Thank you for the great feedback in many forms. I truly appreciate it! This chapter starts one of favorite episodes, which was really fun to write. Enjoy!

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Chapter 8

Since Booth and Brennan had yet another appointment with Sweets the following evening, Brennan once again decided to start her workday early. It was the second day that week that she had been awake and out of the house before five a.m., and Booth was not particularly pleased about it. It reminded him of her previous habits, and he couldn't help but resent Sweets for disrupting the well-established rhythm of their lives.

Booth spent his morning tracking down information on Emma Billings. She had been employed as a cashier at one of Frank Curtis' organic grocery stores in New Jersey, but the apartment she'd lived in was in Virginia. When he dug into the matter a bit further, he discovered that Emma had most likely been hiding from a man named Noel Liftin, against whom she had filed a restraining order. Booth wasn't all that surprised to find the man in a run-down motel room right across the street from Emma's apartment building.

When he called Brennan to share the information, she was able to give him a few more details that she and the squints had been able to determine. Though Curtis' had definitely been murdered by multiple penetrating wounds to the torso, Emma Billings' death appeared to have been accidental. She had somehow struck her head on the corner of her coffee table, and the impact had been hard enough to break her neck. Whoever had been in the room with her at the time had even attempted CPR. Perhaps the most interesting news, however, was the fact that the victims had been related. They shared a congenital deformation of the sternum, and when Cam compared their DNA samples, she discovered that Emma had been Frank's daughter. Whether or not Frank's murderer had known that they were relatives as opposed to lovers remained to be seen.

Although Booth went through the formality of interrogating Noel Liftin, he was fairly certain that the man hadn't harmed anyone. Noel admitted to having followed and observed Emma closely in the months prior to her death, but he seemed to be under the impression that he'd been doing so for the sake of Emma's safety. He thought that Frank Curtis had been her boyfriend, and the interactions he'd observed between them had given him the impression that Frank had been controlling and domineering.

Generally speaking, stalkers were the prime suspects in murder cases, but Noel Liftin didn't strike Booth as a killer. For one thing, he wondered if the guy would even be coherent enough to commit a murder. He was clearly under the influence of marijuana - an observation Booth could've made even without the distinctive smell of pot wafting across the metal table. Noel was also easily distracted, shifting his focus abruptly to abstract objects and swatting at imaginary flies in the room. The only potential place for him in the investigation was as a witness. He'd been watching Emma's building for months, and there was a reasonable chance he'd seen her attacker.

Booth headed to the Jeffersonian after having Noel escorted back to a holding cell. He decided to solicit Angela's assistance as a sketch artist, and he hoped that he would be able to convince his wife to get out of the lab for a little while as well. Though it was after one p.m., he didn't doubt that she had skipped lunch, and his suspicions were confirmed by the grateful expression on her face when she spotted the takeout bag in his hand.

"How did you know?"

"Is that a real question?" he countered, giving her his best charm smile.

"I suppose not," Brennan replied, grinning back at him affectionately. "Zack and I figured out the murder weapon. It was a pitchfork." She followed him from the Bone Room to her office and helped him set up their lunch on the coffee table. They continued to discuss the case as they ate, collecting Angela from her office before they headed back to the Hoover.

"Are you sure this is a productive use of our time?" Brennan asked from the passenger seat. "Judging by your description of the stalker, it seems unlikely that he will be able to give an accurate description."

"I'm not sure I'm following," Angela admitted from the back seat. "Your suspect is going to give me a description of your suspect?"

"Yeah, the stoned hippy guy," Booth nodded. "He's all we have so far. He saw a guy go into Emma's place, so he'll describe him, and you draw."

"I've never really found stoned guys to be very dependable. Except for cookies," she grinned. "They always have good cookies." Neither Booth nor Brennan seemed to hear her.

"You're grasping at straws, Booth. We should wait for more information," Brennan suggested. Booth raised his brows at her accurate use of a colloquialism but didn't address it.

"It has to be somebody in the composting facility. They have pitchforks to turn the heaps, right?" he asked.

"Yes, but pitchforks are used on every farm in the area."

"But not biodiesel, okay? You said Hodgins found traces of it on both victims' clothes. The owner, Gavin, said he just replaced a fuel pump on his truck when he switched to biodiesel," he reminded her.

"One of the other farmers also said that he just switched, and he has a key. He could've dumped the body in the middle of the night."

"Come on, Bones. Whose side are you on? And don't say 'the facts' because that just annoys me." He bit back a smile, anticipating her reaction.

"You want us to base our actions on your gut?" she asked sarcastically.

"Yes. You have your shiny machines; I have my gut."

"Is it always like this when you two are together?" Angela interrupted. They both glanced in her direction, feeling slightly guilty that they'd temporarily forgotten her presence.

"No," they answered in unison.

"Most of the time," Booth added quietly.

"It's kind of hot," Angela said with a salacious grin. When neither of them argued with her assessment, she continued, "Especially since you've been together for so long. Most couples would have drained the well of sexual tension dry by now."

Brennan rolled her eyes at her friend's observation, but she was inwardly thankful that Angela didn't think they'd really been arguing. She wished that Sweets could see their 'bickering' for what it really was…part discussion, part foreplay.

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Noel gave Angela a description of a caucasian man in his mid-twenties of average height, with a slightly muscular build and brown hair who had been wearing sunglasses. They had appeared to be made of wood, and Brennan immediately recalled the bamboo frames she'd found in Emma's apartment.

A trip back to the compost facility led to the arrest of Charlie Rogan. Not only did he match Noel's description, but he was also in possession of the bamboo sunglasses. Brennan also managed to identify the murder weapon among the tools at the facility, but before they could leave with Charlie in custody, she received a call from Cam.

"Cam, we've got the murder weapon used on Frank Curtis, plus evidence linking Charlie to the scene of Emma's murder," Brennan informed her.

"Yeah, well, I hate to throw ants in your picnic, but I recovered DNA from beneath Emma's fingernails… Charlie didn't attack Emma Billings. Her assailant was female."

"What is it?" Booth asked quietly.

"Charlie didn't kill Emma," Brennan relayed.

"But there's more," Cam added. "I noticed some odd similarities, so I compared Emma's own DNA to that of her attacker. There was a twenty-five percent commonality."

"Half sisters," Brennan said, meeting Booth's gaze. "It was Kat Curtis. She killed Emma."

Charlie and Kat were both brought in for questioning, and neither of them denied their roles in the deaths of Frank and Emma. Kat had confronted Emma at the apartment under the misconception that Emma had been having an affair with Frank. During the course of their argument, Emma had fallen into the coffee table and had died instantly. Kat had panicked after being unable to resuscitate her and had called upon Charlie for help. Charlie had agreed to dispose of the body at the compost facility while Kat and her mother had gone out of town, but he had accidentally left his sunglasses at her apartment.

Frank had apparently spotted the glasses when he'd arrived to visit Emma, and since Emma had been missing from the apartment, he'd become angry and suspicious of Charlie. Charlie had been using a pitchfork to turn the heaps at the facility when Frank had tracked him down, and Charlie had used the pitchfork in defense. He and Kat had worked together to dump the body in the hopes that Kat's mother would still be able to collect on Frank's life insurance policy. They had left him in a place where he would easily be found, since the insurance company wouldn't have given the payout without a body.

The most unfortunate part of the story was that Kat had had no idea that Emma Billings had been her half sister. Brennan broke the news to her as gently as possible, but Kat was still beside herself with shock and grief. Her pain was heartbreaking to witness, and both partners left the interrogation room feeling saddened and emotionally drained. They certainly didn't look like two people who had just solved a homicide case, and when they sat down in front of Sweets that evening, he picked up on the mood immediately.

"You don't seem too happy."

"Well, because sometimes, if you win, you end up with somebody else's pain," Booth replied, his voice low with quiet anger. "You work for the FBI; you should know that."

"Must be a challenge for you to access those feelings-"

"Okay, stop," Brennan interrupted, appalled. "You don't know Booth. You don't know me. You have a limited view of us based on superficial data that you've accumulated on a standardized questionnaire and a subjective analysis from talking to us that is not at all scientific. So Back. Off." She was fuming, and Sweets tried unsuccessfully not to shrink under her stern gaze.

"Just trying to help," he said quietly.

"By questioning his humanity?" Brennan countered in disgust. She knew how much trouble Booth had gone through with this issue after the Epps had died, and she had no intentions of letting anyone make him doubt his own humanity again.

"Okay, Bones," he soothed. "It's okay. He's just a kid, right? I mean, the worst thing that's probably ever happened to him was that he lost at Mortal Kombat." Sweets pursed his lips but decided to let it go, settling on another question instead.

"Have you always been this protective of him, Dr. Brennan?"

"He's my husband, and we're partners," she answered, her tone implying that she found his question to be rather ridiculous. "Our lives depend on being protective of each other."

"And you feel the same way, Agent Booth?"

"Of course."

"You two are very close, even for a married couple. That was evident in your 'superficial,' 'standardized questionnaire' and my 'unscientific observations.'" He said the words with a smile, and he was pleased to see both partners relax in their chairs. "You complement each other."

"Did you compliment me in the questionnaire, Bones?" Booth asked, giving her a cheesy grin.

"'Complement,'" she chuckled. "With an 'e.' He means that we complete each other."

"Well, we already know that," Booth replied with a satisfied expression.

"How long into your partnership did you start dating?" Sweets asked, drawing their attention back to him. It wasn't the first time he'd noticed their propensity to forget they weren't alone in a room.

"Three or four months after our first case as partners," Brennan replied. "But we worked a case together a year prior to that, so we'd known each other for a while."

"Were you ever just partners and nothing more?" Booth and Brennan exchanged a glance before answering in unison.

"Not really."

"When did you know you wanted a romantic relationship?"

"A couple of months before we got together," Brennan answered.

"Right around the time she told me she didn't believe in fate," Booth grinned.

"That was one of the first things I ever said to you, Booth," she chided before addressing Sweets again. "He's being hyperbolic. He's just talking about sexual attraction."

"Yeah, well, when it comes to that, I'm pretty sure you knew that quickly too." His smirk earned him an eye roll.

"What difference does it make?"

"I'm just trying to get the facts," Sweets replied.

"Well, I think you've gotten enough facts for one night," Booth said, gesturing to Brennan that they should make their escape.

"Okay, but we've got a lot of work to do over the next few months," he said quickly as they stepped toward the door. Brennan looked back at him.

"Meaning we get to stay together?"

"Yes, but I have observed some things that need to be addressed."

Both partners looked as though they were considering asking what those things were, but they seemed to simultaneously decide to quit while they were ahead. They said their goodbyes and left the office, and Sweets exhaled a tired sigh. He was slightly surprised that Booth hadn't gone to Cullen about the threat to his partnership with Dr. Brennan. Everything he'd read or been told about Booth indicated that he had a very 'take-charge' personality. He was a natural leader who liked to be in control of his environment. Sweets agreed with Dr. Wyatt that it was most likely Booth's need for control that led to his outbursts of anger, particularly in conjunction with his protective instincts.

The fact that Booth hadn't gone straight to Cullen demanding an explanation for threatening his partnership was interesting to say the least. Sweets knew that the two had known each other for many years and had something of a friendly rapport between them. He wasn't sure if Booth had simply been too busy with the case to bring it up with his boss or if he had an actual reason for neglecting to do so. After the first session with both partners, Sweets had spoken to Cullen himself in order to explain the reason for his bluff about severing the partnership. Cullen had understood his logic, but he had also made it very clear that Sweets had no such power.

Cullen had spoken at length about Booth's partnership with Brennan as well as what he knew of their personal relationship. When Sweets had expressed concern over the advisability of allowing a married couple to be partners, Cullen had basically acknowledged his opinion and overridden it in the same breath. He had agreed that in most cases it would be a bad idea, but Booth and Brennan weren't most people. From the very beginning, the chemistry between the two of them had been apparent to anyone within a hundred-foot radius, and even when they were arguing, the dynamic still worked. Cullen had seemed to be of the same mind as Booth and Brennan were about their relationship: they had never been just partners. As such, Cullen had had very few reservations when he'd gotten wind of their romantic relationship, and even those concerns had gone by the wayside when they'd continued to excel at their jobs.

Sweets had been pleasantly surprised when the couple had willingly answered his questions about the timeline of their relationship. It seemed that the more time he spent observing them, the more interesting they became to him. Not many couples would be able to spend so much time around one another, both at work and at home, and still have such obvious affection toward one another. They reminded him of his parents in that way. The partners flirted and gazed at one another like a couple on a first date, switching back and forth between their romantic and professional relationships with seemingly no effort whatsoever. On a professional level, Sweets found them to be two of the most fascinating clients he'd ever had, which was saying something since they'd had only three joint sessions.

As he drove home that evening, Sweets' mind was full of memories of his parents, observations he'd made of Booth and Brennan, and ideas for potential therapy techniques. He knew that gaining their trust would be vital to helping them. And, just as it had been with his parents, he didn't want to let them down.

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"What about Mario, huh? We could get you a fake mustache and big bushy eyebrows," Booth suggested. Parker looked at the costume skeptically for a moment but shook his head. At some point, he had picked up Brennan's squinty face of disapproval, and the sight of it made Booth smile in spite of the fact that his son had just dismissed yet another potential costume.

"I think I want to be a superhero this year, Dad. Do they have Green Lantern?"

"Maybe," Booth said, grinning proudly. "Let's go look."

"That's a great idea, Parker. I'm going as a superhero too," Brennan approved.

"Awesome! We could be like a crime-fighting team! Just like you and Dad." Booth and Brennan chuckled and continued to hunt through the racks of costumes in search of a Green Lantern in Parker's size.

"So you're gonna be Wonder Woman again, huh?" Booth said quietly. Brennan glanced at him and raised her brows at the flash of possessiveness she saw in his expression.

"Same as every year. Is that a problem?" she challenged, her blue eyes daring him to release his inner alpha male.

Booth deliberated whether or not to take the bait. He still remembered the first Jeffersonian gala they'd attended and all of the staring-down he'd done to practically every man with working genitalia. The thought of Brennan in that same crowd of men while wearing her Wonder Woman costume left a somewhat bitter taste in his mouth, but he swallowed it back sensibly. He knew that she would be coming home with him at the end of the night, to their bed. It was his ring she wore, and no amount of ogling from other men would ever change that. So he merely smiled back at her and kissed her gently.

"Eww, Dad! Gross! We're in public."

The couple shared a laugh at Parker's well-timed complaint, and Brennan slipped her hand into Booth's as they continued their shopping.

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"That mummy didn't look like the one we had a couple of years ago," Booth said as they drove home from their most recent crime scene. "It looked shiny. The other one was all dry and brittle."

"Very astute observation, Agent Booth," Brennan replied with a smirk. "Almost like you're already wearing that lab coat." Booth snorted and rolled his eyes in good humor.

"Seriously though, are we sure it's still a mummy?"

"Yes. There are different methods of mummification. In this case, it was most likely done deliberately by a second party, whereas the nightclub mummy was a product of the environmental conditions inside the wall. Zack is starting the x-rays tonight, and I'll probably go in early tomorrow."

Booth grumbled inwardly but didn't argue. The crime scene they'd just left had been in the middle of a straw bale maze at Shoreline Amusement Park. They'd been guided haphazardly through the maze by the local pediatrician-slash-coroner, who had explained that the mummy had been found by a child. Working cases on holidays was one of Booth's least favorite aspects of his job, and he was thankful that they'd already taken Parker trick-or-treating last weekend. At least their case wouldn't be interfering with his parenting time.

By the time Booth picked Brennan up from the lab the next morning for their first interview, she had already put in more than a half-day's work. He found her in the autopsy room with Cam, Zack, and Hodgins, and from the sounds of things, Cam was in the process of laying down the law about the Jeffersonian Halloween party.

"I'm serious, you two. I've heard the stories. No smoke bombs, no spiking the punch with pure alcohol…" She turned her glare on Booth and Brennan. "And no ditching. It's compulsory, as are the costumes." Hodgins opened his mouth to speak but was silenced with a finger. He did his best to look appropriately contrite. "I don't want any argument on this."

"I'm going to be the back end of a cow," Zack volunteered.

"So, no costume?" Hodgins snickered.

"Naomi from Paleontology has agreed to be my front."

"So many jokes, so little time," Hodgins sighed ruefully.

"We'll be there, Cam," Booth assured her before turning to his wife. "You ready to go, Bones? I got the address of that church thrift store. You can fill me in on the rest in the car."

"The body was treated with cedar oil, which is often used in mummification," Brennan announced as she glanced around the parking garage reflexively. Being there still made her mildly uncomfortable, but the additional security measures Cam had pursued had gone a long way to help Brennan overcome her fear. "The victim was female, mid-teens. Angela's working on a reconstruction for the ID and starting with the MEC database."

Booth rubbed her back soothingly before opening her door. Extra security or no, he didn't care much for this parking structure either, and being told that their victim had been a child didn't improve his mood.

The Free Church of America's thrift store was busier than Booth had expected. Pastor Bill Jonas agreed to speak with them and wasn't at all surprised to hear that a dead body had been found wearing clothes from his thrift store.

"We're a charitable congregation," he shrugged. "Homeless people know that we'll provide them with what they need."

Brennan showed him a few photographs she'd taken of the victim's clothing and asked the man if he recalled those particular items. Before he could answer, however, they were interrupted by a teenage boy wearing a long black cape.

"Pastor Jonas? Do you have anything like this in red?"

"You're looking for something that screams 'Satan,' right?" the minister asked.

"Basically."

"I think we have a pink cape in the back. Maybe we can dye it." The boy looked pleased and headed back to return the black cape to its rack.

"What kind of church dresses kids like Satanists?" Booth asked, frowning.

"Let me show you," Pastor Jonas said in a rather businesslike manner. He led them to a long table upon which sat an assortment of open shoeboxes. They had been decorated and assembled into a diorama of a haunted house consisting of seven different rooms. Each room was labeled with a theme. "At Halloween, we do a Hell House. Fornication, theft, murder, gambling, usury, sodomy, abortion…"

"It's kind of horrific, isn't it?" Brennan asked, her tone light but not quite sarcastic.

"Well, abandoning the path of righteousness is horrific, Dr. Brennan. This is our way of remaking a pagan holiday into a positive celebration of Christian values." Booth scowled a bit harder as the pastor congratulated a passing teen on her prostitute costume. He didn't approve of the way fundamentalists like Pastor Jonas used his religion in order to scare people. Booth's perception of God had to do with grace, not fear.

"Anyone ever dress like a mummy?" he asked, moving things along.

"We've never had a 'false idol' room, though now you mention it, it's not a bad idea," the minister replied speculatively.

"Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs endured for almost four thousand years, twice the length of Christianity," Brennan stated.

"Look, did any of your kids suddenly disappear?"

"No," Pastor Jonas replied. Booth was ready to leave, but Brennan's mind was elsewhere.

"What if the children that you save from abortion grow up to be usurers and sodomites?" she pressed. Booth resisted the urge to slap his palm into his face. Talking about religion with his atheist wife no longer made him anxious, but he really wanted to leave.

"I don't respond to mocking semantics, Dr. Brennan."

"Nor do I," Booth agreed. "But she's serious."

"In that case, my serious answer would be that… In being given the chance to live a life, the aborted soul will have a multitude of opportunities to repent for their sins and live bathed in the Holy Spirit." Booth glanced back to his wife, expecting her typical dismissal of faith-based ideology, but to his surprise, she merely nodded.

"Thank you."

"Thank you?" Booth parroted incredulously, following her out of the shop to the SUV. "Didn't that pastor guy make you mad?"

"No," she shrugged as she fastened her seatbelt.

"He's a fundamentalist."

"I appreciate the consistency."

"Of what? The consistency of trying to scare kids into Christianity?" She can't possibly approve of that, he thought.

"How do we keep kids from smoking? We tell them it gives them cancer."

"It does give them cancer."

"According to science," she smiled."

"Right, which is your thing."

"In the end, even someone who believes in empiricism and science has to take a leap of faith."

"What?" Booth wondered if he might be having an out-of-body experience.

"I believe in what I can hear, taste, see, touch, and measure. You believe in what you feel. Pastor Jonas believes that God speaks to him through a sacred book."

"What happened to comparing belief in God to geocentrism and Jesus being a zombie?" Booth asked, gazing at her as though she'd suddenly turned purple. Brennan laughed but lifted her brows with a look of approval.

"Very good use of vocabulary, Agent Booth."

"Admit it; you're saying all this just to mess with me, right?"

"Of course not," she laughed. He threw her a disparaging look. "Seriously."

"When have you ever taken a 'leap of faith?'"

"I fell in love with you, didn't I?"

Their gazes held for a little longer than one might consider safe considering that Booth was driving. Though he wanted to tease her about her cheesy response, he couldn't find the words. Instead, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the smooth skin of her palm. His phone rang from inside of his suit pocket, and he released her hand to answer it.

"It's Cam," he announced, activating the speakerphone.

"I really need you to come back," Cam said, sounding anxious. "I've got a couple here who say they think the mummy in the maze is their daughter."

"That would save us some time on the identification," Booth replied.

"Their daughter only disappeared last week."

"The remains we found were at least a year old," Brennan argued.

"Yeah. Look, I'm great with corpses, but when it comes to loved ones… Let's just say there's a reason I'm not a pediatrician. So if you've got a siren, turn it on."

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Don and Margie Shaw were waiting for them in Brennan's office. They explained that their fourteen-year-old daughter, Megan, had gone missing from Shoreline Amusement Park the previous week, and when they'd heard about the mummy on the news, they'd suspected it might be their daughter. Brennan reassured them that the victim had been dead for over a year and that perhaps their daughter might still be alive. They didn't recognize the girl in Angela's forensic sketch, and before the conversation could go much further, Cam called Brennan from her office with more bad news. Another mummy had been found at the amusement park.

Booth and Brennan said farewell to the Shaws and wished them luck on finding their daughter. Margie Shaw insisted that they keep her photograph and dental records in hopes that they might find her in the course of their investigation. Booth tucked the documents into the casefile, hoping that Megan Shaw wasn't the body they were on their way to investigate.

They decided to pick up dinner and eat in the car on their way to the crime scene, though Booth wasn't entirely sure that seeing a mummy on a full stomach was in his best interests. By the time they reached the amusement park, night had fallen, and the dark sky was punctuated by the colorful fluorescent lights of the rides. The body had been discovered in a haunted house, and as they approached the structure, their attention was drawn to a woman on a stretcher. She was in a mild state of panic and was attempting to argue around an oxygen mask with the paramedic who was attending her.

"I know what I saw," she insisted.

"Keep the mask on, please, ma'am," the medic instructed.

"What's wrong with her?" Brennan asked.

"Anxiety attack. Brought on by this dungeon, here," he said, gesturing to the entrance of the fun house. A large robotic gargoyle swayed ominously over the doorway, and the sign read Dungeon of 1000 Corpses. "I spend half my time on these calls." He introduced himself as Pete Geller, and Booth responded with introductions of his own.

"You know it's not real, right?" Brennan addressed the woman. "You're overreacting to an excessive amount of stimuli."

"I'm not overreacting," she insisted breathlessly. "There's a dead body in there. A real one. I'm a nurse. Trust me, I know a dead body when I see one."

"Did you see anything?" Booth asked Geller.

"Not much time for that," the man shrugged. "Just went in, found her, got her out…"

"Right. What did you see?" he asked the woman.

"A corpse. Just past the killer clown."

"Clown?" Booth repeated, wondering if his voice really sounded so high-pitched to everyone else.

"You okay?" Geller asked in concern.

"Yeah."

"You sure?" Brennan pressed, frowning slightly. Booth reassured her that he was fine, but as they walked toward the entrance of the haunted house, he felt as though every muscle in his body was clenched tightly. Brennan allowed him to go in first, as that was something he usually insisted upon, but she almost ran into the back of him when he stopped suddenly. She peeked around his shoulder to see a clown mannequin with wrinkly skin and bloody, sharp teeth standing in front of him. "What's wrong?"

Booth yelped and jumped slightly, and Brennan held his upper arms steady so that he didn't tread on her feet. Luckily, his phone began to ring from his pocket, and he lifted it to show her that Cam was calling him and that the sound had been what had startled him.

"Coulrophobia," Brennan said succinctly, stepping around him for a better view of his face.

"Huh?"

"The fear of clowns. Coulrophobia. Why haven't you ever told me about it? Do you think you would've shot that speaker last spring if it hadn't looked like a clown?"

"I have no problems with clowns. I can stand right here, see?" he said defensively as he answered his still-ringing phone. His eyes darted back to the clown every few seconds as Cam gave him more information for the case. The first victim had been identified as fifteen-year-old Stella Higgins, who had disappeared a year ago to the day from the very same amusement park.

Brennan moved past the clown first, but as Booth passed it, the mannequin moved as if to follow him, emitting a high-pitched, maniacal laugh. Booth yelped again and hurried forward, falling into step beside Brennan. They entered another area of the building, and Brennan mocked the deep, evil laugh that blared from the speakers.

"Yeah, okay. Clown? Scary. Not you," Booth chuckled. Brennan smiled, pleased that she'd been able to bring a smile to his face after his encounter with the clown. They proceeded a little further, making jokes about the unrealistic 'dead bodies' surrounding them, but it wasn't long until they came across a real one. It was another mummy, but this one seemed to be wearing clothing as opposed to gauze wrappings.

Brennan helped the forensic techs load the body and sweep the rest of the park, while Booth worked his way through interviews with the amusement park staff. Aside from a manager with crazy eyes and a smart-mouthed redhead with multiple piercings, the only employee who seemed like a potential suspect was a teenage kid named Greg Liscomb. Booth recognized him from their previous visit to the park and recalled that he'd been standing outside of the maze at the time.

"I should go back to the lab," Brennan said as they drove away from the park. She stifled a yawn but wasn't completely successful.

"Bones, it's late, and you're exhausted. You went in early this morning. Let the other squints work the late shift, okay?"

She looked as though she wanted to argue with him, but she eventually gave a reluctant sigh of acquiescence. As a compromise, she texted Cam and Zack requesting that they call with their findings as soon as they finished for the night. She was about to switch off the lamp on her nightstand when her phone rang, and she listened patiently as Cam summarized what they'd determined thus far.

"So?" Booth asked sleepily when she had finally ended the call. "Is it Megan Shaw?"

"No. Dental records weren't a match. This victim had a tattoo though, and Angela was able to use that for the ID. Her name was Judith Evans. She was sixteen when she went missing two years ago. Also from Shoreline. She was there with her sister and a couple of friends."

"Another kid," Booth muttered in disgust. "What else?"

"Cedar oil and a generic lacquer was used on both victims, but it was infused with a number of particulates and a spore of some kind. Hodgins is working on identifying those. He also got a match on the skin and hair removed from Stella's fingernails. It was her own."

"She pulled out her own hair?"

"It looks that way. She also had hundreds of small puncture marks all over her body. Like insect bites, but larger. If they were bites, there might be something left inside the wounds, so Hodgins is working on that too."

"Hodgins is gonna have a long night," Booth said flatly, wondering if he wasn't in for one too. It wasn't that he hadn't seen and heard worse in their line of work, but the fact that this had happened to teenage girls was disturbing.

"Yes. Zack identified fracturing on the phalanges and metacarpals of the second victim. Cam said that he told her about seeing similar injuries on a set of remains he'd seen in Iraq that had been...buried alive."

Booth sighed and folded her into his arms, willing away the nausea that her words had induced. He didn't want to think of anyone in a situation like that, but Brennan's experience with the Gravedigger made the images in his mind ten times more frightening.

"So we think it's the same person who killed them both, right?"

"Maybe," she replied, her voice muffled against his chest. "Not enough evidence to be sure yet." They lay in silence, soothing each other with gentle caresses until Booth noticed that she had fallen asleep. He kissed the top of her head and held her a little more tightly in his arms, as though she were a talisman against his nightmares.

...And clowns.

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Damn those clowns. ;)

Reviews please the muse. See you Saturday!