Uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite.

"Will?" Jack cornered him, swung in front of his stride to keep him from walking. He turned dark eyes out onto the courtyard, where two new faces in police uniform were bickering. "Ed Scarab is the tall one. Theodore Knott is the blonde."

Will could hear them.

"I am just not enjoying life."

"Tell that to these guys."

"Hey, fuck you man-"

"No, fuck you."

"Who are they," Will said very slowly. "And what are they doing?"

"Ms Hart received another correspondence this morning." Jack said darkly. "The police got involved. Her roommate opened the box and panicked, called the police."

Will just rolled his eyes.

"I've also called Dr. Lecter in to help." Jack said, nodding as the sleek black car rolled into parking. "The last time Em was involved with the case she appeared to handle it well. She shot Timothy Bell and managed to subdue him... But she beat him unconscious to do that."

"She panicked." was his half suggestion, half defence.

"No it wasn't." Jack told him, with certain finality.

"He'd killed four people."

"It was with the butt of the gun she'd just shot him with. Twice." Will didn't have a reply to that. "In any case, she responds better to men than to women in matters of the mind." Jack glanced over to where Em was talking on the phone, her shoulders sagging, her face obstructed by a wave of black hair.

"I think they'll be quite a pair."

"Quite." Like she and I would be. Dr. Chilton's words - rather, his insinuations that both of them needed to be locked up - hadn't left him. He profiled psychopaths for a living, but she invented them. There had to be a degree of darkness in her to do that, right?

Hannibal was strolling towards them. A sense of calm rolled over Will like a gentle wave, the way it usually did when Hannibal Lecter entered his personal space. He was detached from it, realizing it wasn't quite his emotion, but he sensed it none the less.

They made their greetings.

"It's been five days since the last body was found." Jack informed Dr. Lecter, who nodded. "I would like you to keep an ear on Willow, over there - she prefers to be addressed as Em."

"Why?"

"Pseudonym. She detaches." Will offered in a mumble, and turned toward the crime scene as the tiny woman hung up from the phone and skipped over to them.

"Hello. I'm Dr. Hannibal Lecter." he held his hand out - she removed her glove with her teeth and shook his.

"Hi. Em." she dropped the glove into her hand, removed the other, and tucked them in her back pocket, all the while going over his nice suit and coat with a quick flick of her golden eyes. "Doctor of?"

"I'm a therapist, these days."

The once over she then gave him was more critical, and lingering. She seemed to find his hands extremely fascinating, and the line of his cheekbones.

"I typically only indulge in therapy of the retail kind." she drawled at him, and looked pointedly at Jack with a pursed mouth.

"Most women tend to." the smile did not reach his eyes, so much as crease the corners. "I find myself inclined to ask how you are feeling about all of this."

"I couldn't tell you." she replied mildly.

"Couldn't or wouldn't?"

"Won't." She made a disconcerted noise and turned to eye the double doors of the town hall. "Shall we get this over with?"

"We shall."

Em was fearless to walk into the room, taking strides to enter before the men. Her eyes swept the surface of the two bodies, lain out on two tables pushed together. She took a moment to breathe deeply, gaze darting to various points in the room, her chin raised, and said:

"I'll put twenty dollars down that says her tongue is missing."

No one would be able to tell until someone had unwound the stitching of the woman's mouth.

The bodies were not touching in any respect - she sighed, went over to them, stepping carefully over lengths of string and FBI members taking inventory. Her arms were folded tightly and she was frowning, gnawing her bottom lip, but comfortable in the rancid atmosphere.

"And this came out of your skull?" Theodore, one of the newly investigating officers said.

Hannibal watched her, Will did his own pacing through, and Jack sent the officer a withering look that flew over his head.

"It did." she kept her eyes trained on the bodies of the twins. She bent to the woman's head to go nose to nose with her, her black locks tucked securely behind her ears. She took her time in inspecting the way in which the killer had sewn the woman's lips closed with a thick length of black twine. Then she stood, and caught Hannibal's eye.

"Incest." she declared mildly.

Will's brow furrowed.

"I see mirrors." he said, just loud enough to have it be considered an audible volume. That caused both Em and Hannibal to turn, to break whatever quiet connection they had obtained. "Twins. His eyes are open, hers are sewn shut. His mouth is open... Her hands are down, his are up. Male, female."

"That would actually play, if you'd read the story." she gave him a faint half smile, and turned back to the bodies. Will could see she was sad, but not entirely upset, by the murder.

"How did you get incest?" Theodore prompted.

"I wrote it to be about incest, that's how." she tipped her head and straightened the rest of her body, glancing over to Will, who met and kept her stare. "His finger will be sent to his wife because he was cheating on her. The ring would've been kept on by the post mortem swelling, and the fact that this man has been hanging by his scrotum for hours." Several of the men flinched.

Dr. Lecter peered at the bruised, stretched sac between the victim's legs.

"Her reproductive organs are missing." she went on. "He's gone in through her back, as not to disturb the picture they make. He thinks it's a service to the world. It's a message, and he wants it neat."

"Which is why the ties on his wrists are in bows." Will nodded, and took slow steps closer to the bodies. "They-... her hands are nailed at her hips... that's for what?"

"Chastity." She paced around to the other side, inspecting the man. "As his have been nailed away because he was the instigator. This is to keep his hands to himself."

"You're kind of twisted, aren't you?" That time is was Ed who belittled her.

The stare she met him with wasn't a glare, but it certainly wasn't kind.

"I'm more than a pretty face." she kept staring until he averted his gaze, shifting awkwardly away. Her smile was supposed to be her own secret, but Hannibal saw it. He would never admit to finding it somewhat endearing of the tiny creature.

Katz started rattling things off at them, some unrelated to the murder so much as trying desperately to figure out who E.M Hart was, and never suspecting a young woman. Em, to all intents and purposes, just hummed her agreement, then gave her a long once over that made her stop talking.

"Have his gums been filed?" she asked mildly.

"I-... I haven't checked."

"Oh." she smiled at the woman, and continued. "The idea was to set them on fire to have Jane and Jon Doe."

"Can't identify them by dental records?"

"Pretty much. There were a few other elements to it. Severed hands to keep the fingerprints, that kind of thing. But I - my killer - decided that he wanted the bodies to be recognised. He wanted everyone to know what these two were up to behind closed doors."

Will peered into the mouth of the male victim as Katz pulled back his upper lip and confirmed his teeth were all filed back into his jaw.

"Gross." Em said, but was mostly fascinated by the worn line of bone.

"Her mouth is sewn shut-" Katz let the lips go, let them smack together. "-Anything nasty we should know about in there?"

"Only that she's minus a tongue." she looked directly at her, expression slightly soft. "My killer didn't think in sexual terms, he thought in riddles. The way he went about these was to make connections only his mind could create, but I could explain. These are - perverse, but they're messages. I was writing about sect who indulged in behaviours that a wider public shied from."

"Enraptured. I read it. I loved it."

She smiled at the praise.

"Thanks."

"You're gonna have to sign it for me, you know that, right?"

"Of course." she nodded.

"What, you know, with the sect and everything," Katz went on, waving her hand at the bodies. "What made you write that?"

"The idea," she said carefully. "Was to open up a floor on which the community could discuss this kind of relationship in a psychological way and not sneer at it, give people an understanding of -"

"You're into incest?" it was Theodore who interrupted her.

"Not just incest. Willing cannibalism, scarification, dom/sub, snuff stuff, you name it." she fixed him with a look that he challenged, but didn't win. "I'm a writer. It's my job to be into it."

Dr. Lecter's eyebrows had risen as she spoke, but smoothed as she came to stand next to him. She, likewise, inspected the swollen scrotum, her brows pulling together.

"Hang on a second. That's- no way. May I have gloves, please?"

"What's wrong?"

She took Will's hand when gloves weren't given to her, and untucked his finger. She drew a line on the thigh of the male victim, smudging what had at first appeared to be a smattering of freckles.

"He's gone in and... drawn on moles." she inspected Will's fingertip. "What the hell kind of psychopath pays attention to that kind of detail?"

"What the hell kind of writer details that kind of thing?" Theodore asked in return. She glared up at him from under her lashes, jaw clicking as she grit her teeth.

"What do you even read? Guns and Babes?"

"Guns and MILFs."

"Oh, do excuse me."

There was a heated moment, then she turned away from him, disengaging, completely ignoring him. He appeared to be confused with this tactic, geared up and ready for a fight, then denied one. It clearly irritated him.

"To his mind, that lack of detail would be- offensive." Will said quietly, taking his hand back. "If you put effort enough in it to mention that the male twin had these moles in this formation, than he will of course include them."

"His attention to detail is phenomenal." she agreed. "This looks exactly like... exactly like what I saw in my head. Which is confronting, in itself, but the fact that it's gone to this extreme..."

"You're unnerved by the freckles?" Hannibal ventured.

"Freckles are details that create a physicality." she murmured, turning to Dr. Lecter but not looking at him. "They're - deformities, imperfections. Blemishes. Hereditary. These are the things that make people people. It gives them a medical history. In my head, I imagined that one of his freckles was cancerous. It wasn't anything in the story itself, but I knew he had cancer. They would've shaved their heads together."

"Sweet." Will noted.

"They were in love." she shrugged one shoulder. "Real and proper and true. Had been for years. They were brought up to love each other, of course they did. They weren't like the others in that sect, though, not really. These two were sweet enough to give you an ulcer, but they were wrong because they were related." she shrugged.

"Probably didn't help they looked alike, either. Any way. I'm going to get some air."

"I will come with you." Hannibal offered, and the line of her shoulders stiffened.

She glanced at Will but he was in a headspace, something she, as a writer, instantly recognised. She could see he had emersed himself in an idea, in a feeling. If his empathy was anything like writing a story, he'd be consumed; he'd ignore everyone until he stepped out of it. Heaven forbid someone jarred him. She pitied the man who did.

She thought that maybe the Dr. was busy studying the dead body while she stood there and privately did her own observing of the profiler. She thought that maybe she might be able to sneak away and have a moment to herself.

She was wrong. The second they were out of earshot, he engaged.

"I'd like to enquire as to how you are coping." Dr. Lecter studied the stillness in her body, the way she met his stare head on without any reservations. "It cannot be easy, to have been taken advantage of in this way."

"I wouldn't call it that." she commented easily. "Some one, at least, is paying attention. Isn't that what writers want?"

"Isn't it?" he waited a beat. "These are the images from your mind. You've created these stories and put them into the world."

"Under a name that isn't mine." she replied with her eyebrow cocked. "For people who have an interest in morbidity, gore and a few spare hours."

"Is that what you have? An interest in morbidity and gore? The reasoning of murderers?"

She grinned at him, but it was an echo of an expression. She had no feelings but contempt for his questions, though she tried to mask that. She appeared to be trying to scare him with her lack of answers. On a lesser man it might fly - actually, he'd seen the after shock of what her stare could do, reducing them to confusion, discomfort. But he was not, and had never been, a lesser man.

He was nonplussed.

"Isn't that what your friend Will has?" she asked lightly. "An insight into murderers' reasoning?"

"He calls it their design."

"An appropriate word."

He hummed a short agreement.

"In any case," she dismissed him, digging for her phone. "We both get paid to do it, so why not?"

"Would you say that you're impressed by the detail put into the... " he waved his hand at the hall. "Replications?"

"Eh." She started typing away at her phone with a shrug. He thought it best to redirect his line of questioning, try and come at her in a roundabout way.

"Why do you think you write, Ms Hart?"

"I don't know how to do anything else, Dr. Lecter."

He paused, watching her type, her thumbs tapping over the keyboard with practised ease. He imagined that she could very well type and send her message without having to look, she was purposely avoiding his eye. There was a long pause in which she blindly stared at the screen, the pretense weak.

"Do you often design murders when you are feeling angry?"

"'Design murders'." she commented with a wry smile. "Words are some of the first things we learn. It's natural to chose it as the... most comfortable form of self expression. Some people draw, some people paint, some people sculpt. Others write."

"You're an artist, then."

"What makes you say that?"

"Writers are artists with a written word." he told her calmly. "Painting a picture can be done with sound or word as much as paint."

"Beautiful sentiment." she said, and sounded genuinely impressed. He nodded his thanks. "Though I'd be careful not to show my sentiment around here. I think that it might not be justly appreciated." She brought him up only to shove him down, though he wasn't sure if she was aware of that or not.

"Do you think that, by publishing your books, you're expunging some of the images in your mind? Sharing them with others without having to admit to them?"

She scoffed, as though he were being too psychological, too deep. He was applying it a little thickly and he recognised that. Still, he didn't appreciate the bored stare he received for his efforts.

"No."

"Do these stories live with you?"

"I spend months considering murders - penning the structure, flushing out the characters, 'designing' the motives." there was a particularly emphasis on 'designing' that made him feel she mocked him. "I spend my free time sussing through the details internally. I vocalise histories with friends and gauge their reactions. I spend a lot of my life on these stories. Of course they stay with me."

"And the fact that these people are dead because of it..."

"I don't think so." she wagged her phone at him. "This guy would've killed without any help from me. Maybe not these three people in particular, but some other undeserving bunch."

"You sound very certain."

She retracted her phone to her bag, shuffling aside a large travel container and a notepad full of words.

"Serial killers aren't born to kill," she informed him, matter-of-fact. "But they're inclined. He would've found some other inspiration. Another excuse. God, Muhammad, daddy touched me, momma beat me, I have no friends, I got paid to do it. I am not guilty of anything."

He nodded, agreeing.

"And how do you feel, when you kill in your novels?"

"They're born dead." she shrugged, and met his gaze with her hand still in her bag. "I constructed their deaths before the rest of their lives were detailed. These people who look like them, who were in a relationship like them... They were born first to live."

"And now they are dead," he said gently.

"And it makes me-" her brow came down. "Hang on, how did you do that?"

"Do what?"

She narrowed her eyes on him, an annoyed, but playful curl on her lip. He felt they were playing a game, and he could see she was almost about to show him her cards.

"Oh, you're good."

"Thank you." he offered her a smile of his own. "How old are you, may I ask?"

"You shouldn't ask a woman her age, Dr. Lecter." the tightness of her mouth denoted a particular frustration about that, but she still wore a smile. "I'm twenty."

"And you've written how many books?"

"Six in total."

"That's quite a feat, for a person so young. Your parents must be impressed."

"I imagine they would be, were they alive." The smile was gone. He imagined those cards were being locked in a vault in her head, somewhere.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

He truly was.

"Thank you."

"Did you lose them young?"

"I was ten."

"Old enough to understand, then."

"Yes, I was."

"Was it, traumatic?"

"It's always going to be traumatic when your parents die." she said with a bitter venom that wasn't entirely aimed at him. "Now, don't take this personally, but I'd rather bang my head against a wall than engage in this kind of psychiatry."

"It's only psychiatry if I medicate you."

"Got anything fun?" she teased, and he smiled, turning his face away for a moment. "'Sides, I'm used to self medication. Hope you don't mind." she unscrewed the lid of the container and took several long draws of what was inside. He couldn't quite see, but he didn't have to. The alcoholic burn in his nose just about shoved him over.

He noted she was drinking a straight beverage, and barely flinched as it coated her insides. She screwed on the lid, popped two mints in her mouth, and pulled a face.

"That, has gone straight to my head. Okay. We can go back in now." and she turned around to the crime scene without a second's hesitation.