The first thing Gabriella saw at headquarters the next morning was James sitting in the living room, reading a book in the dim light of the lamp on the couch’s side table. Normally when she got in after he’d done a night shift (or after any shift), she’d see him hurriedly writing reports or dealing with some irritating bullshit that the Foundation had tossed on him at the last minute. But this time, he was contentedly sitting at the end of the couch with an old knit blanket on his knees, reading something with a garishly bright cover. As she came up the stairs, he looked up from his book and grinned.

“Gabs!” he said. “Good morning. Thank you so much for coming in.”

“Of course,” Gabriella said as she took off her coat and draped it over the post at the top of the stairs.

“Coffee’s on, help yourself.”

The house was quiet as she walked into the kitchen. Years back, the Foundation had purchased this suburban raised ranch house as the Leominster headquarters for the North Worcester County Branch. While they’d moved in and adapted it into a functioning headquarters, it didn’t actually look much different than she assumed it had during its residential days. The kitchen was small and messy, with overflowing counters and an oven built into the wall that she’d never seen anybody use. Beside the kitchen was a small dining room that was completely taken over by an enormous oak table that had come with the house. As always, the table was also cluttered, covered in weapons and supplies they used in various cases. Across the table, James’s office door was closed. And from where Gabriella stood in the kitchen, she could see past the table and back into the living room, where a small bank of computers took up about half the room.

“Is anyone else here?” she called to James as she poured coffee into a small, chipped pink mug.

“Not yet,” he replied. “Amelia was supposed to be on today and tonight. So I sent Bradley home early so he can overlap with you, then take the night shift. He’ll be back at three.”

She didn’t imagine that had happened without a fight, especially if it meant leaving James alone in the headquarters. As she walked back into the living room, James had set his book aside.

“So you’ve been here alone?” she asked. “You should have let me know, I would have come in earlier.”

“It’s fine,” James said. “It’s been slow. Plus, Bradley made me keep the radio on in case something happened.”

He motioned to the two-way radio she hadn’t noticed on the table. The red power light was glowing where it sat next to James’s can of Diet Coke. “It was the only way I was getting him the hell out of here,” he said. “I considered turning it off, but I didn’t want to deal with him after I did that.”

“If you turn it off, I’m coming back now.”

Bradley’s voice was slightly crackly through the speaker and James jumped. Gabriella tried hard to keep her laughter to herself as James swept the radio up off the table and held it to his mouth.

“Breaker, breaker, this is Headquarters to Funny Bone Donahue. Funny Bone, go the fuck to bed and leave me alone, it’s been hours, over.”

There was silence on the other end, and James winked at Gabriella. Finally, Bradley sighed.

“Gabriella is there?” he confirmed.

“Right here,” Gabriella said.

“I’ll see you at noon then.”

“Three.”

“Whatever.”

There was a click as Bradley disconnected, then James flipped the radio switch to off and the red light went out. “He dug those out of the closet,” James said. “Wouldn’t leave until both of them were on and working.”

Gabriella had to agree with Bradley on that one. James had a habit of pushing the others to get some time away from their work, while he basically lived and breathed his career. She knew something had gone on with the Foundation after the Delinsky case a couple months ago that concerned him. James didn’t talk about it much beyond telling her McGovern had wanted to change some things and James didn’t think it was practical. But it didn’t take a genius to figure it out, just someone who knew how both the Delinsky family and the Foundation worked. And all she could feel was overwhelming gratitude toward James for helping them avoid becoming the Delinskys’ personal paranormal service. Which was the main reason she’d given him minimal grief, and hadn’t told Amelia, when he’d called her for work updates during his vacation.

“If you want to take a break, I’ll watch the phones for a while,” Gabriella said.

“I’m good, but thanks.”

Typical. James started to get up, then paused as he realized Gabriella was still looking at him.

“What?” he asked.

“You’ve been here solo since when?”

“Two. But Bradley was on the radio with me.”

“Doesn’t count,” Gabriella said. “Six hours. Go take a break. I’ll watch the phones.”

She could see James itching to argue with her, but she wasn’t concerned. She might have been about ten years younger and his subordinate, but she was his cousin and she wasn’t afraid of him. Not that anybody here was.

Finally, he relented. “You’ll come get me if you need anything?”

“Anything at all,” Gabriella promised.

“Fine. I’ll be in the back bedroom.”

He picked up his book and started walking back toward the bedrooms. There were three of them at the end of the hall that went past the kitchen. Two of the rooms were familiar to Gabriella, one with gray walls and one pink. They were simple bedrooms available for the team during overnight shifts or breaks. There was also a back bedroom that was similar to the others, but with a small communications station set up and one bed. Gabriella knew that Bradley tended to claim that one, but Amelia and James seemed to use it pretty frequently too. Something about going in there made her hesitate though. Like it was for senior officers only or something.

Gabriella had been here about nine months now, but was nowhere near a senior anything. She was, however, fairly established as the team researcher, though James was still getting everybody’s positions officially recognized by the Foundation. And, most importantly, the team seemed to be mostly past what had happened during her first month here. When Robin had manipulated her into turning against the team and blaming James for a case that went wrong.

Now she was nearly alone in the headquarters, which wasn’t something that happened often. Knowing James was down the hall, probably staying awake and listening for the phones even if he wasn’t supposed to, was comforting. But there was also a little thrill to having the place to herself early in the morning. It was warm in here and the light was soft as the lamp tossed shadows over the living room/command area. As she glanced out the window, she realized a little snow was starting to drift over the front yard.

The coziness of Headquarters right now was the only thing making this time of year tolerable. February was always her least favorite month. The festivities of the holiday season were over and she was so ready to have warm weather again. The snowy world that had been so pretty in December was just kind of gross now. And working out inside had lost nearly all of its appeal. In the spring, she could take walks around her neighborhood. But right now, she only had a small space in her apartment to exercise in when she wasn’t here. And here, there was a crappy little gym in the basement, replacing what had clearly been the last owner’s storage space and man cave.

There was also a medical room downstairs, a tight space slightly smaller than the living room that was filled with storage boxes and old medical gear. Luckily it didn’t need to be used anymore since the Foundation had enough connections with local hospitals. She knew the Foundation was starting to get a little stingy with healthcare – which was concerning – but thankfully that little horror movie set downstairs had stayed sealed up since she’d been here.

Gabriella sat down on the couch and pulled out her phone, opening her own book to read while she babysat the landline. She’d just take a few minutes and wake up with her coffee, then check her email and start the day. The case she’d been talking to Elliot about last night was nearly wrapped up, but there were probably some others that were making their way into the automated scheduling system right now.

The door opened about an hour later and her teammate Graham walked in. Graham was slightly shorter than her, and stocky, with dark skin and warm eyes. He was the newest member of the team, a former college professor and James’s roommate. Professor Becker – a title he’d been happy to drop – joined the Foundation after nearly being killed by a cryptid on his college campus. He had pepper sprayed the creature and was hired by the Foundation days later.

“Are you on your own?” he asked as he reached the top of the stairs.

Gabriella shook her head. “James is taking a break,” she replied. “Amelia’s out. She’s got the flu.”

The back bedroom door opened, and she heard James walk out. “Hey, I thought I heard you come in.”

He came down the hall, quickly followed by Fang, their resident cat. James ducked the cat as she tried to weave between his legs, then sat down on the couch a little ways away from Gabriella. Fang sat down in the middle of the room and began to casually groom herself. “We’re going to be shorter staffed than usual today,” James said, picking up the soda can he’d left there a little while ago. “Amelia and Madelyn are both out, and I moved Bradley to the overnight tonight. So it’s just the three of us until he gets back at three.”

“What’s on the schedule?” Graham asked, sitting in the chair beside the couch.

“I’ve got one case so far,” James said. “There’s a woman over in Royalston who thinks her basement is haunted. The Foundation sent over the basics, so it’ll be a typical investigate and cleanse, I hope. I have to check the system for more, but I’m sure they’re there. Gabs, you want to take comms?”

Gabriella hadn’t actually been on comms on her own before on an official case, but James knew that. And the way he was looking at her, he was trying to spin this into a great training moment instead of a crisis of severe understaffing. So she swallowed a sigh, then nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Perfect. Me and Graham will go into the field for this one. Um, staff meeting now, I guess. Since no one else is here.”

He went over to the computer and pulled up a PowerPoint, projecting it onto the small screen that was hanging over the unused fireplace. “Bradley made this before he left last night,” he said. “He was planning to give this presentation, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

James cleared his throat theatrically, glared at them both, then at the screen. “The house,” he started, in a pretty decent impression of Bradley’s fed-up snarl. “It’s haunted. Look, ghosts.”

He clicked through an effect of a spinning clip art ghost to a picture of the house. “Okay, but for real,” he said, back in his usual tone. “It’s a straightforward case. We’ve got a small family house, built sometime around 1870 with no major skeletons in the closet. The only person living there is the woman who called it in. Ricki Donahue. No relation to Bradley, actually. I checked already. She bought the property about two years ago and has been slowly rehabbing it. She said there are shadow people in the basement, cool spots, all the usual things. I’m thinking we do both the investigation and the cleansing today before anything new comes in. Questions?”

Graham and Gabriella looked at each other, then back at James with matching shrugs. James nodded. “Solves that then. Gabs, how are you feeling about the communications equipment?”

There was one computer set up for controlling the mission, the one with a monitor that could actually handle having two windows open at once. Madelyn tended to take this role, but Gabriella had observed her plenty of times and had spent about ten minutes alone on comms months ago when James had gone on an unofficial stop at the Jarvis Street School. The equipment was pretty straightforward, but that wasn’t what she was concerned about.

“It’s fine,” she said. “But is there anything special I need to do for the case?”

“What do you mean?” James asked.

“Is it recorded for the Foundation’s records? Or is there any special training required?”

“None beyond what you got in the training modules,” James replied. “And no, it’s not recorded. They tried that years ago, and it screwed up the system.”

It had been a few months, but Gabriella was pretty sure her comms training module had been composed of little beyond the fact that they existed and people used them to communicate with staff members in the field. But apparently that was all she needed, so she just nodded and smiled.

---

A little while later, Graham and James were on their way to Royalston, a town about an hour away from them. It was a small, quiet rural community that was apparently ideal for ghosts. She stayed on the line as they drove, the two of them deep in conversation about the broken oven in their new apartment, which was about a block away from headquarters.

“-makes you think he’s actually going to replace it?” Graham asked James.

“I don’t think he will. I’m just wondering if it’s worth the effort to buy one, then take it out of our rent. Like, when do we reach that point? Because there were sparks flying from that thing yesterday.”

Gabriella’s phone rang just as the two of them were pulling up to the house, still debating whether to replace their oven. She glanced down and saw it was Elliot calling. That was unusual. She was tempted to pick it up, but she needed to focus on the team. So she kept one eye on her phone as she confirmed visuals. James and Graham got their gear together and her phone began buzzing again. Once more, Elliot’s name glowed on the screen.

A voicemail notification popped up. Elliot was a texter, like her. So leaving a voicemail was even more unusual. Immediately, her phone began to ring again. Okay, this had to be something.

“James,” she said, interrupting a conversation that had now turned toward a broken shower. “I’m sorry, I’m getting a few calls on my personal phone.”

She waited for the lecture that may or may not come from James, but he could clearly read her worry through the comms. “Go ahead and answer it,” he said. “Just do me a favor and stay on visuals.”

“Got it.”

She picked up her phone, pushing one earpiece aside to do so. “Elliot?”

“Hey, Gabriella, I’m sorry I’m calling you at work.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she said, resisting the urge to get up and start pacing the living room while they talked. “What’s going on?”

“Look, everything’s okay, but your mom got hurt while we were cleaning up her yard.”

Gabriella’s body turned to ice where she sat. “What happened?”

“She fell in the house and my dad brought her to the doctor. It’s probably just a twisted ankle, but none of us wanted to take any chances.”

“Gabs,” James’s voice broke in, and she realized he could hear the conversation, or at least part of it, over the comms. “Everything okay?”

“Hang on,” she said. “Something happened with my mom.”

“She’s okay,” Elliot repeated, assuaging Gabriella’s worries the tiniest bit. “She said it felt like something pushed her. So there was probably something wrong with the flooring.”

“Gabs, do you need me to head back to headquarters,” James said.

“Who’s that?” Elliot asked.

“Sorry,” she said to Elliot. “I’m on comms at work. James, my mom got hurt.”

“Shit,” James murmured. “If I leave here now, it’ll take me an hour to get back. Can you wait that long?”

She technically could, even if she was dying to rush out of here and leave Headquarters empty and open to the apocalypse. Elliot said she was fine, but Gabriella wasn’t going to believe it until she saw for herself. “Actually, you know what?” James continued. “Call Bradley, he’ll be able to get there faster than I can.”

In any other situation, she’d feel guilty about calling someone else in so soon after they’d left. But right now there was nothing but relief at that idea. “I can leave in a few minutes,” Gabriella said into her phone to Elliot, moving the mouthpiece of the comms headset over slightly. “Text me the name of the clinic and I’ll head out.”

“Don’t speed,” Elliot said. “She’s alright. She’ll probably be mad that I worried you.”

“No, thank you for calling.”

She disconnected. “Calling Bradley,” she said into the mouthpiece.

“If he can’t do it, you leave and I’ll head over,” James responded. “McGovern will have to deal with the lack of coverage.”

She quickly found Bradley in her contacts and called him. He picked up after two rings.

“What?”

“James asked me to call,” she said, voice shaking despite the knowledge that her mother would be alright. “My mom got hurt at home and I have to go. But I’m at Headquarters alone and he’s an hour away.”

“I’ll head out now.”

Before she could say thank you, Bradley hung up. Gabriella set down her phone and it buzzed as Elliot texted her the address of the clinic. Then she sat in the too-quiet living room, the minutes stretching before her as she waited to leave.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 3