Jarvis Street Chapter 5
At seven-fifteen, the front door opened and Gabriella walked in. “Good morning!” she called up as she kicked her shoes off.
“Morning!” James called.
The two other women looked up and gave Gabriella polite greetings before going back to their conversation. Gabriella walked into the living room and set her bag down by the couch.
“How was your day off?” James asked as she sat down next to him.
“Good,” Gabriella replied. “I was up in New Hampshire, helping my mom get settled at her new house. Then I went home to pack up my own place. How were things here?”
Amelia let out a little laugh from the table. “Eventful,” she said. “Where are you moving?”
“Just Fitchburg,” Gabriella said. “I needed to get out of my apartment.”
She seemed to shrink into herself a little as she said it, clearly regretting bringing up the topic. James sympathized. Not that anyone had forgotten what happened in her apartment and the way it was the catalyst for the nightmare that came afterward. But Gabriella mentioning it was a good way to bring all of those feelings right back to the surface.
“Makes sense,” Amelia said.
She didn’t say anything else, and James was grateful for it. Still, the awkward silence hung between them.
“Go get some coffee,” James said. “There’s about a cup left in the pot.”
James waited until Gabriella had gotten herself a cup of coffee before catching her up on the events of the day before. “So we’re going to be doing more investigative work on our own,” he explained. “Basically, instead of the Foundation sending us information on what we’re walking into, we need to get that information ourselves before we do whatever cleansing or catching or banishing is required.”
Gabriella looked a little nervous. “It’s fine,” he assured her. “There’s usually only a handful of things it could be, so we just need to figure out which one it is. Things probably won’t get much more intense than they were before.”
She didn’t look too convinced. “So yesterday was the first one, but it isn’t quite finished,” he said. “And I’ve got some information about a case coming up that I need to go through before we start the day. It’s completely normal to have several cases going on at once, so don’t be surprised by that.”
“What was yesterday?” Gabriella asked. “I could have come in if you needed another person.”
“It’s still ongoing,” James said. “But it was a cryptid call over at the college. There was a, um, an incident and we had to cut it short.”
“What happened?”
“Amelia shot Bradley with a bear tranquilizer,” Madelyn said, trying to keep a straight face as she looked down into her coffee.
“On accident!” Amelia added indignantly.
Gabriella looked at them all wide-eyed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” James said. “So try to be nice to him today.”
Gabriella rolled her eyes. “I’m always nice to him.”
“Anyway,” James continued. “That’s going to be on our plate until we find the creature, but we’ve also got a new case to discuss today. And I won’t be surprised if we get another couple to start within the next few days.”
“What’s the new case?” Gabriella asked, clearly trying not to sound too eager.
James had to hand it to her. Despite everything that had happened she was good at the job and seemed to love it. Hopefully the others would thaw to her soon.
Right as he was about to start laying out the details of the new case, James heard the door open in the back bedroom. A second later, he saw Bradley slowly walking down the hall. He looked like hell, his dark hair sticking straight up on one side of his head and lines pressed into the side of his face from the pillow. He paused and looked at the rest of them gathered in the living room.
“Good morning!” James said with a smile and wave. “Have a good sleep?”
Bradley scowled, shook his head, and walked into the bathroom. Seconds later, James heard the shower turn on.
“He’s fine,” he said.
Once Bradley was there, cleaned up and frowning on the couch in an oversized hoodie, James officially began the morning meeting. He pulled up his notes, then looked up at the others and sighed.
“Listen,” he said. “I know yesterday was a disaster.”
Nobody spoke. Not even Bradley, who was sitting beside Amelia, his hand pressed to his eyes.
“Bradley, how are you feeling?” James asked.
Bradley glared at him. “I’m fucking hungover,” he snapped.
Shit, James should have considered that, shouldn’t he? It made perfect sense, but he’d just assumed Bradley was pissy with them about what had happened in the first place.
He grimaced, hoping a professional response would come to him quickly. But instead, what came out was, “I’ve got Gatorade pouches in the cabinet. Blue ones, they’re pretty good.”
Bradley looked at him for a second, then pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and groaned. “God dammit, this is why I stopped taking molly.”
James had been about to move on to the next thing on his list, the request that they patrol the campus every few days until the creature was back. But he paused, mouth partially open to speak, and blinked at Bradley. He looked over at Madelyn, who raised her eyebrow at him.
Apparently the silence lasted just long enough to make Bradley lift his head again. “What?”
“Nothing,” James said. “Um, I’m just going to put a pin in that little factoid for later.”
Bradley turned to Madelyn, who looked at him innocently. Then he turned to James. “Just keep going, will you?”
“Fine,” he said. “We’re going to keep looking for posts on social media. That’s about all we can do short of patrolling the campus, which they’re going to want us doing. But be aware that that’s going to be on our plate for now.”
Amelia looked guilty and James was dreading the private meeting he was going to have to have with her after this. The accident report had already gone through to the Foundation and he’d just been informed that she was required to take another round of firearms training. James was going to try to get her out of it, but he knew it wasn’t likely.
“But the Foundation isn’t too upset with us because they sent our next assignment, as well as some training materials for how to investigate properly. We’ve been blessed with one whole PDF, as well as some other recommended reading that we can purchase for our branch library.”
“We have a branch library?” Gabriella asked eagerly.
Face still buried in one hand, Bradley waved the other hand toward the tiny plywood bookshelf in the corner that was stuffed with outdated training guides and textbooks. Gabriella’s face fell, but she said nothing.
“So they want us to buy textbooks to do our jobs?” Amelia asked, making a face.
“Just like being back in college,” James said, shaking his head. “I don’t want anyone spending their own money on them. We’ll find the money or try to request some from the Foundation.”
The Foundation wouldn’t give them extra money, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. “I printed a few copies of the training that they did give us,” James said, passing around the papers.
It was a single-page blurry infographic. A cheery ghost took up the top corner, with a little speech bubble that read STAY SAFE. Underneath were instructions for using a spirit box, the iffy technology that the Foundation was really pushing lately. Supposedly, it allowed spirits to speak to the user by rapidly moving through radio signals. This sounded cool to James, but it also seemed very unreliable. Plus, they still hadn’t actually received their promised spirit box, so this material wasn’t applicable anyway.
They were done going over the training materials in minutes and James didn’t feel any more secure about it than he had before they started the meeting. After they wrapped up, he turned to Bradley and Amelia. “I need to talk to both of you separately after,” he said.
Bradley glared at him, and Amelia seemed to shrink into herself. Madelyn gave her a sympathetic look. “I’ll go start warming up,” she said. “Meet me afterward.”
Amelia nodded, and Madelyn squeezed her arm. James’s stomach sank as he saw them. He didn’t want this, he didn’t want to be the authority figure whose orders they comforted each other over. He tried to give Amelia an encouraging smile. “It’ll just be a minute,” he said.
“Should we go in…”
She gestured vaguely toward Robin’s sealed office. “No,” James said quickly. “No, it’s fine. Um, let’s just step outside.”
He felt a little silly leading her out the back door and toward the steps, but the morning air was cool, which was a relief. “Listen,” he said as they sat down at the top of the stairs. “It’s okay, it’s just me.”
Amelia nodded, but he hated the wary look on her face. “So we’re both getting a mild reprimand over yesterday,” James said. “I’m really sorry, it should just be me.”
Amelia shook her head, but there were tears in her eyes. “No, it’s on me too,” she said. “I literally shot him.”
“Yeah, but it was my instructions.”
Amelia huffed a laugh and wiped her eyes. “Listen,” she said, voice low. “Let’s just both take credit for shooting Bradley and leave it at that.”
James shouldn’t laugh, he really shouldn’t. But a giddy laugh escaped him and he pulled Amelia into a hug, relieved when she gripped him back. They stayed there for a second, then he reluctantly pulled back.
“Alright, I can’t leave him waiting all day,” he said. “It’s okay. At worst, you might need to do some remedial firearms training but I’ll try to avoid it if we can.”
She groaned and nodded. Then they walked back into the house. As James opened the door, Fang bolted out and ran down the stairs. He turned and watched the cat as she reached the bottom, then plopped down on the warm stone patio.
“Bradley,” James said, gesturing for him to come back.
Scowling, Bradley followed him back out back. Once they were out back, James was suddenly a little unsure of what to say.
“Um, how are you?” he asked.
“Fine.”
A slight blush tinged Bradley’s face and James suddenly realized he wasn’t just mad about what happened, he was embarrassed. “Listen,” James said. “The doctor from yesterday said to call her. She wants to do a follow-up with you later in the week just in case. But they said there shouldn’t be any aftereffects.”
“Right.”
“And I’m really sorry it happened.”
Bradley nodded, looking at something behind James.
“And you didn’t, um, do anything too weird. If that’s what you’re worried about. You just seemed very happy. Until you passed out.”
Bradley glared at him, face now a dark red. “Is there anything else?” he demanded.
“Not really. Oh, um, me and Amelia are both getting mild reprimands from the Foundation.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
That stopped James short. “What?”
“I mean, yeah, I’m mad. You two shot me full of drugs and I’ve been seeing the multiverse off and on for twenty-four hours now. But it was an accident, so…”
Bradley shrugged, then started walking into the house. Oddly touched, James followed.
