Gabriella had a few extra minutes to spare on her way to work the next day, so she stopped in at Dunkin Donuts for a coffee. As she waited by the pickup counter for her drink and bagel, she glanced over at the table that a couple of old men had recently vacated. The morning’s newspaper was sitting on the table in pieces and her heart leapt into her throat as she saw the headline.

CEMETERY VANDALISM STUNS FRIENDS OF FAIRVIEW HILLS

She walked over to the table and picked up the paper, the previously cheerful noise of the store now overpoweringly loud against the blood pounding in her ears. The paper showed a picture of the interior of the cemetery at the top of the article. Below it was the description of massive amounts of damage. Toppled stones, broken walkways, lewd graffiti. No mention of any injuries, which was slightly reassuring, but not by much.

“Gabriella?”

Gabriella jumped and turned around, still holding the paper. The barista, a friendly young woman who always greeted her with a warm smile, was standing at the counter with her iced coffee. Gabriella folded the paper under her arm and walked over to her.

“Thanks,” she said, trying to stay as normal as possible.

“No problem,” the girl said. “Have a good one.”

Gabriella echoed her sentiments back distractedly as she walked out of the shop, realizing as she got outside that she’d forgotten her straw. She considered going back in for it, but no, she needed to get to work as quickly as possible. The others needed to know about this.

---

Ten minutes later, she pulled into the driveway behind Madelyn, who was slowly getting out of her car at the same time. She cracked her folding cane open and pushed herself up on it as she stood up and greeted Gabriella.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Morning.”

Madelyn’s smile faded slightly. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Gabriella handed her the paper. She flipped it open in the hand not gripping the cane, and Gabriella watched her face fall as she scanned the article.

“Shit,” Madelyn said, handing it back to her. “Have you told James yet?”

“No, I just saw it a few minutes ago,” she replied as they began walking up the walkway towards the front door. “I don’t know if he saw it or not. I just happened to see the paper on the table at Dunks.”

“He was planning to talk to Father McEnerney today anyway,” Madelyn said. “I think the Father might actually be stopping by. So see if you can grab him immediately. You’re moving a little faster than me today, so you’ve got a better chance of catching him than I do.”

She seemed to be genuinely joking as she said it, so Gabriella didn’t feel bad about laughing. She held the door open for Madelyn, then stepped inside after her.

James was sometimes downstairs first thing in the morning, so she might as well check the gym first. Avoiding looking over at the creepy old medical room she’d never been in and never wanted to, Gabriella made her way over to the gym and pushed the door open.

Sludgy rock music was blasting out of the old stereo Amelia kept in there and she was disappointed to see James wasn’t there. Just Bradley, who was wrapping up a workout. He barely nodded to her as he slowed down the treadmill and began his cooldown.

“Have you seen James?” Gabriella asked him.

“Did you check upstairs?”

“Not yet. He’s usually down here when I get here first thing.”

She could tell it was taking him effort not to comment, and she wondered if that was James’s doing. “I need to talk to him,” she said. “There was an article about vandalism at the cemetery this morning.”

“Of course there is,” Bradley muttered. “Look upstairs, he got here about twenty minutes ago.”

Nodding her thanks, she walked back out and closed the door.

James’s voice came down the stairs and as she walked up, she spotted him at the front door, talking to someone on the phone. He gave her a little wave, and she stopped to wait for him. He raised his eyebrows, then held up a finger.

“I’ll be at headquarters all day,” he said. “Just give me a little bit of warning before you get here. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks.”

He hung up a moment later and looked at Gabriella. “What’s up?”

She handed him the paper, and he nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I was just talking to Father McEnerney about. He’s going to come by later on to discuss what to do next. I know he’d rather not get the Foundation involved and neither do I. But between what happened to us and this…”

He shook his head, handing the paper back to Gabriella. “I’m getting some coffee,” he said. “Want some?”

“I’ve got one,” Gabriella said, realizing she left it in the car.

She hurried outside to get it, then stopped in the driveway for a few minutes, looking down the street as the sharp late-October wind cut through her jacket. From here, she could almost see Fairview Hills Cemetery. There was a hedge in the way at the end of the street, blocking the view, but if it wasn’t there, she’d have almost a clear view of the mischief’s cage and territory. Her head didn’t hurt anymore, but she wasn’t in a hurry to go there again.

With a shiver, she took her coffee and went back into the house. James was sitting in the living room already when she got there, poring over an old map. As she got closer, she saw that it was a road map of Fitchburg and had to be at least eighty years old.

“What’s that for?”

James jumped, knocking his own coffee over. Half went into his lap while the rest poured onto the table, running closer and closer to the map. He hissed in pain as he shoved the map aside, rescuing it from the scorching lake coming for it.

“Sorry!” Gabriella exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She ran into the kitchen for a dish towel and a roll of paper towels. She handed the dish towel to James and began sopping up coffee from the table and floor with the paper towels.

“It’s fine,” James assured her, dabbing carefully at his pants with the towel. “I’m fine.”

But as she looked at him, coated in coffee and still with a clear handprint on his cheek days later, he didn’t look particularly fine. He was looking more like he had in the weeks after Robin died, frazzled and close to the edge. She wasn’t about to say that though, so she just kept cleaning as he stood up.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’m going to change real quick and then take care of it.”

She ignored him and sopped up the last of the coffee, then brought the pile of towels to the trash, wincing a little at the size of it.

James’s phone rang as she was walking back out. “Your phone!” she called down the hall.

“Grab it for me?”

She picked up his cell phone and answered it. “James’s phone.”

“James has a secretary now?”

The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “No,” she said, suddenly flustered. “No, he spilled his coffee and his phone rang and I just-”

The other person laughed. “It’s fine,” they said. “This is Father McEnerney, who’s this?”

“Oh, hi Father. This is Gabriella.”

“Gabriella, excellent. Can you please tell James I’m on my way? I’ll just be a little while.”

“Sure, I can do that.” Why was she still so flustered?

“Excellent, thank you.”

James came back in, wearing jeans and a t-shirt just as Gabriella hung up. “It was Father McEnerney,” she said. “He’s on his way.”

James thanked her and sat gingerly back down in his chair. The map was untouched, to Gabriella’s relief. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Your energy readings, actually,” he replied.

She looked at the map. It was worn out, but she could spot Highland Street on there, with a small sticky arrow pointing to it. “Is there anything in particular?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he replied. “I think this might be an ongoing case, like the Foundation originally planned. I just wonder…”

He trailed off, looking at the map again. “We’ll put this on hold,” he said after a few seconds. “Let’s finish up what we’ve got.”

---

Half an hour later, Father McEnerney still wasn’t there. James glanced at his watch, then out the window, then at Gabriella.

“Did he give you a timeline?” he asked Gabriella, who was working on a new training module at the computer.

“No,” she said, waiting as the computer chugged along, attempting to accept her answer. “He said he was on his way though.”

“Maybe he was coming from Boston,” James said, more to himself than to her. “I thought he was going to be in town today, but I could have been wrong.”

He repeated this process three more times over the next half an hour as Gabriella tried to stay patient with both him and the program that kept lagging on her.

Finally, the front door opened, and James stood up quickly. Gabriella looked over and immediately stood up too as Bradley and Madelyn walked in, helping Father McEnerney, who was clasping his hand to his chest.

“Shit, what happened?” James asked, hurrying over.

The father’s face was pale as he sat down on the couch, wincing in pain. “It’s okay, I don’t think it’s broken,” he said. “I think it’s just sprained. I landed funny.”

“Landed funny doing what?” James asked.

“I stopped by the cemetery to reinforce the blessing I left on the entrance.”

“You went inside?” James snapped, throwing his hands up. “Jesus Christ, Father.”

He held up a hand. “Sorry, sorry, bad choice of words. But Father, what the hell were you thinking?”

“I didn’t mean to go inside,” Father McEnerney said, loosening his grip on his injured hand slightly. “It pulled me in as I did the blessing.”

Gabriella thought she might be sick. He’d clearly told Madelyn and Bradley this already because neither of them looked as horrified as she felt and James looked. Father McEnerney inspected his wrist with a grimace, then looked up at them again.

“I stood outside the cemetery gate and when I anointed the pillars, it got ahold of me and yanked me in. That was all it did. I landed badly, got up, and got the hell out of there. These two were coming by a few minutes later and they stopped to help.”

Madelyn sat down in the chair, leaning her cane on the armrest. Bradley stood behind her chair, watching as James let out a long breath.

“You still shouldn’t go there alone,” he said. “I know, I know. I can’t tell you what to do. But I’m asking as a friend. Please don’t do that again.”

Father McEnerney nodded, looking a little ashamed. “I won’t,” he said.

“But you know this means it’s hurting people now.”

“It was hurting people when it got to you and Gabriella,” Father McEnerney said, motioning toward James’s face. “You both count too.”

“But it pulled you inside,” James said. “And if it’s graduated to hurting and doing that, we might need to get the Foundation involved.”

“No,” Father McEnerney said quickly, moving quickly, then grabbing his wrist again with a wince. “Please, not yet. They’re going to go after Josh and they’re going to make his family’s life miserable. He’s already dealing with enough.”

“Listen,” James said. “I don’t want to either. But we’re getting to that point. I might argue we’re past that point right now, but I get it. Our docket is pretty slim today, right Bradley?”

“If you don’t count Bigfoot, we’ve got nothing.”

“We’re counting Bigfoot, so we only have a couple of things this morning,” James continued. “This afternoon, let’s get everything together for a banishing ritual. I don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s the last thing we can try without getting the Foundation involved. How does that sound?”

“That sounds fair,” Father McEnerney said. “If one of you can give me a ride back to my car, I actually have the iron trap in my backseat. We’ll need to get it set up, but if we can get it into the cemetery and get the spirit to go inside, it’ll give us a good chance.”

James glanced over at Bradley, who nodded. “Fine,” James said. “But you should get your wrist checked.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Father McEnerney said, stealing a quick glance at his hand.

“Do you need a ride to Urgent Care?” James asked.

Father McEnerney shook his head. “No, I think I can drive.”

“Are you sure?”

Gabriella saw a flicker of irritation behind that priestly patience. “Yes,” he said. “It’s a short drive and you need everyone here.”

He and Bradley left a couple minutes later and James sighed, running a hand down his face and over the handprint still there. “God, I hope this works,” he muttered to Madelyn and Gabriella.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 21