All good intentions of showering between shifts had gone out the window between the multiple tasks and falling asleep for all of thirty minutes. The day shift had already begun, but he knew nobody would mind if he was a little late. So James walked out of his office and gave the others an easy wave before heading back to the pink bedroom, where his overnight bag had spilled its contents all over one of the beds.

He still wasn’t sure what he’d be doing today and spent a little too long debating between the two sets of clothes he’d brought with him. If he was going to be in the state forest, the jeans would be his best bet. But if he was going to be interviewing about the possession or the apparent true-crime podcast notes currently sitting on his desk, shouldn’t he look like a professional? Why was this suddenly the hardest decision he was making today?

After three minutes of staring dully at the two piles of clothes in front of him, James grabbed a towel and went to the bathroom. He then realized as he got in the shower that not only had he never made a decision, he hadn’t brought any clothes into the bathroom with him.

Oh well, too late now.

The water was blistering hot for once and James took his time, standing under the stream as he thought vaguely about everything and nothing at the same time. They had a lot to do today, but it was under control. With careful planning, they were maybe one or two more team members away from him having a semi-reasonable work schedule. Adding Graham to the team loosened them up somewhat, especially now that he was done with training. The training system had wrapped up in mid-November, about a month ago. So now Graham was a fully-fledged member of the team and could take on any tasks he needed to.

Though, as desperate as James was for more people, he was going to apply Bradley for that northern Maine position himself if he had to sit through a meeting like that again. McGovern was being shockingly reasonable. Sure, he was Foundation, and his expectations were high for the support that they gave. But he wasn’t the same guy who had put off sending James his training materials for a month and a half.

No, that guy must have gotten promoted.

He stayed under the water for longer than he’d planned, letting his hair fall into his eyes as the spray dripped down his face. Finally, he reluctantly turned the water off and got out of the shower. The cold air rushed in as soon as he opened the curtain and, swearing under his breath, James grabbed his towel and quickly dried off. As he ran the towel over his arms, he frowned at how thin they were. Apparently, the weeks of rushed workouts were catching up with him. He’d need to get back on his full weight training or his biceps were going to shrink even more. And it wasn’t like he was a bodybuilder to begin with.

Oh right, he’d forgotten his clothes in the bedroom. It was only one room down the hall, but the bathroom didn’t have a door directly into it. They should really get on that, shouldn’t they? He couldn’t be the only person to make this mistake. Hoping no one was in the hallway to witness this, James wrapped the towel around his waist and walked out the door.

Only to nearly bump into Amelia. “Oh, sorry!” he said, holding up his hands to let her by.

“Sorry,” she echoed, pulling on her coat as she moved to the side. “Hey, I’m going to take the cryptid case now. Sound good?”

That solved case number one of three. “Sure,” he said. “It seems like it’s just getting his statement, so don’t worry about going into the woods.”

“I think I need to go check the space. But from the way he described it, it’s right off the road,” Amelia said. “So I’ll just drive by on my way back after and see if anything about it jumps out at me.”

“Want some backup?”

Amelia shook her head. “No, just stay on the phones,” she said.

“No problem,” James said. “Beyond that, we’ve got the possession in Sterling and whatever the hell is happening over in Ashburnham. Did you see that case file?”

“You mean the murder scene?” Amelia asked. “Yeah, I was eating breakfast when I got to that part. How is that possibly ours?”

“It’s two members of the same family, both dead in freak accidents,” James said. “I’m going to see if the Foundation has anything else to share, but I’m thinking maybe it’s a curse. That’s the only thing that would fit the situation, at least as far as I can tell. Demon deal, maybe? But that’s a stretch.”

“Yeah, this seems small-time for a demonic thing,” Amelia said. “But maybe. It’s just weird that it’s one of ours, though.”

“I’ll meet with everybody else while you’re gone,” James said. “We can go over the other two cases and then split the team up to tackle them.”

“Just don’t forget to get dressed first,” Amelia said with a smirk

Right, he was having this impromptu meeting in a towel. “Yeah,” James said, glancing around to see if anyone else was there. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

As he glanced toward the living room, Madelyn was walking up the stairs from the front door. She reached the top, looked down the hallway at them, and nodded. “Morning, boss,” she said, deadpan.

James rolled his eyes. “Alright, I’m going,” he said, then walked into the bedroom.

---

A few minutes later, he was dressed and presentable, having chosen the slacks and gray button-down shirt. As he walked out of the pink bedroom, Madelyn was walking out of the gray one across the hall. “Morning,” James said.

“Hi.”

An idea hit him just as he was about to walk past her. “Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure.”

He motioned for her to come into the pink bedroom, then closed the door behind them. “What’s up?” Madelyn asked, sitting down on the neatly made bed next to the one James had claimed.

Madelyn was young, just about the same age as Amelia, and small with dark hair and dark eyes. She was Amelia’s housemate and had joined the Foundation on her referral years earlier. A couple years ago, she’d been involved in a serious accident on the job, and the scars still lingered on both her face and the careful way she moved. But despite all that, she was still bright and enthusiastic about the work.

“Do you know if Amelia’s changed her mind about having her own team?” James asked.

Madelyn looked surprised, like this wasn’t at all what she’d expected to hear from him. “Not that I know of?” she said. “But I don’t think she was really thinking about it happening anytime soon. Why?”

James sat down next to her and ran a hand down his face. “So, the captaincy is opening at one of the New Hampshire branches,” he said. “Like, right over the border. I mentioned it to her, and she seemed like she wasn’t happy at the thought of it?”

“What do you mean?”

He thought back to the hesitant look on Amelia’s face a couple of hours earlier. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s probably nothing. I just wanted to make sure that I hadn’t missed something big, you know? Like, if she’d decided she was going to quit the Foundation or something.”

Madelyn laughed. “I don’t think Amelia has any plans to quit the Foundation,” she said. “She’s told me more than once that we’re moving to that retirement home together.”

Right, the Foundation retirement home for ghost hunters who had managed to keep going into old age. Up until James became captain, he hadn’t been a hundred percent sure that it wasn’t some urban legend. But not only was it real, he’d actually had to stop by there after a trip to the Boston headquarters back in November.

It had been a pretty nice place.

“So you’re sure?” James asked.

Madelyn shrugged and nodded, her short hair bobbing around her head. “As I can be,” she said. “If she hasn’t told either of us, either it’s something serious or she’s just being cautious. Becoming captain is a big deal, you know that.”

And James hadn’t had a chance to be cautious about it. Instead, as the shock of Robin’s betrayal and death were still wearing off, the Foundation had handed him the keys and wished him the best of luck. But she was right.

“Okay,” James said. “Thanks. I was hoping I hadn’t put my foot in it. Like, maybe she’d decided already and told me, but I was too distracted to listen.”

“You think she’d let you be distracted?” Madelyn laughed.

“Nope.”

He stood up, and Madelyn followed, carefully lowering herself onto the floor. James stood off to the side as she caught her balance. He felt better as they left the bedroom a moment later and headed out to meet the rest of the team.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 4