Kasey stands with her fists stuffed in the pockets of her jacket, her lip pinched between her teeth. Her eyes are clouded and distant, her expression uncharacteristically blank. She usually prefers to get right down to business, but tonight, something is different.

She draws in a deep breath, then slowly lets it out, closing her eyes. Moonlight falls right through her, paving Benton Street with white.

Aiden catches my eye, quirks an eyebrow.

Give us a second, I mouth at him, then step closer to Kasey.

“Kase-face? You alright?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her gaze roaming the street. “Will and I, we spent a lot of nights together on this street. I feel like I know him, somehow. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but I do. Just - what if we really do this, and he’s not what I…?”

I miss the early days of Kasey’s second life, when she was still physical enough for me to hold. I want so badly to give her a hug right now, or at least take her hand.

“Hey,” I murmur. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Kasey finally looks at me, but her eyes blink quickly away. She nods, then turns to face the empty street.

“Will.” Her voice wavers, and she clears her throat. “Will, we’re going to activate the map tomorrow morning. If it works, we’ll be able to summon you, hopefully. Finally.”

There’s no answer, but none of us expected there to be.

“We’re really excited to meet you, Will,” I add, and Aiden nods.

“Kasey’s going to walk you to the Ghost Office tonight,” he explains. “We need you to expend a little heat when you get there, to confirm to Kasey that you’re where we need you.”

“Are you sure you don’t want us to walk with you?” I ask Kasey, who shakes her head.

“I’m sure. I’d rather we go alone.” She pauses, casting her eyes around Benton Street one more time. “Last night here together, Will. But maybe we can come back, soon. Maybe when we do, we’ll be able to talk, and see each other. Or - we will be able to. We will."

Kasey lingers for a moment, then sets off down the sidewalk. Aiden and I stand in silence for a few minutes, watching her go.

I can almost picture Will, walking there by her side.

~~~~

This is the most restless night I’ve had since I was fretting over telling Aiden that I love him.

My thoughts are all over the place. What little sleep I do get is so shallow that I feel half-aware of the blankets beneath me, the rustling of the wind through the trees outside.

Hours pass like this.

There’s something about Will’s impending rescue that’s making me sad. I think it’s bothering Aiden, too, even if we haven’t talked about it. It’s been on my mind for a few days, but now, so close to the summoning... it’s eating at me to the point that I can barely lay still in bed.

Eventually, I let out a soft curse and sit up. I figure I’ll go to the porch or something, where I can pace off some of this energy without disturbing Aiden.

But he sits up next to me, and I realize that he wasn’t asleep, either.

We don’t say anything for a minute, just look at each other. I expect Aiden to try and coax me back under the covers, tell me to calm down and get some sleep. Instead, he says:

“What time does Mugshot open?”

This is not the most alert and focused I’ve ever been, so Aiden drives us there. It’s still dark out when we arrive, and we’re clearly the first customers of the day. The girl behind the counter casts us a knowing look when we come stumbling in, probably under the impression that we’re just returning from a long night out. That’s fair. We do look like that. Our clothes are rumpled and disorganized, our faces tired, our eyes only half-open.

Aiden hooks an arm around my shoulders while we wait for our order. His warmth and closeness is much-needed relief. I close my eyes and lean into him. I’d been twisting the ring around my finger over and over again, but now I let it go and rest my hand on Aiden’s back.

We stand like that until the sleepy barista pushes our coffees across the counter.

~~~~

We go directly to the Ghost Office, where we fall automatically into our routine, getting set up. Aiden pushes the door up, locks it in place. I put our bags and phones in the trunk of my car, in case of explosions. You never know, with magic.

When I come back, Aiden has opened all of the windows, and he’s standing by the farthest one, taking long breaths of early morning air. There’s a worried pinch between his eyebrows.

I have everything we needed from the car held in my hands. Aiden comes over and watches me lay it all out on the workbench.

The map. The picture of Will. The pocket watch. The headstone chip. The flower petals.

I leave space between each token, as if the items might set off some unexpected magical reaction if they touch.

There’s a silence. Aiden and I stare down at this strange collection, these pieces of Will’s long-ago life. Everything we worked so hard to gather together.

Aiden takes the back of my head in his hand, tips me towards him, and presses a kiss onto my forehead.

“Get some air?” he suggests, and I nod gratefully. We grab our coffees on the way out.

We go to the riverbank. Sit together on the pebbles, gazing out over the water. The quiet bubbling of the river mixes with the whispering of the trees, surrounding us with peaceful, airy music.

White mist rolls over the water’s surface, glowing in the pale dawn light. The mist combines with the fog of our breaths to make the view look hazy, like something half-dreamed. Every edge is turned soft. The trees are reflected on the river, their greenery damp and dripping, crystalline drops clinging to every leaf.

Through all the softness cuts a bright, keening song. A bird somewhere overhead, rousing for the morning, testing out its voice. The sound echoes up the river and bounces back to us. One long, unbroken call, which then dissolves into speedy little chirps.

Beyond the treetops, the sun starts to reach into the sky, its light gently bending over the peaks of the distant mountains. Just above the surface of the river, tiny motes of pollen and plant spores drift lazily, gilded by the newly-arrived sunshine.

Aiden’s warmth is wrapped around us like a down blanket, but I can feel the cold breeze against my nose and cheeks, and in my hair.

The bird calls out again. Another calls back.

I twist to look at the Ghost Office. The building is shrouded in dusky half-light, but I know the details of it by heart. The brown paneling, the white trim. The bigleaf maples and white oaks lining either side.

Everything here corresponds with a special moment I shared with Aiden, or Kasey, or both.

Aiden folds an arm around me.

“Good summoning weather, don’t you think?” he asks.

Once again, I have to wonder when my life became this goddamn ridiculous. I let out a laugh, but it’s hushed, and sounds sort of broken.

Aiden notices. He bites his lip.

“Look,” he murmurs. “I get it, okay? I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

My stomach twists. “You have?”

“Yeah, of course I have.” Aiden fidgets with his coffee cup. “I’m just as scared as you are that I might fuck this up. I know that Ariana said we would do it, but I just - I’m not going to feel sure until Will is actually here. Kasey is your best friend, and this means everything to her, and it means so much to us, too, at this point... I can see how anxious you are, and hear it in your energy, and I - I understand, honestly-”

“Aiden,” I interrupt, pulling back to look at him. “That is not what I’m worried about. I have complete and total faith in you, dummy.”

“Oh.” He blinks at me, his eyebrows furrowing. “Then - what-?”

“Just…” I hesitate, then blurt it all out, as I always end up doing with Aiden. “This hunt for Will, it’s the first big thing we did together. Being here with you, at the Ghost Office, it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had, and - I just hate that it’s going to be over if the summoning works today. I know that’s selfish, I know that I should want Will here as soon as possible, for Kasey, but I can’t help - can’t help but think of closing up, going away, and knowing that we won’t be-”

“Okay, my turn to interrupt." A warm, affectionate smile is spreading over Aiden's face. “Jamie. You do realize that this isn’t it for the Ghost Office, right? Even if everything goes right today, we still have to build some kind of portable power source, so that Will and Kasey won’t be trapped in Ketterbridge anymore. And when that’s done, I mean - I’m only just starting to figure out what I can do. I’m gonna need a place to practice.” He ruffles my hair. “Someone to practice with.”

I stare at him, the cold place in my chest starting to thaw. “You mean that?”

Aiden’s smile broadens, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Tomorrow, you and I will be right here, setting up like usual. I promise.” He takes a sip of his coffee. The steam curls the strand of chestnut hair that’s escaped from his hat. “Kasey needs to stay on the team, too, by the way. Pretty sure we’d both be dead from explosions by now if she wasn’t the manager. Or, locked up in heist jail.”

I laugh, finally feeling warm everywhere. I snuggle up against Aiden’s side, and he rests his cheek on the top of my head. He clearly likes this laugh from me much better than the last one. I feel his smile, the gentle push of his cheek rounding out.

“We’ll have Will on the team, too,” I remind him. “After today.”

“How are you so fucking confident, man?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Because I know you?”

Aiden pauses. He doesn’t answer me, but he does press a kiss into my hair, drawing me closer up against him. His warmth melts my last lingering worries, and where they fall away, excitement starts to gather, instead.

We sit there together, drinking our coffees and watching the sunrise, until I hear footsteps behind us. I turn, then give Aiden’s sleeve a tug.

Kasey is there, her hands in the pockets of her jacket, her expression complicated.

“We made it,” she says softly, when Aiden slips the glasses on. “Will gave me a little heat. I’m sure he’s with me.”

Aiden and I exchange a glance, then get to our feet and move to join Kasey. I expect her to lead the way into the Ghost Office, but she hesitates.

“I feel like…” She straightens up, lifting her chin, her dark eyes turning fiery and determined. “I feel like, as the manager, I should say something. This team - we’ve done some crazy shit, to get here. Never in my life did I think I would see Jamie sleep for thirty fucking hours without stopping-”

“Wish I could do that again, honestly.”

“Or see him willingly interact with an unknown ghost that was released from a hidden compartment in a two-hundred-year-old locket-”

“Okay, that one I hope I never have to do again.”

“Nor did I think I’d get to watch you two straight-up steal so many things,” Kasey continues, “Whether it be an artifact from a museum, or confidential business records, or literally an entire town’s recycling-”

“Did we really steal the recycling? They put it out on the curb, so technically-”

“Yes, Jamie, you stole it. Oh, and I also never expected to find myself striking out into the woods to track down a buried cemetery-”

“Really, never?” Aiden asks, and Kasey laughs, rolling her eyes.

“The point is, whatever happens when we activate that map… I’m proud of how far we’ve come, team. Proud of both of you dummies. What we’ve been doing this whole time is building a bridge that Will can walk across. I, for one, can’t fucking wait to meet him in person-”

“Seconded!” I chime in.

“And I think it’s about time we bring him back from the beyond. So to speak.” Kasey takes a deep breath, then holds out both of her hands, palms facing up. Aiden puts his hand over one; I put mine over the other. “We’ve worked our asses off for this moment." She tosses her head at the Ghost Office, and breaks into a smile. "Let’s go make it pay off.”

~~~~

The team archivist carefully unfolds the map, lays it out flat in the very center of the Ghost Office floor.

I bring over the tokens, line them up by the map’s top edge.

Kasey takes a moment to catch Will up on how this works.

“When Aiden looks at the map with the glasses, he sees a solid rectangle of light. Each token thins out the light, makes the individual spectral traces easier to see. Aiden thinks that there’s something to read there. With all the tokens, he should be able to see it clearly.” She looks across the map, catches Aiden’s eye. “You ready, Heliomancer?”

He nods, once. “Let’s do this.”

We all sit down around the map. Shafts of pale sunlight fall through the wide windows of the Ghost Office. The sun is rising in earnest, in tandem with our summoning.

Aiden reaches for the photo of Will.

He sets it down on one corner of the map. Kasey and I can’t see what he sees, but we know that our first three tokens work. Only the flower petals remain untested.

Aiden picks up the pocket watch, but instead of putting it down, he hands it to me.

I take it, set it on the nearest corner.

Aiden places the headstone chip.

“Get ready, Will,” Kasey says.

Slowly, one by one, I place the delicate white flower petals in the remaining open corner.

Aiden narrows his eyes, staring intently at what we can’t see.

“Did something happen?” Kasey asks.

Aiden tilts his head to the side. “It almost looks like…”

“What does it say, Aiden?”

“It doesn’t say anything. I was wrong, it’s not words, it's a symbol. Not like one I've ever seen, though. I - don't know how to describe it.”

“A symbol...” Kasey sits back, tapping her lip. “Okay… Can you show us where it is? Put your hand on it.”

Aiden flattens his palm onto the map.

The result is instant and blinding. White blue light flares from the map's surface, shining even brighter than the swimming pool that Aiden illuminated when we saved Charlie. Aiden and I both gasp and fall back, throwing our arms over our eyes.

“What the hell?” Kasey glances between the two of us, bewildered. “What just happened?”

“You don’t see that?” I'm blinking rapidly, trying to clear my vision. “The light from the map? Jesus, that's bright.”

“Wait a minute, how can you see that, Jamie?” Aiden cuts in, his blue eyes wide. “You don’t see spectral traces, you see ghosts.”

We all freeze, staring at each other.

“So - if Jamie can see it,” Kasey says, very slowly, “Does that mean there’s a ghost in the map?”

There’s a stunned silence, and all eyes drop back to the map.

“Oh my god,” Kasey whispers. “It’s Will! We must have - Aiden, you just put him in there, I think! He’s - he’s in the map. You just summoned him into the map.”