Thank you all for your kind words and your patience.

Hope you enjoy this one.


The emergency dispatch center has had its work cut out for it for over an hour now. None of it really seemed to be police business, at least not at the beginning, but as time passes and more and more reports of accidents come in, Lassiter begins to not only worry at the pileup—both literal and figurative—but grows extremely suspicious of the addresses given for them, until he pulls out a map and swiftly marks down all the locations of the accidents they know of thus far.

What he concludes terrifies him: almost every single road that would lead to or from Henry Spencer's house has been blocked off, with apparently special attention paid to the routes between there and the precinct. Only one remains that provides an egress from the area.

He receives a text from O'Hara then, stating that Shawn is awake, and it sounds like all is well, so he fires off a normal response, asking that she bring him to the precinct later. He is in the midst of typing a second text warning her of the road blocks in case she doesn't know—he knows she's been over there for a couple hours already—when a rookie pulls him aside to ask a question that turns out to be more involved than either of them thought.

And he's still dealing with this issue when a colleague interrupts to bring him news of one particular 911 call that stood out from the rest.

O'Hara stabbed. Shawn gone. All officers on the scene dead. Henry, by the account he's heard, closer to hysterics than Lassiter ever thought he even could be.

And, as the rookie, smarter than Lassiter thought, informs him mere moments later, another crash has been reported on the last road that granted access to and from Henry's.

Lassiter's heart is continuously pounding like a jackhammer and for once in his life, he has no idea what to do. No ambulances can get within a mile of the Spencer household, and there are so many wrecks that they might not even have the staff to spare. But Lassiter's about to grab his car keys and make an attempt to get there himself anyway, leaving the search for Spencer in the hands of the other officers here, when suddenly a thought springs into his mind and he's pulling out his notepad and throwing it open to the most recently used page, bearing nothing but a hastily scribbled number.

Spencer said, last night, "One hundred fourteen minutes. That's how long you'll have."

And Lassiter suddenly knows that he would hold, with a certainty that goes beyond all reason, that that time starts now.

What exactly will happen in one hundred fourteen minutes, he doesn't know. What he does know is that it must be avoided, at all costs.

So he can't afford to waste massive amounts of time like his heart is telling him to do—hell, he's never listened to it before, so why start now? But… but what can he do?

How can he even think of doing anything other than getting to his partner when she's bleeding out and might not receive help until it's too late?

He casts his eyes back down to his notepad, and he flips it to the penultimate used page, which, among other things, contains the bolded and circled name Barnabas Thornton.

Henry is smart. Resourceful. He used to be a cop, and he's no fool when it comes to first aid. O'Hara is in at least as capable hands as she'd be if Lassiter were to arrive on the scene. And there is so little time.

He allows himself a split second to wonder why he's putting so much stock in this number, but all he really needs to wave away any concerns is the memory of the urgency that colored Spencer's voice as he said it. Shawn is never that serious. He must've heard his captor talk about time tables at some point. It's a strangely specific number, but it's far from the most questionable thing the man has done.

Whoever Thornton is, he's important. Spencer seemed so sure of this. And if Lassiter really has only one hundred fourteen minutes, it seems to him that he needs to make time to have a conversation with the man.

He retrieves Shawn's case file, taking long strides, and returns to his desk. The file contains all the information they have on the man. His criminal record (squeaky clean, except for a couple parking tickets), photograph (perfectly resembling the drawing Spencer had), occupation, street address, and phone number.

Not wasting any time, Lassiter picks up his desk phone and dials in the phone number. He hears two rings, a click, a brief moment of silence, and then, "Hello?"

He sucks in a breath, thanking God for the simple fact that he picked up. "Good afternoon. Is this the residence of Barnabas Thornton?"

A pause. Finally, "Who's asking?" the man inquires simply, warily.

"This is Head Detective Carlton Lassiter of the Santa Barbara Police Department," Lassiter says, wishing he could display his badge. Wishing he could see this guy face to face. It's so much easier to read people when they're right in front of you. "I've got a few questions about a disappearance."

A brief silence on the other end. Lassiter can't blame him; this whole thing is bat crap insane even from his end. "Santa Barbara, sir? I've never been. What does this disappearance have to do with me?"

There's definitely a light accent in there. "Likely much more than you realize. Now, before we go any further I must tell you that this conversation is being recorded for later reference."

"All right," comes Thornton's uncertain voice after a pause. "So… Whose disappearance?"

"Someone close to the SBPD. Often works with us. Name of Shawn Spencer."

"I have never heard of him."

"I don't expect you to have, but please, let me finish." There was no time to figure out how to say this, how to lead into it. Really, there's not even time to lead into it. Best just do it. "Shawn vanished almost a year ago and called the station from a payphone yesterday afternoon, calling himself Arashk Ronaldo and claiming to have recently escaped his captor. When we got to him he did not seem to remember his real name, nor any of ours. He was taken under mysterious circumstances from his home this morning. Whoever did it also at—" He swallows. Don't make it personal. All business. "Attacked… a trusted colleague. She may not survive. But when we were speaking with him yesterday, Mr. Thornton, he gave us your name."

Another pause. He can't hear surprise in it, or lack thereof, like he might be able to read in a face—it's just a silence. "Where did he get my name?"

Lassiter takes a quiet breath, bracing himself. "Shawn… is a psychic." Before the man can react, he rushes to add, "I am as skeptical as anyone, but you must understand—I don't know how he does it, but he gets results. I thought it would be worthwhile to speak to you."

Based on his prompt response, Thornton doesn't seem particularly fazed. "What else did he say? Who was holding him?"

This is going surprisingly smoothly. "He didn't say a lot. He'd been through a trauma; we didn't press him much. He did babble some nonsense about a carnival and a 'Master,' but we didn't ask him for details. He needed to sleep."

Something he said has stirred up a very obvious reaction in Thornton, even over the phone. He answers urgently, but still hesitates in his speech, like he can't quite believe it. "A… Master?"

"Yes, that's the man he says was keeping him. I'm afraid he didn't have a real name to give us, but does the alias sound familiar?"

A wild urgency now colors Thornton's voice as he says anxiously, "Detective, you must find this missing psychic, immediately."

"Don't worry, Mr. Thornton, there are people searching for him as we speak," Lassiter promises, but a sudden anxiousness twists his insides even as he does. This man is genuinely afraid for Shawn, whom he has never even met. What hell could this psycho be putting Shawn through, even now? "A team of people I would trust with my own life, and who care about him very much. My function right now is to gather information that might help with that search."

The man doesn't sound too convinced. "His life depends on his quick rescue."

"From what?" Lassiter asks urgently.

"It is a very long story."

Lassiter grimaces. "There's not a lot of time for long stories… but we need intel. We need it badly. Speak quickly and concisely, but trust me, Mr. Thornton, whatever relevant information you can offer might contain the key to finding him. It just takes the right context."

Thornton does not answer immediately. After a few seconds, concerned the call has been dropped, Lassiter prompts, "Mr. Thornton?"

"Detective," comes the man's voice immediately, "you said that you found the idea of a psychic difficult to swallow. The story here is far more so."

Lassiter blinks. "Okay."

"I am serious, Detective. I need you either to promise me that you can accept all I am about to tell you as fact, or bring me someone who can."

He frowns, wishing desperately for O'Hara. "I don't know if I can make a promise like that."

"How badly do you want to find this psychic?"

That gets his attention. A few seconds pass; then, "I promise."

A brief pause, and then Thornton launches right into it. "Many, many years ago—not too long before this country was discovered—I lived with my village across the sea. It was an unremarkable place, really, or at least at first glance. There was a spring that bubbled up at its center. We all drank from it. And we knew its power. It nurtured excellence. Those who were truly singular, who drank from it long enough… Their talents were magnified, and abilities were granted to them that went beyond humanity. But only those special few. The last person to be chosen by the spring had died decades before, and a few generations had passed, but the stories lived on. When I was ten years old, a young man who had recently come of age… suddenly developed an ability of his own. He had always been a gifted healer, and all his family was still alive going back to most of his great-grandparents. Long life was in his genes. We finally realized the gift he had been given when he returned from a hunting trip having fallen upon a branch which protruded hideously from his leg. After we removed it we were certain he would die of blood loss. But by that evening he was walking and talking and claiming to be free of all pain. His wound had closed up. We knew then that he had been changed."

Lassiter shifts uncomfortably, the pen in his hand hesitating above his notepad. So far this is sounding like a folktale. Not like anything Shawn would come up with, but certainly no more credible. He forces himself to remain silent and listen.

"Precious few years had passed before my wife, my beautiful young bride… developed abilities as well. She had always been vastly intelligent. She could tell so much just by looking at a person. She could glance at your face and know what you were thinking. Some of her conclusions involved such seemingly wild leaps of logic many often questioned whether she had sources they did not know of. But I, I never doubted her honesty."

His pen trembles against the paper as he forgets himself for a moment. The description sounds almost too familiar.

"After she was changed, however, there was no doubt, not anymore. When she dreamed, she saw the truth. Past, present, and future. She warned us of dangerous weather. She could tell when we were lying. She knew about an outbreak of sickness before it happened. She knew things about me that I had never told even her. When she touched another person, often a piece of knowledge would come with it. And soon it became clear that she could also commune with… the dead." Thornton exhales slowly, as if even now he can't believe it. Lassiter can't believe it either. As Thornton continues, his voice takes more and more of a wistful tone, his mind apparently growing more distant. "She would pass on final wishes, facilitate conversations… Sometimes the dead even took hold of her and spoke through her. Those times were the most frightening."

"She became psychic," Lassiter says flatly.

A brief pause, and Thornton apparently remembers that he's on the phone, and murmurs, "Yes. Much like your Shawn Spencer, I presume." He exhales. "I supported her throughout. Having these abilities was not easy, but it was a blessing, and we all knew that. I saw what she experienced every day. And… it became too much.

"I had been jealous of the healer for some years. But I was always able to keep that jealousy in check, with some rationalizations that perhaps were not the healthiest to make—telling myself things like 'He is barely even human, and this is just putting him further away from us.' But after my wife gained abilities of her own as well… that was no longer a safe thing to think. I would lie awake at night, wondering why not me? Was I really so insignificant, so unimportant? How could this be fair?

"These thoughts tormented me for years. The healer became more and more careless as the degree of injury from which he could quickly recover became better established—and that degree was extreme. I once saw him fall twenty feet and land on his side, breaking three ribs and twisting his ankle horribly, and yet two hours later he was walking about normally. I reasoned that if he could still be hurt, it must still be possible for him to die, and this was just one more method I used to convince myself that my jealousy was rational, that he was an unworthy fool risking death on a daily basis, and that if I had such a gift I would never take it for granted.

"Meanwhile my wife's visions continued, and once in the middle of the night I woke to her sitting up next to me, weeping uncontrollably. I tried to comfort her, but nothing I said seemed to reach her. Through her tears I managed to understand something about blood, but no details.

"She would not speak of it for two days afterward, but finally I got her to tell me what she had seen: two men, one of them gifted by the spring and the other ordinary, in a part of the woods familiar to her. The gifted man lay bleeding on the ground, eyes glazed over, and the other was drinking from his side. When he straightened up, she saw in him the same power that had formerly belonged to the man who was now dead. It was in the blood.

"She wasn't sure if it was the past, the future, or just a demonstration of a law of the spring that happened to manifest in a particularly disturbing way, but she told me she saw it every time she closed her eyes. And I…" He draws in a breath. "Well, to make a long story short, after much turmoil and so many attempts to convince myself I was content with what I had, I gave in. I went on a hunting trip with the healer a few months later, and I… I attacked him. I drove a tree branch deep into his side, and the blood was pouring out of him so fast, too fast for him to save himself, as I had hoped.

"I waited until the life left his eyes. I told myself, what an unfortunate accident. And I… and I began to drink."

Lassiter grimaces at the mere thought, but the idea of actually treating this as a confession seems ludicrous. The chances of any of this being real are slim to none… and yet he keeps thinking of how odd it is for a person's delusions to create guilt where there is none. No, this man likely did something. Lassiter just doesn't know how far removed the actual event was from the story he's telling now.

"The taste was appalling. And I had hoped that I would be able to feel the power as it entered into me, but all I could feel was another man's blood sliding down my throat. There was no question of stopping, though. I had already done the deed, and…" He clears his throat. "When I had had my fill, I felt something, something wrong. I looked up, and there she was—my wife, her eyes wide with horror and fear. Of me. I lurched to my feet immediately and she stepped back, never taking her eyes from me. I looked down at my hands, my clothes, all stained—" Thornton cuts himself off suddenly. Lassiter can't be sure, but based solely on his voice it sure sounds like, however much of this is actually true, it's all very real to Thornton.

The man soon continues, a slight tremble in his voice, "She ran from me. I called her name but she did not respond, and I was left to dispose of the healer's body. I rolled it into a nearby pond that was not visited often due to the filth in the water, and started on the path back home.

"I do not know how much my wife told them. I doubt she said a word about the blood. But when I returned, the entire village was awake, and I was tried and exiled then and there. A small group departed to retrieve the body after I confessed. I saw my wife nowhere. She was gone.

"And then… well, I was alone. Wandering. I was confused and lost for so long. I yearned to be close to someone, but I couldn't remember how. I didn't deserve anyone. I have lived in seventeen countries, and brought women home with me in all of them. Some of them didn't know me for more than a few hours. Some I would stay with for a few months. But invariably, I would dream of what I had done, and know that I didn't deserve to not be alone. And no woman deserved to be cursed with me. So I would leave without a word of explanation.

"Often I thought of ending it all. But this is what I do deserve. This is my affliction, and to run away from my punishment would be cowardice. So I run away from my cowardice. Often it draws very near. But I have evaded it for this long.

"Some sixty years ago, on a whim, I drew up a list of all the partners I could recall the names of, and checked in on them. One thing I have accumulated in all the years I have been living is resources. Many of them I could not find, and many, of course, had died, but of the others, all had moved on. Many had gotten married, had a family. But one woman in particular, one of my more recent partners… she had no husband, but a daughter. A little girl who looked so much like me it could not be coincidence.

"She was the only one who carried my blood in her veins, the only one on Earth. For this I pitied her. But immediately she consumed my every thought. I moved back to the town where she had been conceived and where she now resided with her mother, and I watched her grow. She would ask about her father, but she never met me, never saw me, never knew I existed.

"And she grew up. She married young, but I was so proud of her for making that commitment that I had lost the strength for. She bore a son herself, and I wept in joy the day he was born. Unfortunately she and her husband had little time to care for him, and he spent much of his time being looked after by a nanny. But I never doubted her love for him."

Lassiter's starting to fidget. He can't be sure how much of this is real and how much of it—probably the overwhelming majority—is the confused ramblings of a crazed mind. Which is the way of a police interrogation, trying to pick out the relevant details from the unnecessary ones, but this… this is unusual. And bordering on the edge of infuriating. He's holding back from interrupting, but the effort is constant, requiring a new reminder with every single word that comes from Thornton's mouth.

Soon, though, if this keeps up, he's going to have to. He glances at his watch. They have ninety-eight minutes left. "Mr. Thornton, please," he urges.

"She died," the man says bluntly. "She and her husband. They were both intoxicated after a night out—not much, but enough. Their car was found in a ditch the following morning. They were believed to have died on impact.

"And their son—my grandson—was suddenly my only living descendent, and I… well. What could I do?

"I stepped in, and he wondered why he had never met me, but he was so young, and it was not difficult to explain away. But as he grew, so did the guilt inside me. I felt he deserved to know the truth. Especially when he started to ask me how old I was, when I, his grandfather, didn't look like I could be any older than his friends' parents.

"I told him my story, when I thought he was ready. Everything, from my wife to his grandmother. It… it was a mistake. So excited he was, but soon I began to see that it was instead a dark ambition. I tried to keep it in check. But the tale drove him mad. He found the cave where we slept, the fields where we grew our food. He found the spring, and drank of it daily. And he developed an ability of his own. I do not fully understand it. He used it on me once. But I believe he is focused on other things now."

There are too many things to focus on at once. Lassiter can't ask all the questions he wants to. "What other things? What did he do to Shawn?"

A slight shuffling sound, like he's transferred the phone to the other hand or rubbed his face. "He was slipping away from me, but we were still in contact when he, at an impressively young age, created a traveling carnival—or freak show, as he called it. There was not much to it, and for the first year or so I kept track of his show, and called him often. He did not always pick up. Nothing seemed amiss, however. Not until they were nearby and I paid a surprise visit… and met his right hand man."

An accomplice? Lassiter unconsciously leans forward.

"He was several years older than my grandson, older than I appeared to be, and I had never seen him before. I noticed the unlabeled water bottle he drank from, and the way he looked at me, as if he knew me, or at least very much knew of me. I questioned my grandson. And finally, he told me the full story, their plan, and it bubbled out of him as if he had been holding it in for so long and was excited to share it.

"As he spoke, I was terrified. The man had been a genius, one of my grandson's former college professors in fact, with a staggering force of will. My grandson had introduced him to the spring water, and he had developed the ability to move solid matter with his mind."

More. Magical. Bullcrap. Lassiter tries to keep the growl out of his voice when he says, "Mr. Thornton, what does this have to do with Shawn?"

"They planned to develop the man's power until it could be used as a threat to keep people close to them," Thornton says urgently. "They planned to gather up talented individuals until they had a group impressive enough to suit their own selfish needs. They planned to place them in the freak show, in an environment where their abilities would be practiced and enhanced day by day, where they could stand out without standing out, and where they would never stay in one place for long enough to develop any sense of stability, safety, or hope. And then, once they believed they had developed their abilities to their peak, they planned to drain them."

Suddenly all the broken pieces of this enormous, screwed up puzzle begin to come together in Lassiter's mind, or at least the ones he has access to. He can only blink and stare at the empty space before him as the idea of the ludicrous fable he just sat through being one individual's truth assembles itself in his brain… and places Shawn right smack in the middle of it.

There is so much he still doesn't know. But he places the partially complete puzzle in his mental file cabinet, closes it with a snap but does not lock it just yet, and asks, or rather demands, "When was the last time you knew where your grandson's carnival was?"

"Many years ago," the man says sadly. "My awareness of what he was up to ended with my response to that revelation, in fact. The last time I actually spoke with him I was staring down the barrel of a gun."

"What's its name?"

He replies grimly, "I'm sorry, Detective, I do not know."

Lassiter growls in frustration. "How can you not know? Has he changed it? If he has, shouldn't you know the new name? Shawn didn't know it either, does it even have a damn name?"

"Yes, but he has found ways of keeping it from me."

He rubs one hand down the side of his face. "Do you have any other immediately relevant information? About his habits, his rituals, more details of the plan? Do you know where he intended to do this draining? When?"

"I'm afraid I don't, Detective. But he is, while far from what you would call reasonable, a practical man. I imagine, now that so much has gone wrong, he will be doing it as soon as he can assemble however many victims he has taken. And likely rather close by."

A persistent ringing suddenly begins to sound in Lassiter's pocket, and he sticks his desk phone between his cheek and shoulder to withdraw it and read the screen: BURTON GUSTER.

He very nearly hits REJECT. He comes this close. But with as little time as he has… if there's a chance Guster has information he can use, it's worth risking losing twenty seconds figuring it out.

"Mr. Thornton, I'm very sorry, but I'm going to have to put you on hold for a minute." Without waiting for a response, he sets one phone down and presses TALK on the other, and says severely, "Guster, I have never been on a bigger time crunch"—exaggeration, but it sure feels like the truth, considering he knows exactly how much time he has—"so you better have something useful for me and tell it quickly."

"Henry called me," comes the other man's voice, remarkably neutral. "Told me what happened. I know a bike trail to the house. I'm not good at biking so I don't think I could manage it, but if you come, maybe we can get Juliet to the hospital."

Lassiter's mind grinds to a full halt, and then suddenly it's racing. Picturing loading her onto the front of the bike, between the handles. It would be unspeakably difficult to keep balance if she's unconscious, but it's so much better than leaving her there. "I don't have a bicycle with me."

"I have two."

He's not even going to question that. "Where?"

Guster describes the location, and it's somewhere Lassiter's passed by countless times, but he never knew there was a trail there. Guster goes on to say, "There's a lot of forks in the trail so I'll wait for you at the beginning if I get there first, and you should wait for me if you do. Are you at the station?"

"Yes," Lassiter responds, reaching up to massage his forehead with one hand, and realizing that he's stood up without noticing.

"Then it should take us the same amount of time to get there."

His brain feels shot. He can't think of anything else to ask Thornton, and now that there might be a plausible way to save his partner's life? There's no debate to be had.

He's already standing; he simply grabs his keys, not bothering to power down his computer, and then snatches up his desk phone again and barks into it, "I have to go, but I'm giving you my number in case you think of absolutely anything else that might be helpful. And I mean as soon as damn possible, have you got that?" And, without waiting for a response, he demands, "You ready?"

A brief pause, then the sound of rustling on the other end. "Yes," comes Thornton's voice.

He rattles off his cell number, all the while wishing he'd made this call on his cell in the first place so not only could he have started moving immediately, but Thornton would likely already have the number. As it is, he just gets it out, gets out, and is on the road as quickly as possible.


Gus has had two bikes sitting in his garage for about three years now. One traditional, one a recumbent. He replaced the former with the latter when he read that they were better for your back. But he was admittedly attached to his old bike, and every once in a while Shawn would steal it. Once he tried to tell Shawn to just take it, but of course his friend didn't want to bother with storing it himself. So, as long as it was being useful to someone, he decided to hang on to it.

He quickly loads both bikes into the trunk of his Echo and heads to the trail he and Shawn discovered when they were kids. It's not very well-defined at all and they wonder how it even got there, but it goes through the woods right past the house where Shawn grew up. They once followed it to the end and it led them straight out of the trees and dropped them in a very, very questionable neighborhood, which led Gus to turn tail and run at the first sight of a couple of guys in hoodies. In his defense, they were only eleven at the time, and those were some tall teenagers. Shawn, of course, stayed. Gus is pretty sure he made friends with the hoodlums. But he doesn't regret bailing.

He arrives at the start of the trail before Lassiter does, and spends the first couple minutes unloading the bikes and strapping on his helmet. Lassie should be here any moment now.

He tries his hardest not to think about what's happened. Because if he thinks about it, he will genuinely lose it. At least until they get to the house, it's not real. It can't be real.

Even trying to tell himself this is too much. He can't—he can't do it. He presses his hand against his chest, trying to keep his breathing regulated. Shawn will be fine. Juliet will be fine. Shawn will be fine. Juliet will be fine.

Everything will be fine.

Unless it's not.

A single tear ekes out from between his closed eyelids. If Shawn were here he'd be complimenting him on the "single man tear" and urging him to stop the waterworks there and not ruin the moment—but if Shawn were here, there wouldn't be as much of a problem. It would be Gus who'd have to be strong for Shawn.

Footsteps off to his side.

He whips around, his eyes flying open, and there stands a man. Not Lassiter. His hair's jet black, tied into a low ponytail, and his skin is what Shawn would probably describe as "the color of coffee"—even though Gus has explained to him many, many times that coffee comes in a wide variety of shades depending on how you take it. The man wears a clean red button-down and blue jeans, and one hand is held up in a nonthreatening gesture, while the other is being used to keep the bicycle standing next to him steady.

Gus has no clue who he is. He's not attacking him, but he's not just walking by either. And as much as he'd like to be the one to speak first, his brain is still too busy switching gears from trying not to overload with worry and fear to come up with anything bearing any semblance of meaning.

After a few seconds, the man offers a half-smile and says, "Don't worry, friend. I'm here to help. My name is Sebastian."