“Did you pack clothes for tomorrow too?”

James looked at Graham, who was sitting at the kitchen table of their small apartment with a bowl of oatmeal in front of him. The room was in chaos around him, but Graham was the picture of calm as he stirred his breakfast. James just stared at him and eventually, Graham looked up, unfazed by the lingering silence. “I’ve forgotten before,” he said. “I’m just saying.”

“Of course I packed clothes for tomorrow,” James said, making a mental note to check his bag and make sure he’d actually done so.

It was six in the morning and he was fully dressed, cleaned up, and ready to go to the captains’ training. James’s internal clock had been thoroughly destroyed years ago from an unpredictable work schedule, but somehow it still felt too early for him to be awake. His body didn’t currently care that he was regularly at his desk by this time. 

He’d worked until eight the night before, trying to tie up the loose ends of at least a few of his tasks. He hadn’t been able to do everything he wanted before Madelyn had very politely kicked him out, and the fact that he didn’t know what the day was going to look like while he was gone bothered him. 

“You’re not in today, right?” James asked.

“Nah, I’m at Cleary House for a little while.”

Cleary House was Graham’s other job, which he somehow managed to continue holding while working full time for the Foundation. He’d been there when he was a professor of psychology, so James assumed it had something to do with that. But all he knew was that it was both very haunted and outside of North Worcester County’s territory. And whenever he remembered to ask Graham anything about it, it was always in a situation like right now where there was no time to get into the creepy details.

“Are you staying in Boston?” Graham asked. “It might not be worth coming home tonight just to go back in the morning.”

“I am staying out there, but not at the Foundation,” James said as he rifled through his cabinet for the breakfast bars he’d bought a few days earlier. “They had a block of hotel rooms near the main building, but they were still expensive and I don’t want to be on Foundation time when I get out. Plus, they were definitely sold out by the time I booked my room. So I’m just staying at a hotel in Waltham. Still pricey, but not as bad.”

“Both nights?”

“I booked it for two. But I’m working as soon as I get home, so…”

He shrugged, pulling out the chocolate chip breakfast bars and tossing three packs in his old knapsack. “I’ll let you know. I’m heading out, I want to stop by headquarters before I go.”

“Why?”

“Just checking in,” James said. “It’s on the way to the highway, anyway.”

“Yeah, no kidding, we’re ten feet away,” Graham said. “Amelia’s there, you can practically wave to her from the balcony. You’re fine, just go.”

James considered the box of breakfast bars for a second, then tossed another packet in his bag. “I’ll just stop in,” he said. “See if there’s anything I need to know before I go.”

Graham didn’t need to roll his eyes like that. 

***

Amelia had also told him not to come to work before he left, but James still wanted to make sure that everything was all set. He wasn’t going to stay long or actually do any work, just check the schedule. He could be in and out of his office before she spotted him.

So of course he got there, and she immediately saw him come in.

“For Christ’s sake,” she said. “You’re supposed to be there in two hours. What was so important?”

She was sitting on the couch with Fang beside her, a training booklet forgotten on the coffee table in favor of a horror novel James had definitely left there after a shift two weeks ago. “I just wanted to make sure everything was fine before I left,” James said as he walked into the living room, realizing there was no getting out of the lecture for this one.

“Oh, yeah?” Amelia said. “And your phone stopped working?”

“Would you have picked up?”

“Probably not.”

“Who’s on with you today?”

“Madelyn is out back and Bradley’s in in half an hour. Gabriella and Graham will be here later. Bradley’s off tonight, but Graham’s going to do the double. Satisfied?” 

“And you’re good?”

“We’re fine,” she said with a sigh. “I have the schedule for the day already and I’ll check in when everything inevitably changes. Now go, you’re going to get there late.”

“I’ll be fine,” James argued.

“And so will everything here,” Amelia said, standing up and steering him toward the door. “I assume you packed your bag because you’re not a child, so how about you get back in your car, get a coffee, and get to Boston with plenty of time to sit in traffic and swear. We’ll miss you until you get back.”

He was already back at the top of the stairs. How had she done that? “Fine,” James said. “I’ll be back early on Friday.”

“Have fun, be good,” Amelia said. “And get the fuck out of here.”

***

James expected the Foundation’s main headquarters to be a converted home of some kind. Not a raised ranch like North County, but maybe a solemn brownstone or a Victorian mansion, something more suited to their position. He had only ever worked at the house in Leominster, but every branch he’d ever visited also had a residential past life of some sort. It seemed to be the standard operating procedure.

Despite working for the Foundation for so long (thirteen years, the card on the fridge thirty miles west taunted), he’d never been to the main headquarters. Every other training he’d done had taken place somewhere else. The Foundation owned plenty of buildings in the Greater Boston area, all of which had specific uses. 

The leadership trainings he had gone to as second in command were in an old triple decker in Watertown that was uncomfortably similar to his and Graham’s previous apartment. The retirement home for agents was a converted mansion on rolling grounds with a beautiful view of Boston Harbor. And he knew that Bradley had recently attended a meeting for administrative staff in Canton, a town just south of Boston. He’d returned from that with what he claimed was a poorly timed cold, but James knew a hangover when he saw one. Bradley said that the meeting had been in an apartment complex and let slip that the afterparty had involved an entire floor of the building. 

So with all that history to draw from, James figured it was only natural to expect things to happen that way again. But as he pulled onto a narrow street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, he saw that his destination was actually a rather large building on its own plot. There was even a decent sized parking lot behind the building, something unheard of in this area. Of course, it was mostly full and he had a moment of panic as he pulled up, thinking he’d have to find street parking in Beacon Hill. Even if he was comfortable driving through the weaving streets, he knew his chances of finding something, especially somewhere he wouldn’t be towed, were slim to none before he was horribly late for the opening remarks.

Or alternately, if that happened, he could give up and go home. That was the much more appealing option. 

Thankfully, James found a spot down at the end of the crumbling lot, underneath a heavy oak tree. It was chilly in the shade as he got out of the car and looked around. He may have actually found the last spot, and he felt a small pang of sympathy for the car that was pulling in right now. The roar of traffic nearby melded with the wind and he pulled out his knapsack and jacket to bring with him, keeping all of his luggage securely hidden in his trunk.

So this was the official headquarters of the Foundation for Paranormal Studies. It was impressive, he would give it that. It blended in with the surrounding neighborhood, with at least three floors lined with symmetrical, ornate windows. The two lower floors had early season blossoms spilling out of wide flower boxes in the windows that faced the parking lot, but the top floors were less focused on aesthetics. Green tinged copper lined the windows up there and he could see the stubbly remains of an old bird’s nest under one of the eaves. Still, there was a solemnity to the building, like it understood the importance of the mission inside. Despite everything James knew, as he walked around the corner to the front entrance, he had to admit that it had the impact it was clearly going for.

He could see that most of the other captains had already arrived, but there were a few people still piling into the building as he climbed the front steps and walked into the open foyer. Marble lettering on the wall spelled out THE FOUNDATION FOR PARANORMAL STUDIES in large, glittering letters above a long hallway. Sunlight streamed into the room, warming it up and illuminating the paintings lining the walls. Despite the warmth, the subject matter of all the paintings were dismal. James frowned as he walked through the metal detector and moved in for a closer look. That couldn’t be right.

But no, his first impression had been the correct one. Ghosts carrying off babies, demons outside a window in the darkness, and one downright disturbing closeup view of a smiling monster with bleeding teeth. Was this supposed to be inspirational? Knowing the Foundation, it was a distinct possibility. He was tempted to take pictures, but had been to enough museums to know that he’d just get yelled at by the bored security guard at the end of the hall.

The room where they were meeting was much less impressive. James was reminded of the hotel conference rooms his aunts would occasionally rent out for family events like baby showers or funeral repasts. He could see that despite the size of the room, the tables were all only half filled. And there was an empty one a little further back that was calling to him. 

He made his way over, looking through the small crowd for one face in particular. But luckily there was no sign of Patrick, the Hillsborough captain who had assaulted Gabriella a few months earlier. James had honestly been kind of nervous about how he would react if and when he ran into Patrick here. The Foundation had promised there would be consequences for Patrick’s actions, but their idea of consequences was paid time off and some modules to work on when he returned. And judging by how they were all now being told to settle in, apparently he’d been excused from this mandatory training as well.

James could be grateful and irritated at the same time.

“James!”

Of course now that he’d chosen an empty table, someone had noticed him. He turned and spotted Rosa, the Hampden County captain, making her way over from the doorway. If he was going to sit with anyone, it was going to be Rosa. She was tall and pale, with long dark hair twisted on her head and a simple outfit of jeans and a flannel shirt. “I hit traffic on the Pike and there was no parking left,” she said, wiping her forehead as she got closer. “Did I miss anything?”

“Unfortunately for you, no.”

He had only met Rosa in person a few times, though they’d spoken on the phone or over email fairly regularly since he’d become captain. She was the one who had given him the advice he needed in order to survive when the Foundation had dropped the captaincy in his lap nearly a year ago now.

“Hey, come sit down,” he said, pulling out the chair beside him.

Rosa sat down gratefully and looked around the room, which was still far emptier than he would have expected. “Not much of a crowd, huh?” James said.

Rosa shrugged. “They do this every, like, year. But they only bring the captains for captain training, which makes sense.”

Now James just felt silly. He should have realized that. Doing some very sketchy math, if there were one or two branches per county in New England, then yeah, the room was overflowing with captains. But before he could embarrass himself further with his lack of math skills, an older man with the bushiest eyebrows he had ever seen walked up to the podium.

“Captains,” the man said in a powerful baritone, “Welcome to the yearly training session. Before we begin, I just want to say a few words. We appreciate the work that you do for the Foundation. This organization would not be nearly as successful as it is without your hard work.”

This organization wouldn’t be the slightest bit successful, James thought. But he kept his mouth shut and nodded along as the man continued to talk about the great success of the past year. How the vast majority of cases had been solved on a timescale that the Foundation deemed acceptable, how injuries had been minimal. And, his voice even prouder now, how they had managed to reduce spending by a significant amount. Though not nearly as much as they had last year and not to the point of achieving their goal. James thought for a moment about how Bradley would have probably burned the place down if he heard that.

“Today’s training will be primarily workshops,” the man – Harding, according to his name badge – continued. “You’ll be taking part in a number of classroom training sessions – I know, but we promise to keep it interesting – as well as some practical workshops for more specific areas of your job.”

That wasn’t promising, but it was just for today and tomorrow. And James was getting paid for it, so he’d survive. Maybe it’d be a nice change of pace to be out of the field and in the classroom for a bit. He hadn’t been in a classroom since college and, as the team had been quick to remind him last week, that was a long time ago.

However, the workshops weren’t starting yet. First, they needed to sit through a keynote speaker, who turned out to be an administrator for the Foundation. The woman was droning and uninspiring and James tried his best not to doze off as she spoke about the origins and mission of the Foundation. The large coffee he’d had was helping somewhat, but it couldn’t work miracles. As the speaker went on, he glanced at his phone under the table to see no missed texts, so he sent a discreet one to Amelia to check in.

JAMES

How are things?

“-a community in peril and you are often the ones to stand between them and their destruction, so give yourselves a round of applause.”

A small scattering of applause started somewhere in the front of the room and James failed to set his phone down in time to join in. He jumped slightly as it buzzed in his lap.

AMELIA

Fine. Stop texting.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 4