Devil's Lover

Chapter 3

She woke up the next morning to the screen of her phone happily proclaiming, one text message received!

Not-Elf: Did you know greetings such as good morning, good evening, etc., are all found in the earliest literature and are considered to be derived from ‘God’ as in ‘May God be with you’? S. R.

There was a long moment where she blinked blearily at the screen and quietly realized that there was no way she was going to be able to handle texting Reid before her morning coffee if this became a regular thing.

To Not-Elf: Normal people just say, ‘good morning.’

Not-Elf: Isn’t that what I said? S. R.

“Why are you smiling like that?” Sergio asked her suspiciously, appearing at the end of her bed and swishing his tail. “You don’t smile in the morning. You don’t smile until at least ten.” She hid her phone under her pillow and swept her legs under the blankets, knocking him onto his side with a startled mrrow. She wasn’t guilty about texting Reid. She didn’t have to explain herself to a cat—even a magic cat.

“I’m just happy. Aren’t I allowed to be happy?” she asked him, avoiding his claws with her toes as he retaliated for her surprise attack and smacked at her blanket-covered feet.

“Not before ten. It’s unnerving. Now feed me. I’m starved.”

Her first proper case was with Reid and, because god clearly didn’t want to make this any less awkward, Gideon. Alone. She wondered how they were going to fit the entire team on the jet, because with just her, Reid and Gideon in there, the space already felt claustrophobic. She wished Sergio would get over his mistrust of Reid and come back to work. If she could put Doyle behind her, he could too. After all, technically, Doyle hadn’t done a thing to Celine Ryder and her familiar, Sergio.

“Why do we get a private jet?” she asked Gideon with interest, trying to make small talk. He didn’t even look up from where he sat opposite, paging slowly through a thick file on the man they were going to question. Reid was next to her, flicking through an identical file rather more quickly. He licked his finger between pages, making a soft rhythm that she half focused on even as she waited for Gideon’s response.

“Cost effectiveness,” he grunted. Then he looked up. She repressed a shiver. It was uncanny having all of that sharp interest suddenly focused on her—frightening and intense all at once. “You’re third circle? Why only third? We don’t usually hire mages ranked under second.”

“I’m newly qualified,” she said quietly, sensing that he already knew this. “My previous work didn’t require me to be formally trained.”

“I can tutor her up to second,” Reid interjected suddenly, the lick-flick rhythm faltering as he looked up and met Gideon’s gaze with a smile that was a lot calmer than her own. “In seventy-three percent of fresh graduates from magical academia, it takes less than six months for them to qualify for second circle. A further thirteen percent make it between three and four months.” He beamed at her, and she felt the back of her neck flush, suddenly very conscious of the space between them. “I bet we could do it in two.”

“No,” Gideon said, looking back down at the file. “She needs a registered mage, Reid. I’ll do it. Ryder, I’m going to organize extra training sessions between cases. I expect you to attend. Now, Jamal Abaza—”

Celine felt the tickling sensation of someone trying to talk to her and reached for it, fighting the urge to sneeze.

“Sorry,” Reid’s voice hummed in her head. Gideon kept talking, completely unaware of their silent communication. Reid kept talking out loud too, not even skipping a beat as he, somehow, managed to keep two separate conversations going: “he’s a great teacher. You’ll learn quickly. And he doesn’t bite.” It made her head hurt to listen to both of him at once. There was the faint sensation of laughing in her mind. “Doesn’t bite much,” Reid added, and his mouth twitched into a smile that was sorely at odds with the case they were discussing.

As it turned out, between cases meant that they’d barely stepped off the plane back in Quantico before Gideon had informed her that he’d see her in his office that afternoon.

“Is he serious?” she groaned to Reid as Gideon strode away and left them standing there on the icy tarmac of the runway. “We’ve been on the job for two days. I need a shower. I need my bed. I don’t need three hours of casting with him looming over me and correcting every incantation.”

“He won’t ask more of you than what you’re capable of,” Reid answered quietly. “He’s never pushed me beyond my limits.”

She looked at him with interest. “Gideon trained you?”

Reid nodded, his expression serious. Ten minutes ago, he’d been giddy and manic with excitement that the case was over, buzzing like a soda can that someone had shaken up and left to pop. Now he was dull, flat. The kid swung between moods faster than she did. “Not just magic. Profiling, working in a team… all of the things I needed to know to work in this unit. I wouldn’t be who I am without him. I owe him everything.”

It was a sudden insight into two very private men, and for some reason he’d decided to share. She didn’t know how to respond, so she deflected. “I should be done by eight,” she said instead, touching his arm, fingers tracing the rough fabric of the ugly brown jacket he was wearing. Her arm didn’t react—she’d finally fixed the rune. It had taken some improvising, but it wouldn’t respond to him anymore. Improvising being straight up weaving the essence of his name through the rune. It was a weirdly intimate spell, although necessary, and she was determined to never show him. He leaned slightly, ever so slightly into her touch, even as she continued. “You could bring over one of those old sci-fi shows you bore Morgan to tears about and tell me everything that’s scientifically inaccurate about them.”

His face lit up again, and she could see the temptation written all over it despite the haggard look two days of racing against the clock had left on him. On all of them, except for Gideon. The man seemed to thrive when pressure was applied to him. She wondered how much pressure it would take to crack that calm exterior. She noted suddenly that, under his excitement, Reid looked ill. She frowned, seeing with concern the deep purple shadows under his eyes and the pallid cast to his skin.

The excitement vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, and he looked frustrated and worn again. “Oh. I can’t, I’m sorry. I have stuff I have to do tonight. Sorry, Em.”

She wasn’t disappointed. She wasn’t. She should have considered that he’d have his own stuff to do, his own interests and friends outside of work. She shouldn’t have a tiny voice in the back of her mind saying, what could possibly be more important than this thing we have just starting? She pushed that thought back quickly. There was nothing starting here. Not with her co-worker; her co-worker who wasn’t only a demon but also an actual certified genius. How could she possibly relate to him on his level when his level was probably about fifty IQ points above hers?

“Raincheck?” Reid asked, and she realized that she’d been standing there lost in her own thoughts. She inwardly shook herself, noted his plaintive expression, and smiled at him cheerily. See, I’m fine. Just peachy. Nothing to see here folks, just two friends being friendly.

“Of course, if Gideon doesn’t murder me tonight, anyway.”

She found Gideon sitting at his desk, smiling down at what appearing to be a picture of two painted swallows flying wing-tip to wingtip, their wide beaks open in song.

“A fan of birds, sir?” she asked quietly, examining the picture. It seemed so… odd. Here he was, Jason Gideon, fabled profiler, looking at this depiction of two common birds like they held some sort of great mystery he needed to solve.

“I’m of the firm belief that there’s a lot we can learn from birds,” he responded absently. “For example, monogamy is almost solely an avian trait. Few mammals are as meticulously monogamous as many birds. Swallows, for example, will return to their home nests every year, no matter how far from there they travel during migration. They’re also known as the freedom birds… they cannot abide captivity and will mate only in the wild. Fascinating and admirable, don’t you think?”

She wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that, so she waited for him to make the next move. His gaze lifted and scanned the far wall. She followed his eye-line, studying the rows and rows of photos and mementos lining the shelf and wall across from his desk. “Are they your family?”

“Of a sort.” He rapped his fingers on the desk with a restlessness more at home on Reid than him. “Why did you wait so long to pursue upper-magical education? Normally those seeking to become mages enter the circle apprenticeships directly after obtaining a college degree. Yet, you waited to begin your two-year apprenticeship until you were, by my count, thirty-four? And with a career already under your belt, one that being known as a third circle caster would be a black mark against you.”

The abrupt conversational shift left her blank for a second, but she recovered quickly. “My career at the time didn’t require more than a passable working knowledge of my magical abilities. I didn’t feel it was necessary. And I knew that I wouldn’t stay third circle for long.” She tried to ignore the bite of defensiveness in her tone. Her nails dug into her palms behind her back, hands clenching. They’d leave crescent shaped marks she’d rub at later. This was a sore spot, one that her mother liked to pick at.

Gideon was a blank slate. She couldn’t profile him. “Are you often satisfied by being merely ‘passable’ in your abilities, Agent Ryder?”

Hoo boy. Celine suddenly realized that she had unwittingly stumbled into a verbal chess match with Jason Gideon without even realizing he’d made the first move. She wasn’t overly worried. Celine had always been very good at chess. “That would imply that my magical abilities are the entirety of my skillset,” she said, settling her shoulders and staring him down stubbornly. Letting him know from the get-go that Celine Ryder did not back down from a challenge. “But we both know that’s not true. I’m more than just a runic-mage, with all due respect, sir. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be down in the medical bay; carving agents’ hands up.”

There was a long, tense moment where she wondered if this was the part where he told her to pack her desk and leave, because Hotch might wear the Unit Chief title, but she was under no illusions about who was holding the reins of this particular carriage. And, while the only thing she knew for sure was that Gideon was a proud man, she wasn’t entirely sure yet if he was the kind of proud man who could take being spoken to like that from a subordinate.

Especially a woman.

Then, he smiled, and suddenly it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to profile him. She wasn’t fooled by that. “Good answer. After all, if we were all merely the sum of our magical abilities, Agent Hotchner would very likely still be practising law.”

Hotch had been a lawyer?

She could see that.

Gideon continued, quieter now. “And Dr. Reid… well, now. If he was nothing but the product of his lineage, then that would be a lot of talent sorely wasted.”

She stared at him, now completely lost. What was that supposed to mean? Demons reached positions of power all the time. A lot of them were naturally charismatic; it was hardly shocking. Hell, there were three demons seated on the Senate that she knew of. Reid’s heritage shouldn’t have caused any disadvantage to him. She had the faintest inkling he was hinting at something, probing. Searching for some reaction from her to indicate, what? That she knew what Reid was? That she cared what Reid was?

Or, did he still think she couldn’t work well with him?

She swallowed back the nerves that threatened to rise and smiled blankly. Her mother’s polished smile. She had no doubt he’d see straight through it. “We were going to train, sir?”

Whatever he’d seen in her reaction, he seemed satisfied. “Indeed. I’ve seen examples of your defensive rune work; you’re correct in that it is exemplary. How is your offensive casting?” Terrible. Her expression gave that away without her answering. “You may be put into a position where your gun isn’t enough to keep you or your team members safe. We’ll work on that. This room is shielded, you won’t harm me or anything in here.” He held up a chess piece, a queen, twisting it so the light caught the edges. “Obtain this chess piece. I will be doing my best to stop you. Good luck.”

She took a deep breath, settled back onto her heels, and rested her fingers against her palm, ready to tap out the spell-patterns she’d spent agonising nights memorizing during her schooling. She was under no misconceptions that this was going to be easy.

But she loved a challenge.

Not-Elf: Are you awake still? S. R.

To Not-Elf: I’m awake. Contemplating never going into work again after the beat-down I got from Gideon. You didn’t tell me he was *that* good.

Not-Elf: Knock, knock. S. R.

“You know,” she said, as she slid open the window and leaned out, “this could be construed as being very creepy.”

He blinked and adjusted his perch on the railing of the fire escape, his long fingers sliding elegantly along the rust-coated metal. It made her feel sick to see him sitting there so calmly, obvious to the six-story drop underneath if his balance shifted ever so slightly the wrong way. “Well, it’s considered socially acceptable to knock on your door, if perhaps a little rude to do so unannounced. Is the window so different?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Reid, it’s one in the morning. Socially acceptable was five hours ago.”

“Is it?” He looked startled, turning on the spot to glance up at the overcast night sky, scanning the clouds for the moon. She twitched as she pushed back the desire to lunge out and grab him before he could pitch backwards. “I must have lost track of time.”

Doing what? She eyed him curiously. Even in the dim light from her window, he looked better than he had the day before. Refreshed somehow, as though he’d spent the last twelve hours sleeping deeply. The purple shadows were gone, his face relaxed, even as he let go of the railing and pulled a face at the rust-orange streaks across his palm. She wished she looked half as alert.

“Well, you were right,” she announced, drawing his attention back to her. “Gideon doesn’t bite.”

Reid grinned widely, rubbing his hand on his thigh, clearly fighting the desire to laugh and losing. “Of course he’s that good. He’s first circle. There are only three-hundred and seven registered first circle casters in the DC metropolitan area, and he’s the best. Did you get the chess piece?”

She’d suspected he was first circle as soon as he’d smiled blandly at her from across the desk and then rippled the goddamn world around her so that she found herself five feet away from him, and with the queerest sensation that her centre of gravity had just shifted down to her left big toe. Still, Reid could have warned her. “Damn you, what do you think? I mean, what the hell? He didn’t even move. He just stood there rambling about birds and I still couldn’t get near him.”

Reid didn’t even bother holding back his laugh this time, and she glared at him with all the disapproval she could muster. “Oh yes, so funny, Reid. Keep laughing. Why don’t you tell me how to get hold of it then?”

He stopped laughing and widened his eyes. “Err… I um. I haven’t…”

They stared at each other for a moment before it was her turn to smirk. “You haven’t gotten it off him yet either, have you?” she asked slowly.

His sheepish expression was all the answer she needed. She laughed and handed him a cloth to wipe his hands on, her fingers brushing his as he took it.

Some cases started with a text. Some started with them walking into the conference room and JJ turning on the plasma. Celine knew that, behind the scenes, almost all of them started with a stack of files on JJ’s desk and her desperately hoping that she was making the right choices.

Nathan Harris started with Reid and ended with him too. It was appropriate, in a way, as well as frightening on a level that left Celine cold if she thought about it too much.

She’d only been working with the BAU for a month and, while intellectually she was absolutely aware that they all had weaknesses, none of them wore them openly. They were easy to overlook. Somehow, she’d managed to forget Reid’s biggest.

Gideon was walking past her desk towards the kitchenette, and she was absently trying to decide which of her stacks of paperwork she could slip into Reid’s intake folder without him noticing, when there was a flurry of frantic movement behind them.

Gideon saw him first and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She turned. Reid was in the doorway, eyes wide and almost quivering with something that could have been excitement but was more than likely fear. A cold lump settled in the pit of her belly and began to make itself at home, sensing that whatever was going to happen next was nothing good.

Reid looked sick. “I think DC might have a necromancer, and I just let our only lead to him slip away.”

Morgan stood close to her while they looked down on the body of the woman Reid had said they’d find. She hated it when Reid was right.

He was right a lot.

“Lots of hesitation marks,” Celine said to him quietly, eyeing the word ‘help me’ carved jaggedly into the victim’s abdomen. The alley stunk of piss and vomit and, underneath it all, the coppery tang of blood. She didn’t envy Morgan his enhanced sense of smell. “He doesn’t want to be killing.”

Morgan eyes were locked on Reid; he was corralled near Hotch and moving about in what Celine could only describe as ‘pacing on the spot’. It was the closest to panicked she’d ever seen him.

“If Reid is right, he doesn’t have a choice,” Morgan replied. She could see his nostrils flaring, scenting the air. The idea of voluntarily inhaling the medley of scents around them made her nose twitch in protest and her stomach groan. “If this kid is thrall-bound, someone is pulling his strings and making him kill.”

Hotch turned his head and said something to Reid, who stilled like he’d been scolded. One of the local police made a noise of barely restrained disgust. “This is what happens when you let demons off-leash,” he commented indifferently. “If you’re not gonna use them, someone else will. And then you get dead hookers and weeks of overtime.”

She froze. There was a low growl to her left; Morgan expressing his displeasure. If he didn’t smack the guy, Celine would. The anger lasted until she glanced over at Reid again, almost unconsciously, and found him staring at the police officer with an expression as though he’d just been slugged in the gut and was struggling to catch his breath.

Then she wasn’t just angry anymore; she was worried as well.

She found Reid and Garcia huddled in front of Garcia’s bank of computers, their faces glowing blue as they both gazed intently at the yearbook photos covering the screen.

“Someone has to know this kid is missing,” Reid insisted. “Someone knows he’s gone.”

Garcia turned her head and eyed Celine from over Reid’s shoulder, biting at her lip. Even without her focus on the screens, they continued inputting commands independently, shuffling photos across the displays. “Oh, hon… you know the statistics better than I do. They probably know he’s missing, they’re just…”

“Sixty-three percent of demons bound against their will are never reported missing,” Reid stated, his voice monotonous. “Overall, seventy-eight percent are never freed. Another thirteen percent die when the necromancer is killed. Of the nine percent that are saved, more than half commit suicide within a year of being released.” He swivelled around and looked at Celine plaintively. “Did you know there’s been three separate Bills drafted in the last two decades presenting the case that demons are too dangerous to be left free-bound?”

“I know,” Celine responded quietly, not looking away from his fixed regard. “And it’s been shot down every time. Everyone has a basic right to freedom, Casper. Everyone.” Even you, she thought. Especially you.

“Demons believe that if they report their family and friends missing that people will use it as an excuse to take away our rights.” Reid was fidgeting on the spot as he spoke, tapping intently at Garcia’s desk in an uneven beat with his fingers. Celine wanted to lay her hand over his, pin it down, hold him close. “So, this kid has a family out there somewhere, wondering if he’s ever coming home, and they’re too scared to ask for help. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?” She knew that that wasn’t the question he actually wanted to ask. He already knew the answer to that one.

“We’re going to find him,” she said firmly, and Garcia nodded along. “We’ll bring him home.” And we’ll burn the bastard who did this to him.

“Maybe.” Reid closed his eyes. The beat increased to a manic rate. “But he’s never going to be the same again, is he?”

“Are you aware of your son’s whereabouts?”

Celine leaned against the wall next to the window looking in on Sarah Harris’ questioning. The woman’s face was drawn, her skin blotchy from what Celine assumed had been days of crying. It almost drew attention away from the slender wings furled tightly against her back, tucked around her shoulders as though to shield her from Morgan’s regard. Almost. Celine’s gaze kept slipping to those delicate appendages before darting back to Reid wonderingly. He stood the same as he always did, slightly stooped to hide his height, with no sign of weight on his back. Did he have wings like that? If he did, he kept them well glamoured. He was adept at hiding them.

Why would he hide them?

“He’s at a friend’s,” Sarah repeated, the only thing she’d said about her son since they’d brought her in. She spoke from behind her hands, continually covering her mouth. “He has lots of friends. He spends lots of time with them while I’m… I’m working…” She burst into tears again, and Celine saw Reid flinch.

“Dr. Harris,” Reid said softly, stepping forward with his hands splayed open at his side. Celine knew that body language. Trust me. I’m your friend. “We’re only here to help. Anything you know, anyone Nathan has been speaking to or maybe he mentioned has been hanging around; it will all help us find the person responsible for taking him.”

The tears were still wet on her thin cheeks when Sarah stopped crying and narrowed her gaze at Reid. She didn’t say anything, just kept staring, her hands dropping away from her face and lying limp like dead things in front of her. Reid didn’t look away.

“I was a familiar once,” she said finally, turning back to Morgan. “You know, they say that every demon should take a familial-bond with a mage. They say, ‘oh, you need a mage to keep you safe.’ They talk about how fulfilling it is and how caring mages are. Apparently, no one told my mage that. He used to get drunk and hurt me, in every way you could imagine. If I protested, he told me he’d sell both Nathan and I, just a baby then, into thraldom. That with him I might be beaten and assaulted, but I’d still have my own mind. Have you ever been a familiar, Dr. Reid?”

Reid’s answer was almost inaudible. “No.”

“Have you ever been bound?”

“No.”

“Then you’re clearly under the mistaken assumption that you are in control of your own destiny.” She slumped in the chair, the life vanishing from her bearing in an instant and leaving her a desolate shell. “I’m a doctor, agents. I’m a free-bound demon who works as a doctor, one of the highest status jobs our society has. And yet no one lifted a finger to save me then. Why should I believe you’ll do otherwise for my son now?”

Celine saw Morgan shift, opening his mouth ready to move the weight of the questioning off of Reid’s shoulders, but Reid inched forward again. “When did you dissolve your familial bond?”

Dr. Harris’s gaze didn’t lift from the desk. “I didn’t. The mage died. When Nathan was nine.”

“Natural causes?”

Celine heard Hotch make a soft noise behind her right as Sarah Harris looked away, her face flushing guiltily and wings drawing even tighter around her. “He just died.”

“It’s not easy to thrall-bind a demon.” Reid was pacing again, his expression fierce and hair chaotic from where he’d been running his fingers through it. “A creature’s natural state is to seek freedom. In some countries, this is recognised to such a point that even attempting to escape from incarceration isn’t in itself a crime; instead, it’s seen as a natural response to captivity. For a necromancer to overcome that, they’re fighting against every part of a demon’s instincts and desires and overcoming them with their own.”

“So, it has to be someone powerful?” Celine asked, trying to think back to the few courses she had taken on demons. Demonology wasn’t her major, none had covered binding. Familial bonds, sure, but they were simple and every day and nothing like what Sarah Harris had been subjected to. Just thinking of that breach of trust made Celine feel sick and long to hold Sergio close. She curled her hand over her right wrist, over one of the few visible tattooed runes she wore openly; the one that symbolised the oath she’d taken to her familiar almost two decades ago. The simplest of designs. His name and hers tied invisibly to the carefully traced runes that would call him if she needed him. And, visibly, a string of Latin under the rune. ‘Nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur’. A reminder of what a familial bond was to a mage: ‘No one learns except by friendship.’

“Not always.” They turned to look at Gideon. “You can be weak in magical ability, but powerful enough mentally to overcome a demon, especially a young one.”

“It’d be even easier if it was someone in a position of power over Nathan—someone he was naturally inclined to trust. Letting people close is, in itself, a vulnerability.” Reid deliberately looked away from her as he said this, and the lump in her stomach grew.

Morgan spoke up from where he was nose deep in a file about Nathan and his mother that Garcia had put together. “Hey, he’s only been missing for, what? A week or so? He was at school last Monday, then from Tuesday onward he’s gone. Don’t these things take time to kick in? I mean, it’s a hefty spell. Say the guy who snatched him is a pro—binding still takes hours. If he’s not good at it, it could take days. Add in the time it takes for the necromancer to recover, more days, and Nathan is still going to be fighting that bond with everything he’s got.”

“Yet we have bodies appearing only four days after Nathan disappeared. Which hardly seems enough time for the spell to have even set, let alone for Nathan’s will to have been eroded enough that he can be forced into murder. Reid?” Hotch frowned as he spoke, his brow creasing.

Reid looked uncomfortable as all gazes turned to him. “Well… the timeline still fits… if, ah…”

“If Nathan isn’t morally opposed to murder,” Gideon finished. “If he’s killed before. He might not be okay with killing outside of the man who made him and his mother’s life a nightmare, but his fundamental aversion to killing is already compromised.”

Silence. Reid looked at his shoes and nodded, oddly still and hunched into himself. Celine fought the overwhelming desire to hug him, he just looked so… woeful.

“Okay,” Hotch said tiredly. “Profile on Nathan Harris. Morgan, JJ, you speak to his classmates. Reid, with me. We’re going to speak to his mother again. Ryder, you keep narrowing down mages strong enough to be illicitly practicing necromancy within DC with Garcia.”

Gideon stood. “And I’ll be finding out more about our first victim,” he said coolly, staring directly at Reid. “We find him, you hear me, everyone? No matter what he’s done under this guy’s influence, we have no proof of him committing a crime under his own behest. He’s an innocent until proven otherwise, and we protect the innocent.”

Celine was halfway out the door so she couldn’t hear Gideon’s reply, but she heard Reid’s question. It was probably the most borderline insubordinate tone she’d ever heard from him, and she’d have been delighted under any other circumstances to see this show of backbone.

“And if he’s not innocent? Who protects him then, Gideon?”

They found Ronald Weems first, part of the ‘Decency Watch’ advocating for ‘Cleaning up the Streets’. Apparently, scattering it with the remains of the women he forced Nathan to brutalize was ‘cleaning’. He’d spoken at Nathan’s school. Had struck up a friendship with him, invited him to meetings.

Had bound him and used him as a tool to kill.

And he swore that he’d done nothing wrong, that he’d never touched any of the dead women. When they mentioned Nathan, he lawyered up. Even Hotch seemed to be barely suppressing anger. Celine noted that when they made the arrest, Hotch left Reid at the Bureau. She wondered if that was for Weems’ sake, or for Reid’s. She was willing to bet that Reid wouldn’t have taken being benched well.

Nathan had slipped his binds just long enough to find Reid on the subway, to tip him off to what was happening. If he hadn’t, Celine wondered what his life would be like. If they would have saved him.

If they would have even known he needed saving.

Using Weems, they found Nathan. As soon as Celine saw the gold spellwork twisted up Nathan’s thin arms, tight enough to bruise and sharp enough to slice into his skin and leave bloody furrows, she decided that if it was the last thing she did, this crime would not be forgotten.

Nathan fought them because he had to, he had no choice, and he cried while he did so. She wasn’t entirely sure what Gideon did, but she was glad he did it quickly because the blank look in Nathan’s eyes as he threw a blistering curse at his saviours would haunt her for months to come. Nathan crumpled even while Morgan yelled in pain.

They brought him in alive. Not free, not yet, but he would be.

“I’ll be with him and Weems most of the night undoing the binding,” Gideon told them as they gathered in the conference room, the smell of sweat and the bitter aftertaste of curses coating their throats and tongues. Celine wanted a shower, her bed, her cat. She wanted to go home and sleep and recover from this day, because she was exhausted to her bones and even her magic was tired. “You may as well all go home and rest. I’ve organised tomorrow off, so we have a long weekend—recuperate. I’ll see you all on Monday.”

Another day over. Celine watched her team as they filed slowly out of the room: Gideon to a sleepless night fighting magic that was as opposed to his own as it was possible for it to be, Hotch already thinking of his family. Reid, who practically shot out of the room as though the hounds of hell were on his heels with Garcia determinedly following him. JJ, who smiled at her exhaustedly, finally looking shaken by the events of the case. Morgan with a thick salve over his cheek where the curse-work had skimmed him. So close to tragedy.

Nathan and his mother in the holding cells, their lives forever altered.

It didn’t feel like they’d won this one.

She stopped to get her paperwork in order before the weekend, and that was where Hotch found her, slumped at her desk and too weary to face walking to the elevator, to her car, driving, unlocking her home.

“Are you okay?” Hotch stood over her desk, looking down at her. He almost looked concerned, or as close to it as she thought his face could manage. “You’ve been quiet. Reserved.”

She straightened quickly and swallowed around the stomach lump that had decided to go on holiday to her throat. “Yes. It’s just… I’ve never seen a thrall-bound demon before. It was…”

“Confronting. There’s a good reason necromancy is illegal. This is one of them. Ronald Weems will be facing the death penalty for this, Ryder. This is not a common occurrence.”

His reassurances only cemented the knowledge that he knew exactly what she was obsessing over. “Reid…”

“Is well aware of his vulnerabilities both in the field and out of it. The Bureau has taken steps to ensure the safety of all of its agents and employees, human, demon or otherwise. What you saw out there today, what Weems did to Nathan—that is not and will never be Reid’s future.” Celine wasn’t the kind of person to take stock in empty promises and false reassurances, and, yet, somehow, when Hotch said it, there was no doubt in her mind it was true.

The lump shrunk, just that little bit, and she could breathe again.

Saturday afternoon and she hadn’t heard from Reid since they’d left work two days before. It wasn’t hugely unusual, sometimes he went days without contact outside of work, but she was worried. And Sergio had finally gotten sick of her fussing over him and locked himself in his room, refusing to come out and be ‘mothered’ anymore. She was getting twitchy.

To Einstein: Hey. How are you?

Silence. Complete radio-silence and, at the end of that radio-silence, she knew there was an i***t genius drowning himself in blame for something that was entirely not his fault. She reminded herself that the i***t genius was an adult and that she needed to let him fight his own battles, and then proceeded to spend the day with one eye on her cell, twitching towards it every time she imagined it was buzzing. She felt like a damn teenager. She was almost glad Sergio couldn’t see her.

She was really glad Morgan couldn’t.

When her cell finally indicated a message, she almost flung herself at it. Two messages, actually. Neither were Reid.

Neither were good.

Garcia: Em are you with Reid? We were hanging out and he was fine and everything was good but then something happened and now hes gone and hes not with Gideon and ohmygod Em plz say hes with you.

Bossman: Ryder, Gideon just called. Nathan Harris killed himself tonight. Reid was first on scene, Nathan contacted him. Reid has vanished. If you see him, can you please alert one of us? Thank you.

Well, s**t. She should have known this week wasn’t done f*****g with them just yet. And she didn’t even have the slightest clue where to start looking for him. She wasn’t even sure she knew where he lived, or where he went when he wasn’t at work, or if he had friends, or who he’d go to if he was hurting, if he’d go to anyone.

There was a lot she didn’t know about him.

To Einstein: I know what happened. You don’t need to deal with this on your own. I’m here for you. If you need help, you can come to me.

Einstein: I’m okay. Really, I am. S. R.

That asshole. So, he did have his cell on him. He was just ignoring them. She tried to convey her irritation by glaring at her cell as though channelling it through to him. Her next text was reckless, a challenge.

To Einstein: Prove it. Come over.

Einstein: Is that an invitation? S. R.

To Einstein: To my fire escape. No further. You can have the warm blanket.

She took a moment to wonder what the hell her life had become when she was organizing to spend the night with her ass in the kitchen sink, when the cell buzzed again. She read the message and her heart tried to leap out of her mouth in a mixed reaction of shock and… something keener.

Einstein: Only if you’ll share it with me. S. R.

She didn’t let herself think it through, typing the answer out in seconds, and only letting her thumb hover over the send button for a moment before tapping down with finality.

To Einstein: Okay.

When he replied with nothing but the words ‘smiley face S. R.’, she decided that she’d completely lost her mind.

That night, when she hesitantly wrapped the blanket around them both and they sat on the escape watching black and white Doctor Who episodes through her kitchen window with their sides pressed against each other, she decided that she probably didn’t care if she was mad for wanting this. He was a long line of heat from her thigh to her hip and up to her shoulder, and it was delicious and endlessly distracting.

When the disk ended and, instead of getting up to change it, she slipped onto his lap and curled around him like she belonged there, she knew that this was what she’d wanted all along. Their first kiss wasn’t anything special, it didn’t knock her socks off, and she wasn’t going to swing off the fire escape and sing a ditty about it, but it was gentle and awkward and everything he was. Their second was better.

She lost count after that.

She shifted slightly so her weight settled evenly across him and he wrapped the blanket around her shoulders more securely, pulling her close, finding her lips again even as he cupped a hand around the back of her head and threaded it through her hair. His free hand held hers, fingers tangled together, and she thought her heart was going to stop from the slow burn of this tension.

They didn’t have s*x. Celine amused herself by imagining his reaction if she’d suggested that on the fire escape, even if she had no intention of actually treating her neighbours to that particular show, as well as being somewhat hypocritical to sleep with him and give him that trust over her body when she wouldn’t even let him in her home. But, she did fall asleep in his lap with the Who theme humming in the background and her head on his shoulder, inhaling the scent of his shampoo, surrounded by the rhythm of traffic below and with his arms around her.

In the morning, she was sore and aching, and he was still there. Probably twice as sore as her and with a dead leg to boot. She woke and the sun was hot on their shoulders, the blanket had slipped down, and he was asleep still with his neck tilted back and his mouth slightly open. She pressed her lips to his and tasted the smile he’d left on the corners of it.

She thought maybe that this was the beginning of something good.