A/N: Wow! When I first started writing this chapter, I thought to myself: "I won't have anything to write about for this one". Seriously, the plot for this chapter was quite simply but changed into something a bit more complex. Hope you like it, I've had fun writing it. I just love Clara for some reason! She reminds me of Booth's mother in "Remember Our Promise?".

He couldn't believe he was doing that. Mackenzie had only been dead for three days and Clara was already requesting a visit to the Robertson's home. The couple had agreed, probably thinking it would help them bring closure to a story they didn't want to live in the first place.

He still couldn't believe that little Mickey was dead. He had seen her only a couple of days ago, so happy to be coming to sleep over at her best friend's house on a school night. Booth felt guilty. They had only protected her for a night and she had ended up getting killed practically the next day.

He was now positively certain that a serial killer was at large in his quiet town of Winchester. But who? And, most importantly, why? Why Winchester and why these girls?

As he turned the corner on Maple Street, Booth eyed suspiciously a man crossing the street. Could he be the killer? Probably not. Then who was? Would he have to suspect everyone in his town?

Another question was popping up. Why that house in particular? Why every eight years? Did it take the killer so many years to plan the murders or was it simply a coincidence, that he simply had a thing for nine-year-old girls and he was just waiting for them to hit the big 9? But Mickey had been about to turn ten and so had been Laura Joyce, the first victim. Something wasn't right. All the murders had been done on an April 23rd. Why that particular date?

So many questions without answers. Booth glanced briefly at the woman sitting beside him. Would she be able to give them answers?

Bones had refused to accompany them. He could understand why but he still wished she would have come. But she had Angela to take care of. Angela who had just given birth to a premature baby. He'd had a preemie himself, he knew how she was feeling.

He parked the SUV in front of the Robertson's house. The couple had left their cars out in the driveway, preventing Booth from parking in it. Turning off the ignition, he turned to Clara.

"Now listen. These people just lost their daughter. I don't want you to make them feel any worse than they already are."

"I'm not your partner, Agent Booth. I'm really not like Dr. Booth. I know how to talk to people."

Booth frowned. It hadn't been quite what he had meant. He bit his tongue, holding back the question of how she knew his wife was like that to slip out. He already knew her answer. And he was no psychic.

They got out of the car and walked up to the front door in complete silence. The doorbell seemed to ring louder than usual in the stillness of this Sunday morning. Even the footsteps coming from inside the house seemed to echo loudly in his ears. His gut feeling told him that it hadn't been a good idea to come here today. But what Booth didn't know is that his gut feeling would turn out to be right.

The door in front of them opened. A tall woman with dark brown hair opened the hair. Booth smiled sympathetically at her. Lucy smiled sadly back at him.

"I'm so sorry to bother you." Booth said, honestly.

"No problem, Seeley." Lucy replied. "Anything you need to do to find Mickey's killer, I'll accept."

Lucy's eyes went from Booth to the other woman.

"I'm Clara." Clara said, introducing herself. "I'm the reason why Agent Booth is so sorry to bother you on this day."

"Hi."

"Clara is a..."

"Psychic." Clara finished for him. "He still has trouble saying that word. It's probably because of his wife. She's not a firm believer in my line of work. Would you mind if we came in? I'd like to get acquainted with your house, if you don't mind."

Lucy frowned slightly.

"Not at all."

Her voice betrayed her skepticism but Clara didn't seem to pick up on it. Instead, she stepped inside the house and shivered.

"I sense a dark presence in this place." She said, her voice suddenly lower.

Booth took a deep breath, trying his best to soothe the annoyance that had just surprised him. He could almost hear his wife make a sarcastic comment beside him.

He followed Clara around the house and watched somewhat curiously as the psychic made her way around each room, examining closely each corner of it and trailing with a finger some objects.

"Mackenzie was a very happy child, Mrs Robertson." Clara said somewhat dreamily. "And despite what she went through a couple of nights ago, she's still happy."

Behind Booth, Lucy let out a small squeal.

"Clara, I don't think..."

"It's okay." Lucy immediately interrupted.

Booth turned to face the woman.

"Really, it's okay." Lucy repeated, wiping a single tear falling from her eyes. "I need to hear this. I'll be fine, I promise."

Booth nodded, a bit unsure. Was this what Lucy truly needed? A psychic going through her house, examining items and talking about Mickey like she had known her all her life? There was something wrong about this, Booth thought. How could Lucy be okay with this when he, himself, felt like he had just let an impostor in his daughter's friend's house? He almost felt like he was betraying the memory of this adorable little girl who had died way before her time.

Clara grabbed a picture frame from a shelf and smiled tenderly at the children on the picture.

"He put up a fight, didn't he?" Clara asked, looking up at Lucy.

Lucy, momentarily stunned, took a few seconds before answering.

"Yes." She said, in a whisper. "Will didn't want to go take pictures. He said pictures were for girls. He threw just a fit that day. But the second the photographer handed him his baby sister, he just stopped. Mickey always did that to him. Maybe not as much today, you know how teenagers can be."

"Yes." Clara replied even though she couldn't have known by experience.

"How is Will?" Booth asked.

"Okay, I guess. He doesn't talk much. He just sits around in his room, listening to music- if you can even call what he listens to music-, playing computer games or reading. He only leaves his bedroom to eat dinner and go to school."

"If I remember well, William wasn't here the night Mickey died."

"No, he wasn't. He was sleeping over at a friend's house. He came back maybe an hour after the police left. He didn't know a thing. We had to break the news to him."

Lucy began sobbing. Booth slowly reached out to her and squeezed her shoulder.

As suddenly as Lucy had started sobbing, she stopped and looked up at Clara.

"Would you like to see the rest of the house?"

Clara set the picture frame back onto the shelf.

"Actually, I would like to see her bedroom now."

They walked in silence and Booth almost felt like he was practicing for tomorrow's funerals. In a straight line, the trio trooped up the stairs and down a hallway. Everything was quiet, the hallway seemed like it had fallen asleep for a while. It was dark, no windows were there to brightened the gloomy atmosphere.

Each step brought him closer to the bedroom. Her bedroom. He momentarily forgot why he was there. His thoughts brought him back to over a decade earlier.

How could a child simply vanish from the face of the Earth? Booth thought as he opened the door to the small room.

The walls were baby blue and a net hung above the bed. A large Barbie with long brown hair was smiling brightly back at him. Ballet slippers hung from the ceiling in the corner of a room. The sun was shining through the window, brightening the room softly. A ray of dust flew gracefully in the air.

Booth sat on the bed and rubbed his eyes. This was simply ridiculous. Raine Bennett had simply walked out of the bed only to never be seen again. There were no clues as to where she had gone off, the small wood behind the house had been searched thoroughly and there were no signs of her.

Down the stairs, Booth could hear Raine's mother walking about the kitchen, trying desperately to keep herself busy in order not to think of her daughter. Booth knew the woman was unstable. He knew that this would only aggravate her situation. It made him feel powerless that he couldn't help her.

He thought of his baby son in Washington. If someone was to take him, he knew he'd probably die. But more importantly, he would want someone looking for him. He would want to know that someone out there cared about his son enough to search for him and maybe be lucky enough to bring him back to safety.

He turned to the next bed. That one white. There was no drawing, no Barbies staring back at him. Only white. White comforter. Simple. Just like Raine had been. A simple child who never asked for anything, who simply made her way into the world as quietly as possible.

I'll find you. Booth thought, his mind momentarily clouded by emotions. Even if it takes me all my life, I'll find you.

Booth shook his head, as if doing so would clear his mind of the memory of Raine Bennett.

He looks up to find Lucy slowly opening the door to her daughter's room. Booth's breath catches in his throat as a light pink wall slowly comes into view. Pink. Not blue.

The trio stepped inside the room and Booth's eyes immediately went to the left corner of the room. There was no ballet shoes hanging from the ceiling. There was no net about the bed and Starla the Starlet was staring back at him, not Barbie had a decade ago. Being in that room felt weird to Booth. Everything had changed. The room was still the same yet it was different at the same time.

He watched as Clara began examining the room. Her eyes slowly circled it, as if seeking for invisible information, information she was the only one able to see. Booth felt as though she was trying to connect with the room, as crazy as it sounded to him.

"There's something in this room." Clara said as she lightly touched the wall.

Her finger traced the contour of the light switch. Her eyes seemed to question what she was feeling.

She traced the switch for a few more seconds before stepping further inside the room. She passed the bed and went to the window. Suddenly, Booth felt as though this visit had nothing to do with Mackenzie.

"This is where he got in." Clara said to no one in particular.

She traced the window frame with her left hand.

"It exploded but it wasn't from the earthquake. It was him."

"Who's him?" Booth asked, suddenly understanding that she was describing Laura Joyce's kidnapping.

"I can't see his face again. It's the same man, I know it."

She stopped. Lucy and Booth glanced briefly at each other before turning back to the psychic. A strange noise reached Booth's ears. Turning around, he saw nothing. Frowning, he turned back to Clara who was still standing at the window.

Her eyes were focused somewhere into the void. When Clara stared directly at him, Booth was pretty sure she was looking past him. Something brushing past him startled him. He looked around the room in search of a cat or a dog but found nothing. A voice at the back of his head told him that he already knew the Robertson had no dogs or cats. Booth shivered.

The temperature in the room suddenly dropped. Cold grabbed hold of his hands and spread throughout his entire body. He searched Clara's eyes for an answer to what was going on but Clara's eyes were still unfocused. He turned to Lucy. She seemed unaware of the temperature change.

"That's all I can learn from this room." Clara said, out of the blue.

Lucy turned to the woman.

"What you just described... it had nothing to do with my daughter, didn't it?"

Clara shook her head.

"No. I'm sorry. But I describe what the spirit tells me. And the spirit here told me that the window was busted by a man and not the earthquake."

Lucy frowned.

A noise in the hallway startled the three adults. Three heads spun in the direction of the open door to find the hallway empty.

"Is it just me or is it cold in here?" Lucy finally asked.

Booth let out a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't crazy.

"It's normal that a room feels cooler where there is a ghost present inside."

"A ghost?"

"Not just one ghost. This house is populated by spirits. Some good, some bad. The one in this room is called Laura Joyce. She was the first of the victims. She vanished during an earthquake."

"What are you talking about?" Lucy asked, confused.

"This house is haunted, Mom. I'm telling you."

"The house isn't haunted, William, now will you just go to bed please?"

"So you're saying that the slamming of the door we just heard was caused by the wind?"

"Mom! I can't find my shoes!"

"They're at the front door."

"No they're not."

"Yes they are, I just che...cked."

"They had disappeared." Lucy whispered.

"What?" Booth asked, unsure of what she had just said.

"The children. Both of them. They complained. They complained that their belongings were disappearing, that doors were being slammed shut on their own, that there were weird noises coming from the basement. I dismissed them, told them that they were only imagining stuff but now..."

Clara smiled, reassuringly.

"Children are often sensitive that this kind of things. They often see or hear things that adults don't because they have just simply stopped believing. I, for one..."

Booth tried his best to listen intently at Clara's speech on extrasensory perception but found himself incapable of doing so. He stared politely at Clara, pretending to be listening when something from the corner of his eye caught his attention. Movement. On the floor.

He tore his eyes from Clara and looked down. Beside Lucy's foot laid a small stuffed bunny rabbit. Booth cleared his throat.

"Ladies."

The two women turned to him. With a slightly shaking finger, he pointed at the inanimate object on the floor. Lucy frowned.

Clara stepped over on the other side of the bed and looked in the direction of Booth's finger. Slowly, she crouched down and picked up the rabbit. It was yellow and dirty, obviously old.

"Is this Mickey's?" Booth asked, knowing fully well the answer simply by looking at the stuffed animal.

"No. I've never seen that toy before. Where did it come from?"

Booth shrugged.

Both women leaned in to take a good look at the rabbit.

Where had that rabbit come from? Booth was certain the toy hadn't been on the ground when they had first walked in. The stuffed animal wasn't big but wasn't small either. They would have seen it. Could one of the spirits Clara had been talking about have put it there?

Seeley, you're being ridiculous. He could almost hear his wife say.

There was no spirit inside that house. The cold air had probably just swept in from the window. This was an old house. It probably wasn't even insulated very well.

Without knowing why, Booth slowly turned around. His heart skipped a beat as his eyes fell on a little girl standing beside the stairs.

"Melanie Pharatt visited me last night. She told me to help her."

Booth felt his insides freeze as he locked eyes with Melanie. Then, in an instant, she vanished leaving Booth blinking unbelievably at the empty space.

"There's something written on its leg." Lucy said.

Booth spun around just as Clara was flipping the bunny over.

"Give me that." Booth said a little harshly.

With his heart still pounding inside his chest, he snatched the toy from the psychic's hands and examined the toy's leg. The letters E and B were stitched on the back of the rabbit's leg. Booth frowned. E.B.? Who was E.B.?

So... what do you think?