Malone swam into consciousness.

	"[i]Well, hello there, sleeping beauty.[/i]" Ku's voice welcomed her back.

	"[i]Ku...?[/i]"

	"[i]Yeah, it's me. Do you have some other demon mask stuck to your face?[/i]" The grumpy tikki responded.

	"[i]What happened?[/i]" Malone sidestepped his barb and asked.

	"[i]You fainted.[/i]" Ku deadpanned.

	"[i]I lost consciousness.[/i]" Malone corrected staring down at her shoulder. There was a bunched t-shirt covering her wound and a male hand holding it in place.

	"[i]Sure, sure, tough guy.[/i]" Ku laughed in her head and Malone couldn't help but join him at her knee-jerk 'tough guy' act.

	She felt fingers on her neck, pushing her head aside and a familiar voice asked to take a look at her wound. For a moment she felt confused. [i]Ellie was in the second car with Manny and Kennedy, wasn't she?[/i] Suddenly Malone remembered Madeline speaking with the voice and inflection of Eleanor. It was Madeline's fingers touching her right now. Their decidedly non-medically trained client was offering her first aid, spouting medical jargon like the best of them. This was not right. An unknown force drove Malone's body to sway sideways outside of Madeline's searching hand's reach.

	"[i]You're welcome for that too, by the way. How's about you pay me what you owe me now?[/i]" Ku's voice sounded in her head resuming his spiel about payment and Malone was reminded of a lyric from Rihanna's song 'Bitch, better have my money'.

	"[i]Yeah, yeah, pipe down, Rihanna.[/i]" She uttered, grinning at Ku's pinched face at the barb. The demon mask had obviously felt something off about Madeline and had made Malone move to protect her. If Ku had reacted like that, something most certainly was afoot with their client.

	Suddenly her attention was drawn away from her chat with the demon mask. Morgan was speaking to her and Malone heard something in her voice she hadn't before. The profiler didn't have time to respond before the other woman stormed out of the SUV. Seconds after Madeline sobbed something that sounded like 'Eleanor, don't leave me!' and promptly stumbled out of the car, spilling onto the ground like a puppet that had its strings cut.

	Malone opened the door of the SUV and exited the car with a grumble. Her gaze fell on their client. Madeline was laying on the ground in a fetal position. A pool of fresh vomit next to her. The profile crouched down beside her, but her head turned to what was happening near the second SUV. Morgan had Eleanor pinned to the side of the car, rage telegraphing through every movement of her body. Malone's attention was pulled back to Madeline when their boss demanded that Morgan let her go as she needed to take care of Malone and followed up with what sounded like a veiled threat. All of this the ex-FBI agent heard in a freaky stereo as Madeline was speaking the same words in unison with Eleanor.

	"Guys..." Malone spoke to Manny and Leon. "Would you mind helping our client inside? We don't want the bad guys to catch us with our pants down right after all that effort to evade them."

	Malone tried to stand up, but was abruptly brought down hard on one knee, dropping her makeshift bandage to brace her good hand on the ground to regain her balance. She gave herself a couple of moments before the dizzy spell passed and carefully stood and approached Morgan and Eleanor with determined steps. When she reached them, she shifted her body so she was looking at Morgan and managed to get her left hand up and place it on Morgan's forearm with effort. A new wave of nausea hit her and she struggled not to sway. [i]Don't you bloody dare faint right now![/i] She summoned all of her Irish ancestral stubbornness. [i]Cuz that would be such a terrible cliché.[/i]
	
	"Let her go, Morgan!" She rasped infusing her voice with as much calmness as she could muster. Her own insides were churning with quiet anger. She was no expert in magic, but she was no fool either. She could put two and two together well enough to understand Madeline had just been violated in some magical way by their boss and she could not, would not stand for that! But this was not the time for infighting. They needed to show a united front against an unknown enemy that exhibited a distinct cult mentality. And cultists were known for their blind devotion to their cause. And so they possessed the very unity their own team desperately needed right now as they had inadvertently dipped their toes in a pile of shit.

	"Morgan." Malone insisted again but this time her voice was not but a whisper and she was more leaning into her side as attempting to pull her arm off Eleanor. She couldn't have even if she wanted to. Morgan was taller and heavier than her on top of being full on raging at the moment. The profiler didn't think she had ever seen the mysterious Miss Blackwood exhibit any such strong emotions whilst in the company of her team mates. This was something that she would dissect later in her mind. Right now she needed to diffuse this situation sooner rather than later.

	"Morgan..." She made one last attempt. But this time her voice was so quiet it managed to be somehow almost intimate. As if she was speaking only for Morgan to hear, her blue eyes pleading. For what even she herself didn't know exactly. "Let her go." Malone finished and turned to look at Eleanor. "This is not over." She said, dropping the polite tone and the friendly 'Ellie' she always employed when talking with their boss. Her blue eyes burned with anger and disdain.