James was working the overnight shift after dinner, so he went home for about two hours in between the party and work. Graham was there when James walked into their apartment, having just gotten off the day shift. 

“I made some chicken,” Graham said, gesturing toward a pan on the stove. “Help yourself.”

He hadn’t actually gone back inside to eat, James realized. He’d spent the next couple hours outside with his cousins, then went back in to kiss Auntie Ruth and leave. And grab some desserts off of the trays on the tables.

“Thanks,” James said, pulling a couple brownies wrapped in napkins out of his jacket pocket. “Here, want a brownie?”

Graham took it and sat down with a groan at the table. James scooped some chicken into a bowl and took the chair across from him. “How was the day shift?” he asked.

“Rough,” Graham admitted. “Me and Bradley had things mostly under control this morning, and it got better once Madelyn and Amelia got there. But there’s a backlog of cases already and Bradley was still doing paperwork when I left.”

“I’ll kick him out when I get there,” James said. “And I’ll triage the backlog, but honestly, how many ghost sightings can they send us to?”

“I’m pretty sure the woman that called in one of them actually passed away since then,” Graham said. “It’s on your desk somewhere, but it might be worth checking obituaries on all of them.”

“God dammit,” James muttered.

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirty-six in a couple weeks. Why?”

“Happy birthday. Also, one of the case files is older than you.”

James looked up from where he was digging a stray almond out of his brownie. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope. Noises in a basement thirty-seven years ago. That one’s also on your desk.”

James was speechless, though he really shouldn’t be. The Foundation had been retaliating against him and his team for months. He’d called them out on their bullshit back in February and their response to that was more bullshit. Everyone said he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he knew that on an intellectual level. But maybe if he’d kept his mouth shut, they wouldn’t currently be working on cases older than him.

Rosa over at the Hampden County branch had told him they’d had an increase in cases after that captains’ training, but nothing like North Worcester County’s. Jessamyn from Hampshire County had quit days after the training session, so James didn’t know how bad it got out there. 

He’d texted with her a few times after everything that had happened, and she said she was alright. Physically, at least, after getting zapped by an artifact in one of the Foundation’s storage apartments in Boston. She’d ended up with nothing beyond a burned hand that had healed completely since then. But she was so discouraged by the Foundation’s response to everything that she’d resigned from her captaincy less than forty-eight hours after getting home from the training. She hadn’t even given two weeks’ notice.

Rita, who had been in Boston with them, was currently Hampshire County’s captain, but James had spoken to her enough times too to know that she was on her way out as well. And he didn’t imagine they were doing a lot of recruiting these days.

Hell, Graham may have been the last person the Foundation actually hired. And that was over a year ago.

“I’m meeting with McGovern in a little while,” James said.

“In person?”

“Nah, this one’s official. But it should be a quick video call. It’s me and Amelia tonight so maybe we can get ahead on some of the admin work because nobody wants to be interviewed about ghosts at three in the morning.”

Graham raised an eyebrow, but James didn’t need to hear anything to know he’d just jinxed them. Oh well, that seemed to be the general gist of things these days.

***

A little while later, he was walking up the steps into their raised ranch home headquarters. As he unlocked the door and went inside, he heard music playing from the living room, something quiet and chill on old laptop speakers. He walked up the stairs to see Amelia and Madelyn working there. Amelia was at the small computer bank while Madelyn was lying on the couch with a laptop braced on her knees. Both looked up and greeted him with tired smiles. 

“Madelyn, you can head out,” James said, setting down his bag beside the armchair where Fang, their team cat, purred contentedly in the sun. 

“My shift doesn’t end for another thirty minutes.”

Right, he was a little early, wasn’t he? “Fine,” he said, giving Fang a scratch behind the ears. “Don’t stay late though. Graham updated me on these cases and if they’re going to wait my entire lifetime to send them out, they can wait a few extra days for updates.”

“Oh, I saw that one earlier,” Amelia said.

“I’m going to take a look as soon as I throw Bradley out. His shift ended an hour ago and I know he’s still here.

Amelia nodded toward the back bedroom, where Bradley, their logistics coordinator and resident grouch, tended to claim the old computer by the single bed. James headed back, hoping that the fact that he was still fresh would help him gain the advantage in the evitable battle.

Considering Bradley was glaring blearily at the computer with an old table fan directed at him as James came in, there was no need to worry. Not that he would have let Bradley win, since he’d been working for about eighteen hours now. And no, James had not given him permission to stay, but it didn’t surprise him that he had.

“I’m just going to wrap this up,” Bradley said before James said anything.

“Two minutes,” James said. “And I mean it. Are you good to drive home? I know you did a double and then some.”

“Fine.”

James was about to question that, but then Bradley held up his coffee cup. The coffee he made was thick and potent, so maybe he was actually telling the truth about staying awake long enough to get home. 

“I’d rather not kill myself on the way home. I’d stay here if I had to.”

“Alright, I’ll see you in two minutes. No, one minute and forty-five seconds.”

Bradley waved him out of the room impatiently and James did so, leaving the door open all the way behind him. He went back to the living room, where there was a box of old manila folders waiting on the coffee table.

“I can’t believe we’re doing cases so old that they were never digitized,” James said.

“Don’t worry, there’s plenty of new ones coming in too,” Amelia said. “Check your email. As of now we’re not scheduled for anything tonight, but there are six cases on the docket for tomorrow and I know there’s going to be at least two or three calls looking for updates.”

That was what James was about to do with McGovern. Richard McGovern was the branch liaison for all of Massachusetts and normally, spending quality time with McGovern was enough to make James want to walk out the door and disappear down Route Two. But something seemed to be changing with the other man lately. Nothing extreme, he was still extremely corporate and frustrating to deal with. But he had helped James and the other captains solve the Foundation’s not-puzzle before there were any further injuries. And he’d met James for coffee at an all-night Dunkin Donuts nearby a few months ago to confirm that yes, the Foundation had been targeting him and his team. 

They were also clearly targeting McGovern as well, but McGovern hadn’t brought that up at the meeting

Sure enough, James found the case Graham and Amelia had talked about sitting on his desk. Strange sights and sounds in a residential basement, unable to be explained. The homeowners would like someone to come and investigate the phenomenon. Two statements were taken, but nothing had happened beyond that. 

“Yeah, this is thirty-seven years ago, damn,” James said as he walked back out to the living room, scanning the faded forms the residents had filled out. “Nobody in this room was born yet. Oh, wait-” he said as Bradley came down the hall. “Bradley was a bouncing baby boy for this one.”

Bradley glared at him, took the folder, looked at it, then handed it back without a word. “A darling…three month old?” James confirmed. “All smiles and light, a blessing on the world?”

“Why do you know my fucking birthday?” Bradley muttered as he walked into the kitchen and began washing his coffee cup.

“You can leave that,” James called in as Bradley ignored him. “I’ll get it with mine later.”

Bradley continued to ignore him and washed the cup, then came back out with his backpack. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” he said as Fang weaved through his legs, as though begging him to stay. 

“I think it will be a full day tomorrow,” James said. “At least for the afternoon. I’ll do my best to get this all organized tonight and see what McGovern has to say at our meeting.”

“I’m sure it’ll be useful,” Bradley said. “I’m leaving.”

He crouched down to pet Fang, then walked out a second later with the cat still following him down the stairs. As the door closed and she settled in on a middle step, James went back to the box of manila folders. “I’ve got fourteen in here,” he said, digging through them. “None of them are newer than eight years ago. And I got a note yesterday that they want all of these digitized as they’re resolved.”

“I can get on that,” Madelyn said, her skepticism obvious. “But it’ll take a while.” 

“Is there any way to just, like, scan them directly into the system or something?” James asked her. 

She was the branch’s tech expert, or at least she was working toward that role. But even before her official training and designation, she knew more about the technology they used than anyone else James knew, including the higher ups in the Foundation. So when she grimaced at him, his hopes faded quickly.

“I mean, we could scan the images,” she said. “And maybe pull the information off of the PDFs. But we’d have to buy the appropriate software, otherwise we’d be out of authorization with the Foundation.”

The chances of the Foundation buying it were non-existent and James knew without looking that it would be more than they could afford out of petty cash. Would they notice if James pirated a copy of whatever software their bylaws required them to use? Or if he just used something free online? It was tempting, considering this was going to take hours to put in manually. 

But they couldn’t afford to lose someone to just do it all at once, anyway. So it’d be another thing to put on the to-do list. It might just be very far down the to-do list.

“I’m going to meet with McGovern in a little while,” he said. “But I’ll get started on setting up the schedule for these before then.”

The doorbell rang and they all looked over. “I’m not expecting anything,” Amelia said.

“Mads?” James asked. “Did you order food?”

She shook her head. “Maybe Bradley forgot his keys.”

James went to the door, nearly tripping on Fang. The cat ran away with a yowl and James looked out the frosted window. He couldn’t tell who it was, but he could kind of see a figure that didn’t appear to be Bradley. And when he opened the door a crack, chain still on, it was a delivery driver with her van on the road by the sidewalk. She wore a plain white visor over her red hair and neither that, nor the nicely fitted black tee-shirt she wore gave any hint of who she was.

“Are you the branch captain?” the woman asked.

James looked at her and the woman looked back at him. Was she Foundation? Or maybe it was a court summons. Her van was unmarked, but so was their repulsive yellow one parked in front of it.

“Captain McManus?” the woman said.

“Yeah,” James said.

“Delivery from the Boston branch.”

Christ’s sake. He would have preferred a court summons. Somehow he’d missed the enormous box by her feet. James closed the door, unchained it, then opened it again. The woman held out a clipboard. She was cute, James thought as he took it. A little younger than him, broad smile. Unfortunately, she was also delivering another box of old case files, wasn’t she?

James signed and the woman took her clipboard back with a smile that might have been a little friendlier than it was at the beginning of their interaction. “Thank you very much,” she said, then turned and walked toward her van.

James picked up the box and staggered up the stairs with it. Amelia looked over at him. “God dammit,” she muttered.

“How far back are we thinking these ones go?” James asked as he set it heavily on the coffee table, rattling the tea mugs sitting there. “I’m betting on 1970.”

“What year was the Foundation established?” Amelia said as she brought over a box cutter and sliced it open. 

These files were dirty, James realized as he picked them up. Crumbling soil fell off of them and back into the box, landing on more dusty, dirty files. As he flipped the first folder open, he wished he had gloves. Then he realized all the writing was handwritten, smeared across the page.

“1964,” he read from the date in the upper corner. “I guess these are coming in with me too.”

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 3