Jarvis Street Chapter 19
Amelia was kind enough not to murder James when she got back and heard the full story a little while later. Instead, once she was finished yelling at him – “FIVE HOURS! I WAS GONE FIVE FUCKING HOURS, JAMES!” – she took charge of the follow-up visit and headed over there with Bradley to run a few last scans on the building. James was tempted to take a nap while they were gone and he didn’t think any of the team would blame him. But there was too much to do, and now he had the additional responsibility of writing up two full case reports as well. He wasn’t on the night shift today, so he’d be out of here by midnight. And tomorrow was actually his first day off in about three weeks. He hadn’t planned it that way, but Amelia had insisted he needed to take a day off and she’d take command for it.
He spent most of the day doing other work, trying not to think about what had happened. But by six o’clock, when the day shift was wrapping up, he finally got started on the report for Jarvis Street, unsure about how exactly to go about it. Beyond the formatting, which was in the training modules he still hadn’t received, he didn’t know what to say. He’d never spoken to a ghost before. And the weirdness of the situation and all of its implications hadn’t sunk in until he’d woken up in the driveway at Headquarters, feeling the slightest bit refreshed after an accidental fifteen-minute nap. By now that boost had long evaporated and he was sitting in front of the computer with a blank document open, the cursor blinking at him in a menacing rhythm.
Should he tell them he’d seen the ghost without using any equipment? James wasn’t a medium or anything, he knew that the power had all been with Penny in that scenario. But she was a ghost, and he’d both seen and interacted with her. And what did that say about Robin? Did that mean it wasn’t a hallucination? He was actually seeing him. Shit, if Robin was haunting them, the team and the Foundation needed to know. But that was for another report. This one had to focus on the Jarvis Street School.
He wrote furiously for what had to be at least twenty minutes, just spilling everything onto the page. Seeing Penny in her classroom, communicating with her, seeing her in whatever state that had been. Sensing her on the doorstep afterward. He wanted to ask why they’d sealed her up in the first place, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t like any answer he got. It was probably a time-saving measure. There was an intense presence in the building and instead of taking the time to cleanse it, they sealed it off and moved on to the next one. An assembly line of metaphysics.
What was the Foundation going to do with this information? Hell, what was James going to do with it? The power to see and speak with Penny hadn’t come from him. It had come from her, he was sure of it. But the Foundation might not be so positive and the last thing he needed was more on his plate if they decided to question him about what had happened.
That’s when the computer froze. He’d written about four pages of rambling detail about everything that had happened on the case and was about two lines from saving it and parsing through it tomorrow morning. But mid-word, the computer froze. And before James could even attempt to save his work at the last second, the screen flickered off, on, and then off. Then it showed the Loading screen.
No, this was too much. He wasn’t even close to being done with everything he needed to do today and now his work hadn’t saved. He’d have to start all over and he was already so drained from typing it up in the first place. But he wasn’t going to cry, not here, not at work. Not over a computer error. He was in charge, whether he wanted to be or not. So he needed to stay in control.
“McManus, where are the expense approvals?” Bradley asked as he walked into the room. “I’ve been sitting on three of them since I’m waiting for last week’s to come back. Your disaster of a shopping list needs approval too.”
The approvals. James tore his gaze away from the computer and looked over at the dining room table, where Foundation administrative paperwork was slowly overtaking the investigation gear. The rejected forms were sitting there. He still didn’t know if they were rejected because he’d fucked something up in submitting them or if they were rejected because they were just rejected. But he’d put them aside and now they were half-buried under a week’s worth of daily reports that had been returned with stern orders to format them correctly and resubmit so that they could be filed appropriately with the records department.
“I’m sorry,” James muttered, his chest tight as he turned back around to stare at the now-blank computer screen. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to keep up, I really am.”
He didn’t need to look up to see the scowl on Bradley’s face. And he couldn’t keep using the fact that he was new to the job as an excuse for his mistakes, could he?
“I’ll get it, I promise,” James said, heart pounding as he stood up and hurried over to the table. “I-they were rejected and I think it’s something I messed up. Give me a minute, my report just-the computer shut down, and-”
His whole body felt hot and cold at the same time and there was an ache sliding from the sides of his head and into his eyeballs. Fuck, he was losing it, wasn’t he? And in front of the one person here he couldn’t slip up in front of. He’d cried in front of Amelia before, they were best friends. And Gabriella was family. And Madelyn wasn’t about to judge him, he knew that. But Bradley had already made it clear how much he hated having James as captain. And any sign of weakness would be something to add to the list.
Almost on autopilot, James sat down at the table. Instead of picking up the forms, he held his head in his hands, unable to do anything else.
Bradley was silent for a second, then James heard him sigh and pick up the phone. It was happening. He was going to report James to the Foundation, and they’d bring him in for whatever disciplinary action they gave captains. If he was lucky, they’d be merciful and give him the severance package they gave incompetent captains who finally lost their minds, but didn’t try to kill anyone.
Face burning, James stayed where he was as he heard Bradley give the person on the other end his name and their location. Were they going to pick him up? Did the Foundation work outside the law? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe they’d lock him up somewhere where he could get some sleep.
“Yeah, I’ll get a large pizza, half onions and green peppers, and the other half, hang on. What do you want?”
The second part of that statement was directed at James, and it took a second to penetrate. James lifted his head and blinked at Bradley. “What?”
“What do you want on your pizza?”
“Um, black olives please.”
“Gross,” Bradley muttered. Then into the phone, “And the other half black olives.”
A moment later, he was hanging up and came and sat down at the table. “Hey,” he started.
James looked up. Bradley still looked vaguely irritated, but there was a surprising degree of sympathy there.
“They still haven’t sent the training modules, have they?”
James shook his head. “They told me there’s a lot going on.”
“Yeah, no shit, there always is. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get all of the paperwork together and you’re going to organize it. I don’t know all of the technical stuff, but I’ll do what I can. And let me see if I can get the report back.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He should be saying thank you, and he knew that. But the question escaped instead.
“Because I can’t do my job if you don’t do your fucking job.”
With that, Bradley went over to the computer and James turned to the mountains of messy papers on the table. The process of just organizing the papers into different piles was comfortingly simple and James could lose himself in it, just for a little while.
“Jesus Christ, McManus.”
Bradley’s voice broke his concentration and James looked up from the team training plan he was carefully stacking to deal with later. Behind Bradley, James could see the computer monitor was on again. And what looked like the first draft of his report was there.
And judging by the look on Bradley’s face, he’d read it.
“It’s just a first draft, I-”
“Have you not heard of a period?” Bradley asked, rolling his eyes.
“It’s a first draft.”
“It’s like a nightmare manifesto. Don’t send this.”
“I was going to edit it. For God’s sake, it’s a first fucking-”
James’s defense was interrupted by the doorbell. A few minutes later, Bradley was coming back up the stairs with pizza and the argument was postponed while they got their food.
“Are you going to tell them you saw the ghost?” Bradley asked, folding his slice in half and taking a bite.
“I mean, I think I have to,” James replied. “It’s how we resolved it. Do you think they’ll do anything weird?”
“I’m not sure,” Bradley admitted.
“I don’t have, like, secret powers.”
“No shit.”
“Maybe I’ll edit it a little,” James said. “Hype up that spirit box or something. No, wait, they haven’t sent it yet. I’ll figure something out.”
Bradley nodded, then got up. “I saved the report,” he said. “You might want to try it next time. It’s a very simple process. You go up to this File button here…”
***
Two hours later, they had a reasonable plan in place. James had made a schedule for the paperwork, prioritizing it as best he could. Bradley had printed out some copies of previous reports to compare the rejected ones to. It wasn’t perfect, but it would help for the moment. And now, for the first time since becoming captain, he had a good idea of what he needed to do when he got in after his day off.
“Is that everything?” Bradley asked as they looked at the neatly arranged piles.
“It is,” James said. “Thank you so much.”
Bradley shrugged. Then he pointed at Robin’s door. “You have an office,” he said.
No, he didn’t. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m going to go home,” Bradley said. “You should too.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Bradley headed toward the door, and a moment later, James was alone in the living room. He knew Amelia was sleeping out back, her alarm set to go off soon so she could yell at him later if he was still here, but he didn’t have it in him to talk to anyone right now. So he slowly pulled on his shoes, expecting Robin’s ghost to show up any second. But the house was silent as he walked out and locked up.
