Magical Spice - Part Twenty
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
The Port Sitka ocean glimmers with the bright sunshine of the summer day, the waves smashing in brilliant explosions against the rocky cliffside. The shallow little pools in the intertidal zone are flooded and sparkling, some of them with tiny fish temporarily trapped inside. The air is salty, the sky very blue and wide and open. Further off down the beach people are wading into the water to escape the heat, buying frozen citrusy treats from the booths on the boardwalk.
I couldn’t resist stepping out into the water for a minute. I’ve just gotten the last of the sand off my feet, and now I’m sitting on the hood of Ralph’s car, trying to familiarize myself with the forest map.
Noah is standing a few feet away, nearer to the sand dunes, gazing thoughtfully out at the ocean. He’s been doing that for a while, actually.
“Nautical!” he suddenly blurts out.
The way he says it makes it sound like he just figured out something very important. I look up at him in surprise, blinking in confusion.
“What?”
“Nothing, dude. I was just tryna remember a word.” Noah comes back over to the car, and stuffs his fists into his pockets, grinning widely. “Did it without Ralph’s help, d’you see? I was thinking, it’s something that sounds like nut oil. That’s how I got there.”
He looks so proud of himself that I let out a little laugh, shaking my head at him fondly.
“Good job, man! Nice.”
He beams in agreement, then leans down to look over my shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Having a look at the map of the forest we’re heading into.” I push Noah’s hair out of my face - the sea wind is really catching it - then point to the section I was looking at. “That’s the hotel, near the trailhead. We’ll be setting out from there.”
Noah points to a few buildings marked within the bounds of the forest. “What are these?”
“Supposedly villas belonging to the hotel, but Aiden said they’re just run-down little cabins. You’re not allowed to build in the old-growth, so these fall in a part of the forest that doesn’t technically qualify as that, mostly near to the edge. Still a big piece of land, though.” I point to another building, set further away from the rest. “And this right here is a forest ranger’s outpost, I think.”
“Hey, Ralph!” Noah calls enthusiastically, spotting him and Aiden crossing the street to join us. “Figured it out, dude! Nut oil! I mean nautical!”
Ralph stops where he is, blinking in bewilderment. “What?”
Aiden hastily jumps in, correctly sensing that we're at threat of being sidetracked. “You guys got all your gear?"
"Mhm, all set.” Ralph distributes the coffees in his hands to me and Noah, then uses his own to gesture to a backpack in the backseat of his car. "I read the list you sent me. Can't say we all did, though."
Noah makes a noise of protest when Aiden turns an exasperated frown on him. "Aw, c'mon, bro, that long-ass list - you should've known better than to give me a reading assignment!"
Aiden’s blue eyes widen in disbelief. "It was like ten things, Noosh, one of which was just water!"
"Okay, well, no need to panic, I came equipped! Didn't even need the list, I brought everything I need, I'm prepared as shit. Except for the water, I guess."
Aiden gives him a doubtful look. "What did you bring, then?"
"A survival knife, and a lighter," Noah answers impressively, then pauses and feels around in his pockets, his eyebrows furrowing. "Oh, shit. I forgot the knife."
"It's alright," Ralph snickers, when Aiden stares at Noah in blank dismay. "Something told me Noah would only think of two things to bring, and probably forget one of them. Don't worry, Noosh, you're all set. I had Melanie pack for you. Although I think Raj may have had a hand in this, too, because there's molasses cookies and a little note and shit in there."
He reaches through the car window to tap the backpack left beside his own on the backseat. Noah beams at it in delighted surprise - obviously looking forward to reading the note and eating the cookies later - then seems to realize what he’s doing with a little jolt. He quickly clears his throat, but his phone starts buzzing in his pocket before he can say anything.
His grey eyes brighten all the way to silver as he answers the incoming video call.
Melanie appears when the call connects, and all of us collectively make a delighted sound when we see Nik's adorable face peeking into the camera. Mel was clearly just expecting Noah, not all of us crowded in around him. She giggles at the instant burst of noise, immediately making Nikita burst into giggles, too.
"Hey," Melanie laughs, pushing her braid over her shoulder.
Noah takes his pierced lip between his teeth, gives her a dimpled smile. "Salut toi.”
"And hi, um - everyone." She giggles again when we all answer at once, with enthusiasm. "Noah, baby - I'm sorry, I know you just left for your camping trip, but please help me.”
“Sure, angel!” Noah’s face lights up. “Glad for the opportunity, as a matter of fact, since I’m hearing you already helped me today.”
“Cool, just be on the phone with us for a minute.” Melanie bounces Nik on her knee, making a pained face at Noah. “Someone won't stop asking for dada. Apparently won't do baby yoga or take her bath or eat her snack until she sees dada."
"Is that true, princesse?" Noah asks very seriously, as Nik beams at him, happily watching his piercings sparkle in the bright sunlight. She lets out a burst of babbling noise that doesn't quite form into real words, but Noah nods understandingly, then lowers his phone and presses it against his chest. In a brisk, businesslike voice, he says: "Boys, I have to take this."
"Go on," I laugh.
Noah retreats a little way back from us, heading towards the sand dunes. I bend down to pull my socks back on, bracing myself with Aiden’s arm. He takes the opportunity to slip his fingers through the arm hole of my tank top and give me an intimate little scratch on my side, then hastily takes his hand back when Ralph turns to face us.
He pushes a few windblown blonde locks out of his eyes, leaning his hip against the car. "So, what's our strategy for today?"
"Well, the ghost member of our delegation will be meeting us near the forest hotel,” I explain. “We might stop there and get some food."
Ralph nods, waits for a second, then asks - "Okay, and then?"
Aiden and I exchange an uncertain glance.
"Guess - we were just gonna go out in the forest, set up camp, and sorta - see what happens," I say slowly, wincing, with the distinct feeling of getting a question wrong on a test.
Ralph stares at me with his eyebrows arched up, then slowly lets out a long breath, pinching the broken bridge of his nose between his fingertips.
"That's the kind of top-grade strategy that goes into your Ghost Office missions, huh?"
"Um, okay!” I pull on my hiking boot, then straighten up to stab an accusatory finger in Ralph’s face. “First of all, dude, you really fuck up the curve for everybody when it comes to strategic capability! It's actually pretty rude. You're making the rest of us feel dumb, so - so maybe you should try to be more considerate, how about that?"
"I'd take that argument into further consideration if you guys had, you know - tried to come up with a plan? That's step one, generally speaking. In having a plan."
“The hotel! Get some food! How is that not a plan?”
“It’s not exactly a plan to take down a witch, dude - okay, you know what? Now I see why the hotel heist went down the way it did. I've never been part of such a fucking circus in my life.” Ralph shakes his head gravely at me, folding his arms over his chest. "Thank god I'm not letting you children go unsupervised, this time."
I blush indignantly. "Funny, Ralph, I was just wondering whether or not it actually was a good idea to bring two feral boys along for this ride!"
"Good question. You'd probably have a better idea about that if you had a plan." Ralph touches a finger to his temple and lets out a heavy breath, closing his eyes for a second. "Why am I bothering? It's too late to come up with one now. Aiden isn't even listening to any of this, he's just looking at you."
Aiden blushes and hastily glances away as I turn to look up at him in surprise. "No, I wasn't!"
Noah rejoins the group, slipping his phone back into his pocket. "What's the word, boys? Any witch sightings while I was busy, Jamie?"
"No, we were talking about the plan.”
"Sweet." Noah turns expectantly to Ralph. "What is it?"
"Why'd you assume he made it?" I ask indignantly. "Maybe Aiden and I did! We can come up with a plan!”
"Oh, my bad, man!" Noah turns to me with apologetic eyes, obviously a little startled by my reaction. "Didn’t mean to say otherwise. What plan did you and Aiden come up with?"
"Well - it's, um..." I trail off, full of immediate regrets, sensing that Ralph is suppressing a laugh as he watches me struggle. "We - the plan was - y'know, go the hotel, probably - probably just get some food, and then we’ll, um - forest will be right there, s-so - we’ll-"
Noah watches me in concern and confusion as I go on fumfering, and Ralph hides his grin behind his hand.
"You didn't even plan your way to the end of your sentence, dude,” he snickers. “And Aiden still isn't listening to any of this. He's barely said a word all morning, actually, and I’m seriously starting to think it’s because you wore a tank top, Keane."
Noah and I both look at Aiden in surprise. He quickly blinks his blue eyes away from the bare strip of my side he can see through my tank top, then gives a little start when he realizes we're all looking at him.
"Sorry - what?" He looks at Ralph, confused. "D'you ask me something? The plan? Yeah, we were just gonna go to the hotel, I think, right? Hopefully get some food?"
"Okay, why don't we focus on the here and now?" I cut in hastily, when Ralph and Noah exchange a grin. "Step one of the plan is, go to the hotel, meet up with our ghost. We're very well prepared for that part of the plan. Ripley even made us a playlist for the drive. He said he was gonna send it to you, Ralph."
"Yeah, I had a look at that so-called playlist. It's just the album Sound Affects, by The Jam. He put the whole album on there three times, nothing else."
"Trickster boy," growls Noah. "He keeps saying he's gonna get me to listen to that one way or another."
"Okay," Ralph sighs. "It's clear to me now that the only one who had any kind of plan for this trip was somehow Ripley, who isn't even part of what we're doing. So... should we just go to the hotel? We’ve been standing in one place for too long, Noah’s gonna get distracted soon-"
“Oh, whoa,” Noah gasps dreamily, as someone flashes past us down the road on a souped-up motorcycle. “You guys see that beauty? I wonder what the curb weight is on a piece like that… You guys think that dude would let me take a spin on his ride if I trade him for some molasses cookies?”
Noah takes a few eager steps in the direction of the road. Aiden catches a handful of the back of his shirt just before he can get away.
“To the hotel,” he says firmly.
~~~~
“We’re gonna make one very brief stop there,” Aiden explains, as Noah takes the car around a turn in the forest road. “It’s not a big hotel, but it’s old and expensive. Seems to me it’s where the super fancy tourists who come to Port Sitka stay. There’s a lot of foot traffic in and out of the forest from the trailhead nearby, though, campers, hikers, hunters. So there’s a more casual, kinda cheap cafe attached to the hotel for them.”
“Gotta keep the riffraff separated off,” Ralph mutters beneath his breath.
“It’s actually open to the hotel lobby, but yeah, that’s the energy,” Aiden agrees firmly. “That’s part of why we’re not gonna hang around there too long. The hotel is going through a renovation at the moment, so there aren’t any tourists staying there. Only the cafe is open, and it was pretty much empty when me and Jamie went last time.”
“So?”
“So, the old lady who owns this place is very, very unpleasant, and with the place so empty you’re always in her sights.” Aiden meaningfully catches Ralph’s eye in the rearview. “Jamie didn’t like her. She got him so annoyed he was talking a little Irish by the time we got outside.”
Noah and Ralph both twist around to flash me a startled look.
“Shit, how mean was this lady that even Keane decided he didn’t like her after one meeting?” Ralph sputters.
“I actually don’t remember. That part of my memory didn’t come back. What happened, Aiden?”
“Lots. Examples might be quicker, let's see… When we met the guy who works the kitchen at her cafe, she told us he doesn’t speak English, but he definitely does. You chatted with him for a while, Jamie. He said she’d just assumed he can only speak Spanish, and he left it that way because his life is much easier when she doesn’t try to talk to him. She also called me exotic, which was - fun.”
“I think I would like to meet this lady, actually,” Noah says, with an alarming smile glinting in his grey eyes.
“Easy, Noosh,” Ralph murmurs warningly. “We’re not there to make a scene. Not until the job is done, anyways. We’ll break something on the way out.”
“Oh, I’m not sure - I don’t-” I begin uneasily. “She’s an old lady, you guys. She could be confused, or-”
I break off in surprise when Aiden shrugs his shoulders like he’s totally on board with the plan of breaking some of this old lady’s stuff on the way out.
“If you want a better idea of what this lady is about, Jamie, she has a small collection of items on display at her hotel, on loan…” Aiden pauses for effect, which he almost never does, so this must be something wild - “From the Bratton Collection.”
My mouth drops open. “You’re joking!”
Ralph makes a disgusted face, then spits out of the side of his mouth through the open car window. “Ain’t that the Confederate-lover’s museum a few counties over?”
Noah shoots Ralph a puzzled glance. “How do you know about it, dude?”
“One of the security guards there sells for me every now and then. Says the place is hell to work at, he’s thinking about working for me full time instead.”
“I hope he does!” I jump in heatedly. “They don’t even give them good jackets for when they have to be outside, you know!”
“Why do the Confederates even get a museum?” Noah asks, his grey eyes narrowed with irritation. “Their flag was white last time I checked.”
“Yep, they lost.” Aiden pulls his snapback down over his hair as the breeze pours in through the car windows. “But apparently what they didn’t lose is a bunch of ugly plates and pieces of pottery that were collected by Bratton, and now loaned to the hotel, since I guess this lady is a big monetary donor to the Collection.”
“Okay,” I concede, sitting back in defeat. “You guys can break something on the way out. Only one thing, though! And not something on loan from the Bratton Collection, that’s probably a serious-ass crime.”
“Yeah, no one in this car has ever done any of those,” Ralph mutters.
“I just don’t want anyone getting in trouble!”
“No worries about that,” Aiden rumbles, slipping the ghost glasses onto his face. “The creepy pottery from the Bratton Collection is all locked up in a display case in the lobby. Actually, I’m not too worried about the hotel at all. We should only be there for like ten minutes. Trust me, there’s never a line at that cafe. Place is pretty much dead. We’ll grab some food, then head for the forest.”
“I have one question before we get there,” Ralph says very suddenly, like he’s been working his way up to saying it for a while. He bites his lip when we all look at him, his grey-green eyes blinking nervously. “The ghost meeting up with us. You said Kasey earlier this morning, when you were talking about her. You’ve said that a few times, actually. Are you, like - you’re not talking about-?”
“That’s right,” chimes in a new voice.
Kasey is lounging in the backseat between me and Ralph, with her arms folded behind her head and her translucent feet luxuriously kicked up on the center console. She’s torn and knotted herself a very cute hiking outfit out of her ghost clothes, and she’s grinning widely.
“Kasey Lavoe, bitches,” she says.
It sounds incredibly cool and badass when she says it, but it definitely loses something when I translate it for the rest of the car as: “Yeah, um - it’s - it’s Kasey. She’s next to you, Ralph. You summoned her by accident.”
Ralph gives a startled jolt in his seat, and Noah slams on the brakes to twist around and stare at where I’m pointing.
“Fucking what?” Ralph sputters, then cringes with his whole face. “Wh- really? Kasey Lavoe?”
“Hi, Ralph, it’s nice to see you, too.”
“She says hi.”
“Aw, man, I-” Ralph runs a hand over the back of his neck, his wide eyes guilty and horrified. “Now I kinda feel bad being here. She hates me, right? Pretty sure I owe her apologies for a bunch of stuff, including - I dunno, hitting on her a bunch in high school, in - in ways that, um - I try pretty hard not to think about now-”
Kasey sits up, smoothing down the little crop top she made for herself out of her button-up.
“Okay, stop him for me, Jamie? Thank you. Tell him that I’ve been around this whole time, so I already know better than to conflate current Ralph with previous Ralph.” She waits while I relay that. “Okay, now tell him that he’s already been punished for his gross pick-up lines in high school, because I actually was totally down to fool around with him back then, before he opened his dumb arrogant mouth and ruined his chances. He might remember that I’m the one who introduced myself to him, not the other way around? Yeah, there was a reason. I liked that he was the only one who beat my grade on the history test.”
Ralph savagely punches the back of Aiden’s seat in frustration when I finish repeating that, and Kasey giggles, apparently satisfied.
“Alright, there we go. I had my moment of fun, which I did have to have. I mean, you could’ve exploited my unfortunate thing for blondes, you poor fool. Although I guess you would’ve blown it anyways the minute you started being mean to Jamie, so-”
“Kase-face,” I laugh softly, deciding against translating any of that, gesturing at Ralph as he slumps miserably into his arms folded against the back of the passenger’s seat.
Kasey laughs, then turns a smile on Ralph, even though he can’t see it. “Okay, okay, I’m done. We can put it behind us now, Ralph. If anything I’m glad you’re here to help us with the Witch.”
Ralph lifts his head when I tell him what she said. He absorbs that for a moment, then slowly sits back, his sage eyes full of mingled surprise and relief and gratitude.
Kasey leans towards the driver’s seat to look at Noah. “Noah, how are you?”
“I’m all good,” he answers waveringly, when I translate. His eyes are still very wide. “Yo, you’re really a ghost, Kasey?”
“Mhm.” She stretches out a translucent foot, admiring the way the sunlight shines through it. “Pretty cool, right? I think I’m pretty hot in this form, personally.”
“Wait a second,” Ralph suddenly cuts in, sitting up again. “You guys were telling me that the ghost is the real brainpower behind the team, the one who makes the plans, keeps all you goddamn wildcards in check. Now you’re telling me the ghost is Kasey Lavoe? She’s the team’s sanity staple?”
“Why shouldn’t she be?” I draw back in startled confusion, and Kasey frowns indignantly at Ralph. “She’s so smart, probably smarter than most of this car put together!”
“Yeah, man, I know that, why d’you think I liked her?” Ralph stops, then blushes anxiously, wincing as he realizes what he said. He gives himself a shake, blows right past that. “But she can’t be the sanity staple around here! Kasey Lavoe? She’s another wildcard, makes no difference that she’s brilliant!”
Kasey was just beginning to look offended, but she pauses thoughtfully at that, raising her eyebrows.
“I mean… he’s not wrong about that.” She looks at me, faintly surprised. “Wait, am I another wildcard?”
“You will do anything for the drama,” I point out, thinking it over.
“That’s true, I will…”
“Honestly, for a long time I thought she faked her death and skipped town for some reason,” Ralph says, with total seriousness. Kasey and I both let out a sharp, startled laugh, and he spreads his hands at us. “I’m not even joking, it sounded like somethin’ she would do, and somethin’ she’d be smart enough to do well, and I always thought it was suspicious you weren’t sadder, Keane! Besides, sometimes you’d be talking about her in present tense, stuff like that, but then we all started hanging out and I realized you can’t lie, and then there was that day I saw you looking after her grave, and I was like, oh shit, guess she’s really… but now I guess - I’m hearing that she’s a ghost, so. That - that clears up what happened to her...”
He trails off, gives his head a slow, dazed shake.
“You see what I mean, though?” He makes a helpless gesture in the rough direction of Kasey. “Chaos in her wake, always. Is this why your plans always devolve into chaos for Team Ghost Office? Kasey’s the one making them!”
“Oh, it’s not my fault!” she protests, pouting at Ralph, although she seems mightily pleased to hear that he thought she could have and would have pulled off faking her own death. “It’s the - the spirit of Team Ghost Office. Those who feel the calling to join the team are all wildcards. You’ll see what I mean on this trip. It’s actually impossible for things to not devolve into chaos. As if you’re not a wildcard, by the way. You’re a legendary rogue element, in fact, Warlord. You have no room to talk.”
I repeat all that to Ralph, who tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and rubs his temples in an agonized sort of way.
“Just be glad that I’m on the team,” Kasey says primly. “You guys need a historian, or in this case someone who knows her mythology. I’ve been brushing up on the Classics in case we run into the naiad-siren again, I’ve got my shit down. I even accidentally memorized a few passages, listen to this!”
“Oh, no,” I whisper, realizing I’m going to have to repeat whatever Kasey is clearing her throat to dramatically say. I hastily begin repeating after her, already a little behind. “And I invoke the god with the golden headdress, who gave this land his name, wine-faced Dionysus, who runs with the maddened girls-”
“Wine-faced?” Ralph snickers.
“Hey, uh - ask her more about the maddened girls,” Noah whispers, poking my knee.
Kasey lets out an aggrieved sigh. “No one in this group appreciates art, or culture.”
“We know about art!” Noah protests, once I translate. “Jamie, tell her about all the sex photos us and the boys looked at together the other night!”
I actually haven’t had a chance to tell Kasey about the exhibition in Greenrock yet, and she twists to face me with her eyes very wide.
“What?” she giggles.
“Okay, first of all, Noah, you can tell her anything you like, she’s right there!” I sputter, blushing hard. “I’ll just have to repeat whatever she says to you, that’s all! Second of all, stop giving her wrong information, we weren’t - Kase-face, it’s not-”
“Sweet, I can talk right to her?” Noah follows my gaze to roughly where I’m looking. “Hey, Kasey - what was it like dying?”
“Mmm - I don’t know, I guess it was okay. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was like this. I’m pretty annoyed that I didn’t officially get my Ph.D. first, though, I was so goddamn close. But I don’t really have any regrets.” She breaks into a wide grin. “I’ve even got an incredibly hot lumberjack boyfriend from the 1820s now, so.”
“Will is really from the 1820s?” Noah asks with interest, when I repeat this back to him. “Aw, man, sounds dope. I bet they were just, like - having the best time back then.”
Kasey stares at Noah in wide-eyed fascination, then bites her lip as silent laughter shakes her shoulders. “Wow, I - I’m so curious about what Noah thinks was happening in the 1820s. What could it possibly be?”
“You got any ghost powers?” Noah asks, taking a bite of a molasses cookie. “Can you haunt stuff?”
“I can dematerialize and rematerialize in other places, and I can do cool zippy movements as a streak of light,” Kasey answers, then laughs when Ralph and Noah both look impressed after I translate. “Also, me and my ghost boyfriend can have sex for days, like, days without stopping. We do it all the time, it’s great.”
A flustered blush crawls up my cheeks, and I cut myself off midway through. “I’m not telling them that!”
“Yeah, that must be Kasey Lavoe back there,” Noah laughs. He has another bite of the molasses cookie, then offers them around. Ralph and I both reach over to take one. “I don’t know what Keane was about to finish up saying for you, Kasey, but I think I’m jealous of whatever that last power was.”
“I thought poly people don’t believe in jealousy, Noosh,” Ralph says distractedly, clearly still dazed from the revelations of this car ride.
“Are you kidding?” Noah scoffs, around a mouthful of cookie. “All you guys should be mad jealous of me. You seen my husband? And my wife?”
“Hey,” comes the sudden, deep rumble of Aiden’s voice, startling everyone. He leans around his seat to look at us, his blue eyes baffled. “What’s, um - what are we doing, right now? Are we in park, with the car on, in the middle of the road? Just, like… having a hangout sesh, or…?”
We all look around at each other, realizing that we’re all relaxing and munching on cookies, and The Jam is playing from the radio, giving the sunlit car a nice background noise.
Everyone snaps to attention, quickly sitting up. Noah stuffs the rest of the cookie into his mouth and straps himself back in.
“Jesus, glad there was no one behind us! No worries, I can make up for lost time. Unless-” He hesitates, glancing up at the rearview. “You want me to drive slower, Kasey? It - it was a car accident, yeah?”
Kasey’s expression softens, and she gives Noah a smile I wish he could see.
“Thanks, Noah. But I know how well you can handle a car, and the lesson I took away from dying young actually wasn’t have less fun. Let’s rock ‘n roll.”
Noah grins widely when he hears it from me, and seconds later we’re moving again. Going fast, but gliding very smoothly around the turns, I notice, even though sometimes Noah likes to take them roughly for fun. I guess he can’t help but be a little conscious of Kasey, but she doesn’t seem to be having any problems. She leans through me to lean out through the window, bracing herself on her palms, enjoying the breeze and the sunlight.
“I stop paying attention for two seconds,” Aiden groans, leaning down to zip up his backpack, “And when I look up we’re having a party in the middle of the road.”
“Two seconds?” Noah flashes Aiden an incredulous look. “Dude, you’ve barely said anything all morning, except for telling us about the hotel, and that was only ‘cause Ralph asked! We all know it’s because Jamie wore a tank top, by the way!”
Aiden blushes, taken aback. “What? The fuck it was! I’m trying to use my Guardian senses to see if I can feel the Witch anywhere nearby!”
Ralph leans forward with interest as Kasey slips back down into the car to listen. “Can you?”
“I…” Aiden closes his eyes behind the ghost glasses, trying to concentrate. “Yeah, I can, and that’s what’s weird, I don’t think I should be able to. I only sense really faint traces, old traces, but there’s still enough magic left behind for me to pick it up… it’s like the Witch has been somewhere around - here. And further back down the road. And where we’re going. Instead of real deep in the old-growth, where she should be.”
We all exchange a startled glance.
“I thought the illusions can’t stray from their territories,” Kasey says, glancing nervously out of the car window at the forested landscape speeding by. “How could that be possible? And why would she?”
“Well, if she wants to come out and meet us, let her do it,” Noah growls, flexing his hand against the wheel. “Makes things easier for those of us who’ve taken a vow of revenge.”
“Which is none of us, Noah, I said I don’t want revenge for what happened to me!”
“Sure, Keane, yeah. Aiden, what’s our plan for taking her down?”
“I’m not sure, man. Sometimes you can plan out the magic in advance, sometimes you just have to let it happen in the moment.”
“Another situation with no plan,” Ralph sighs wearily, pushing a hand through his hair. “Are you sure you weren’t just busy staring at Keane in his tank top?”
The blush across Aiden’s cheeks deepens as he scowls at Ralph. “I was trying to use my senses, like I said! What, a man can’t rest his eyes on something pretty while he tries to think?”
I blush so much deeper than Aiden that Ralph notices and has to fight back a laugh.
“Think you short-circuited Keane’s mind with that little statement.”
“He did,” Kasey confirms, giggling behind her fingertips. “See this, all this that’s happened so far, Ralph? That’s why you may as well accept now that some kind of chaos is inevitable on Ghost Office missions.”
“I’d love to accept that,” Ralph says, once I tell him what she said. “But just for fun, as a little experiment, why don’t we see if we can keep it to a minimum amount of chaos? Just try to do it smoothly and professionally, without any sidetracking or batshit occurrences.”
“Oh, you don’t like chaos, Ralph?” Kasey laughs, smirking at him. “That’s why you’ve hung out with Noah Raunier, like - for your whole life, pretty much, every single day since you first met him?”
“I’m not asking for no chaos, I sure as hell know better than to hope for that, I’m asking for minimum chaos.”
“Minimum chaos,” I say brightly, encouragingly. “Sure, yeah, we can try for that!”
“Hey, Noah, park us somewhere up here.” Aiden points at a strip of the road separated off for parking. “We used the hotel lot last time by accident, and the lady came out and yelled at us. Gave us a whole thing about how rude it was after we went inside, too.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea! Why don’t I park it in the hotel lobby? Keane said we could break one thing.”
I swat Noah’s shoulder, my eyes widening in alarm. “I feel like the lobby counts as more than one thing!”
“Here is fine,” Aiden says firmly. “We’ll leave the car here while we camp, so everybody make sure to bring all your stuff.”
We all get out and shoulder our backpacks, except for Kasey, who springs lightly up through the roof of the car to stand on it and have a look around.
“Noooo,” Aiden says softly, when I pull a flannel on over my tank top. It’s loose on me, and the arm holes fall to my jeans. That means he can easily slip his hands through them, and he immediately does, stopping me with my flannel halfway on. “Thought - kinda thought you looked pretty cute how you were already dressed.”
“I can tell!” I let out a flustered laugh, let him stroke my sternum with his thumb for just a second, then push him away. “I’d leave this off, but it’s actually kinda cold up here, isn’t it? Almost, like - weirdly cold.”
Aiden shrugs his broad shoulders, glancing around at the tree-lined road. “Getting towards the end of summer.”
“Yeah, which usually around these parts means everything gets really hot before it finally starts to cool off. Also, wasn’t it really hot out where we were parked before? That’s why so many people were out in the water. I don’t get it, it’s no less sunny up here…”
There’s a lot more tree coverage around us. That cools things off significantly, and we’re at a slightly higher elevation, too. Even so… it’s pretty cold for a bright, sun-drenched summer day. I’m not the only one who’s noticed, either. Noah just pulled a beanie down over his long black hair, and Ralph, who’d started to take off his hoodie when we got out of the car, zips it up instead.
“Got an answer, science boy?” Aiden asks, looking faintly puzzled.
“I… do not.”
We exchange a wondering look, then gather up our bags. Kasey hops lightly down from the car to join us, and Noah and Ralph circle around to form up the group, both of them in their new tan hiking boots. They automatically fall into their old formation behind Aiden, sticking just behind him at his left and his right.
“Remember what I said,” Ralph reminds us. “Minimum chaos.”
“Minimum chaos!” Noah echoes enthusiastically, then turns in surprise to the rest of us. “Oh. Were we not doing a chant type of thing?”
“Minimum chaos!” Aiden, Kasey, and I echo back, then stop in confusion as Ralph suddenly comes to a complete halt on the road, having gone a little ahead to get a look around the corner.
“What the fuck…?” he murmurs, narrowing his eyes at whatever we can’t see. “Is that the hotel you were talking about, Aiden?”
The rest of us round the bend in the road, then stop where we are, staring.
“It is, yeah,” Aiden finally says, bewildered. “But I don’t - what happened…?”
Kasey folds her arms over her chest, turning to look smugly at Ralph.
“So much for minimum chaos,” she says.
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