O’Toole House Chapter 9
BRADLEY
Your fucking ghost king is here
Gabriella blinked awake to the sound of her phone chirping with an incoming message. She rubbed her eyes, looked at the message again, and then rubbed her eyes again to make it make sense.
Ah. Right. Poor Elliot was apparently on shift with Bradley. And it was almost eight-thirty, so she was also about to be on shift with Elliot and Bradley.
Gabriella sat up and immediately looked at the floor. James was gone, but his bedroom door was open, so she walked over and knocked on it.
“Yeah,” he said softly as she peeked in.
The room was stuffy and she wanted to open a window, but it wasn’t her call, was it? It also reeked of weed again. Which made sense considering James was currently smoking a joint as he lay on his bed, looking up at the ceiling.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice a little too bright in the quiet.
“Hi Gabs.”
He, on the other hand, sounded dull and listless. He didn’t look at her, instead looking straight up as he let out a cloud of smoke.
“I need to get going,” she said. “Um, Graham offered me the couch last night. There was some stuff, um…”
Right, she shouldn’t go any further with that. They were all avoiding any discussion of work with James right now. In some cases, work talk helped, like when Madelyn had been recovering from surgery and appreciated the distraction. But there was no way it was going to be anything but detrimental with James, so she was going to shut up right now.
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“I…” Gabriella looked around for anything to use to connect with him. God, this was James. Why was it so hard when it was James? “I’ll see you later?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“Love you.”
“Love you.”
It sounded almost automatic and she was hesitant to leave him. But Graham was on his way home from work, so she reluctantly left.
It was cold outside and the sky was threatening snow as Gabriella hurried down the street to work. Despite everything, she couldn’t help enjoying how simple this commute was. Maybe not enough space for a healthy disconnection from work, but not a bad commute at all.
The air was charged when she walked into headquarters and she didn’t even need to get all the way up the stairs to realize what was happening. Bradley was at the computer bank, doing his own work, glasses on, looking to all the world like a true professional as Fang snoozed peacefully in his lap. Elliot sat awkwardly on the couch under the window, working on a laptop and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. The waves of disdain coming off of Bradley as he worked were enough to kill a man and she had to respect Elliot for handling it.
“Good morning,” she said to both of them.
Bradley nodded, but Elliot set his laptop aside and stood up. “Gabriella,” he said. “Hi. It’s, um, good to see you.”
“You too,” she said, unsure if she meant it.
“There’s coffee,” Bradley said.
She went into the kitchen as Fang jumped off of her perch on Bradley’s lap and followed her hopefully. She topped off the cat food and poured a mug, wondering briefly if it was moving slower than normal out of the pot. Then she came back into the living room.
“We have the cleansing at the Banas’ this morning,” Bradley said. “You and I are on that, Ghost King is on comms.”
Over by the window, Elliot looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Did he expect her to? Had that actually been an element in his decision? It definitely had, hadn’t it? And Bradley had taken a little too much delight in that.
“Alright,” she said. “What time?”
“In fifteen minutes.”
“I saw the address. Did you drive here from there and now you have to drive back?” Elliot asked. “We could have just met you there.”
“No, I stayed nearby.”
It was petty. It was so, so petty. And she wasn’t going to look for any reaction from Elliot. Bradley raised an eyebrow. “That thing called me a slut and said it was going to kill me,” Gabriella said. “Would you want to stay two blocks away from that house?”
“Fuck no.”
“Notice how it didn’t call you a slut?” she said as she sat down, realizing a second too late that she was at the empty computer station. “I think I’m more offended by the double standard than by what it actually said about me.”
She felt Elliot’s eyes on her. “Though maybe I’m making assumptions,” she continued. “Maybe you’re the slut it’s going to kill.”
Bradley looked steadily at her. “Graham offered me his couch,” she relented.
“How-”
He didn’t need to finish that. She grimaced and that apparently got her point across. “Right,” he said. “Did he eat?”
“We kind of alternated being asleep, I don’t know.”
“Maybe I’ll just fucking force him to-”
He broke off with a shudder, then went back to his computer. “You and I are leaving in fifteen minutes,” he said again. “You get the shit together, I’ll finish this. He’s on comms.”
“Do you have the same setup as us?” Elliot asked Gabriella. “I’m not sure I’m familiar with it, could you show me?”
“No, she’s busy,” Bradley snapped. “Come here, I’ll show you.”
She made herself not laugh as she went to the table to get all the cleansing materials together.
***
They didn’t need Elliot to be on comms with them while they drove over to the Banas’ house, so it was just Gabriella and Bradley in the car. Bradley drove and unfortunately, Gabriella didn’t have any new data to work with or anything at all to keep herself occupied and not thinking about how awkward this was going to be.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Fine?”
“I’m just asking because this house makes you sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Fine.”
He pulled onto the highway. “Besides, I’d rather be puking at the demon house than hanging out at headquarters with your ex-boyfriend.”
“Me too.”
He glanced over at her before looking back at the road. “Though I want to try to be professional with him,” she said. “And maybe actually try to be friends.”
“Why would you even want that?” Bradley asked.
“I said I’d try,” Gabriella said.
“And you regretted it.”
“I didn’t say- I just mean, I want to do this without fighting with him. This is hard enough, right?”
Bradley sighed. “Yeah,” he relented.
“And I think I do want to try to be friends. I do like him, we’re just not a good fit. Can we just keep it professional with him?”
“I have been professional.”
She stared at him and he didn’t look away from the road, but she knew he could tell. “Do you have a problem with how I handled myself today?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
Was he actually mad? Probably, but he always was. “Let’s just get this over with,” Gabriella said.
When they got to the house, the only person there was Sarah. She waited outside, wearing her thick winter coat. “This is not meant to be the solution,” Bradley said after he’d explained how the cleansing would work. “We’re going to cleanse the house and maybe it’ll help. At the very least it’ll eliminate anything non-demonic. If this works, then the issue is not a demon, it’s something doing an excellent job mimicking one. However, if it is a demon, then we have our work cut out for us.”
“What will you have to do?”
“We’ll bring in a consultant,” Gabriella said. “There’s an expert we can get to help us. He’s great, but he’s extremely busy.”
“There’s that many demons around here?” Sarah asked.
“You don’t want an answer to that,” Bradley said.
“No, I suppose I don’t.”
“If you want to stay, you can,” Gabriella said. “But you don’t have to.”
Sarah considered for a second. “I’ll stay out here,” she said. “I just don’t want to go in.”
Gabriella and Bradley walked into the house, closing the door behind them. It was quiet in here and the sun streaming in made the space far more appealing than it had been. Even when she knew there was blood on the shelves and the cellar was trashed, at least it wasn’t dark outside.
They went through a standard cleansing, smoke, bells, and Latin. It was almost comforting to do something this familiar. Gabriella’s Latin pronunciation was getting better, though of course Bradley’s was significantly smoother. He had a practiced form that made her suspect high school Latin classes on top of ten more years of working here than her. He still looked sick while they worked, but there was nothing left to say about it that hadn’t already been said, so she left it alone.
Finally they were done. When they got outside, Sarah Bana was sitting in her front seat, reading a book. She looked up and hurried out of the car.
“Is it over?” she asked.
“For now,” Gabriella replied. “We’ll come take some readings tomorrow.”
Her phone buzzed as Sarah glanced nervously at the house. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll stay out until then.”
Elliot had been silent on comms the whole time, which made sense, but she’d still been too conscious of him as she tried to focus on the work. As they got in the van, Gabriella checked her phone.
AMELIA
One more case, sorry! I need you guys to go up to Mama’s again.
Mama’s Kitchen was a little restaurant over in Westminster that had a recurring ghost problem. She waited a second for further instructions, but when none came, Gabriella called her.
“Hey,” Amelia said, sounding distracted. “What’s up?”
“Just got your text. What are we doing at Mama’s?”
“Oh, shit, did I not send the instructions? Okay, the haunting from last week is making noise again. I want you guys to check around the property for any relics that might be causing it.”
“What should these relics look like?” Gabriella asked.
“They don’t say,” Amelia replied, and Gabriella winced. “But I guess anything weird? Or maybe anything that sets the energy sensor off. Don’t take anything out of the restaurant, but get some pictures and document them. We can cross-reference it with the notes I took there last week. I’m sorry, I’d go, but-”
“No, it’s fine,” Gabriella said. “We’ll go there now.”
“Thank you.”
Amelia sounded exhausted. Gabriella hung up. “You got all that?” she asked Bradley.
“Yeah. Ghost King?”
There was silence. “Elliot?” Gabriella prompted.
“Oh, yeah, I got it. Sorry.”
Mama’s was closed when they arrived twenty minutes later. Gabriella was supposed to come here last week, but Amelia had taken that late night trip with her on comms, saying Gabriella would go the next day. But then James had sent Amelia instead.
Gabriella wasn’t sure why, but she also didn’t want to know, since he’d been under Adele’s control at the time. So whatever the reason for the change was, it was probably terrible and didn’t matter anymore.
“Have you eaten here?” she asked Bradley when they pulled up outside the back door, which the owner had left open for them when she left a few minutes earlier.
“No.”
This was the kind of place where she and Elliot might have gone on a date. She wasn’t going to say that though, so she got a flashlight and started in the dark back door of the building.
“Careful,” Elliot said over comms as the door closed behind them.
“Do you see something?” Gabriella asked, looking around.
“No, it’s just dark in there.”
The lights came on and she looked over to see Bradley standing by the light switch, looking directly into her comms. “We’re fine,” Gabriella said, still trying to be friendly.
“You take upstairs and I’ll take down here,” Bradley said. “Start in the kitchen.”
The kitchen was dark and it took a moment to get the lights on in there too. As they came to life, she went behind the grill to start searching.
“This is going to take a while,” Bradley said over comms. “There’s so much shit down here.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriella said. “Up here isn’t bad, so I can come down and help if I finish first.”
“There’s thirty years’ worth of boxes down here.”
“Speaking of thirty years’ worth of boxes, I threw out a bunch of boxes in the medbay,” Gabriella said as she opened the grease trap and peeked inside. “Was there ever a medic working here while you’ve been here?”
“No, I’ve only been here about five years.”
“Wait, seriously?” Gabriella had missed that somehow. “Where were you before?”
“Essex County.”
“Right,” she said. “Asshole from Marblehead.”
“Fuck off, McManus.”
The silence after that was a little heavier. “Hey, check this out,” Gabriella said to both him and Elliot as she spotted a key on the floor. “It might be nothing.”
“Or it’s something,” Bradley said.
Gabriella winced. She was selling herself short again. And more, she was doing it with Elliot listening. “Right,” she said. “Elliot, can you get some pictures of it?”
“Yeah, hang on.”
It was still surreal, even now that she was used to him working for the Foundation. Or at least as much as she was going to be. “Got it,” he said.
He still had that reassuring voice. If they were going to be friends, she’d let herself appreciate it. Especially as she was alone in the kitchen of this haunted diner.
This continued for another forty minutes as she finished upstairs. She’d found the key and a silver pin of a fish. At first she’d been interested, but then looked up to see the trucker cap full of similar pins hanging directly above it. Still, she took readings and Elliot took pictures.
By the time she was done, Bradley was only about halfway through doing the same thing in the basement. So she went downstairs to help him.
“So you’ve been clearing out the medbay,” he said to her as they both took a box to sort through.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just around work or when I’m on lunch or something. And some of it is too heavy to get out myself, so I’m working around those. But yeah.”
“Why?”
“They’re moving Jolene down there and she’s never going to get a chance to clean it out.”
“But why you?”
“Because I decided to.”
The little noise he made was skeptical, maybe more skeptical than it needed to be. “She saved James,” Gabriella said finally. “I mean, with the cure and taking care of him.”
“Yeah, she did.”
Gabriella knew about the salt water submersion that had been required before Jolene arrived. And she also knew James’s size versus Amelia’s and had a strong suspicion that Amelia hadn’t been alone in that bathroom. But she wasn’t going to bring it up.
“If she could do all that for him while also handling her own ridiculous workload, I can at least start to get the space cleaned up for her,” Gabriella said.
“You’re right.”
Had he ever said those words to her? “Elliot, are you able to get a clear image of this?” she asked as she tipped a necklace out of the box of paper products.
“It’s a little dark,” Elliot said.
It was, but this was almost sterile compared to the basement they’d just been in. She shined her flashlight on it. “Yeah, I got it now,” he said.
She went back to her box, but that necklace was too suspicious. “I know we’re not taking anything out of here, but I don’t think I should put that away,” she said, glancing back over to where it lay innocently on the counter. “Is there any way to, like, neutralize it without destroying it?”
“Salt?” Bradley suggested, passing her a canister of it.
The salt ring around the pretty green necklace looked ridiculous, but she felt better when she saw it contained like that on the otherwise empty metal counter.
“What are the heavy items?” Bradley asked.
“In here?”
“No, in the medbay. What’s left?”
“Some of it I want Jolene to look at first, but there’s a few broken exercise machines that someone clearly just stuck in there, and an old gurney.”
“I’m off at six. I’ll help you with those.”
“You don’t have to,” Gabriella said.
He just shrugged and moved on to the next box.
