Lanie Parish watched her fiancé and his two partners enter the theater. Esposito couldn't help but smile back at the woman he loved. "You glad to see me, chica?"

"Absolutely," Lanie purred back. Her tone turned serious in a heartbeat. "Because now you guys can get *him* as far away from *me* as possible..."

While Ryan recognized Lanie's annoying 'shadow' immediately, Esposito had no clue who he was. And the idea that some balding bureaucrat could just poke his head into *my girl's* business whenever he wants...Esposito tamped down his growing anger and forced himself to be *all* business. "And you are...?"

"Douglas Vanderkellen," the older gentleman replied, "the general manager for this Opera House." Vanderkellen's eyes followed Lanie as she walked back to the reason why they were all there in the first place. He then turned away dramatically, shaking his head. "Tragic story, simply tragic..."

"This is an opera house," Esposito tried to joke, "aren't the stories *supposed* to be tragic?"

The joke fell flat, showing Ryan that he was going to have to take the lead in this interview. Getting a cursory look at the body for himself, Ryan's eyes widened as he realized exactly *who* the deceased man was. "Mr. Vanderkellen, is that..."

The manager answered Ryan's question, choking off a sob. "Yes, I'm afraid that is, indeed, Thomas Engebretsen..."

"Wow," exclaimed Ryan, shaking his head as he wrote down the victim's name in his notes. "Wasn't he about to make his debut here?"

Vanderkellen nodded. "Our original Wotan, James Hightower, tragically passed away a week ago. We were lucky to get Engebretsen to come in and take over for him. But now..."

Ryan informed his partner, "Wagnerian singers are considered something of a rare breed, even in the world of opera. There are often less than a dozen singers in the world capable of singing one of these roles." Turning his attention back to Vanderkellen, Ryan commented, "To lose two of these men within a week of each other must be a terrible blow to the company."

"Yes," said Vanderkellen, "singers are very superstitious, after all. At least we have one more cover for the role, and he better be ready to go on tomorrow..." The manager's voice trailed off as his thoughts quickly got lost in the monumental size of his to-do list.

Ryan and Esposito shared a knowing look between them. Potential suspect? asked Esposito through the mind-link.

Unless he tells us otherwise, replied Ryan. Out loud, Ryan asked, "What is the last cover's name, Mr. Vanderkellen?"

Vanderkellen's face went ashen as he contemplated why the police would be asking that question. "You don't think he could have possibly...?"

"We need to talk to him to be sure, sir," replied Esposito. "Name, please?"

"Jacob Bradford," replied Vanderkellen. "My office will have his contact information."

"Thank you," said Ryan. He briefly recalled a memory of an overheard conversation. "You have had many critics of the way things have been run since you've been here, am I correct, sir?"

Vanderkellen's gaze grew more stern as the conversation turned more personal. "Your point, detective?"

"Have you made any enemies since you started your tenure, Mr. Vanderkellen?" Ryan asked matter-of-factly.

"One does not end *up* in my position without having made a few enemies, detective," Vanderkellen replied in a snide, derisive tone.

"Have you made any of your enemies angry enough to *kill*, Mr. Vanderkellen?" Ryan countered quickly. "Perhaps a board member you've crossed swords with, or a Wagnerite who's particularly incensed about your plans for the Ring cycle..."

Both suggestions seemed to strike a nerve with the nervous general manager. Paling visibly as he finished the interview, Vanderkellen stammered out, "Talk...talk to my assistant. She'll give you any other information you require. Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me..."

Ryan and Esposito both visibly relaxed as the older man practically ran away from the crime scene. "And I thought Gates was a hard boss to work for," commented Esposito. "That guy would put *me* in therapy."

Beckett watched the boys lead Vanderkellen off to be interviewed, not envying them in the slightest. She then focused her attention on her best friend and reason they were there. Beckett climbed the machine-made hill to talk to the medical examiner. "What do you got for me, Lanie?"

"Well," Lanie began, "I'd say we've got a pretty good head start as to the cause of death.

Beckett knelt down to study the face of their victim, frozen in a death-mask of terror. Between the victim's head and shoulders, the detective couldn't help but agree with Lanie's assessment. "Probably that spear through the neck that got him, huh?"

"Ya think?" Lanie teased.

"You were right about one thing," Beckett thought out loud as she examined the surrounding area, "Castle would have *loved* this..."

Lanie couldn't help but notice her friend's melancholy demeanor. "So when's he coming back from London?"

A ghost of a smile flashed across Beckett's face. "Tomorrow night."

"So we'll see you guys sometime next week, then?" Lanie teased. Getting the desired longer-lasting smile out of her best friend, the ME got down to business. "The more interesting problem seems to be how someone could possibly set up this little tableau. From the way the spear impacted with our friend's throat our killer would have had to have been somewhere along the lines of 7 foot 5."

Beckett was surprised by the number her friend just quoted. "Could the killer have raised his side of the platform so that he appeared that height when he attacked?"

"It's possible," Lanie replied. "Our killer seemed to have been pretty determined to immobilize the vic before he struck, which would have given him time to make any adjustments. I'm not familiar with how these planks move, though, so I wouldn't know."

The detective made her way down the 'hill' to the stage level. When Beckett looked around to take in the new perspective, she couldn't help but notice the deep scratch in the stage floor. "Looks like our killer couldn't handle the weight of the spear."

Alexis overheard Beckett thinking out loud. "But then how did he get the stage up the 'hill' without scratching the planks of the machine?"

Beckett didn't have an answer for the question. A voice whispered faintly in the back of her mind, look at the spear's aura...

The *spear's* aura? Beckett recoiled at her own train of thought. The spear wouldn't have an aura...still, would it hurt to check...She climbed back up on the machine, approaching the body just as Lanie was finishing up her examination. Beckett focused on the air around the spear, looking for any breaks, any waves of energy...

It was as if the world suddenly flashed into a paler, duller version of itself. Beckett stepped back and stared at the glowing handprints she knew only she could see. Stepping back a little further, she looked around the room, only having a faint idea of what she was looking for. The scrape made by the spear was also faintly glowing. Beckett scanned the room carefully in a counter-clockwise direction. There, she thought, in the catwalks above the stage...and there it is again on the back wall...

"WHOA!" Lanie yelled out, narrowly catching up to Beckett in time to keep the detective from losing her balance on the unstable machine. "Easy there, girl!" she exclaimed, her voice clearly showing concern for her friend. "You almost took a two-story nose dive there, honey. What's going on?"

Beckett shook her head several times, trying both to bring her focus back on the real, visible world and to *explain* what exactly she had seen. Lanie watched as her friend had trouble coming up even with a place to begin. "You weren't looking at 'normal' forensic evidence, were you?"

"Not even close," replied Beckett, shaking her head. "Listen, promise me you'll run *every* test you can think of on that spear. There's something on that spear..."

Lanie nodded, mentally congratulating herself for thinking to make the extra call when she heard about this crime scene. At least with her here we don't have to work around the weird side...the ME called for her intern, who was standing at the bottom of the 'hill'. "Alexis!"

Alexis looked up from her clipboard at her mentor's call. "Yeah, Lanie, what's up?"

"Whatever Beckett tells you to do, can you make sure it gets done?"

Alexis nodded. "Sure, no problem."

"Thanks, Lanie," Beckett said as she started to descend the hill. "You'll let me know what you find on that spear?"

"No problem," replied Lanie. "As long as you make sure to bring my intern back in one piece..."

"The stagehands are setting up a scissor crane for us now," Beckett told Alexis, "should only be a minute or so."

"Okay," said Alexis. "So what are we doing?"

Beckett looked past the girl to the back wall of the theater. "To be honest, Lex," she replied, "I'm not really sure *what* it is."

Alexis followed Beckett's line of sight to the high spot where they were headed. "Can I assume that whatever this is is something that someone else might not have seen?" When Beckett nodded, Alexis asked, "Can I ask *how* you saw it?"

As they boarded the scissor crane with the stagehand who was going to work the controls, Beckett quietly replied, "I looked at 'air around' the spear."

Even though Alexis understood what Beckett was talking about, she was still surprised by the detective's answer. "Why?"

"Had a hunch," Beckett shrugged. "Anyway, when I did that I saw some sort of weird, glowing residue on the spear in a form that looked like handprints. So I looked around the rest of the theater and I saw the same residue in a few other places. One of them being...right here." Beckett turned her attention to the stagehand controlling the crane. "Can you move us down about six inches?" She thanked the man after he complied with her request.

Alexis turned her attention to the wall that was now right in front of them. "So this is the spot?"

Beckett nodded, focusing on the 'aura' she had seen earlier. "Can you take some scrapings from the wall at around the height of your shoulder?"

Alexis nodded and did as the detective asked. The material that came back on the edge of her knife was a dried-out thick goo. "Eeewww," Alexis commented as she wiped the knife against the edge of her specimen jar. "Is that what you saw, Kate?"

Beckett confirmed that the scrapings had the energy that she had seen earlier. The jar glowed between her fingers. "Yeah. So what the hell is it?"

Ryan, Esposito and Lanie were waiting for Beckett and Alexis when they came down from the scissor crane. "Well, we're not going to be at a loss for suspects on this one," Ryan announced to the group. "Our vic's name was Thomas Engebretsen. He came in to take over the starring role in the current show after the original star died 'tragically' last week, according to our jumpy general manager."

"I heard about that," Beckett chimed in. "Didn't he drown in the fountain outside?"

Lanie nodded. "His blood alcohol level was .25, and a couple of bottles of cheap whiskey were found at the scene. Perlmutter ruled it an accident."

"Can you get us the records anyway?" asked Beckett. "Under the circumstances it might be good to compare the two cases. See if there are any similarities." Lanie nodded her agreement.

Ryan continued, "There's only one guy left in town who can sing the role. Name's Jacob Bradford, the second cover."

"Second cover?" asked Beckett.

"Kinda like the backup to the backup quarterback. These are guys who usually don't have a lot of experience and are there to get the role on their resume," replied Ryan.

Beckett understood the younger man's suspicions. "But you think the guy might have decided that he was better than second cover and offed the people standing in his way?"

Ryan nodded. "But he's not our only option. Our nosy GM hasn't exactly been popular with his Board of Directors. Some have even accused him of deliberately trying to run the company into the ground."

"So why would the board of directors take his incompetence so personally?" asked Esposito.

"The productions here are funded almost entirely through private donations," replied Ryan. "The board of directors are usually made up of the donors or close friends of the donors. They may not be looking for a return on their investment, but if they're not happy with where their money went..."

"Still," countered Beckett, "I can't imagine somebody with that much money wanting to go after the 'singers' over the production, good, bad or otherwise. Who else?"

Ryan had one more possible group of suspects. "When I mentioned the possibility of a deranged Wagnerite, Vanderkellen lost it. Practically ran out of the theater. I think he might have gotten some threats, but he didn't stick around long enough to verify that."

Esposito frowned in confusion as the unfamiliar term. "I remember when you mentioned that word to him. Who are Wagnerites?"

"Fans of the operas of Richard Wagner are probably the most die-hard, devoted, passionate fans in the opera world...kinda like Trekkies. If one of them decided he didn't like this production and went off the deep end over it..."

"People have killed for a lot less," agreed Beckett. "Although I doubt any sort of deranged fan could explain this stuff."

Alexis passed the specimen jar around for the team to examine. "What is that?" asked Lanie. "Where did you get it?"

"We scraped it off the back wall of the theater," replied Alexis.

"I think you'll find it's a chemical match to...*something* on the spear," added Beckett.

A familiar voice chimed into the conversation. "It's ectoplasm. The residue that can get left behind when a powerful ghost starts messing around in the events of the real world."

Beckett gasped as she recognized who was talking to her. She turned to Ryan, praying for his verification...

She got her wish immediately. The link's almost always on when we're on duty nowadays, Ryan projected into her mind. I heard him, too.

Beckett's eyes shone with gratefulness even as she squeezed Lanie's hand for support...

...before turning to look into the eyes of the ghost of her old training partner.

"Hey, kid."

Hi all! Clearly I'm not abandoning this story any time soon. :D I want to thank everyone for their wonderful, heartwarming comments, but TheTruthBetween was right. I couldn't abandon this series if I wanted to. For one thing, I've already come up with ideas three stories ahead. That's right, I said *three* stories. Some of you already know this, but after this series 'formally' finishes with Ascension two stories from now, I'm going to jump from fanfiction to completely original fiction. My plan is to write a full-on, totally epic, totally *original*, novel length (250,000 words+) prequel story of Katya's turning and century (or so) with the Guardian predecessors in Tibet. It will *not* be posted here because the Castle characters won't have been born for another 400 years or so. When the series ends I'll post the link to a FictionPress account where the adventure will continue. :D

Until then, if you don't have the foggiest clue who Katya is you should look for Moonrise Kingdom on my author page. Likewise, if you want to know what little there is to know about the predecessors, you should look up Guardians of Shangri La on my author page.

And please, don't forget to post your comments below! I can't wait to hear from you!