The recordings from the last Wildwood case had finished downloading while they were meeting, so Amelia told Gabriella to stay here and listen through them, then meet her over at the Wildwood. She had her comms securely in place before she left and her plan was to spend some more time with last night’s recordings before Gabriella got there. They could then go over the materials together and make a plan of attack for that evening. As of now they needed at least a little more data to go off of, potentially pushing the actual cleansing or whatever they decided on back another night.

At first, the idea of dealing with the Foundation’s reaction to a potentially unnecessary delay on the case made Gabriella uncertain this was the right choice. But that feeling evaporated with unexpected speed as she looked beyond Amelia into James’s office, where he was sitting at his desk with his head resting on his fist, staring at his computer with an exhaustion she’d never be allowed to see if he knew she was watching.

“Yeah, fuck it,” she said to Amelia, who looked at her with undisguised amusement. “If it takes an extra night, it takes an extra night. If they complain, at least they don’t have to send us back a third time.”

The idea of going back to the hotel and potentially dealing with another time bend was unappealing, but the rest of the case was intriguing and she wasn’t upset about having extra time to dig into it. It was a combination of things she found interesting, particularly the fact that the spirit had once been a local resident. So many times they dealt with things from planes beyond their comprehension, things she’d never be able to fully wrap her mind around. So knowing this was Sarah Morgan whose birth certificate was at Fitchburg City Hall, who was quoted in local papers discussing her Christmas plans for the Wildwood, was a bit of a novelty. Much like Virginia Richelieu up at her mom’s house had been, once they established her existence and presence.

There hadn’t been any more activity in her mom’s New Hampshire farmhouse since they’d found Virginia’s remains on the property and helped her move on. Not that Gabriella expected the quiet to last forever. Her mother’s house had been a boarding house in a previous life and the sheer number of people who must have moved through it meant that the chances it contained only one spirit were very unlikely. And if Virginia had actually been alone, the leftover energy from all those years would have its own charge anyway. It was a matter of time until there was activity there again, but Virginia herself was long gone.

But Virginia hadn’t been a local. She’d been moving through town, probably on her way to Nova Scotia, when she died. Sarah Morgan was deeply rooted to Fitchburg. This meant the community, but maybe more importantly to this case, it meant the physical Wildwood building. If she was the cause of all of this – like Lorraine had insisted and the Foundation was finally acknowledging – then this connection to the property had to be important.

Amelia headed out the door as Gabriella took her laptop into one of the back bedrooms, then returned up front to find her missing headphones. Bradley was back at the comms station, talking to Graham, whose voice was slightly tinny as it came through the speaker beside the computer. James was still in his office with the door open, she could see him now glaring at his computer screen as he typed something.

A message came through on the printer just as she was getting her headphones out from where they were buried under a pile of papers. She went over before Bradley could get up and pulled the warm paper off the printer.

NEW CASE

FILE #45987608-Q

Potential spiritual unrest in unused cemetery. Nashua, NH. Please confirm receipt and begin investigation asap

She frowned at the message, waiting a beat for the correction to come through. Usually if the Foundation’s system sent a case to the wrong team, a correction arrived very quickly. But the printer remained silent. “Hey, Bradley?” she asked.

“What?”

“I think I know the answer. But is Nashua part of our territory?”

“Is there a Nashua, Massachusetts I was unaware of?”

“Not in about two hundred and sixty years. But…”

Bradley looked up and saw what she was holding. “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered. “Go show McManus.”

She really needed to get moving if she was going to have time to listen to that interview. But this was making her uneasy and Bradley’s reaction made it clear he was too. The way that a correction didn’t come through immediately like it always did when a mistake was made seemed to confirm what James and Graham had been saying earlier.

She went to James’s office and knocked on the open door frame. “Gabs, hey,” he said, waving her in. “What’s wrong?”

“We just got a case in Nashua.”

“Just wait a minute, they’ll send a correction.”

“They haven’t yet, it’s been about two minutes.”

He stood up, ignoring three rapid-fire notifications beeping on his computer. “Seriously?”

She handed him the paper and he scanned it quickly, his frown deepening as he read the case description. “This isn’t right,” he said softly.

“Maybe they just haven’t gotten to fixing it yet?” she suggested, following him into the living room as he passed her and started for the printer.

“No, it’s automated. If there’s a mistake, it gets flagged and a correction goes out. It would be here by now. Brad, nothing?”

She expected something sarcastic, but Bradley just shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” James said, balling up the paper and tossing it lightly at Bradley.

“What the fuck?” he muttered, throwing it back with much more force.

“That’s Hillsborough’s territory,” James said to Gabriella as the paper ball bounced off the side of his head and hit the floor. “Their branch is literally in Nashua. So unless they disbanded the Hillsborough County branch and didn’t tell us – which I wouldn’t put past them – we shouldn’t be getting this.”

He went over to the phone and pulled out the little paper directory that somehow always managed to stay nearby. Then he dialed, looking like this was the last thing he wanted to do today.

“Hi Saskia,” he said a few seconds later as Bradley made a face. “Is Patrick there?”

The sick feeling that had come into Gabriella’s stomach at the mention of Hillsborough got worse as she heard Saskia’s nearly inaudible, but still recognizable, response. James listened for a moment. “Huh, how about that? Well, we had a case come in just now that’s located in Nashua. Did it duplicate there?” He listened for a second, face neutral. “Great, thanks.”

He hung up. “She’s going to check, then call us back,” he said. “Patrick actually isn’t there anymore, he transferred to another branch and nobody thought to mention that to the captain of the neighboring branch. But if it’s not her calling back, it’ll be someone else.”

“The brain trust on parade,” Bradley muttered.

Gabriella couldn’t disagree with him. Even before Patrick had attacked her at her mother’s house, working with the Hillsborough team had been a nightmare. But if this case was theirs, then why the hell had it gone to North Worcester County without any retraction?

She had work to do, and clearly the others did too. But all three of them were watching the phone uneasily. The silence was broken as Graham checked in over the comms and Bradley turned back to discuss the case he was on.

The phone didn’t ring for a few more minutes, but then James’s cell went off in his office. He went in to grab it and before Gabriella could start back toward her own work, accepting they weren’t getting an answer right away, the phone rang again. Bradley was still talking to Graham over the comms, so she grabbed it.

“North Worcester County branch, Gabriella speaking.”

There was a long pause, and she rolled her eyes. “Hello?”

Still nothing, but she could hear someone shuffling on the other end. “I can hear you breathing,” she snapped, surprising herself with her frustration as Bradley glanced over at her. “Who is this?”

“Gabriella?”

She nearly dropped the phone onto the table at the sound of her name in an all-too-familiar voice. Was this seriously Elliot? Of all times for her not to check the caller ID on their ancient cordless phone. Anger, confusion, and longing were all suddenly stirred up, but annoyance overpowered all the rest of the mess of emotions now sloshing around inside her. “I’m sorry, but I need to free up the line,” Gabriella said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. “We’re waiting on another branch to call us back.”

“I’m calling from the Hillsborough County branch.”

She nearly dropped the phone. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” she demanded, aware of Bradley watching with interest. “Is this a joke?”

“No, Gabriella, I- look, I have a lot to tell you. But I’m returning your boss’s call.”

“Are you working there? Really? After everything you- No, you know what, Elliot, just tell me what’s going on with the case. I have way too much to deal with tonight to do this.”

Now James was in his office doorway, watching too. “We didn’t get the case at all,” Elliot said. “Saskia, um, Saskia just checked and it isn’t showing up anywhere in our scheduling software.”

Gabriella needed to compartmentalize. That would solve this and allow her to get herself back on track. This wasn’t her extreme skeptic of an ex-boyfriend calling from the Hillsborough County branch with this information. It was just another staffer calling with the message, exactly like it would have been three minutes ago. “Hang on, I’m putting you on speaker.”

“Gabriella-”

She set up the speakerphone, managing to get it on the first try. Which was a relief, because having to call Elliot back would definitely have made this conversation significantly worse. “You’re on speaker, Elliot,” she said, keeping her voice clipped and professional. “James and Bradley are here too. James is the captain, he’s the one who called Saskia. Tell them what you just told me.”

“There’s um, no case listed on our end,” he said, sounding more nervous than he’d ever sounded with her. She tried not to take any pleasure in the awkward situation she’d just placed him in, while the other two apparently held no such qualms. And considering the way Elliot had tried to fight Bradley at her mother’s house, then accused James (and everyone else there) of being a fraud, she couldn’t really blame them.

“There’s no case here with that case number or description,” Elliot repeated.

“You’re sure?” James asked.

“Yeah, Saskia just went through all of it.”

“I guess we’ll send it along to you, then. I’ll check in with McGovern and see what happened there,” James said.

“Yeah, um, thanks.”

“Alright, we’ll let you go.”

“Wait, Gabriella-”

“I have to go,” Gabriella said. “I’ve got another scam to run.”

That was beneath her. And she was going to stop, she really was. After all, he’d accused her of doing terrible things, the same way she had to James, right? Even if she hadn’t fully forgiven herself for it, she couldn’t hold Elliot to a higher standard than she held herself to.

“Can we talk later?”

Elliot sounded sad and if he was willing to do this on speaker, with the others listening, then maybe she should listen to what he had to say. “Fine,” she said, shaking her head. “Yeah, fine. I need to go, though.”

“Thanks.”

He hung up, and she did the same. “Since when does your ex-boyfriend, the one who ‘doesn’t believe in ghosts,’” Bradley did a fairly good impression of Elliot for someone who had met him twice, “work for the Foundation?”

“I have no idea,” Gabriella said. “I haven’t spoken to him since February.”

“Pretty big shift, if you ask me,” Amelia said over the speaker, and Gabriella jumped.

“Where the fuck did you come from?” she demanded, the words slipping out before she could stop them.

“I’m at the Wildwood,” Amelia said, amusement obvious in her voice. “Waiting on you. I assume you didn’t get to listen to the interview yet?”

“No, I’ll do it on my drive over.”

She was going to have to balance her laptop carefully in the car, but she could make it work.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 10