Pinewood Corner Kitchen Chapter 18
Of course it had to be the day of her shortest shift that she was stuck here. Gabriella tried to remind herself over and over to be grateful. They had a very comfortable headquarters. If she had to be here between shifts yet again, then at least there were fairly comfortable beds, a working kitchen, and a small gym. Even being at home wouldn’t have nearly as much to offer, though she’d rather be there.
After the fire, she was even more certain that staying here was the right choice. During the O’Toole House case, she could have gone home and probably been fine, since the demon wasn’t focused on her. She hadn’t insulted it or figured out what was going on the same way that she had with these fairly powerful psychics. But they’d tracked down her home (something that didn’t need psychic abilities, just money), and attacked her. So things had clearly gotten more serious.
When Graham arrived for work, Gabriella was wrapping up her own shift. He looked a little unsettled when he arrived, like he expected someone to yell at him for what had happened yesterday. And as Gabriella told him about the fire, she was pretty sure it just made matters worse.
Graham pressed a hand to his forehead. “I feel like the biggest asshole in the world,” he said.
“Seriously, none of this is your fault,” Gabriella said. “You just chose a hell of a favorite website. Plus, you didn’t set my kitchen on fire, so you can’t be the world’s biggest asshole.”
He laughed weakly and sat back up. “What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I mean, I was going to play it straight-faced and pretend I didn’t know it was them who went after my car until we could have a calm sit-down with them,” Gabriella said. “Because maybe they don’t know it’s them. Or they’re in denial about it, but we could break through enough to make them stop what they’re doing. But now I’m not so sure. They found my home and set my crockpot on fire to send a message.”
“I have a spare if you want it.”
“Really? Is it an actual spare? Like, one you don’t ever use?”
“It’s my sister’s old one,” Graham said. “I have it in case I’m making multiple dips or something that needs to stay warm, but I don’t really use it. You can have it.”
Despite what she’d said to James earlier about her renters insurance, she really wanted to take Graham up on this offer. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” he insisted. “It’s pretty cool, there’s a few different features I can show you.”
“Thank you.”
Graham set his bag down. “I was afraid for a second I might have accidentally insulted you too.”
Gabriella laughed. “No, but they were definitely insulting me by going after the slow cooker.”
Graham glanced toward James’s office, which was empty except for the ever-accumulating piles of work. “He’s downstairs meeting with the new team doctor,” Gabriella said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, we all get our turn.”
“That sounds…good?”
She shrugged. She’d give it another shot, maybe they just got off on the wrong foot with Dr. Hillard.
James came up the stairs a few minutes later. “Gabs, you’re off,” he said. “But if you want to have your meet and greet now, go for it. Clock out after.”
He looked shaken, but he kept going toward his office, giving Graham a wave as he went. Graham hesitated, then got up and followed him as Gabriella headed downstairs.
The medbay door was open, so Gabriella awkwardly knocked on the door frame. “Hey!” Jolene called over. “Come on in!”
She and Dr. Hillard were sitting over by the small alcove where Gabriella’s cousin Celia’s old couch was now. The space was more organized than it had been when Gabriella last saw it. Jolene had apparently spent time setting it up over the past few weeks. “It looks nice in here,” she said as she walked toward the doctors.
“Gabriella cleared this whole space out for me,” Jolene explained as Gabriella took the empty folding chair beside them. “It was decades of storage before she got to it.”
Dr. Hillard was looking at Gabriella’s face and before Gabriella could stop herself, her hand went up to touch the thick scar running from her eye to her upper lip. “We just want to do a quick meeting with everyone who’s here today,” Jolene explained. “Dr. Hillard will officially take over as team physician for North Worcester at the end of June, so we’re just doing a bit of a transitional period.”
“Great.”
“Gabriella’s the team researcher,” Jolene said. “And a field agent. Dr. Hillard works in research too, so you two have that in common.”
“What do you research?” Gabriella asked.
“Injuries and illnesses with a paranormal cause,” Hillard replied.
Gabriella didn’t want to admit that sounded fascinating. And if Hillard could take her eyes off of Gabriella’s face long enough, she’d love to hear everything Hillard was willing to share about her work. Jolene looked down at the folder on her desk. “Fairly normal health history with two notable injuries on the job,” she read.
“As a researcher?” Dr. Hillard said, raising one thin eyebrow.
“No,” Gabriella said. “Um, one in an attack when I first started that injured my arm-” She was going to ignore the scent of pine that she knew was only in her head. “And glass from a broken window. A spirit shattered it and it got me.”
Hillard was staring openly at her face and Gabriella felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “Are you planning to fix it?”
Her face went hot. “What?”
“Your face. If it’s a Foundation injury, they should cover the restoration.”
Considering Bradley’s much more necessary surgery had been canceled about three hours earlier, Gabriella had her doubts. And as much as she’d tried to play it off with Graham and Bradley yesterday, the word “restoration” suddenly made her want to hide and cry.
Jolene looked at Hillard as Gabriella tried to figure out the best way to respond. “I- I don’t know,” she managed.
Hillard raised an eyebrow again, but didn’t say anything. Jolene looked embarrassed. “Emma,” she said softly, with enough quiet frustration that Gabriella could tell this was not the first time something like this had happened.
She turned to Gabriella. “If you want to look into it, it might be an option,” Jolene said. “But of course it isn’t something you have to do, honey.”
“Yeah.”
She realized she was covering the scar with her hand a few seconds too late. “So you’re on lockdown because of a case?” Jolene asked.
“Yeah. I’m off now, but I’m not leaving.”
“What are you going to do?”
Gabriella shrugged, forcing herself to let her hand fall. “Cook, maybe. I have some recipes on my phone that I want to try. Some cakes and a couple things I think James would like. I’ll make him try them for me.”
She looked meaningfully at Jolene, who seemed to catch what she was saying. “That’s really kind of you,” she said.
“Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Well, we’ll let you go,” Jolene said. “If anyone else is upstairs, can you ask them to stop by?”
“Sure. Um, it’s nice to meet you,” she said to Hillard.
Hillard nodded, her eyes returning to Gabriella’s face for a second before Gabriella got up and walked out of the room.
She went back upstairs, where she saw Graham first. “Are you busy?” she asked him.
“No.”
“Jolene wants us all to meet with her,” Gabriella continued, wincing slightly at the tug of her scar on her lip as she spoke. “You’re up.”
“Got it,” Graham said with a slight grimace.
He headed downstairs and she went into the living room with nothing planned for when she got there. She was about to check her email when she noticed James was sitting on his office couch.
“Hey,” she said as she came in.
“Hey, Gabs.”
He was looking at the floor. “What happened?”
“Nothing, it’s fine.”
And then she made the connection. Research into paranormal injuries. The ghost part of her scar was interesting, but not the fact that the injury itself was caused by ordinary glass. But a rare dosing with a control compound? That was interesting.
“Hillard grilled you, didn’t she?”
“What?” James said. “No, it’s fine.”
Gabriella tried to think of the right response here. “Really,” he insisted. “Gab, I’m fine.”
She wanted to keep arguing, but considering everything that had happened recently, she didn’t want to set him off or throw him off his game any further. “Alright,” she said. “Want some tea?”
He shook his head and she waited for him to say anything else. But he didn’t, so she walked out of the office, giving his shoulder a quick squeeze on her way out.
***
With James’s permission, she called the Chapmans a little while later and left a voicemail saying she’d like to meet and discuss some further findings. But after that, she was off work until she began the overnight shift at ten that night. And he was being fairly strict about it. Which, on one hand she appreciated and figured she could use as ammo to get him to take his own breaks. But on the other hand, she had nothing to do. She could only stare at her phone for so long, or read one of the repulsive horror books James and Amelia liked so much and left scattered around headquarters. At one point, she was seconds from borrowing one of Bradley’s school books just to have something to do when her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Gabriella? Are you hurt?”
The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “No,” she said, setting Gothic Literature in the American Canon back where she found it. “I’m not hurt. Who is this?”
“It’s Casey Romano.”
“Oh! No, they didn’t hurt me. How- did you see what happened?”
Casey laughed, but it sounded ragged. “No,” he said. “But I’m filing a fucking lawsuit against them for libel. The Chapmans said I attacked you on their site.”
“What the fuck?”
She sat down at the back computer, minimized Bradley’s work, and opened Pinewood Corner Kitchen on a new window. There was a post from that day, published about four hours earlier. The title was for a dessert she’d never heard of and the picture looked delicious, but that wasn’t why Casey was calling, so she scrolled past it.
It’s been a tough week around here. We told you all about the damage to our workspace. We know who was doing it, but the police have asked us to keep quiet for our own protection. Our friend is dangerous, after all.
But now he’s gone too far. He tried to hurt someone who was just trying to help us. A young girl, leaving our building, was attacked in our parking lot. It sounded like gunshots to us, but by the time we rushed to see what had happened, the perpetrator was gone. She waved off our offer of help and left, shaken but unharmed.
But enough is enough. This is too much. It’s one thing to go after us. Even if you cook our recipe wrong and blame us for it, we’re adults. But to go after a defenseless girl just because she’s connected to us? Our medium rare friend has gone too far this time. Casey Romano, it’s time to be done with this.
Thankfully, we’ve been able to keep our spirits up. Part of that has been experimenting with some new recipes, two of which we’ll share today.
“Gabriella, I swear it wasn’t me,” Casey said.
“Of course it wasn’t you,” she said. “It was them. I saw it happen.”
“They tried to shoot you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “No, it was…it was a psychic attack, I guess. They broke my car window, then their window broke too. And last night they melted my slow cooker. They’re trying to put it on you because it’s a convenient story. And because maybe I’ll believe it and back off of them because they’re doing all of this to themselves.”
Maybe she shouldn’t be telling him this. “Fuck,” he murmured.
“I’m safe,” she said. “I’m in a protected place, there’s all sorts of protection here. And my boss made it clear I’m not going to go back there alone or even leave here until it’s resolved.”
“Well yeah, I get the sense he’s an older family member?”
“That’s true,” she said with a laugh.
“In that case, you’re locked down until Halloween.”
“God, I hope that’s not true. And I’m not actually a defenseless young girl, I’m a professional. But we’re being smart about it.”
“Good,” Casey said.
“Are you alright? Have they been coming after you?”
“The usual death threats,” Casey said, his voice falsely casual. “Don’t worry about me. But I’m trying to scrape it together to see a lawyer and find out my options.”
“I have no clue,” she admitted.
“Same,” he said. “I just wanted to be sure you were alright.”
“I am,” she said. “Thank you.”
She hung up the phone just as Bradley walked into the room. He stopped in the doorway. “I’m using that,” he said irritably, nodding toward the computer.
“Look,” she said, getting up so he could take the seat back.
He read the post, his scowl deepening. “Casey Romano just called to tell me,” Gabriella said. “Or, he called to make sure I was okay first. Then he told me it wasn’t him, which I knew already. Defenseless young girl? I’m almost twenty-five.”
“Got your priorities in order,” he murmured, still reading. “Did you tell McManus?”
“Not yet,” she said. “And I’m going to hear about it for working off the clock.”
“His shift ended twenty minutes ago.”
Right, he was supposed to have eight hours off between the end of this shift and the overnight shift they were both working tonight.
“Is he still here?” she asked.
“Obviously.”
“Then he can’t complain.”
James tried to anyway, but Gabriella shook her head. “He called my cell,” she said. “And besides, you’re off the clock too.”
“I’m salaried.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
He was obviously about to argue that it did, but she cut him off. “There’s nothing we need to do about it,” she said. “But I wanted to let you know before you left. You’re leaving now, right?”
“Soon,” he said. “I’ve got a few more-”
“You’re leaving now, right?”
James sighed. “Fine, we can talk about it tonight.”
She smiled sunnily. “Great!”
