A/N: Sorry about the wait, the beginning of this chapter gave me some trouble. Thank you so much to everyone that reviewed. I felt so encouraged by your kind words! Again, thank you to my amazingly perf beta TheAmethystRiddle (go read his stuff it's wonderful!) for proofreading this into something presentable.

Blood Rites

Chapter Two: In Which Lisbon Has Coffee With a Dragon

She looked up when he cleared his throat. He looked speculatively at Agent Lisbon for a moment, tapping his lips with one finger before gesturing at her with it. "So... how are you with dragons?"

Lisbon barely had a chance to wonder if he'd forgotten his medication that morning before he waved his hand. "Sorry, stupid question," he said, snagging his tea mug off the counter; he took a hasty sip. "I have a uh, friend that just called and she would like us to stop by her place to give us some information. At least I'm assuming it's information. When she goes all cryptic and bossy she either has news she doesn't like or she's fighting with her husband again."

She stared at him. "A friend. I'm assuming from your magic community?" she said, twiddling her fingers at him.

"Mm, yes." He looked amused. "Although think less of community and more of a daycare with sporadically attentive nannies."

"Did it occur to you that someone that just happens to have information on a murder that occurred," she glanced at her watch, "maybe three hours ago, and calls you about it instead of, I don't know, the police just might have something to do with it?"

Jane chuckled a little. "That's not possible."

"Please, tell me why." She set her cup down and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Because if Madeleine Hightower had had anything to do with this murder, the statistical chance that you would have found a body rounds to zero. There would be no evidence in this house. There might not even be a house." The wizard shrugged and shoved a hand in his pants pocket. "And anyways, some nobody yoga teacher with barely enough power to bless her flower garden? Meh, Madeleine probably didn't even know she existed."

"How did you know the victim taught yoga?" Lisbon asked quickly.

Jane waved a hand back at the living room. "Class picture on the table next to that awful couch; employee of the month certificate for a Westside Gym on the bookshelf. The callouses on the victim's feet."

Lisbon nodded, impressed. A neighbor that took her classes had volunteered the information to the SVU,

"So back to this Hightower person, she just wants us to... drop by?"

"Yes," Jane said, setting his cup down in the sink with a light clink. "Preferably we leave now. Normally I'm all for tweaking her tail, but there's nothing left here to look at and I'm done with my tea."

Lisbon's expression turned into one of incredulous amusement. "You're bored, so we should just go?"

"Well, yes, I mean-" Jane's answer was cut off by the loud ringing of Lisbon's cell phone. "Ah, that will be your boss," he said, suddenly re-interested in the mail heaped on the counter.

She pulled her phone out and looked at the caller ID. Minelli. Shooting Jane a suspicious look, she answered it quickly. "Morning, Boss."

"Agent Lisbon, morning," Virgil Minelli said, sounding exasperated. "Look, I just got a call from a Madeleine Hightower. She says that you've hired one of her people as a consultant?"

Lisbon was taken aback. "It's a weird case, I thought some insight would be helpful. The budget's good for it. Besides," she added defensively, "I didn't know I was hiring her people."

The consultant in question looked up indignantly. "I am not!" he interjected. She quickly shushed him with one finger.

"It's alright, that's not the problem," Minelli said. "The problem is that Ms. Hightower is very connected and very interested in this case. She requested that you stop by with this Mr. Jane at your earliest convenience."

"Earliest convenience, riiight," she said, glaring at Jane, who leaned against the counter and smiled politely at her. Suddenly Bosco's contact information for him was starting to make sense. "Is there something I need to know about this case, sir?"

"I expect that's what she'll tell you. Right now I don't know anything more than you do, but I'll expect a full report when you get back." Minelli sighed. "Look she's kind of an old family friend, and she's got her fingers in a lot of pies, important pies. Going to see her for free information isn't going to kill you, and you might just get something out of it."

"Yes, sir," she said resignedly, watching in irritation as Jane's smile widened. Minelli hung up, apparently satisfied with her cooperation, and she shoved her phone back in her pocket.

"You knew she was going to call Minelli," she said, shaking her head at Jane.

"Eeeh." The wizard shrugged dismissively. "Saves time convincing you to come with a strange man you've just met to an unknown location for cryptic reasons at the say-so of an unknown woman. Let's be honest, I would never have gotten you out of this house."

Lisbon rolled her eyes and headed to the front door. "Bosco warned me I'd have the urge to shoot you. Come on. Might as well get this over with."

He followed her out of the house, still grinning. Despite his irritation with Madeleine's imperious manner, the fact that she had started moving people about like chess pieces meant that this was big. Normally she was much more subtle. Combining her reaction with the brutality of both the magic and violence displayed in this murder was giving him some interesting theories to work with. Added in the new acquaintance of Agent Lisbon? Losing sleep over today was looking more worth it by the second.

Lisbon ducked under the crime scene tape and walked up to a woman sipping coffee and leaning against the coroner's van. "Hey Pat, we're done in there. Body's all yours," she said.

"Did he do anything weird with it?" The woman looked Jane up and down suspiciously as he hovered on the edge of the conversation.

He waved cheekily at her before looking around the neighborhood in interest. The small crowd had dissipated sometime while they'd been inside. Only one police car was left, its officer idly keeping an eye on a lone forensic tech looking through the front bushes.

"Not that I saw," Lisbon said to Pat. "We moved the bed a little, but the body wasn't disturbed. They guys are finishing up inside. Probably be another twenty minutes. I need to leave though, can you tell them for me?"

"Sure," Pat finished her coffee and tossed the paper cup through the open door of the van. "He's not staying here, is he?" She chucked her chin in Jane's direction.

"No, he's coming with me on an interview."

Jane glanced over at the ladies. "Technically you're coming with me. And I should drive. You don't even know where we're going," he called.

Pat turned from pulling the gurney out of back of the van to raise her eyebrow at Lisbon and the agent sighed. She had been hoping to not have to explain the situation. "Agent Minelli got a call from a... mutual friend of theirs who might have information on the case. Boss wants us to speak with her."

To cover her self consciousness, Lisbon scanned the street around her and pulled her keys out of her pocket. "Looks like Rigsby came here with Cho. Can you give him these and tell him to drive the SUV back to the station for me? This might take a while."

Pat took the keys, holding back a smile. "Sure. I'll send the autopsy results up to your office probably by late tonight or tomorrow morning. That triple is going to push me way back."

Lisbon nodded. "Thanks."

Turning, she found her consultant watching her. "Alright," she said to him. "Let's go." Might as well get this over with so she could get back to the normal police work she was comfortable with, and get away from this man's intense gaze. It felt disconcertingly like he could see right through her with those blue-green eyes. That was the last thing she needed

Whatever he saw made a corner of his mouth turn up and he nodded. "This way." He led her down the street to a blue Citroen. As he pulled out his keys she stopped and stared.

"Wait? This is what you drive?" she said, horrified.

Jane looked from her face to the car and back again. "What's wrong with it? It's a classic!" He opened the doors for them and slid in.

"Classic deathtrap, maybe," Lisbon muttered as she pulled the door handle and got in gingerly, as if she was afraid the car would fall apart underneath her.

"There is nothing wrong with my car, I'll have you know. It's perfectly safe," Jane said, sounding offended as he fastened his seat belt and started the car.

Lisbon was unconvinced. "I've seen pop cans with better safety regulations." She clicked her seat belt into place with an air of trepidation. "Does this thing even have airbags?"

Jane put the car into gear and shook his head in playful disgust. "Just for that, you can sit on your hundred-and-one questions about Madeleine until we get there, Agent Lisbon."

True to his word, Jane had refused to answer a single question about their destination, either by evasively dodging the question, or smiling to himself and staying silent. It was infuriating to Lisbon, and made worse by the fact that the man had the worst driving skills she'd ever seen. She was fairly certain that he had nearly caused an accident twice on purpose to stop her from asking questions while her heart recovered. Finally she gave up and lapsed into silence, hoping that in exchange he wouldn't kill them both.

Jane watched her out of the corner of his eye while he drove down the freeway, noting the occasional stamp on the "invisible passenger brake" when he did anything reckless. He couldn't seem to stop himself from poking at her buttons. One minute in her presence and he had her pegged for the control freak type. Probably an older sibling, in charge of kids in a single parent home, judging by that firm sense of authority.

"So, Agent Tereeeza Liiiiisbon," he said, drawing out her name until she glanced at him, annoyed, before staring out the window again. "Lisbon it is then. Who called in a wizard. Odd choice for a Catholic, but you do seem like you could be the 'thinks outside the box' type. Makes sense that you would leave SacPD to pursue the caliber of cases you would see at the CBI."

Now she did turn to face him, frowning. "Are you trying to make me believe you can read my mind? Or did you pick up my file somewhere?"

He chuckled. "No, nothing like that. Mind reading without permission is very frowned upon; even if it was one of my skills I wouldn't be using it for something so easy. No what I do is called cold reading. I just observe what's around me and... infer from there."

"You watch people and you guess," she said, grabbing the safety strap as Jane veered across three lanes.

He didn't quite huff, but it was a near thing. "You make it sound so boring. Besides my 'guesses' are nearly always right." Merging the car onto the off ramp, he took a right and headed into a neighborhood filled with rich, estate houses.

Lisbon felt relieved. Con men masquerading as magicians she could deal with as long as they proved useful. "So that bit about magic and the rest was just smoke, mirrors, and quackery?"

"Not at all," he said, turning the Citroen into a gated concrete driveway and idling next to an intercom box. Jane rolled the window down and pressed the call button. His fingers drummed restlessly against the side of the car as he leaned back to wait. "This might take a minute."

Lisbon nodded and turned to study the gates. They were massive wrought iron fixtures set in a solid brick wall that stretched as far down the left and right property lines as she could see. Apparently the minimalist approach was in mode here as there wasn't much in the way of decoration aside from two large, clay urns flanking the entrance on both sides. Even at this hour with the sun shining bright overhead, fire crackled merrily out of the top of them.

It seemed like a waste to her, but anyone that could afford one of these posh places probably didn't even notice the expense. Peering through the gates, she could just make out the corner of a large building around the bend of the long driveway. The rest of what was visible was shaggy grass and a some very large trees, making it look more like a park than a home from this view.

The buzz of the intercom pulled her attention back. "Yes?" said a man.

"Patrick Jane and Agent Teresa Lisbon to see Hightower. We're expected." He added the last part rather quickly. Lisbon wondered if he thought he wouldn't be let in otherwise. There was certainly a long enough pause before there was a response.

"Present tokens," the man's voice said, decidedly more frosty than it had been before and with that cryptic remark the line went dead. Jane rolled the car forward until the door was even with one of the urns and turned to face his passenger.

"I'm going to need a hair. From your head." He ran his fingers through his curls and held up a loose blond hair. "Like that."

She blinked. "You're kidding."

"'Fraid not."

"What for?"

He was starting to get used to her looking at him like he was mad. "The urn burns it for an identification spell. DNA doesn't change even if you're wearing an illusion, so it's far more accurate than fingerprinting or other nonsense." He leaned out the window and tossed the hair into it. The fire sparked red for a moment, popping like he had used pitch instead.

She still hesitated, so he held out his hand. "They're not going to let us in otherwise," he said.

Lisbon was starting to wonder how many more times this morning she would regret making that phone call. Instead of things being clarified, she felt like they were just getting more complicated, and much more ridiculous. It wasn't even 10 am. She certainly hadn't had enough coffee for this.

With a sigh she buried her fingers in her dark locks. Jane thought it was hardly fair how distracting that was as she slid them through her hair a few times before coming up with one. He plucked it from her fingers and deposited it in the flames. For a brief second they flashed green before resuming their cheerful orangey flicker. Jane barely had a moment to hum in interest before the giant gates creaked open on mechanical hinges.

"You know what doesn't make sense about you, Lisbon?" Jane asked as he slowly drove the car through the gateway and down the driveway.

Her face flickered warily as she studied the large, three-storied brick manor house coming into view. "What?"

"You're not a practitioner, but you have exceptionally tight shields-which I checked when we shook hands; sorry if I zapped you, I just had to be sure." Lisbon tightened her fingers at the memory of that odd flutter that ran up her hand. She wouldn't have called it a zap.

"You scoff at wizards and psychics," he said as he parked the car in front of a grand looking entrance flanked by stone pillars and well manicured topiaries, "but you've never once said 'There's no such thing as magic!' as you should have if you believed it. Why is that?"

"There's no such thing as magic," Lisbon said flatly and got out of the Citroen, hoping to end the conversation.

Jane was smiling as he hopped out and shut his door. "Needs more denial in the middle, but it was a good first attempt." He followed her up the steps and briskly knocked on the door. "Do you want to try again?"

"Butt out, Jane," she snapped, glaring up at him. Perversely, her mind started to wonder what color his eyes were exactly-blue or green, she really couldn't decide, maybe it was both?-before the door opened and she looked away. The quicker this was over with the quicker she could get rid of the man. His poking and prying about subjects not the least bit relevant to the case were the last things she needed.

A proper looking young fellow in a butler's uniform held open one of the double doors and inclined his head to Lisbon as they stepped past him into a large wood-paneled foyer worthy of an old English manor house. "Agent Lisbon, thank you for coming." He shut the door behind them, transferred his gaze to Jane, and gave him a much chillier examination. "Mr. Jane, I had hoped you would be banned from the premise forever."

Jane slid a smile on his face, pleased with the distraction. "James, nice to see you, as always. I see they bought you a new suit, looks very nice," the wizard said to him.

James sniffed dismissively and focused back on Lisbon. "If you both will come with me, Lady Hightower is in the library." He turned on his heel and headed down a hallway.

"What did you do?" Lisbon whispered curiously to Jane as they followed their guide.

He shrugged innocently. "Nothing, he's overreacting," Jane said quietly.

"He set fire to the third floor guest bathroom," came the butler's supercilious voice from ahead of them, leading them down another hallway past some impressionist paintings.

"You what?" Lisbon hissed, eyes wide.

"I didn't.. I didn't set fire to the bathroom; that was just an unfortunate side effect of a very helpful experiment," Jane protested while Lisbon stared at him. "Technically the fire was Mimi's fault for missing the book in the tub and hitting the shower curtain with her breath." He mimed breathing fire with one hand at Lisbon as they came to a halt in front of another set of double doors.

"With her breath?" Lisbon asked, feeling off balance in yet another conversation with him. She was starting to suspect he was doing it on purpose. Surely he wasn't suggesting that this Mimi breathed fire?

James opened the doors as Jane said, like it was a perfectly reasonable answer, "Well, she is only ten; her aim's not so good yet."

"Don't you dare blame my daughter for that mess, Patrick. I had to redo the entire bathroom because of your scheme," said a woman's voice from inside the room, and Lisbon tore her gaze from Jane's face to find the speaker. A sharp looking woman in a power suit was seated behind a massive, wooden desk in an even more massive room. Bookshelves stretched from floor to ceiling along every wall, interspersed with windows on three of them, giving Lisbon the impression that it took up the entire back half of the house. It was a bright and warm room, despite being so huge, and filled with more books than any five Barnes and Nobles put together.

"Helpful experiment," Jane said pointedly, striding into the room. Lisbon hurried to keep up with him and James shut the doors behind them. "And it's not like the flame retardant didn't work; the book was fine, which was really the question anyway. Madeleine, this is Teresa Lisbon of the CBI. Agent Lisbon, Madeleine Hightower." Pleased with his neat segue, Jane sat down in one of the two comfy chairs in front of the desk.

The woman behind the desk stood and offered her hand, which Lisbon firmly shook. "Agent Lisbon, I'm pleased to meet you. Virgil had only good things to say about you," Hightower said with a smile. "I'm sorry to strongarm you over here like this but it was necessary. Please." She gestured to the seat behind Lisbon.

"I'll have to admit this is the first time information gathering has felt like a mob boss interview," the agent said, sitting down while Jane looked back and forth between them with interest.

"Yes, well, when I found out Patrick was involved, I decided to move before things got out of hand. Can I offer you some coffee? Tea?" Madeleine asked, taking her own seat.

"No thank you, we just-"

Jane interrupted Lisbon's attempt to decline quickly. "I'll take some tea, of course, and she could really use some coffee."

"Cream, sugar?" she asked Lisbon, picking up a tablet and tapping on it.

Lisbon gave up and rolled her eyes. "Two sugars, please, and are you sure he can't read minds?"

Madeline finished typing and set the pad down, looking across the desk at Lisbon in wry amusement. "We're sure. That we could forbid him to do, and enforce it. This, however, is him being a know-it-all and a show off; unfortunately no one has ever been able to curb him from that."

He smiled benignly at her, leaning back in his chair. "Speaking of knowing it all, what did the seers have to say this morning?"

A shadow flitted across Hightower's face as Lisbon looked from her to Jane. "Seers? What are you talking about?"

Hightower frowned at him and laced her fingers together before looking back to Lisbon. "This is a very delicate situation, you understand, and in order for you to be properly prepared to deal with it you're going to have to accept a few things that might stretch your imagination." She waited while Lisbon considered her words before nodding for her to continue.

"First of all," Hightower said, "Magic is real, and there are people that can use it."

Jane watched in interest as one of Lisbon's hands slowly fisted in her lap. She had gone still, but it didn't look like she was about to start shouting in denial. Interesting... he thought.

After a moment Hightower went on. "Secondly, not everyone uses it for good things, and that's where the Councils come in. Sacramento is in Red Council jurisdiction and we-along with Blue, Green, and Gold in other places-act as a government for those with magic. We keep an eye on things, and try to stop problems from getting out of hand."

She broke off as James came back in the room with a tray of drinks and passed them out, coffees for Hightower and Lisbon, and tea for Jane. Lisbon took her cup gratefully and immediately took a sip, finding comfort in the bitter familiarity of coffee. Jane's tea was cold, which he thought was rather petty of James and valiantly refrained from glaring at him as the butler left the room.

"Like I said," Jane said, playing with his teacup. "Sporadically attentive nannies. Unless someone starts screaming murder, the less important things slip through the cracks."

Lisbon looked up at his tone of voice. If there was one thing she knew, it was the way someone sounded sad over something they couldn't fix. Apparently they had both had important things slip through the cracks, and her heart went out to him. Her bad memories or not, this case needed to be dealt with. Even if it meant facing the truth, which was something she had been avoiding for a very, very long time, and she hated avoiding things.

"Even magic can't fix everything," Lisbon said quietly. Jane's gaze snapped up to meet hers, and they stared at each other for a few seconds.

Hightower watched in rapt interest as first the corner of Jane's mouth turned up and then Lisbon's. Holding his stone cold tea cup up to his lips, he blew on it. The tiny application of a warming spell through his fingertips and steam was suddenly curling out of the top of the cup. Lisbon watched it unfurl, a charmed smile on her lips.

"It can fix some things," he said, shrugging almost modestly. Madeleine's face caught his eye and seeing her expression hastily took a sip, nearly burning his tongue.

Hightower quickly hid her smile. Watching Patrick Jane be flustered was certainly the best thing she'd seen all month, but teasing him about it was certainly a bad idea. He would just clam up at best or refuse to work with Agent Lisbon at worst. Actually worst was probably more in the range of setting fire to her house again, but she was trying to be optimistic. If anything was bringing Jane out of his shell, she wasn't about to discourage it.

"So, ignoring Patrick's rather unflattering opinion of us, we do try to keep an eye on things. A good number of practitioners do Dawn Rites and if the ones with foresight see something at that time that they think I should know, some of them write it down for me and it shows up immediately in my books." She patted a hand on one of the several leather bound books resting on her desk.

"How?" Lisbon seemed to have recovered from her previously unsure demeanor and was sliding back into cop mode.

"Things that get written down end up in my books. I just have to know where to look to find the information I need. It's part of the magic of my hoard," Hightower said.

"Your... hoard?" Lisbon asked.

"The library is my hoard," the other woman smiled in sly amusement. "The Red Council was originally founded by a red dragon clan. My family branch settled out here about 160 years ago."

"You're a... dragon," Lisbon said slowly. She glanced at Jane to make sure Hightower wasn't pulling her leg.

He grinned. "A dragon with a library hoard. She's a bookwyrm!" It had the intended effect and Lisbon groaned at his pun, sidetracked from her disbelief.

Madeleine glared at him. "It wasn't clever the first time someone thought of it; it certainly wasn't clever when you did."

"Will still thinks it's funny," Jane smiled unrepentantly.

"My son is seven," she said dryly. "He's not exactly a good judge of quality humor yet."

"Really Jane, that was bad," said Lisbon, shaking her head. Madeline smiled at her appreciatively and Jane quickly backpedaled before they joined forces.

"Back to my original question, what did the seers see?" Jane set his cup down on the desk and leaned forward. "You called me maybe forty-five minutes after sunrise. You don't react that fast unless there's a mass sensing. And why even call me?"

Hightower opened a fat, brown leather clad book and pushed it across her desk at him. Lisbon leaned over her chair arm to peer at the book as Jane transferred it to his lap. That macabre face smiled up at her from the pages and again she had to control the urge to shudder. Jane flipped through the book but there were precious few other notes. A scribbled "He is man." Another that read "returned." But on each page there was that smile.

When he reached the final page with writing, Jane closed the book and handed it back to Madeleine. "Twenty-three. Damn." Catching sight of Lisbon's confused look, he explained, "The future is nebulous and constantly changing. Trying to get a proper look at it is annoying, so foreseers often use magically charged points in the day to look, like sunrise, and they often get nothing for their troubles. Twenty-three people having the same view of that murder?" He shook his head and leaned back, tapping his lips in thought.

Lisbon turned back to Hightower. "Why did you call him?"

Hightower sighed. "I called the switchboard to find out who was the officer in charge, and they gave me your name, and the names of your team, including his. Imagine my surprise. Personally I would have called Kristina Frye, she's much less of a hassle than this one."

Jane looked up from his musing to make a face. "Kristina doesn't know how to function without her powers. Anyone that relies on magic as much as she does is a fool. Besides, I'm much better at this than her and you know it."

Ignoring him, Hightower leaned forward on her desk with a slightly triumphant smile. "I'd like it if he could continue to consult on this case until it's resolved. I talked to Virgil and he agreed to hire him in a slightly more permanent capacity, if you were okay with it."

Lisbon glanced at Jane, but he was watching her with a neutral expression. For a moment she was inclined to say no. He was trouble, she could feel it in her bones, the kind of trouble that attracted more trouble. But he was also quick, and challenging, and God help her she liked that. And despite the fact that he seemed to like annoying her, there was also that moment earlier when had she felt like they had made sense to each other.

Apparently her decision was easily read since Jane's face lit up. And that, Lisbon thought, part of her dazed by his smile. There is that too.

"This'll be fun; you won't regret this, Lisbon," he said, feeling strangely buoyant. He should be outraged with Hightower ordering him about like he was one of her lackeys. Not that he wasn't planning on helping Lisbon with her case, but it was the principle of the thing.

"I have a feeling I will..." the agent muttered and Jane looked miffed.

"You will," Hightower said, amused. "Now, is there anything else before I send you back?"

Jane looked back at her. "Ah, runes. The crime scene was all over with them in blood. The transference spell was weird too; it felt... old. So anything you can give us on those."

Hightower hummed and stood up, crossing the room to a bookshelf. While she perused the shelves, Jane leaned over and tapped Lisbon's arm. "Are you alright with this? Really," he said, his eyes searched her face. Lisbon thought he looked oddly vulnerable for a brief moment. Maybe she was seeing things.

"Yeah, sure," she said, surprising herself with a half smile. "We have a mystical, portent-inducing serial killer on the loose, and your boss is a dragon. No problem." Jane grinned at her, pleased.

Hightower came back with three smaller books and they stood up. Ignoring Jane reaching for them, she gave them to Lisbon. "These should help, or at least give you clues on translation. I'm giving these to you to hold onto, so keep them in your office. Patrick's not allowed around the books unsupervised anymore." Quirking her lip in an almost private smile, Hightower offered her hand. "It was lovely to meet you."

Lisbon shook Hightower's hand again and said, "Thank you. It was... nice to meet you." She really didn't know know what to say about the rest. Half of what she heard she wasn't sure she believed, and the rest she didn't want to have to think about. It made her very eager to get back to the CBI and do her job.

Jane and Hightower said their goodbyes and James was called to escort them out. As the door closed behind them, Lisbon sighed. Jane stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and looked down at the petite cop. "Well," he said. "I think you handled that nicely. No panic or denial just... very calm, well done."

Lisbon ignored his curious look and rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's get back to the CBI. I need to think of what to tell my team, so don't drive so fast."

Jane grinned as she walked down the steps. "Not a chance," he said and followed her to the car.

A/N: Thank for reading, please review if you have the time!