Roses Manor, Weston Chapter 6
The next day was much the same. Gabriella started by finishing the stack of forms the Foundation wanted from them and handing them directly to Bradley, nearly seventy percent sure she had written nothing embarrassing on them. From there, she’d worked the Sixteen Roses case, as well as a couple of in and out cleansings that James wanted to knock off the list. By four in the afternoon, she was on Level Twelve with a full update going to Madelyn’s email for her to check before she left for the day. Gabriella had also cleansed a car dealership of bad energy, and was ready to be done until her night shift began. She had to sit through one more meeting, then she’d have a few hours off until she was back at eleven.
The majority of the meeting was fine. Not fun by any means, but fine. Gabriella thought maybe they’d even get through it in one piece. At least until James looked at his notes and sighed.
“Last thing,” he said. “Get those updated information forms in at some point.”
“Could you please get them in as soon as possible?” Bradley asked, his voice deadly precise. “They want them all in together, so that they can do less work.”
“Did they give a deadline?” James asked. “An official deadline, not one that you made up?”
“No, but the fact that they’re emailing everyone now means they want them sometime before the heat death of the universe.”
“Alright then,” James said with a fake-casual shrug. “Get them in sometime before the heat death of the universe.”
Bradley turned on James. “Do you want me to forward you every email they’ve sent me about these fucking forms?” he demanded. “Collecting them is part of my job description, believe it or not. It’s literally one of the bullet points.”
“And that’s more important than stopping monsters?”
“Do you think I’m not right there with you, fighting the monsters?”
Bradley’s voice was quiet now and unless she was totally misinterpreting, he sounded almost more hurt than angry. “Of course you’re there too,” James said quickly as, beside him, Amelia winced almost imperceptibly. “We’re all doing our parts and I know this has been rough. I’m just saying, the forms can wait if everything else isn’t done.”
“Everything else can’t get done if I don’t get the proper forms in,” Bradley argued. “They’ve made that clear. They send the forms, I send them back, they give us what they claim we need. It’s not enough, I request more. They send the form, I send it back. Then maybe they give us more. That’s how it’s been.”
“And never actually works and you know it. So maybe this love affair you’re carrying on with the forms isn’t working.”
“I can’t believe you’re our captain. You’re a fucking child.”
James studied him for a second. “You know what it is about you?”
“No,” Bradley said, raising his hands in exasperation. “What is it?”
“You know when people talk about someone and are like, ‘Oh, they seem like an asshole, but they’re great when you get to know them?’” James asked. “And it’s like, they have all these hidden depths and great things about them? You don’t. You seemed like an asshole when we met and when I got to know you, it turned out you were just an even bigger asshole than I thought. That’s it, Bradley, there’s nothing else there!”
There was silence after James stopped speaking and Gabriella was instantly reminded of the ringing quiet after Bradley had asked her if she had another authority figure to mindlessly follow, something that apparently still haunted her more than she realized. James had kicked Bradley out of the meeting for that one. But this time he’d been the one to say it and Bradley was on the receiving end. And she had no idea how this was going to go.
Bradley nodded slowly, his face expressionless. “Is the meeting over?”
“Yeah, it’s fucking over.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Bradley got up and left without another word. Graham shifted slightly in his chair, like he wanted to go after him. He didn’t, and Gabriella wasn’t about to either. But Madelyn slipped out of her chair and walked down the stairs behind him. After a second, Graham got up too, going toward the bedrooms.
Gabriella stood up awkwardly. “I finished the forms this morning,” she said, unsure of anything else there was to say. “My shift ends in a minute. I’m going to, um, get my stuff.”
“Thanks, Gabs.”
James looked shocked by his own words. “You okay?” Gabriella heard Amelia ask cautiously as she went into the kitchen to find her thermos.
“I just can’t deal with him,” James said. “It’s like I’m trying to work with an alligator that wants to fuck the stationary.”
“And you’re his boss,” Amelia said. “You’re everyone’s boss. I know he can be… himself. But you should have brought any discipline into your office, just like you would have for, like, Gabriella. Or me.”
Why did she have to be the example? Gabriella spotted her thermos and walked over, getting as far from the conversation as possible. Which wasn’t much in a tiny kitchen.
“You were both out of line,” Amelia continued. “Again. That’s not like you.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay lately? You’ve been… that was harsh.”
“He called me a child and a shitty captain.”
“So you write him up.” Amelia’s voice was stern now in a way Gabriella had never heard her use on James before. “This is one of those situations where you have to be the captain. You know you’re not a shitty captain. We all know that, including Bradley. But, as captain, you just told a subordinate, in front of the entire team, that he had no redeeming qualities. After implying what he does here is useless. Which, did you notice you did that the other day too? Bradley’s a dick sometimes and he’s being super fucking petty just to piss you off. But God damn, James. I know your shift ended twenty minutes ago. You need to go home, actually get some sleep, and then the two of you need to work this shit out. How much of this is actually about those stupid forms?”
He didn’t answer. Gabriella didn’t want to interrupt and remind them she was here, but she did want to go home. “I’ll be back at eleven,” she said, walking back out and grabbing her coat off its hook.
“Great,” James said, not looking at her. “Thanks, Gabs. Sorry about that.”
She shrugged, once again having no good response. “Good night.”
***
The night shift was uneventful. Gabriella was scheduled to overlap with the day shift for a while, going home at two the next afternoon. So she was alone for several silent hours. She ground through another level of Sixteen Roses, which was becoming increasingly more difficult, then went to sleep for a couple hours before answering some calls from surrounding towns that ended up not being an issue.
James was on call, but she didn’t want to actually call him unless she absolutely had to. He’d be back at seven, anyway. So she could save anything that wasn’t essential until then. Not that anything essential came in either.
The on-call approach was better than having no one, but it was clearly a cop out from the Foundation. When Gabriella started at the North Worcester team, they’d have two people on the overnight shift. They’d never had a single person on for the entire night. Then it had been a desperate times, desperate measures situation. Having one person available to deal with monsters during monster hours wasn’t a safe option, but was sometimes necessary. But apparently it was the norm now, especially with the introduction of on-call hours. So she expected that approach was going to last for a long time.
James arrived at seven, holding a couple of takeout coffees. “You should go home early today,” he said as he handed her one. “You’ve been here a while with only a little time away.”
“It was quiet,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
Not really. “Positive.”
“Everyone’s staggered today,” James said. “We’ve got the ongoing cases and a few short ones that I’ll be assigning across the team to knock them off the list. I set up the schedule and assignments when I got home, so that’s ready to go as soon as the others get here.”
Her disapproval was apparently obvious, because he looked a little sheepish as he set his notebook on the coffee table and flipped through to the messy schedule. “Did you sleep at all?” Gabriella asked.
“Some, yeah.”
There was the obvious reason why he might not have gotten much sleep, along with fifty potential others. She didn’t want to ask yet again if he was okay. She knew the answer to that and also knew that he’d never tell her the truth. So instead she just nodded. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Yeah, of course,” James said, and she knew it was a lie.
