With Aiden safely home, his Tree doing well again, and our breaths back in our lungs - we can turn back to the case of John Botswick, and the Guardian who was somehow involved in what happened to him.
His notebook turned out to be a treasure trove of information, and now we have to figure out what it all means, how it fits into what we already know.
We would normally do this at the Ghost Office, but we got a very late start tonight.
I’m cozied up in a nest of all the blankets on my bed. Aiden is sleeping deeply, his head against my chest, the soft fabric of his sweatshorts pressed against mine. His heat is seeping into me in waves of delicious warmth.
He fell asleep with the glasses on, so Kasey and Will are whispering, just like I am.
“John Botswick was definitely an agent,” Kasey is saying. “We know that for sure, now. He left that notebook in the cave after he came into Port Sitka by boat, in the middle of the night. Just a few days before he collapsed the farmhouse, which he did on the same night that he was murdered.”
“Right. And what does this mean?” I look down at my phone, where a photo of the contents of Botswick’s notebook is pulled up. “In the event that what happened to the other agents happens to me… so other agents tried to kidnap the kid living at the farmhouse before John Botswick did? And something - happened to them?”
“My mind still feels like my own,” Will reads. “The previous agents lost their grasp on their own minds, perhaps?”
“Except for codename Rouge.” My mind drifts back to the lipstick-stained cigarette butt that we burned on the beach with all the rest of the evidence from the warehouse. “Rouge must have been another agent. She was clearly supposed to work with John Botswick on this job. I mean, look at this part - Left the green ribbon tied up on the railing at the corner store. I know that Rouge saw the signal, but she didn’t come.”
“Well, now we know why the green ribbon was in John Botswick’s stuff,” Kasey murmurs. “It was a signal. Spies would use this kind of covert communication all the time. Move a potted plant from one side of a balcony to another, or tie up a ribbon somewhere…”
“We must have been right about the child living at the farmhouse, too,” Will adds. “Botswick notes that he was under the protection of two Stasi agents. The son of some important member of the Stasi, then?”
Kasey slaps a hand over her mouth, her dark eyes blinking hard and fast.
“Oh my god,” she whisper-yells, flapping her hands at me and Will. “The Stasi - no wonder I can’t fucking crack that code we found in the well, it probably correlates to German, not English - Jamie, can you Google some stuff for me real quick?”
I look down at Aiden, whose lip is twitching now and then as he dreams. I gently try to shift him onto the bed, and he immediately burrows further into me, keeping me in place.
“Um - can we let Aiden get some sleep?” I whisper. “He’s so tired, you have no idea how hard he’s been working on the exhibition.”
“Oh - of course we can. What am I thinking?” Kasey blows out a frustrated breath. “I forget sometimes that you guys can just run out of energy.”
“Says the person we’re literally making a battery for,” I point out, and she laughs.
“Fair enough. Do you need some rest, too, Jamie?”
“Mmm, no, I’m fine,” I yawn, trying to keep my eyes open. “I want to tweak my design sketches for the exhibition before I go to bed. Can you hand me my notepad, Will?”
Will blinks his eyes at me. In the half-light of my bedroom, they’re a deeper shade, almost moss-green. They also look a little skeptical.
“Ah - Jamie, my friend, if you’ve forgotten that I can’t hand you anything, you most certainly do need some rest.”
“Bullshit, dude, I’m totally fine,” I insist, even though my cheeks are burning at my mistake. “I mean - okay, yeah, I’m a little tired, but I want everything to be perfect, this is so important to Aiden-”
“Then do it when you’re not exhausted,” Kasey says firmly. “Besides, I think if you try to do anything besides let Aiden sleep on you, it’s not gonna work. Like - try it.”
I hesitate, then try again to shift Aiden off of me and onto the blankets. He makes a soft, worried noise in his sleep, and I stop immediately, wrap him back up in my arms.
“Jamie?” His eyes flutter open, blue arctic light in the dimness of my bedroom. “What’re you-?”
“Nothing,” I answer quickly, pressing a kiss onto the top of his head. “I’m right here.”
“Don’t go,” Aiden rumbles, his deep voice like leather worn to smooth softness, love in the undertones of each word.
My toes curl beneath the blankets. “No, I won’t.”
Aiden lets out a sleepy, relieved breath, then closes his eyes again.
Kasey makes a knowing face at me.
“Okay,” I grumble. “Point taken. I guess - let’s just go to sleep?”
The ghosts both nod. I settle further down into the bed, careful not to move Aiden too much. Kasey and Will stretch out through us and across us, snuggling up with each other.
"Comfortable, lass?" Will murmurs softly, and Kasey nods, smiling, practically invisible in his burly arms.
I switch off the lamp, and the room falls quiet. Aiden resettles himself against me, his chestnut hair tickling my chin. His heat is warming up the entire bed, a sweet reminder that he can recharge just fine again.
“So,” I say into the silence, “In light of our recent discoveries, is anyone opposed to us officially throwing out the John Botswick was a cyborg theory of Joni's? Or - can we go ahead and do that?”
“I’m opposed,” Aiden mumbles sleepily, surprising me. “Extremely opposed. Violently opposed.”
“You are nothing but tired, okay?” I inform him, as Kasey and Will both let out a snicker of laughter. “And this is an awful lot of faith in an absolutely batshit theory, coming from the guy who insisted there was no way it could be a cryptid!”
“Yeah, because that’s absurd,” Aiden murmurs, nuzzling his face into my neck.
“I’m inclined to agree with Jamie,” Will puts in. “It makes perfect sense. A cryptid murdered John Botswick.”
“Thank you, Will!” I point at him, even though no one can see it in the darkness. “It does make perfect sense. Cryptids are deadly, man. Cryptids kill like - what is it, every one in one hundred people? I don’t remember the stat.”
“That number sounds quite right to me,” Will agrees immediately.
Kasey laughs, and Aiden groans.
“Everyone shut up and go to sleep," he says, his deep voice quiet and drowsy.
Before I can argue with him, he rolls me onto my side, then snuggles his body up against mine. The feeling of that shuts me right up. Clearly the intended effect, because Aiden nods in a satisfied kind of way, then lets out a low, sleepy sigh. I reach back to pluck the glasses from his face, set them aside on my night table.
While I'm up on my elbow, I glance down at Kasey and Will. It’s dark, but they put off their own gentle glow, enough for me to make them out clearly.
They both already have their eyes closed. Will is smiling, his arms locked tightly around Kasey. Aiden’s leg is going right through the two ghosts, but neither of them seems to notice or care.
I cuddle back down against Aiden, smiling just as big as Will.
I fall asleep in record time, surrounded on all sides by my friends, by my team, by love.
~~~~
Floyd has customers when Aiden and I step into Body Bag Books. Two sunburned girls with bandanas and giant hiking backpacks.
“I actually don’t stock a lot of books on serial killers,” he’s telling them.
“No?” one of the girls asks, exchanging an amused glance with her friend. “Why not?"
“Matter of principle!” As usual, Floyd is gesturing wildly, rings clicking on all of his fingers, grey flyaway hair bouncing. “Too many of those books idolize them! Portraying these dreadful creeps as geniuses of murder because they evaded the police for so long, got away with so much. The truth is, you really don’t have to be that brilliant, to outsmart the fuzz. Far from it. Matter of fact, I would argue-”
He stops, blinking at me and Aiden from behind his thick, perfectly round glasses.
“Oh - oh!” he says excitedly, his already over-magnified eyes growing even bigger. “Aiden, Jamie!”
He starts to rush towards us, then stops, realizing that he’s abandoned his customers. He glances between us and the girls, his long grey braid whipping over his shoulder with the speedy movements of his head. His faded t-shirt says D.B. Cooper Skydiving School - Est. 1971 in big white letters. Floyd runs an uncertain finger around the collar, hesitating, torn between us and his customers.
“It’s okay, Floyd,” I laugh, flapping a hand at him. “Take your time.”
“Are you sure-?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Floyd gives us a thumbs up, then zips back across the shop, a small grey streak of unbridled energy.
“So sorry!” he tells his customers, as Aiden reaches to close the door behind us. “Two very dear friends of mine, you understand…”
This statement warms my heart a little. I glance at Aiden, see my own surprised smile reflected on his face.
“No problem,” says the girl Floyd was talking to. “We’ll take these three that you recommended-”
“Oh, wonderful!”
“-and is it cool if we take a picture with your sign down the road?”
“Of course!” Floyd practically beams at her. “Absolutely dynamite, isn’t it? And do you know, I have no idea who did it? It just showed up one morning! Mysteries abound, my friends, even in this day and age!”
Aiden and I wait while Floyd rings the girls up and lets them out of the shop. He trots alongside them to the driveway, gives them directions back to the main road, and waves as they head off.
“Seeing more customers these days, Floyd?” Aiden asks, when he comes bounding back inside.
Floyd cranes his head back to look up at Aiden, a giant smile on his face. “They’re the fifth and sixth ones this week! It’s that sign! Did you see it?”
We did see it on our drive here, and it’s even more impressive in person. Ripley really outdid himself.
We follow Floyd into his kitchen, where I drop down to say hello to Ida. She gets up and stiffly wobbles over to me, her tail wagging in recognition.
I suddenly remember what happened the last time I crouched down to greet her.
“Oh - Ida, no-” I begin, then break off as she hurls herself into me, knocking me on my ass. She crawls onto my lap and cuddles up on it.
“Do you not realize you’re a Rottweiler?” Aiden asks her. She fixes her big brown eyes on him, panting happily. “Not a traditional lap dog breed, but you don’t let that stop you, huh?”
“I can't feel my legs," I sputter, struggling to get free. "Are you not gonna help me, Aiden?"
“Yeah right, dude. As if you don’t love it. You should see the smile on your face." He reaches down and pinches my cheek. "So cute. Isn’t it, Floyd?”
“It is, Jamie!” Floyd says brightly, as I swat Aiden's hand away. “A cherub smile, really!”
Aiden suppresses a laugh, and I have to bite one back, too.
I struggle my way out from under Ida, then join Floyd and Aiden at the sunlit kitchen table, where Floyd pours out three cups of coffee.
“So, fellas?” he asks, brimming with obvious excitement. “Made any progress on the case?”
“We’ve got some new theories,” I answer, as Ida totters slowly towards the table. “First of all, we have reason to believe that John Botswick was murdered by a cryptid.”
“And that he was a cyborg,” Aiden pins on.
Floyd nods earnestly, his eyes very serious. “Both are possible.”
I open my mouth to answer, then stop, watching as Aiden bends down to scoop Ida into his arms. She’s a big girl, but my Bicep Boy easily lifts her up to sit on his lap. Even he isn’t big enough to sit her like a lapdog, but he can hold her weight so that she doesn’t fall. Her slow-moving tail begins thumping happily. She leans up to lick Aiden’s cheek, then turns to look at Floyd, a giant puppy grin on her face.
“Wow, it’s your lucky day, Ida,” Floyd laughs. “You’ve finally found someone you won’t crush! Although - don’t hold her too long, Aiden. The chair might break, genuinely.”
I’m tempted to snap a photo of Aiden and Ida, but instead I pick up Aiden’s backpack. Floyd’s eyes flit to me, and he leans forward enthusiastically.
“Got something for me, Jamie?”
“Floyd,” I answer, “What would you say if I told you we had concrete proof that John Botswick was a spy, and that you were definitely right about the espionage angle that everyone told you was stupid and absurd? Like - if we had it in John Botswick’s own words? In his handwriting?”
“Oh,” Floyd says dreamily, propping his chin on his palm. “I don’t know what I would say.”
“Well, you better figure it out pretty fast,” Aiden tells him.
Floyd blinks at Aiden, then freezes as I unzip the backpack and pull out John Botswick’s notebook.
“What - what is that?” he says, his voice suddenly hoarse. His eyes flick from me to Aiden, then drop down to the notebook. “You don’t really mean to tell me…?”
I hand him the notebook, along with a pair of Aiden’s archival gloves.
Floyd stares down at both, then pulls the gloves on with shaking hands, his eyes filled with disbelief.
He gently eases open the notebook, stares down at the handwriting, and reads the first sentence out loud.
“It goes against everything they told me in training, but per official request, I am keeping a written log of my activities so that Command can trace my steps in the event that what happened to the other…” Floyd stops, blinking hard. “The other agents - with the exception of codename Rouge - happens to me.”
There’s a long silence, during which Floyd stares down at the notebook. Then, very slowly, he lifts his gaze to us. His glasses make his eyes gigantic, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them quite this huge.
“We saw the handwriting in the other notebook, the one that was sewn into John Botswick’s suit,” Aiden rumbles, scratching Ida’s ears. “It’s a perfect match. He’s definitely the one who wrote this.”
Floyd stares at us, blank-faced and speechless.
“You were right, Floyd,” I tell him. “Those people who said that you’d lost it, going with this theory - they were wrong.”
Floyd puts a shaking hand over his mouth. His lips move, but no words find their way out.
“Floyd?” Aiden says, growing concerned. “Are you-?”
“Oh,” Floyd breathes, his voice trembling. “Oh, I knew it, I knew...”
He fades off into stunned silence. Then he startles the hell out of both me and Aiden by springing to his feet and letting out an explosion of wild, giddy laughter.
“I fucking knew it!” he hollers, at a booming volume. “Oh, how do I get a hold of my editor - he retired twenty-five years ago, but let me tell you, I intend to really let him have it - Jamie! Aiden! Do you know how rare it is to find evidence that’s so - especially in a cold case, I mean - a log! An entire log of his activities!”
Floyd turns through the pages of the notebook, then draws in a long, loud gasp when he sees how many pages have been written on.
“Holy shit!” he yells, his glasses slipping down his nose. “This - this is…”
He goes quiet, stunned all over again.
“Absolutely dynamite?” Aiden gently suggests, and Floyd sputters out a small, dazed laugh.
“Yes,” he stammers, gazing down at the notebook cradled in his hands. “Yes, boys. That it is.”
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