“What’s taking so long?” Kasey groans, dropping her head back against the seat. “Come on, let’s go already.”

I twist around to face her, leaving a hand on the steering wheel.

“Okay, I’m going to need you to take it down like, twenty notches. Just because you don’t have to shower, or consume caffeine, or anything else that we mortals have to do-”

“Are you joking? A hot shower and a cup of coffee? Two of my favorite things in life. I just don’t understand why we have to do this now, like, it’s time, let’s make the glasses work, everything is set up-”

“Kasey.” I hold out a hand. She glares at it for a moment, then blows out a long breath and sets hers on top of mine. “I know how excited you are, okay? But it’s important to get this right, so - don’t you want Aiden to be fully focused when we try?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then he needs some coffee, and so do I. We’ve barely gotten any sleep.”

I’ve pulled all-nighters before. Mostly in high school, right before finals. Kasey and I would work in my room until the sun came up, only taking breaks to complain together and throw popcorn into each other’s hair. I usually couldn’t even remember what I’d done, said, or written the next morning, all of it consumed by the haze of exhaustion. For some reason, though, I remember everything about last night.

The droplets running down Aiden’s cheek, the brilliant sunrise, the warm press of his body against mine beneath the surface of the river. Him stopping to make a stupid face at me through the rows of empty bottles, catching me by surprise and making me laugh.

The things he said to me just before the sun came up.

“I’m sorry,” Kasey says, snapping me back to the present. “I just - I really want to find Will, and-”

“Oh, he’s Will, now?” I grin at her, and she rolls her eyes. “Not William, huh?”

“Whatever! The point is, thank you guys for staying up all night. Your idea is a good one, Jamie. I’m just dying to see if it works.”

I whip around as Aiden opens the passenger’s side door, two cups from Mugshot in his hands. I snatch my macchiato from him, take a long sip, and then let out a groan of pleasure so loud that he starts laughing.

“Jesus Christ, Jamie, slow down. No one’s going to take the coffee away from you before you finish it.”

“Can’t take that chance.”

“Okay, okay!” Kasey interrupts. “You guys have your coffee, everyone is showered, can we please-”

“Yep, yes! Let's go!” I turn to grab my seatbelt, then stop, staring through the windshield, wondering if my eyes are playing tricks on me.

But no, there they are: Raj and Noah, walking together up to the door of Mugshot. As I watch, Noah says something that makes Raj toss his head back with laughter. Raj gives his arm a shove, and Noah staggers, but he’s grinning. He holds the door open for Raj, and they both slip inside.

“Um. Did you see that?” I ask, turning to Aiden.

“Yes, I did.” Aiden’s eyebrows draw together like he’s not quite sure what to make of it. “Looks like Noah found a friend who won’t bash his face to bits. Besides us, I guess.”

“You guys!” Kasey moans, grabbing two handfuls of her short hair.

“Oh, right - we’re going!” I stick the keys in the ignition and glance one more time at Aiden. “Ready to absolutely demolish the thing we spent all night building?”

“Let’s do it,” he says, and I put the car in drive.

~~~~

We all stop just inside the Ghost Office, staring at our glass construction. It’s a curved wall of half-melted and resolidified bottles and jars, almost as tall as Kasey. Whatever Aiden did to meld everything together, it completely absorbed the sticky tabs, so the thing looks - kind of cool, honestly? I’m sort of bummed out that it only gets to exist for one day, but it’ll be worth it, if this works.

“Walk me through this one more time,” Kasey says, moving around it in a slow circle.

“Okay, so. Aiden and I realized that the stuff closest to us breaks first when we’re - uh - when he puts off energy. So we made this thing four bottles thick. The idea is that he’ll give me as much energy as he can, then release the rest at the reading glasses. Hopefully, the wall will break, but not the glasses.”

“Will he be able to see me?”

“He’s not sure. We hope so, but if he can’t see you, it’s not a total loss, so long as he can read the map.”

“What’s the deal with the map, again?” Kasey drifts her sheer fingers over the bottles.

I direct the question to Aiden, who is better at explaining it.

“The map is a way for me to see and hear spectral energy, if it’s too faint for me to pick up on my own. It should show us the lines that William has walked. The ones that I haven’t identified already, that is.”

“So,” Kasey says, “If we can read the map, we can probably find the old cemetery, and Will’s grave?”

“That’s the idea,” Aiden answers, when I relay her words. “Then we’ll have the watch, a place to call him, and a way to see him, if the glasses work. It might be enough to summon him, even though I’m not totally sure…”

“It’s gonna work!” I cut in, before Aiden can start losing confidence. He’s clearly nervous about what we’re doing this morning. I can read it in the tiny crease between his eyebrows, the way his hands keep unfolding and refolding around his coffee cup.

It makes sense. We stole like, everybody’s recycling to do this, and I’m not sure that we could get away with it again if we end up having to rebuild. Eventually someone is going to notice us running off with all of their empty beer bottles. It’s a miracle that no one looked through their windows and reported us last night. We’re lucky that Ketterbridge sleeps soundly.

Kasey is busy inspecting the wall, so I gently pull the coffee out of Aiden’s hands and set it down on the workbench.

“Everything will be fine,” I tell him, running my thumb over his cheek. “You’re going to do great.”

He takes a breath, nods, and ruffles my hair.

“So, when do I get credit for my sick managerial skills?” Kasey asks, looping around the side of the glass wall. “If I hadn’t set you two a deadline, would you have busted your asses to get this thing done, and turned out a great idea at the last second? I told you it always helps.”

“Yes, Kase-face, you’re the best manager the Ghost Office has ever had.”

“That’s right!”

“Ready to get your Wraith King?”

“I know I’m ready for some homemade ghost goggles.”

I turn back to Aiden.

“What about you, feeling ready?”

He shakes out his hands, kneads his palm for a moment.

“Yeah. Let’s get started.”

~~~~

He extracts a pair of reading glasses from the box and hands them to me. I set them out beyond the bottle-jar wall, directly on the floor.

Oh, god. Now suddenly I feel stressed. I really hope that the fire department doesn’t have to come back. By the time I put on my Ray-Bans and join Aiden a few paces back, my stomach is twisting. It’s useless trying to pretend otherwise: soon our connection will be open, and he’ll be able to feel my wild heartbeat, my racing pulse.

But when I slip my hand into his, a strange calm settles over me. I think it’s his resolve, his focus. It seeps into me when he slowly begins opening the connection, rushing up my arm like the tide of a peaceful ocean, approaching and then drawing back. He’s feeling me out, making sure that I’m ready to hold all of this. I close my eyes and remember what he told me: clear my mind. Make space for him, everything he gives me.

Our heartbeats smooth out and fall into rhythm. We breathe long, slow breaths with each other’s lungs. I’m always dazed by how good this feels, but today I’m doing my best to focus completely on letting Aiden pour as much energy as he can into my veins and hands and heart.

I hold out for a few minutes, but soon enough, my toes curl in my shoes, and I can’t take anymore. Aiden understands immediately. The energy shifting between us changes course and reaches for the wall of glass.

A breathless moment passes, then another.

A sharp noise tears through the air, loud enough that I almost fuck up and drop Aiden’s hand to cover my ears. It’s like someone threw a hundred chandeliers down a flight of stairs at once. The sound of an avalanche of breaking glass. A blast of heat knocks me back a step, but I hold on tightly, determined not to let go of Aiden and be responsible for ruining everything.

“Holy shit!” Kasey shouts.

Aiden’s fingers slip from mine. I pull off my sunglasses and finally open my eyes, blinking at the scene before us.

The entire structure is gone. Where it was before, there’s now only a scattered pile of broken glass. A few pieces tumble down the sides and stop on the concrete. Kasey stands behind it, both hands clasped over her mouth.

“Did it work?” I stammer, the rest of Aiden’s energy leaving my body in tiny fits and starts.

He moves to the pile of shards and starts shifting it around with his shoe.

“Where did they go?” The panic is clear in his voice. “The glasses, did they explode, too?”

“Wait, wait!” Kasey makes a grab for Aiden’s arm, but her fingers coast right through it.

“Aiden, hang on!” I repeat immediately, and he freezes.

“Right near his foot! Jamie, right there!”

I bend down and carefully brush some of the debris out of the way.

“Oh, shit, dude, look at that!” I pull the glasses free and hold them up.

Intact. Not even a scratch. Aiden is frozen, watching me get back to my feet. He silently holds out a hand, and I put the glasses into them. He turns them over, staring, chewing his lip.

“Did it work?” Kasey asks, flapping her hands impatiently. “Someone put them the fuck on!”

“Aiden?” I murmur, catching his expression. “Are you okay?”

“Scared to put them on,” he says, so quietly that I can barely hear him. “What if it didn’t work?”

“Only one way to find out,” I tell him.

Aiden hesitates, but slips the glasses onto his face. My first thought is that they look nice on him, even though that’s not exactly what’s important right now. He blinks rapidly, his gaze roaming around the Ghost Office.

“Ugh, I can’t take another second of this!” Kasey explodes. “Tell Aiden to use his dumb fucking voice and tell me whether-”

“Hey,” he interrupts, looking right at her. “Your voice is dumb, how about that?”

My hands fly up over my mouth. There’s a moment of silence, during which a gigantic, silly grin unfolds on Aiden’s face. Kasey stares at him, her eyes wide.

“Aiden?” she asks, suddenly hoarse.

“Yes, hello,” he says, his smile spilling into his voice.

I’m the one who shatters the calm, as it turns out.

“Oh my god!” I shout, and Aiden bursts into amazed laughter. Kasey starts shaking out her hands, basically hyperventilating. “Oh my fucking god, oh my-”

Aiden sweeps me right off of my feet, laughing into my neck.

“We fucking did it!” He turns on the spot, holding me up against him with one arm, and reaches for Kasey. She darts over and joins the huddle, even though we can’t really touch her. Aiden drops me to my feet, and I seize him by the waist, then throw one arm around Kasey’s shoulders as well as I can.

“We did it!” she screams, and now we’re sort of hopping around in a little circle, all yelling at once.

When we break apart, I stop and look at them: my two best friends. Aiden, his face flushed with triumph and his cheeks fully rounded out. Kasey, unable to stop laughing and waving her hands at him, making delighted sputtering sounds as his eyes follow her movements.

“Jamie?” she asks, spotting me staring. “You okay?”

I am. Nothing is wrong. It’s just that I can’t find any words.

~~~~

Noah ⚡ 9:15 PM: This is u

Noah ⚡ 9:15 PM: Watch on Youtube - Dog will NOT stop barking until owner gives him a bite of his bagel!!

Me 9:16 PM: 😑😑😑

“What are you looking at?” Aiden asks. “You look annoyed, but also sort of like you’re gonna laugh.”

I blink and look up at him; I didn’t hear the sliding glass door open. He’s offering me a steaming mug with a lemon slice. I drop my phone onto the table and reach up to take it from him. I don’t drink a lot of tea, but now that it’s starting to get colder, I’m noticing that Aiden likes it. So, you know. I’ll have one, if he makes it for me.

Whatever he brewed up tonight is sweet and tangy. The warm cup feels nice on my palms, a little buffer against the evening chill. Aiden takes the chair on the other side of the glass table and stretches his legs out. Unwinding, after a very full day.

I still haven’t answered his question.

“It’s Noah, actually. I guess we text, now? That’s apparently a thing?” I shake my head and take a sip from my mug. “What has my life come to? Texting Noah? Drinking tea with you? High school me would be shocked to learn.”

Aiden lets out a soft laugh through his nose.

“Is that really more shocking than the fact that you’re a part-time ghost hunter?”

“Somehow, yes it is,” I yawn.

We’re both exhausted. The few hours of sleep we snatched after our all-nighter were not enough. Plus, we had the connection open earlier, and there was the stress of getting everything right, and then the wild celebration that followed. It's been a happy day, but a tiring one.

“I thought that Kasey would want to look at the map right away,” Aiden says, pulling off his snapback and tossing it onto the table. The chestnut hair beneath is tousled and messy, just like I like it. “She took off pretty quick.”

“She definitely went to tell William about it, that’s why. And… I think she got a little overwhelmed. She’s freaking out. It’s great. I haven’t seen her this excited in a minute, honestly.”

Aiden sets the mug down and tips his head to the side, stretching out his neck. I watch the shifting movement of the muscle there, appreciating it even when I’m this sleepy. He glances over and catches me looking at him, but I don’t need to look away, so I don’t. Something sparks in his drowsy blue eyes.

He leans forward like he’s going to tell me a secret.

“You know how you said that last night wasn't going to be fun?” he asks.

“Mhm?”

“It was fun.”

Warmth blossoms in my chest, bright and sweet.

“I had fun, too.”

“Before you came along, this whole thing totally sucked.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, like - I was just - hiding up here, trying not to let Kent or Ellen hear the noise, failing over and over with the rock circle, ready to rip my hair out. I used to dread working on it.” He shrugs and looks down into his tea. “But not anymore.”

I know I must be beaming at him, because when he looks up again, he laughs. It’s infectious, and it sets me off, too.

Eventually we lapse back into a comfortable quiet.

“You look so tired,” he finally says.

“Yeah, I am. But I don’t - I don’t want to go home, yet, I just-”

“Stay here.”

I fall silent, looking at him.

Normally I don’t spend the night with people I’m seeing. I don’t know why, I just haven’t particularly wanted to. I was always sneaking out of Roger’s place with the excuse that I didn’t like his mattress.

As in all things, Aiden is special. We’ve spent the night together a number of times, now. Mostly by accident.

I’m developing a serious taste for it.

He stands up and offers me a hand. I take it and let him pull me to my feet, into the house, into bed, and into his arms.