I narrowed my eyes at the less stubborn of the Parrish boys, knowing I could easily get the secret out of him.
“Sort of,” he added with a wince. “It’s more of a freelance thing at the moment.”
Brighton laughed. “They’re going to kick you guys out of your apartment.”
“And then they’ll try to move in with us,” I said, silencing her laughter.
“I don’t think so,” she said, turning her gaze on the boys. “Why can’t you guys keep a job? It’s not that difficult. You can’t tell me that people don’t work in England.”
“It bores me,” Jefferson said.
He had his huge eyes on me, gauging my reaction, I was guessing, but I knew he was just trying to get a rise out of me.
“Well, we aren’t paying your rent,” I said, “so you’d better think of something quick.”
His lips tugged up in a slow smile.
“I mean it, Jefferson! We can barely pay our own rent, and all of this equipment isn’t cheap.” I motioned to the piles of cameras on their patched up old couch. “Besides, don’t you guys have work visas or something you need to keep up on?”
“Dual citizenship,” Jefferson stated simply, pointing to himself then Deacon with a proud smile, as if he’d even had anything to do with it. His mom had probably done it for them both.
I shook my head. “Well, get out of my way. I need to get some sleep before I go to work tomorrow.”
I stepped up to Jefferson, waiting for him to move. It was difficult to intimidate him when I could barely see over his shoulder. Being short was the worst.
Slowly, he leaned down so that we were face to face, his large eyes locked on mine and his lips still curled up in a smile.
“You know, if you’d let me set up cameras at your place like I suggested, I wouldn’t have to worry about the two of you all alone over there,” he whispered. “Or I could check for monsters under your bed.” And at that suggestion he finally stepped out of my way, leaving me to wonder how he hadn’t been committed yet. He had to have a couple of screws loose.
“Do you want some coffee or something?” Deacon asked behind me.
“It’s three in the morning,” Brighton said apologetically, following me out of the apartment and leaving the Parrish boys to do whatever it was they did in that place. They must have done something with all the free time that being unemployed offered. It wasn’t like they were reviewing tapes like they should have been.
“Unbelievable.” I sighed, closing our front door and dropping my coat on the ground.
Brighton quickly picked it up and hung it in the closet. She was a bit of a neat freak.
“I’m not his mother. I can’t make his bed and pay his rent for him,” I said incredulously, stripping off wet articles of clothing as I walked down the hallway to my room. My soaked twenties dress emitted a dull plop as it hit the floor.
“Leave it,” I called over my shoulder to Brighton, who was still trying to pick up after me. “I’ll get them in the morning.”
I sat on my bed and created a snug little cocoon out of my quilt. “He’s like a child.”
Brighton perched on the edge of my bed, rubbing my quilted arm sympathetically. “They both are.”
She looked like a blonde angel despite being waterlogged and exhausted. I just looked like a spiky-haired drowned rat, and somehow managed to look pale despite my naturally dark coloring.
It was infuriating.
We both sat there for a moment, having a wordless pity party over the fact that we had picked the most difficult friends in the world.
“They really are going to get kicked out of their apartment,” I finally said. “I couldn’t handle living with them full time. Please fix it, Brighton.”
“I’ll talk to Deacon in the morning before work,” she promised, giving my arm one last reassuring squeeze before getting up to leave.
“Thanks.”
“You try to get some sleep. No matter what you say, those boys are going to make us go investigating tomorrow.”
I nodded my head somberly, giving in to my dramatic side and letting my lips pout a bit. Brighton rolled her eyes at me and closed the door, engulfing me in darkness.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and even though I was exhausted and needed to wake up for work in just four hours, I let the night’s investigation replay in my mind. Although I felt completely justified in my diva moment, I still couldn’t help but worry that I’d botched an opportunity to finally have a successful investigation. Before Jefferson had ruined my attempt at connecting with whatever spirits might be lurking at the old bar, the shadow detector had gone off just one room from where I had been standing. I could almost hear it beeping in my empty room over the sound of the rain hitting my window.
An involuntary shiver crept through my body. No matter how excited I was to catch evidence of the paranormal, it was always a little unnerving to think that some unseen thing could be in the room with me at any given moment.
I pulled my quilt tighter around me and let my brown eyes roam the darkened room. Of course, everything looked like a human shape in the dark—my desk chair, a coat hanging on my closet doorknob, and some large dark object in the corner that I couldn’t quite identify. My eyes stayed locked on the unidentifiable mass, and I held my breath without really meaning to.
The slightly skewed nature of the shadow reminded me of Jefferson and his creepy head tilt, and suddenly I was on my feet, running across the hardwood floor and flipping on my light switch.
A robe.
My robe on one of Jefferson’s stupid camera tripods that I told him to stop leaving in my room. He left his stuff everywhere after an investigation, no matter how many times I scolded him about it. Although I guess it could have been worse. It could have been an actual camera and not just a tripod.
I really was his mother.
I pulled the robe off and tossed it on the ground with the rest of my clothes, walked back over to my bed, and sat down, grabbing my quilt once more and wrapping it around myself. Heaving a deep sigh and getting a grip on my shot nerves, I glanced at my nightstand only to notice something that hadn’t been there only moments before.
A single key sat on the dark wood, shining in the semi-darkness. It wouldn’t have been such an unusual thing, had it not been my mail key that was normally secured on my key ring and buried in my disaster of a purse.
I looked at it sideways and picked it up suspiciously, thinking it must have been Brighton’s and deciding there was an easy way to get to the bottom of this particular mystery.
I dumped my entire purse over, spilling the contents on my quilt and rifling through my things. What I found left me breathless and slightly stunned. My mail key was missing from my key ring, but that hardly seemed important when compared to the envelope that had somehow appeared in my purse.
The envelope that had my name on it.
Chapter 2
My initial reaction should have been one of fear or shock. Instead, the only thought running through my head was, “Was someone just in my room while I was running around in rain-soaked underwear?”
Suddenly self-conscious, I grabbed a tank top and some shorts off my floor and pulled them on, looking over my shoulder every few seconds. My eyes darted around every dark corner of my room, but as little sense as it made, I was alone. I supposed the letter could have been placed in my purse while I was investigating, but I had dug through it on the way home, so it seemed like I would have seen it before then.
Goose bumps sprang up over my skin, though that might have had something to do with my poor choice of clothing on a rainy night. In my defense, I had grabbed the closest articles of clothing I could find. I wasn’t going to be picky when I thought some creeper was watching me in my underwear.
When I was completely satisfied that I was alone, I sat back down on the bed—or rather, I jumped onto it, not wanting to get my feet too close to that unsettling space between the bed and the floo
r. I was still unnerved, but I was more curious about what was in the envelope that had mysteriously appeared in my purse. The handwriting on the heavy cream-colored envelope was loopy and well penned—something I never would have been able to do with my second grader handwriting.
I slipped my fingernail under the flap and slowly tore it open, trying to remember how long ago that whole anthrax scare had gone down. I had the letter pinched between my finger and thumb, when a loud knock on the front door tore me from my reverie.
Still holding the envelope and letter it contained, I opened my door to see Brighton poking her head out of her own room, looking rumpled and sleepy already. She had the unique gift of falling asleep in a matter of seconds no matter where she was, while I was a notorious insomniac.
“Who is it?” she asked, as if I would magically know the answer.
I shrugged and made my way down the hall to our front door, opening it without checking the peephole.
Jefferson leaned against the door frame, still wearing his vest, tie, and high top converse, and still completely soaked. I shivered just looking at him. He wore a grave expression, although with him, it was always difficult to tell. His face just looked like that most of the time. His eyes darted down to my bare legs for a split second, just long enough for me to realize I should have been wearing longer shorts.
Deacon stood behind him, wearing an old T-shirt and pajama pants, and with his skin looking even paler than normal.
“Are you guys okay?” I asked.
“What is that?” Jefferson asked, nodding to the envelope I hadn’t realized I was still clutching.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet,” I answered, furrowing my brow at him.
“Then what is this?” he asked, pulling an identical envelope from his pocket with the name “Jefferson” written across the front.
“You got one too?” I was getting more and more confused and intrigued by the second.
Deacon wordlessly held up his own envelope behind his cousin, pushing his glasses up his nose with his free hand.
“Brighton, did you get one?” I asked over my shoulder, searching my roommate’s hands but seeing nothing there.
“She probably fell asleep before noticing,” Jefferson said dryly. “If you’d just let me set up security cameras in this place like I asked, we’d know where these came from.”
I didn’t bother telling Jefferson why him setting up cameras in our apartment was beyond the realm of normalcy. He wouldn’t understand anyway.
“I’ll go check,” she said excitedly, running into her room. “Where will it be?”
“Try your purse, that’s where mine was.” I looked questioningly at Jefferson.
“Coat pocket,” he said.
“Duffle bag I keep the cords in,” Deacon added, flicking his own envelope with his fingers.
“I got one!” Brighton called, emerging from her room triumphantly and grasping her own cream-colored envelope.
The Parrish boys entered our apartment and we all sat around the coffee table in silence for a moment.
“You guys haven’t opened yours yet?” I asked, to which both boys shook their heads. “What made you think we’d gotten them too?”
“Jefferson and I both get mysterious envelopes that somehow appeared on our person?” Deacon said skeptically. “How could that not have something to do with our weird little hobby?”
“Or someone is just playing a prank on us,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted and failing miserably.
Jefferson didn’t respond, but gave me a look that said that was the stupidest explanation he’d ever heard, his owl eyes extremely expressive in the dim apartment.
“Obviously the only thing we can do is open them to find out what they say,” Brighton said, clutching her envelope in one hand and her inhaler in the other.
Jefferson nodded at me, wordlessly urging me to open mine first and making me uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had been staring at me this whole time. I took a deep breath and pulled the letter out of the envelope, looking around the room at my odd group of friends before reading aloud.
“To the Parrish Society.”
I stopped reading abruptly and took a moment to look indignantly at Jefferson.
“We are not calling ourselves the Parrish Society,” I said with a note of finality.
“Don’t look at me,” he shrugged. “I wanted it to be the Parrish Paranormal Investigators. The Parrish Society sounds like a funeral home or a cult.”
“Or a combination of the two,” Deacon put in, sitting as close to Brighton as he possibly could without actually sitting in her lap.
“If the shoe fits,” she said with a raise of her eyebrows and an amused grin.
I shook my head at them, internally vowing I’d return to the subject of this awful group name after I’d read the entire letter.
“After observing your activities of late, I have become painfully aware of two facts,” I read, unnerved by the fact that someone had apparently been watching us. “The first is that you are terribly short on money and could use a boost in your current financial situation.”
“Oh, I like this guy already,” Brighton said.
“Guy?” I asked, raising my eyebrow and wanting to think it had been a girl watching us, especially if this person had somehow managed to sneak something into my purse without my knowledge.
“Or girl,” she amended with a shrug.
“The second is that you are a group of talented young paranormal investigators whose talent is being vastly underutilized,” I read. “I wish to correct both of these failings with a proposition that I pray you will accept.”
“Write back and tell him yes,” Deacon said immediately.
“You don’t even know what he wants,” I pointed out.
“I know he wants to give us money to investigate.”
“There’s no return address,” Brighton stated, pointing at her own envelope.
“Finish reading,” Jefferson said. His long fingers were pressed together, creating five tall steeples that he rested against his pursed lips.
“I have four different locations around the country, all with a dark past that seems to linger; their histories clinging to the locations themselves like the stains they are.”
“Bit dramatic,” Deacon said.
I ignored him and continued.
“If you can successfully identify the link between these four locations, utilizing your unique abilities, you will find your financial burdens to be nothing more than a distant memory.”
“Done,” Deacon said.
“Although the decision is yours to make, I’ll assume, based on my own observations, that you will be accepting this job offer. Do not burden yourselves with finding a way to contact me. I’ll be in touch with your first location within the next twenty-four hours. Sincerely yours.”
“Sincerely yours, who?” Brighton asked.
“That’s it,” I said distantly. “It just says ‘sincerely yours’. There’s no signature.”
Jefferson wordlessly took out his own letter and let his green eyes flick back and forth across the page.
“Mine says the same thing,” he said, sounding a bit disappointed.
“Ditto,” Brighton confirmed. Deacon simply nodded as he read his own letter.
“This has to be a joke, right?” I grabbed the blanket that Jefferson held on his lap and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was cold enough with our broken heater without the added chill of a mysterious business proposition.
“How did the letters get to us then, Sadie?” Jefferson asked, his voice sounding a thousand miles away.
“Maybe we just didn’t notice them before?” I suggested lamely.
“I put my inhaler in my purse before I went to bed and didn’t see anything,” Brighton said. “But maybe I missed it?”
We all fell silent once more. It seemed we were all fairly certain the letters had c
ome from nowhere, but the idea was much too ridiculous to comprehend. We were either dealing with a ninja or a ghost, and neither option seemed realistic, even in our line of work.
“Origin of the letters aside,” Jefferson said, “Are we taking the job?”
“Who doesn’t like a shady business proposition?” Deacon asked, obviously all in.
“We can’t just rush in to this,” I said, trying to be the voice of reason. “How are we going to afford to take the time off of work? I mean . . . for those of us who still have jobs,” I added, giving Jefferson a meaningful look. “And if these locations are all over the U.S., how will we afford to travel?”
Jefferson pulled his worn wallet out and thumbed through the scarce money there. Among the crumpled bills I could see a dollar with “You owe me one” written on it. I’d given it to Jefferson ages ago when he’d needed some money, although why he’d kept it instead of spending it like a normal person, I’d never know.
“Pool our resources?” Brighton suggested.
Apparently she was all in as well.
“You mean ask our parents?” I didn’t like that idea one bit.
My mom and dad had moved from Portland to Boston to be closer to my sister, and rather than looking like the less-than-favorite child, I decided to stay behind. I wasn’t about to call them out of the blue asking for money, even though I knew they’d give it to me if I asked.
“Shawna’s always good for a loan, right?” Deacon asked Brighton with a big grin.
“My mom’s in North Carolina right now visiting her sister and my cousin,” she answered vaguely. “Family emergency.”
“Oh,” he said, looking at the floor quickly and not asking her to elaborate.
“I just meant putting all our money together . . . but I guess that would turn into Sadie and me pooling our money, since you boys obviously don’t have any.”
Jefferson, who had been unusually quiet during the whole conversation, exchanged a look with Deacon, his lip curling on one side in a look of disgust.
“What?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two boys.
Deacon raised his eyebrows at Jefferson, who rolled his large eyes and shook his head, his dark curls falling into his eyes. They were having some sort of non-verbal conversation, leaving Brighton and me in the dark.