Roses Manor, Weston Chapter 20
Gabriella woke up to a voicemail from the sobbing woman. “Kenzie…” she heard between wails. “Kenzie…”
It was chilling, and she listened twice as she brushed her teeth in the headquarters bathroom, then went out to the living room. She had been solo overnight for a mostly uneventful shift, but James was supposed to be in in about forty minutes. So she set the voicemail aside for now and got some breakfast before going through the morning checklist, checking in with neighboring teams, previewing the day, and finally writing up a report on the uneventful night where the most exciting development was the unexplained resurrection of the living room printer.
James arrived, looking half-asleep, about ten minutes before his shift was supposed to start. He got his coffee and sat down in the living room without saying more than a couple words to Gabriella.
“Are you alright?” Gabriella asked after a minute of silence.
Maybe whatever she was already feeling a little better from was a cold, not a supernaturally deadly video game. Which meant she didn’t have to worry about easing back, even if she still felt sick. And yeah, it would suck when it ripped its way through the team, but they’d dealt with that before. Last spring’s bout with the flu was still fresh in her mind, so maybe she should go bleach the countertops and computer keyboards while things were quiet.
“Fine,” James replied. “Just didn’t sleep much.”
“Just couldn’t sleep?”
“Mmm.”
“Were you doing work at home?” Gabriella asked as she checked the weather on her phone. “Seriously, if I have to get yelled at by a client to stop working, then you should also…”
She looked over and saw him intently reading the printout of today’s cases, cheeks slightly red. “Oh,” she said.
“Oh, what?”
“Nothing,” Gabriella replied. “I’m just glad you had a good night.”
Then she spotted it. “Hey, James?”
“What, Gabs?”
He finally looked at her and she motioned on her own neck to where the prominent hickey was on his. “You got a little…”
He slapped a hand to his neck, and she saw the second it dawned on him. “Fuck!”
He hurried into the bathroom and she followed. “Gabs, go away,” James started, but she waved him off as she went into the top drawer under the counter.
He pulled his shirt collar aside to inspect his neck in the mirror. “Oh my God,” James muttered, wide-eyed.
“No wonder you didn’t get any sleep.”
“Fuck, what do I do?”
“Let me see it.”
He covered it with his hand again. “Relax,” Gabriella said, knowing she shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as she did. “I’m not going to tell Auntie Dana you spent the night at your girlfriend’s house.”
James turned and glared at her, hand still pressed to his neck. Gabriella smiled innocently, then went back into the drawer. She’d seen a makeup kit in here on her first day, she remembered that distinctly. She never bothered to bring makeup to work, but someone had to still have some. So where…
There it was. She dug through the worn little bag until she found an old concealer. “Whose is this?” she asked James, who was attempting to rub off the hickey with his hand. “Stop that,” she ordered. “It’s a bruise, it’s not washing off. Do you have a turtleneck or something?”
“I hate turtlenecks,” James said. “Please, just leave me alone. I have a call with McGovern at eleven.”
“Should have thought of that before you let Meredith chew on you.”
He opened his mouth in outrage, but Gabriella just held up the concealer. “Let me try something.”
“I’ll do it.”
“I can see it better. Come on, it’s just me.”
“I…”
He looked in the mirror, dropping his hand so the mark was visible. “It’s no big deal,” Gabriella said. “Just let me help you for once, okay?”
James didn’t refuse, which was almost shocking. He didn’t say anything at all as she applied the concealer, tilting his head with her hand to get a better angle to blend it. It wasn’t exactly his color, but she’d done this more than once for herself, so she was able to get it somewhat close. Amelia was going to notice it the second she arrived, but Gabriella couldn’t work miracles. So she’d be satisfied if this was good enough for his meeting with McGovern.
“There,” she said, blending the concealer a little more with her fingers. “I have to be honest, it’ll cover you for the video meeting, but probably not in person. That’s an intense hickey.”
“Amelia already knows. I can sense it.”
She couldn’t disagree with him. And when the door opened twenty minutes later and Amelia came upstairs, she barely had her coat off before she zeroed in on James’s throat.
By the time everybody else arrived, Gabriella and Amelia together had fruitlessly attempted a little more touching up on the hickey. A mortified James allowed it, but Gabriella knew that even with the rest of Amelia’s makeup kit, this wasn’t going to work. And sure enough, the color difference was so blatant that he ended up just wiping it off before the morning meeting started.
“It’s the concealer,” Amelia said. “It’s not the right color for your complexion.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I have the perfect concealer just sitting around for situations like this,” James said.
“Well, maybe you should,” she retorted. “You think the rest of us don’t?”
James didn’t seem to have a response to that. He looked over at Gabriella, who shrugged and smiled. He scowled, then went into his office.
As everyone gathered a few minutes later, Gabriella gave James an encouraging smile, which he ignored. The mark on his neck was almost more obvious than before as he positioned himself to hide it as much as possible.
James started the meeting with very deliberate professionalism. “Two new cases today,” he said. “Graham, the first one is you. Creature Containment out in Barre called in a few reports of a coyote in the Leominster State Forest. Which would be completely normal if not for the fact that this one appears to have tusks.”
“Tusks,” Graham repeated pleasantly.
“Yeah,” James said, looking back at the screen and unfortunately putting the hickey even more on display without realizing it. “Their report says that the creature might be responsible for killing several smaller animals whose remains were found partially eaten on the trail. The bite patterns weren’t consistent with anything that’s usually found in the forest.”
“Ah, bite patterns.”
Gabriella glanced over at Graham, who had his most serene professor face on as he spoke. James looked at him and Graham just smiled. “Sounds great, man.”
“Great. You and I are on that this morning after the meeting. Brad, you’re on comms with us.”
“Yeah,” said Bradley, who was determinedly looking at the smaller version of the slideshow on his computer screen.
“Gabs, you’re on-”
The phone rang, and Bradley reached over and grabbed it. He greeted the caller in a rote, monotone way that clearly meant James had gotten after him for his phone manners in the recent past. “Hello?” he said after a few seconds. “Who is this?”
He winced and held the phone away from his ear the way Gabriella had the other night, then put it on speaker. The sound of sobbing filled the room. “Please answer me,” he said. “Show me you can hear me.”
There was nothing, just sobbing. And then the call disconnected. Bradley put the phone back in its cradle. “I take it that was your princess?” he asked Gabriella.
She looked at Madelyn. “Yeah,” she said. “But I didn’t give any phone numbers out. We made a dummy email for it and that was all it needed.”
“Mark it in your record and we’ll discuss it further later,” James said. “Alright, I have to get to my meeting. Everyone has their assignments.”
“No?” Gabriella said.
“Right. Um, Gabs, you’re back on the Seagram House like we discussed yesterday. That’ll be later today, so you’ve got time for side work before then. But you and Amelia go take statements, put up cameras, and report back. After that, we can discuss the Sixteen Roses again. Alright, good? Good. Dismissed.”
He started toward his office and after he passed Bradley, Bradley whipped around toward Amelia. Does he know… he mouthed, motioning toward his own neck in what was apparently the universal sign for “hickey.”
She nodded. Seconds later, James came back out of his office. “Amelia,” he said. “Can I get your help with something?”
“Sure thing, killer.”
James closed his eyes in embarrassment, but Amelia just clapped him on the shoulder and went into his office.
***
The phone rang again a little while later as Gabriella was getting ready to go home, the same woman sobbing “Kenzie” whenever she could get coherent words out. Gabriella knew the chances of them having any technology to trace this call was as unlikely as aliens announcing themselves in the Boston Globe. But she stayed on the line as long as possible anyway, her hand shaking as she sipped a glass of water and tried to pretend that everything was fine and that her heart rate was absolutely nothing to worry about right now.
A long shift and a November cold. She could keep convincing herself that it was just a cold and power through. Even as Charlotte’s words rang in her ears alongside the sobs. She wasn’t on the game, and she was fine.
The call cut out abruptly after about two minutes. “What did you notice?” Madelyn asked from the couch, where her laptop and three new textbooks from the library were spread out around her.
Gabriella thought as she looked at her notes. “It’s the same woman,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s the same recording as last night, if it is a recording.”
“I think it is,” Madelyn said. “So what does it mean?”
Gabriella considered what she’d just heard, the gasping breaths and the rising inflection on the choked out “Kenzie.”
“Kenzie means something,” she said.
Bradley was on comms with Graham and James and his cell phone vibrated with a new call beside him on the desk. He ignored it. “I see it,” he said to Graham. “Look on your right, I can see the… tail, I think. Or what’s left of it.”
“Still glad you chose zoology?” James asked over the comms.
“Beats hearing all of your weird secrets,” Graham said. “Or trying to fix any of what’s going on in your awful minds.”
James laughed, maybe a little too loud for someone who was currently in the woods with a creature with tusks that apparently shouldn’t have them.
“Yeah, the teeth marks line up,” Graham said.
Bradley’s phone buzzed again as James started reading off some findings over the comms. He pushed his phone toward Gabriella without looking at it. “It’s your ghost,” he muttered.
She took the phone, answered, and put it on speaker, hoping he was right. And sure enough, sobbing filled the room again. But not with the same inflections and timing as before.
“Fuck, what’s going on?” James demanded. “Who’s hurt?”
“No one, it’s the call again.”
“Just don’t pick up your phone, Gabs,” James said. “Unless you know who it is, just let it go to voicemail.”
“This wasn’t mine,” she said over the wailing. “She called Bradley’s phone.”
She looked at the phone number as the call played on. Non-local number, but that could easily be spoofed. But it was different from the one that had called her twice.
The call disconnected again after a few minutes of continuous sobbing. “So she contacted two of us,” Madelyn said. “Plus the central phone line. So it is the game, but maybe they’re using the Wi-Fi to find you, not the paranormal aspect.”
“Yeah,” Gabriella said, looking over at the landline. “Does anyone know if there’s any copper wiring left in the house?”
Bradley looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “Gabs,” James said over the line. “I have to be honest, I have no fucking clue.”
“The landline is the only thing that doesn’t quite line up with that,” Gabriella said.
“If it’s Wi-Fi based, it does,” Madelyn said. “I can check the phone bill, but my gut instinct is to say it’s not an actual landline, but done over Wi-Fi. So all three phones that were hit have been on the same Wi-Fi as the laptop. And all from the same number?”
“Not his,” Gabriella said, nodding toward Bradley’s phone. “Wait, but you knew it was them?”
“I didn’t recognize the number,” he said defensively.
“You didn’t even look at the number.”
“Who else would be calling?”
“Anyone, bud,” James said. “Literally anyone.”
“How many doctor’s appointments have you had this week?” Madelyn asked innocently. “Pharmacy? Billing? But you knew it was the ghost.”
He shrugged. “Lucky guess.”
Bullshit. But also not Gabriella’s business or problem.
