Any half-considered plans she was making didn’t end up happening. Gabriella woke up twelve hours later to a dry mouth and a throbbing pain in her face. She glanced blearily around the room, checked her phone for messages, then fell back to sleep until five the next morning. Then she dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom, flipping on the yellowish overhead light to illuminate the tiny space as she looked in the mirror.

The stitches were puffy now as she carefully pulled off the gauze. They’d told her to keep it covered for a couple days, but she needed to change the bandage before she went back to work. And now that she’d taken it off, Gabriella was regretting looking at it. The neatly stitched gash ran down her face, a clean slice that started on her cheekbone and nearly cut into the side of her mouth.

Don’t cry, she told herself once again. It’ll fade down. The scar will heal. And like Amelia said, scars are hot, right?

Not that she was dating anyone right now, or potentially ever again. The job that had done this to her wasn’t a date magnet.

Which brought her right back to the fact that Elliot was apparently working at the Hillsborough County branch. What the fuck? Gabriella stumbled out of the bathroom and sat down on her tiny sofa, willing herself to get up and make some coffee. But instead, she just stayed where she was and dwelled.

The last time she’d talked to Elliot, he’d still been skeptical about what was happening, condescending to both Gabriella and his own father about it even though he’d witnessed multiple paranormal phenomena over the course of a couple weeks. Something had pulled him six inches off the ground while trying to hurt him with Gabriella’s great-aunt’s china. And after she’d turned down Elliot’s attempt at reconciliation, she’d spent days torn between wanting to go right back to what they’d had and never wanting to see his fucking face again.

There were a couple hours until she needed to be at work. Maybe she should call him so that they could have the conversation that apparently needed to happen. She pulled out her phone and scrolled to his number. But before she could dial, she paused. Not yet, she couldn’t handle that yet. So instead, she kept scrolling, then hit Call and waited for it to connect.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom?” Gabriella started, her throat tight.

“Sweetheart, what’s up?”

“I just-” Gabriella swallowed hard. “I just wanted to talk to you. I’m okay, but I got hurt at work last night and…”

She sniffled, but before she could try to get back on track, her mother spoke. “You’re alright?” she asked.

“Yeah. But I cut my face.”

She was quiet for a second as Gabriella waited, drowning in guilt and anxiety. “Do you want me to come down there?”

Yes, yes she did. Gabriella wanted nothing more than to see her mom right now. But she had to be back at work in two hours. And while James would probably want to make her take more time off, she needed to get back. She knew it was ridiculous and unhealthy, but she still felt bad that she’d gotten time off while the others didn’t. “I’m working in a few hours,” she said. “But can I come up tomorrow?”

“Of course you can, honey. Now, can you tell me what happened?”

***

When Gabriella got to work, she was feeling almost up for working her shift. The gauze on her face was obvious, but it wasn’t like the team was going to freak out about it. And with the exception of James, they also weren’t likely to try to smother her with care. As she walked into Headquarters, Amelia and Graham were the only ones on. Amelia was swearing at something in her email as Graham typed a little less angrily beside her.

“I didn’t realize you were on today,” Graham said. “Are you feeling alright?”

Her face throbbed despite the Tylenol she’d desperately thrown at the pain on her way into work. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile through her puffy cheek.

The glass hadn’t penetrated all the way through the skin, but it had gone deep enough that eating or drinking was far more of an ordeal than she had considered after she woke up again that morning. She could use something to boost her energy right now, but drinking through her water bottle straw was plenty of effort for the moment. So instead of going to the kitchen for a coffee, Gabriella sat down at the last working computer and began checking her own email.

“So James and Bradley are both off for a couple more hours because I forced them to,” Amelia said. “They’ll be back in a little while though. I’d throw you out too, but the doctor cleared you to work.”

Gabriella jolted slightly at the harsh words, but Amelia was smiling as she said them. “If you’re comfortable with it, we need to go down to the Wildwood to cleanse it later this afternoon,” Amelia said. “Or me and Graham can take it and you can do comms.”

Gabriella weighed her options for a second as she glanced through her inbox. “Is it weird that I want to finish this out?”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure that just comes with the job. ”Wait,” Gabriella’s brain was finally catching up. “What do you mean, cleanse it? Don’t we need to figure out what we’re going to do about Sarah Morgan first?”

“Funny story,” Amelia said. “We looked at the footage from the night before last when you and I were there, then last night’s. And there hasn’t been a single incident since we left.”

“Seriously?”

“Not so much as a curtain swaying,” Amelia said. “And the energy readings are lower than they were even when we finished there a few years ago. I talked to James about it and we’re going to keep the case open a little longer, just to make sure that everything has actually quieted down. But whatever you said to Sarah Morgan, I think you got through to her.”

Gabriella wanted to dissect that. She wanted to sit down and really consider how maybe she’d been able to connect with the spirit, then make notes for future cases. But then, she also wanted to put this case fully behind her.

“What should we do until then?” she asked.

Amelia shrugged. “I’ll be on the comms with the other teams in the area to make sure that everything is fine.”

“And I’m getting ready to start up the cryptid hunt again tomorrow,” Graham said, looking less than enthused about it.

She could keep going with that demon summoning research. Or maybe see what else was arriving today, if anything was lined up yet. Something new and terrible was going to show up very soon, wasn’t it?

She got up from the now-frozen computer and pulled her laptop out of her bag. “My books are all piled in the pink bedroom,” she said. “Let me know if you need me, I’m going to do that before I look at the chore roster.”

Amelia laughed, shooting a look toward the eternally messy kitchen as Gabriella left the room.

***

Everybody except Madelyn was working by the time Gabriella had been at headquarters for a few hours. Despite the giant wad of gauze still on her face, it was starting to feel like a fairly normal day at work. As James came in last, setting down his bag on the coffee table, he came straight over to her.

“You doing alright?” he asked quietly.

There was nobody else in the living room right now. She was taking a few minutes to breathe and everyone else was scattered through the house. Gabriella nodded and James leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m so sorry this happened,” he said.

“It’s not your fault,” Gabriella answered quickly, before the implications of what she’d said could catch up with her.

It was over, all of that was over.

She took a shaky breath, then pulled him in for a hug, resting her head against his shoulder as he stood in front of her. James didn’t say anything, he just held onto her for a long moment. “It’s alright,” he said finally as she let go. “It’ll heal. What did the doctors say?”

“That it’ll heal,” she said, almost laughing. “I got lucky and they don’t think there’s nerve damage. It’ll scar. Um, they said that maybe plastic surgery would be an option? If the scarring is too much?”

She didn’t want to think that far ahead, but it was going to have to happen eventually. James looked slightly ill for a second, then swallowed and nodded. “Have you talked to Auntie Carrie yet?”

“Yeah, before I came in.”

She could argue all day that she was an adult. She was nearly twenty-four years old. But of course she’d called her mom. And of course her mom had cried during that conversation, making Gabriella cry too. “I’m going up there for a little while after work tomorrow.”

“You going to see Elliot?”

“I don’t care if I do,” she answered honestly. “I just want my family.”

James gave her another hug, which she accepted gratefully. “I know you’re going back to the Wildwood today,” he said. “But we need to have a meeting first. All of us, I mean.”

Right, his meeting with McGovern. Somehow she’d forgotten that they hadn’t actually discussed that yet. A tight ball of anxiety burned its way into her stomach. And now that she was looking closely at him, James didn’t look great either. “That bad?”

He grimaced. “No one’s losing their jobs.”

That was a relief, at least. “Alright,” she said. “When are we meeting?”

“As soon as Bradley wraps up his diplomacy with personnel department.”

As if on cue, James’s office door opened with an unnecessary amount of force. “Rocks for fucking brains,” Bradley fumed as he came out, shaking his head.

“Did they agree to extend it?”

“Oh yeah,” Bradley said, going into the kitchen and slamming cabinet doors as he dug through the cupboards, eventually pulling out a container of coffee grounds. “Yeah, once they found her file. Did you know those assholes were trying to claim she’s not disabled?”

“Madelyn can’t walk half the time,” James said cautiously.

“That’s what I told them.”

Gabriella had never seen anyone scoop coffee angrily, but Bradley was managing it. “When I asked to get Dr. Oliver on the call like we had originally planned, he suddenly found Madelyn’s personnel file, which confirms her disability. Then he tried arguing that the guidelines say she shouldn’t need more than a week off.” The coffee scoop hit the counter, bouncing into the sink. “At that point, I again told him we needed Dr. Oliver on this call.” Angry water pouring. “To which he said they don’t need a Foundation doctor on the call in order to read a worksheet. But then he called Madelyn Mary, so I couldn’t be sure he even had the right file in front of him. So finally I told him to get Doctor fucking Oliver on the call now.”

“And did Doctor Fucking Oliver come to the phone?” James asked.

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

“She was scheduled to join us at eleven, but he started talking at ten-fifty and wasn’t adding her just yet when it got to eleven oh one. She was waiting to join the call, but he just kept lecturing me. So after the Mary thing, I told him we’re waiting for her or we’re rescheduling this call with someone competent.”

“Good.”

The coffee maker hissed almost cheerfully now and Bradley leaned against the counter between the kitchen and dining room, propping himself up on his elbows as he talked to James. “So she joined, told him two weeks of leave is what she and you both signed off on. And now she’s signing off for three more days, and she doesn’t know why she was having this conversation again.”

“I like her.”

“Yeah. He sputtered something like a little worm and said fine, he’d send it through. I said I’ll be checking for Madelyn’s pay stubs. And then told him that if anyone calls her again, I’ll be coming in to talk to him in person.”

“Thanks for taking care of that.”

“Yeah.”

He went back toward the coffeemaker and James turned to Gabriella, trying and failing to hide his smile. Smiling back stung, but she felt a little better.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 17