Chapter 25
twenty-five
ZEKE
Zeke: Yo. Will. Is Lydia around?
Will: Should I be worried…?
Zeke: I need her for something at the library. Where is she?
Phoebe: The library? Holy shit! Zeke knows how to read?!
Zeke: No. Dats y eye knead Lideeah.
Will: She’s there now. Working. Like you should be doing.
Benji: Ffs you guys
“Interesting…” Lydia narrows her eyes at me from behind her desk.
Barely even glancing at the black-and-white photo I slapped down on the desk, she continues her work of scanning books and placing them on the cart next to her.
“You want me to look in the archives for you to see if I can find anything out about some girl you found in a photo?”
“Yep,” I say, flashing her my most winning smile. “But I told you, it’s not just some girl. It’s the ghost that’s been haunting Autumn’s house and scaring the fucking shit out of her.”
“Zeke, there are children around,” Lydia says with a raise of her eyebrow. She casts a worried glance toward the kids’ section, then back to me.
“Oh, sorry. Freaking crap. She’s been scaring the freaking crap out of her.”
Lydia rolls her eyes. “And what makes you think there’ll be something in the archives?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Her name’s on the back of this photo Autumn found in her attic—and it’s definitely the ghost—but good old Google told me the date of her death is unknown.”
“Can’t you just ask her?”
“Aw, come on, Lydia. You know I need Benji for that shit. Oh—crap. Sorry. But it’s for the pilot, and I want it to just be me. Benji always gets the credit. And besides, looking through the archives will be good for the narrative if you’ll let me record.”
She sighs, stands. “Fine. But Nancy went to lunch, so I’m only giving you ten minutes. Someone’s got to man the desk.”
“Sure,” I say, pressing my palms together in thanks. “Whatever we find in ten minutes, that’ll be more than great.”
I follow Lydia down the hall and to a separate room next to the office. Aside from the grand opening after Will’s renovation of the library this spring, the last time I was here I was sitting with my brothers on the floor, trying to summon a ghost. Ah. Memories.
“Okay, let’s see here,” Lydia murmurs, more to herself than to me.
She’s pulling out drawers, flipping through binders.
I whip out my phone and hit record. Lydia looks up at me, and I can tell she’s gone full librarian mode now.
“Do you know any year this girl was alive? Like, did the photo have a date?”
“Nah, but Google told me a birthdate. At least, I’m pretty sure it was her. Someone had added a bunch of people to their family tree, and she showed up as a relative. March 1, 1919.”
“Okay, good. That gives me something to go off. So let’s say she looked—I don’t know—seventeen? In that photo? You tell me. You’re the one who’s seen her up close.”
I grin, tempted to tell Lydia I’ve done more than just see this chick up close. But I don’t want to piss her off. Lydia can have a temper, and I’m relying on her good graces at the moment.
“Yeah, seventeen. Eighteen. Something around there,” I say with a shrug.
“So I’ll start in, oh, 1936 and skim through the headlines for anything interesting.
” Lydia rifles through a drawer, pulling papers out here and there and glancing at them with a frown before shoving them back into the file.
“Nothing about any Lena Reeves in 1936 that I can see. Unless she’s not named? That might make this difficult.”
“Yeah, I think we keep looking for a name,” I agree.
As curious as I am about who this Lena was and what happened to her, I don’t have the patience to sit here all day.
And when push comes to shove, I could just ask Lena and hope she answers through the spirit board.
But, even though I’m sure the viewers would love to see Autumn get the crap scared out of her again by cheeky ol’ Lena, I think they’ll appreciate this library stuff. Change of pace for sure.
“Okay, on to 1937 we go,” Lydia announces.
She moves to another drawer, rifles through even more files.
As she searches, a sweet little wrinkle in her furrowed brow, I’m trying to tune out the whispers swirling around me, the flashes of silvery figures coming in and out of view like static.
This library has a lot of ghosts. This whole town does. It’s kind of unnerving.
“Wait!” Lydia shrieks. I glance up, my attention ripped from any ghosts in the building.
Lydia’s flushed pink, and she tears a file from the drawer.
“There’s a headline here. June 18, 1937.
Reeves Girl Declared Missing: Police Ask for Public’s Help.
And then the one after it: ‘Reeves Girl Still Missing. Search Continues Into Eighth Day.’”
“Holy shit! Is there a picture?” I can already feel my heart speed up. This is exactly what I needed.
“Mmhm. Come look.” Lydia ushers me forward, laying the pages side by side on the polished conference table. We survey them together, eyes flashing over the text.
“It’s her,” I say, triumphant. “It’s definitely her.”
Lydia’s dark eyes skim the text. She gestures for me to hand her the black-and-white photo again.
“This article says Lena Reeves was a member of the household staff at the Calvin Carroway family home—which makes sense, right? This looks like a family photo, with Lena here on the end and whoever that guy is. A butler, I guess. The article doesn’t mention him. ”
“So what? She just… up and disappeared?”
Lydia shrugs, her brow still furrowed. “Sounds like it. According to this, local officials organized a search party that scoured the area for almost two weeks. Nothing turned up, and the case went cold.”
“Except Lena is very much hanging around her former place of residence—which means the trail is hot again. Almost a hundred fucking years later—don’t give me that look, there’s no kids in here, Lyds—this trail is hot.
I’m on it.” I swipe the photograph off the table and shove it in my bag.
“Can you make me a copy of these articles?”
Lydia, who looks a bit more trusting than when I walked in fifteen minutes ago, makes the copies and sends me dubiously on my way.
I can tell she isn’t a huge fan of me getting involved in missing person cases, but geez—the dang case is a hundred years old.
It’s about time someone found out what happened to Lena.
Once outside, I hightail it straight to Autumn’s store.
I know I’ll be seeing her in just a few hours to film more footage for my pilot, but I’m fucking stoked about this information and I know she will be, too.
Because, like, what if, when Lena spelled out murder on the spirit board, she didn’t mean she was going to murder someone—but that she herself had been murdered?
Smell that? This shit is fishy.
Hardly even looking where I’m going, I stride into Autumn’s store and—
What the fuck?
Autumn and some dude are in the back of the store, and although I don’t recognize him by his face, I figure out pretty quickly who he is by what a douchebag he’s being.
I know people say it’s rude to eavesdrop, but I never claimed to be polite.
So I stand there and shamelessly listen, ready to throw down for Autumn if this guy so much as takes a single step toward her.
“Be reasonable,” Autumn is saying. Her voice sounds… not like her. Like she’s making herself small, toning herself down to fit in some kind of box. “…as a favor to Lydia. She and Will were going a little nuts with Zeke all up in their business…”
I stop when I hear my name. This conversation is... about me? But I’m reeled in now, too worried about why Patrick is here and why he’s bothering Autumn to turn around and leave.
“They’re only that—rumors. You think I’m not aware Zeke’s just a player? Get real. There’s nothing to any of this…”
Autumn’s words blur together. Just a player?
Is that what she thinks of me? I mean… of course it is.
It’s what I wanted her to think. It’s what I want everyone to think.
It’s what helps me skate by, helps keep me flitting around, darting from one amusement to the next, so I never have to stop and wonder whether I could make someone stay.
And maybe that’s why what Autumn just said hits me like a ton of bricks, right in the chest. I can’t be mad at her. She’s just believing what I’ve shown her—and I think I kind of believed it, too. But I don’t know anymore.
So I stride forward, because, regardless of what either of them say or think about me, that’s not the point. This fuckwad does not get to talk to Autumn like this.
“Yo, pretty boy,” I say, walking right up to the dude and fixing him with an unflinching stare. I’m standing so close our chests are almost touching, and I feel a little smug when I realize I’m a half inch taller than he is. “You wanna talk to her like that again? Huh? I fucking dare you.”
Patrick surveys me, his dark eyes cold and calculating. He’s wearing a smirk that tells me he thinks he’s better than me, but I don’t care. Let him. I know I can make his ex-wife come with just a few strokes of my fingers—so suck on that, pal.
Patrick just smiles at me, his lips as thin as a snake’s. He turns to Autumn. “Well, then—this must be Zeke. How sweet. Does he come when you call him?”
Even though his remark is directed at Autumn, I scoff. “Oh. Bro. She comes, too, for sure.”
I see Autumn wince. Although she doesn’t slap a palm to her face, she may as well have, because her reaction is clear.
Patrick’s head snaps around, and his eyes are blazing. He gives a quiet laugh, eyes flicking between Autumn and me, then shakes his head.
“Alright, Autumn. I tried. You wanna fuck up your reputation along with mine? Be my guest, but know there’ll be consequences.”
Autumn doesn’t reply, just blows out her breath as she watches him turn and leave. He shoots me one more death glare on his way out the door and disappears down the sidewalk. Autumn and I are left standing in the middle of her store staring at one another, the silence thick.
“Sorry you had to hear that,” Autumn says. “He’s a dick.”
“Sure is,” I say, offering her a signature grin.
Her words are still rolling around in my head, and I’m pretty sure that line about me being just a player has already buried itself deep in my chest. But I don’t say anything about any of that.
What is there to say? It’s what she thinks, and honestly?
It’s probably the truth. I’ll shake this off like I always do.
“Anyway,” I continue, handing Autumn the folder of newspaper scans. “I came by to give you these. Lydia found them in the archives for me. Apparently, Lena Reeves disappeared out of nowhere in June 1937—never heard from again.”
Autumn takes the scans. She leafs through them, then glances up at me, glad for another subject to cling to. “Wait—maybe she was trying to tell me she got murdered, not that she was going to murder me.”
I shoot her a wry smile. “That’s what I’m thinking. We’ll ask her about it tonight. But for now, I thought you’d appreciate knowing we’ve got recorded proof to go along with whatever else we find out.”
“Thanks,” Autumn says, holding my gaze for a moment. “See you tonight?”
“Yep.”
I give her a nod and get the hell out of there, leaving the scans for her to look through. There’s a weird sort of ache in my chest, and I’m trying to will it away. After all, nothing’s changed.
I’m in exactly the same place I was before: I’m screwing the hottest chick I’ve seen in my life, and I’m going to win this goddamn pilot competition if it means having to die and come back as a ghost to haunt the producers at the SyFy Channel. Yeah. It’s all good, man.