The owner of the auto body shop was skeptical, but agreed to let James send someone to do some readings in his shop and scrapyard. So as soon as Amelia returned, she was on her way back out with an umbrella and a comms unit. James sent her a salute out the living room window. She flipped him off with her free hand, then got into her car and drove away.

Bradley was working a split shift due to some coverage decisions between him and Amelia that James couldn’t bring himself to pick apart or even learn about fully. As long as there was coverage, he didn’t give a shit which of them was here. So he was gone for a little while, doing whatever dark errands Bradley did in the few hours he wasn’t at work. Gabriella was meeting the night watchman over at Panera. Amelia would leave work at… some point. Again, as long as it was covered he didn’t care about the logistics. 

Graham and Madelyn were both on for a while longer, but they’d gone to get a late lunch. They’d offered to pick up something for James, but he had his own. And he didn’t want to interfere if they were actually going to get a little bit of time together away from the monsters. 

Dating someone you were on the same team with would either be a nightmare or the greatest thing ever, James honestly wasn’t sure. And, like the logistics of Bradley and Amelia’s coverage arrangement today, not something he was going to spend much time thinking about.

Even if he was half-hoping they’d get more boxes so he could see Meredith again.

But before he could hope for that, he had to call Mrs. Caroline Sawyer to see if she’d be willing to speak to him about a house she might not have any knowledge of.

The phone rang twice before someone answered, an old woman with a sweet voice and a strong Alabama accent. “Hello?”

“Hi, is this Mrs. Sawyer?” James asked, sitting down in his chair and curling the phone cord in his fingers.

“Yes, it is. May I ask who is calling?”

“Mrs. Sawyer, I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon,” James said. “My name is James McManus. I’m calling – and, ma’am, I can’t believe I’m saying this either – about a case of potential paranormal activity submitted to the Foundation for Paranormal Studies in Boston by your grandmother, Patty Rockland, in 1920.”

There was silence on the other end of the line and James waited to be very politely cussed out. Or hung up on. But then there was a peal of laughter over the line. “What year was that, young man?” Mrs. Sawyer asked.

Now James was laughing too. “1920,” he confirmed.

“I suppose you work for the government?”

“Might as well, ma’am,” he said. “They handed me this case about a week ago.”

“My grandmother,” Mrs. Sawyer said thoughtfully. “She was a good woman. A tough woman, no one messed with her. So if she says she saw something, then I’m inclined to believe it.”

“Do you know anything about it?” he asked. “She says there was activity on the property she and her husband owned in Leominster, Massachusetts.”

“I don’t, Mister…”

“James, please,” he said. “Do you know of any family members who might?”

“There aren’t many of us left,” she said. “I was the youngest in my family, all my brothers are gone now…” She paused for a second. “She never told me anything about that. Nor do I want to be involved in it. I’m saved by the blood of Jesus Christ and the devil needs to stay away from my family.”

And this was why James had taken this call. “I understand,” he said. “There isn’t anything else that I need from you, unless you think of anything that might help me put this to rest.”

He hung up with her a few minutes later, after assuring her that he wouldn’t contact her again. She was very kind, both to him and about the case, but also firm that she wanted nothing to do with this kind of work. Which, fair enough. There were days James didn’t either.

***

A while later, James had about half an hour left of his shift and honestly not much to do. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true, but it was nothing that was going to catch on fire immediately if he didn’t manage it. So he was taking a break from his computer screen and wiping down the kitchen, which he didn’t do nearly enough. 

Amelia had returned with stories of skeptical, condescending men who were suddenly a lot less condescending when the energy detectors had picked up activity behind the garage. She’d taken her readings, taken a statement from the one man who would admit to having heard strange noises there late at night, then come back to drop off the equipment and confer with James before going home.

“Gabriella thinks that was a field,” James said while Amelia packed up her bag. “Or a smaller structure of some kind. The place wasn’t a working farm, it was too small.”

“So it was a cute nickname that stuck?” Amelia asked.

“Probably. Do you want to go back tomorrow or do you want me to take it?”

She laughed. “I’ll take it,” she said. “By the time I left, we were basically friends. Enough of the guys were freaked out that the ones that had been really skeptical shut the hell up pretty quick.”

“Good.”

“I think a couple days of monitoring energy levels is all we really can do over there, though,” she said. “It’s a hundred-year-old case. What do they even want us to do? We could cleanse it, but I can’t think of anything more concrete.”

“I think cleansing would be good,” James said. “I know it’s bothering Gabs that this information is so incomplete. But unless she comes up with something really unexpected in the existing files, I don’t think there’s much to do except settle the energy and wrap it up.”

“In that case, maybe we can get it done this week,” Amelia said. “I’m going to stop by there and get the monitoring equipment in place tomorrow before I come to work.”

“Adjust your timecard to include the time you’re over there,” James said.

“Yes, Dad,” Amelia said with a laugh, hitching her backpack over her shoulder. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

She walked out just as Graham came in the kitchen to finish his own shift. “See you at home,” he said as James threw away some questionable apples he’d felt pretty confident he’d eat when he bought them a week earlier.

“Yeah, I’ll be there in a bit. Don’t wait up.”

Graham looked a little doubtful as he left, but James couldn’t really blame him. He was going to go home tonight, he was sure of it. He just had to wait till Bradley came back and they had coverage for the overnight shift. Then he’d be out of here.

The door opened shortly after Graham left, just as James was finishing cleaning up the kitchen. He threw away the contents of the dustpan, then turned to see Bradley coming up the stairs.

“Hey!” he called, setting down the dustpan. 

“Hi.”

“Do anything good while you were gone?”

And now Bradley was looking at James like he was nuts. They’d gotten past the whole fight they’d had in Boston a few months back, but maybe James was getting a little too pushy with his questions again.

“Went to the laundromat,” Bradley said after a moment, heading for the coffeepot.

“Did you get any rest?”

“No.”

Bradley scooped grounds into the coffeemaker, then turned to the sink. He stopped, blinked, and looked at James. “It looks good here.”

James laughed. “I needed to get away from my computer.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Thirty minutes or so. You good solo tonight?”

“Of course.”

James didn’t like having anyone on night shift alone, but hadn’t had much choice lately. Luckily, there was nothing on the board for tonight, short of any emergencies that might come in. And James was only a few houses down if there was a true emergency, so even Bradley wouldn’t be stubborn enough to not call. 

He left Bradley to get settled and went into his office. The captains’ email thread was still going, and he fired off a message about Gabriella’s experience at the Foundation and how they were pretty sure that after all that, they still didn’t even have all the files from that case. And they were only an hour away. 

He only had a few minutes left of his scheduled shift and he really was going to go home tonight. He saw a response come in from North Aroostook County and made a note of it, since they were furthest from Boston, right up in the northernmost part of New England. Then, right before he was about to log out of his email for the night, a message came in from Sharon Delgado.

Subject: Cases

James,

I’ve been speaking with Charlotte Allard at North Aroostook and we’re filing an official complaint, for all the good it’ll do. This is untenable at any distance, especially as more files come in. Do you want to put your name on the complaint?

I understand if not. I know you’ve had some problems of your own with the Foundation and this will almost certainly add to them.

Regards,

Sharon

James considered it for a second. Months of retaliation, which had left his team in shambles. And it had died down to as much as it was going to, now that everyone was getting overwhelmed with this shit.

But no, this was too much, and he had one of the better deals of anyone with it. So even if he hadn’t wanted to, he felt obligated to help.

Sharon,

Put me on the list.

James

With that, he closed out his email and shut down his computer for the first time in probably a week and a half. It wheezed gratefully as the screen went dark, then he got up and went over to the couch.

It was late, coming up on ten-thirty. And he should go home, he was back tomorrow around nine. But while he still had a little energy, he wanted to get ahead on a couple of these cases that the Foundation had sent over. So he stretched out on the couch, just for a moment, with a case file from 1993 in his hands. This one looked simple to the point of boring. A house in Westminster with something watching from the trees. 

Honestly, probably not supernatural, James realized as he flipped through the report. A deer, maybe a bear. Anything with reflective eyes? He could easily just check it out, write up a fresh report, then…

***

James was not surprised when he woke up in his office, the folder and its contents draped over his chest. He got up, blinking in the dim yellow light of his lamp, and set the folder on his desk. It was two in the morning, which was the one thing that did surprise him. He’d apparently laid down to check out that case and fallen asleep for four hours. 

He should still go home. The door was partially open, so James went out into the quiet dining room, moving with just enough sound to avoid scaring Bradley, wherever he was. The air conditioner was humming softly as he walked into the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

James stood by the sink, drained the glass, and refilled it again. He should really go home. He’d been wanting to go home since he arrived here. But he’d have to get his stuff together, get home, shower before bed, then go back to sleep for a few hours. And his pantry was empty, he hadn’t gone grocery shopping in a while. So he should eat the leftover pasta he had here. 

Maybe he’d just stay here. He had a spare set of clothes in his office. And it was a bad habit, obviously. Especially if he did any work. But it could be worse and it made sense after sleeping half a night here already.

James glanced into the living room. The case printer was silent and there was one lamp glowing in the corner of the room closest to his office and the dining room. Bradley was asleep on the couch, the phone silent in its cradle next to him. Nothing was waiting in the queue, Bradley didn’t need any backup, and there was plenty of time until James’s own shift started. 

He wandered over to the fridge, opened it, and started sifting through the contents until he found the ziti and sausage he’d made yesterday. He microwaved the container, making sure to stop it before the timer beeped, then dug through the messy silverware drawer as quietly as possible until he found a fork. 

There was a ton of pasta in the container. He really should have just put some in a bowl, there was no way he was going to eat all of this. And putting it back in the fridge to be reheated later just seemed irresponsible. 

James had messed up this simple task, and it was a sign. He should eat some here, then bring the rest home with him.

No, what he really should be doing is going home now. He needed to get out of this building before it consumed him.

He sat at the dining room table and ate, resisting the temptation to check his email or pull up any files on his phone. He wasn’t working right now. So he’d just eat and read the ebook that he’d started on his phone six weeks ago and couldn’t remember at all. 

“Don’t you live, like, a block away from here?”

James jumped, nearly choking on a ziti as he turned around. Bradley was standing in the living room, checking the printer for cases. There was nothing there, not that James was expecting anything right now. Nights were for catching up on the admin work that now piled up all day, and babysitting the printer. But it hadn’t been that long since the night Gabs got hurt, when cases had spilled one after the other off the printer as he’d listened to her cry over the comms while Amelia brought her to the hospital.

His inspections of the various other annoyances in his life complete, Bradley made his way over to where James was sitting. “I didn’t want to scare you when I came out,” James said. “I was supposed to go home at ten-thirty.”

“I knew you were in there,” Bradley said around a yawn. “I did my checks around midnight and saw you.”

Right. James held out the Tupperware of pasta to him. “Want some?”

He expected Bradley to refuse, probably pretty rudely. But instead, he shrugged. “Sure.”

He went to the kitchen and came back with a fork. They both picked silently at the pasta and James again considered how he shouldn’t be here right now. He considered starting a conversation, but Bradley said nothing and James really didn’t have anything to contribute.

“Are you going home?” Bradley asked after a little while.

James shrugged. “I should,” he said. “But why bother?”

“So you don’t get stuck on something stupid with me at four AM?”

“Yeah, but then you’ll be here alone at four AM with whatever it is.”

“And who fucking made that schedule?”

“You and Amelia, thank you very much.”

James took a scoop of pasta, dropping a noodle from the too-big forkful as he tried to eat it. He wiped it up with his napkin, contemplated eating the noodle anyway, then didn’t bother. Who knew what touched this table throughout the day? 

He did. James knew exactly what touched this table during the day and that noodle needed to stay as far away from his mouth as possible.

“I’m here at nine anyway,” James said. “I might as well just sleep on my couch here.”

“There’s beds too, if you’re going to be an asshole about it.”

“Couch is better.”

Bradley shrugged, then took some more pasta. “Yeah,” he agreed. “But you should go home. Give me some fucking peace for once.”

There was no heat in it. James sighed. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said.

“Obviously.”

It was coming up on three now, the time glowing from the stovetop clock. He stood up. “You can have the rest of that,” he said, nodding toward the Tupperware. “I won’t see you before you leave, so I’ll see you the next day. Or tomorrow or whatever.”

He wasn’t doing the hourly math. Now that he’d made the decision, he just wanted to go home before he found another excuse to keep him here.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 16