Aiden and I crash to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, staring into the archives.

I take a look around, then nearly sway on my feet with relief. Aiden closes his eyes and lets out a heavy exhale, holding the railing of the stairs very tightly.

“Oh, thank fucking god,” he murmurs.

“Did you also assume that everything would be destroyed, for some reason?” I ask, pressing a hand over my heart.

“No.” Aiden slumps back against the wall, breathing hard. “I was totally calm and chill, not - not worried at all.”

I was afraid that we might arrive to find the archives ransacked, everything that Aiden so scrupulously preserved left ruined. It’s an immediate relief to see the cabinets left as they were, no shredded precious documents on the ground. Nothing looks different, actually - except that the police are here.

There are officers taking pictures, others taking notes. There’s also a guy who isn’t wearing a uniform, but does have a badge attached to his belt.

That man is speaking with Gabby. She’s in jeans and a loose white sweater - a very simple outfit, especially by Gabby standards - and her hair is up in a messy bun. Based on that, I’d guess that she was asleep when she got the call about the break-in. But her eyes are as awake and sharp as they usually are, and they quickly find us where we’re standing by the stairs.

“Oh, there’s our archivist,” she says, and beckons to us.

Aiden crosses to her. I follow after him, dazed and unsettled. I’m not used to being in the archives in the dead of night, and I was already way thrown off just from seeing the police cars parked outside of City Hall.

“Aiden, this is Detective Callejo,” Gabby says, when we reach her side. Her voice is a little rough around the edges, still heavy with sleep. “Detective, this is Aiden Callahan, the archivist.”

The detective nods at Aiden, and I take a better look at him, my eyes slowly adjusting to the half-light of the dim lamps.

Callejo is probably around the same age as Kent, maybe slightly older. He’s wearing a grey leather jacket, holding a cup of coffee. He had a frown of concentration on his face before, but now he gives us a friendly smile.

I can only hope it’s sincere, because I have no idea what’s going on. Are we in trouble, somehow?

Aiden must be wondering the same thing. I can tell that he’s more than a little stressed out, but he pulls himself together, finds his composure. He gives Callejo’s hand a firm shake, paired with a swift nod of greeting.

“Nice to meet you,” he rumbles.

“Likewise.” Callejo’s eyes flit to me. “And this is…?”

“Jamie,” I answer, and Callejo shakes my hand, too. Then he lifts his eyebrows, like he’s waiting for more information, so I pin on: “Um - Keane?”

“My boyfriend,” Aiden hastily explains. “I’m sorry, we were together when you called, we just rushed over-”

“Are you the other person who was here working late?” Callejo asks me, and then, belatedly - “Oh, I’m sorry, Aiden. Didn’t mean to cut you off. I’m still waking up.” He holds up his coffee cup. “Waiting for this to take effect.”

“No problem. And yes, Jamie was here helping me out, I needed an extra set of hands.”

“Then it’s good you’re here,” Callejo tells me. “We’ll want to hear from both of you.”

Aiden chews his lip for a second, then blurts out: “That’s fine, but can someone please tell us what’s going on? Gabby - what happened?”

Gabby hooks a finger at us. She leads the way to the work table, where there’s an open laptop with a paused video pulled up. Paused security footage, actually - from City Hall. It’s the main hallway outside. It looks dark and empty, so the footage must have been taken late at night.

Gabby unpauses the video. As we watch, a security guard comes walking down the hallway, on patrol.

“Either of you recognize this man?” Callejo asks.

I glance up at him, confused. “The security guard?”

Callejo nods.

“It’s - hard to say,” Aiden answers, and I have to agree.

The guard has his back to the camera. His hat is pulled low over his face, no hair escaping from it. The shapeless jacket that comes with the security guard uniform obscures most of his body. That’s not much to go on, as far as pinpointing his identity.

But - does this mean-?

“It was one of the security guards?” I ask, disbelieving.

Callejo points silently at the screen, and I turn back just in time to see the guard come to a stop, right outside of the door to the archives.

He glances quickly up and down the hallway, apparently checking that it’s empty. Then he switches off his flashlight and drops to a crouch, examining the lock. After a moment, he stands again, pulls out a ring of keys. He unlocks the door and disappears into the archives, closing the door after himself.

Gabby skips a few minutes ahead in the footage, and the door to the archives opens, just a crack. The security guard peeks outside, his face hidden beneath the brim of his hat. Finding the hallway still empty, he steps back out into it, then shuts the archives door.

The guard keeps his head down the whole time, turned away from the camera. But his jacket is slightly unzipped, and there, tucked into it - I can just make out the corner of a folder.

The guard zips up his jacket the rest of the way, switches back on the flashlight, and resumes patrolling.

“What the fuck?” I say, before I can think.

Gabby nods, pressing her fingers to her temple. “I’m wondering the same thing.”

Callejo pauses the video and turns to face us. “We heard from Isabelle - one of the security guards - that you two were here working late?”

I’m trying to avoid lying, which I expect won’t work on either Gabby or Callejo, so I decide not to offer any extraneous details. “Yeah, we were.”

“Well, a few hours after you left, someone showed up on City Hall grounds dressed as a night security guard.” Callejo backs up the video, then points to the intruder. “This guy did a few rounds of the property, then entered the building with a key. Entered the archives, also with a key. Left the archives with a file, less than three minutes later.”

“What…?” Aiden stares at the screen, wide-eyed. “What?”

“The suspect ran into Isabelle on his way out,” Callejo continues. “She heads up the night security team, and she didn’t recognize him as one of her staff. She approached the suspect, at which point he took off and disappeared into the night. Did some acrobatics to get over the wall, too.”

I look at Aiden, and see my own confusion mirrored in his blue eyes.

“Isabelle contacted the police, and me,” Gabby explains.

“When we reviewed the security tapes, we found this.” Callejo taps the screen. “Isabelle didn’t get a good look at our suspect, but she guessed male, so that’s what we’re going with for now. We also know that he’s young and athletic enough to leap that wall, but - that’s about all we’ve got. The guy didn’t let his face get picked up on any of the security cameras.”

“Wait, hang on," I say, struggling to keep up. "How did he have keys to the building?”

“One of the other security guards on duty has now realized that his keys are missing,” Gabby sighs. “Only after the thief had already escaped, unfortunately.”

“Jesus!” I sputter. “This guy stole the keys right off of a guard? Without the guard noticing?”

“That’s what it’s looking like, yep.” Callejo bites his lip, suddenly trying to suppress a wide smile. We all blink at him, surprised, and he shrugs his shoulders. “Sorry. It’s just - this is sort of fun, to tell you the truth. Ketterbridge doesn’t usually get action like this.”

“Detective,” Gabby laughs, and Callejo chuckles.

“Apologies, Ms. Soto. I’m a professional, I assure you. This is just an unusual case.”

“Fair enough,” I tell him. “I bet you’ve never investigated a crime with disguises involved, before now.”

Callejo grins at me. “Nope. But I’ve always hoped I’d get the chance.”

Gabby lets out another tired laugh, shakes her head at him, and turns back to us.

“Aiden," she says, "We know that a file was stolen, but we don’t know which one, or why. We’re hoping that you can help us out with that. Why were you and Jamie working so late? Did sensitive files come in to be archived, or…?”

“Like - sensitive enough that someone would break in and steal them?" Aiden shakes his head, his eyebrows furrowing. "No, definitely not. I wasn’t working on anything special, and I didn’t mean to stay so late. It’s easy to lose track of time down here, that’s all. And I have no idea why anyone would steal a file, in the first place. He could have just asked me for it. If you want to see something from the archives, all you have to do is fill out a request form. I pull old documents for people doing research on a pretty regular basis.”

“Exactly.” Callejo nods at Aiden. “We’re missing the motive, and knowing which file was stolen could help us figure it out. That’s why we called you down here. I need to know what’s been taken. You’re the archivist; tell me what it is.”

Aiden blinks at Callejo, then twists to look around at the sea of cabinets, each filled almost to max capacity with archival materials.

“Um...” He adjusts his snapback nervously, clearly thrown off at being put on the spot like this. “The guy only took one file? And none of the cabinet drawers were left open, or…?”

"Nope,” Callejo answers. He stares at Aiden, who increasingly looks like a person about to take an exam he’s in no way prepared for.

“Well, then - I mean - I’m sorry, but you have no idea how much stuff we’ve got down here.” His blue eyes roam hopelessly over the archives as he speaks. “I don’t even know where to st-”

He breaks off sharply, his gaze having fallen on the work table.

The old newspapers from the towns surrounding Ketterbridge are still out on the table, where we left them. Aiden was going to put them away in the morning. But that’s not what he’s looking at.

There’s a tiny, square notepad on the table. It’s the one that Aiden used earlier, when he wrote down a reference code so that we could pull the hard copy of a certain case file tomorrow. He tore off the page with the code, and we took it with us. So the notepad should be blank, but - it isn’t.

Aiden reaches over and picks it up. I lean closer to him, take a look at it.

Someone has shaded in the topmost page with the side of a pencil. The indentations from Aiden’s pen are the only part of the page not covered in a light layer of graphite.

There it is, perfectly visible: the code for John Botswick’s file.

Aiden’s eyes lift to mine, and we stare at each other in shocked silence.

“Got something?” Callejo asks, in a tone that says I know you do, show me.

We have no choice, so Aiden sets off across the archives. We all follow after him, and he comes to a stop before a cabinet all the way in the far corner.

He flips on the nearest dim lamp, checks the code again, and opens one of the cabinet drawers. It’s filled with old police case files. Aiden flicks through them until we get to the one labeled with the right code.

Or until we should get to that one. But we don’t, because it isn’t there.

~~~~

Aiden stares at the empty spot where the Botswick file should be. Very, very briefly, his eyes dart to find mine.

He takes a second to get control of his expression before he turns and hands the notepad to Callejo.

“That’s the reference code for the file that’s missing.”

Callejo stares down at the notepad, putting two and two together.

“You wrote down this code today?” he asks, and then, when Aiden nods - “Why?”

That’s a fair question, but for a number of reasons, difficult to answer. The main reason being that the truth involves ghosts and Guardians.

My instinct is to keep quiet, because this is a situation where we need to lie. But Callejo directed the question at both of us, and it’ll probably look weird if I just stand here in silence.

Thankfully, using small pieces of truth to avoid giving away the full story is another skill I developed at the Bratton Collection. Aiden and I have a rhythm for it, now. So long as he does the lying, we should be okay.

Aiden knows this, so he answers first.

“I pulled up the Botswick file - the missing file, that is - while working on another archival piece. It was a newspaper article that mentioned him. John Botswick. I needed context to fill out the description sheet for the newspaper, so I searched the name.”

Seeing an opportunity, I jump in.

“When we pulled up the digital version of the Botswick file, we realized that the scan and the transcript were missing. Aiden said it looked like sloppy archival work.”

“Right," Aiden says. “I figured that while I had it pulled up, I’d grab the hard copy of the file, add the missing parts to the digital version. So I wrote down the code on that notepad.”

“But Isabelle kicked us out before we could pull the hard copy of the file,” I finish. “So Aiden said he’d just do it tomorrow, and we left.”

“And a few hours later,” Callejo says slowly, “Someone breaks in here, and steals it?”

Aiden shrugs his shoulders, equally as lost. “I - I guess, yeah.”

“What was the file?” Gabby asks.

An acceptable truth for me to tell, so I chime in again. “It’s a case file. A cold case from 1961.”

Callejo’s eyebrows shoot up. “The file concerns a police matter?”

“Yeah,” Aiden says, “But I can’t think who would have taken it, or why tonight. Jamie and I didn’t tell anyone we were going to pull that file tomorrow, and we were down here alone.”

“Hoped you’d bring me answers, guys,” Callejo tells us, rubbing his forehead. “Not more questions.”

He lets out a sigh, then pulls his wallet from his pocket.

“Here’s my card.” He holds it out, and Aiden accepts it. “Call me if you think of anything else that could be helpful.”

We both nod, then wave goodbye to Gabby. We head for the door, but stop as Callejo adds: “Aiden, one more thing. I need you to email me everything you have on that missing file.”

“Um - I don’t have anything on that file.”

Callejo tips his head to the side. “Didn’t you say there was a related newspaper article?”

Aiden and I twist to look at each other. We didn’t think to check if that was taken, too.

Aiden quickly finds his discarded pair of archival gloves, left on the table. He sifts through the stack of newspapers we left out, and we both breathe a sigh of relief.

The Faceless Man article from 1961 is still there, untouched. I have to wonder if it was only left behind because it was hidden beneath the newspaper from 1842, the one with the story about Isaiah.

“I'll send you a scan,” Aiden says, and Callejo nods. 

“Oh - guys!” he calls, just before we reach the stairs. We both stop again, turn to look at him. “If it’s alright by you, let’s not say anything to anyone about which file was stolen. Better that the thief doesn’t know we figured it out.”

He says it breezily, like a casual suggestion, but we read him loud and clear. This is a directive. Not a word to anyone.

“What the fuck?” Aiden whispers, as soon as we step back into the hallway. “Just - honestly, what the actual fuck?”

“I know,” I say, my head spinning. “How do we even begin to figure out what the hell any of this means?”

Aiden and I look at each other silently, then both say the answer at the same time.

“Kasey.”