I go straight from the flower shop to City Hall, and realize when I’m halfway there that I’m driving with the windows down. A light snow is falling. Delicate flakes are melting on the passenger’s seat, and probably also on me. I’m so used to having Aiden in my car, I opened all the windows without thinking about it. I smile to myself, go to close them, and end up leaving them open for the rest of the drive.

Stepping through the main doors, I’m met with the now-familiar assemblage of sounds and atmosphere that collectively says City Hall. Distant phones ringing, the clacking of keyboards, lots of conversations happening at once, the click of professional shoes moving down the hallways. The smell of coffee, the warm overhead lights, the snow against the shiny glass of the windows.

On my way to Aiden’s office, I spot a head of green curls in the crowded hallway, and divert my path.

“Ripples!” I call.

He’s got his AirPods in, so he doesn’t hear me. He’s leaning one shoulder against the wall, flipping through a densely-packed folder of papers, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

I come to a stop behind him, give him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Hey, man, what’s-?”

I break off in surprise as the little slap that I gave Ripley sends him staggering a step forward, wincing like I hit him really hard. He twists around, and we look at each other, mutually startled.

Ripley shuts the folder, pulling out his AirPods. “Oh - Jamie!”

“Sorry, bro!” I answer, alarmed. “I didn’t mean to - did I hurt you, somehow?”

“No,” he says, stuffing the AirPods in his pocket. “I hurt myself. Aiden and I have been going to the gym together some mornings before work, and every muscle in my body hates me, right now. I can barely even hold up this folder, to be totally honest.”

I laugh, relieved.

“Well, I’m glad that you’ve started going with Aiden. I know he wanted a gym buddy, and I really didn’t want to be that person, so.”

“Guy lifts weights that are heavier than me,” Ripley groans. “For warmup. His routine is fucking ridiculous, and so is the one he made for me. Bet you I won’t even be able to pick up an Xbox controller this weekend. Noah is about to laugh me out of his house.”

I smile at Ripley, who is massaging his own bicep.

“I don’t think he will,” I answer. “I know he feels bad that he didn’t tell you sooner, about him, Raj, and Mel.”

“Well, he doesn’t have to feel bad.” Ripley cringes as he works his paint-stained fingers against what must be a particularly sore muscle. “He told me it took him a while to figure out what was happening, and I get that. It took me a while to figure out what was going on with me, too. Although maybe I should have known sooner, about myself. Looking back at some of the stuff I did and thought, I’m just like - oh. Yeah. That’s not cis.”

I laugh again, and Ripley grins at me.

“What’s that file you’re looking through?” I ask, poking at it. “It’s like the width of a brick.”

He flips it open to show me. “Gabby’s schedule and notes for next week.”

“Jesus Christ!” I stare at it, agog. “That’s for one week?”

“Yep. And most of it is meetings.” Ripley’s expression suggests that he can’t imagine anything more terrible. “Really glad that I won’t be going into this kind of politics.”

Speaking of Ripley’s kind of politics…

I quickly check that no one is listening, and lower my volume. “Still working on that art project you mentioned?”

Ripley shrugs like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but I see something devious move in his eyes.

Before he can say anything, Aiden comes up from behind him and gives him a slap on the back. “What’s good, Ripples?”

“Oh, god.” Ripley lets out a pained groan, rubbing his shoulder. “Two for two.”

“What?” Aiden asks, then glances at me when I put my hands over my mouth to suppress a laugh. “Did someth- mm-” He stops briefly as I lean up to plant a kiss of greeting on his lips. “-something happen?”

“I’m dying,” Ripley says, in a very matter-of-fact way.

Aiden’s blue eyes fill with immediate concern. “What happ-?”

“I should not have tried to lift the bigger weights. Why did you have me do that?”

Aiden blinks, then tries to hide his obvious relief. I smile up at him, my worrier.

“You’ve gotta push yourself, dude,” he informs Ripley. “That’s where you make your gains.”

“Okay,” Ripley answers, around a ragged laugh. “Cool, no problem. I can handle it. On an unrelated note, I’m gonna go try to find an empty conference room where I can lay down on the floor for a while.”

Aiden and I both laugh, and Ripley smiles, gives us a wave before he sets off down the hallway.

“So,” I say to Aiden, as we head towards his office. “You slept at your place last night, and yet I see that the beard is still there.”

Actually, I think he groomed it this morning, instead of shaving it. It has a nicer shape than it did before, cleaner lines. It looks sort of - really good, especially paired with the glasses and his work clothes.

“Yeah, thought I might keep it,” Aiden says, all casual. “I’ve noticed that this cute guy I know seems to like it. I’m trying to impress him.”

He winks at me.

My god. When will the nervous flutters that Aiden gives me stop happening? We’ve been together for a minute, now. This is ridiculous.

He runs a hand over his thick, close-cropped beard. “Got an opinion about it you want to share with me?”

I do have an opinion about it. A very strong opinion.

We should get a place together, I almost answer. You wanna go looking this weekend?

“Nope, no opinion.” I shrug my shoulders, turn away to hide the blush rising in my cheeks. “It’s whatever. I mean - it’s fine. I hadn’t really noticed.”

Aiden smirks at me, then unlocks his office.

We both stop in the doorway, surprised to discover that Will and Kasey are already in there, leaning over Aiden’s desk. I also spot the huge cookie I brought to the Ghost Office for Aiden yesterday, unwrapped and sitting next to his coffee.

“Yes, I recall this place,” Will is saying, pointing to one of the aged photos set out beneath the dim lamp.

Kasey is watching him with wide-eyed interest. “Really? You do?”

“Mhm. It was the rowdiest tavern Ketterbridge could boast, in its day. Had to pull more than a few of my beat crew boys out of brawls there. We used to say it was just as dangerous as the river. You were as likely to get a punch to the eye as you were to get a drink.”

“What?” Kasey laughs. “Why’s that?”

“On account of the barkeeper’s exceptional, near-legendary indifference. You could lay a bloke out on the counter, he’d still serve you after. So long as you paid, of course.”

“Of course.” Kasey laughs again, then looks down at the photo. “Man, you just don’t get these kinds of details from the history books.”

“Happy to fill in the gaps.” Will smiles at her, clearly pleased to have made her laugh. “All the bloody, drunken, shameful gaps.”

Kasey giggles, then catches a glimpse of us. “Oh - there’s our archivist! Got a place for us to start, Aiden?”

“Actually, yeah, I do. Let's hit the archives.” He reaches for his laptop, then turns in the doorway, beckons us with a nod of his head. “And don’t you dare, Jamie,” he adds, in case I was thinking about stealing the cookie, which I was.

“I wasn’t!”

“Right, definitely not,” he says, glancing over his shoulder just in time to see me quickly retract my reaching hand. “My mistake.”

“I wouldn’t do that!”

“Okay,” Aiden laughs. “Says the guy who stole a raspberry scone out of my hands while I was literally in the middle of taking a bite.”

“That was forever ago. Stop bringing up ancient history.”

Aiden quirks an eyebrow. “That was yesterday.”

“Was it?” I do my best to look confused, instead of guilty. “Weird, I have no memory of this.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Aiden chuckles, bending to press a kiss onto my temple. “Come on. Move it out, ginger spice.”

I let out an indignant laugh. I almost forgot about that moment during the heist. Maud’s nickname for me, when we escaped the inn with the haunted dolls.

I smile at Aiden’s back as he leads the way to the archives, thinking that it feels good to do another mission, another hunt with him and the team.

Honestly, I could get used to this.

~~~~

Aiden brings us over to the work table in the archives. Kasey, Will, and I gather around him, blinking as our eyes adjust to the low light.

“Okay,” he says. “Here’s the situation. I talked to my aunt, and she had some information for us. Apparently, my great-grandpa told her that Guardians used to keep in contact with each other. More than they do now, anyways. I figure that means they must have visited each other, since they couldn’t put anything in writing. Guardians usually won't go too far from their towns, so - I think we should start by looking at towns that are close to Ketterbridge.”

“Smart,” Kasey says, with an approving nod.

Aiden flashes her a smile before he continues.

“City Hall has a really extensive newspaper archive. It includes newspapers from other towns. I think we should go through the archived newspapers for the four towns nearest to Ketterbridge. As far back as the early 1800s, up until the present. We can each take one town.”

“First-rate idea, Aiden,” Will says, and I have to agree.

“Thanks, dude.” Aiden sets his laptop down on the table, taps the spacebar until it wakes up. “Ghosts, you can use mine and Jamie’s laptops. Jamie and I can go through the physical copies. You guys let us know when you need us to press a button, turn the page.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Will says brightly. “Only - what exactly is a laptop?”

~~~~

Will parks himself in the chair by the work table, and Kasey sits cross-legged on top of it. Aiden loans me a pair of archival gloves, carefully extracts a stack of newspapers for me, and shows me how to safely flip the pages.

Silence settles over the archives, broken only by the occasional whisper of a page being turned. We're going through newspapers faster than I expected. We only have to find the really weird stuff, events that no one could explain. Everyday news can be skipped over, which speeds up the process.

At first, no one says much, but as we dig into the archived papers, everyone starts calling out their weird finds. From the distant past, and the more recent past, too.

“Get this - there’s an urban legend in Greenrock about a bus that drives itself? It shows up in random places, only in the middle of the night, and the PA system makes announcements in a language no one claims to know.”

“This article from 1862 is about a girl who said her feet suddenly became too heavy to move. The paper says all the townsmen tried to pick her up, but no one could. She accused her neighbor of cursing her. Sounds like some drama.”

We begin to accumulate a pile of strange stories. A peach tree that sprang up out of nowhere, fully grown, and produced so much fruit that the townsfolk had to prop up the branches with wooden boards. Police investigating suspected occult activity after digging up a cache of jars filled with unidentifiable purple liquid. A wanderer who came to town and caused a stir by offering the mayor ‘witch poison antidote’, absolutely convinced that he needed it. An even bigger stir when the mayor inexplicably died three days later, and the wanderer was nowhere to be found.

History is full of oddities, even in the smallest towns. Sometimes especially in the smallest towns.

Even recent history is chock-full of weirdness, as I discover when I start reading through newspapers that aren’t so fragile or dated. The odd, unexplained stories move towards the back of the newspaper, especially as I reach the 1950s and 60s, but they’re still there.

Most of these stories don’t indicate the presence of a Guardian, however.

We keep looking until Kasey breaks the silence again.

“Team. Come take a look at this.”

We gather around the work table. Kasey sits back, so we can see what she’s been reading. It’s a newspaper article that was published in 1986, but it’s reflecting on an event long in the past.

“Brookville’s Oldest Unsolved Mystery,” Aiden says, reading out loud. “The Vanished Lady Alice Levitt.”

There’s another silence as we all read over Kasey's shoulder. It’s a story about an aristocratic lady who went missing in the 1800s. During Ariana’s lifetime, actually, although Ariana would have been old by the time this happened.

“Apparently Lady Levitt caught a 'burning fever' that her doctors couldn’t explain,” Kasey tells us. “Her staff said that a 'wild woman' broke into the house when Lady Levitt was on death’s door, and then both women just - disappeared.”

“Definitely strange,” Aiden says, his eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure that’s the work of a Guardian, though. Why would a Guardian abduct someone?”

“Not the mystery woman,” Kasey clarifies. “That part might be made up, I don't know. It’s a really old story, the details tend to get warped - and anyways, I’m talking about Lady Levitt, herself. Look at this.”

Kasey taps the screen, pointing out a specific line.

According to historical records, Lady Levitt’s staff attempted to contact the authorities when they found her missing, but were unable to get help for hours. Most of the townsmen were busy battling a wildfire that had engulfed the nearby forest and was raging dangerously close to the southern edge of Old Brookville.

“She caught an inexplicable burning fever,” Aiden says slowly, “The same night that a wildfire destroyed a big section of the forest?”

Kasey nods. “Yeah. Yeah.”

This takes a moment to sink in.

When it does, Aiden goes deeper into the archives, sifts through the cabinets, and returns with a map of Old Brookville. I pull up a map of modern-day Brookville on my laptop. We do a comparison. The southern edge of Old Brookville is… smack dab in the center of modern Brookville.

I pull up a picture of the area, and - where the forest once was, there’s now a bustling downtown. Shops, restaurants, roads. Paved in all directions.

Team Ghost Office lets out a collective, disappointed groan.

“We won’t be digging up any roots there,” I sigh. “Good work though, Kasey, holy shit. I think we actually might have just found a Guardian.”

“We’ll need to find another one, then,” Kasey says, and gestures for all of us to get back to our reading.

She hops down from the table, comes to stand with me.

“Well, Brookville is a bust. Anything in Port Sitka?”

“Still looking,” I tell her, carefully picking up the page I just finished reading.

Port Sitka is a small town, around the same size as Ketterbridge, named for the Sitka spruces that grow along the coastline where it's situated. I’ve only ever driven through it on my way to other places.

There’s been just one article that really caught my attention so far, one tiny story. But when I flip to the new page - my heart briefly stops.

I read the headline, then read it again. Then I speed-read the entire rest of the front page, my head spinning.

“Hey, guys?” I say, my gloved hand hovering over the newspaper. “I - I think I’ve got something.”

Will and Aiden come to join us, and everyone leans in close to read the headline. In huge, bold letters, it says:

WHO IS THE FACELESS STRANGER?