An amethyst dusk is falling outside. The day's last golden rays of sunlight are falling softly into Ketterbridge’s only concert venue.

It’s a small space. Just the floor, the bar, and the stage that I'm sitting on. The black walls are tightly packed with stickers, graffiti, and neon signs, which the manager just flipped on.

There are four gigantic speakers near the stage. Noah has taken the back off of one. He’s on his knees before it, his tools in a pile beside him, his hair swept up out of his face and into a bun.

“You're awful quiet, Keane." He sets his voltmeter aside, reaches for some pliers. “Everything okay?"

“Sorry, man. I’m a little distracted.” I stretch out my legs, watching Noah sort through the wires of the speaker. “Aiden and I had a big breakthrough in our ghost-hunting case yesterday. Like, huge.”

Noah pauses, his hand wrapped around a bunch of wires, and looks at me over his shoulder. “Uhh - what’s-?”

“We barely talked about it on the way home, because we were both just trying to process everything. And Aiden had left for City Hall by the time I got up this morning. I don’t want to tell the ghosts until we can all talk together, so I haven’t gotten to talk to him or them about it yet.”

Noah stares at me, one pierced eyebrow arched all the way up.

“Jesus Christ, bro,” he laughs, shaking his head. “You’d think it was you who’d been electrocuted like a billion times, not me. Your brain ain’t right. Aiden’s, neither.”

“It’s a long story,” I inform him. “The good news is, the whole situation resulted in us coming home with a vintage Campbell’s advertisement that genuinely looks like the cover of some soup-themed X-rated movie-”

“Bro, what the fuck?” Noah lets out a startled laugh. “Can you shut up, already? I’m gonna pinch one of these wires right where I don’t fuckin’ mean to.”

“I’m sorry! I wouldn’t have come and bothered you if I knew you were busy! Why did you just give me an address, why didn’t you tell me you were working a job?”

“Figured - dunno. Sounded like you wanted to hang out.” Noah shrugs, turning back to his work. “And I was bored doing this, anyways. So.”

I stare at Noah, a smile slowly spreading across my face. It’s been a minute since he and I got some one-on-one time together. I was missing it, which is why I hit him up.

Sounds like maybe Noah was, too. After all, I’ve been here for about an hour and a half, and he hasn’t told me to go away and let him work.

“Well, I'm sorry.” I pull my feet up onto the stage, watching as Noah starts to lock the pieces of the speaker back in place. “Didn’t mean to be distracted while we were talking.”

“Hey, I get it. You think I’m not distracted, Jamie? With that in my line of vision?”

I blink in confusion, following Noah’s gaze to a giant red fire extinguisher set into one of the walls. “Um…?”

“I’ve always wanted to spray someone with one of those.” Noah looks at the fire extinguisher, a gleam in his grey eyes. “That one is huge. A perfect candidate.”

“I’m telling you right now, Noah, if you spray me with that thing, we are never speaking again.”

“I’m not gonna do it, dude,” Noah says, all innocent. “Relax.”

“Oh, god. Why does that actually make me feel more like you’re gonna do it?”

“Nah, man. Chill. Nothing to worry about.”

“Okay, how did we even get to this-? We were talking about Ralph.”

“Yeah, and I don’t even know what to make of that shit.” Noah sits back on his ankles, looking at me over his shoulder again. “You really believe all that? About him, like - trying, or whatever? You seriously think so?”

I nod at Noah, who lets out a whistle of disbelief as he turns back to the speaker.

“I’d have lost money on that bet,” he says, and I make a noise of agreement.

“I thought you’d want to know. Ralph is focused on himself, right now, so you’re definitely not in his scope. He seems pretty determined to stay on task. I only really saw him get distracted by Calla. Very distracted, actually.”

“What - really?” Noah’s eyes dart back to me, surprised. “You made it sound like she basically put him in the ground.”

“Mhm, she did. He was enraptured.”

“Wow.” Noah lets out a snort of laughter, then shakes his head. “Well, if Ralph’s going after a girl, I’m glad it’s one who won’t fall for his fucking mind games. All his lies and bullshit. Sounds like she’d see right through it.”

“He's not going after her. And I don’t think he should go after any girl until she doesn’t have to see right through it. He’s gotta quit that shit, first.”

“Yeah, bro, I'm talking about after he’s quit that shit. Would be good for him to be with someone who can keep him in line if he fucks up or backslides, cause, like…” Noah shrugs, tightening a bolt with a wrench. “That shit happens. It's not always a straight path forward.”

“That’s… true,” I answer slowly, thinking it over. “Well. Aiden and I told him to keep working on being better. He said he would. And he is better, already. He’s just - still got a long way to go.”

“Can’t believe it, man.” Noah seals the back panel of the speaker into place, then falls silent for a moment, staring straight ahead with unfocused eyes. “He honestly, actually read that book you gave him?”

“I mean - he said he did, and I believe him. He had it for a long time.”

“Did he?” Noah lets his hair loose from its bun, then starts gathering his tools back into his bag. “That’s weird. Ralph can read a book in like, two days.”

“This was a textbook.”

“Mkay, so like, three days.”

I stare at Noah, caught by surprise. “Really? He can do that?”

“Yep. If it took him that long to read it, he must have given up, and then restarted it. Like, more than once.” Noah gets to his feet, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “He’s sharp, you know that. How d’you think he’s run his business all this time?”

“No, I know." I hop down off of the stage to join Noah as he starts walking towards the bar. "I’m just surprised that he gave up, then changed his mind and kept pushing forward. More than once. He did say that reading it made him feel bad. Didn't realize he meant that bad.”

“Ralph actually felt bad about something?” Noah makes a soft sound of disbelief. “That’s a big fucking change, already.”

“Yeah. Yeah. And he asked us to apologize to Calla for him.”

Noah looks at me with grey eyes so round and enormous that I let out a laugh.

“Yeah, that was pretty much my exact reaction.”

Noah breathes out another incredulous exhale, then falls silent for a moment.

“Speaking of that business Ralph runs,” he says, much more quietly. “That girl, Calla - if she gets tangled up with Ralph, she should know what she’s getting into. He kept a small crew, but Ralph is one of the big boys in his field. Like, he’s a name. He does serious business. She should know that.”

I bite my lip, avoiding Noah’s eyes. I had to leave out a lot of information about the brush between Calla and Ralph when I told him about it. I couldn’t exactly tell him that one of the ways I know Calla is through being her co-conspirator in the robbery of a police warehouse. That she does things just as dangerous and illegal as Ralph does, and with a similar degree of regularity.

We come to a stop at the bar before I can work up an answer, and the manager strides out from the back.

He has about half as many tattoos, but twice as many piercings as Noah. He comes to a stop behind the bar, his eyes going to the speaker.

“No way. You got it to work?”

“Should be humming, bro.” Noah nods in its direction. “Do me a favor, give it a test real quick?”

The manager waves a hand at the guy behind the sound booth, who presses a button.

Noah and I both startle as rock music starts roaring out of the speakers at a window-shaking volume. The thump of the bass vibrates every bottle behind the bar.

The manager smiles happily, then waves at the sound guy to turn it off.

“Fucking thank you, man,” he tells Noah, as we both drop the hands we’d automatically clamped over our ears. “Thought that thing was irreparably fucked. We’re not open yet, but drinks on the house for you and your friend.”

“Thanks, dude,” Noah says brightly, folding his elbows on the bar.

“Have your fiancé come down, too,” the manager adds, pointing at his engagement ring.

“Not the best idea,” Noah snickers. “He’s a drunk off of two beers type of guy. Definitely not someone who can start drinking this early in the night.”

“He?” asks the manager, arching an eyebrow. “I thought you said before that your fiancé is a she?”

“He’s got one of each,” I explain, and Noah throws up two fingers for emphasis.

The manager blinks, then nods at Noah in an impressed kind of way. “Rock ‘n roll.”

Noah snickers again, and the manager straightens up, knocks the bartop with his knuckles.

“I’ll go get your cash. Sit tight.”

He slips into the back again, and I rest my elbows on the bar next to Noah's.

“Should we take him up on his offer?” I suggest. “Stay and have a few beers?”

“Oh, shit.” Noah winces at me, his eyes regretful. “Love to, dude, but I already made plans for tonight. Raj is gonna be here any minute to pick me up.”

Almost as soon as he says it, the door is pushed open, and Raj steps inside. Wind-tousled, pushing his black curls out of his face.

“Hey,” he says warmly, his dark brown eyes going right to Noah, and then - “Oh, Jamie! What’s good, brother?”

He strides over to join us at the bar, where he presses a kiss onto Noah’s temple.

“Hey, man,” I laugh, pushing him away as he comes in for an immediate hug. “I was just asking Noah if he wanted to hang out. I didn’t realize you two already had plans.”

“And I didn’t realize you were in here,” Raj tells me. “Aiden’s outside leaving a voicemail for you, like, right now.”

I blink at Raj, then turn and spot my phone. I forgot it on the stage. It’s still lit up with the call I missed from Aiden.

“Aiden’s here?” I ask over my shoulder, crossing to the stage.

“Yeah, we’ve got plans tonight,” Raj calls back. “I think he was just calling to let you know. We came to get Noah, now we've just gotta go pick up Ripples. Then we're headed out.”

I pause with my hand reaching out for my phone. I'm thrown off, taken aback.

Noah, Raj, Ripley, and Aiden - all of them made plans, without me? And plans that I’m clearly not invited to, or one of them would have said so by now.

Where are they going? What are they doing that they don’t want me to come to?

I look down as my phone starts buzzing again, another call coming in. This time not from Aiden.

I stare at the screen in surprise, then glance at Raj and Noah. They’re distracted, chatting with the manager, who just returned with Noah’s payment.

I snatch up my phone and answer the call, keeping my voice quiet. “Hey, Calla, thanks for calling me back, I wasn't sure you w-”

“Jamie. Why’d you call me?” Her voice is urgent, anxious. “What happened?”

“Oh, no - it’s nothing to do with that,” I hastily answer. “I promise! I only called to give you a message. An apology. That guy we were with, Ralph, he wanted me to tell you that he’s sorry for behaving like an asshole.”

There’s a short silence from Calla’s end of the line.

“Jamie, I gave you my number so we could plan a crime together. Not so that you could call me with fake-ass bullshit-”

“No, really! He honestly felt bad about it. He asked me and Aiden to apologize for him. We told him we would, but only if he promised not to pull shit like that again.”

“And he did?” Calla asks, understandably skeptical.

“Yeah, he did. He’s kinda been, like - working on himself? But he basically panicked when he laid eyes on you. Doesn't make it okay, but he admitted that it was a stupid fucking attempt to get your attention, so. Yeah, he’s really sorry.”

Another silence, this one longer. I keep silent, myself, resisting the urge to ask Calla about Leyla, Rose, everything we learned about during the ghost moment last night. I desperately want to, but I can’t do that without authorization from the Ghost Office manager.

So I wait quietly, letting Calla absorb what I just told her.

“Alright…” she says, more slowly. “That’s - unexpected.”

I turn to glance at Noah and Raj again, then do a double-take. The manager has disappeared. Raj is examining the poster of upcoming gigs, and Noah - Noah has snuck off and retrieved the giant red fire extinguisher from the wall. He’s very quietly sneaking up on Raj, the nozzle already aimed.

Watch this, he mouths at me.

I put my hand over my phone and start mouthing back at him. No, dude, no no no -

“Well, I accept Ralph's apology,” Calla says, as Noah slowly sneaks closer to Raj. “He’s still on my shit list, though.”

“Where he belongs,” I answer firmly, to a sharp little laugh from Calla. “I’ve gotta run. There’s about to be a disaster right in front of me.”

“I gotta go, too. As always, you caught me in the middle of something.”

“What now?”

“Breaking into the police station. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a good reason.”

“What? Calla!”

“Bye, Jamie!”

She hangs up, and I let out an indignant sputter, then whip around to see Noah posed in a dramatic stance, carefully taking aim at an unsuspecting Raj with the fire extinguisher.

The door opens again, and Aiden steps inside, his blue eyes roaming over the room.

“Jamie.” He sets off towards me, plucking the fire extinguisher out of Noah’s hands without breaking stride. “Raj just texted me that you’re here.”

“Yeah, I - I heard you’ve all got plans.” I lower my volume considerably as Aiden stops before me. “Don't you want to see the ghosts tonight? Tell them about the corner store?”

“I’m dying to,” Aiden says, setting the fire extinguisher down. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made plans. I set it up before I even knew we were going to the corner store.”

“Oh, okay.” I hesitate, fidgeting with my sleeve. “Is - is there a reason why you guys don’t want me to come?”

It must show in my eyes how hurt I am, because Aiden looks down into them, then flinches like I touched him with a branding iron.

He tips his head back, lets out a helpless sound.

“Goddamnit,” he groans, aggressively adjusting his snapback. “You weren’t supposed to know that we're all together! I just left you a voicemail saying that I was with Noah, helping him with wedding stuff. I didn't know you were here!”

I'm even more confused now than I was before. “What-?”

“For fuck’s sake! You are so hard to surprise.” Aiden's voice drops to a low, determined growl. He stabs a finger at my chest. “But you will be surprised, Keane. So get that sad look off your face, before it kills me.”

"A surprise?" I stare up at Aiden, breaking into a smile. “For me?”

“No.” He takes a handful of my flannel, then starts backing me up towards the door. “There’s no surprise, and we never had this conversation. Noah, Raj, Ripples, and I - we’re all hanging out without you because you’re annoying. Not because we’re all secretly working on something nice for you. Got that?”

“Got it,” I laugh, a blush rising in my cheeks.

Aiden pushes the door open and backs me out onto the sidewalk. He bends down, holds me in place by my flannel, and presses a fierce kiss onto my mouth, one that makes my heart stumble wildly.

“Now get lost,” he growls, and closes the door in my smiling face.