Between the two of them, Madelyn and Gabriella were able to convince Amelia to go home and let them take the night shift. Madelyn was still a little shaky after her second round of the flu, but she was adamant that she was fine to work, even as Amelia protested somewhat weakly. And Madelyn was the one in charge without James or Amelia there, so Gabriella would follow her lead.

She spent the first half of the night shift on her phone, pulling up everything she could about Virginia Richelieu and the lore surrounding her. There wasn’t much beyond what the pamphlet already told her. A woman on her way to Nova Scotia, possibly a dancer. The information wasn’t clear on who she really was, if she even ever existed outside of local stories. But in these stories, she’d been traveling the East Coast and was last seen in a tavern in New Hampshire. It had to be in Greenville. Otherwise, why would they have that specific pamphlet? And Saskia had heard of her, so unless Saskia was an expert in New Hampshire’s obscure lore, this was what they were looking for.

So here she was with a potential lead that might or might not exist. And if she did, then she may or may not have ever set foot in Gabriella’s mother’s house. And if she had, then she might or might not have died on the property. But it was more than they got for some cases, so at least it was a start?

Gabriella scrubbed a hand over her face and took a long sip of one of James’s Diet Cokes, trying to keep her brain focused on the task at hand. Even if her mother officially canceled the case with the Foundation, which Gabriella sincerely hoped she wouldn’t, she was still going to solve it on her own. It wasn’t like it was the first time they’d gone out of bounds with the Foundation. And if it was just her, well, hopefully she’d been doing this job long enough now to be able to cleanse the house effectively on her own.

The New Hampshire state resources didn’t have anything, not that she’d expected them to. After she’d put six books on hold at libraries throughout the state – knowing full well that she’d be taking her day off to drive around and pick them up – Gabriella had to admit she’d hit a wall. So even though it was two in the morning, she headed down to the basement to do her workout.

She’d been off her routine the past week and it showed as she began running a few minutes later. Her legs burned, and she tried to ignore it while also trying to push her mom’s case out of her mind for a little while. They had other things to consider, like the Gundrill case over in Fitchburg. What was showing up on those cameras? It wasn’t anything that could be proven by the police or any of the experts the Foundation worked with to eliminate cases that could be solved with mundane measures. So she was leaning toward a ghost. But probably an energy imprint, rather than an intelligent haunting. After all, it was identical each time and there were no indications that the ghost was trying to communicate with the family.

Clearing up an energy imprint wasn’t exactly simple, so the owners would probably want to just leave it be. Especially if there was no threat to them or their property. So that would wrap that case up. Hopefully there wouldn’t be many others until the entire team was feeling better again.

She was the only one who’d escaped this flu so far this year. But as her chest burned, and she considered giving up running before the three-minute mark, Gabriella knew it was probably a matter of time until she was sick too. And if she got sick before this case was done, then maybe Patrick would just cleanse her mom’s property and be done. Or he’d seal it just like Jarvis Street had been sealed, only to become a bigger problem later.

If her mom stuck with the Foundation, Gabriella had to stay well until the case was over. If she decided to leave, then Gabriella would have to convince her mom to let her do it herself on her days off, a task potentially more difficult than anything the Foundation could give her. Either way, this was going to suck.

The gym door opened a little while later and Madelyn poked her head in. “Gabriella?”

She’d been running in silence, so God only knew how she looked just then. But she turned to Madelyn. “What’s up?”

“We have a case.”

It was three o’clock. Meaning it was either a very hard or a very ridiculous case. “Hang on,” she said, turning the treadmill off.

It slowed down, then stopped. Gabriella stepped off and grabbed the towel she’d hung there. Wiping her face, she made her way over to Madelyn. “What is it?”

“It’s the Gundrill house again,” Madelyn explained as they made their way upstairs. “The owners called in a panic. The thing on the camera was talking to them.”

Fuck. There went the idea that it wasn’t an intelligent haunting. “What did it say?” Gabriella asked, hoping against hope that there’d be time for her to clean up before she had to go over to the house.

“Obscene things,” Madelyn said. “Swearing, sexual stuff. Really gross things and it was loud enough that their six-year-old heard it. They left the house, and the Foundation said we’d send a rep to meet them at their hotel room as soon as possible. Do you mind taking it?”

“Of course,” Gabriella said. “Do I have time to shower?”

“If it’s fast.”

---

Ten minutes later, Gabriella was showered, dressed, and hurrying out the door. The new van was sitting in the driveway. She’d rather take her own car, but in the interest of keeping everything professional, she got in the van and turned it on.

She always hated driving in a van. It was too high up, like she was driving over all the other cars on the road. Riding in the van, whatever, that wasn’t a big deal. But she hardly ever drove it and hated it when she did. Luckily, the roads were nearly empty as she drove in silence, light snowflakes drifting down around her. She passed a couple cars of college kids as she drove, but nothing else. By the time she got to the hotel, she almost felt comfortable in the van.

Almost.

The family was staying at a Holiday Inn just outside of Fitchburg. Gabriella called the number she’d been given as she pulled in and a male voice answered, soft and nervous.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Gabriella McManus from the Foundation for Paranormal Studies.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs.”

He hung up abruptly, and Gabriella slid her phone into her pocket. The air seemed even colder when she got out of the van, so she hurried into the lobby, where the bored night shift auditor barely looked up as she came in. A moment later, a man came out of the elevator. He was probably about thirty-five, with a round build and thinning hair. He smiled at her, but it was strained.

“Sorry to pull you out of bed,” he said.

Gabriella laughed. “Don’t be sorry, I’m on the night shift,” she said as she followed him over to the elevator.

“Did they tell you what happened?”

“The basics,” Gabriella said as the door opened and they stepped inside.

The man shook his head in disgust. “The things it was saying and that voice…my poor son was so scared.”

“And it was the same entity that you’ve been seeing in the security footage? Have you heard it speak before?”

“No, but I don’t see what else it could be,” the man said as the elevator rumbled and groaned its way up to the fourth floor. “I’m Colin, by the way. I don’t think you and I have met.”

“Gabriella,” she said, reaching over to shake his hand.

“Nice to meet you.”

“After this, I’m going to go over to the house and get the footage from our security cameras,” Gabriella said as the elevator doors opened to a somewhat ragged hallway. “We can access some of it remotely, so my captain will be doing that. But the others are so old that we need to actually have the equipment on hand to check it.”

The man laughed and it still sounded frayed, but genuine this time. “The bosses don’t hook you up with new tech for this kind of thing?” he asked.

“Nothing worthwhile.”

This time his laugh was full-throated. “God, that’s half the reason we unionized at my old place,” he said. “You’re not going alone, are you?”

Gabriella shrugged, though the thought of going into that dark yard on her own did send an uneasy shiver through her. “I’m a pro,” she said, hoping her voice sounded more confident than she thought it did.

“Still, though,” Colin said. “How about this? We’ll do this talk, then I’ll leave Jenny with the kid and go over there with you.”

“No, you don’t have-”

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no, I insist. I don’t feel right sending you over there on your own so late at night. And with a friggin’ monster hanging out there as well. I’ll drive over in my car and just meet you there.”

A murderer wouldn’t do that, right? “If you’re sure,” Gabriella said. “I know you’ve had a hard night, I don’t want to keep you up.”

“Like I’m sleeping tonight,” Colin said as they stopped in front of a nondescript hotel room door, one in a sea of dozens. “Alright, here we are. Just keep your voice down a little, Tommy is actually sleeping.”

He cracked the door open and stepped inside. “Just us,” he whispered as a large woman with flowing blonde hair turned from where she sat on the side of the front bed.

She smiled at Gabriella too, but she looked exhausted. “I’m Jenny,” she said. “I think we’ve met?”

“I was there with Amelia the other day, putting up the cameras,” Gabriella said. “So we met in passing.”

“We’re going to go over and get the cameras down after we talk,” Colin said.

Jenny looked hesitant, but she didn’t disagree. Instead, she looked over at the other bed, where a little boy wearing Star Wars pajamas was sound asleep, his arm tossed over his head. “Tommy’s finally out,” she said. “I didn’t think he’d fall asleep after all of that, but he’s a tough kid.”

“What did you hear on the cameras?” Gabriella asked. “And do you mind if I record this on my phone?”

“No problem,” Jenny said. “It was a deep voice, like a demon at first. But then it got really high-pitched. And it was just saying the most vulgar things. They didn’t seem to be directed at any of us in particular, but it was just saying, you know, all this sexual stuff. And religious too. Neither of us are religious, but it was intense. The devil, you know?”

So it was either Father McEnerney’s territory or it was a mischievous spirit. Neither was appealing, but she’d rather go with mischief. “And you said it wasn’t directed at you in particular?”

“It didn’t seem to be,” Colin said, pulling out a chair from the small desk and motioning for Gabriella to take it.

Gabriella sat down and Colin took the spot beside Jenny, putting an arm around her. “There was nothing to make it seem like it was talking to us,” he said. “It didn’t mention names or anything, just the obscenities.”

“And this was on your cameras,” she said. “Was it connected to the Wi-Fi?”

Colin nodded. “Do you think maybe it was someone messing with you?”

Gabriella saw the flash of fear in Jenny’s eyes and the disappointment in Colin’s and realized she’d misspoken. “Not the whole case,” she said quickly. “We believe you, I swear. I believe you and I’m taking it very seriously. The Foundation wouldn’t have sent us if you hadn’t passed all of their tests.”

The couple relaxed slightly and Gabriella mentally kicked herself, praying that was enough to solve the problem. God, Amelia was going to kill her if she fucked this up. “I mean this part in particular,” she said, keeping her voice soft while trying to emphasize exactly how much she believed them. “I want to get the footage from our cameras as well, since the ones we’re getting tonight aren’t on Wi-Fi. The one that sends footage back to our headquarters obviously is though. So I’m going to compare the results of both.”

“Thank you,” Jenny said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to doubt you. It’s just that we’ve gotten a lot of flack from people who think we’re making it up.”

“I get it,” she said. “And you haven’t heard this voice on any other devices? Baby monitors? Phones?”

“We don’t have baby monitors anymore,” Colin said.

“And I haven’t heard it anywhere else, either,” Jenny added.

Gabriella nodded. She wished James or Amelia were here, but so far she apparently wasn’t making a total mess of things on her own. “Alright, here’s the plan,” she said. “I’m going to get the cameras and go over those tapes. The day shift will also do it, just to get an extra set of eyes and ears. Someone will contact you at some point tomorrow. I do have to ask for patience though. Our team is absolutely decimated by the flu right now, so it might not be until a little later.”

They both cringed sympathetically. “We’ll plan to stay here another night, just in case,” Jenny said.

“Good call,” Gabriella said.

She glanced at the little boy, who grumbled something in his sleep and rolled onto his side. The poor thing, he was too young to be dealing with this. When she’d been his age, there’d been ghosts and entities, sure. But they flickered in the corner and occasionally sang upstairs when no one was home. Never something reenacting The Exorcist for fun.

“Do you think it’s a demon?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know,” Gabriella admitted. “It doesn’t seem like it. But if it turns out to be something along those lines, we’ll be calling a priest in to help.”

That was about all she could do from here, so she thanked them and got up. Colin stood up again as she did so.

“I mean it,” he said. “I want to follow you back to the house to make sure you’re alright. I won’t forgive myself if I don’t and something happens.”

He seemed sincere, and she was armed. And to be honest, the idea of going there alone was not appealing. She planned to call Madelyn and keep her on the phone, but it wasn’t the same as having another person there. And James would be pissed if she did so, even though it wasn’t like there were multiple options, just like he’d told her. Leaving the cameras until tomorrow gave the entity time to mess with them and left less time for them to investigate. So she agreed and the two of them walked back to the elevator together.

---

The yard was small, neatly kept, and completely fenced in. Although Colin said the floodlights were working fine, the backyard was dark when they arrived. Gabriella knew where the cameras were located and of course, most of them were swallowed by the darkness. Walking out from the equally dark kitchen, she was glad Colin had convinced her to let him come with her. This feeling only doubled when she saw that her phone battery had gone from eighty percent to zero in seconds, cutting her off from Madelyn seconds after they set up the call.

She stepped down onto a neat brick patio, keeping her footsteps as soft as possible. The bag for the equipment hung loose on her shoulder and she started walking toward the first camera, one that wasn’t connected to any Wi-Fi networks and didn’t have the capacity to ever do so. She thrust her shoulders back and walked with a confidence that didn’t reflect her real feelings on the matter.

“FUCK YOU, YOU LITTLE SLUT.”

The voice crackled over the speakers, so loud that it was distorted. Although she’d expected it, a small noise of surprise still escaped her mouth. Gabriella backed up, lifting her flashlight and quickly scanning the area. There was nothing to be seen. Even the little red light on the camera wasn’t visible the way it usually would be.

“I’LL KILL YOU WHILE YOU’RE SLEEPING.”

She tried to ignore it, reaching for the camera straps with shaking hands. Colin stood behind her, his own flashlight moving across the small yard. A swing set was set up in the corner, underneath another camera. She saw Colin’s beam linger on it for a moment, then she turned to the second strap, unhooking the camera. She popped the batteries out of their compartment, then stuffed the camera in the bag with less care than the Foundation would prefer. A low moan, similar to the one she’d heard at her mother’s house, came out for a second before cutting off abruptly.

One down. Nodding at Colin, Gabriella took a step toward the next camera.

“ANOTHER STEP AND I’LL CUT YOUR THROAT.”

Gabriella froze. She knew it probably wasn’t true, but she was here alone except for a civilian. There were a few more cameras to go, and she had no backup. Nor had she or Madelyn considered keeping her on comms, a decision they were both going to hear about later. Not that it would have made a big difference anyway, since Madelyn couldn’t leave headquarters empty.

Why had the Foundation insisted she had to get the cameras tonight? For all their talk about having less time to investigate, she knew that wasn’t the primary reason for the rush. Was it to get the proper paperwork on the right desk tomorrow when someone got to work? She thought back to what Colin and Jenny had said about it not seeming to be directed at them. But something was clearly watching her movements in the yard.

“Let’s go,” Colin said.

“I need-”

“Let’s go.”

His voice was calm, but firm. Normally, she’d tell him she had everything under control, that this was protocol. But it was bullshit protocol that had her out here right now and both Amelia and James would agree with Colin. So she took a step back, keeping her eye on the darkness the entire time. Colin walked beside her, surprisingly calm despite the situation. They got into the house and he slid the patio door shut.

“Tell them I was belligerent,” he said, his voice soft as they went through the house toward the front door. It was warmer in here, missing that tinge of malice she’d felt in the backyard. “I wouldn’t let you on my property. I don’t know, I threatened you with a shotgun.”

Despite her pounding heart, Gabriella laughed. “I’m not telling them that,” she said. “But don’t go back in the yard. Not until Father McEnerney has had a chance to see it. We’ll come back in the daylight.”

Colin didn’t argue with her, which she was grateful for as they went out the front door. Despite the fact that the house seemed safer than the yard, Gabriella didn’t breathe easily until they were off the property and on the sidewalk.

“Go back to the hotel,” she said. “You can’t be in that house. If it’s a financial issue, we’ll deal with it, but don’t go back in. I’ll bring this camera to my team and see what footage is on it. We’re going to resolve this for you.”

“I’m not sure I ever want to bring my son back in there,” Colin murmured.

He sounded more sad than scared and Gabriella didn’t know what to say. “You’re keeping him safe,” she said, trying to give an encouraging smile.

Colin nodded, seeming lost in thought. “Thank you,” he said. “Have a safe trip back to work.”

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 14