Gabriella felt surprisingly good when she got up the next morning. It may have had something to do with the massive order of French fries and the pitcher of water that Amelia had forced on her at the end of the night, but her hangover was mercifully light. A warm shower and a solid breakfast later, she was actually ready for her shift.

When she got to work, James was the first person she saw. He was up in the living room with Amelia, who also looked much better than Gabriella expected, and Bradley, who looked worse.

“Bad news,” James called as she walked in.

Gabriella cringed as she reached the top of the stairs and faced them all. “What’s up?”

“Graham and Madelyn are both out. Apparently the flu is back for round two.”

Shit. They were supposed to have half the team in New Hampshire helping Hillsborough and half the team here covering anything coming in on their end. Which, watching the printer churn to life, Gabriella realized was going to actually happen this time.

“What do we do?”

Bradley shrugged from where he was sitting at the end of the couch with his head propped on his hand. James looked over at him. “Go. Home.”

“Fuck. You.”

Gabriella turned to Bradley. “Are you sick too?”

“No, he just worked more than a double and thinks he’s covering Graham’s shift today too,” James said, rolling his eyes.

“We can’t run on a skeleton crew,” Bradley said.

“But we aren’t going to fall apart if you go home for eight hours,” Amelia pointed out.

Bradley snorted but didn’t respond. James looked like he was considering how to kill him, but then turned to Gabriella.

“Anyway, it’s you, me, and Amelia this afternoon. And you’re on overnight, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So’s Amelia, so that’s covered. Anyway, we need two people here to cover our own work. Bradley doesn’t count because he’s a stubborn fuck who is going home in five minutes. How about you and Amelia stay here while I consult with Hillsborough?”

Gabriella felt like she should argue that. After all, it was her mother’s house. Shouldn’t she be the team member to consult on it? Especially since she was a witness to the phenomenon? But also, the idea of even being in the same state as Elliot right now made her stomach turn.

“It’s at their headquarters,” James said, apparently reading all of her thoughts on her face. “I’m going to meet with them for an hour or so. Patrick already said they’re not getting to it today, but we’ll discuss what needs to be done. So I’m sure it’ll be illuminating. Then I can just stop by Auntie Carrie’s and check in, okay? I’ll grab a key from her and go there, make sure the equipment is still in working order and that nothing weird has happened.”

Gabriella hoped her relief wasn’t too obvious. “That sounds great,” she said. “Hang on, borrow my key.”

She took out her key ring and removed the small metal key to her mother’s house. As she handed it to James, he grabbed her in a one-armed side hug and gave her a squeeze. “Has he…” he started awkwardly.

“No,” Gabriella answered, thinking about her silent phone. “Should I text him, do you think?”

“No,” Bradley muttered, eyes closed. “Jesus Christ.”

“Agreed,” James said. “He’s the one who’s wrong.”

“I should have told him though.”

“And he shouldn’t have been an asshole about it,” Amelia said.

Gabriella wanted to argue that Elliot wasn’t an asshole, he was just overwhelmed. But the grinding of the printer cut her off. Amelia picked up the paper and glanced at it.

“Interviews over in Lancaster,” she read. “Harmless, but intense paranormal activity that the family wants to track before sale of the property. So today’s the initial meeting on that.”

“Simple enough,” James said. “I’ll head out now and you two take that? I’ll be back by three.”

Gabriella suddenly had the urge to go up there and maybe see Elliot. Even if she was still desperate to avoid him, a small part wanted to get their next meeting over with. No matter what the results were. But she kept her mouth shut because they really did have work to do and there was no way they could afford to send two people to New Hampshire today.

“Alright,” James clapped his hands together and stood up. “You and you, get familiar with the information they sent, we aren’t doing a team meeting for it. You, get the hell out of this house because I swear to God if you’re still here when I get back…”

He trailed off as he started searching the table beside him for his car keys. Bradley scoffed, but stood up and put on his coat anyway.

“I’ll be back at six tomorrow morning,” he said.

“I’ll miss you til then,” Amelia deadpanned.

He glared at her, then walked toward the door without another word. After he’d gone, James rolled his eyes. Then he got his own coat on and headed out too.

“Those two are brutal,” Amelia said, groaning as she sat down at a computer and opened her email. “Same fucking person, honest to God…”

It was quiet for a little while as they both checked their email and schedule. The cases were fairly mundane for today and Gabriella appreciated it. The interviews, a follow-up on the UFO sighting, and potentially an initial investigation at a convenience store nearby that would likely get pushed later into the week. Gabriella would have thought the quiet would leave her too much room to think about the nightmare that was yesterday’s case, but it was actually pretty peaceful.

The silence was broken about forty minutes later by the shrill ringing of the phone. She reached over and picked it up.

“North County Branch, Gabriella speaking.”

“Is James there?”

It was Bradley and his voice sounded raspy. “No, he left right after you,” Gabriella said. “Want to leave a message for him?”

“No,” he said. “Is Amelia there?”

Gabriella tried not to be offended that he wouldn’t trust her with a work message, it just felt petty. But then Amelia motioned for the phone. “Hang on, Amelia’s right here,” Gabriella said.

She handed the phone to Amelia before he said anything else. “Hello?” Amelia greeted. There was a pause. “Oh shit, did you at least make it home?” Another pause. “I think they’ll live. No, Shithead, you’re not coming in tomorrow morning to infect us. Yeah, worst case, we’ll get someone from Franklin County to cover. Alright, go get some rest. I’ll talk to James.”

She hung up the phone. “Another one bites the dust.”

Gabriella grimaced, suddenly all too aware of every bit of discomfort in her body. “Is it the same thing?”

“He thinks so. He said he ended up puking in a trash can outside his building. But also that he’d be fine for his shift tomorrow. And I know when I talk to James about it, he’ll say he can just cover the shift like it’s no big deal.”

Gabriella couldn’t see many other options, but she didn’t say anything since she knew the wrong words could easily bring Amelia’s frustrations over to her. So she kept quiet as Amelia called James to let him know the situation had changed.

She spent the rest of the afternoon distracted from their work, despite her best efforts. Her attempts to focus weren’t working too well, and she knew Amelia could tell, despite the fact she got through the Lancaster interview with minimal problems. But they’d already hashed out the details of everything with Elliot last night, so Gabriella didn’t feel like going through it again. Thankfully, Amelia didn’t ask, and she didn’t bring it up. Instead, she pulled out the papers from the Historical Society and stared at them for a little while.

Her phone buzzed at about four o’clock. Hoping it was Elliot, but also dreading the thought, she picked it up and saw James’s name.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Gabs. How are you doing?”

“Fine,” she said. “We did the primary interviews at the site and it’s all good. I left the initial report on your desk.”

“Good, good,” he said. “Listen, I want to put you and Amelia on the day shift tomorrow, are you okay with that? I’ll swap with you and take the night shift solo.”

“Is that legal?” Gabriella asked.

“Rosa’s on over in Hampden County, so she’ll check in with me.”

Technically Hampden County was the next county over. But their Palmer headquarters was at least an hour’s drive from Leominster. “I can stay,” Gabriella offered. “I only got here at noon, so it’s not like it’ll be a triple.”

“It’d be almost a triple,” James said. “And I’d rather have you fresh for tomorrow. Thanks though.”

“Can anyone from South Worcester or Franklin come over?”

“Gabs, I tried that already,” James said, the slightest edge coming into his patient tone now. “Franklin’s got a couple out with the flu too. And South County is so understaffed at the moment that if one person gets it or comes here to cover, it’ll be dominoes. I’ll be fine, I swear. The more important shift is the day anyway.”

She didn’t like it, but also knew she wasn’t going to win this fight. “Fine,” she said. “But I’ll have my phone on.”

“Fine,” James agreed, as though he’d ever actually take her up on that. “I’m on my way back now, so I’ll update the two of you before you leave. Not that there’s much. Auntie Carrie’s house is the same as it was and Patrick barely gave me twenty minutes despite telling me to come up and meet in person.”

So the case was being pushed back another day. Gabriella couldn’t say she was surprised about that. They hung up, and she set her phone down on the table, beside the enormous tome of New Hampshire history she was flipping through in hopes of finding anything connected to her mom’s case. The information she had wasn’t nearly enough to put the puzzle together, so she was stuck jumping back and forth between the index and the various chapters for anything new. As soon as she flipped the first page, Fang jumped up in her lap, nosing her hand away from the book.

“Hey, you,” Gabriella murmured, scratching the cat behind her ears. “Are you going to pick up a shift?”

Fang purred and settled in as she went back to the book. It was intimidatingly big, like there was no way she’d find a single thread anywhere in it, but this was her only option for the moment. Luckily she’d done historical research in college plenty of times, so wide-ranging collections of seemingly unconnected information were nothing new to her. This one had more at stake than her history courses had, but there was a comfort in the familiarity.

Her phone rang again and she picked it up without looking at it, assuming it was James. “Hey, did you find coverage for tonight?”

“Hi, um, Gabriella?”

Elliot’s voice was soft and Gabriella nearly dropped her phone as Fang hopped off her lap and skittered away. “H-hi,” she stammered, grateful Amelia wasn’t in the room to see her face turn bright red.

“Hey, I just wanted to check in with you.”

“I’m fine,” she said, wanting both to get off this call and stay on forever. “Just really busy with the case, that’s all.”

“The case, right,” he said. “It was an earthquake, wasn’t it? Some kind of seismic activity was making the house shake like that.”

Was he serious? “No, it was a ghost,” Gabriella said, resisting the urge to sigh loudly.

Elliot sighed instead, and icy dread flooded back through her body. “Gabriella,” he said. “I know it was messed up, but it wasn’t a ghost. Are you still listening to those people your mom hired?”

“Considering I am one of those people my mom hired?” Gabriella said, outrage making her chest tighten. “Yeah, I am.”

“Look, I didn’t call to fight with you,” Elliot said, in that infuriating patient, patronizing tone. “I just wanted to make sure you were fine.”

“Why wouldn’t I be fine?” Gabriella demanded. “You only completely disregarded everything I’ve told you, called me a criminal, called my cousin and friends criminals, and acted like you were the only one making sense in a chaotic situation. Yeah, Elliot, I’m fine.”

There was silence on the other end and Gabriella could see any chance of reconciliation catch fire and crumble away as her words hung between them. “I’m going to go,” Elliot said. “Look, I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. I guess we’re not as compatible as we thought.”

“No, I guess not.”

Gabriella hung up the phone before Elliot could say anything else, if he was even planning to. There were tears in her eyes again and she was so fucking tired of crying. So rather than give Elliot the satisfaction – even if he had no idea – she wiped her eyes and went back to the dusty, delicate book in front of her.

There was an inn in Greenville, one that she didn’t think was still standing. It came up a couple of times in the small portions of narrative woven throughout the book. According to the text, it was a simple place, just a few rooms for travelers to sleep in before taking off again. Then a small tavern downstairs. And, she realized as she looked at the caption of one of the sketches, it was built in the same part of town as her mother’s house at approximately the same time. Then she flipped the page and saw the faded, yet familiar map.

Wait. Gabriella felt that thrill of excitement again, the tug on a thread that might lead to the answers she was looking for. She took the book over to the computer bank, pushed aside the papers stacked there, and set it carefully down. Then she pulled up a modern map of Greenville and tried to line it up based on the map that she was looking at in the book.

The town didn’t look too different now. Main Street seemed to be in the same location it was in 1825 and the tavern was actually up off of the street her mother currently lived on. Gabriella zoomed in on the modern map, trying to parse out the lots. Her mom’s property was about two acres wide and she could assume that the surrounding ones were as well. And glancing back at the book, it looked like the inn was on her mother’s parcel.

Shit, she’d been going at it all wrong at the historical society the other day. She wasn’t looking for a private residence. The Greenville Inn was either her mom’s house or the business that had been on the land previously. And as she scanned the dates in the book again, it seemed to line up with the building of her mother’s house. Sure, they might be slightly off, but that could easily be chalked up to an estimated date on her mother’s house information or the book’s tavern dates. James would be back and kicking her out any minute, but Gabriella reached for her phone and quickly called her mother.

“Hi sweetheart,” her mom greeted her after two rings. “What’s up?”

“Do you happen to know if your house was a small tavern when it was built?”

There was silence on the other end, indicating this was clearly not the direction her mother expected this call to go in. Then she spoke. “Not that I know of?” she said. “But there are a few things in the details of the house that have made me wonder if it was originally a boarding house of some sort. The way the upstairs hallway is lined up has always felt more like a hotel than a family home. Why?”

“It’s a lead,” Gabriella said. “If your house was the tavern, then maybe the ghost is connected with that. If we find something that happened there, we can use it to make the cleansing more effective.”

“Did the historical society have something?” her mom asked.

“I think I took the wrong approach at the historical society,” Gabriella replied. “I’ll go back tomorrow and see.”

“Isn’t the Hillsborough County branch on it?” her mom asked. “How about you ask them to go instead? I’m sure you have plenty to deal with in Massachusetts.”

Apparently she was quiet just long enough, because her mom laughed. “I get it,” she said. “You only have to work with them a little longer.”

Gabriella laughed too. “They’re not that bad.”

“Right.”

“Okay, they are that bad. But I don’t know, I feel like they wouldn’t go this route. I think when they actually get to your house, Patrick’s going to want to take the quickest route possible, which might not be as effective as moving this specific ghost on, you know?”

“God, you take after Gran so much, you know that?”

The sick pit that had been in her stomach since talking to Elliot earlier was slowly replaced by a warm glow. “I’ll go tomorrow,” Gabriella said. “Or at least call them so we can pick it up.”

“Don’t overdo it,” her mom said.

“I won’t,” Gabriella promised, resisting the urge to cross her fingers like a child. “I’ll see you tomorrow, probably.” Delete

James got into the building about twenty minutes later. “Alright, I’m here,” he said. “You can leave. Go, get.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Gabriella protested as James started ushering her toward the door. “I have a lead to tell you about first.”

He let her sit back down on the couch as he joined her and started eating his supper. Amelia was wrapping up the UFO follow-up before she left for the night, so it was just the two of them as Gabriella filled him in about the tavern.

“It makes sense,” he said. “If we can confirm that her house is the tavern, it’s a solid lead. Maybe there was a murder or an accident or something that’s keeping the ghost contained. We don’t want to just seal it off though, if the ghost can’t be cleansed easily. And after talking to Patrick today, I’m even more worried that’s what he’s going to do.”

“Like at the Jarvis Street School?”

She remembered how indignant Madelyn had been about them sealing a ghost in her elementary school. That was also the meeting where she and Bradley’s fights had reached a boiling point, so she didn’t like to think about it often. But it was important to this case, so she tried to move past the shame that still festered there and focus.

“Exactly,” James said through a bite of salad. “But like you said, if we can tailor a cleansing to this particular ghost, it may be easier to get it done and keep it done.”

“So why is Patrick so hell-bent on doing the other way? Won’t he risk having to redo it? Even outside the fact that this is my mom’s house, it doesn’t seem like a smart approach?”

“Same reason as the Foundation at Jarvis Street back in the seventies,” James said. “It’s fast, it’s convenient, and they’ve got a mountain of other cases just like this one to take care of. So it’ll solve the problem until it is some future team’s problem to deal with. Sometimes they also have a situation where the Foundation promised a result to a powerful client that they might not be able to reasonably achieve. But it’s legally binding.”

The fact that ghost hunting could be legally binding made that familiar anger seep back in, but there was nothing she could do about it. The Foundation was going to act the way it had for hundreds of years and they were just cogs in the machine.

“Here’s the plan,” James said, wiping a spot of dressing off the side of his mouth. “I’ll talk to Patrick tonight. If I can get him on board, you can go to the historical society for any information on the Greenville Tavern tomorrow. Then when I get back around three, we’ll do whatever needs to be done at the house. It could be anything. Hell, chances are slim there’s a body on your mom’s property, but that tends to piss off ghosts too.”

“I bet the county historical society would have it too,” Gabriella said. “I’ll email them tonight and-”

“No, I’ll email them tonight,” James said. “You’re done. We’ll deal with it tomorrow. For now, go. Get out of here.”

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 11