It was the next day, and despite the open windows and the resident ghost, Eve was hot as hell and twice as mad. The air in the apartment was stifling and seemed to seethe along with Eve as she worked on her henge rune translation and got progressively angrier.

At a knock on the door, she slammed her notebook shut on the stupid runes and their stupid meanings, shooed at the air where a cold and questioning presence lingered, and opened the door with a rough yank.

Jon blinked at her, fist raised to knock again, and gave her a blinding smile. “Good morning!”

“These goddamned runes are ruining my life,” she said, stalking back to her desk. Harvey luxuriated in a sunbeam by the french doors, pretending neither of them existed.

Jon closed the door behind him and dropped his bag nearby. “Need to talk it out?”

The translation was like a half-finished jigsaw puzzle. The edge pieces were all in place, and the shape of the image was there, but there were large holes that Eve had been working her way into from the sides. Like the word she’d always thought meant something like “the power of god.” According to Murphy, the real meaning was power of the magic, non-godly variety. And that word, “Magic,” was sprinkled all over the North Henge runes she’d copied down her first night in Blackwood.

“Fuck magic,” Eve muttered. She tapped her pencil against the edge of her desk and glared at her notebook. Jon paused by the door and looked at her.

“Is that a curse, an intention, or a category?” he asked as he came to sit on the couch.

Eve snorted and twisted in her chair to look at him. “Curse,” she said. “The henge might have magic spells written on it.”

“Well, duh,” Jon said. “The stones are powerful gates between the living and the dead.” A Chelsea-shaped breeze brushed Eve’s bare shoulders.

Eve stared at Jon for a second before giving in. “Apparently. Anyway, if this,” she tapped on a rune that had the suggestion of spiraling about it, “means what I think it means, we can conclusively blame this on magic.”

Jon raised his eyebrows at her like he’d known it was magic the whole time. Which, he had, but that wasn’t the point. Ezra’s hesitant knock saved Eve from having to respond to Jon’s—perhaps justified—smug look.

“Come in!” Eve called. Ezra slowly opened the door and peeked around it. When Eve beckoned him in, he stepped inside. His sweater vest was dark blue this time, and his face was pinched and nervous. “Don’t you get hot in those?” Eve asked. She crossed her arms over her dark blue tank top. How the hell did they keep ending up matching?

Ezra rubbed the back of his neck. “Haha,” he said, “sometimes.”

“Are you two ready to go, then?” Eve asked. “We’ll get in, get out, be back here before anybody starts giving a lecture about fairy law or something.”

Jon laughed from his spot on the couch. “Cool, I’ve always wanted to learn about fairy law.”

Eve shoved the notebook of terrible runes into her bag and rubbed Harvey’s sun-warmed, exposed belly before grabbing an energy drink out of the fridge.

“How do you have kidneys still?” Ezra asked

Eve cracked the can open with a satisfying hiss. “This is what kidneys are for,” she said. She ushered the guys out in front of her and called out as she shut the door, “Bye Harvey. Bye Chelsea.”

They emerged from the building in the alley, the air thick and smelling like someone had stuffed a rotting fish and some bird poop into the dumpster. Eve’s car was parked in the alley that ran behind the row of stores, next to Pearson’s truck.

Ezra went to take the front seat, then looked back at Jon. “Do you want the front seat?”

Jon waved his hand. “No, you take it.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind sitting in the backseat?” The two of them looked earnestly at each other, locked in a battle of politeness.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Eve snickered from the driver’s seat, almost-cold air blowing into her face from the A/C. “Whoever sits in front has to navigate and do my bidding unquestioningly.” Jon and Ezra looked at her and then back at each other. “For fuck’s sake, Jon take shotgun because you’re taller.”

They were taking Route 23 north, Blackwater Lake shining beside them. The pines were dark, thick green against the sky, so bright and cloudless it hurt to look at. And there Eve was, trapped in a car with two of the biggest nerds she’d ever known and almost-working air conditioning. They were probably going to want to talk and make friends some more. Ugh.

The sweet silence lasted all of the thirty seconds it took Eve to pull onto the road.

“Did you go to Raven Falls College, Ezra?” Jon asked. He turned his head to look as they passed a couple wearing full hiking gear and holding a book with a picture of a henge on the cover.

Ezra’s bouncing knee stopped for a second, then bounced faster. “No,” he said. “Lakeside University has a better Journalism department, so I went there.”

“Journalism? That’s so cool.” Jon turned halfway around in his seat so he could see both Eve and Ezra. Ezra looked down and tried to suppress his smile. “What about you?” Jon asked Eve.

“What about me?”

“You said you used to be a student?”

“Yeah,” she said. An expectant silence filled the car. She could feel Jon and Ezra looking at her. She stared out the windshield at the hot, black road and still pines while they waited, and the silence grew fingers and started poking uncomfortably.

“I was for a year,” Eve continued. “And I figured out it’s a scam. I don’t need a linguistics degree to do what I want.” How much did she want them to know? She usually didn’t volunteer information like that, but here she was. Making friends.

She didn’t know what would happen once they solved the ghost problem. Jon didn’t live in Blackwood, and why would Ezra want to hang out with her if he wasn’t helping his actual friend get justice?

She frowned. It was stupid. She hadn’t come to Blackwood to make friends. She’d moved there for the exact opposite reason. And that was why she’d asked Ezra for help in the first place—she wanted to be left alone, not stuck with a roommate and her mega-nerd friend.

“Linguistics?” Ezra said. “I would’ve assumed folklore since you seem to know this professor pretty well.”

Eve pursed her lips, already regretting what she’d said. “Nope, I was never into folklore. Why journalism?” she asked.

“Ah,” Ezra said, eloquently. He fidgeted a little. “I used to want to work for The Herald and report on the really important stories, the kind of stories that change peoples’ lives.” He paused. And yet here he was, writing pointless gossip for a shitty little local paper. The words sat on the tip of Eve’s tongue. She looked at Ezra in the rearview mirror and swallowed them. Ezra blinked a little and then straightened up. “Local news is a good place to build up some experience. It gives me time to work on my own investigations,” he said, smiling at Eve and Jon.

“I’m glad,” Jon said. “This is more fun with good company.” Ezra flushed and looked down, his hair sliding over his face.

Eve snorted. “Your standards are too low.”

“Is this a bat?” Ezra asked, reaching down into the depths of the car. Jon, who’d been about to argue with Eve, stopped and turned to see. Eve bristled. Ezra pulled the softball bat out from under Jon’s seat.

“You play?” Jon asked. He was much too interested now—he’d found enough of a glimmer to start digging.

Shrugging, Eve kept her eyes on the road. “I was on the softball team in high school,” she said, looking away. “Now I have it in case someone tries to fuck with me.” Ezra made a face and held it further away from his body.

“Damn,” Jon said, reaching back to tap on it. “Aluminum?”

“Ya.” Eve sniffed. Her hesitation to share any information about herself was fading the longer she spent with these two. As much as she wasn’t looking for friends or anything like that, Ezra and Jon seemed chill. And for some stupid reason, she liked them both, even though she barely knew them. They seemed…good, in a way she couldn’t pin down.

Ezra looked at Eve closely, like he was studying her, and she scowled at him in the mirror.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a sporty type,” he said, tilting his head slightly.

Jon gripped the bat between Ezra’s hands and smiled. “You could fuck someone up pretty well with that,” he said, sounding more impressed than concerned. Eve raised her eyebrows briefly.

“That’s the point,” she said. “And I’m not.” She glanced at Ezra. “I just played to pad out my college applications. But it turns out I like hitting shit with a bat, so I ended up doing it for all four years.”

Jon laughed and Ezra looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be intimidated or amused. He settled for an only-slightly nervous chuckle.

“Very glad you decided you wanted to work with me,” he said, “instead of hit me.”

Eve pursed her lips. “I prefer verbal assaults to physical.”

“You did call me Groutfit that one time,” Ezra said, giggling. He didn’t seem like the giggling type, but there it was. Jon looked at Ezra, a soft smile slowly growing on his face, then glanced over at Eve.

“Groutfit?”

“Can we get over the groutfit?” Eve said. “I called you Groutfit because you were wearing all gray and annoying me. You’re less annoying now, so…” she shrugged.

“Less annoying?” Ezra said.

“Literally everyone is annoying, don’t take it personally.”

“I’ve never been annoying in my life!” Jon loudly declared, pressing a dramatic hand to his chest and flinging the other into the back seat. He winked at Ezra, and then at Eve.

“Shut up,” she said, smiling. The drive passed quickly after that.