Behold, dear readers, for I bring glad tidings: in celebration of Christmas (or whatever it is you may celebrate in December (for me it's Christmas (if you haven't gotten that already from the notes on the Christmas-proximal chapters these last two years (gosh I've been writing this for ages (look at all these parentheses))))) as well as Psych: The Movie (because THAT'S a thing that's happening!), this story shall be updating every Wednesday. Yes, you read that right—weekly updates are upon us, lasting the rest of the year. (Today is, obviously, an exception, as I won't have access to my computer tomorrow.)

I wouldn't make this promise if I weren't sure I could follow through, so get excited. 'Tis the season of giving, after all. Also I figure I owe you guys for all the long hiatuses you've endured.

Additionally, I'd like to give a shoutout to AllieDotes, who has just jumped onto the 120k-word bandwagon and left some very kind reviews that I can't respond to in a PM, her being anonymous and all. As ever, many thanks to you all for your continued support.


For a few long seconds Gus just stands there, his hand gripping the handle of his recumbent so tight it starts to hurt, never taking his eyes off the newcomer. The name… Sebastian. It was on Shawn's list. But which one was it? The man waits patiently, not making a move except to slightly lower his hand.

"You… You know Shawn?" Gus finally asks, voice low.

The man draws his brows together in puzzlement, and after a pause says slowly, "I know your friend, a psychic named Arashk Ronaldo."

Arashk Ronaldo. Arashk Ronaldo (me). Gus breathes out as silently as he can manage. It's confirmed then, isn't it? Beyond any shadow of a doubt. That's the name Shawn's been going by for the past year. "That's not his real name," he informs the man—Sebastian. "It's Shawn."

Sebastian's eyes go wide in slow realization and gradual acceptance of this claim as the truth, and he says only, "Well, I'll be damned."

It's an odd reaction—like he had an inkling that this might be the case, or at the very least it's not a situation that's altogether unheard of to him. But Gus chooses to ignore it for now, in favor of the question he just has to ask, prioritized even above what are you doing here: "Were you at the carnival with him?"

Sebastian nods slowly. "I was. The whole time. We were friends. Still are, I hope."

Gus doesn't understand. He doesn't understand anything. Doesn't even know enough to formulate a question. Tears prick his eyes. He's always been a crier. When scared or stressed or even confused. Right now, the whole trifecta is at work.

Sebastian's eyes are on the ground at Gus's feet, and the smile has completely dropped off his face. After a few moments of silence pass between them, he lifts his gaze back up to meet Gus's, and he says, by all appearances with all sincerity, "There is so much I didn't know. So much I still don't. Or I would have helped him. I'm sorry."

Gus's mouth opens and closes. He feels himself rapidly becoming willing to trust this man, but he's no less bewildered than before.

It is at this moment that Lassiter's car pulls up next to them, catching Gus by surprise, though Sebastian remains unaffected. He watches, though, as the tall detective steps out of the vehicle and closes the door, his eyes immediately fixing on Sebastian. "Who's this?" he asks, the question obviously directed at Gus, though he doesn't take his eyes off the stranger.

"Sebastian Jaeger, sir," says Sebastian before Gus can conjure up a decently informative answer.

Recognition shows in Lassiter's face, though he doesn't look away from the man as he approaches Gus's bike. "Shawn mentioned you. He said you were a friend."

Sebastian gives a barely perceptible nod.

Lassiter eyes the bike next to him, and returns his attention to the man's face, his brows furrowing suspiciously. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Gus was working up to that question, he really was.

"Shawn told me to come here," Sebastian responds. "You're aware that he's psychic?"

Gus is unable to hold in his alarmed expression. Shawn told him? How could Shawn have possibly figured out the timing this exactly? How could he have even known this would be necessary?

"I am," Lassiter responds simply, the suspicion in his voice abated only slightly.

"I understand someone's been hurt," Sebastian continues, speaking carefully, obviously trying to communicate goodwill to Lassiter through his eyes. "I'm a doctor. Or at least, I used to be."

Lassiter's expression drops.

Gus watches him, slightly concerned now. He could let himself trust this man because Lassie could always be counted on to be the smart one. But the man is more emotionally charged than he cares to admit, and given what's happened today, maybe "I'm a doctor" is all he needs to hear anyone say before he's willing to risk everything on the chance that that person is telling the truth.

Lassiter turns abruptly to Gus, all business now, and orders, "Guster, go on ahead. Jaeger, you're in the middle. We don't have any time to waste."

Sebastian dutifully mounts his bicycle and waits for Gus to take the lead. And Gus, moving with all due urgency but feeling as if he's dreaming, complies. He recalls it being somewhere around a twenty minute ride. So twenty minutes remain until… something happens. Until they see how bad it really is, how much hope there is for Juliet. Until they arrive to be greeted by an ambush. Until Sebastian turns on them and they're all dead before they hit the ground.

He's so terrible at keeping a level head under stress like this. Always has been. He wishes, oh how he wishes Shawn were here.


Guster looks like an idiot leading a high-speed race against time reclined in that damn recumbent. Lassiter gives Jaeger as little space as possible, pushing him to practically breathe down Guster's neck. And Lassiter can tell that the man is trying. But right now, he doesn't care one whit about effort. Results are all that matter.

The trail forks off in several places and for the first ten minutes they keep to the main path, but at least twice they turn onto one of the forks. The ground isn't particularly even either—it's manageable on a bike, but Lassiter's not sure he'd go as far as to call it anything other than a foot trail.

Jaeger seems to be a capable biker. Lassiter keeps an eye on him but all he does is follow Guster. He notices the man has one of those cheap bags you get for free at college open houses slung over his shoulder, and assumes that it contains necessary medical supplies, at least bandages and disinfectant and such.

Eventually, Guster slows to a complete stop, and before he's put his feet on the ground Lassiter's blustering, "Guster, what the hell—"

"This is as far as we can go on bikes," Guster cuts him off. "The trail only goes by Mr. Spencer's house. We have to rough it for a couple minutes on foot, through the trees."

Lassiter nods, acquiescing, and points to the right, where the trees are obviously thinner, though the underbrush doesn't look particularly forgiving. "That way?"

"Ye—" Guster begins, and Lassiter lets his bike fall to the ground and enters the trees, pushing aside branches and trampling over weeds. Thorns catch on his pants and some manage to scratch up his ankles, but the minor pain means nothing right now. He keeps forward, straight and fast as he can.

Finally they burst out of the trees, to behold the back of Henry's house.

Lassiter's already sprinting round to the front, the other two just behind him. And what they find on the porch has Lassiter covering his mouth with his hand.

O'Hara lies on her back near the ajar front door, with Henry kneeling at her side, pressing a towel into her stomach. Her shirt is soaked in blood, and a large smear stains the porch between her and the front door, right next to Henry, indicating she initially fell on her stomach before he rolled her over. Her face is ashen. She looks dead already.

"Oh God" escapes Lassiter's lips and he stumbles, his knees going weak, just as he takes the last step up onto the porch.

Henry looks up, his eyes huge and red-rimmed, and they immediately fix on Lassiter. "She was awake for the first few minutes," he says, a mighty shudder in his voice, but also something else. If it didn't seem so ridiculous Lassiter might say it sounds accusatory.

"She's not—?" Guster's voice starts behind him, but he is apparently unable to finish.

Henry shakes his head. "She's still alive. The biggest danger is blood loss. She needs a hospital."

"Jaeger," Lassiter says, not even trying to hide the ragged quality of his voice, just as the man appears at his side and kneels down next to O'Hara opposite Henry. He shrugs off his bag and lets it fall to the porch next to him, and instead of opening it up to retrieve supplies, he simply reaches forward, presumably to examine the wound.

Lassiter opens his mouth to question him, but before he can Henry says in unconcealed surprise, "Who are you?"

"A doctor," Jaeger says simply, placing his hands on the towel next to Henry's. As he speaks, Guster kneels down behind O'Hara's head and presses two fingers into her neck.

Clearly the answer is enough for Henry, and he releases the towel to let the professional work and begins waving his hands in small motions now that they're free. It strikes Lassiter that with his motor issues since the shooting, sitting here and holding his hands still for a solid half hour must have been exceptionally trying.

Holding one hand in the other, Henry looks back up at Lassiter and asks, eyes narrowed, "What do you know about this, Detective?"

The question on its own might not have been so strange. But the tone that comes with it, that of confusion and distrust, throws Lassiter off wildly. He stares at Henry for a full four seconds before he manages, "What the hell do you mean?"

"I mean," spits Henry, "that I saw the man who shoved my son into that car and drove away from behind, and let me tell you, he was a beanpole. Had on a suit, like the kind you always wear, and his hair was very, very dark."

Lassiter stands stone still, coming to terms with the implications of the description, but it is so completely ludicrous that he knows he must be mistaken. "What—"

"It looked exactly like you, you damned idiot," Henry snarls. "And I really didn't think anything of it, until I heard what she was saying on repeat, like she couldn't believe it: 'It was Carlton. It was Lassiter.'"

"I beg your pardon?" Lassiter sputters, a torrent of confused emotions sweeping through him.

"What are you doing?" comes Guster's voice before Henry can respond, and they both look at him, and in an almost synchronized fashion look to where his eyes are trained.

Jaeger has released the towel and placed his hands on O'Hara's stomach next to the wound, and closed his eyes in a look of deep concentration. Immediately Lassiter drops painfully to his knees and surges forward, clapping his hands down over the towel and applying pressure. "What the hell is this?" he snaps. "She needs help, now."

"I am helping her," Jaeger murmurs without opening his eyes. "Remove the towel."

"What?"

"Just do it."

Lassiter only even considers complying because the blood seems to no longer be flowing and as much as the thought of it twists his insides, he needs to see how bad it is. So after a second more of inaction, he lifts up the bloodied towel.

The wound seems to be small for the amount of blood Lassiter has seen, but it's not the sort of wound a carefully sharpened blade would leave. It's jagged, and ugly. Though none of this is exactly the opinion of an expert; Lassiter is a detective, not a surgeon. Most of the injuries he sees in his line of work are on corpses. But even as he watches it blood continues to ooze slowly out, and it's plain that if action is not taken, O'Hara will be the one on the slab soon enough.

As he stares at the wound, his attention is drawn to the shallow rise and fall of her chest. It's noticeably weak, but its mere presence is reassuring. "How bad is it?" he asks haltingly.

"It's deep," Jaeger murmurs after a few quiet moments. He still hasn't moved his hands nor opened his eyes. "The knife was dull. But I should be able to…"

He trails off, and Lassiter is about to open his mouth and give him hell for his lack of action, when Guster suddenly drops his hands to the porch besides him and says, voice blank with shock, "Oh my God."

Lassiter's attention snaps back to the wound itself, where Guster's eyes are glued, and he is immediately rendered as dumbstruck as Guster. Because the edges of the wound are… moving. Slowly but surely, towards… each other.

Jaeger's fingertips are almost touching the hole in O'Hara's stomach. And Lassiter would swear he sees the air rippling in the space between. It's the only way he can think of to describe what he's seeing, and still it lacks an explanation.

The wound is closing.

It's closing.

Jaeger's hands tremble even as they're pressed against O'Hara's side, and Lassiter's eyes move of their own accord up to his face. Upon it is a look of deep concentration and intense effort, eyes screwed painfully shut.

Not a single one of them is making a sound. Lassiter doesn't even know what kinds of sounds they might be making. Indeed, what is the protocol for a freaking insane situation like this? He wishes he knew. But his being completely at a loss will be more than worth it, if Jaeger is able to complete what he appears to be doing.

It has been about half a minute before all traces of a break in the skin have vanished, and the instant this is the case, Jaeger takes his hands off her and falls backwards, drawing in a deep gasp. He looks and sounds exhausted, but Lassiter's not paying attention to him. He immediately scoots forward so as to be right next to her, watching her face, her breathing—which seems to be much easier now. She's very pale, but she looks like she's asleep.

"She lost a fair amount of blood," comes Jaeger's voice, weak, but so matter-of-fact it's insane. "She's pretty weak. We have to get her to the hospital at once."

"O'Hara," Lassiter croaks, reaching for her. She seems to be stirring; if he just lets her be, she ought to wake up, in her own time.

"The hospital's swamped right now," Guster tells Jaeger, though Lassiter hears the tremor in his voice. "Tons of accidents, blocking the roads. We… we were gonna try to take her anyway, and we still should—"

And then her eyes flutter open, and Lassiter leans forward, and her name leaps from his mouth, uttered with an intensity he did not intend, effectively cutting Guster off. Almost in synchronization, Guster and Henry lean forward, immediately realize they're not giving her any space, and quickly return to their former positions.

For about one second all she does is lie there, apparently absorbing what's happening around her. Lassiter waits with bated breath.

And then her eyes fall on him, and widen in fear as she sits bolt upright. Immediately she's distracted though, clutching at her stomach and the slash through her shirt, looking at her own bloody hands, her eyes quickly growing wilder as her bewilderment mounts. Henry puts his hands around her shoulders from behind, steadying her, and she glances back only long enough to see who it is before her eyes fix again on Lassiter, and there it is again—fear.

Of him.

It's like a punch in the gut. It doesn't make a lick of sense and it hurts more than anything else that's happened today.

"O'Hara," he says again, this time nearly succeeding in keeping his voice level, "how do you feel?"

She looks at him for a few more moments, and then glances at Guster, then at Jaeger, then back to him. "What the hell is going on?" she queries, voice shaking.

"Do you remember what happened?"

"Carlton," she starts, and stops, biting her lip, looking down again at her midsection. She lifts up her shirt far enough to see the area that was wounded mere minutes before. It's smeared with blood, but the skin appears unblemished. She stares at it for a few long seconds, shudders, and lets her shirt drop back down as she looks up at him again. "I… I remember, but I don't understand it at all."

"Who did this?" he presses, suddenly feeling like the answer is the only thing that matters in the world.

"Carlton," she says again, and he sees tears trembling in her eyes. "Please tell me what's happening. It doesn't make any sense."

"Juliet, who did this?"

"It was you," she whispers, pressing herself against Henry, and then he's looking at Lassiter, and so are Guster and Jaeger—all their eyes are on him, ranging from accusatory to questioning to completely bewildered and he's never shied away from attention before but at this moment he wants to shrink into himself and be forgotten.

He inhales deeply and sharply, and immediately asks, "What are you saying?" and his voice, thankfully, doesn't crack. Now is not the time to be weak or hurt. "Are you saying that I did this to you? Don't you know how completely—"

"Of course," she says easily, but her voice is heavy with guilt and the tears finally escape her lashes, "but Carlton, that's what I saw. I—you stabbed me."

"I didn't." He doesn't dare look at any of the other's faces. The confusion in hers is all he can bear to focus on—at least it's not certainty in the wrong direction. "Are you—I wouldn't! I—" If this is really happening, if he's really a suspect—God, this is the most utterly outrageous thing he's ever encountered—then the first step is offering an alibi. "I've been at the station all day."

It seems it was the right thing to say, because something in her faces clears, or at least changes, and she glances around the porch briefly until her eyes land on her phone, which Lassiter hasn't even noticed before now, lying just in front of the door. "While I was looking right at you, you… you texted me," she says slowly, staring at it.

He nods emphatically. "I told you to bring Shawn around to the station."

Her head snaps around, eyes flying wide open as she sits up straight of her own volition, startling Henry. "Oh my God, where's Shawn?" she gasps, hand flying to her forehead, and immediately answers her own question: "He's gone. Where is he?"

"Take it easy, sweetheart," Henry says, but Lassiter can see the pain that twists his features. "We'll find him."

"We just need to make sure you're all right first," Lassiter says.

"If I might interject," Jaeger cuts in, and suddenly all eyes are on him, "she is all right. I promise you." Before the question can be asked again, he says to O'Hara, "I'm Sebastian. Sebastian Jaeger."

Recognition and shock register clearly on her face. "You were with Shawn at the carnival."

"Yes."

Lassiter's still focused on "she is all right" though. He is finding it absolutely impossible to focus on everything that deserves focus. He climbs unsteadily to his feet, pointing a shaking finger at Jaeger. "You. Explain."

"I heal people," he says simply.

"Obviously," Lassiter spits, and steps back, almost falling backwards off the porch when he finds a step there. His hand goes to his forehead, mind reeling. "He could have been telling the truth," he says, the words coming out flat, his brain unable to make sense of them.

Guster finally speaks up, if only to ask, "Who?"

"Thornton. Barnabas Thornton, the man Shawn pointed us towards. I spoke with him, and I thought he was crazy, but…" He blinks, shaking his head, trying to clear it, if that's even possible. Guster, Spencer, and O'Hara watch him in concern and confusion, until he silently reaches into his breast pocket and hands over his notes to his partner.

As she flips through them, eyes gradually widening, Lassiter just fixes his gaze on the wall of the house. "This… all this… it might be real." He runs a hand roughly through his hair. "It doesn't make any sense."

"It's real," Jaeger assures them.

"So it probably is," Lassiter snaps. "So what? I need… I need time. This is nuts. I'm gonna end up in the wacky shack just because there's… there's no time, and sometimes proof doesn't matter—I can't accept so quickly that this is possible."

Jaeger, brow furrowed, mouths wacky shack? as O'Hara decisively puts the notepad down on her lap. "The good news is it doesn't matter if it's real. Even if it's not, even if everything that's happened has a mundane explanation, we know one thing for sure: this man is going to drain Shawn dry, and we need to stop him."

Lassiter blinks, and a smile begins to spread over his face, even as Spencer snatches the notebook from O'Hara's hands. Not at her words, of course, but at the clarity with which she says them. She's fine. She's going to live. And she is one hundred percent right.

The only problem is, he doesn't have the first idea where to go from here and they are down to—he glances at his watch—fifty-seven minutes. After that, it's all over.

"This is clinical insanity," Henry says blankly, staring at the notes.

"We need to move, now," Lassiter says, assuming his authoritative voice, even though he's never felt less capable than he does at this moment. He extends his hand to O'Hara, and though she hesitates, she accepts it.

He pulls her to her feet, ready to catch her if she stumbles, but against all reason—not that reason's factoring into this day all that much—she moves very steadily. As soon as she's vertical, she looks up at him, and just looking into her clear eyes hits him harder than he was prepared to take, and he pulls her into his arms at the same time she rushes into them.

He clutches her tight, just feeling her shape, hearing her breath. She is warm, and alive. When he received that call he wasn't sure he'd ever see her like this again.

"I thought I was gonna lose you," he murmurs, resting his chin atop her head.

A few seconds pass. Then, "I know it wasn't you," she says into his chest. "It couldn't have been you."

God, he thought he was doing so well but his knees almost buckle at this. He holds onto her yet tighter, not caring that her blood is surely ruining his jacket, nor how the other three are trying not to pay attention.

And after a few moments more of indulgence, he pulls away, rubs once at his nearly-dry eyes, and addresses the lot of them: "We're on a timetable. Shawn told me yesterday that I would have one hundred fourteen minutes. Whether he got that number from his captor or—" A slightly hysterical chuckle escapes him. "Or whether he divined it isn't important. Now, it's been almost exactly an hour since he was taken. We need to move. Jaeger, do you know this wackadoo? The Master?"

He seems unsure of how to answer, but after a moment's pause he says, "Well, yes. But not nearly as well as I thought."

"You didn't know what he was doing," O'Hara says quietly. As she speaks, Henry's struggling to his feet, followed quickly by Guster.

Jaeger shakes his head. "And I don't know where he would have taken Ar—Shawn. I'm sorry."

Lassiter racks his brain. "Thornton said he'd be doing the draining as soon as he had all his victims together. But—" He looks at Jaeger, who doesn't seem to be able to summon up enough strength to stand. "But you're here."

Jaeger blinks. "I'm… I'm a victim?"

Well you have magical powers, Lassiter thinks but can't bring himself to say out loud. "I assume so. I'm not willing to bet that means we have more time after all though. And he said… it would be somewhere nearby?" He growls. "That doesn't narrow it down at all. Okay, I'm going to call the station and put an APB out on this Master guy, and—" He swallows. "Somebody who looks just like me. I guess. And Spencer, O'Hara, did you see the car they were driving?"

"It was a minivan of some sort," says Henry promptly. "Grey. I just caught the first three digits of the plate—"

"Wait," says O'Hara suddenly, urgently, and Henry stops, surprised by her tone. And wait they do, for several seconds while she stares at empty space, apparently trying to recall something.

Finally Lassiter ventures, "O'Hara—"

She looks up. "This is going to sound very strange, but maybe still not stranger than everything that's already happened today. I sat in Shawn's room for a while before he woke up. He was dreaming, muttering to himself. It got louder and louder but no more coherent and I started to think maybe I should just wake him up, but then… he started being intelligible. He was talking to someone; it was like hearing one side of a phone conversation." She shakes her head, not appearing to be particularly sold on the idea of repeating what she heard him say. "He was quiet for a little while after that, and I thought he might be waking up, but then he spoke again, weirdly decisively, almost mindfully. He said—" She pauses, devoting one more moment of thought to it before she says carefully, "He said, '10 Ellison Street.'"

"An address?" Henry asks immediately.

Lassiter whips his phone out, opening up the GPS, but Guster's a step ahead of him, and says just as Lassiter's starting to enter in the street name, "That's a twenty minute drive from here. Not factoring in the bike ride and any road blocks."

"Doesn't matter," says Lassiter, even though it matters a lot. "We just need to start moving in that direction, fast as we can."

"You think—you think he heard or saw the address somewhere, and was remembering it in his dreams?" O'Hara ventures uncertainly, apparently unable to believe his willingness to base everything on something her boyfriend said in his sleep.

"Maybe," Lassiter says simply. "Or maybe he just… knew. At this point, that almost seems more likely. But that doesn't matter either. Let's get a move on, people." His eyes sweep over everyone present. O'Hara's coming, of course. Guster's already involved and might be able to help further, like he did with the trail. They definitely can't let Jaeger run off. His eyes fall on the man who's currently both emotionally and physically compromised. "Henry—"

"This lunatic came to my house, on my watch, dragged my son into this mess, did God knows what else to him," the man growls. "You cannot get rid of me and you'll just piss me off by trying."

"Fine." There's no time to argue, and Lassiter's been through this song and dance before. Henry has always proven himself useful whenever he's been involved in a case. It might be against protocol, but the pros outweigh the cons here. "You got a bike?"

"In the garage," Henry replies after a moment.

Before he can continue with a "but I can't ride it," Lassiter says, "You take the recumbent, you'll have a much easier time balancing. I'll take yours. O'Hara, you're just going to have to balance on the front of it. Guster, take your own bike. Jaeger, you've still got your own too. Any questions?"

They all just look at him expectantly, standing still and silent.

"Then let's move."