James didn’t go to Gran’s house nearly as often these days. It had been years since Gran died and Auntie Jules had taken over the home. And he loved Auntie Jules, but it wasn’t like he was going over there weekly for supper the way he had as a teenager. He was mostly there for special occasions. She hosted a big Christmas party every year, and occasional other events, but he never just dropped in anymore.

Still, the house looked almost the same as it had throughout his entire childhood as he pulled up out front. A large, historic home in Lancaster, not too far from the Leominster town line. It was white with black shutters on each of the windows, the paint not quite faded, but definitely not brand new. A wooden porch took up the length of the front of the house and curled around the left-hand side, away from the driveway, with no railings, but an old swing and a few small chairs resting on it. Pots filled with wilting flowers sat on each stair and lined the edge of the floorboards. 

The swing was just like the one at Auntie Ruth’s house nearby. It had been there since James was a baby and he always found comfort in it, even now. As he started across the small neat lawn, he spotted Penny stretched out on the swing, reading a book. “Hey, Pen!”

Penny sat up, startled, then relaxed as she saw James. “Hi, Uncle James.”

“Your mom inside?”

“Yeah. Were you at work?”

James laughed. “Sure was. And I’m going back after this.”

“Can I come?” “No.” “Please? I can help.”

The Foundation was probably pro-child labor, or at least wouldn’t say no if it meant saving a few dollars on labor costs. But absolutely not. He got nervous enough about Gabriella working there and she was twelve years older than Penny. And a fully grown adult who could make that (terrible) decision on her own.

“Sorry, you have to be an adult,” he said.

She looked like she actually wanted to argue with him, but then sighed. “Fine.”

“I’m going to go talk to your mom. See you in a little bit.”

“Sure.”

She laid back down on the swing and picked up her book. Ghost Stories of the White Mountains, he saw on the cover.

“Hey, is the nun of Mount Washington there?” he asked.

“What?”

“The ghost nun? Spotted on Mount Washington?”

Penny flipped to the front of the book. “Nope.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised. That’s a cool one, I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

She looked much happier as she smiled at him this time. James grinned at her, then walked into the house.

Like the outside, the inside had only changed so much since he was younger. The front foyer was filled with jackets and shoes, the stairs along the wall currently scattered with bags and lunchboxes. Family photos lined the walls and he could see Sears photoshoot pictures of himself and Gabriella as toddlers among them. There were also a few religious pictures, some carefully chosen artwork, and further down toward the spacious kitchen, a line of paintings from his cousin Bobby, who was an artist in Tampa Bay. 

“Hey, Cel?” he called.

“Hang on!”

Celia’s voice came from up the steep, narrow staircase, which led to a long hallway with five bedrooms. Downstairs, there was also a much smaller bedroom off of the living room. It might have been a parlor of some sort in the past, meant to be the actual room used for everyday life while the more formal living room was for display only. Not that it ever was, during Gran’s years or now with Auntie Jules ruling the home. When he looked into the wide, wood-paneled living room, the first thing he saw was a Barbie dollhouse with three naked Barbies towering around a table made for much smaller dolls. A plastic cup half-filled with juice sat abandoned beside it and James slipped in to prevent the inevitable spill whenever Krissy came back to her game.

Gabriella and Auntie Carrie had lived with Gran for a few years after Uncle Rob died. It had been a sudden heart attack at forty-eight. They’d been living in Leominster and lost their apartment shortly after his death. In those years, James had spent hours at this house every week. He’d been twenty-four and living with some friends in Leominster while working for the Foundation. But he’d also driven Gabriella to school three days a week, dropping her off at the high school before going into work on the days Auntie Carrie couldn’t drive her. 

He and the cousins had been here a lot on the weekends anyway, but it seemed like during those years, the cousins filtered in and out of the house even more frequently than they ever did before or after. They never talked about it, but he knew they were all trying to be there for Gabs and her mom. 

James set the juice on one of the small side tables in the front hallway, putting it on top of a little purple coaster. The tables were all antiques, but not too good to hold car keys and coffee mugs. And they blended in better that way. The inside of the house was all warm hardwoods, with what he was pretty sure were the original floors. Gabs would know better than him what was original and what Gran had replaced and kept as close to the original as possible. He’d have to ask her later when he got back to work.

Speak of the devil, his phone rang with Gabriella’s name on the display. “Hey, Gabs,” he said.

“Hi.”

She didn’t sound too happy. “What’s wrong?”

“So you know how you sent me here hours ago?”

Oh, no. “Yeah?”

“So I got here a little while ago. Traffic was bad, whatever. But when I got here, the woman at the front desk said that the mailroom was closed for lunch. So I waited an hour, which sucked. But I texted Amelia about it, since I knew you were off for a couple hours. Sorry for calling you, by the way. But she said I should now.”

“No big, I’m just waiting to talk to Celia, anyway. So what’s going on?”

“The mail room is closed for the whole afternoon. I saw the guy come back, and I went to ask him for the key. But he said they’re closing up right now. It should have been completely closed when he left, but he’d forgotten his jacket. And he was such a dick about it too. He said there was a staff meeting he had to go to and he couldn’t help me. James, I’ve been waiting here for two hours.”

James took a breath, then let it out slowly before saying what he actually wanted to say. “Alright,” he said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Have you ever spoken to McGovern, our branch liaison?”

“No, but you’ve told me about him.”

“Okay. I’m going to call him right now. He’s the one who said to go today, so he better help you. I’ll call you back in a minute. Are you still at the Foundation building?”

“I’m outside in the parking lot.”

“You enjoy some people watching for a few minutes and I’ll call you back.”

He hung up with her and called McGovern’s office phone, fingers drumming impatiently on his leg as the call connected. It rang three times before McGovern answered.

“You said for me to send someone today for the files from Records, right?” James confirmed, as though he didn’t know the answer to that.

“Yes, is someone going to come?”

“Someone’s been there for two hours,” James said. “Gabriella got there, was told she had to wait until the mailroom was open after lunch, then was told by the staffer at the mailroom that they couldn’t help her.”

“No, they know that it’s part of their department now,” McGovern said. 

“He said the mailroom is closed for a staff meeting.”

“Oh.” Something about the way he said that chilled James slightly. He wasn’t going to ask, but he had the feeling that the mailroom staffer wasn’t going to have a job after this meeting and he wouldn’t be the only one. “Alright,” McGovern said, voice gratingly cheerful again. “Send her to me. I don’t have access to the mailroom, but I can get someone who does.”

“Thank you.”

“Any time.”

He hung up as Celia came into the hallway. “Sorry,” James said. “I just gotta call Gabriella back real quick.”

“Take your time.”

Celia went into the kitchen as he called Gabriella. “Go to McGovern’s office, Floor Three, Room Eight. He’s going to find someone who has a key to the mailroom so that he can get you the key to the Records Office.”

“This is ridiculous, right? I’m not just being demanding?”

“No, it’s a mess. I’m going to go back to Headquarters after I’m done with Celia, so I can take the rest of your shift here at home. Don’t worry about getting back by then.”

The silence on the other end showed him clearly how she felt about the plan. “Should I come back another time?” she asked.

“No, we don’t need to waste the trip, not now that McGovern is going to take care of it,” James said, with more confidence than that statement deserved. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t worry about any of your research from today,” James said. “That can wait til tomorrow. I’ll just be there as a body in case there’s an emergency.”

“Okay. There were a few things on the board when I left, and Amelia said Bradley’s on the overnight tonight.”

“Perfect,” James said. “I’ll go chill with Bradley. We’ll watch rom-coms and make popcorn.”

“Sounds wonderful. I’ll call you when I get everything.”

“Thanks.”

Celia had tea going when James got into the kitchen a moment later. “I know she’s an adult, but I still can’t believe you actually work with Gabriella.”

“I feel the same way sometimes,” James admitted. “Like, ‘I used to babysit you. I remember the day you were born. Why am I sending you to fight monsters?’ But she’s great.”

Celia gestured toward the boxes of tea on the wooden shelf behind her. “Earl Grey, green with jasmine, or black?”

“Green please.”

He wasn’t a big tea drinker, despite Amelia’s many attempts. But a few minutes later he had a fragrant mug in front of him and they were sitting at Gran’s old wooden table, sunlight streaming into the room through the big windows over the sink.

“Alright, tell me what you know,” James said, pulling out his notebook. “Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense, I just need details for now.”

“There really isn’t that much,” Celia admitted. “Krissy’s never been a fearful kid, you know? We moved into the house when Penny was six, so we’ve been there her whole life. And when she started talking about monsters in her room, I figured it was just because of the scary movies. She’s so into them, especially when she watches them with Penny. And they’re not like actual horror movies. I’m not letting her watch Poltergeist or anything. But the tween ones? Like that high school zombie one. You know what I mean?”

James did not, in fact, know what she meant. But it didn’t matter. “When did she start talking about the monster?”

“It was over the summer. She came downstairs about twenty minutes after bedtime and said she saw something in her room.”

“Was it in the closet or was it in the room itself?”

“The room, over by the window. She said it looked like a monster. I checked, since this was unusual for her. But I looked through the whole room and there was nothing. I thought maybe an animal got in, like a squirrel or something. Or that someone was being creepy outside somehow. But there was nothing. And then she said it again the next night. I looked, but there was nothing. And it just kept going.”

“Was it every night?”

“Not every night,” Celia said. “But a lot of nights. And I was so tired. Jenny was teething, and it was hard to get her to sleep through the night. And I started getting frustrated because I figured it had to be an attention thing. She wasn’t doing it at her dad’s house, just at mine.”

“Was it the same every time?”

Celia shook her head, clearly trying to hold back tears. “Hey, Cel,” James said, dropping any pretense of distance. “It’s not your fault.”

“I should have checked everything. James, I should have found what was in my daughter’s room.”

James reached across the table and took her hand. “I barely did and I’ve been chasing these things for thirteen years,” he said. “That’s the only reason I spotted it. Were you turning on the light?”

“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And yes, it changed, sorry. It went from being in her room to being in her closet. And then it was only her closet. I looked a few times, but finally I just started turning on the light to show her there was nothing, then putting her back to bed.”

“So here’s my thought,” James said. “I want to do this case outside of official channels. If we send it to the Foundation, it’ll take years to get to it.”

“I can wait. You don’t have to-”

“I’m working on a case from 1920 right now. I’m not exaggerating. But we need to figure out what is in the house before you guys can go back. I’ll have to do it around official cases, so it might take a little while. But it’ll be faster than going to the Foundation with it.”

“Just don’t get in trouble for me,” Celia said.

James grinned at her over his tea, and she finally laughed. “I’m heading back to work for a bit. Do you mind if I go over there tomorrow and check it out?” he asked. “I’d like to figure out what the best approach is.”

“Go for it,” Celia said. “The girls are staying here tonight, then Adam has them for the week.”

“Are you staying here?”

“Mom’s not going to let me back in that house.”

James laughed. “No, for real,” Celia insisted. “She said she’d go in and get whatever we needed. And she did. I shouldn’t have given her that spare key.”

She was laughing as she said it. For a second, James wanted to be mad about Auntie Jules putting herself in danger. But it wasn’t like the previous generation were completely ignorant about these things, not by a long shot. Uncle Tommy hunted vampires whenever he felt like it in his thirties (and might still? James was afraid to ask) and he knew his mother and aunts had done more than they were willing to let on. It was mostly the in-laws who brought their skepticism in, and that was the minority of them. But Gran had six daughters and two sons, and all of them knew to respect the forces beyond understanding.

James stayed for another thirty minutes, setting up a plan and then getting caught up in a conversation about some things that had been happening in the family lately. By the time he got back to headquarters, he was tired, but feeling confident about that small aspect of his life, at least.

“Gabriella called,” Amelia said as he was walking in. “She’s stuck in a whole legal mess of who’s responsible for photocopying and physical materials. I mean, the cost of the ink and paper. Not the priceless records, just the shit that can be ordered from Staples.”

“So she’s still in Boston,” James confirmed, his hopes of maybe sleeping in his own bed tonight fading away.

“You should go home,” Amelia said. “I’ll hang out for a while.”

“Nah, you’ve been on since yesterday,” James said. “Go, take a break.”

It took a few minutes of convincing, but she finally headed out, leaving James and Graham in the building. Graham was in the back bedroom, working on some zoology modules the Foundation had sent over, so James spent the next few hours in his office, catching up on paperwork. 

By the time Gabriella arrived back at Headquarters, it was nearly ten PM and she was almost in tears. She had one large box in her hands and she dropped it on the lone empty chair in front of James’s desk. “How does the Foundation even exist?” she demanded through her exhaustion as she collapsed onto the couch.

“I am so sorry I sent you there,” James said. “If I’d known shit was this bad, I would have gone myself.”

She shook her head, her blonde hair falling in her face. “It’s fine. McGovern was fine, he was actually pretty helpful, all things considered. But everyone was so checked out and it was such a mess. And the fighting, oh my God. James. I thought we were bad. Everyone was sniping at each other and I just wanted to go home. And the asshole from the mailroom kept staring at my face as he was fighting with McGovern. He barely even tried to hide it.”

“I’ll go next time,” he repeated, unsure what else there was to say.

“It’s fine, really,” Gabriella said. “Thanks for staying for my shift, you didn’t have to.”

Probably not, nothing had actually happened. “Bradley’s in in about fifteen minutes,” James said. “How about you head out and I’ll wait for him.”

“And then you’ll go home?”

He was tempted to just go sleep on his office couch, but it was less than a block to his bed, wasn’t it? And he’d have to listen to Bradley yell at him for staying, then Gabriella would do the same when she found out. Because she would. 

“Yeah, I’ll head out then.”

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 11