Chapter 12
I jolt awake, fumbling for Dad’s dog tags under my T-shirt.
I press the metal against my palm until the edges bite into my skin, counting my breaths until my heart stops pounding as hard, and the dream stops feeling so real. The mattress is solid. The sheets smell like laundry detergent. I’m here.
I’m safe.
What’s weird is that I really think I am, even though I’ve just met these people.
Am I only trusting them because I’m scared and don’t want to be alone? Would Dad think I’m stupid for trusting them?
Shut UP.
I know where this spiral goes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it once it starts. I wish I had my Jim Beam—what’s left of that handle is still in my car. I don’t want to go wandering around at night alone, but I could use something to quiet the noise.
The smell of plastic fills my nose. I feel it sealing around my mouth, clinging to my lips with each breath, sucking closer…
I practically punch the lamp switch, flooding the room with light. It does nothing to prove I’m not back in that house.
My fingers find the hair tie around my wrist. The sting brings me halfway back. I snap again, and again, until my wrist turns pink and my lungs remember how to pull in air.
A therapist taught me this trick when I was sixteen, and my panic attacks had escalated to carving up my forearms with whatever I could find because it was the only thing that made the noise in my head stop.
I’d rolled my eyes at the time, but the hair tie was the only thing that could get me to stop hurting myself two years ago.
It has been a monumental effort. Some days I can barely fight the temptation.
It’s been a long time since the urge has been this strong.
The hair tie is keeping it under control, and I’m not at the point where I’d need to avoid sharp things entirely, but it had better stay that way.
Donny would have to reconsider how much extraordinary courage I have if he finds me trying to gouge my arm with a railroad spike in the back of the ghost hunting van.
Sinking back into the pillows, I do my breathing exercise until my breaths even out. I’m about to close my eyes when the front door opens and closes downstairs.
Bob’s head snaps up. I hold still, listening, as footsteps climb the stairs, but then they stop.
I check my phone—2:17 AM.
It’s probably nothing. But I can feel the weight of them standing out there.
I count to sixty. When the person still hasn’t moved, curiosity wins out. I ease out of bed, remove the chair from under the knob, disengage the deadbolt, and crack my door open just enough to peer through.
Nico stands at the top of the stairs in shorts and a black long sleeve that clings to every line of his chest and shoulders.
His arms are huge, and his muscular shoulders taper to a narrow waist, resulting in a body I’ve only seen men have in the movies.
His legs are covered in tattoos. A spiderweb over his knee catches my eye first, then a snake wrapping around his calf.
There’s a spider so detailed it could crawl off his skin, an angel with haunting eyes, and a sliver of moon disappearing under his shorts.
His damp black hair falls into his eyes as he braces his hands on his knees, breathing hard.
Oh. He went running.
At 2 AM?
That’s objectively unhinged, but healthier than my usual coping mechanisms. I’ve done way stupider things to quiet the noise in my head.
His chest is still heaving, hair plastered to his forehead. He lifts his head. Our eyes meet. In place of last night’s anger, there’s something raw and unguarded. He looks how I feel, as though he’s trapped inside his head with nowhere to go.
I emerge from my room, bathing Nico in warm light. “I can’t sleep either,” I say, with a self-deprecating smile.
Nico straightens and brushes past me, and I catch the smell of cold air and sweat before he disappears into his room at the end of the hall.
I stare at his closed door for a couple of seconds.
I climb back into bed, yanking the covers up to my chin. Bob shifts against my leg.
Annoyance sits in my chest for a couple of seconds before I force myself to think through this. What would Mom say?
Lead with kindness even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
I press Dad’s dog tags against my lips, thinking.
Whatever Nico’s running from, it’s bigger than me. Having a new person here is probably adding to his stress.
It must be hard, trying to keep everyone safe after losing one of the team.
It’s clear they’re like a family. My stomach drops.
What if he watched them die? I know what it’s like to carry that weight.
To wake up every day wondering if they’d still be here if you’d done something differently, and the wondering eats me alive.
In the morning, I knock on DJ’s door, and she answers wearing pajama pants with a cartoon sushi pattern.
“Want to come to the grocery store with me?” I ask. I won’t have the chance to go once I start work tomorrow.
Forty-five minutes later, DJ and I are pushing carts through the produce section of the closest big-chain supermarket. I grab some basics, and DJ works through a shared list on her phone for the others.
DJ tosses a bag of frozen peas into the cart, adding it to a growing pile of comfort foods—mac and cheese, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies.
“Can I ask you something?” I say. “The team member who died, what was their name?”
DJ’s easy smile vanishes. She studies the grocery list.
“Bonnie,” she says, eyes firmly on her phone.
I feel like Ray as I figure out how to approach my next question, all the wrong words churning in my mind. I decide to be direct. “What happened to her?”
“Six months ago, Nico and I were hunting a Fragment through an old movie theater,” DJ says.
“It’s important when hunting Fragments to establish their boundaries, and we thought it was confined to the building.
” DJ throws a glass jug of milk into the cart a little too hard, crushing a loaf of bread.
“We were wrong. Bonnie was running comms from the van parked outside. We lost contact with her, and when we got back to the van… she was slumped over in the passenger seat. Her eyes had gone milky white.” DJ struggles to get the next part out and picks up a juice carton, examining the label, obviously pretending to read it.
“The entity got so deep inside her head that she thought she was someone else. She kept asking where her husband was, but Bonnie was never married. The intrusion permanently blinded her. She lives in a facility upstate now, and still has no idea who she is. I visit her sometimes.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, because what else can you say? I understand now why they talk about her as though she died. She did. In the ways that count.
My annoyance with Nico evaporates. I can’t take any of what he’s doing personally. He sees me as another Bonnie.
DJ breathes out a long sigh on a lip trill and replaces the juice carton on the fridge shelf. “Oh—hold on—I need to grab something.”
She veers toward the seafood counter before I can ask what. I follow her, watching as she points to a whole fish sitting on ice, its glassy eye staring up at nothing. “That one.”
The guy behind the counter wraps it up.
“Are you meal prepping?” I ask as we walk away.
DJ shakes her head. “This is for Peggy.”
“Peggy?”
“She’s a Poltergeist who lives just outside our property line.” DJ tucks the fish under her arm. “She can’t cross the fence, but she hangs out near the edge sometimes, and she loves fish.”
I blink at her. “Ghosts can eat?”
“No, but she likes to peel the scales off. Don’t ask me why—Donny says it has something to do with sensory memory—but it makes her happy, so we bring her fish when we can.”
On our way back to the house, DJ sets the unwrapped fish on a bed of leaves next to the gate. I scan the woods, expecting to see something glowing between the trees, but there’s nothing.
I’m up at 6 AM the next morning, and my body doesn’t feel like it’s been run over by a car anymore. Not even by Rosie’s Barbie car. It was always light enough, even with her driving it, that getting run over by it never hurt that badly.
I don’t take the lack of pain for granted. I’m dancing to the song in my headphones as I take Bob outside.
I bounce on my toes to keep myself warm as he does his business on the grass.
Once we’re back inside, he hobbles around, inspecting the kitchen baseboards while I make coffee.
I pour myself a cup, wrapping both hands around it because the kitchen is cold enough to numb my fingers.
I hear movement in the hall, and I peer out to see Donny’s office door open.
I should probably wait to bother him until seven like he said, but he might want coffee. He does already have a machine in his office, but it feels rude not to ask.
“Donny?” I poke my head in, pulling my headphones around my neck. “I made coffee if you want some.”
He takes me up on it, and I pour him a cup, carrying it down the hallway and being careful not to spill. He takes the mug with both hands, his weathered fingers curling around it like he’s as grateful for the warmth as I was.
I pull the forms from my hoodie pocket, the paper crinkled from being shoved in there. “I know I’m early, but I have those forms you wanted me to sign.”
Donny unfolds them, smoothing out the creases. He scans each page, occasionally adjusting his glasses.
“Just to be clear,” I say, “I’m not accidentally selling you my kidney or firstborn child, right?”
His mouth quirks. “I’d strongly encourage you to read through these before signing.”
“I did read them. I mean, I tried to—I’m not good with legal stuff. It kind of turns into word soup.”
Donny slips his glasses off and rubs his thumb against the bridge of his nose, lingering there. “It’s important you understand what you’re agreeing to. Take a seat.”