price?" the girl asks, her whole body tense, her attention teetering between dog and demon. The door rattles in its frame and she winces, but she dares not move, or take her eyes off the demon.
"Your dog," the evil spirit cackles, throwing back its head in delight. "The dog for your mother, there is the price!" At a gesture of a clawed hand, the doorknob turns; the door swings open, the dog surges inside. In an instant he places himself between girl and demon, hackles raised. The girl grabs for the dog's collar, holding him back.
"Mickey, no. Sit!"
The dog does not sit, but he stops straining toward the otherworldly intruder, for the moment. Unfazed, the demon repeats itself.
"The dog for your mother. This is the bargain. Do you accept?"
"I..." The young woman falters, fresh tears falling. "Mickey?" Kneeling, she wraps her arms around the dog's solid form, presses her cheek to the top of his head, never taking her eyes off the demon.
A long moment passes in silence as the girl struggles between warring emotions, while the demon watches with poorly concealed impatience. The dog's body is firm and warm against the girl's, grounding her, his steady breathing calming hers even as her tears dampen his fur.
"No," she says at last, watery and hopeless. "I can't." A sob escapes, drawing an answering whine from the dog.
The demon's good cheer dissipates in the blink of an eye. Its eyes snap fire, it dances in place, the movements somehow infused with menace. It shakes a furious finger at the young woman. "Traitor," it hisses fiercely, "deceiver! Thou canst not summon a demon and refuse the bargain!"
"Of course I can," the girl snaps back, though a wariness comes into her face, and she cringes backward instinctively from the demon's rage. "I don't have to accept your deal."
"If no bargain is struck, the demon need not depart," it sneers. "You would prefer I stay, then?" Seeing the girl flinch in dismay, it knows that she doesn't recognize the lie; the demon presses its advantage. "If not this bargain, then another, perhaps?" The forked tongue flickers, licking its lips greedily. "Ask another, little witch."
"I..." With a jerky motion she swipes the back of a hand across her eyes, wiping away tears. "I don't know..." The dog shifts against her and butts his head into her chin, whining softly. She blinks and refocuses on the demon. "I don't know, but I can't lose Mickey too," she says again, hopelessly. "I just can't."
"Eternal life for the dog, then, that is your desire?" The demon's eyes glitter with an excitement that the young woman cannot recognize, too deeply mired in her grief to see the trap opening up before her.
But she holds on to some thread of caution, at least: "Well... at what price?"
The demon licks its lips again and hisses with glee. "A simple price, child, for a simple bargain. Merely this: you must let him help you."
She blinks, frowns, confused. "Mickey? Let him help me? That's all?"
The evil creature inclines its head in agreement. The girl continues frowning, trying to think.
Never accept a deal when the terms are vague, her aunt has told her. Always think through all the possible interpretations, and then, know that there are more you can't possibly imagine. But none of that advice enters the young woman's mind in this moment, so befuzzed is her mind from weariness and sorrow. She tries to find the catch in the deal, but cannot see it.
"Well..." she wavers, and looks down at the dog. His trusting face swims before her eyes, his tail wagging, his body pressed against hers, giving comfort. She hugs him again, rubbing her damp cheeks in his fur. "Mickey," she whispers despondently. "I can't lose you too."
"Speak, child!" the demon demands. "The bargain is before you. Do you accept?"
She lifts her head again, trying to summon fierce purpose into her tone. "You promise he'll never die?"
"As long as you honor the agreement," comes the reply. "Oh," the demon adds, sly with a smirk and snicker, "there is one more term to be agreed upon."
"No more terms," the girl objects, outraged. "You said!"
"One more," the demon cajoles, singsong-sweet now, seeing the prize almost within its grasp. "Just a small one, which is this: When a man asks, you will tell him all."
She pauses again, considering. When a man asks... Her thoughts flicker to the next room, where her father lies in his stupor. Surely he will...?
"All right," she says at long last. "I agree to your terms."
She holds out her hand, and the demon, cackling madly, shakes it.
"A pleasure, little witch," it cries, "and now I must away. Release me!"
"Oh - right, yes." With a swipe of her hand she breaks open the chalk circle. "Begone to whence you came."
"Farewell," comes the laughing reply, and the dark creature is gone.
The girl sits back on her knees, blinking, reeling. Her exhausted brain can hardly grasp what has happened. She barely manages to stumble across to the bed, and falls onto it in a heap. The huge dog clambers up as well, and lies down at her feet.
In the morning, the girl awakens to the dog keening and convulsing, seemingly asleep. His eyes are closed, but his body thrashes so violently he nearly topples off the bed.
Alarmed, she shakes him, calling his name: "Mickey! Wake up! Mickey!" but to no avail; the tremors continue, the deep dark eyes remain closed. The girl kneels over him, dithering, at a loss for what to do.
Just when she has decided to call for help, the seizure is over. The dog lies still, panting loudly; his eyes open and fix on the girl. Involuntarily, she shivers. There is something in those eyes she has never seen before.
"Mickey?" she says tentatively. At the sound of her voice, he whines softly, his tail thumps against the bed, but he does not otherwise move.
The girl reaches for the water bottle on her bedside table, and carefully pours water into the dog's mouth, which he laps up eagerly. After a few moments, he rouses enough to sit up and lick her hand.
She coaxes the dog into the kitchen, where he eagerly digs in to the food she puts down. She starts the coffee machine, and while it brews, she turns on the TV. By sheer force of habit, she sets the channel to the morning news.
"In breaking news, a shootout between rival drug rings leaves several people injured and one suspect dead," says the anchorwoman. A photograph of a man flashes onscreen, bearing the caption: ALLEGED DRUG DEALER SHOT IN GANG WAR. The young woman glances at it... then does a double-take, feeling her whole body go cold.
She has never seen the man on the screen before... yet, she knows him. She doesn't know how, or why, but she just does.
At her feet, the dog whines.
She looks down and meets his eyes.
A gasp escapes her throat at what she sees there. She looks from the dog to the screen, back to the dog again, and feels her chest clench in horror.
Trembling, she dashes across the room to grab the phone. Her fingers shake as she dials. Unnoticed, tears begin to stream down her face.
"Katie?"
"Aunt Teresa?" She gulps as the horror of what she did last night begins to hit her. "I - I think I've made a big mistake."
Beckett's voice trailed off, and Castle was left gaping at her, entranced by the story she had woven. He could see it so clearly in his mind: the darkened bedroom, the chalk circle and flickering lights, the capricious demon. And of course, the ever-loyal dog.
"Mickey," he breathed, his writer's mind already working on untangling the web, assembling the clues of the mystery. "So he somehow... got the soul of that drug dealer put into him?"
Beckett blinked several times, startled by how quickly he had put it together. "How did you - You really do read too many fantasy novels, Castle."
"Too many is relative," he replied, waving that aside with a hand. "But I'm right, aren't I? Mickey has the soul of that dead drug dealer inside him?"
"Not any more," she said. "But that day, yes. That's how I figured out what I had really agreed to - been tricked into."
"What do you mean?"
She sighed. "The criminal's spirit inhabits Mickey's body, alongside Mickey's own soul, and it has to do a certain number of good deeds before it can... move on. And then another one moves in."
It was too much for Castle to absorb while sitting still; he put down his whiskey glass and stood up, began to pace.
"Good deeds, like helping me find Alexis, or helping you catch killers. It's like the dog is a kind of purgatory," he mused aloud as he strode back and forth. "Classically, the soul has to deal with unfinished business before it can move on to heaven or hell."
"I don't think the demon I summoned is interested in sending murderers to heaven," Beckett put in sourly. She sipped her whiskey and watched him pace.
"No, no, of course not," he said, turning it over in his mind again. "But wait, they have to do good deeds? In order to get into hell?" He frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."
"I know. That's demon logic for you," Beckett shrugged. "He gets to torture the dead criminal and me at the same time. Win-win, from his perspective."
"I guess." Rick continued frowning, paced another lap up and down. "But what if the dirtbag soul doesn't want to play along?"
"Some of them fight it," Beckett said, reaching over to pour another splash of whiskey into her glass. "But a soul naturally wants to move on, it doesn't want to be stuck in between, so eventually they give in." A small smile softened her face briefly. "I think Mickey helps to convince them too. He can be pretty irresistible."
Rick had to smile too; Beckett's affection for the dog was contagious. "Yeah, he can." A new thought hit him. "But before that, when the spirit is in him and it doesn't want to be? That must be hard on him."
"Yeah." Her smile faded; she lowered her eyes, grimaced, and added, "Especially in the beginning when he didn't know what was happening. He tried to fight it too, the first few times. He was so scared and confused."
Rick stopped pacing and looked at her, a wave of sorrow rushing through him as he thought about what that must have been like for them back then, when all of this began - the young woman and the dog, struggling to adjust to their new reality.
"But now?" he asked. "He... accepts it?"
She looked up at him again, and shrugged. "Mickey's soul is the soul of a dog. It's... pure. And he loves people. For him, it's that simple." She sighed again. "So once he got used to it, yeah, he just accepts it. I think... he tries to make friends with each of the criminals. He helps them do what they need to do. And then he lets them go."
Castle resumed pacing. "Lets them go. So the murderer goes to hell, Mickey gets to live forever, and you get help with your cases." He tilted his head to one side, considering. "It sounds like a pretty good deal, so there must be a catch."
"Yeah." Beckett nodded slowly, the corners of her mouth turning downward. "The catch is that Mickey only feels immortal when he has another soul in him. When it moves on, then he feels his age again, until the next one comes along." A hint of the cop came back into her expression as she added, "It doesn't usually take very long. Criminals get themselves killed in New York all the time."
Castle felt his heart sink as the implications began to hit. "This is why you were so worried about Mickey the other day. It had been too long since the last spirit moved on?"
She nodded again. "If he goes more than a few days without, he starts to really feel it." Again she seemed to sense what Castle was going to ask next, and before he even got the words out, she said, "He's seventeen. And the average lifespan for his breed is nine to ten years."
"Shit," Castle breathed. "He's really old. The days in between must be so hard on him."
"And it's cumulative," Beckett said bitterly. "Another way the demon screwed us. On the in-between days, he feels like a seventeen-year-old dog, even though he's immortal."
Castle's heart twisted again with sorrow for the dog, and the woman who loved him. "Poor Mickey," he murmured. "That's why you keep your eye on the police scanner, so you'll know as soon as there's news about a criminal getting killed."
Beckett took another sip of Scotch and another slow breath. "Yeah, and that's why sometimes I rush out. Because the new soul can only enter him if I'm there."
Castle paced back and forth a few more times, brow furrowed as he thought it through to the inevitable conclusion. "Beckett... Kate... he has to die eventually. Doesn't he?" Looking up, he caught her stricken expression and immediately felt like a complete asshole. "Oh God, I'm sorry, that sounded terrible." He moved to sit down on the coffee table, facing her. "I just meant, how can he go on like this forever? It doesn't seem possible."
"But it is. We don't have any other choice." Beckett wouldn't meet his eyes, and from the rapid blinking of her lashes, he knew she was fighting back tears. "Aunt Teresa said," she managed, struggling to keep her voice even, "that a demon never grants true immortality, so there's always a catch. In this case, the catch is those days in between. If I..." She paused again to get her voice back under control. "If I decide to... to put him to sleep... then the demon can say I broke the terms of the bargain."
"And he can't die naturally, because that's the demon's part of the bargain," Castle finished. She nodded and gave a half-hearted snort of not-really-humor.
"Yeah. The deal says he can't die; it doesn't say anything about him being in pain, or tired, weak."
Castle grimaced. It made far too much sense; from everything he had read, demons were always tricksy like that, always managing to put in a loophole that the hapless human didn't see until it was too late.
Of course, until tonight, Rick had thought all of that was fiction.
To his surprise, Beckett stood up, clearing her throat. She had collected herself again, and her expression was calm, no hint of the powerful emotions she had been showing just a moment ago. Her tone was brisk when she spoke. "Anyway, I should get going. I'm sorry to take up so much of your time, Castle. Thanks for, uh, for listening."
"What?" He jumped to his feet as well, staring at her. His mind was whirling, buzzing, still full of questions. "No, but... What are you going to do?"
"Do?" She looked up at him, her gaze firm now. "I've fulfilled the other piece of the bargain. A man asked, and I told him."
"Me?" Castle blinked. He'd almost forgotten that part of the story. "Wait, but... what about your dad? I thought he was the man the demon meant."
Beckett pursed her lips. "He never asked," she said, and though her tone was flat and her words simple, there was a whole universe of meaning in that statement.
Castle stared at her, and this time if the words wouldn't come to his lips, there was nothing magical or mysterious about it; he just didn't know what to say.
"Kate..."
"I'm hoping," she interrupted, deliberately businesslike, "that this buys me some grace. I've told you the story, now the demon can't say I haven't held up my end." She paused, and her eyes narrowed, the cop coming back to the forefront. "I'm also hoping it goes without saying that you don't tell anyone about this, Castle."
"No, no," he denied immediately. "I mean, yes. I mean, of course I won't tell anyone, Beckett, don't worry."
"I mean it," she said sternly. "Not even your mother or daughter. And if I see anything like this in one of your books-"
"I wouldn't. I won't," he insisted. "I swear."
Beckett met his eyes, and he felt again that jolt of connection, that lightning bolt sizzling through him, raising the hairs on his arms. He saw her eyes widen, her cheeks flush, and knew she had felt it too.
"Okay," she said, and swallowed, and took a breath. "Night, Castle."
She was gone, but he still had at least a thousand more questions, and he didn't know what the hell to do. He went to his study and scoured the internet for information on magic, dogs, and deals with the devil until he fell asleep in his chair.