Chapter 12 #2
He explains each form with this careful patience.
Donny makes sure I know what happens if I get hurt in the field (there’s insurance), what my responsibilities are (basically: don’t die and follow protocols), and what happens if I want to leave (I can, anytime, no questions asked).
By the time we finish, a gentle glow has settled behind my ribs, as if someone has lit a candle inside me.
“Thank you,” I say, and mean it.
He sets the papers aside, then just… sits there.
The silence grows more uncomfortable until I’m fighting the urge to just say the first thing that comes to my mind to fill it.
Bob walks through the door on his cast, his cone of bravery tilted at an angle that makes him look drunk.
Come to think of it, I should probably ask about him.
“Can Bob roam the house?” I ask. “Or do you want him to stay in my room?”
“This is his home now, too,” Donny says. “He’s welcome anywhere you are.”
“Really?”
“Of course,” Donny says. “I wouldn’t dream of confining such a valiant protector to one room.”
Bob will have to be confined to my room for some of the time in the next few weeks while his leg recovers, but it’s a relief that he can roam freely once he feels up for it. I gesture at his newspaper. “Are you scouting for cases?”
Donny blinks, like he’s coming back from somewhere else. “Crossword puzzle.”
He’s so smart that he probably completes them in pen, no mistakes.
“We have developed more reliable methods of case identification,” Donny continues. “I maintain contact with a sympathetic former colleague at the Bureau who forwards me unusual cases, and Zoey has designed an algorithm that flags cases exhibiting certain… peculiarities.”
“How often do you get cases?”
“Every few weeks, typically, though it varies. When we’re between Possessors, we spend our time tracking down anchors, which forces the entities in containment to cross over, making room for more.”
Donny must see the confusion on my face because he leans back in his chair, glancing up at the clock.
“I suppose it’s time for me to bring you up to speed,” Donny says, folding his hands on the desk in that careful way that reminds me of teachers who actually care whether you understand the lesson.
“Each member of this team brings something essential to our operation, and we need to find what it is you will bring and what you excel at beyond seeing the dead. Griffin maintains our equipment and defenses. His combat skills are also quite exemplary.”
That tracks with the Griffin I met yesterday. He might have been easy smiles and jokes about his abs, but he was also clearly a gym rat, so him being good at combat makes sense.
“DJ is our emotional intelligence,” Donny continues.
“She possesses a remarkable ability to get people talking when they’d rather remain silent.
Benjamin has an eidetic memory and can remember every piece of information he has ever read, and there’s not a digital system in existence that Zoey cannot penetrate. ”
He makes these people sound like superheroes. All I bring to the job is Bob and the tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
“What about Nico?” I do my best to sound casual, but his name feels weirdly charged coming out of my mouth.
“Nico is my profiler,” Donny says. “One of the most naturally talented I’ve ever worked with, and that includes twenty years at the Bureau.”
I trace my fingers along the handle of my mug, hoping I look nonchalant instead of like a very interested tomato. “What’s a profiler?”
“Someone who studies behavioral patterns to understand the psychology of violent criminals,” Donny says.
“Most profilers can give you educated guesses about where a killer might strike next, and how. The good ones can tell you whether you’re looking for an organized offender or a disorganized one, figure out what kind of stressor might have triggered the violence, whether the killer knew the victim.
Nico can walk through a crime scene and tell you not just what happened, but understand what emotions were driving them.
He can predict their behavior so accurately that sometimes he finds them on intuition alone. ”
Nico could figure out what went through Stanley Daniels’s head that morning. Not that it matters. I couldn’t ask that of him. Not when he barely tolerates my presence.
Do I even want to know?
What if the answer is worse than not knowing? What if there’s no reason at all, just random chance and bad luck? Or what if there is a reason, and it’s something about my family, that made us targets?
Who am I kidding? No amount of understanding why is going to change the fact that they’re dead and I’m not.
Griffin appears in the doorway. He’s wearing a red T-shirt and gray sweatpants riding low on his hips. He braces one hand on the frame, giving me a small nod before turning to Donny. “You wanted to see me?”
“I’m assigning you a new responsibility,” Donny says.
“Good,” Griffin says. “All my responsibilities are so old and haggard.”
“Eden needs to begin her physical training,” Donny says. “She will be joining you every morning.”
I nearly choke on my coffee. Griffin’s expression shifts from concern to uninhibited delight.
“Every morning?” he asks.
Donny nods.
I try to figure out how to say this without sounding like I’m chickening out. “Is this going to be one-on-one? Or like, a group thing?”
I’m not opposed to working out—the construction job made me stronger, although I’m nowhere near strong enough to attempt the move Nico used on William Caine in the parking lot.
I just don’t want to work out with Griffin.
Not because he’s not a good guy, he clearly is, but because I can barely run two minutes without wanting to vomit, and the thought of being that vulnerable and letting anyone witness how pathetic I am makes me want to grab Bob and escape to my car.
“Individual attention would be best,” Donny says.
Griffin’s grin stretches wider, and I get the same feeling I used to get when I had to run the mile during gym class.
“Could you, just, give me the exercises you want me to do, and I can do them alone?”
Griffin folds his arms in a way that makes his biceps bulge against his sleeves. “I promise I’ll go easy on you. The first day.”
“How generous.”
“I’m a generous guy,” he says. “You’ll learn that about me.”
“I’ll leave you in Griffin’s capable hands.” Donny waves me toward the door with his newspaper. “Come find me after you’re finished.”
I drain my coffee and step out of the office. Griffin reaches across me to pull the door closed behind us, and I catch the sharp, clean smell of his body wash. My brain helpfully notes that he smells good, which is not information I need right now.
“So.” Griffin pauses. “Ready to see what you’re made of?”
“Like, right this second?”
“Unless you’ve got something better to do.” He takes a long swig from his water bottle, his eyes not leaving mine. “But I’m guessing you don’t.”
He’s right. Obviously. Getting stronger is part of the job I signed up for, and learning how to fight ghosts apparently starts with learning how to do a proper burpee. I’m not afraid of hard work. Or of being sore.
“Give me five minutes?” I ask, and Bob nudges me with his nose. “I need to give this guy his happy pill.”
I push up on the latch to the heavy barn door, ramming my shoulder to get the thing to budge. The door groans open, and I step into the cavernous space.
The left side looks normal enough—black rubber mats, dumbbells against the wall, the kind of setup you’d see in any gym.
But the right side is where things get medieval, or like something in one of those post-apocalyptic movies where the people fight zombies with baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire.
Punching bags and human-shaped dummies hang from chains attached to the ceiling beams, swaying slightly in the breeze from industrial heaters positioned in the corners.
Taking up the entire back wall is an arsenal of crowbars, fire pokers, and baseball bats mounted on pegboard hooks.
Griffin curls a resistance band near the weight racks.
He’s ditched his shirt somewhere between the kitchen and here.
I’ve only known the guy for a day, but I’m still not surprised.
I have to force myself to look at his face instead of the defined muscles of his shoulders and chest, but my face feels warm anyway, which is annoying because even with the heaters, it’s cold in here.
“Thought maybe you went back to bed,” he says.
“Unfortunately not.”
“That’s the spirit.” He hangs up the band and turns around, giving me an appraising once-over. “So. What kind of shape are you in?”
“I’ve been working construction for the last six months,” I say. “But I only have my gym membership to use the showers.”
He nods, arms crossing over his bare chest in a way that makes the muscles in his shoulders shift. “Cardio?”
“I outrun most mall security guards.”
“Do I want to know why that’s your benchmark?”
“Probably not.”
“Right,” he says. “Have you ever done a structured workout before?”
The honest answer sits on my tongue before I can think better of it. “I try to avoid working out because physical exercise makes me wish I were dead.”
Griffin’s face does this micro-cringe, and I immediately want to grab the words back and shove them down my throat.
“I just meant I’m not a gym person,” I clarify.
But the damage is done because Griffin’s glee has disappeared.
“You need to get stronger,” he says. “When an entity possesses a person, it overrides their body’s natural safety mechanisms. You know how sometimes you hear about a mom lifting a car to save her kid?”
I nod, focusing on his words instead of the embarrassment still burning my face.