The meeting was excruciating. While most of the team hadn’t been openly hostile toward Gabriella since that terrible meeting a few weeks ago, she could feel the tension in the room as everybody filed in. James didn’t look at her. This was possibly the first time he hadn’t tried to catch her eye at least once. Instead, he walked in with Amelia and talked quietly with her for a few seconds, their voices too low to hear even from just the other couch. Neither of them even seemed to notice her.

Robin was right. They were clearly pissed. And if Amelia was mad, Madelyn probably was too. She’d just been being polite earlier.

And Bradley, but she assumed he was always angry. So that was nothing new.

She tried to focus on the meeting, but couldn’t help stealing glances over at James as Robin began speaking. He was quiet, avoiding Robin’s questions and not bringing up any topics of his own. The only person who raised their hand to bring up something that was not on Robin’s agenda was Bradley, and he was ignored.

“So, tomorrow’s case,” Robin said after a detailed lecture about the importance of conserving gasoline while in the field. “Bradley, will you do the honors?”

Bradley had just dropped his hand and his face was sour as he stood up and pulled down the projector screen from above the fireplace. “Alright, so tomorrow’s a ghost,” he said, leaning over to start up the slide show from the computer beside him.

A map appeared briefly on the screen, then he clicked over to a photo of an old house. “We’re staying local, this place is right over in Lancaster,” Bradley continued. “Old farm house with a ton of history, at least some of it connected with murder. The activity the Foundation recorded on this site is intense, but standard. So we’re going in with the usual approach. James and Madelyn will stay on base. Amelia and Gabriella, you’ll be with me in the field. And Robin will be doing whatever it is Robin does.”

“Signs your paychecks,” Robin answered with a tight smile.

“It’s stamped,” Bradley retorted. “So we’ll be taking a cleansing approach. Salt, holy water, the standards. Likely no need for weapons, the owner says it’s alarming but not dangerous. No humans have been hurt, but it has a tendency to stir up the animals. Oh, right.”

He made a face and clicked to the next slide, which showed a clip art red barn. “It’s a farm. Activity is situated in both the house and the barn. So make sure you stretch beforehand.”

He sat back down. Robin looked at him like he had expected something more, but then just stood up.

“I guess that’s that,” he said. “Amelia, you stay behind. But everyone else is free to go. Oh, Gabriella, you wait a moment. I need to talk to you after Amelia and I meet.”

Amelia looked puzzled as she stood up and followed Robin to his office. Once again, James didn’t even look at her as he walked silently out of the room behind Madelyn. Bradley picked up a textbook from beside his computer and headed down to the basement, leaving Gabriella standing awkwardly in the living room, waiting for her turn to meet with Robin.

The door was still open to Robin’s office, and she suddenly heard a fierce murmur of conversation coming from inside. Robin’s voice was too low to understand his words, but she could tell from the tone that he was furious. Not wanting to look like she was eavesdropping, Gabriella looked around the room for something to occupy herself. But all the textbooks, even Introduction to Calculus, were gone and it would look really fake if she tried to do anything else.

She got about halfway into the kitchen when the door opened all the way and Amelia hurried out. Her face was red and she was shaking as she walked through the living room. Gabriella opened her mouth to ask if Amelia was okay, but the other woman rushed past her and down the stairs toward the gym.

Watching her go, Gabriella suddenly felt the urge to join the others downstairs. She wanted to be part of the group. There didn’t have to be an “us versus them” situation with Robin, right? And Amelia must have done something to get Robin riled up like that. He yelled sure, but he’d been so friendly and attentive to Gabriella and that seemed to be his normal personality. So maybe it was like what happened with James. Maybe she’d just been careless with something.

Gabriella turned as Robin walked out of his office. “Lots of history on this one!” he called cheerfully. “Come on in, we need to talk!”

He sounded fine, but maybe she was about to get yelled at too. Part of her almost hoped he would get mad at her. She didn’t want to be bad at her job or disappoint Robin, but she didn’t want to be the teacher’s pet of the group either. But as she sat down in the seat in front of his desk, he sat down and smiled at her.

“So,” he began. “I’m not sure how much you’ve heard about the Foundation’s concern about strange energy readings in the region.”

“Um, some,” Gabriella said. “James mentioned it a while back.”

“Did he explain what it was?”

She thought back, trying to remember from that conversation on her second day of work. “Something about trying to figure out what is causing them,” she said slowly.

“We think it’s lingering energy from some past event,” Robin said. “But we don’t know what that event would be, or how these houses with the strange readings are all connected. You said you’re interested in local history, so I have an assignment for you.”

Gabriella’s heart sped up a little. A historical mystery? That was exactly the kind of thing she was interested in. “What kind of assignment?” she asked, trying not to sound overeager.

Robin slid a paper across the desk to her and she took it. It was a list of ten addresses, and most were either in town or right nearby. But a couple were miles away from their headquarters. “These are all the locations where the Foundation has tagged those energy readings,” Robin said. “I want you to look through the history of each house on this list and see what connections you can find.”

“Are you looking for any connections in particular?” she asked.

Robin shook his head, still smiling. “Nope,” he said cheerfully. “That’s going to be your job. Look into the history of each and note anything that jumps out at you. Or anything that might be a commonality between it and the others.”

Her heart sank. Gabriella knew she should be grateful for the work, but she couldn’t help thinking it sounded an awful lot like busywork. Was there really not a better way to find connections than having her look through four hundred years minimum of information for each house? “Do we have any books here that might have that information?” she asked.

Robin grimaced. “Not that I know of,” he said. “You’ll probably need to go to the library. How about you go and set up a research plan, then come back to me before you get started? I can help you get your hands on any books that might be trickier to get.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t just busywork. Maybe this was actually important. She nodded and he smiled again. “Excellent,” Robin said. “And don’t forget your workout today.”

Had she ever forgotten a workout? She’d literally told him when she was finished with her workout earlier. Was that supposed to be a dig at her since he was doing it with everyone else? But he was still cheerful as he stood back up and Gabriella followed. “Do you think you can have a list of books on my desk for the end of the day?” he asked as he led her to the door.

“Yeah, that’s no problem,” she said.

“Excellent. I knew I could count on you. This is something that the Foundation has been struggling with for a while. I think if you can solve the mystery, it would look very good for you with the higher-ups.”

It would probably look good for Robin too, but that sounded mean even in her own head. “I’ll work hard on it,” she said instead.

He clapped her on the shoulder. “That’s my girl.”

He led her out, then closed the door. The living room was thankfully empty still, but she didn’t feel the same urge to go downstairs with everybody else anymore. Instead, Gabriella pulled out a piece of printer paper and sat down at the messy dining room table. She pushed a pile of books and equipment aside, then set down her paper and fished a pen out of the same pile she’d just scattered. Putting the paper Robin had given her on one side, she glanced over the list of addresses and turned back to the blank page.

Maybe she could start at the beginning? But the beginning of what? The current house on that particular piece of land? When the town had been settled by colonists? Time itself? Did he want her to just find the history as far back as possible and start reading until something showed up? This was clearly important if it kept coming up. So why hadn’t anyone else started on it yet?

But that didn’t matter, because now she was starting on it. So pushing aside the feeling of uncertainty and the nagging thought of busywork, Gabriella started thinking of potential starting points.

***

“Gabriella.”

Gabriella looked up from her notes a little while later to see Bradley standing over her, glowering. “Hi Bradley,” she said.

“We need to talk.”

She put down her pen and sat up straight. “What’s up?” she asked.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to stop treating James like this.”

Her stomach twisted, but she just tried to keep her face calm as she looked up at the man looming over her. “Like what?” she asked.

“Like what happened at your apartment was his fault,” Bradley replied.

She couldn’t help the fact that her eyes darted toward Robin’s closed office door. She wasn’t sure if he was still in there or not. Bradley just looked at her as she turned to him.

“It was his fault,” she said.

Bradley frowned even deeper. “No, it wasn’t.”

That anger that had settled down into a dull ache for a while now flared back up. “Look, I’m not saying he did it on purpose,” Gabriella said. “But he messed up, and it ended up coming back on me. I think I’m allowed to be angry about that.”

“Do you really think that’s what happened?” Bradley asked.

“What do you mean?”

Of course that was what had happened. It was the most logical explanation. Bradley didn’t even like James. Why would he ignore the fact that this was the most obvious possibility?

“I watched that case from the base, remember?” Bradley said. “I watched and listened to everything that happened. McMa – James – didn’t cut any corners. He did exactly what he does every single time. What we were all trained to do.”

“Then how did the spirit attach itself to me?” Gabriella demanded, her face hot. “How did it get into my house? How did it get under my bed? It was under. My. Bed.”

“I don’t know,” Bradley admitted. “But I do know that it wasn’t James.”

Gabriella shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull or cover up or what, but it’s not going to work, so don’t even try. I don’t think he did it on purpose and I’m not going to, like, report him to the Foundation or whatever. He’s my cousin and I love him. But he messed up on that case. And because of that, I got hurt. So yeah, I think I’m going to stay mad about it.”

Her heart was pounding and she was grateful that she was sitting down for this instead of standing, because her knees would have definitely been shaking. She wanted to be the one to leave the confrontation, but if she stood up, she’d probably fall back down again.

Bradley looked at her for a long moment and she felt vaguely like a bug under a microscope. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Whatever,” he said. “Believe what you’re going to believe. I tried.”

Before she could think of anything else to say to that, he walked out of the room. She heard a door close a little ways down the hall and turned back to her work. Were they really going to try to cover up what had happened to her? Was this the point they’d reached?

Whatever. She didn’t know what Bradley’s game was, but she’d just ignore it and do her work.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 17