“I don’t know what to say.” Aiden sits on his bed, his face pressed into his hands. “I can’t fucking- how did this happen?”

We searched his office like, six times. We went through every shelf, corner, box, and drawer, and nothing. I don’t think either of us really believed we would find it - the bag left open is a pretty clear indicator that this was no accident. But we had to try.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving all of the roads near City Hall except the flooded one, searching for the red car. Nothing. 

Astonishingly, the damage to City Hall is negligible: no water actually got inside, so the building wasn’t flooded. As the water had simply appeared from nowhere and spilled outward, a great deal of it rushed onto the street and spread out, eventually leaving the lawn water-logged, but nothing the boiling summer sun can’t handle. It seems like the only real destruction was of the pants and shoes of the unlucky people who happened to be on the lawn at the time.

The Public Works Department is stumped. No one understands how it could have happened, but the best guess is some kind of freak water main break. There’s construction going on down the street from City Hall, and these things happen. Of course, that doesn’t explain why it stopped all by itself, but it doesn’t matter: people are ready to buy the easy explanation. Some of this we learned from the news, and some from the updates being emailed to Aiden and the other employees. 

At least we didn’t turn up at Kent’s house drenched again. We had a lot of time to dry off over the course of our frantic search. Now, here we are, Aiden in a pair of clean basketball shorts and me in a borrowed pair of joggers. Both of us are too shaken up to have successfully communicated more than a sentence or two since this all happened.

At least I get to sit with him on his bed.

“Can I do magic?” I ask, staring at my own hands. We’ve been numb long enough. “Did I cause the flood, somehow?”

“No.” Aiden speaks with a degree of finality that makes him sound certain. “If you could do magic, I would be able to hear it. That’s not what it is.”

“You didn’t hear that there was about to be a flood in City Hall!”

“Because no one was in any real danger!”

“I’m just saying, maybe I have some cool ability-”

“No. Not in the magical sense, anyway. I’m telling you, I would know.”

“Fine, then let’s hear your explanation of what happened today!” I toss my hands up. “You explain how I saw myself, wearing somebody else’s clothes, getting into some crazy car-”

“It was a Corvette,” Aiden murmurs, frowning deeply. “And one I’ve never seen around Ketterbridge before. I’d remember a car like that. Are you sure those weren’t your clothes?”

“You know me, do I seem like a guy with a Budweiser t-shirt? I guess those could have been my jeans.”

Aiden runs both hands over his hair, presses his palms to his forehead, and falls back against the bed.

“Why is the watch gone?” he asks the ceiling. “Who else knows about it? My laptop was in my bag, but they didn’t steal that. Whoever took it, they were looking for it specifically.”

“Honestly, Aiden, I have five million questions and a guess at the answer for like... four of them?”

Aiden doesn’t respond. He drops his hands onto the bedspread and shuts his eyes. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, he looks beyond tired. I’m drowsy, and I straight up slept through work, so I can only imagine the depth of his exhaustion. It’s only like, 6 PM, but somehow I feel like we’ve both been up for days.

“God, I’m so fucking beat,” Aiden murmurs.

“I feel guilty that I got some real sleep and you didn’t,” I tell him. “Can I like - give you some of my energy?”

I gently trace a finger down his chest. An instant spark of magic flares up at the point of contact. Aiden gasps and jolts upright, shuddering. He catches my finger in his hand.

“Give me a little warning!” he sputters. “My god!”

“Sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t know that would happen, normally we have to prepare and concentrate and stuff-“

“Well, our connection must still be open.”

“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.” I wiggle my finger free and hold my hands up.

“No, I mean-" Aiden pauses. “It’s all good, just give me a heads up before you’re gonna do something like that.”

“I will, I promise.” I gently push him down onto his back again, and he settles against his pillows, letting out a long breath. “Alright, look. There can’t be that many red Corvettes in Ketterbridge, right?”

“Right,” he mumbles, closing his eyes.

“So, maybe we can... I don’t know. It didn’t have any plates, but maybe we could ask around, see if anyone else has seen it?”

Aiden makes a sound that doesn’t quite form an entire word. His chest rises and falls slowly. I nudge him in the ribs with my elbow.

“Aiden?”

No answer. He's asleep. 

I hesitate, then carefully pull the hat from his head, releasing a tumble of glossy hair. A few chestnut strands fall into his eyes, so I smooth them back from his forehead. Aiden turns his face into my palm, lets out a little sigh. I freeze. He’s trapped my open hand between his cheek and the pillow. I feel the flutter of his breath against my wrist. My heart races wildly.

I swallow hard, unsure of what to do. If he wakes up and finds us like this, it will be really awkward, but also I’d rather die than move my hand away.

His cheek against my palm is a blend of gentle stubble scratch and soft skin. I don’t often get an opportunity to just look at him like this; every lingering glance I leave on him is a chance for him to catch me and figure me out. But here, now, I have a moment. I press my free fingers to my own lips, my breath caught in my throat.

Sometimes I’m ambushed in broad daylight by the way I feel about Aiden. Even with everything that happened today - the chaos, the confusion, the things that made no sense at all - my mind goes blank, no room for anything but his breathing against the heart line of my palm. Every moment with him reveals some new beauty, and I don’t only mean it in the physical sense. It feels like there are one thousand tiny, perfect things to discover about him, and I wish I had all the time in the world to appreciate every single one.

There’s no physical magic happening between us right now, but in looking at him I feel strangely revived; rain on a meadow. I want, more than anything, to press a kiss into that spot in his jaw that gets tight when he’s stressed. I want to fall forward into the safety of his arms and never leave again. I want.

He shifts, freeing my hand. He rolls onto his side and curls his knees up, burying his face into a pillow. The movement tugs his shorts a little lower, revealing the divot of his hip. I turn away, my face burning. The blanket is bunched up at the bottom of the bed, so I grab it and spread it over him. He sleepily tugs it closer around himself.

My exhaustion creeps back up on me. I wonder distantly if it’s going to be this tiring every time, this magic we do together.

There’s a healthy bit of space on the bed that isn’t occupied by Aiden. I’m not even sure if I’m awake enough to drive home, and nothing sounds worse than having to face Kasey and tell her we lost the watch. Would Aiden mind if I stayed? He let me sleep over here the night we pulled Gabby out of the river.

I pull my bare feet up on the bed and scooch up next to him. The movement doesn’t stir him at all. I wiggle my feet under the blankets, snag the other pillow, and fall headfirst into sleep.

~~~~

In my dream, I stand again on the high, grassy slope. Old Ketterbridge spreads out before me, hemmed in by the mountains and the water. I walk once more into the forest, through the trees, until I come upon the women. I watch as they plant the sapling, treating it like the most precious thing in the world.

I’ve been having that dream more and more often recently, and I’m starting to wonder why I never pressed Aiden on what exactly he meant when he said that it was his fault. What did he do, to imprint this so thoroughly on my brain that it keeps coming back over and over again, never one detail changed? What does it mean?

Blinking sleepily, I open my eyes. My cheek is smushed against something warm and soft. I look up into a bright blue stare.

My face is resting on Aiden’s upturned forearm. My hand curled up next to my nose, also settled on him. He’s watching me.

“Hi,” he says, smiling.

I sit upright at once, rubbing my eyes. It’s bright and sunny outside, birds chirping.

“What time is it? How long have we been asleep?”

“It’s...” Aiden plucks his watch from the night table. “About 3 PM, and I, at least, fell asleep around 6 o’clock yesterday, so... a while.”

“Seriously? Oh my god. How long have you been up?”

“I don’t know. Also a while.” He shakes out his arm. “Must have been a minute, because my arm fell asleep.”

“Why didn’t you just push me off?”

He shrugs.

“Didn’t want to wake you.” I freeze as he skates his fingers through my hair. “Holy shit. Your bedhead is something exceptional.”

I smack his hand away.

“Shush!”

“It’s cute,” he yawns, still stretched out against the pillows.

“You’re cute!” I snap, and Aiden raises his eyebrows. “Okay. That didn’t sound as insulting out loud as it did in my head.” Something occurs to me. “Wait, aren’t you like, shockingly late for work?”

“No work today, which is lucky, because we both slept through my alarm. We were knocked out.”

“Is it going to be this exhausting every time we open the connection?” I ask, trying to smooth my hair down with little success.

“No, I don’t think so.” Aiden stretches out his legs. “We just did something huge, finding the watch. And then we opened the connection like three more times just for fun.”

“Yeah, well.” I chew my lip, then blurt it out. “It just feels really… I don’t know.”

Aiden suppresses a smile, fastening his watch around his wrist.

“Don’t worry, I know what you mean. We don’t have to stop, just pace ourselves a little better.”

We both pause as someone knocks at the sliding glass door. I climb out of the bed, half-tangled in the blankets, and stumble to it. I pull back the curtain to reveal Kent, busy typing something on his phone. He looks up, sees me, and does a double-take as I slide open the door and step out onto the porch.

“I was looking for Aiden,” he says, eyebrows raised. “What are you guys doing?”

“Nothing. Sleeping.”

Kent’s phone buzzes, and we both glance down. It’s a notification, a text from Gabby.

“What are you doing?” I ask, tipping my chin at the phone.

“Nothing. Talking.”

We stare at each other suspiciously for a moment. I clear my throat.

“Do you want me to go get Aiden?”

“No, no need.” Kent reaches into his pocket and pulls something out. “I just wanted to see if he knew what the deal was with this.”

What. The. Hell. I must still be dreaming. I extend my hand almost automatically, and Kent drops the pocket watch into my fingers.

“Where did you get this?” I breathe. Kent gestures towards the front of the house.

“Someone left it in the mailbox.”

I stare at him, my head swimming.

“You’re telling me that this was just in the mailbox? By itself?”

“Yeah?” The suspicious furrow between his eyebrows deepens. “Just that and the cable bill. I’m guessing you know what this is?”

“Long story.” I close my hands around it, as if someone might appear from nowhere and steal it again. “Kent, did you get a look at whoever put it there, or see anything weird?”

“Anything weird?”

“Yeah, like maybe a red Corvette, or, um-”

“Okay, you know what? I didn’t see anything weird, and I don’t know what you two are up to, but I have the feeling I don’t want to know.”

“It’s nothing, I just - I’m thinking of changing up my look.”

“By adding a pocket watch to the mix?” Kent presses his lips together. “As your friend, I feel like I need to tell you that you can’t pull it off.”

“Alright, you know what, do you need anything else, Kent?”

“Yes. For you to actually show up to your shift tonight. Don’t make me make good on my threats.”

“Aiden doesn’t have to go to work,” I groan.

“That’s because City Hall is shut for two days while they try to figure out what caused the flood. You have no such excuse.” He turns and sets off down the steps. “The people need their flowers!”

Aiden is leaning in the doorway to his bathroom when I come back inside.

“What’s going on?” He’s speaking around his toothbrush, his voice muffled, minty paste clinging to his lips.

“You’re going to want to spit that out before I tell you.”

~~~~

We examine every inch of the watch. So far as we can tell, it’s most definitely authentic, the real thing. Thankfully my constant photo-taking has officially paid off. I’d snapped like fifteen shots of the watch from every angle the day we found it: detailed closeups of the scratches on the back, the wear on the front, the frozen hands indicating the time, the hand pointed to the moon, indicating nighttime. The engraving, the chain, and even a shot or two of Aiden holding it, because I never want to forget that moment.

There can be no question: we have the real watch.

“Someone stole it from us,” Aiden says. “Then waited a day, then gave it back.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I have no idea.” He bites his lip. “Do we think - do we think that someone caused the flood at City Hall to distract us, so that they could take it?”

“But then how does that - other me, or whatever, factor into it? And the car? And-”

“Jamie.” Aiden pushes his index finger against my lips. “Stop for a second. This is pointless. We don’t have enough information for a theory. We’re going to need to do some digging. The first thing I can think of is to figure out whose car that was. It’s extremely distinct, and we can ask questions about it without drawing too much attention. Whereas if we go around asking people if they’ve seen another you or if they have any information on stolen antique pocket watches, you know. It’s not gonna look good.”

“So, where do we start?” I swat his finger away from my mouth. “Call the Corvette, um, manufacturer? Who makes those?”

“Seriously?” Aiden asks, clearly amused.

“I don’t know, alright, I’m not super into car stuff! Have you seen the car that I drive?”

“Yes.” Aiden smiles. “I’m not sure how it’s still going, frankly.”

“It’s fueled by love, and I love it. That's how.”

“Alright, well, I have a friend in the Transportation Department, I’ll text her and see if she knows how we might go about trying to track the car down. In the meantime, I think…” He hesitates, deciding. “I think we just need to forge ahead. Try to use the watch and make something happen with William. Someone clearly has the upper-hand on us right now. They could steal the watch again, and next time they might not give it back.”

Oh? Another chance to hold Aiden’s hands, feel his energy, be close to him? Well. If it’s for the good of the hunt. I guess I can make time before my shift.

“To the Ghost Office?” I ask, and he smiles.

“To the Ghost Office.”