James woke up a couple hours later to his phone alarm trilling and rain splattering on the window. Jenny was cooing beside him on the floor and he realized his hand was still resting on her as she played with his fingers. He sat up, tried and failed to work out any of the kinks in his back from sleeping on the floor, then scooped up Jenny and walked out of the office.

The older girls were still sleeping in the pink bedroom, so after a quick diaper change for Jenny, he went to the living room and laid her on the couch beside him. She was wide awake now, babbling up at him as she grabbed for her toes and tried to fit them in her mouth. Bradley nodded from his spot in front of the computer, his usual greeting that James assumed applied to the baby as well. And Amelia was quietly talking on the phone in the kitchen. If he had the schedule right, Graham was due in in a few hours and Gabriella was hopefully taking a break in one of the bedrooms.

“Who’s this sweetheart?” Madelyn asked as she came into the room, leaning on her cane with one hand and holding a cup of Amelia’s awful ginger tea in the other.

“My cousin’s daughter, Jenny.”

“She’s adorable. Hi, sweetie.”

Madelyn sat down and gave Jenny a little wave. Jenny gave her a gummy smile in return, then went back to her toes. There was the sound of footsteps down the hall, then Penny padded out of the bedroom, rubbing her eyes, her shoulder-length brown hair tousled around her head. “Uncle James?”

“Good morning, honey,” James said. “Your mom is going to be here soon to get you.”

“We’re not going home, right?”

“No, you’re gonna go stay with Nana Jules for a few nights.”

“Good. I never want to go home.”

Penny looked shyly around the room. “Oh, Penny, these are my friends.”

He introduced everybody. Penny smiled at them, blushing a little more when he reached Bradley, who barely gave more than a brief wave before going back to his work. Meanwhile, Fang watched Penny cautiously from her perch beside Bradley, but didn’t run off. Penny looked at the cat, clearly wanting to pet her, but also intimidated by the idea of going any closer to Bradley in order to do so. The cat was apparently feeling friendlier than usual, though, because she hopped off the computer chair and walked a few steps closer to Penny. Penny crouched down and held out a careful hand. She was rewarded with a sniff and a nuzzle, then Fang ran off to her hiding place behind the couch.

“You know you’re basically best friends now,” James said with a wink, and Penny blushed even harder.

James wasn’t on for a couple more hours, and he knew he was being hypocritical checking his email while he’d told Bradley off for the same thing a little while ago. But after he managed to find something appropriate for breakfast for the older girls – cereal he promised Madelyn he’d pay her back for – he scanned through his messages while Jenny chewed her fingers on the couch beside him.

“Six cases, same as yesterday,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “Nothing new so far in the system?”

“Not yet,” Bradley said, glancing at James’s painted nails, which he’d totally forgotten about. “Do you want me to put these old cases in there as well? If I take it slow, it might not freeze.”

“I told McGovern we’re doing those one at a time,” James said. “So don’t waste your time putting a bunch in. We started Blueberry Hill, so yeah, let me go get the folder and we can at least have it in progress in the system.”

He went to pick up Jenny, but she was busy babbling at Madelyn, who waved James off as she nodded along to Jenny’s story. It had only been a few hours, but he was so used to having to work around the baby now that he was going to panic at least once or twice later today when she wasn’t within arm’s reach. But he went into his office, picked up the Blueberry Hill Farm folder, and came back in.

“I told him we’re doing the boxes at random, if no one tells us to prioritize anything,” James said as he handed Bradley the case folder. 

“And you chose the oldest case you could possibly find?” Bradley asked, flipping through the folder as dust fell onto his neat slacks.

“Let me get Jenny situated and I’ll go check in the system for anymore background information,” James said.

“You’re not fucking on.”

Krissy laughed from the kitchen, and James shot Bradley a look. Not that he had the right to, he was the one who had brought small children into a monster hunting factory. But Amelia was laughing now too as Bradley glared at James.

“If I pull up your time card right now, are you going to be clocked in from four AM?” James demanded as he went into the kitchen for a baby bottle.

“Yeah,” Bradley retorted, getting up and following him. “Because my boss told me to.”

And since when do you listen to me?”

The bottle shouldn’t really be microwaved, since it could have hot patches. James knew that. But of course he didn’t have a bottle warmer here, so the microwave would do. 

“I’m already here,” James said, scooping baby formula and shaking the bottle. He popped it in the microwave as Bradley stood in the kitchen doorway. “I’ll just check real quick. And I don’t believe you for a second that you actually marked four instead of five.”

“Then maybe you should take a f-”

Bradley stopped and James glanced at the two older girls, who were sitting at the counter on stools that had housed giant piles of random crap for as long as James could remember. Penny was looking down at her breakfast, trying not to laugh, but Krissy had no qualms about it.

“Are you girls still hungry?” James asked as he pulled the bottle out of the microwave and poured a couple drops onto his wrist. It seemed like the right temperature, or close to it.

Penny shook her head, her eyes darting to Bradley for just a second. Krissy shook her head too. “Where’s Mommy?”

“She’s on her way,” James said. “She’ll be here in probably ten minutes.”

He doubted Krissy really understood what ten minutes was, but she nodded and went back to her cereal. Meanwhile, Penny had hopped out of her seat and was now at the dining room table. Which was, as always, covered in a vast array of dangerous weapons.

“Cool!” she said, reaching for a knife in a leather holder.

“Nah, leave that alone,” James said.

“Will it work against the monster?”

“Probably not,” he said truthfully, walking over and pulling her into a side hug. “But we’re going to figure out what it was, then get it out of your house.”

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

Celia got there about ten minutes later, just like he’d said. He was midway through giving Jenny her bottle, so Amelia had gone to open the door for her. She gave the others a polite hello, then hurried to the girls. Krissy burst into tears as soon as he saw her, and James could see that Penny was trying her best not to cry too. And by the time James was done giving Celia the details about what had happened the night before, she was almost in tears as well.

“She told me,” Celia said to James while the girls got their jackets on before heading out into the rain. “She told me that there was a monster in her closet. I looked, but I didn’t actually look, because I didn’t think there was ever a possibility. She could have-”

“Don’t blame yourself,” James said. “She’s a five-year-old who loves scary movies, saying there’s a monster. And you did look. I didn’t expect anything either, but it was there and I happened to spot it. You’re going to Gran’s, right?”

Celia’s mother had owned the house for years now, but that didn’t stop all of the cousins from calling it Gran’s house still. Celia nodded, wiping at her eyes. “Mom’s still gone, but she said to go there, so we’re going to stay there for now. Then Adam has the girls for a few days.”

“I’m going to try to get in the house and take a look,” James said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.”

“Right now, I’m not going to file any official reports with the Foundation over it. I just don’t think they’ll get to you in a reasonable timeframe. I literally have a case from 1920 to look at in a little while. But I’m going to go in with some equipment and see if I can figure out what’s there. And once we know what’s going on, we can get rid of it. Alright?”

She nodded, holding Jenny tightly. “Let me get you some money for the formula,” Celia said.

“Don’t you dare.”

She laughed, but looked too drained to argue. “I’ll call you tonight,” James said. “I’ll be here through tomorrow and things slow down at night, so we can talk.”

“Thank you.”

The girls filed out after Celia and the headquarters seemed suddenly much quieter.

***

There was a team meeting at one that afternoon. James had spent the rest of the morning catching up on work and planning the afternoon’s cases with Amelia and Bradley. By the time he had a few minutes alone in the office to eat his lunch and check his email, there were only about five minutes until the meeting. He glanced at the mess in his inbox, then gave up and went out to the living room to get ready.

Madelyn and Graham were already in the living room. She was half-lying on the couch while he sat on the other end, and they were talking quietly. Graham was clearly in love with her and, looking at Madelyn right now, James could tell she was interested too. James nodded at them as he passed by, but they barely noticed him. 

Honestly, good for them. He personally wasn’t looking for anything right now, contrary to what everyone was teasing him about, but he could be happy for them that they seemed to have found each other in all this shit. And it wasn’t like it was any of James’s business, thank God. They were both at the same level in the Foundation, so there was no rule against it that he would have to work around.

Not that he was too concerned about that. Not after Amelia had talked some sense into him while he was in Boston.

“Hey, James?”

Gabriella was coming up the hallway, not looking thrilled. “What’s up, Gabs?” James asked.

“Have you heard anything from the Foundation about file requests changing?”

“No, why?”

“I requested some files on the Blueberry Hill Farm case so that I can get the basics of it down before we go out there. But I haven’t even gotten a confirmation for my request. I know it takes a while sometimes, but I’ve always at least gotten confirmation within a couple hours.”

“It’s probably just short staffed,” he said. “How long ago was it?”

“Five hours. I ordered them before I went on break this morning.”

“I haven’t heard anything,” James said. “But check with Bradley.”

Looking like she’d rather just walk to Boston and get the files herself, Gabriella turned and started toward the back bedroom. James went to the computer and tried to get the PowerPoint program running so that it’d be ready whenever Bradley got here to launch the presentation. James would do it himself, but he might get his hand chewed off for his efforts. So he’d just step back and let Bradley handle it the way he wanted to.

A few minutes later, everyone was in the room, and the software was chugging to life. Bradley was watching the smiling ghost spin in cheerful circles against a faded image, so there was no point in James pulling down the display screen just yet. Not when Fang was eyeing it hungrily from her perch on the couch’s armrest.

“Let’s get started while we wait for Bradley’s latest masterpiece to load,” he said. “Alright, we’ve got two current cases and one past case to focus on today. Current case number one: Viscoloid. It’s pretty straightforward, a haunting in an industrial building. It’s partially occupied with an HVAC company, but the empty part of the warehouse is where the activity seems to be contained. The staff all provided statements in the initial form, so we have a starting place. But we will need to go get further information. I’m thinking cameras in the active part of the warehouse, maybe the office as well if they’ll let us. But I doubt it.”

“We should see if they have security cameras first,” Amelia said. “I know I wouldn’t want us recording while I was trying to get my work done, so they might be more agreeable to sharing theirs.”

“Agreed,” James said. “Any progress over there, champ?”

Bradley looked like he might get up and stab James. “Not yet,” he said. “I’ll restart it. Take my notes.”

He pushed a notebook toward James, who took it and flipped to the page neatly labeled Viscoloid HVAC. “Thanks,” he said. “Alright, um, yeah. Straightforward. We have to gather information before we can do anything, so it’ll be a bit of a ‘hurry up and wait’ case. Alright, next.”

He flipped to the next page, where a few alarming doodles filled the margin beside a page of notes labeled Blueberry Hill. “Jesus Christ, Bradley,” he muttered. “Okay, Blueberry Hill Farm, which we mentioned at the meeting the other day. This is the file from the boxes of historical cases that never got completed. Or even started, in some cases. We have…barely anything on this one. Blueberry Hill Farm on the western side of town, activity on the property, team sent out to interview. Gabs, is there any more than this?”

“Not available online,” Gabriella said, her face sour. “We have the initial notes we talked about before, but nothing else. That’s what I’m waiting for from Records, but I haven’t heard from anyone.”

Right. “Bradley, any thoughts?” James asked.

He waited for those thoughts to be directed toward him, but Bradley shook his head. “She’s right,” he said. “I called Records after she told me she didn’t hear back, and nobody picked up. So I left a voicemail but they’re not going to call me. I can try again before I leave tonight.”

Maybe they were having a staff meeting or lunch all at the same time. There had to be some reasonable situation where the entire records department wasn’t getting back to them for hours on end, but that didn’t stop the unease from settling in. “I’ll look into it if we don’t hear back this afternoon,” James said. “So this is it on Blueberry Hill?”

“For now,” Gabriella said.

“Alright, then let’s stick with Gabs for the third case. Gabs, ghosts in the mall. What happened there?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Amelia and I were working on it last night before Hillsborough called to consult on a case that crossed slightly over into Townsend. But I wrapped it up this morning. It seems like a false alarm and the owners changed their minds about doing anything at all. I have the report in the back bedroom, hang on.”

She got up and hurried back toward the bedrooms, leaving James standing at the front of the room. “So…how was everyone’s weekend?” he asked.

“Great,” Graham said, with a degree of sarcasm. “Two days in the woods, tracking a bird that might or might not exist.”

“It flew away?” James asked. “How did it possibly fly with teeth like they said in the report?”

“I have to be honest, I’m not inclined to believe the report,” Graham said. “But my own report has all sorts of detail for you. I’ll email it after the meeting.”

“Can’t wait.”

Gabriella was back now, with the printout in her hand for their third case, which was apparently over before it even began. “Did the owners say why they don’t want to pursue it?” James asked as he took the paper from her.

“No,” she said. “Just that they were pulling their request.”

“Fair enough. That’s one less thing to plan for today.”

Gabriella sat back down. “Alright, back to Blueberry Hill,” James said, looking between Gabriella and Bradley. “No word from the Foundation. What are you hoping they’ll have?”

“The original investigator was Anne LeRoux in April of 1920,” Gabriella said. “She started interviewing, so it looks like Records should have her interview transcripts. That’ll save us some time.”

“Maybe,” Bradley added.

Five hours without reports had happened plenty of times. But five hours with no confirmation of receipt, that was what was concerning here. “Anything else to add?” James asked.

“No,” Gabriella said. “Once I have the scans, I’ll be able to look more into the history of the house and we can try to track down any living family members.”

“Great, let me know about that.”

There were other cases to work on today, but none of them were ready for the whole team to discuss. So James gave them very brief details, then put Amelia on setting up those. Graham and Madelyn were going to take notes and set up cameras over at Viscoloid while Gabriella and Bradley were on side work for a few hours while they waited on the Foundation. And James was going to try and fail to shrink the amount of work physically piled on his desk and overwhelming his inbox.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 8