It was almost eleven when James pulled up in front of Headquarters. The girls were still crying, but as he turned off the car, he turned and looked at them. Penny wiped her eyes and watched him cautiously.

“I’m going to call your mom as soon as we’re inside,” he said. “This is where I work and it’s very safe. So we’re going to stay here, just for a little while.”

“Is it like Nana Jules’s house?” Penny asked.

Nana Jules was Celia’s mom, who had taken over Gran’s house after Gran died. “It’s a lot like Nana Jules’s,” he said. “Can you get Krissy out while I get Jenny?”

Krissy was still crying in the backseat. “He’s real,” she sobbed as Penny helped her unbuckle her seatbelt. “I told you he was real!”

Jenny didn’t cry as James pulled her out of her seat, but still squirmed unhappily in his arms. They were still on the sidewalk, but the front door opened and Amelia stepped out onto the stoop.

“James?” she called over. “What’s going on?”

“There was a shadow figure of some kind in the house,” he said as he marched the girls across the front yard and up the stairs. “I need to call their mom, we couldn’t stay in the house. But my aunt’s out of town so I couldn’t bring them to her house. This just seemed safest.”

“Of course. Come on in.”

Amelia moved aside so he could get the girls upstairs into the living room. Krissy still cried quietly, but Jenny was settling down now as James rocked her in the kitchen doorway. “The pink bedroom is free,” Amelia said. “Gabriella is taking a call in the back bedroom, but she’ll be out soon.”

Despite the unexpected case that had just dropped itself on his lap, James looked curiously at the closed door. “Hillsborough County,” Amelia said, voice heavy with meaning.

Oh, James didn’t like that very much. “Ah.”

Not a good time to interrupt. “Alright,” he said. “Penny, bring Krissy to that pink bedroom right there, alright? I’ll be in in just a sec, I gotta call your mom.”

Penny nodded and steered Krissy into the open doorway of the pink bedroom. Jenny was curled into James’s shoulder, letting out little gasping sobs as he awkwardly fished out his phone out of his pocket. 

“Want me to…” Amelia started, gesturing toward the baby.

“Nah, I’m scared to move her,” James admitted as he dialed the hospital’s number. “Hi, I’m looking for a nurse there, Celia McManus? Floor Four? I’m her babysitter.”

The operator transferred him to a nursing station that took his information, and a second later, Celia was on the line. “Celia,” James said. “The girls are okay, but we had a situation.”

If he was going to explain anything like this to any of his family members, talking about why he had to take their children out of their beds in the middle of the night and bring them to his workplace, he was glad it was Celia.  “The girls are fine,” he said, once he’d gone through the events of the night. “I don’t have a key for your mom’s place, so I brought them here.”

“I can try to get out now,” she said. “Can I call you back in about five minutes?”

“Yeah, no problem. I’m going to just get them tucked in for a little while.”

He hung up with Celia just as Gabriella walked out of the back bedroom. She had a piece of paper in her hand and was clearly about to say something to Amelia, but stopped midway down the hall as she caught sight of James. “James, did you kidnap a baby?”

“Fuck off,” James said, then glanced at the pink bedroom where the other kids were clearly in earshot.

“Auntie Gabbie?” Krissy called in a watery voice.

Gabriella looked at Amelia, who motioned for her to go into the bedroom. She did, then James turned back to Amelia. “I’m so sorry for bringing them here.”

She shrugged. “It’s not like you’re going to leave them at the house. Don’t worry about it.”

James’s phone rang, and Jenny didn’t stir as he answered. “James, they’re not letting me leave,” Celia said, almost in tears. “There’s not enough staff tonight and I have to stay until my shift ends at six or I might get fired. I can still-”

“Celia, no,” James said. “Your bosses suck-” Another glance at the bedroom. “But don’t risk your job, alright? I have the girls, we’re at our team headquarters, which might be the safest possible place rivaled only by Gran’s house. And it’s literally a house, it looks like Auntie Dana’s. Penny and Krissy are in with Gabriella right now, she’s got them tucked in bed and they’re thrilled. Jenny’s asleep on my shoulder. We can keep them here.”

“Will you get in trouble?” “I’m the boss,” he said, and she laughed through her obvious tears. “I promise you, we’re okay. Don’t go back to your house though, alright? I’m going to figure out what to do about it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back until we know what’s going on.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Just think of it as me finishing out the night with them like we planned,” James said. “I have my cell on me, I’m going to get them situated and just have them sleep here. It’ll be fine.”

It took a little longer to convince Celia not to risk her job by leaving right now, but finally she relented. As James hung up, Amelia came back over to him.

“Did you bring formula or diapers?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted. “I was about to go to the kitchen and grab some, but the thing started making noise upstairs and I just needed to get them out.”

“There’s a twenty-four-hour grocery store up on Maple,” Amelia said. “That shitty little place. But I bet they have both. Want me to go get it?”

“You don’t have to do that, I just showed up with three kids while you’re trying to run a shift.”

“And there’s nothing on the docket tonight besides a mountain of paperwork I don’t care about, and you should stay here with them instead of going. I’ll be back in like thirty minutes. Text me the formula she drinks.”

He hadn’t been able to go in the kitchen for Jenny’s formula information, but the cat on the can was still fresh in his mind, so thankfully he had enough information to find the name himself and didn’t need to call Celia in the middle of what was apparently a nightmare shift on her end to get it. He didn’t know any particular brand of diapers, but he figured anything would be fine in an emergency.

“Your nails are beautiful, by the way,” Amelia said as he texted her the formula brand.

“What? Oh, shit.”

His fingernails were still plum colored. He held out a hand and admired them in the lamplight. “Penny did a good job, didn’t she?”

Amelia laughed, then ducked out to go to the grocery store. James went into the pink bedroom, where Krissy was asleep, nestled against Gabriella’s side as Gabriella stroked her hair. Penny was crammed into the twin bed with them, on the other side of her sister.

“I just talked to your mom,” James said to her. “You guys are going to stay here with me for a while until she gets out of work. So how about you try to get some sleep.”

“What was that thing?” Penny asked, her voice shaky.

“I don’t know,” James admitted. “But it was real and we’ll figure out how to get it to go away.” “I never want to go back in the house,” Penny said.

“We’ll get it out of there and it’ll be your normal house again.”

“I don’t care, I’m not going back.”

He wasn’t going to argue with a scared eleven-year-old, especially not this close to midnight with her sleeping sisters in the room. So instead, he went over to the wall and checked on the nightlights plugged in near the floor. He had always thought the night lights in the bedrooms here were usually unnecessary – mostly just for finding your way in the dark, not for nightmares – but he was relieved to have them tonight. “Just try and sleep, okay?” James said. “It’s late. We’re all safe here.”

“Uncle James?” Krissy said suddenly.

“What’s up, sweetie?”

“Auntie Gabbie hurt her face.”

“Krissy!” Penny hissed.

James glanced at Gabriella, who smiled sadly. “It’s okay,” she said. “Yeah, Krissy, I did.”

“How?”

“I got a cut.”

“Girls, let’s get you tucked in.”

It took a moment of convincing, but finally Krissy agreed and laid down and closed her eyes again. As Gabriella gently got out of the bed, Krissy nestled in against her sister, who put an arm around her with her eyes still closed.

James brought Jenny with him out into the living room, Gabriella right behind him. He told her everything that had happened that night. “It was a shadow figure,” he said. “Or at least it looked like one. I want to go back in the daylight and see what’s going on.”

“Should we report it to the Foundation?” she asked.

James hesitated. “Not yet,” he said finally. “It’s in our region, so it’ll be ours. But they’re going to toss it at the bottom of the pile and another team in a hundred years will end up with the case. But then, we’re spread so thin right now I don’t think we can sneak it in like we did at the cemetery last year. I’ll think on it.”

Amelia was back a few minutes later with a bottle, formula, and diapers. “I estimated her size,” she said as James handed her a couple twenties. 

“You saved me,” he said. “Thank you. I’m so sorry, I-”

Amelia shook her head. “You did the right thing bringing them here,” she said, grabbing the remote and turning off the old movie that was still paused on their crappy little TV.

Jenny was still dry and asleep and now that they were all safe, the fatigue James had been fighting during Penny’s movie dropped back on him like a wrecking ball. He yawned, half covering his mouth.

“You should go to bed too,” Amelia said. “You’re not even on right now.”

He looked around the living room, considering his options without a crib. She wasn’t that tiny, she was about six months old. But that was still too little to have her just sleep on his chest or beside him in a bed. So a cozy little nest on the floor was the safest option. But he was going to go into his office to do it so that he didn’t disrupt Amelia’s night any further.

“I’ll be right over there,” he said, motioning toward the office door. “I’ll keep it open so I’ll hear the girls.”

He had to write up a quick report right now though, before he forgot any details. As he went to set Jenny on the office couch so he could sit beside her and write it, she let out the tiniest, saddest little cry he’d ever heard. So he scooped her back up and wrote it on a notepad at his desk, the baby still sleeping on his shoulder as he did so.

Finally, it was done, and he was able to lay down and forget all of this until Jenny woke up. There were blankets and throw pillows scattered on the couch, so he took some down and laid them on the floor, then set Jenny in them while keeping himself far enough away to avoid rolling onto her. The largest blanket was draped messily over the back of the couch, so he pulled it down over him and Jenny and closed his eyes.

***

“What the fuck?”

Bradley’s voice pulled James out of shadowy dreams. He reached out for Jenny, who was still a warm, soothing weight beside him in the little nest he’d built for her.

“Shh, you’ll wake the baby,” he muttered, opening his eyes and squinting up at Bradley, who was standing in the doorway, looking baffled in the dim light. 

“Why is there a baby here to wake up?”

“There was a shadow figure in their house,” James said, closing his eyes again as Jenny breathed gently beside him. “The boogeyman scared Krissy and when I went in to check her closet, he was fucking real.”

“Yeah, obviously.”

“What time is it?” James asked.

“Four.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m on at five.”

“Four isn’t five.”

James was on at nine and Celia was going to be getting the girls at seven or so. “I had some things to finish,” Bradley said.

“Well, stop.”

James wanted to go back to sleep for a little while longer, but he should go check on the girls, shouldn’t he? He groaned, bracing himself to sit up.

“I take it the two others in the pink bedroom are yours too?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna get up and check on them.”

“They’re fine, I saw them sleeping in there like two minutes ago.”

“You’re the best.”

So no need to get up just yet. The blanket had slipped off of him and Jenny at some point in the past few hours and James reached over, eyes still closed, feeling around for it on the floor beside him. After a few seconds of embarrassing floundering on James’s part, Bradley scoffed and stepped into the room. 

“Here.” The blanket landed over on James, who slid part of it over Jenny completely by feel. 

“Thanks,” James murmured. 

“Yeah. I’m going to go do my work.”

“At least put it on your time card.”

“Sure.”

Jenny let out a soft little cry, but barely stirred as James rubbed her back. “Shh,” he soothed. “It’s okay, sweetie, I’m right here.”

He didn’t hear Bradley leave before he fell asleep again.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 7