The story is about an exceptionally bizarre criminal case. A cold case, now. An event that occurred in Port Sitka on June 5th, 1961.

Authorities are seeking help to identify a body found on Sitka Beach, the article begins.

No wonder this was front-page news. Even if it had happened in a town larger than Port Sitka, the baffling aspects of the case would have attracted some interest. Each strange detail jumps out at me as I read, but I force myself to look at the larger picture, put the story together.

What I come away with is this:

On an otherwise perfectly ordinary night in Port Sitka, a stranger appears. No one knows where he came from, or even how he got to town. He checks into the local hotel, pays in cash. The hotel clerk pegs him at somewhere between thirty and forty years old. He remains in Port Sitka for a few days, but aside from the basic polite pleasantries, he doesn’t speak to anyone.

So far, normal enough. Port Sitka is a beautiful coastal town, and while it doesn’t have what you’d call a booming tourism industry, it gets its share of visitors.

But on the third night of his stay in Port Sitka, the stranger doesn’t return to his hotel room.

At noon the next day, his body is discovered on Sitka Beach, less than a mile from his hotel. The police put his time of death somewhere around dawn.

Cause of death: a single gunshot, one that completely obliterated his face.

The police ask the hotel clerk and other townspeople who interacted with the stranger to describe him to a forensic sketch artist. But somehow, someway, no one ever got a clear look at the man’s face. The hotel clerk tries to give a description, but can only recall his black hair, the general shape of his features, and the double-breasted suit he was wearing.

The result is something extremely eerie: a police sketch of a man’s head, neck, and shoulders - with the face left completely blank. I have to assume that the newspaper printed the sketch for dramatic effect, because there’s no way anyone could pin down the man’s identity based on this.

And that’s only the start of the weirdness.

The stranger checked into the hotel under the name John Botswick, but the police could find no record of anyone with that name. When they searched the hotel room, they found nothing. No fingerprints, and none of his belongings, though the clerk remembered him having a small travel case. The police couldn’t even find a change of clothes.

They found nothing on his body, either. He was wearing his suit, but his personal effects were all missing, and - apparently he’d been dragged halfway down the beach, towards the water. But he was found a few feet back from the shoreline. Whoever moved him gave up before they could get him into the sea.

There were signs of a struggle, but no footprints leading to or away from the body.

His fingerprints turned up nothing. His dental records, similarly so.

But perhaps the most inexplicable detail is the lights. On the same night that the faceless man went missing, townspeople reported seeing strange lights. One woman described a flare of green light in the night sky, appearing in quick, repeated flashes before vanishing altogether. Dismissible, maybe, but three other people reported seeing it, too.

The police ask that anyone with information - about the lights, the missing murder weapon, or the identity of the stranger - please come forward so that this grisly matter can be resolved.

“Woof,” Kasey mutters, when she reaches the end of the article. “Gunshot wound to the face? Ouch.”

Will shudders as he straightens up. “And I thought my death was bad.”

“Okay,” Aiden says slowly, “All of this is bizarre, but - what does it have to do with Guardians, Jamie? I don’t see the connection.”

“Right, and I probably wouldn’t have even said anything,” I answer, “But in an earlier paper - which one was it? Hang on, I wrote down the date.”

I find the newspaper I’m looking for and gently lay it out on the cabinet. It contains the only other story from Port Sitka that struck me as possibly significant.

It’s a very brief little article, all the way back in a paper from 1842. An accusation of heresy that ultimately went nowhere. A woman accused her brand new father-in-law of using some pagan ritual to look into the future. She retracted the accusation only a day later, but she’d already told town officials exactly what he’d said, and it was printed verbatim in the newspaper.

The faceless stranger claims his title at dawn, in smoke and fire. A green sky shall mark his passing, though the message is not for him. He will not speak again, but he cannot keep his secrets forever.

Everyone finishes reading, and we all stare at each other in silent disbelief.

“How could he know?” Will asks, staggered. “He lived and died a century before.”

Aiden is standing stock-still, but his eyes flit to meet mine. He’s already figured it out, and I can tell that Kasey has, too. It’s the whole reason the 1842 article caught my attention in the first place. 

In her letter, Ariana told us that she knew Will would be rescued, because a friend had looked into the future.

“This is it,” Kasey breathes.

She sets a hand on the aged newspaper. Aiden makes a quick, aborted movement, like he was about to stop her. As a ghost, Kasey can’t damage anything, but Aiden’s archivist reflexes don’t turn off.

“This man, Isaiah,” Kasey continues, pointing to the article. “If he looked into the future, then - he was a Guardian. Which means… there’s got to be a Guardian Tree in Port Sitka.”

There’s a ringing silence, and then the entire team breaks into huge, matching grins.

“Fuck yeah!” I shout.

Aiden laughs, then pulls off his gloves, ruffles my hair. “We did it, holy shit!”

“Wait a sec,” Kasey says, “We still have to make sure the area isn’t paved over, or-”

She stops, and I know why. I’ve only driven through Port Sitka in passing, but it’s not like Brookville. It’s a tiny, beachy town, largely unpaved, with surrounding forest on all sides except the coastal one.

Kasey lets out a sharp, victorious laugh, and somehow it feels like permission for all of us to celebrate, too. She shoves Will’s arm, and he’s surprised by that, but it makes him laugh. Aiden wraps his arms around me, gives me a tight squeeze.

“Nice work, Keane,” he murmurs in my ear, to a shiver down my back.

“Does this mean I can have the cookie?”

“No.”

“Hang on,” Will says, “We have the town pinned, but what of the Tree? Where do we look for it?”

Kasey, as usual, is already way ahead of us.

“He cannot keep his secrets forever,” she repeats, reading from the older article. She looks up at us, breaking into a wide grin. “You know what, team? We’re uniquely qualified to figure out what secrets the faceless stranger was keeping. I don’t think we have to go as far back as we thought to solve this mystery. If those lights in the sky were real, it means that the Guardian line in Port Sitka survived until at least 1961. And the same night that the stranger was murdered, something happened to the Guardian, too. They're supposed to keep their magic a secret, but they filled the sky with lights."

Kasey chews her lip for a moment, then adds: "There has to be a connection. If we figure out what happened to this dead man… I think we’ll find out what happened to the Guardian, too. And from there, we can find the Tree.”

“Unless…” An unpleasant possibility occurs to me. “The faceless stranger was the Guardian?”

“No,” Aiden says firmly. “If he was the Guardian, he would have grown up in the town. People would have known who he was.”

“Well, then,” Kasey says. “Looks like we’ve got some digging to do. Can you search up John Botswick in the archives, Aiden? See if there’s anything else about him?”

Aiden leads the way back to his laptop, where he searches the name. I make a small, excited sound as two results pop up. One is the newspaper that we were just reading, so Aiden leans forward to read the details of the other.

“Looks like the Ketterbridge police were brought in to help out,” he says. “We’ve got a case file.”

Kasey bounces on her toes, swatting at Aiden’s arm. “Open it!”

Aiden does, then frowns when we’re faced with a near-blank screen. He refreshes the page, but nothing changes.

“Okay, that’s odd.” Aiden sits back in his seat, tips his head to the side. “The Botswick case file is marked as archived, but there’s no photo of it. No transcript, either. Either this is sloppy archival work, or part of the record has been deleted, for some reason.” He shrugs his shoulders, reaches for a pen. “Doesn’t matter, I can pull out the hard copy. Just let me write down where to find it.”

“I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” Will murmurs, and Kasey beams at him.

“I know! We honestly, actually found another Guardian.” She nudges Aiden’s shoulder, her elbow briefly dipping through his dress shirt. “How’s it feel, Aiden?”

He lets out a dazed laugh. “If you see steam coming from my ears, that’s just my brain melting.”

I bend to kiss the top of his head, and he smiles up at me before he turns back to his laptop. Then he pauses, staring.

“What…?” He leans closer, and I see what’s caught his eye. A tiny, blinking arrow in the bottom corner of the screen, as if to indicate that something is being sent, or uploaded.

It disappears, and doesn’t come back.

“That’s never happened before.” Aiden frowns, baffled. “Maybe my laptop is just bugging out? Is that why we can’t see the scan, or the transcript?”

“Let’s just find the hard copy,” Kasey says impatiently. “I’m dying to see-”

We all freeze as the door to the archives swings open. A flashlight beam appears on the stairs, followed seconds later by a security guard.

“Hello?” she calls, squinting into the half-light. “Someone in here?”

Aiden quickly gets to his feet. “Yep, it’s just me!”

“Aiden? What are you doing?”

“Hi, Isabelle! Just - working late. I’ve got someone helping me, too. Please don’t use the flashlight down here, this stuff is very light-sensitive!”

"Alright, whatever." There’s a clicking sound, and the flashlight beam disappears. “But we’ve already locked the building for the night, and you’re really not supposed to be here."

I look down at my watch, only now realizing how long we've spent in the archives. 

“You’re lucky that I’m the one who found you, or you’d be in big trouble," Isabelle calls. "Come on, I’ll let you out.”

Aiden hastily scribbles down the code for the file on John Botswick, or whatever his real name is.

“Coming!” he calls to Isabelle, and then, much more quietly, “We’ll find the hard copy tomorrow, ghosts.”

Kasey nods, then grabs Will’s hand. They both vanish.

I grab my laptop, then follow Aiden up the stairs, thinking that it’s nice we don’t have to jump from a second-story window, this time.

~~~~

The couch in Aunt Sarah’s living room is surprisingly soft. It's also roomy enough for Aiden to stretch out comfortably on his back with me curled up against his side. His arm is folded beneath his head, my palm flat on his chest.

The smoldering embers in the fireplace cast a glow onto the painted tiles that adorn it. Between that and Aiden’s warmth, I’m cozy enough to have shed my flannel. Aiden’s fingers are trailing lazily up and down my arm, occasionally toying with the fabric of my t-shirt.

Over dinner, we told Aunt Sarah about what we’re working on. She listened with fascination as we filled her in on Isaiah, and the bizarre cold case. Aiden actually told her most of the story, and he usually prefers to let me do the talking.

Aunt Sarah had such a huge smile on her face by the end of it.

“I’m not supposed to talk to her about Guardian stuff,” Aiden explained, afterwards. “But she loves hearing about it, and - I hate that rule. It’s a bunch of bullshit. Probably part of why she and my mom never got along.”

I’m with him on this. It’s good to scrutinize old traditions, decide for yourself whether or not to abide by them. Besides, if Aiden and I ever have a little Guardian of our own, I wouldn’t want their siblings to feel left out.

The fire makes a quiet snapping sound, and Aiden’s eyes drift over to it.

He bites his lip, then breaks what’s been a long, peaceful silence. “Jamie.”

“Mhm?”

“Do you think that we were right about the other Guardian? Alice Levitt? You - you think she burned, because her Tree did?”

I lift my head, look down at Aiden. His jaw is working in an agitated way. Almost imperceptibly, but enough for me to see the nervous flex of muscle.

“I mean - not necessarily. It said she disappeared, not that she died. Maybe she survived.”

“You’re such an optimist, dude.” Aiden huffs out a laugh, his gaze moving from the fireplace back to me. “I don’t know how you do it.”

I smooth a strand of chestnut hair out of his eyes, then tap his nose.

“I won’t let that happen to you,” I tell him softly. “Your Tree is not going to burn, and neither are you. I won’t let it. I’ll put it out myself, if I have to.”

Aiden breaks into a tiny smile. He turns his face into my hand, kisses my fingers before I can pull them away. I reciprocate with a kiss on his jaw, on the muscle that’s all tensed up. Aiden closes his eyes, and I feel him relax against me.

Something snags my attention from my peripheral vision, and I look up to see Aunt Sarah standing there.

She has one shoulder against the doorframe, a cup of tea in her hands. She’s watching us, smiling widely, but she blinks and straightens up when I catch her looking.

“Hi, you two,” she says, crossing to sit in the armchair. “Cozy, aren’t we?”

“Auntie,” Aiden groans, sitting up.

I sit up with him, and Aunt Sarah chuckles, folding her hands around the cup of chamomile.

“Don’t move on my account. Actually, I wish I had my camera.”

“Auntie,” Aiden says again, this time in a warning tone.

“Relax, honey, I won’t go get it. Probably.”

Aiden opens his mouth to answer, then pauses as his phone starts buzzing on the coffee table.

“That’s weird,” he says, surprised. “Why is Gabby calling me this late?”

I have no idea, so I shrug. “You’d better take it, right?"

Aiden slips into the kitchen to answer the call, leaving me with Aunt Sarah, who settles back into the armchair.

“So nice,” she sighs happily. "Just lovely, really."

“What?” I ask, pulling my socked feet up onto the couch. "The tea?"

“Seeing Aiden like this.” Aunt Sarah smiles at me, her cheeks rounding out in the same way that Aiden’s do. “Before his mom left, he was such a sweet, cuddly little thing. He’d sit right here-” She points to the carpeted floor next to the armchair. “And put his head on my knee.” She looks down at the spot, as if she can still see him there. “I’m glad he’s found that part of himself again. I thought it was lost forever.”

This is altogether too much for my heart. I don’t even know what to say, but Aiden saves me the trouble of having to come up with something by reappearing suddenly in the doorway.

My smile drops away when I see his expression.

“Aiden?” Aunt Sarah sits up in the armchair, concerned. “What happened?”

“I need to go to City Hall. Right now.”

“What?” Aunt Sarah’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why?”

Aiden’s gaze moves from her to me.

“There’s been a break-in at the archives.”