We found ourselves back in the hospital, passing through the bustle of the morgue like ghosts as no one paid us any mind. Most of the corpses were still on tables in body bags with corresponding tags, but the tables were arranged differently – I'd be a lot had been catalogued and booted for coffin burial, but then more had been brought in. It seemed like there was a constant stream of deceased victims of Katrina being found every day.

"According to bureau files, Rene Mouton headed up a small voodoo church. By all accounts, he was a very good man." Booth rubbed the back of his neck, and while he and I were walking side-by-side with Brennan in front of us, he had to turn sideways to let a medical attending pass by. "He rescued scores of people during Katrina, then he just… disappeared. Some thought he was just… swept away, when the levee broke."

"Why would anyone murder him?" Brennan wondered, honestly confused how someone who saved so many lives could have garnered enough ill will to get himself killed.

Booth shrugged, but even though he may have wanted to provide a good answer, he didn't have one to give. "You know, the chaos during the evacuation – it could have been for a bottle of water."

Ah, the moral scruples of panicking humanity. Oh, wait – lack thereof, I suppose.

"Or because he was a priest," Sam offered, swerving across the room to stop in front of Brennan. As a result, Brennan stopped moving and Booth and I had to stop, too, or else crash. We created a roadblock in the aisle, but people seemed to anticipate it and go around so that we weren't actually stopping anyone. "The gris-gris box, the murder of Dr. Legiere, your amnesia." Well, that about sums up the last two days. "This is the work of a bokor, a Secte Rouge sorcerer," Sam concluded grimly. "Rene Mouton was a houngan, a powerful and well-loved priest. For Secte Rouge to claim his soul, this would give them influence on all the people that he influenced."

Brennan was seriously trying to understand, and she made an analogy to try to follow along. "Like a chain letter?"

"Or, in the real world," Booth coughed.

"Zombie," I muttered under my breath in warning. I did not want to have to get into this argument again; if he has to claim that voodoo's beliefs aren't part of reality, then I very well may have to remind him that to me, as an Atheist, his own religion falls under the same umbrella, meaning I don't have to try to understand the complex nature of Jesus's murder and revival.

Booth shut his mouth so we didn't get into the zombie/not zombie argument again, and I considered myself triumphant in this particular conversation.

"It makes sense," Brennan stated slowly, accepting the logic behind it and seeming to disregard the interaction behind her.

"What does?" Booth wondered, looking between Sam and Brennan like he'd missed a vital part of the dialogue.

"On Tuesday and Wednesday, Holly, Graham, and I must have been on the trail of a broker," Brennan explained, her eyes lighting up a bit and her body getting just a bit more of an optimistic bounce. Her entire demeanor changed as her perception began to look up with the recovery of some information.

"Bokor," I corrected clearly but patiently.

Brennan tipped her head to me in acknowledgment, but she continued. "And he found out… or, Secte Rouge did."

Booth rolled his eyes and shoved one hand in the corresponding pocket of his slacks. "Alright, great," he said impatiently, carrying on to make some reference that even I didn't get right away. "Then we just toss the ring into the molten river and… blah, blah, blah, right?" Sam and Brennan both narrowed their eyes at Booth, trying to discern his meaning. "Look. In the meantime, somebody here had the ability to hide Mouton's body and files."

I hate it when he makes good points that distract us from asking him what the hell he was talking about. "Graham's been killed, and Dr. Brennan and I attacked, so it's safe to assume none of us did it," I rationalized, wincing as I recalled the nail dug under my skin.

Brennan pursed her lips as she considered the names of all the hospital employees she could remember working with, and thinking of which of them could have had access to both records and corpses. "James Embry," she suggested.

"Me," Sam pointed out. Although Sam doesn't strike me as the violent type, I had to appreciate his honesty when a lot of people I'd encountered in these investigations would have concealed that in an effort to cover themselves.

"And Mike Doyle." As I remembered the short, somewhat stocky doctor, I twisted around to look over the room, searching for the familiar features. "Where is he, anyway? I can't remember seeing him since Tuesday." Sam shrugged in response.

"Say you wanted to hide a particular body and you didn't want anyone to find out." Booth stepped forward closer to Sam and dropped his voice. Even for an FBI agent, that was not generally an acceptable question to ask in public. "Where would you put it?"

"If I wanted to hide a body," Sam started to explain as he opened up a plain, flat brown coffin to peer inside and look for the missing, former John Doe's remains. "I'd change the name tag on the coffin." He shut the lid gently.

In another room that was also technically a part of the morgue, we have rows and rows of processed corpses already tagged and embalmed (if there's still enough flesh), ready for burial as soon as the families arrange for burial. Most are waiting for plot space in the cemeteries, seeing as how many people have already been laid six feet under in the city. It's kept well-lit, but it's also quieter and less people are generally in it. At the moment, we were the only four, which worked well for Brennan and I as we split up and walked down either side of a table, each of us pushing up the coffin lids to make sure that the contents matched the tags.

I wrinkled my nose as the smell hit me when I opened up another one. I much preferred the aroma of the jambalaya restaurant. All things considered, this room is well ventilated and the air circulation is good, too, but there's only so much that Febreeze and a fan can do.

Taking in the skull, I first established that there was no sign of anything through the cranium and the zygomatic structure was a bit off. "Not this one," I said, shutting the lid with as little slam as possible. Still, it was polished wood and I wasn't needing to be entirely silent, so it did make a little bit of a thudding noise. "Wrong ethnicity and age."

"Yeah. It's been buried, and the evidence is gone forever." Booth nodded as he realized the reasoning behind what I hoped was the killer's plan – not because it's necessarily good, but it would mean that we were right and are close to finding Rene Mouton and Graham Legiere's murder. I tend to take it personally when people butcher my friends, and it was just disrespectful to try to crucify me.

Booth followed the trail behind me. Each coffin was maybe seven or eight feet long and I think the widest part was four feet at most – easily accommodating the average-sized human with leeway. Brennan moved on to the next one in the row down the tables and pushed it up for only a few seconds before she groaned softly. "Female. You know-" this was punctuated by the closing of the coffin. "-I find it hard to believe that horny little Mike Doyle is a voodoo sorcerer."

I slipped sideways further down the line of coffins and settled my fingers underneath the ridge of the next lid, then pushed it up, looking down into the fancy box to a site I hadn't expected. I couldn't keep myself from stepping back, but I had enough presence of mind to keep the top up, leaning forward so that it didn't fall.

"Oh!"

Along with a skeleton wrapped up in clear plastic sheets was a much fresher corpse – the skin ashen and grey, a projectile wound through the forehead eerily reminiscent of a stabbing. There was no more blood.

Graham thumped pale, short-haired Mike on the back to wake him up, and Mike stumbled forwards… Graham snorted and Mike looked at Brennan, ducking his head in embarrassment. "I've got work to do," he mumbled, turning away and almost running out of the room.

I swallowed thickly, shutting my eyes and turning my head to look away. What, one murdered coworker wasn't enough? "Something's telling me it wasn't him."

Brennan put her hands down on the table in a space between a couple of coffins, using it as a brace to lean further over and see into the coffin I was holding open. "Speak of the devil," she sighed as she recognized the body. The skeleton, shoved and fitted snugly to the side, had a single hand poked out through the plastic wrap, the bony hand on top of Mike's chest in an oddly symbolic… almost remorseful… gesture. "Mike Doyle. And he's not alone."

"Great." I sighed dramatically and kept the coffin open, because it really wasn't too much to do. I'm not about to break down. Sure, this is a lot to deal with in the space of a couple of days, but it's not like I'm going to start sobbing. I'll just have to avoid looking directly at it until I've had a moment to really get it through my head. "Now who are we going to crucify in the name of ritualistic murder?"

It would be just our luck that the detective who responded to the call was the same one that wanted to have me on a leash with the other end tethered to bars. Harding had her crime scene team take the coffin the two bodies had been in, and while James Embry was called down to the morgue to conduct a cursory exam on Mike, Sam Potter remained with us faithfully. Somehow I suspect it had more to do with paying his respects to Rene Mouton than actually being invested in sticking around for our benefit.

"You said to avoid the police," Brennan reminded Booth, seeming irked that, despite what he'd said, we'd called the detective right to us.

"Not cooperating is one thing, Bones, okay?" Booth was whispering so that Harding couldn't overhear what was likely a little bit of a suspicious conversation, and he turned so his back was to the officers. I could barely see Harding's curly brown hair from over his shoulder. "Concealing a double homicide? Well, we might as well give them an excuse to hang us!"

I looked to Brennan and nodded seriously in agreement, then lifted my hands and mimed slipping a noose around my throat. I pretended to pull the rope back behind my neck and pulled up behind me, sticking my tongue out and feigning choking. I stopped quickly when Harding started to approach with James trailing reluctantly behind her. I suppose it was a good thing, because Brennan seemed vaguely disturbed by my performance.

Harding put her hands on her hips and I dropped my hands to my sides, replacing my expression with a neutral one. There was no need to give Harding any satisfaction. Either fortunately or unfortunately, she didn't immediately care to speak to me, instead addressing Brennan with the arrogant, agitated attitude she seemed to have down pat. "Dr. Embry says that you can identify the bag of bones."

"The skeletal remains belong to a man named Rene Mouton," Brennan confirmed, before she looked over at the skeleton, unwrapped of plastic and laid out in anatomical order on a gurney. Sam was watching over it while answering questions from another officer. "His skull is missing," she added helpfully.

James rubbed at his left arm absently with his right, his eyes worried and his posture sad. I couldn't even imagine what it must be like to do medical exams on two dead friends in as many days. "Looks to me like Mike Doyle was… drugged, a spike was driven through his head during or immediately following sexual intercourse."

Harding raised her hands from her hips, but only so that she could cross her arms over her chest and survey me mistrustfully. I'm getting really sick of that expression. "Well, it appears that Miss Kirkland, Dr. Brennan, Dr. Embry, and Sam Potter here are the three people who could've pulled this off."

Booth sidestepped until he was in a position to literally step between Harding and I if she made any blunt accusations or attempted to arrest me again. "Well, Sam Potter brought us to the body." He pointed at Sam with both hands, then switched to gesture towards himself as well as Brennan and I behind him. "We called you in. Who does that leave?"

Everyone turned to look at James all at the same time.

The doctor put his hands up in front of himself defensively. "Oh, please!" He protested. "There's no security in this place! Anyone could've gotten in here."

"He was killed right after having sex, right?" I piped up, standing on my toes to look over Booth's shoulder, then moving to the right and stepping up to his other side to actually be involved in the conversation. "Well, Dr. Brennan has a boyfriend, and since I know for a fact I wasn't high, I feel quite certain that I wasn't sleeping with him, so that leaves the one person who actually was." I sent Brennan a meaningful look.

Brennan actually got it in about two seconds and she looked back to James, conveying the same message. "James, he must've been killed by the coffin girl!"

"What?" Booth frowned, probably wondering what the hell that meant, while Harding glared at Brennan, expecting an answer. Clearly she didn't remember Graham hitting on her because Mike was getting laid in the coffin room.

"What's her name?" Booth asked, deciding to be productive now and ask questions later.

James looked apologetic, but really, how was he supposed to know that the girl Mike kept boasting about was actually a psychotic murderer? "I never got her name."

"Is there a voodoo bag in Mike's mouth?" I asked Harding. I hadn't seen one when we found the corpse, but the one with Rene Mouton had been shoved down so far that it had been in his throat.

Harding shifted. I was regaining confidence in my own investigating as it became evident that not only was I innocent, but that Brennan and I had also fallen victim to something unpredictable. I don't think the detective liked that I was asking for information.

She began to answer testily, "I don't feel comfortable releasing that-"

I interrupted her. Yeah, I know I'm not law enforcement, but come on! I'm close enough to this investigation – a victim of it, even – to have the right to be privy to the vital details, and that's not even considering my allegiances with Brennan and Booth. "Mike was screwing a Secte Rouge bokor," I said bluntly. "She was involved in the houngan Rene Mouton's murder and probably asked Mike to help cover her tracks. I bet her refused and so she killed him for good measure."

"Detective Harding, I know this is… you know, it sounds superstitious." I highly doubted that Booth was only saying that to keep some semblance of respect going around, seeing as he didn't care much for the nuances of voodoo either. "But-"

"Three ritual murders, a prime suspect with priors who was at the discovery of all three victims, and a world-renowned anthropologist who can't remember how either of them ended up smeared with the blood of a skinned man crucified to a wall with nails and spikes." Yeah, that sums it up. Harding stared at Booth flatly, unimpressed even by his attempted diplomacy. "Call me superstitious."

"Does that mean if I show you a black cat, you'll go away?" I asked seriously, crossing my arms and staring at the detective coldly.

Instead of answering, she cocked her head at me like she wasn't sure if I was being serious or funny, and as a result, the entire room descended into a pause filled with tension and discomfort.

Sam coughed. The noise dispelled some of the tension and he took a lot of the focus away from myself. "Excuse me," he called to Harding, holding a little decorated pot closed over the priest's mostly-skeletal corpse. "May I scatter fwan ginea over Mr. Mouton, to purify his remains?"

"No!" Harding yelled sharply, turning halfway around to motion emphatically for him to put the pot down. "No more of this voodoo crap, I don't want you contaminating the body!"

"What is it?" Brennan asked curiously.

Sam held the pot closer to himself and a bit further from the remains, pacifying Harding for a little bit. "Ashes, from a ritual fire pit. Ashes from a dove's feather, salt mixed with holy water…"

Booth waved a hand in Sam's direction for him to cease. "Yeah, you know, we get the idea."

Brennan looked away from Sam and back to Harding, shaking her head to the detective. "It should have no effect on the bones, Detective Harding," she said, now with a touch of determination like just because we were suspect, didn't mean that Sam should be deprived of doing whatever it was he normally did.

Harding went back and forth, looking between Sam and Brennan. This time I kept my mouth shut. Brennan had made the point, anyway. The detective clearly wasn't feeling too generous to me. While I understood her frustration, I really hoped she wouldn't take it out on Sam – he's a nice guy and I think he honestly believes what he's practicing. Allowing him to perform the rituals probably helps give him peace of mind more so than the deceased victims.

Finally, Harding gave in. Either she recognized stubbornness when she saw it, or she wasn't willing to make a scene over something that wouldn't do any harm. "Fine," she assented in a tetchy hiss, waving at Sam with force to emphasize her unhappiness. "Fine. Go ahead."

Sam nodded once to show that he understood and he raised the pot – I think it's made of clay – up towards the sky – well, actually, ceiling. He started to recite a short chant from memory. His voice, low and smooth, made it sound relaxing, even though I had no idea what it meant. Just as Booth was starting to seem uncomfortable, he stopped, gently pulled the top off of the container, and tipped it to one side, shaking it lightly to send ashes dusting over the body's torso.

It was supposed to just… I don't know, lay there, but instead it started to make a sound like magnetic shavings being pulled into a static field – not unlike the somewhat irritating sounds an etch-a-sketch makes when it's shaken to clear the drawing. The ashes pulled together like they were following a design, magnetizing in a pattern across the sternum and ribs.

"Whoa!" Booth yelled, alarmed and excited at the same time. He pointed over at the body and looked to Brennan. "Did you see that?!"

"That was cool," I admitted, but I remained wary.

"Very interesting phenomenon," Brennan observed, walking up to the corpse to look over what the ashes had done. While the ashes stayed in the same general location, the magnetic field was stressed and weakening, and they pulled apart more evenly, giving the design less definition. "The electrostatic charge of the particles reacted with the bone. Angela was unable to recreate that pattern from the x-rays using the best technology in the world!"

Bet Michael wishes he were on our team now, I thought before really realizing it, smug. Michael Styres had been one of Brennan's professors and she had a fling with him for a while. He came to visit in D.C., but it turned out that he had been only telling half-truths. He was working for the defense when the Jeffersonian was on the side of the prosecution in a murder case, and he exploited his relationship with Brennan to gain details he wouldn't otherwise be privy to.

"Electrostatic, my ass," Booth argued, eyes flashing down to the ashes on the corpse. Sam was clearly hesitant to do anything else in light of what had just happened. "That was part of an emblem of a nineteen fifty-nine Caddy Brougham – oh, boy." He stopped short as he remembered exactly why said emblem was so fresh in his memory.

Harding noticed his reaction too. "What?" She commanded an answer, although she didn't seem as authoritative as she used to.

"The voodoo shop guy owns a nineteen fifty-nine Cadillac," Brennan explained to Harding, while Booth was getting out his cell phone hurriedly to look up the address of Richard Benoit's shop again.

"He's got a voodoo daughter!" Booth added, and yeah, that was a pretty important point to make. Harding lifted her chin a little higher, grudgingly conceding that yes, this was a damn good lead.

"Eva Benoit," I told the detective smugly. "She's the killer, not me."

Richard Benoit was not pleased when we showed up at sunset to confiscate his antique car, to say the least – although he wasn't exactly rude about it, he balked when Harding brought it up.

"You're taking my Caddy?" He asked, looking far more mournful than anyone has a right to be over a car. "Why?"

"Why?" Booth repeated, glancing at the framed photograph of said Cadillac. "Because we have reason to believe that your Caddy was used in the wrongful death of Rene Mouton."

Benoit stared at Booth for a second like he thought that the line was a joke. After a couple seconds, when Booth remained completely serious, Benoit became even more distressed. "You think that someone did a hit-and-run on Rene Mouton in my Caddy?"

"Yes!" Brennan bit out quickly and emphatically, quickly growing tired of the man trying to protect his car. I nodded along with her – I had to agree with the anthropologist on this one. I'm tired and I'm hurting and I'm just overall done with this case, and the sooner we wrap it up, the sooner we can go home.

"Mr. Benoit, does your daughter have a boyfriend?" I suppose that was a prudent thing to ask, considering it would better confirm the theory that Eva was actually Mike's killer.

Benoit nodded once wearily, and Booth whistled shrilly. He made a gesture with his hands from Harding to the shop owner, and Harding sent him an unamused 'don't-order-me-around' look while handing across a photograph of Mike Doyle's corpse.

"Is this him?"

"… Mike Doyle," Benoit confirmed slowly, seeming to recognize the picture even before he was able to come up with the matching name. "Yeah." He slipped it back across the front glass counter to Harding, now anxious. It would have been hard to miss the spike through Mike's forehead. "Why?"

Booth didn't immediately answer. There was always the problem of Benoit figuring out we were going to arrest Eva, and then lawyering up before we could really press charges. "We need to speak to your daughter," he said solemnly. Harding coughed pointedly and shot Booth another 'you're-stepping-on-toes-and-not-in-your-jurisdiction' glare. Really, it's amazing how many people have those particular glares. "By which I mean Detective Harding needs to speak to your daughter," he grudgingly amended.

I scoffed, crossing my arms and staring at the door towards the back room. "She can talk to the girl when I'm done, but I have some serious issues with her." It's best to just get that out there, right? No one can blame me for throwing a few punches after what I'd been put through.

Benoit shifted uneasily. He wasn't very good at covering up his discomfort. "I don't know where she is," he said, looking past Harding for a moment and to the doors. Between Harding, Brennan, Booth, Sam, and myself, it was hard for it to go unnoticed. He's lying.

"Mr. Benoit." Harding was all seriousness and no-nonsense, and she pinned the guy with what looked like a lethal glare. "Right now, she's a suspect in the murder of Mike Doyle."

"Why would Eva kill her boyfriend?" The edges of desperation were becoming apparent. While I can't fault him for trying to protect his daughter, I can fault him for lying to us, and he should have known better than to try to hinder our investigation.

"It's… hard to explain," Booth hedged, not wanting to get into the details.

Conversely, I felt that the man had a right to know why his daughter had decided to go dark side – and our evidence that linked her to the crimes, especially if we would have to find her through him. "Actually, it's not," I corrected.

"She was involved in a hit-and-run," Brennan explained for Benoit, apparently thinking along the same lines as I was. I obviously can't completely relate to Benoit, what with not having any relatives (regardless of whether or not they're homicidal) or children in particular, but I can try to understand that I wouldn't want to believe it without proof. "When the body surfaced at the morgue, she asked her boyfriend to help her hide it. He refused, so she killed him. Also," she added as an afterthought. "She's a member of Secte Rouge."

"Oh, and she's a bokor who killed a houngan for Secte Rouge, plus her boyfriend and another innocent man in order to cover her ass." It needed saying. Mike had tried to do the right thing but had gotten killed because he had known what she'd done. Graham, however, hadn't lived long enough to figure out the entire story, and his death had been uncalled for.

"No, no," Benoit denied, shaking his head steadfastly.

Brennan looked through the glass to the displays and then looked back up. "I bet there are drugs in this shop that could knock me out… make us forget." She raised her eyebrows at Benoit, satisfied that she'd gotten something over him that he couldn't just deny.

Benoit looked away from Brennan and to me. I pointedly nodded to the contents of his displays. Yeah, somehow I'm not feeling too kind towards many people at the moment. Harding and Booth stared down the shopkeeper. I think their personalities would clash if they spent too much time together, but they'd be a kickass team if they could keep their hands away from each other's throats.

Finally, Benoit sighed, realizing that he was defeated in this and giving up peacefully. "Eva is downstairs, praying."

Benoit led us actually out of the shop and around the side of the building, where a set of stairs led to a lower level with an outside door. He stood to the side and knocked gently on the wood, calling through with resigned sadness. "Eva? Eva, open the door."

No one answered from inside and I shared a look with Booth, wondering if maybe we should be prepared for violence. Harding didn't share the thought, instead giving up on waiting after a moment of impatient shifting. She twisted the knob and pushed the door inside while going in after the murderer, leaving the door open after her so that everyone could see inside.

Eva Benoit had a bloodied spike driven directly through her back, ripping through both flesh and the fabric of her orange dress. Her head was rolled back, her curling dark hair down past her shoulders while she hung off of the spike on the wall limply.

"Eva," Benoit breathed, before reality really sunk in and he screamed, charging into the room. "No!"

I stepped inside and moved to the right towards the wall. The back end of the room was bare and dull, cement walls and floors making the color scheme mostly grey. The most color came from a long altar at the front of the room, decorated with herbs, sigils, some tomes, and pots not too unlike the one Sam had kept his fwan ginea inside of, some decorated scarcely and others with neon beads like a macabre art project. Most notable, however, was a set of objects on top of and in the middle of the shelves making up the altar; a human skull with a projectile wound through the forehead, and a simple steel spike lying next to it with traces of blood.

"Eva!" Benoit repeated his daughter's name, horrified, having a hard time believing what he had just discovered. He tried to pull Eva off of the large stake, but she was dead weight and the moment the spike slipped out of her chest, he was sporting it all on his own. He slumped, lowering her gingerly to the floor and grieving loudly. "Oh, no, no…"

Booth snapped his fingers once to get my attention as he too did an inventory of the altar. "Could that be Mouton's skull?" He asked, pointing up to the skull in question.

I looked to the spike suspiciously and then nodded. "Yes," I determined. "Looks like it fits the profile. And that could be the murder weapon she used on both the priest and her boyfriend."

We had James Embry here to do an exam on Eva in less than twenty minutes, having ordered him to bring a gurney for the body. While Sam helped James to lift the shish-kebab'd girl up onto the stretcher, I kept looking over the altar. I touched as little as possible, but I wanted to know what was what.

"She was definitely in Secte Rouge," I said to Booth quietly, who'd been hovering near me protectively for pretty much the entire case. I straightened up and nudged softly at clipped flowers – I think they were rhododendron, and they were wilted and dying. They mean to beware, I recalled from somewhere. "I find it hard to believe that this sort of set-up is for benevolence. Sam?" I called across the admittedly smaller-than-average room to the orderly.

Sam lifted his eyes from Eva to rake his gaze over the altar and see what's what for another time before making a final conclusion. "This is the lair of a bokor," he rumbled surely. "Someone who can call the dark spirits." He gestured mildly towards the steel stake Eva impaled herself upon. "This was used for ritual animal sacrifices."

Brennan was far more interested with the spike than she was with Eva's body. "It was heated to red-hot first to cauterize the wound so it wouldn't bleed," she said, detecting whatever signs that remained to piece together what had happened.

Booth looked over at Eva, and then to the spike in the wall skeptically. "What, she killed herself because she knew we were coming?"

Benoit remained in everyone's way in the middle of the room, but no one was mean enough to point that out to him while he was mourning in shock. "No, no," he denied, shaking his head. "Not – Not my Eva…"

"But how could she have known?" I wondered aloud to counter Booth. I looked back to Brennan and explained how I got to that question. "She killed Mike, who would have told us. She didn't realize how much further in the investigation we'd gotten. We wouldn't have found Mike if it weren't for Sam's idea to find Mouton."

Brennan's brow creased as she looked to the stake with a new focus. I felt like I'd missed something important. "She drove the spike through her sternum?" She double-checked, tone akin to suspicion.

James nodded, looking sadly over the body of the young girl on his gurney. "Sternum, heart, through the chest cavity, through the spine." He confirmed.

"Can I open this?" Sam asked, reaching with care to a black pot with beads somehow kept on it. He moved to the side so that Harding could see what he was referring to.

"Why?" The detective questioned first.

Sam tapped the top of the pot gently as if it may break – and considering that I don't know what it's made out of, he might actually be right. "This one holds the soul of Mr. Rene Mouton." He switched over to the other one, which was darker in hues of burgundy and maroon. There were no beads, just what looked like carvings made with a knife or sharp instrument in the material of the pot. "I believe this one holds the soul of the bokor."

Benoit looked up at Sam with barely-hidden agitation. "Why don't you just shut up?" He hissed at Sam. I took it as a personal slight, since not only did his aggravation make little sense – I mean, yeah, his daughter's dead, but Sam wants to release her spirit. That's a good thing, right? – But also since I can consider Sam a friend, and it's really not nice to tell people to shut up.

I'm a hypocrite, but I'm… I think I'm actually cool with it.

"Funny…" I said, looking at Benoit curiously, trying to find some sign of any other contextually inappropriate emotion. "I'd have thought that you'd want a priest to bless your daughter's soul, Mr. Benoit, especially after what she's done."

"I would like to release Mr. Mouton's soul so no other bokor can use it." Sam didn't seem put off by Benoit's aggressiveness. That's okay – I can be irritated enough for both of us.

"No," Harding snapped. "It's evidence. Don't touch it." This time I suppose she may have a point, because last time something was supposed to be harmless, it turned out to be very important. It helped us, but it was definitely important, so if anything's touched then it should only be after the altar has been catalogued.

"I raised my Eva to be a houngan, a healer." Benoit raised his eyes up towards the ceiling, shaking his head in denial. Even his voice sounded like it was torn apart – already, there were darker circles under his eyes, and his entire body was riddled with tension. The way he held himself conveyed hurt, an almost physical pain. "How could this happen right underneath my nose?" Well, feet, actually – we're in a basement.

Brennan glanced to Benoit from her place standing next to the spike. She stood with her side to the wall, facing the metal stained pink from Eva's blood. "Rebellious adolescent?" She offered for Benoit in response to his mostly rhetorical question. Transferring her attention, she looked back to me. I wandered closer to her and further from the altar, staying to the side of the stake. I highly doubt I'm the only one who sees the potential risk in walking directly towards a large, pointy thing attached to the wall. "Do you remember how much of the spike was protruding from her back when we first came in?"

It was a long stake, almost two feet, and the first few inches were untouched with blood – human blood, anyway. Animal blood had been cleaned, so forensics had yet to determine that part. Benoit had run in and dragged his daughter down without waiting for a thorough examination of the room to occur, but I thought I'd gotten a pretty good look.

I held up my hands about as far apart as I'd thought the tip of the spike had been from Eva's back. My depth perception is usually pretty reliable, so I took a rough guess at the measurement. "Foot and a half, maybe a little bit more?"

"Would the fact that the spike was red-hot cause it to go through the body more easily?"

"I…" I hesitated. She was onto something and need accurate information, and though I do know how cauterization works, I'm not as sure on how the heat would have affected the actual stabbing. "I really don't think so," I offered my opinion anyway before calling to the medical expert here. "James?"

James had been looking around and paying attention to the dialogue, maybe out of interest and maybe just so he'd know when he was being spoken to. Either way, he was already up to speed on the question. "No. If anything, it would have made it harder."

"So how could she have impaled herself directly through her chest to pierce her spine, and get so far onto a spike in the wall?" I asked aloud, shaking my head in disbelief. That barely even seemed possible – it was a big spike and the human body is actually stronger than it looks. I would have thought that to go that far on she'd have had to keep trying, but that was impossible from the moment the tip pierced her heart. She'd have died seconds after.

Brennan looked closely at the spike again, and then lifted her eyes to follow a line from the floor where she stood to the doorway.

"Eva Benoit did not commit suicide," she ruled decisively.

Harding raised both of her eyebrows and didn't quite want to take that without an explanation. It reminded me of what Caroline had said – that there was no helping the New Orleans police because they just want the case closed. As it was, we had a murderer, we had probable cause, and we had the murder weapon. Easy conclusion.

The detective crossed her arms. "Based on what?"

"This room isn't even twelve feet wide," Brennan pointed out, motioning from the spike and to the wall, drawing the attention to the only route Eva could have taken to the spike due to its stunningly accurate angle. "Even if she ran at full speed and her aim was perfect, there's no way the spike would go through her spine unless she was pushed onto it." She mimed pushing someone directly in front of her for emphasis.

But Benoit has a key. The only way that this could have happened without him hearing a struggle is if Eva did it herself, because she wouldn't let a threat in. Which means…

As I rotated around to stare down at Benoit, searching for a crack in his acting skills, Sam seemed to arrive at the same conclusion that I had and stepped closer to Benoit as if he was searching for something around or on his person. Benoit must have realized that he was becoming suspect, as he planted one foot behind him as if to run before he stopped himself. He looked up at Sam, but the hospital orderly was much larger than him, and everyone knew that he wouldn't have a chance at escape even if he somehow did get past.

Sam realized something and he raised his chin in distaste. "He is the sorcerer," he accused. "He believes he can bring her back to life."

As Benoit drew himself up, about to defend himself, Booth stepped closer to Sam like he was willing to stop the two if they got into a fight. "Everyone just simmer down," he instructed, looking at Sam and then Benoit pointedly. "You're saying that he murdered his own daughter, thinking that he could bring her back to life?" While he clearly thought it was ridiculous, he was getting a lot better at accepting that Benoit really believed things like that were possible. I was proud that he'd at least learned to be more open-minded concerning other cultures.

Sam was replying to Booth, but his eyes were fixated solely on the second bokor. "You find her dead, you stop looking for Mouton's murderer."

I crossed my arms across my chest, rolling my shoulders and leaving Dr. Brennan to approach the three men in the center of the room. I stared at Benoit passively, calculating. "We assume she attacked Dr. Brennan and I and slaughtered Graham. It seems unlikely, but we wouldn't have had reason to believe otherwise." As I was locked onto Benoit, he did the same to me, eyeing me like he was either sizing me up for a fight or about to lash out verbally. "It's not like we can remember," I added coldly.

"An inch or two to the left or right, we would never have known it was murder." Brennan shifted, and I suppose it was cool that she told him where he went wrong – he put effort into making it a perfect ritualistic suicide, and in the process, he exposed it as murder. Irony at its best – or worst. "Had to have been hard, pushing her onto that spike, especially if she were resisting." She was definitely making a point there, and I listened closely to her as I stepped up to the sorcerer, who was now leery of my proximity. "You'd have some wounds of your own."

Before he could pull back or Harding could accuse me of assault (again), I grabbed at the collar of Benoit's shirt. His expression was one of complete shock until I ripped it open, snapping the buttons off with the force, tugging both sides of flannel in different directions. A small, half-translucent orange bottle tumbled out of his shirt pocket, and as his shirt opened, it showed a large white cover of bandages on the front of his torso, stained red in the higher center just underneath his heart. It looked like he'd used enough bandages to make it less obvious he was wounded and wearing any at all.

I stepped back in case he became violent and thought to do something other than hold his arms out in surprise, and lifted the toe of my shoe up to catch the bottle before it rolled. It was the type of bottle used for prescription medications, and though the white sticker with the label, dosage, doctor, and name had been removed, I had been taking Oxycodone long enough to recognize the pills by sight alone.

He must have taken it when he attacked Brennan, Graham, and I. I bet I dropped it and he picked it up, and he's probably kept it with him since he hurt himself on the spike.

I bent down to pick up the bottle, but wasn't stupid enough to actually use it to dispel the dull aches that came from the battering I'd taken from this man. Who knew if it had been tampered with? "That's what happened to the Oxycodone," I said to Booth, holding up the half-empty plastic container for Harding to see. "I told you I didn't kill anyone."

I switched the bottle to my left hand and started to turn around, done with Benoit, before I whirled back around on my heels and balled my right hand into a fist, delivering a hellish punch to the bokor's jaw. His head snapped around and I heard his jaw pop, and he grunted quietly like he'd been suppressing the urge to make any noise.

I smirked and sighed, feeling much better even though now my knuckles were stinging a little bit. It had been a while since I'd punched anyone that hard. I stepped back towards Booth while Harding advanced, pulling handcuffs from her belt to arrest Benoit. She slapped one cuff around his left wrist and he held the other behind him, accepting his defeat.

I looked up to the FBI agent next to me and tiredly pushed my hair back from my face, then honestly said, "I think I'm ready to go home."

Booth nodded in wholehearted agreement. "Yeah, me, too." He jerked his head towards Benoit. "Alright, my advice? Cuff Mr. Wizard here before he puts a spell on you?"

I listened with satisfaction to the hiss of air Benoit let out when Harding tightened the handcuffs with more strength than strictly necessary. "What?" She asked sarcastically. "No written confession?"

"You want a confession? Threaten to release his daughter's soul." Booth gestured carelessly towards the altar. "He'll tell you everything."

"Dr. Brennan?" I called to the anthropologist. "If we catch the next flight to D.C. we might be able to keep our ears out of danger." Angela tended to make good on her promises, and I was hurting enough already without being dragged by the ear to wherever Angela wanted us to plant ourselves for the time being.

"Angela can be very stubborn," Brennan commented with a near grimace, absently reaching up to her ear before stopping herself when she realized what she was doing. Booth stretched an arm out behind my shoulders to shepherd me to the side and towards the doors to leave, making sure to keep some space between us at the same time. I let him lead me at a close range, because hey, I can trust him and if that's what he wants, then fine, by all means, protect me from the psycho bastard who tried to crucify me.

I found myself walking between my two favorite adults and was surprisingly content, even with people on either side of me. It was a huge change from when I'd met them, and I'd been anxious just because of sitting in a booth with people on either side of me.

"Miss Holly Kirkland." I was a bit surprised that Benoit knew my name, but I stopped and turned to look back over my shoulder when I heard Benoit speak up for the first time since Sam had figured him out. Still, compared to everything else, knowing my name was a bit underwhelming. The sorcerer was leaning back to keep his wrists from being pulled by the cuffs, but he was glaring at me hatefully. "You leave here, you go home, it does not matter. There are powers, dark powers, to whom distance makes no difference."

I scoffed callously. "Yeah, well, unless they can pull a James Moriarty and convince an entire jury to rule you innocent, they're really not my concern." I mockingly waved one hand in a deceptively cheerful goodbye.

Benoit dropped his voice to a husky, gravelly note and started to mutter under his breath, chanting in a different language. Although I don't put any stock in magic, it wasn't too much of a leap to conclude he was cursing me or something of the like. I'm not afraid of it by any means, but it's kind of rude.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Booth started to interrupt, glaring at Benoit. He stepped back up to be even with me again, since we'd fallen a bit out of step when I'd first turned around. Benoit paid him no mind, continuing with his incantation, and Booth frowned. "Agua?" He repeated a sound Benoit said frequently, looking at me for an explanation.

I couldn't offer one for him this time, so I shrugged. "Sounds Latin," I offered.

Benoit stopped chanting and snapped open his eyes, leaning forward while Harding kept a very tight grip on his hands. She scowled at him irately while he blew at me. I think it was more symbolism than anything – directing magic at me or something like that – but it just made me uncomfortable, and not in the 'I've-been-cursed-with-voodoo-spells' way, but in the 'I-feel-like-I'm-being-harassed' sense.

Brennan's lips pulled down unhappily and she stepped forward, holding out two fingers and poking Benoit in his eyes when he didn't expect it, then stepped back to rejoin Booth and I like it was something she just did every day. Benoit groaned and backed up, squeezing his eyes shut. Brennan's expression brightened as I giggled.

"I've noticed that very few people are scary once they've been poked in the eye," she shared with a smug smirk.

Harding rewarded the scientist with a big grin and she laughed. Booth nodded his head, laughing in his agreement and giving her a thumbs-up in praise.

We got back into D.C. so late in the night that it was actually early in the morning, but that didn't stop Hodgins, Angela, and Zach from gathering in Brennan's office with us to hear the story that we had to tell. Brennan pulled her chair out from behind her desk and pulled it closer to the center of the room with the couches, and while I sat between Zach and Booth on one couch, Hodgins and Angela claimed the other while Brennan kept her chair.

"We got caught in the middle of a battle between two religious sects," Brennan was concluding the story with the reflection of what we had managed to piece together. "Benoit used Hurricane Katrina as a diversion to take the soul of a voodoo priest."

"We can't forget Eva, though," I reminded Brennan, sighing as I remembered both father and daughter. There was really a tragic element to the story, despite that both of them were extremely guilty. "She wasn't exactly innocent, either. She was involved in Mouton's murder and then killed her boyfriend."

"But he killed his own daughter," Angela re-emphasized, falling hard for the abhorrent, tragic plot twist Benoit had implemented.

Hodgins let his shoulders slump, leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees. "Dark sorcerers suck, man," he whined.

"Oh, but, you know, he intended to bring her back to life," Booth reminded Hodgins with a smirk and a roll of his eyes.

Zach frowned on the other side of me. Unlike Hodgins and Booth, who were playful to lessen the severity of what had really happened, Zach was soaking in the magnitude of the events and the lives lost. He was also completely willing to point out their errors. "There's not really any such thing as spells and magic," he told Hodgins factually.

"What are you talking about?" The entomologist snorted. "He put a forgetting hex on them!"

"But it wasn't the spell that made me forget," Brennan interjected, trying to reassert what was what before things started to get out of hand. "It was the drugs – Rohypnol."

I looked to the scientist and shook my head, denying that option. While I agreed we weren't hexed or whatever, we couldn't say for sure what had really been the cause of the amnesia. "No, there were no drugs in our blood tests, remember?"

Brennan opened her mouth, paused, and then tried again. "Severe emotional trauma."

Angela shook her head firmly, but smiled affectionately. "Honey, even I think you're too strong-minded for that."

I saw the stubborn set to Brennan's jaw as she rapidly tried to think up an explanation more reasonable than 'the sorcerer cursed me.' "There were too many delays in doing the blood tests," she rationalized. "That, plus the adrenaline of the fight, and the drugs were out of our systems."

"We'll probably never know for sure why we forgot Wednesday," I sighed wistfully. I wanted to know so badly, but this was just one thing I'd have to accept never understanding. Whether it was drugs, emotional trauma, or the head traumas we'd suffered, we forgot, and that was the important part. I just had to keep in mind that, even with all of that, we'd come out on top.

Hodgins laughed delightedly at the stubborn refusal to admit to any supernatural involvement. "They put the voodoo on you, baby!" He declared teasingly, then stopped, replayed it, and realized what he said, ducking his head in embarrassment. "I… didn't really mean to call you 'baby.'" He told Brennan apologetically.

"You guys, stop it, now." She ordered. Though she was fond of their antics no matter how she tried to hide it, she had a hard time dealing with it when they refused to stop. "I mean it!"

"Do you believe in voodoo?" Zach asked, still worrying about it. "Because even if a small part of you believes in it, then it has a grip."

Of course I wasted no time in denying it, but that didn't mean I had to be mean. "Zach, you know I don't," I protested seriously.

"Maybe just a little?" Booth prodded now that he knew I was bothered, leaning over towards me. I seriously contemplated giving him a shove.

"No more than you believe Jesus is a zombie," I said blandly instead, knowing that that would be an even better rebuttal.

Booth sighed and leaned back like I'd thought he would. "Let's not go there," he said with an exasperated roll of his eyes. "But, you know, if you ever have any doubts, we'll just have Benoit send you back one of those little Satanic mojo pouches from prison."

Brennan was giving him the 'ah, you less rational human beings are so cute sometimes' look as she corrected him. "Booth, objects have no intrinsic power," she said sternly. "A person's future does not depend on some thing. Things are just… things. They do not have magical meaning, or 'powers.'" She even used air quotations around the last word.

Booth leaned into the back cushion of the couch with a small, secretive, I-know-something-you-don't smile. I watched him carefully as he opened his fist, holding a long earring in between his fingers, letting it rest against his palm. I didn't recognize it, but Brennan stared at it for a long moment before she leaned forward.

"Where'd you get that?" She asked softly.

"What does it matter?" Booth asked, repeating her sentiments from earlier with a grin. He stood up from the couch and gently deposited the earring in Brennan's palm. "It's just a thing, right?"

"My mother's earring," Brennan whispered, looking down at it in both relief and confusion.

Booth let his hands fall to rest against his thighs as he straightened up, walking backwards to leave the office, probably to go home. "No magical power over your future," he reminded her in a cheery tone, giving a wave before he turned around and walked out, leaving Brennan to think about that.

Angela looked after Booth, and when he was no longer in the room, she twisted to look at the earring her friend held. "Does that prove something?" I'm pretty sure she was asking on behalf of everyone in the room.

"Yeah," Brennan said slowly, closing her hand around the earring and smiling softly. "It proves something."

It didn't take long before it became clear that she wasn't going to elaborate any further than that, and Hodgins cleared his throat as the anthropologist stared off into space, thinking over things on her own regardless of the other people present.

"Speaking of proving things, Xena, you need a way of proving that you're still alive when you go off on your own."

Angela took that as a cue of some kind and she got up quickly, going around the edge of the couch to her purse on Brennan's desk. I stayed in place, eyeing Hodgins quizzically and trying to figure out what he meant. "What are you going to do? Put a chip in my arm?" I asked sarcastically.

Angela turned back around, purse in tow, one hand slipped inside and holding something. "No," she allowed. Instead of sitting back down, she stood at the side of the coffee table between the two couches. Her eyes were bright and pleased with herself. "But how about a GPS and Wi-Fi enabled phone?"

Before I could ask what she was talking about, she pulled out a brown cardboard box from inside her bag, a picture of a touchscreen phone on the front along with an image of a black charging cord. Above the picture was the name of a big phone company, complete with the logo.

My eyes widened to the size of saucers. "My God, you didn't," I stated, hardly daring to believe what was even right in front of me.

Hodgins chuckled, apparently amused by my absolutely dumbstruck reaction. "Hey, you're stuck with us, Xena. Might as well get used to it." He nodded to the phone, still smiling. "Friends and family plan."

Angela held out the phone box more insistently. "You really didn't have to do this," I said, my mind still blown and my cheeks started to heat up in both delight and embarrassment that they'd gone to such lengths.

"We know," Angela assured me, giving the box another wave in my direction. Temptation won out over responsibility and I reached up for it, and Angela relinquished it happily before sitting herself down next to Hodgins again. "Look, we're all in your speed dial," she added, overall thrilled with how this project had turned out. I pulled open the top of the box. The extra packaging was gone and the charger lacked the wire that kept it bound tightly when it was packaged. The phone itself was already charged, a newer model of smartphone. "Voicemail is number one, Booth is number two, and you also have Bren, me, Hodgins, and Zach."

"I…" How does someone respond to something like this? I've known them for a matter of months – a long time overall, but a short time comparatively – and they go to this much trouble on my behalf? It was mind boggling. "Thank you!" What else could I say? There was only so much gratitude that I could express without making myself uncomfortably out of character.

"Hey, that's not all!" Hodgins' eyes were bright and his voice enthusiastic. He pushed himself off of the opposite sofa and came around the coffee table in between to plant himself down in the space Booth had vacated, angled towards me to show me the features of the phone. "Check out your wallpaper!"

Grinning in almost unbearably excited anticipation, I slipped my fingers under the sides of the phone and pulled it up from the depression in the cardboard, pressing down on the home button in the lower center and seeing the screen turn on. The battery was in the high nineties, and the background had a thin banner with the date and time over Lucy Lawless with black hair in a medieval-styled dress.

"It's Xena!" I recognized her immediately, and maybe I sounded a little too excited about it, but can I really be blamed?

"Hey, it's scary accurate!" Hodgins, at least, seemed to share my excitement, and Angela was smiling brightly when I glanced over at her. As Zach twisted to look over my shoulder at my new phone, I leaned back so that both boys could see easier while we went over all of the features, playing with the apps for fun.