Fairview Hills Cemetery Chapter 12
A few hours later, Gabriella was alone in the gray bedroom, scattering local history books on the bed she’d claimed for tonight as she looked up anything she could on a few neighborhoods where caseloads seemed to be heavier. She felt a little foolish working on this while the mischief was out there, but she had free time right now and few other ways to fill it. The others were dealing with the Bigfoot sighting, but James had insisted they didn’t need her or Amelia on the case. In fact, too many people might make the witness nervous. So Gabriella figured might as well keep going.
Her phone buzzed, and she reached over to look at it. She and Elliot had been texting back and forth for about twenty minutes now as she worked. She had a feeling he was on his lunch break and there was something nice about being the center of his attention for a few minutes as they asked each other silly questions. Elliot was twenty-three. He was a month younger than she was and at least six inches taller. At least from what she remembered. He liked to play football, but he didn’t really watch it.
She texted him her answer to the sports question she’d sent him, then went back to her books. There wasn’t much information in here that she didn’t already know. The one she was reading about right now seemed like a standard urban neighborhood. Houses built by big names in the city, many of them later converted into apartments. She didn’t live all that far from this particular neighborhood, she realized. She just lived in a more residential area tucked a little further back. But nothing in these houses stood out to her. These books were pretty standard local history books. Two of them were small modern volumes that were mainly photos with descriptions. There were a few houses in that neighborhood that matched up, but that was it. None of this was useful for background on any recent cases, but maybe she could fit it into her never-ending busy work project of collecting local history.
Her phone buzzed with another message from Elliot. This time he was asking for her favorite food. These were the kinds of messages he’d been sending. Slightly boring, but cute. The kind that showed he was making an effort to be charming and fun, but he was maybe a little unsure how to do it.
It was charming in its own way. Gabriella answered and sent the text, then set her phone down. She needed to focus. She had about half an hour until the rest of the team wrapped up Bigfoot and she’d be too busy to spend any time on this.
She moved over to the third book. This one was a blank-covered historical narrative of the city. Hoping against hope, Gabriella flipped to the back and saw that there was no index. But it was the last one in the pile, so she had time to go through and scan it.
The narrative flowed surprisingly smoothly, and she was surprised to catch herself actually reading passages rather than just scanning through them. Gabriella had little interest in the regular days of city residents of the 1850s, but as she kept an eye out for familiar street names, she noticed that a few names popped up over and over. Prominent families, that sort of thing. Before she realized it though, the door was opening down the hall, and she heard voices as the others got back from their observations.
Nothing new or useful. And even researching these histories without a solid goal was giving her that sinking feeling of wasting time, despite James’s reassurances that this information would be useful. She knew that if she was ever going to be the official team researcher, whatever that meant, she’d be looking into these things all the time and it would be worth it. Nobody was setting her up with busy work as they made plans to murder her anymore. And if she could just convince her subconscious of that, things would be fine.
It was raining in heavy sheets, but Gabriella was lying on the ground outside. The crunchy fall leaves were scattered around her and she could feel them underneath her body as well, scratching her skin where they slipped into her shirt and rubbed against her back. The rain was getting in her eyes, but she wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t she moving?
Someone was laughing nearby, the sound high-pitched and rough, scraping against her ears. The peals of laughter kept going, wave after shrill wave of it vibrating through her. She was in the cemetery, wasn’t she? Who was laughing at her?
“Guess who?” a voice whispered in her ear.
The laughing intensified as the voice got louder. “Guess who?” it repeated through malicious giggles. “Guess who?”
Gabriella’s eyes flew open, and she sat up so fast that she almost fell out of her bed. Heart pounding, she tried to steady her breathing as she looked around her familiar room. It was exactly like it had been when she went to sleep. The bed with storage containers filling every inch of the space beneath it. The chair by the window, covered in clothes. The dresser with her photos and candles on top. And the heaps of protective amulets dangling from the windows and the door.
She fell back against the bed and let out the breath she’d been holding. God, if this was what that kid had been feeling every single night, no wonder he didn’t want to risk pissing it off even more. That evil little voice giggling in her ear while she wasn’t able to do anything about it? Hell no, screw that.
Gabriella glanced at the glowing display on her phone screen. Four fifteen. Her alarm wasn’t going off for another hour and a half, but she wasn’t going back to sleep, anyway. Not with the bucket of adrenaline that had just poured into her bloodstream as she woke up.
She got out of bed and stumbled out to the bathroom of her little studio apartment. This place was slightly smaller than her last one, but it was comfortable and she didn’t have to worry about something reaching out from under her bed at night. It had been the only thing available in her price range when she realized she needed to get out of the other apartment as soon as possible, so she’d jumped on the chance to get on a month-to-month lease. Now, with the streetlight glowing in her window from the gap in the shade, she was grateful she’d decided to go for it.
As she brushed her teeth in the matchbox-sized bathroom, Gabriella considered whether that had been the real mischief spirit or an actual nightmare. After all, she and Amelia had had to run out of that cemetery to get away from it. That, plus all the discussion of it, might have given her nightmares without any interference from the creature itself. It had happened on cases before this. Either way, she’d tell the others. But she could hope it was just a creepy coincidence.
She took a quick shower, then got dressed and went out to her dim kitchenette to get something to eat. There wasn’t much there, she’d been putting off grocery shopping. But there were a couple of eggs and a hamburger bun, so she threw together a quick sandwich with those and some cheese she found in her fridge, then sat down to eat.
She had to be at work for seven and she was tempted to go in early since she was already awake. But Gabriella was intentionally not going to do that. She didn’t want it to become a habit that she’d just go into work early. Not that she expected any of the others to take advantage of that, but she needed to do it for her own mental health. There had to be a distinction between work and home. Otherwise, she’d spend all of her time on work and burn out before she turned thirty.
She loved James dearly, and he didn’t seem to be burned out exactly, but she also wondered if he did anything that wasn’t connected to the Foundation these days. It seemed like every time she was at work, so was he. And also the times when she wasn’t there. And on his days off, there was still some reason why he needed to be there. Maybe she should talk to him about it, but she’d probably wait unless it got bad. He seemed happier these days than he had over the summer, so it was his business if he was solely focused on work.
And besides, was she really much better? Her mother had forbidden her from investigating the ghost, Agatha, in her house. Not because of any ghostly consequences, but because she thought that Gabriella was already overworked. And Gabriella had immediately disregarded that request and looked into the basement. If she was trying to add another outside investigation on top of her existing work and the outside investigation they were already working on, then maybe she needed to take a look in the mirror before judging James’s habits.
God, Gabriella needed to get a hobby. All of her local history interest was going into work, so she needed to find something that had nothing to do with work at all. Maybe knitting? Unless she was going to knit mittens for a case, that wasn’t going to have anything to do with the Foundation. Or crosswords.
No, she’d go insane with crosswords. Ugh, whatever, she’d figure it out later.
Gabriella took her time eating breakfast, scrolling through her phone while she ate. When her alarm rang at her usual wake-up time, she got up and slowly continued to get ready, trying to forget the sound of that creepy laughter. By the time she went downstairs to get into her car, she was almost feeling completely normal.
CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 13
