Surprise! Miss me? I'm back, sorta, with a gift for my amazing, beautiful best friend Halo! Not only does she have me writing BTR fic again, but Psych, too! I haven't written Psych fic since... well, since the first story in this little series lol. That was for her birthday as well! Thank ya Halo!

Enjoy!

It was a bright and sunny morning, a perfect start to an ordinary day… and Shawn and Gus were bickering.

"I told you, Shawn, this is the last time I'm pitching in for this bill! We're partners! You're supposed to help every once in a while, you know!"

"I do help," Shawn countered, just a touch of defensiveness in his smirk. "I solve the cases, I get the money, I spend the money-"

Gus' nostrils flared. "We are partners, Shawn! You need me to solve your cases and you know it. Who else would back you up, drive you places, and save your sorry ass once a week?"

"Okay, last time didn't even count," Shawn protested. "I did not need CPR. I slipped into the kiddie pool, Gus-it was like two feet of water."

"It's instinct!" Gus snapped.

A look of pure rebellion curled in Shawn's eyes, and he opened his mouth…

And then the doorbell rang.

Gus looked up at the ceiling, like he would find a mariachi band pounding off key to La Cucaracha. Grinding his teeth, he said, "We have a doorbell?"

Shawn shrugged. "I spend the money."

His friend stalked outside to answer the door, while Shawn stayed at his desk watching him. They'd been going at it for almost a week now. Gus was upset and trying to hide it, and Shawn knew that the longer he did that, the worse the explosion was going to be. They had been friends since they were five years old-Shawn knew all his tells. Gus was upset. It wasn't the typical "Shawn Spencer has ruined me and I have got to get new friends" upset that he had every week or so. It was something deeper. He let it leak into every little thing he fussed over, and since Shawn couldn't get him to open up about it, he decided it needed a little coercing. A little provocation. If there was one thing Shawn was good at-and there were a great many things-it was being provocative.

"Ack-Shawn!"

Well that didn't sound good. Shawn leapt from his chair, charging forward to help his best friend.

The next second was filled with noise and pain as someone small and full of flailing limbs and screaming all but bowled him over. Shawn blinked blearily at the ceiling, wondering if Gus had taken in some homicidal chickens again, and then a bronze, ruddy face popped into his vision.

"Oh whoops," he exclaimed, fixing the hockey helmet on his head. "Sorry, Shawn! I tripped."

"Is this payback?" Shawn mumbled. Carlos Garcia cocked his head to the side, before shrugging and giving him a hand up.

"Carlos, wait up!" Kendall Knight stuck his head through the doorway. Seeing the mess his friend had made in his urgency to find the psychic, he shook his head and leaned with his back against the pane to let the other two members of their band in.

Logan Mitchell looked slightly out of breath as he stumbled inside, clutching at his chest like it was on fire. "We have got to put a leash on him!" he gasped out.

Kendall crossed his arms and looked at Gus as the last of their number, James Diamond, trudged in looking decidedly unhappy about having to run in clothes that weren't meant to be run in. "Hey. Nice to see you guys again. You okay?"

Gus, like Shawn, had been knocked over by the whirlwind that is Carlos Garcia. The young Latino was bouncing around, full of nervous energy and excitement. He was firing off questions and explanations too fast for even Shawn to comprehend, and the psychic just blinked at him until Logan came over to pinch Carlos hard on the arm.

"Ow!" he complained. "Logan, that hurt!"

"You need to calm down or you'll hyperventilate," Logan scolded. Carlos imitated the words as soon as his back was turned, and Shawn finally recovered.

"Big Time Rush! Long time no see, buddy! How you guys been?"

"Peachy," said Kendall, at the same time Logan said "Pretty good" and James said "Have you seen the news lately?" and Carlos said "Oh my God you will never believe what happened Shawn it was so crazy and I knew as soon as I saw it that it was haunted and I did some research like a real detective and-"

Logan reached over and clapped a hand over Carlos' mouth. This, unsurprisingly, did not stop the Latino from talking, but it did slow his rambling down a bit.

Shawn looked at Gus, and then at the boys.

Kendall said, "Carlos thinks the hotel we're staying at is haunted."

Logan said, "He found out the original owner of the hotel died like a hundred years ago in a suspicious fire that almost burned down the whole building."

James said, "And now his ghost is haunting the halls, looking for the guy who murdered him and where he'd hidden his treasure!"

"Treasure?" Shawn said, a glint in his eye.

"Ghost?" Gus paled immediately, an impressive feat considering he was black.

Carlos nodded vigorously, and Logan let him go. He took a deep breath. "And we saw him!"

"Oh God," Gus muttered.

Shawn held his hands up in an X. "Okay, time out. I have rules, you guys. You can't just waltz in here and demand I take a case…"

The boys' faces fell, and Shawn grinned, opening his fridge. "Without pizza!"

Only Kendall looked unaffected by the psychic's joke as they gathered the leftover pizza and plopped themselves on a couch that was not designed for four hockey-playing pop stars. Shawn caught Gus as he turned and said quietly, "I can take care of this one."

Gus glared at him. "Partners," he said.

Well, that was both exactly and not at all what Shawn expected. Gus usually protested loudly and mercilessly about being dragged onto cases. But if Shawn was going to fix whatever it was with Gus that was broken, he was going to have to push him out of his comfort zone. So he flashed his friend a knowing smirk and went to sit across from the boys.

"Okay!" Shawn rubbed his hands together and leaned forward. "What've we got?"

Kendall spoke this time, having been elected to tell the complete story. "We're doing a small West Coast tour to broaden our fan base, because sometimes we leave some people out on our bigger ones. We're supposed to start here in Santa Barbara tomorrow night." He grimaced. "Griffin didn't really like the idea of us doing this by ourselves, so we're the ones doing the promoting and renting venues and stuff. He gave us a pretty small budget, which is why we're staying at this hotel."

"The Grand Junction Hotel," Logan supplied, taking up the story. "It isn't that bad. It's really big, but nobody ever stays there. We got the penthouse suite really cheap. Apparently nobody but the maid's been up there for months."

Carlos bounced on the couch, eyes alight with the promise of adventure. "Because it's haunted!"

Shawn looked to Kendall and Logan, the level-headed ones in the group. Logan sighed and Kendall pursed his lips. Neither of them protested the statement.

Oh boy. Shawn turned his attention back to Carlos. "You said you saw him?"

"Well, sorta." Carlos fiddled with the straps on his helmet. "It was fine when we got there, but then we went to explore the hotel and when we came back, everything in the room was broken! Gustavo thought we did it, but we didn't." The last bit was said with a pout.

Kendall took another turn. "The lamps were knocked over, the mirrors were broken, the faucets were left running… it was a mess."

Shawn looked at Gus and saw that his friend had reacted the same way. This wasn't just a dreamy kid seeing things. Either there really was a ghost haunting the hotel… or the boys were in trouble.

"Weeeell," Shawn said, stretching out the word with a grin. "That sure sounds like the perfect case for a psychic like me."

Carlos nodded again. Shawn was starting to think the kid he'd met a year ago had been mysteriously replaced with a bobblehead. "That's why I thought you'd be perfect," he declared. "Plus, you live here! We got some free time today 'cause Gustavo kicked us out while he's trying to find us a new room and help pay for damages. He told us this was strike two or we'd never get suites again."

"What happened the first time?" Gus asked.

Logan grimaced and rubbed his leg. "Please don't ask."

"I checked out the hotel's history and everything," Carlos steamrolled on, not to be outdone. "It used to be really popular, 'cause it was one of the tallest buildings in the area. Lots of people came to stay 'cause it's a port city, and then the gold rush happened and it was turned into a luxury hotel. It burned down in 1892, but nobody knows why. They rebuilt it, and then his son took it over, and now his son and daughter run the hotel, but nobody goes there anymore." He pitched his voice lower. "Accidents keep happening."

"They should've closed it down years ago," Logan muttered.

James started bouncing, looking a lot like Carlos as his dark eyes lit up. "The hotel was mostly where a lot of people came to stay during the gold rush back in the 1850s, and there were tons of fights and murders that took place. Lots of gold went missing. It was blamed on a small time bandit named Ricardo Valencia, who had showed up super rich with gold in his pockets, but Carlos and I think the guy who owned the hotel stole it and hid it."

"You have no proof," Logan pointed out. He turned to Shawn. "They have no proof! And even if that is what happened, what makes you think it's still at the hotel?"

Kendall rubbed his eyes as his friends started arguing again. Shawn took sympathy on him. "And what do you think, Kenny?"

"Wow," the blonde exclaimed, "that is so not my name. And I don't know what to think. We haven't even told you the rest of the story. There's one more thing."

Carlos reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded it, shoved it into Logan's face first and sticking a tongue out at him in the process, and then handed it to Shawn and Gus.

Shawn squinted. "Huh. Is that-"

"A map," Carlos said, eyes glittering. "It's a treasure map."