I did not appreciate the things alcohol did to my body. I slowly stirred, the smell of char hitting my nose just as the grit of sand filling my clothes registered to my senses. I slowly pushed myself up, the sand giving way slightly to my hand before I opened my eyes to the blinding brilliance of day. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light. When they did there was sand all about, a small pile of darkness sat where a fire had burned a deep magenta the night before.

I was a little bit dizzy, the glare of daylight taking longer to fade than it should have. I had gotten drunk, not enough to ruin me for the day, but enough to make the next morning uncomfortable. I was thirsty and hungry but I didn't want to drink any of the beer we had brought, that is, if we even had any left.

I stood up, feeling the soreness that resided in my muscles scream out at the movement as I stretched. I groaned loudly as I twisted and turned until I had at least attempted to relieve the pain in every muscle. It hurt to turn my head so quickly in such bright circumstances, but I turned my head about to look for Jack, walking slowly around.

Jack sat snoring, face down and half buried in sand a good thirty feet from the dark remains of our celebratory fire. I nudged him with a foot, prompting a drawn out groan and a coughing fit. When Jack lay still again I nudged him one more time, a whine escaping his lips as he pulled his face from the sand.

"Come on Jack, get up and shake yourself off, it's. . ." I looked at my watch as I trailed off, wiping sand from the glass to read the face. "Almost eight. Come on, let's get breakfast and get back to the hotel, relax and try to think of what to do when we catch the ghost." I kicked Jack lightly in the shoulder as he struggled to open his eyes.

"Giminute," Jack muttered as he slowly sat up. I stepped back a little bit, my headache pounding in time with my steps before I stopped to try and shake more sand off like a wet dog. I continuously slapped at the coarse material only for more to magically appear in every place I looked.

"We might want to stop by the hotel and shower first," I mentioned to Jack as I tried to shake off more and more sand. "Then we should vacuum out your car. It's gonna be a mess."

I saw Jack stand up, displacing a small mountain of sand and shaking himself off much like I had done just a moment before. "Ugh, yeah. I'm considering just dipping in the lake to get most of it off, but then I'd be soaked. Ugh, I have leather seats, son of a bitch." Jack slurred his words slightly. I could tell the difference between his drunk slurring and his newly awake slurring, and this sat firmly in the newly awake category. We weren't up that late that night. We weren't quite as high energy as we were back in college, nor were we as used to staying awake for long periods of time with only caffeine and underage drinking to keep us going.

"Well fuck," I lightly. "This wasn't as good an idea as it seemed at the time." I continued to smack the endless droves of sand from my person as I spoke.

"We needed that, it was worth it," Jack said as he too took to smacking his person, clouds of sand emanating from each impact.

"If you say so," I muttered as I started walking towards the car, still trying to get as much sand out of my clothes as possible.

Jack started following me towards the car, regardless of the fact that he was far more covered in sand than I was. "It's your car," I spit under my breath so Jack wouldn't hear.

"I was wondering when you folks would wake up," remarked a folksy ghost in flannel and jeans, his toes completely uncovered and a large hat sitting lightly on his golden brown hair. "People don't usually pass out here until just after finals!"

"I know, we were celebrating," I informed the ghost, making obvious eye contact with the matter challenged individual.

"Well, everyone else usually. . . Wait a minute. You can hear me?" he asked, clearly flabbergasted.

"See you too. Sorry to be rude, but we're going to go get cleaned up. If you would excuse us," I said quickly and quietly to the ghost, annoyance plain in my voice. Sand was rubbing between my legs, filling my shoes, and all caught up in my hair. I felt gross and slightly angry at the situation even though I played a heavy part in getting here. I hated sand so much.

I moved right through the ghost in a cloud of mist that filled my vision for a short moment. Oddly there was a slight cold sensation as I did. Cold flashes weren't something I'd had to deal with in the past, but I knew my dad had them often enough.

The mist soon cleared and reformed into the redneck beachgoer, allowing me to go to the car and sit down on something less covered in sand so I could try to clean off my shoes and lower legs. I sat beating at my legs, doing my upmost to get the damned sand out as Jack sat in the drivers side and did the same.

"Sand, vacation herpes," Jack muttered just a little bit too loud for me to ignore.

"What?" I asked, wiping my head around to stare at him in incredulity.

"Oh, that's just what my dad always called it. Vacation herpes, you know, because it gets everywhere, and when you think its gone you find more." I started laughing, long, loud, belly laughs that set me to rocking the car. "Oh come on, it's not that bad."

"I'm sorry, that's just so fucking stupid. I'm sorry, it really isn't even that funny," I managed amongst my dying laughter. Jack would be the one to pull a phrase like that out of his back pocket with no context. Jack was good at almost everything, hell he was probably better than me at my own job. I guess I had lockpicking and talking to ghosts. I was frankly just glad he wasn't the ghost murderer, because we would have been shit out of luck.

I shook my head as I finished beating as much sand as I was reasonably going to get out of my apparel and pulled my legs the rest of the way into the car. I shut the door with a thud and a shower of even more sand. Seriously, how could there even be this much sand at one beach, it was like we were being cursed by some ancient Egyptian rite or something.

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Jack followed suit, shutting the door and turning the key. The car roared to life and Jack stepped on the gas, leaving the beach as fast as reasonably possible, the car trailing streams of sand for a short while as we headed to the hotel to clean up before we went and cleaned Jacks car, then we could finally go get breakfast. I'd pick up an energy drink at the hotel to wake me up, that stuff was highly addicting and it can't have been good for my health.

After a short drive of shitty traffic and even shittier country music we made our way to the hotel, stepping into the elevator which played Beethoven's fifth, a nice change of pace from the country I'd been subjected to as of late. I whistled the song of death as we walked out of the elevator almost subconsciously, using the tune to fuel any sort of thought that would allow me to stop this woman from murdering any more people in cold blood.

I didn't get far, showering quickly but efficiently to get the grit from between my ass cheeks. When I finally felt clean enough to handle the world I exited the overly exquisite shower, something I was going to miss dearly when the police contacted us about our apartment. I pulled on clothes, nothing fancy, and walked into the common area and into the kitchenette where I pulled one of the four remaining cans from its space and popped the tab open, prompting a faint hissing noise as the carbonation escaped the previously sealed container.

I was about to go sit on the couch to wait for Jack when my phone started ringing. I pulled it out to see Jack's contact information pull up, so I swiped on the screen to answer the call and held it up to my ear.

"Hey, what's up?" I asked.

"Do you just wanna stay here and relax? I think they've got a hot tub, although I don't know if it'll be open this far before the place opens," Jack said.

"I guess that's fine, why though?" I asked.

"I just figured all you'd be doing is sitting there and ordering the same breakfast you always do while I've got more stuff to do. You good if I just pick something up for you?" he asked. I was confused, I usually made my own breakfast and I didn't have anywhere specific that I would go to for. . . He was going to Burrito Americano, one of the only places where I always ordered the breakfast item, although rarely I would switch things up and tell the guy at the window to make me his favorite. Sometimes it was better than others, but it was chaotic, which is what I asked for in that instance.

"Yeah that'll be fine. I'll see if the hot tub is open, I'll be there if it is but either way I'll have my phone. You can just give me a call if you need anything," I told him.

"Alright, see you later."

"Yep." I immediately went back and took my shirt off, throwing it into the room that was frankly far more spacious than it needed to be and pulled my luggage onto the bed, emptying the messily packed compartments everywhere. I rummaged around for a moment but didn't see a swimsuit. Figured, we weren't expecting to be going swimming in the time we were out of an apartment, which had been for a ridiculously long amount of time. I hoped they'd take a little bit longer though, this place was very bougie and I didn't want to clean up after myself yet. I figured I had some light basketball shorts that were close enough for my liking, so I threw those on and walked down to the elevator.

I kept all my regular items with me, my earbuds, multitool, lockpicks, and phone all sitting heavy in the deep pockets of the shorts that were frankly just slightly too big to have so much weight in the pockets. The elevator brought me down to the lobby where I raided the desk for a map of the place. There was an indoor pool, though I'd have to find my way through a small maze of hallways containing various services that I couldn't afford to do while they were open. I made my way to the pool area to find the door locked and the lights off through the glass door.

"Damn. The pool looks good to go though. . ." I trailed off. "No, I, well." I sat for a long moment debating with myself on whether I should obey the rules or relax.

"Fuck it," I kneeled down and pulled my lockpicks out with one hand and unzipping it while I inspected the lock. It looked a little bit nicer than the other ones I'd used prior, might be a bit more of a challenge. My fingers drifted over the picks as I inspected the lock before finally landing on a larger hook and a smaller turning tool to get the pins in place better. I felt around for a short moment and felt the pins move up one by one before it finally started turning, but the lock quickly stopped turning.

"False set," I muttered under my breath as I turned the lock back enough that I could push the pins up further past the shear line. I didn't know where I'd heard the term but it felt right. I also wasn't sure how I knew how to solve this problem, but I did.

"Don't look the gift horse in the mouth," I muttered as the lock set all the way this time, unlatching the door for me to enter. I flipped the light switches and waited a short moment for light to flood the space. It was a very nice swimming pool, and honestly I had no idea how this place would survive in a broke ass town like ours, but it was another gift horse and mouth situation, so I left it be.

I looked around for a long moment before I found a large circle cut away in the floor with steam rising visibly from its surface. I wide grin cracked my face as I made my way over to the area and set all my belongings beside the tub, taking a moment to organize everything so it was in reach if I needed it but it was far enough away to not be in danger of innocent splashing. I found a knob on the wall that turned the jets on and I set them as high as I could.

I settled into the disturbed liquid and decided to take a moment to check my texts and emails. I had most of the people from work on silent so I wouldn't get bothered if I didn't want to be. There were almost never emergencies for electricians.

I had lots of missed texts and unanswered emails that I skimmed through. Mostly, I was behind on work and had lost some of my pay for the jobs because someone else had to pick them up. That was only fair, if incredibly annoying. "I should go into work tomorrow. I'll get off real early until the end of the month," I told myself before closing out of the apps and setting my phone down, leaning my head back and taking a long moment to just let the reality of everything we'd figured out in record time to settle on my shoulders so that the pressure and heat of the jets could take them away for good.

I knew logically that this murder wasn't my fault. I knew that, but I was still blaming myself. That's why I was so adamant in the beginning about taking on the case, and then when I almost gave up I had just accepted that I would hate myself forever for her death. I didn't say it at the time, I didn't even really think it, but I knew that's what it was.

I was mulling over the various insecurities this had awakened in me when my phone rang. It was Jack on his way back with breakfast. I told him where I was and soon after hung up the phone.

Jack. Perfect Jack, so good at everything. Even the things I was better at than him were things he couldn't control. Hell, he was better at fitting into small spaces, and he was a fucking giant of a man! We'd lived together for so long, we'd done so many projects together, and never once did I find this kind of jealousness in my heart until this week, where those skills were paramount, that the only reason I was really in the investigation at all was because I could see ghosts and no one more competent could.

I let those worries wash away with the bubbles the jets generated. I loved Jack, he was the older brother I never had, someone to look up to that wasn't your dad. He was my greatest friend in the whole world, there was no reason for jealousy. We had contributed equal amounts to the investigation, hell, I'd stolen information from the fucking police!

"I've got burritos!" Jack yelled as he walked into the wet area.

"Hell yeah, I love burritos," I said as I pulled myself dripping wet from the hot tub like a kid who's mom had just called them over for lunch to enjoy a good ass burrito with my best friend.