Gabriella’s flowers were blooming. That was a good sign, right? She’d bought the seeds at the dollar store a few months earlier, babied them into seedlings in her kitchen with a single grow light, then brought them out onto her tiny balcony as the warm weather hit. And now she could see a single purple blossom as she looked out the narrow balcony door. The balcony itself was maybe a foot wide and four feet long, so the flowerpot took up an enormous amount of space. But that single bloom was worth it.

It was her morning off, so she didn’t need to be at work until noon today. Of course, she was also working the overnight shift, so it wasn’t like it was an actual day off or anything. But it did mean she’d slept in and was now taking her time making breakfast and packing her lunch.

She had no idea what to expect tonight, beyond the fact that they’d be understaffed. Her teammate Madelyn was out for a couple weeks to recover from surgery and the Foundation hadn’t sent anyone to replace her during that time. Her cousin and team captain, James, had told them all not to hold their breath on that when he sent in the request. But at least the South Worcester County branch was aware and might be able to help if their own workload wasn’t overwhelming.

Which, again, James had told them not to hold their breath for.

It was the beginning of June, meaning Gabriella had now worked for the Foundation for Paranormal Studies – a prestigious organization for metaphysical investigation – for one year. She’d joined their North Worcester County branch on the recommendation of James, who had then been second in command of the branch. Back then, she’d just been looking for any job that offered health insurance, so she’d taken it. And at first it seemed like she’d simply be an ordinary part of the team.

But it had all been an elaborate plan set by the former captain, Robin, to get the branch more support from the notoriously stingy administration. And Robin’s plan had been to isolate Gabriella from the group, then murder her, making it look as though a case had gone wrong.

It had half worked. She’d escaped him that night in the woods, running through the darkness until the others had rescued her. And then Robin had tried to kill them all and instead ended up meeting his own death in a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer on a dark state highway.

But before then, he had absolutely managed to isolate Gabriella, manipulating her into believing James had caused her to be injured after a case. She’d fallen for it so completely and now, all these months later, the memories made her choke on shame. James, of course, had forgiven her instantly. He didn’t have a malicious bone in his body and she was still shocked that she hadn’t believed him in the first place.

But the rest of the team had been much slower to forgive and welcome her into the fold.

Not that Gabriella blamed them. Obviously Bradley was going to hold on to her sins, he held everyone to some level of contempt. Madelyn was less frosty about it when the awkwardness popped up, but it still did once in a while. And Amelia tried to embrace Gabriella, but she knew that there were moments when Amelia still resented her. Gabriella couldn’t blame her, Amelia was James’s best friend.

Despite how much she loved the job and all she put into it, this still lingered under everything she did there.

It had been a hell of a year, she had to admit that. With one day to go until the anniversary of Robin’s death, things were a little touchy. But during the year she’d been on the team, she’d started and ended a relationship, gained more confidence in her own work than she’d ever had before, was now physically stronger than she’d been in college, and was finding her way as a researcher. Doing research that primarily involved very specifically local history and monsters, but this was actually essential work. She’d worried for a while that it was just busy work, the same way that Robin had put her to work chasing a dead end energy case to keep her distracted.

But over the past few months, Gabriella had seen the way her own research made an impact on their work. She’d found the missing pieces to put several spirits to rest, dug up essential information about a property in Boston that belonged to the Foundation (the end result of which nearly sent James into a tailspin, but he seemed alright now?), and last night at work she’d been digging into a Fitchburg man who might have summoned demons to his property in 1941 and never properly disposed of them. Gabriella had tracked him down enough to confirm that he did exist and that the property was unnervingly close to her own apartment, but she had more work to do on the topic when she got in today.

It was misty outside, and the water was gathering on the scratched wooden railing of her balcony. Gabriella ate her breakfast as she considered the little space. She liked this apartment. She’d been desperate to get out of her last place after that monster had attacked her from under her bed, so she’d taken the first thing that was available within her budget. But she had come to really like this little space. It was in a small building with a few other units, mostly filled with students from the nearby university. It wasn’t loud like she might expect, these seemed to be some fairly quiet students. The studio apartment itself was easy to maintain, and the balcony was an added bonus. It might even fit two chairs, but it wasn’t like she had visitors here often.

Or ever. She could admit that to herself. She’d lost touch with nearly everyone who wasn’t family or coworker.

Gabriella finished the last piece of her toast, then stood up with her coffee to look outside. Beyond the balcony it was quiet, the usually fairly busy street empty this morning. A few cars were parked along it, including her own. But nobody was walking by and the faint hum of traffic was a few streets away.

She had about four hours until she had to be at work. That meant laundry, a movie (not a horror movie, she told herself firmly), and a long shower. She’d worked until seven last night, so she’d gotten plenty of sleep for once.

This next shift was going to be a long one, she was scheduled for a double including overnight with Amelia. But all the shifts were long these days. And while she was sure James was going to kick her out in the morning, if anything went sideways during the night or the early hours, she was going to offer to stay and help. She had time between the end of her overnight shift and the start of the next one. And like James always reminded her, she was young and had that youthful energy still. Even if he said that to get her to leave work, not stay.

But for four hours she wasn’t going to think about work. She was going to relax, get her house in order, and maybe even cook something in her new crock pot so it would be waiting for her when she got home tomorrow morning. No matter how tempting it was, she was going to leave her notes about O’Toole and his demons in her cute little messenger bag.

***

The smoke alarm was going off at Headquarters when Gabriella walked in a few hours later. The air was filmy, but nobody seemed too concerned about it as they casually opened windows and started fanning the smoke outside.

“Gabs!” James called from on top of a kitchen chair, where he was trying to turn off the screeching alarm. “Keep the door open, will you? Who’s got Fang!”

Amelia appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the upper level of the split-ranch house, the quietly furious cat in her arms. “Got her!” she said. “I’ll put her in the bedroom.”

“What happened?” Gabriella asked over the sound of the alarm as she propped the door open with someone’s shoe.

“We forgot about a pizza in the oven trying to sort out the case from yesterday,” James said as he finally pressed the button and the alarm went blissfully silent.

He hopped off the chair, which skidded alarmingly underneath him on the kitchen tile. “We couldn’t find one of the reports on the computer and my handwritten one was perfectly acceptable to copy back in. But-” he shot a dirty look toward the dining room, where Bradley was gathering up a stack of papers. – “apparently it wasn’t good enough for everyone.”

“You write like a five-year-old,” Bradley snapped.

“I’m sorry I don’t have perfect prep school penmanship like some people,” James retorted. “Jesus. But it’s all there. And I’m not the one who lost the file.”

Gabriella didn’t need any further explanation, she had a pretty good idea that she was watching a reenactment of how the pizza got burned in the first place. James and Bradley spent most of their waking hours bickering with each other so it wasn’t anything new. But the lingering smoke and the way the fight was resuming made her want to turn around and walk back out the door.

“So beyond the pizza, how has the day been?” she asked, interrupting as James took a breath to continue sniping at Bradley.

“What? Oh, busy,” James said as he pulled a large, clean pot off the old drying rack and filled it with water. “There’s a case from a few years ago that needs to be readdressed and a few others have come in. I’m going to take lunch in my office to get them all organized, then I’ll let you guys know what’s going to happen this afternoon. Amelia, I’ll meet you in there. Bradley, are you coming? This is going to be a logistical shitshow.”

“Yeah, I’ll be in in a minute,” Bradley replied, still sorting through papers.

“I’m throwing on some pasta instead, since Brad burned the pizza. Amelia, you want some?”

Bradley glared at James as he put the pot on the burner. “I’m all set,” Amelia said.

“Where’s your lunch?”

She shrugged. “I’ll grab something later.”

James pushed some things aside on the kitchen counter and pulled out two boxes of pasta. “I’m making extra anyway,” he said, setting it beside the stove. “Grab some of that when it’s done.”

“Yes, Dad.”

Gabriella shook her head, then went to the fridge to put her lunch away. “James,” she said. “I’m still tracking Duncan O’Toole, but is there anything you want me to start before the meeting instead?”

“Nah,” James said, waving her off as he went into the fridge and came back out with a Tupperware container of salad. “Focus on that, because I’m going to need you on these other things this afternoon. So the more details you can get on that demonfest, the better.”

He walked from the small kitchen into the attached dining room – which was taken up by a large table loaded with supplies – then disappeared into his office. The front living-room-turned-paranormal-research-center where they did most of their work was attached to the dining room, creating an open circle of small rooms on this side of the house. As the others got back to their own tasks, Gabriella took a seat at the living room’s computer bank to start loading the library database she’d been using yesterday. Maybe there’d be some new information on O’Toole and his demon hobby in there.

She must be getting more settled into this work than she thought, because as she looked back over her notes a little while later, Gabriella realized this was a pretty messed up case. Demons, a vengeance-obsessed man doing his best to summon them from his own house, and the distinct possibility that they had eaten him. It was all here in her neat handwriting, crowded onto the front pages of this notebook. But the reality hadn’t really clicked beyond its location until now.

She looked away from her notebook and blinked hard, gazing around the space to give her aching eyes a break. She was in a cozy, dated living room where charts of demon types and safety equipment sat side by side with strangers’ framed First Communion certificates and dusty lamps. Again, something that she had grown to find completely normal. The Foundation’s branches mostly worked out of converted residences. She wasn’t sure why, it was equally likely to be a security and secrecy thing as to be the desire to save money on more professional settings. But the blend of suburban home and somewhat high tech headquarters was so familiar by now that she couldn’t imagine doing this kind of work out of an office building. Even if that office did have a rule to take shoes off at the door the way they did here.

The only one who actually had indoor shoes was Bradley. And sometimes Graham, when he remembered to bring them. The others just tended to wear socks indoors as if this was someone’s home. But it kept the old carpets fairly clean, and she’d gotten so used to it all at this point that moving to another job might actually be impossible.

She’d made surprising progress by the time the rest of the team began to filter into the living room. Graham arrived back from running errands a few minutes before the meeting was set to begin. He was dripping wet, but smiled at Gabriella and greeted her warmly as he came in and set down his shopping bags.

Graham had arrived on the team after everything had gone down with Robin. By the time he’d started with the Foundation, James had been the branch captain for a couple months at least. But he was like this with everyone, a friendly former professor who also happened to be James’s housemate.

“I have been running all over Leominster today,” Graham said as he sat down on the other end of the couch. “There was a sighting over in the State Forest that I offered to go check out. It lasted ten minutes before the rain got bad. Then I had to go and offer to grab any supplies we needed, me and my big mouth.”

He laughed, gesturing to the paper bags tipped over on the floor in front of him. “Nobody asked for anything wild, but Market Basket was out of plastic bags and they gave me paper. Normally, I’d rather have paper anyway, but it’s raining out and I think that bag is melting.”

This would be the same Market Basket where they’d chased a cryptid through the deli several months earlier, she had to assume. “How are you?” Graham asked, nudging a bottle of laundry detergent back upright with his foot.

She shrugged, half her mind still on the O’Toole guy. “Good,” she replied. “I had a nice slow morning at home to prepare for the double today.”

“You’re here overnight?”

“Yeah, me and Amelia.”

“Amelia’s here? Didn’t Madelyn have surgery a couple days ago?”

There was no way Graham would look that concerned if anyone else here was having surgery, was there? “Her stepmom is with her, I think,” Gabriella said, trying to remember exactly what Madelyn had said the other night before she’d left.

Not that any of it was her business. Madelyn had had surgery to remove some scar tissue that was the result of injuries on the job several years earlier. This had been long before Gabriella arrived, but Madelyn was pretty open about her situation. She’d been thrown off of a building by an entity they were tracking, and the injuries had resulted in permanent damage, particularly in her back. She was usually pretty upbeat about it, but Gabriella sometimes felt awkward trying to approach anything related to her condition with her on a case.

“Oh, okay,” Graham said, clearly trying not to sound too concerned about Madelyn.

James’s voice was audible from behind the closed office door, just for a moment and too muffled to understand. Amelia came into the living room from the back hallway. “They still fighting in there?” she asked, nodding toward James’s office. “I left like fifteen minutes ago.”

“I assume so,” Gabriella said.

“Who’s with Madelyn today?” Graham asked.

Amelia glanced conspiratorially at Gabriella, then looked back at Graham. “Her stepmother, Beatriz. She’s doing well.”

“Good!”

Gabriella felt a little bad that she hadn’t known the schedule or been able to help in any substantial way. But Madelyn and Amelia were housemates, so Amelia was naturally going to know much more about Madelyn’s personal life.

“Yeah, Beatriz is spending the night at our place since I’m working.”

“I would have given you the night off,” James said from his now-open office doorway.

“Because we’re so flush with staff right now,” Amelia retorted.

“As always. Alright, we’re ready when you guys are.”

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 2