I sit curled up in my armchair, the wind blowing gently against the windows behind me.

The ghosts both shine in the low light of my apartment. Kasey is on the couch, Will leaning back against the wall. There’s been a prevailing silence since they finished reading my transcription of what was said and done during the ghost moment at the corner store. Aiden gave me the go-ahead to let them see it without him here, given that he, Raj, Ripley, and Noah are going to be busy all night.

It puts a glow in my chest to think that they’re all out doing something for me. I almost don’t care what it is. Just the fact that they’re doing it at all feels like a warm little gift that I’ve been happy about ever since I left them earlier tonight. I catch myself smiling every time my mind goes back to it.

The ghosts, on the other hand, look very serious. In fact, they look absolutely dumbfounded, which is more than fair. That’s how Aiden and I both looked when we were trying to get our heads around everything that we learned at the corner store.

The ghost moment changes things. It calls into question some assumptions that we’d made, and it confirms some of our theories. It also gave us entirely new information. It gave us three critical names we didn’t have before - Leyla, Rose, Charlie. We know now that Rose was the Guardian. We know that she and Leyla - somehow, despite the circumstances - fell deeply in love.

It's a lot to take in.

Kasey is sitting silently on the couch, lost in thought. Her ghost outfit has been changing from day to day, recently. She’s been trying different combinations of the one set of clothes that she has. Today she’s twisted the blue button-up shirt into a headband, knotted at her temple. She’s in her bralette and her long, loose, red pants, which pool around her legs.

I watch her think, feeling warm with affection. I can almost see the gears turning behind her eyes, her formidable mind tearing through everything that I told her.

I glance at Will and catch him doing the same thing I am. He tosses a stray lock of blonde hair out of his eyes, smiling down at Kasey, his muscled arms folded over his chest. It’s like he’s forgotten all of the information I just dropped on his head, watching her.

Kasey looks up, drawing herself back into the present, then blinks when she finds me and Will both smiling at her.

“What the hell?” she laughs, glancing back and forth between us. “Am I the only one in this room actually thinking?”

“You should be used to that by now,” I inform her, and she tosses her hands in the air, lets out an aggrieved sound.

“Focus, boys! We just got an avalanche of information!” She nibbles the tip of her thumb, staring out of the window. “Now we know why Leyla blew off the meet-up with John Botswick. And - oh.”

Kasey sits up a little more, holds out her hands as she realizes something.

“Leyla said she was going to meet with Botswick later, at his hotel, right? Give him that lie about how she’d made a mistake and put Scholz and Jahn on high alert?”

“Oh, shit,” I murmur, already seeing where Kasey is going with this.

Floyd told us that the hotel clerk overheard an argument between John Botswick and some unknown second person in the middle of the night. It was suspicious, because she had thought Botswick was alone in his room. She hadn’t seen anyone come in to visit him.

And what had she overheard Botswick shouting?

Blow this whole operation, and, it’s too late for that.

“Well, now we know who Botswick was arguing with.” I shake my head in disbelief. “Checks out. I’m sure that Leyla was capable of getting in and out of his hotel room without being noticed by the clerk.”

Will points down at the notebook on my coffee table, the one where I wrote out everything that happened in the ghost moment.

“Rose and Leyla - they teamed up together, made some kind of plan. To save Charlie and Rose? Why was Rose in danger?”

“I don’t know… but whatever the plan was, nobody was supposed to get hurt.” My eyebrows furrow as I lean forward and scan my eyes over the pages again. “If Leyla is the one who killed John Botswick, something must have gone seriously wrong.”

“She did say that she thought Botswick had plans of his own,” Kasey points out. “Plans he hadn’t told her about.”

“Maybe he was able to execute his plan, first.”

Will and Kasey both look troubled at that, and I am, too. Rose said that Botswick was going to do something terrible. As the Guardian, she would know.

Leyla said that they’d trick Botswick into thinking he had the upper hand in the situation, but - didn’t he? He showed up without telling Leyla, caught her when she and Rose weren’t ready. They needed more time for their plan, but it sounds like he didn’t.

The odds were already stacked against them in every conceivable way, and then he forced them onto the battlefield without a critical thing that they needed to win. The complex piece of magic that Rose was working on.

I feel like I have a much clearer picture now of everything leading up to the night that John Botswick was shot and killed on the beach. There are questions left unanswered, but I can follow the rough timeline, see the pieces slotting together.

The only thing I’m still drawing a near-total blank on is the actual night of John Botswick’s death.

All we know about that night is that both sides had plans. We know that the farmhouse was intentionally collapsed by Botswick. We know that someone fired a Colt Government and killed him. And we know that Leyla walked away, unhurt.

That’s it.

“Where do we go from here?” Kasey gets to her feet, starts pacing as she thinks. “Pointless to search up any of these new names we found, I assume? I’m guessing that Calla won’t have left a trace of any of these people on the internet.”

“Yeah, not a chance in hell,” I confirm. “The only thing on the whole internet about the Botswick case is Floyd’s blog…”

I trail off, coming to another realization. Floyd originally stopped working the case because he thought he was being followed, watched.

Calla can’t have been born yet, during that. I’m willing to bet it was Leyla. Staying in the shadows, following Floyd, making sure he didn’t get too close to the truth.

“Jesus Christ.” I let out a dazed laugh, then tip my head back and rub my eyes, my mind reeling. “A whole lot of stuff is suddenly making sense.”

Again, I’m struck with the feeling that we’re close, so close to having all the answers.

“How do we put this all together?” Kasey asks, echoing my thoughts.

“There is a living person we can talk to about it,” I remind her.

I know what the team thought about my suggestion that we talk to Leyla, and I understood where they were coming from. But that was before. The ghost moment has made it very hard for me to see her as a ruthless, cold-blooded killer.

John Botswick’s death was never part of the plan. I sincerely doubt that it was the result of Leyla losing her temper, either. She promised Rose that she wouldn’t hurt anyone unless she had no other choice. If she pulled the trigger, she must have had a reason.

The ghosts are clearly thinking along the same lines, because the suggestion isn’t met with the same immediate dismissal it was last time.

“I think…” Kasey says slowly, “We need to play our cards very carefully, if we do that.”

“What do you suggest?” Will asks, and Kasey stops pacing.

She pauses by the window, holding her wrist against her chest, thinking deeply. Moon and starlight spill down through her translucent form, her homemade headband, her jet black hair. Will watches her, and suddenly seems to glow more brightly, even though she’s the one in the moonlight.

“If we do talk to Leyla…” Kasey lets out a heavy breath, her eyes narrowed in thought. “We need to have all of our facts in order. If she did kill John Botswick, and it was never her intention, if it was because things spun out of control… which is what it sounds like, we all agree, yes?”

Will and I both nod at Kasey, who nods back at us.

“Then she’s not going to talk to us about it unless she knows that we’ll believe her side of things. There can’t be a doubt in her mind.”

“And how do we make that happen, when she has no idea who we even are?”

“We show Leyla that we already know the truth." Kasey’s eyes lift to me. "If she really did kill John Botswick, there are things about his death - things about that night - that only she can know. We have to prove to her that we already know everything except those things. We can prove that by telling it to her, accurately.”

“We don’t already know everything except those things,” Will points out.

“Yeah.” Kasey seems to have come to a decision. “Which means we’re not ready to talk to Leyla. Not yet.”

A pause, and then she adds: “I’ll decide when.”

“We’ll defer to our beloved manager, as always,” I tell her, to a small smile. “The only problem is, I don’t know what we do next, if we don’t talk to Leyla. We got a lot of new information, but not really any new leads to follow. Unless - do you guys have an idea? For the next step to take?”

There’s a silence that tells me neither of them does. Kasey lets out a sigh of frustration.

“Perhaps we should take a day or two to ponder it,” Will suggests. “A step back may help us see the bigger picture.”

“I’m so on board with that.” I sit back in the armchair, breathe out a tired little exhale. “It’s been a lot to take in at once. We’ve been going pretty nonstop. I could use a minute to catch my breath.”

Kasey considers for a moment, then gives us a little nod. Will and I both make sounds of excitement, and she laughs, sweeping back over to the couch.

“Should we watch a movie?” I ask, reaching out for the remote. “Assuming you ghosts don’t have plans?”

“Let’s do it,” Will says brightly.

Kasey hesitates, kneading her palm. “Maybe I should go back to the Ghost Office while you guys do that, keep working on the case. Take another look at that letter we decoded. Maybe we missed someth-”

“Miss Lavoe.” Will crosses through the coffee table to her, taking her hand before she can disappear. “You deserve rest, just as we do.”

“I just think that I should-”

“Rest, my love.” Will takes her gently by the waist and moves her towards the couch. “Sit you down.”

Kasey stops in front of it, biting back an affectionate smile as she gazes up at Will.

“I could go review those Stasi files that Floyd sent over again,” she says, pretending she didn’t hear him. "Even if it takes all night, I'll just power through."

Will makes an indignant noise. “Sit you down, lass!”

“Or I could go through the case log John Botswick was keeping one more t-”

“Sit you down, sit you down!” Will laughs, pushing her onto the couch.

Kasey flings her arms around his neck, drags him down with her. His hands fly up so he can catch himself on the back of the couch, trying not to fall on her and crush her. He laughs, his blonde hair tumbling down over his forehead again.

Kasey takes his face in her hands. She looks up into his leaf-green eyes and quirks an eyebrow.

Will smiles, then grins, then laughs softly. “Go on, then.”

Kasey breaks into a wide smile as she sits up to press an adoring kiss onto his mouth. Will returns it, then gently smacks her forehead with his.

He gets back on his feet and bends down to unlace his boots. I catch Kasey’s eye, and she very narrowly suppresses a laugh when she sees the giant grin on my face.

We both pull ourselves together right as Will straightens up again. He pulls off his boots, then drops down on the couch next to Kasey, who curls up against him.

“What movie should we watch?” I ask, powering up my Xbox. “Should we do something from the sixties, stay on theme with our case? That was the Hitchcock era. How about The Birds?”

“Sounds cute,” Will says, to a burst of laughter from Kasey.

“Not friendly birds, man,” I laugh. “It’s a horror movie.”

“And the birds are not the heroes?”

“No,” I answer, fighting down another laugh. “Horror movie rules, Will. The thing in the title is the villain or the bad thing, not the hero. Like The Conjuring. The Mist. The Descent. The Ring. The Others. Although - The Others might technically be the exception to that rule. You could make that argument.”

“Nice work, Will,” Kasey giggles. “You set Jamie off talking about horror movies, now we’re in for...”

She fades off, tips her head to the side. Will has stopped listening to us. He’s staring off into the distance, listening to something else.

“Aiden is summoning me,” he says.

I sit up in the armchair, quickly growing serious. “Is he okay?”

“He sounds just fine." Will listens for another moment. "Quite happy, in fact.”

“Oh.” I shrug at Kasey, then look up at Will. “Guess - should you go?”

“I suppose I should.” Will gets to his feet, takes Kasey’s hand, and brushes a kiss onto it. “I regret that I can’t stay, Miss Lavoe, but I would rather appreciate it if you did.”

“I will.”

Will narrows his green eyes at her suspiciously. “I will not find you at the Ghost Office later, working away?”

“No, I promise.” Kasey glances at me, then looks back to Will, smiling. “I’m good where I am.”

He smiles down at her, bends to kiss the top of her head. Then he turns and gives me a little salute before he disappears from my apartment.

I immediately get up and go join Kasey on the couch. We snuggle up together as best as a ghost and a human can, then let out a simultaneous happy sound.

“It's been way too long since we had a night with just the two of us, Jamie! I would have been happy if Will stayed, but this is so good, too.”

“Yeah, we have a lot to talk about - we’ve only really had time to talk about the case! I never even told you about the rescue we did with Roger and Luca - oh, shit. I just realized that you’re gonna yell at me.”

“Am I?” Kasey arches an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I - jumped off a cliff. But I can explain! And I need to show you the soup ad that Aiden and I brought back from Port Sitka - do you know what the deal is with the surprise that Aiden is planning, by the way? He needs Noah, Raj, Ripley, and Will for it? I mean, he must need Will, if he’s summoning him right n-”

“Jamie.” Kasey presses her palms to her eyes. “I don’t even understand how you can talk this much and this fast at the same time. It’s genuinely impressive, but I can’t follow a fucking thing. For a second I thought I heard you say that you jumped off a cliff.”

“Did you? That’s weird.”

“Gonna need you to start from the beginning, and at, like, half speed.”

“Um - there’s a part at the beginning involving a cliff that I’d really rather skip, but the good news is, Aiden and I got ourselves an auxiliary crew for when you and Will can’t help us with a rescue. Roger and Luca volunteered!”

“Roger - what?” Kasey places her palms on either side of my face. “Jamie. The! Beginning!”

"Okay, okay!"

She cuddles up close to me the way she used to when she was alive, breaks into a smile, and adds: “And slow it down. We’ve got all night.”

For probably the millionth time, I silently thank Aiden for making Kasey into a ghost. For making it so that I didn’t lose her.

I can’t believe he’s working on another surprise for me, when he’s already given me gifts like this.