hi again. sorry for the late update, but its sunday and, despite it supposedly being a day of rest, i spent the whole day with my family since its also the last day of spring break. its currently 3 minutes until the time when i have to go to bed or else will miss my 6:00 am wakeup call via my loud-as-Hiroshima alarm clock. so im just slipping on to update real quick.

ok, major thing right here: as i wrote my last few chapters, i changed a lot of things, right? so of course, this one had to take a HUGE hit, and there may be discrepancies . if you notice any, please write me a PM or put it in a review (either ones good) so i can fix it.

disclaimer: DISCLAIMED.

October 31:

Gibbs arrived at NCIS at his usual time—0530 hours. Dani had fallen back to sleep in the car and it had taken some persuasion to get her on her feet so he could lead her to the more comfortable position on either Abby's futon or his chair.

Dani had just grunted in greeting when they entered the bullpen and found McGee behind his desk, looking over a collection of objects on top of it.

"There's a couch in the break room down the hall," he told her. She put her hands together like she was blessing him and dragged her feet through the halls. "Hey boss."

"McGee? What's all this?"

"Basic witch defenses," he replied. "Salt, hallowed ground—I got this from the Salem cemetery when I lived there," he picked up a jar of what definitely looked like dirt, "crosses, holy water, mistletoe, brass bells, religious candles… I'm trying to remember any others."

"Garlic?" he suggested.

McGee looked up at him, slightly hurt… until he saw that Gibbs wasn't smiling. He was at least a little serious. "Vampires aren't real, boss… well, at least, I've never seen any."

"And what have you seen?" The question was meant for two reasons: one to find out what he knew existed, and another to figure out just what he'd been through.

"Witches and zombies. That's it."

"Zombies?" Flashes of yesterday's conversation came to his mind. "We're going to do this in a cemetery and she can bring up zombies."

McGee shrugged. "The spell has to happen with someone she knew. Billy Bones was her boyfriend, until he cheated on her with her sister. She killed him and sewed his lips shut, then brought him back to life in '93. He stunk and his head kept falling off, but he was actually pretty nice and he helped us a lot. Let us use his grave for protection."

"So she's not going to bring up an army of them?" He shook his head. "Good. Last thing we need is DiNozzo starting with 'Attack of the Undead'." Despite everything, McGee grinned.

After a few minutes, he took the huge jar of salt and started toward the elevator. It opened just as he arrived, with Ziva inside.

"Good morning, McGee," she said. "You're here early."

He shrugged. "Making sure she doesn't try to storm NCIS," he explained. "Circle of salt protects everything inside it from witches, zombies, and old boyfriends."

"You might want to suggest Abby to carry some around." McGee chuckled, but went down the elevator. She went further inside and saw Gibbs sitting at his desk, sipping a cup of coffee.

"I thought spilling salt was bad luck."

"He would know better than us."

"Yes… especially with the age difference." He looked at her, eyebrows raised. "I over-heard Sarah and Tim talking last night, at the airport."

He shouldn't be surprised. Gibbs was thinking about asking her to spy anyway, and he had taught them to anticipate. "And?"

"I did not hear all of the conversation, just most of it." She propped a hip on his desk. "When I arrived, McGee was talking about how we would understand if he told us the entire story, though Tony would never let him live it down."

"You think he's gonna lie?" The didn't sound like McGee.

"No. He told Sarah that he could never lie to us—even if he wanted to. He knows he cannot lie, and…" She stopped, unsure if she should reveal something so personal.

"And?"

Oh, screw it, his was Gibbs.

"McGee said he could never lie, especially to you, because you remind him of his father—his real father, not Commander McGee."

"He's adopted?" Gibbs said this with a certain degree of surprise. It hadn't been in his report, after all. Then again, breaking into his records wouldn't be so hard for a hacker of his experience.

"Apparently. I did not know, either. He also said that you'd be the right age… if he was born in 1977." That registered shock on Gibbs's face, and Ziva shook her head. "I could not tell that he was not 33, Gibbs," she admitted. "He looks like it—mostly—acts like it, and that is what we were told."

Gibbs nodded. He had all the information he needed now; they just had to piece it together so they could make sure that McGee didn't lie to them again.

Half of the day was spent at NCIS, preparing for what seemed like an impending battle. Abby recruited the entire sanitation department for help in "decorating for Christmas". They didn't dare ask why she was getting ready so soon. Normally, she would ignore the celebration at least until after her favorite holiday was over—Halloween, today.

But they didn't want to risk the wrath of Energizer Abby, so they hung the brass bells and mistletoe without complaint. Her name was enough explanation for any agent that asked, even people from human resources.

Dani took to the lab, setting up as many protection spells as she could manage with Alda's help. Once she had learned about the witches and the book, the wiccan had come in a matter of minutes to help the novice make sure that they could stay safe.

Several people had walked in on them circling around a symbol made of salt on the floor, then backed away slowly and told their superiors that they didn't want to be cursed.

The team ran over their plan of attack while the defenses went up. With only a small amount of hacking, McGee had a layout of Arlington cemetery onscreen, their battlefield.

"Ok, so this entire area here," he said, making a circle on the picture, "is considered hallowed ground. Winifred can't touch it or she turns to stone, but she can fly as close to the ground as she wants. That's where this'll go down."

"No zombies?" Tony asked, actually worried.

"She didn't know anyone buried there," he replied, "that's a requirement for the raise-the-dead spell."

"How do you know she didn't?" Ziva asked, curious. Sarah, who was sitting on the armrest of his chair, shrugged.

"You're gonna have to trust us, Agent David." The suspicion in her voice wasn't missed by any of them.

McGee rolled his eyes and waved her down. "Relax. Winifred Sanderson was born, raised, and died just outside of Salem Village. Lived there her whole life. And anyway, even if by some miracle someone she knew in life was buried here, I seriously doubt they'd do what she said."

Tony snorted. "McGoo. Have you never seen a zombie movie? They don't care about who's controlling them, they just do it. And the ones with no masters, all they want is their food. They're brainless, McGee, brainless zombies."

"Actually, Billy was a nice guy," Tim said evenly. "He stank pretty bad, though."

"Billy?" Ziva asked. Tony's mouth was on the floor. "Who is Billy?"

"Billy Bones was her boyfriend back in the 1600s," Sarah replied. "He cheated on her with her sister, she killed him and sewed his mouth shut, brought him back after 300 hundred years—it's a long story."

"This was him when he was alive," McGee told them, pulling up a painting of a black-haired man in a suit. "This was him in 1993."

A slightly grainy security image of the zombie version of him appeared onscreen, following what looked like 3 kids and a cat. "We passed a bank," he explained. "I had to get the tapes before someone started asking too many questions."

The entire rest of the day was spent setting up for that battle in a secluded section of Arlington cemetery.

This place was half forest, half graveyard, the oldest part of it, with graves going back to the Civil War before they started fading. For some reason, McGee always winced while passing those stones, and the college girls understood why he refused to dig near them, even if the team didn't.

Soon enough, Tony, Gibbs, and McGee were all digging holes 6 feet deep and wide enough to hold up to 5 people. Ziva was placing mistletoe and brass bells in certain places to ward her off. Dani was doing something with Abby that none of them knew how to explain, but involved most of the holy water and the crosses McGee had brought.

By the time they were finished, it was getting dark. Tony snuck into the groundskeeper's hut and changed the schedule so that he would go nowhere near it on patrol for the next few nights.

When he came back, he found the others looking at McGee, Sarah, and Dani. The interrogations were about to begin. Tony joined sides with Gibbs and Ziva.

"First question!" Abby called, raising her hand. McGee smiled, but shrugged and nodded. "Why is Winifred Sanderson after you? I mean, I know that you guys sent her back to hell and everything, but why is she going after Tim especially?"

"She thought I had the book," he replied, pointing to the thing lying in it's own hole. "Without it, she can't bring her sisters back to life and can't become young again. Normally, I would've had it, but it was part of a museum exhibit and people would notice if it went missing."

"Then why bring it here?"

Gibbs answered her question for them. "Abs, they needed bait. She's going to come where the book is, and here we can be prepared." Dani nodded.

"Same thinking last time," she added.

"What did happen back then?" Tony asked. "Never got the full picture here."

Sarah took over. "On Halloween 17 years ago, Dani's older brother Max convinced his future wife Allison and Dani to go to the Sanderson sisters' house. Dani didn't want to go because she was a scaredy cat…"

"I was not! I had a bad feeling about that place!"

"Long story short," McGee interrupted, glaring at both of them, "A virgin lit the black flame candle—Max—and brought the three sisters back from the dead. They barely escaped, especially after they found Dani's hiding place. I, uh, bumped into Max on his way out after he set off the sprinklers—the whole witch-melting-in-water thing is a myth by the way."

"Now what'm I supposed to do with the bucket I brought?" Tony whined. Gibbs whacked him, rolling his eyes.

"Anyway," McGee continued, "it was my job since I was a kid to guard the cottage and make sure no one brought them back—obviously, I didn't do too great a job with these three. For the rest of the night we ran around Salem trying to escape or kill them, since Max had Winifred's book and they could only live until sunrise on the 1st. We tried to warn the adults in the town, but they got caught under a spell set by them and couldn't help at all."

"Hard to fight witches when you're dancing the night away," Dani mumbled.

"We managed to trap them in the kiln at the high school and burn them," he went on, "and we thought for a few hours that they were gone."

"But they weren't." Ziva added.

McGee nodded. "They came back and, after a few run-ins with a guy dressed up as a devil, a bus, and a kid dressed up like an angel, they found us because Max and Allison opened the book in his bedroom and lit up the house like a beacon for them."

"Aw, cut 'em some slack, Tim, we were just trying to help you!" Dani protested.

"Well, they couldn't help me like that!"

"Why did you need help?" Tony asked. "Did the big bad witches give you a big bad boo-boo, Timmy?"

All 3 people froze at the remark. "Uh…" Sarah looked up at Tim, "different, longer story."

"Much longer," McGee murmured. "Anyway, what happened to me isn't important, but what is, is that we ran to a graveyard—hollowed ground—where Winifred had already brought her ex-boyfriend back to life…"

"Billy Bones," Dani told them. "He was pretty nice, especially for a zombie. He kept losing his head, though."

"Literally," Sarah added, drawing her finger over her neck.

"Yeah, he let us use his grave to protect Dani, Dani went out to help Billy get his head back, Winifred got her and took her a few feet off the ground—they were on brooms—I went after the bottle, she threw me against a headstone, Max grabbed the potion and drank it, Winifred went after him, Billy, Dani, and Allison took care of the other two and sent Winifred to the ground." Tim paused to catch his breath. "Winifred was about to kill Max when she started turning to stone…"

"Hallowed ground?" Abby wondered. McGee nodded.

"Then exploded with her sisters when the sun came up," he finished. "Did I forget anything?"

"What happened to you?" Gibbs asked. "You said you hit a gravestone. Then what?"

"Er…" he swallowed. "I, uh, died, but when the witches died, I got brought back and so did Em—Sarah, who died earlier."

"You two… were dead?" Ziva asked.

"…In a way, yeah. 'Dead' implies forever, and I didn't die… forever. Just a while," Sarah explained.

Ziva glanced at Gibbs, who nodded. It was time to lay down the big mackerel. "And just how old were you when this happened?" she asked McGee.

The way he jumped at the question would've been noticeable to a blind man. "I, um, 16, remember? I crashed my car the same year." Technically not a lie, he still felt 16.

"So you're 33 now, correct?" she prodded. He swallowed. "Are you?"

"I, uh…" He sighed, resigned. "No, I'm not." McGee's head dropped so they were talking to the top of his head.

"You were not born in 1977?"

"No, I wasn't."

"How old are you?" Abby asked, shocked. Had her Timmy lied to her? "You told me you're older than I am!"

"I… I am."

"How much?" Tim looked away. "How old are you, Timmy?"

"I'm older than you," he replied, "I won't tell you my real age."

"Than what can you tell us?" Tony asked. "You're not some crotchety old man underneath that mask, are you, Probie?"

"There's no mask," he replied. "I… " He looked around at the last remaining member of his original family, and the family who'd brought him out of a shell he'd hidden behind for years. Which one should I give up?

"I'm the oldest person here," he finally decided. He met Gibbs's eyes to make sure that he could tell he wasn't lying. "I… I'm older than you, boss."

"How much?" Tony asked, shocked.

Dani mumbled something that suspiciously sounded like a number beginning with three.

"I…" McGee shook his head, backing up. "Can you excuse me a minute?" he asked, running toward the woods before they could answer.

"Oh, nice going." Sarah glared at them. "You had to spy on us, didn't you, David?" she demanded of the Israeli. "Now look what you did! As if he didn't have to go through enough right now."

With that, she ran after her brother.

"Poor Tim," Dani said, shaking her head. "I'm going to go check on the holes. Call them back when the sun goes down, ok?"

"Probie?" Tony said, barely even hearing her, "Older than Gibbs? How is that even possible?"

"Plastic surgery," Ziva replied. "But I cannot imagine Tim doing that." She looked at Gibbs guiltily. "Gibbs, this is my fault, I was eavesdropping on them…"

Abby shook her head. "No, Z," she said fiercely. They looked at her, surprised. "McGee may not have been lying to us, but he still didn't tell the whole truth. If you ask me, this is what he gets for not doing what a real friend should do: bare their soul."

Three seconds later, however, the tough exterior melted.

"Oh, who am I kidding? I can't be mad at Timmy! Besides, he probably had a great reason for not telling us, right? Can I go talk to them? Please, Gibbs?"

Gibbs knew that she would be able to bring him around best of any of them, but he also knew that he needed his privacy for a while. "10 minutes, Abs, then go."

She nodded eagerly, setting her skull-and-crossbones watch.

ok. remember how i said this thing might be long? turns out i might be very, very wrong about that, or at least, it could end up as long compared to my other stories, which could be anything seeing as my only other NCIS story is a oneshot and the other one... that was a plotbunny with no tail (end). there might only be one or two chapters left, maybe 3. the end if definitely near, my friends. i can smell it.

oh. that's just my dog's latest natural chewtoy (DON'T ASK, THE EXPLANATION DOESNT EVEN BELONG IN A T STORY.)

PEACE~Tibki