"Mister Spender!" Isabel gasped at the dirt she'd accidentally kicked into the air, reaching her arm over her mouth to try and sway the odds of her lungs collapsing in her favor. The bridge of her nose stung like hell, reminding her that she was still not at full health.

That's the last thing I need to be focused on right now!

"Mister Spender!" She called out to the empty forest, twisting in circles so that she didn't miss an inch- not one inch. If she saw movement she'd go for it. He had to be in the woods somewhere. Alive. He had to be. Someplace in the distance she heard Isaac sounding just as desperate, calling out to their teacher with little hope of a response. Even with all the foliage and space that divided the two of them, she could hear it clearly. His voice was so deep with apprehension and panic that she had to block it all out to keep herself sane, because it couldn't be true but she knew it was and reality was strangling her like a thick rope around her throat.

"ACHOO!"

Isabel ripped another tissue from the box, smashing it to her nose. Had the skin there not already been red from the almost nauseating cold she'd had thrust upon her by Mother Nature, it certainly would have been after she pulled the tissue away. Three days sick with the cold from hell and she already wanted to toss herself out the nearest window. "Ugghh…"

"You sound wonderful."

"Shud ub Maex." Isabel inhaled then sneezed again, coughing up what she was sure was phlegm and one shriveled up lung.

"I'm just shocked Ed got you to lay down this long." Isaac came to sit at the foot of her bed, patting her foot supportingly. Max took to leaning against the doorframe of her room, arms crossed over his chest with a smile on his face she would have punched clean off had she not been feeling like Death's wife. "How did he manage to do that?"

"Heh sat on meh until I laid still."

"And you didn't throw him off?"

"Maex, mah arhms arhe lahke overhcoohked noodhles right now. I cahn hardlhy use them t' sit up ahnd you think I'dh be ahble t' throw a hund'ed-fo'ty pound man offh me?"

In all truth, she hadn't wanted to shove him off. He'd been pinning her arms down and she'd been kicking and laughing and then he'd laid his torso across her stomach and at that point she'd given up because it wasn't worth the effort to fight anymore. It'd been awhile since they'd had a moment like that. If there was one good thing about coughing and wheezing and choking up phlegm, it was that Ed was there with her twenty-four-seven. The few moments he wasn't were spent making food for the two of them or using the restroom. He hadn't even bothered to change out of his pajamas in the last three days, not that she had either. A few times he actually fell asleep right there next to her in the bed. She'd 'tried to stop him' because he would catch her cold, but he refused to leave. Laying there with his arms around her waist- it was the best sleep she'd gotten in years. The entire atmosphere had felt so right, like they were kids again and it was a sleepover. It was like all the years before they could even start to train at the dojo, when they'd stay up talking about what spectrals in the dojo could totally beat what other spectrals, and they'd fall asleep in the same sleeping bag because they just didn't want to be apart.

"Well when you put it in unintelligible gibberish!"

Ed slid into the room with a bowl of soup in his hands, very narrowly missing the pillow that Isabel sent flying at Max's head. He twisted out of the way, somehow managing to keep the broth from spilling over the side of the bowl. Max chuckled and picked the pillow up from off the floor, approaching Isabel to place it back behind her head where it belonged. Ed glared Isabel's way, straightening up from where he'd been hunched over the bowl protectively. "How about we not?"

She gave him a wide, giddy smile back. "How 'bout weh doo?"

Ed rolled his eyes and set the bowl in Isabel's lap, making sure she had it steady before his hands parted. He was smiling behind his glasses and she knew it.

"You know" Isaac sounded smug "I thought the Great Powerful Isabel didn't get sick?" She should have assumed he'd make a comment about something she may or may not have said in passing back in middle school. It was just like him. His haughty face dropped when she raised her foot under the covers and kicked him. In all honesty, it was kind of nice to be teased again. She'd been expecting it to be like every other time she got sick, with tons of dojo students mocking her mercilessly, but none of the students now so much as dared to tease her about her cold- they all knew she could kick their asses. After all, she was a graduate, leagues above them in rank. Isaac was the first one to say a word edge-wise about her cold. In a way, it was a comforting taste of nostalgia.

"Hey, hey, hey! Be careful of the soup, Izzy! Geez!"

"So, Mister Spender's going to be taking over the dojo, huh?" Isaac rubbed his lower back where she'd kicked him, face contorting in pain. She guessed that even as weak as she was feeling, she was still stronger than the dorks she chose to surround herself with.

"Yeph." Isabel snorted. She was feeling a little too lazy to blow her nose at the moment, seeing as the option of food had presented itself in front of her. She raised the spoon to the broth and started shoveling noodles into her mouth as fast as she possibly could. She must have been hungrier than she thought. All day she'd felt like throwing up, but she'd assumed it'd been from the raging headache she'd woken up with, which in hindsight could have also been from hunger. The steam reached through the air, burning through her nose and turning what was once an impenetrable wall in her nostrils into a broken dam. She reached for a tissue and blew her nose clear before it started running.

Isaac snickered, leaning back against the bedframe. "That should be fun to watch."

"As talented as I've been hearing he is for six years, I can't help but think his teaching style is a little…" Max fell silent, clawing through his extensive vocabulary to find a word that would fit his old mentor's methods. It was odd, seeing Max struggle over his God-given gift. Actually, no, it was funny- hilarious, really. The guy never shut up. Max having a hard time finding the right words was as rare as a four-leaf clover covered in gold, laced to the saddle of a unicorn and/or Pegasus as the clouds in the distance parted to let a rainbow through.

"He's different from my grandfather, but if you ask me that's what the dojo needs." Isabel coughed on a spoonful of broth that went down the wrong hole, to which Ed jumped to remind her that she was 'fragile' right now and to 'take it easy'. She glared at him and he gave her a huge, toothy grin back, knowing damn well that he would have gotten himself smacked had she been operating at full capacity. "We don't need another person to just scream in faces. We need somebody more understanding. He can do it."

"As understanding as Spender is, Isabel" Isaac cut in, a small cautious smile on his easily-read face "keep in mind he's hardly ever upfront about anything. He's too passive to be the dojo's instructor. They'd all practically be learning on their own."

Isabel gaped at him, frowned, and said "You wouldn't know, Isaac. You're blacklisted, remember?"

"Whoa, hey!" Max put his hands up in mock defense, leaning over so that he was between Isabel's bloodshot eyes and Isaac's deathly narrowed ones. "Someone sounds a little cranky!" Isabel sighed and rolled her eyes. Cranky was certainly the best adjective she could think of, so it wasn't a surprise that Max called it. She was just so sick and tired of lying in bed all day for three days when she could have been doing something more useful- like beating some stupid friendly-spirit-eating spirit senseless. But no, she was stuck in bed with a bowl of hot soup and a never-ending headache.

"Yeah, sorry."

Isaac's defense fell, the scrunch of his nose turning into little more than a satisfied wiggle. "It's okay. I know you can't help it! Dumb people can't help but be rash." Isabel snorted and glowered at him, mirroring the smirk inching across Isaac's face.

Ed wiped his hands together like he was brushing something off, grin still as wide as his head. "Well then, how about them Yankees?"

"A breech?" That was the last thing Spender needed to hear. With all of the weight of his existential dread and literal weight of the stack of papers he needed to grade, he had no idea how he was going to handle much of anything. "What do you mean a breech?"

"An unidentified spirit and or spectral broke through the barrier on the east side of the city." He didn't recognize the voice on the other end, but it was certainly a young, probably inexperienced, spectral. Maybe they weren't quite as young as his kids, but they were new to the Consortium nevertheless. They were probably in training. If everybody else at the hub was busy, which wasn't entirely unlikely, then it made sense Boss Leader would have passed the reporting job down to someone still learning. "We don't know how, but you've gotta get in there and take care of it."

"Of course."

He hung up the phone and slipped it into his back pocket.

Not just any spirit could break through the barrier- it didn't work like that. Something was wrong. Whatever had the ability to break through an age-old barrier of masterful creation must have been powerful, powerful enough to be a threat to his town and everybody he cared about- maybe even their neighboring cities. Isabel was still bedridden with her cold, not surprising considering how rarely she got sick, Ed was taking care of her, Max was taking care of the store while his father was away on business, and Isaac's ignorance wasn't to be risked. Then they'd have two breeches and everything would become much, much worse.

He'd take care of it.

He grabbed his coat off the hanger and his keys off the bureau by the front door, taking one last look at his sleeping wife (her blonde hair loose against the pillows, the blankets falling from the curve of her hips, her brows and lips at rest because her sleeping form could still feel the heat from where he'd been laying) before taking off.

"You really inhaled that chicken soup, Izzy. Sure your cold's not turning you into a creepy flesh vacuum?"

"I will pay you to never say 'flesh vacuum' ever again."

"I thought it was funny?"

"It was oddly unsettling."

Ed laughed and set a bowl of water on her nightstand, water she could assume was not for drinking. He gestured for her to lay down and she did as told, slipping under the covers that had started to feel like a humid summer's day the longer she spent under them. She'd just have to ask Ed to turn on the fan. She would have done it herself, but every limb in her body felt limp and weak. Standing up would have just changed where she was laying down- on the bed or on the floor. Ed folded a cloth and dropped it into the water, pulling it up and turning it over and dipping it again as he felt necessary. "Do you think my fever's gone down at all?"

"Maybe! I'll check."

She was fully expecting him to reach into his back pocket and pull out a thermometer. He'd surprised her by being prepared with more in the past. He'd been coddling her the past few days and she kind of liked it, being taken care of. That was weird for her, enjoying being useless and helpless. She couldn't bring herself to hate the white noise of her fan above her whenever it was on, not when she spent her nights whispering in Ed's ears because they'd wake the students if they were too loud. Sometimes she wasn't so mad that she was cooped up with nowhere to go. Instead, a foreign emotion stirred her body from her chest, if only because they played "Never Have I Ever" to pass the time. She lost every time and he lost every time, just because they'd done everything together. When she woke to a coughing fit, she expected to hate it and hate herself and hate everything around her, but Ed was always there with a glass of water and some medicine.

Ed was full of surprises; lately that'd seemed like all he'd been doing- surprising her. He leaned over Isabel, resting one hand on her pillow. She watched his other hand with a perked curiosity, his fingers brushing against her shoulder before he cupped her cheek. Her congestion didn't help, but it was because of his touch that she found it incredibly hard to breath. Isabel's eyes were bloodshot, she was sure, but they worked well enough to trace the curve of his nose and the crease of his brows. All the while she felt as though she'd been dealt a wild card, not knowing if her cheeks were red hot because of her fever or because of her best friend towering over her like they'd have one less chance to say "Never Have I Ever". He didn't seem fazed, not when his palm brushed her lips and not when she leaned into his touch. "Ed?" She hated the sound of her own voice. It was thick and pathetic, like she wasn't buoyant enough to speak. Was it him or her cold leaving her feeling so feeble? He leaned closer.

"Yeah, Izzy?"

"You're going to get sick."

"Probably, yeah."

That was all she could possibly think of to complain about, all she could think of to stop him. Did she really want that- to stop him? He leaned down close enough that their noses were touching, close enough that she could feel his breath on her lips and close enough that staring up at him was becoming exceedingly difficult. He didn't stop smiling, though, and she hadn't expected him to. It was just in his nature, and most of the time she hoped he was smiling for her. She watched him with parted lips, somewhat because she couldn't breathe through her nose and relatively because she knew what was coming.

Then he surprised her for the second time that night. Ed pulled away and pressed a kiss to her forehead, humming in concentration- not quite what she'd been expecting. Isabel was too busy (mentally beating herself to death with Max's bat in compensation for the embarrassment she was feeling) to pay attention to a word he said. "Your fever has gone down a little, but you do still have one."

"Great…" She mumbled and glanced to her wall full of posters, trying to avoid eye-contact as much as humanly possible.

Ed laughed and sat up, reaching into the bowl of water. He twisted the cloth and sighed when all of the water came falling from the fabric. He folded it again, squeezing the excess water out of it before laying it flat over her head. "Hey, you're almost out of the woods!"

"That's still not actually out of the woods, though…"

There was a vibration from the nightstand, a bright light flashing with every annoying buzz. Isabel and Ed glanced at it.

"Have you heard anything from her since, by the way?"

"Nope." Max shook his head and stuck his phone back in his pocket. "But I mean, she was only three years older than us. I'm still worried about running into her on college campus. God, that'd be awful."

Isaac laughed and glanced at the ground and, Max hated himself for it but, he took the opportunity to trace the lines of Isaac's face with his eyes. It'd been- what- four or five years since everything happened with Velda? He didn't know why he was still holding on. He guessed it was because of the glimpses of emotion he'd see behind Isaac's eyes when they caught each-other's glances; it was imaginary, it always was, because Isaac would blink it away and just like that the feeling was gone, but he liked to pretend on occasion. He'd known it from the first night home, lying awake at one in the morning for no reason, that he wouldn't be able to stand it. Being in the friendzone, just waiting for years and years, was a special brand of hell he wanted no part of but he'd still done it. He'd told himself that Isaac was right, that they'd just been caught up in the heat of the moment and it hadn't been a real kiss and there wasn't anything there for them. The problem was that, while Isaac might not have been, Max definitely was lying. He'd lied to himself that entire week. He couldn't go back when he'd hit the realization that Isaac was way more to him- that Isaac was quite possibly the love of his life.

But he had to acknowledge that he simply wasn't Isaac's.

That's why he'd learned over the years to keep it simple. If he thought for one second Isaac was interested, he'd ignore it. He wouldn't make a fool of himself just to end up losing his best friend. He learned to touch him less, look away, joke around if things got too serious. It never got easier, but the pay-off was more than enough.

"What you should do is find a girlfriend or something- date Suzy. Suzy would knock Caron on her butt if she tried anything."

"How much do you think Suzy would want for that?"

"Eh, probably like a buck an hour or something."

Max snorted and turned to look at the road ahead of them. It was a little foggy, not much to his surprise, but it wasn't like they couldn't see where they were going. He sighed and breathed in the fresh air around him. It was late enough at night that the crickets were 'singing' or whatever you wanted to call it. He could hear the thin rivers that ran along Mayview's hills and feel the humidity on his skin. Moments where he actually felt calm were rare since he'd moved to Mayview, what with the constant hustle and bustle of the spirits they saw and the enemies that popped up at random. Most of the time he was in a state between panicked and irritated and tickled. While peaceful moments were appreciated every now and then, Max found himself missing them less and less as time went on.

"Gotta work for that journalism fund, ya know?"

"She is going to take control of Mayview Community and we're all going to be enslaved for eternity. We'll spend our lunches taking mediocre pictures of each-other and writing horrible articles that are pretty much just a series of gifs we thought were funny."

"Gifs won't move when they're printed, though?"

"That's what's so bad about it."

He heard the beginnings of Isaac's laugh, but it was cut abruptly. Isaac tumbled over a block of sidewalk that'd been just a tad higher than the rest, falling forward with all the grace of a drunken orchestra conductor. Max lurched forward and caught Isaac in his torso, arms wrapped under Isaac's, effectively trapping his shoulders in his hands. If it didn't look awkward, it certainly felt it. Isaac's face was buried in Max's chest, and the way Max held him left very little room to move. When Isaac tried to pull his head up, he not only head-butted Max in the jaw, he managed to chew on his shirt. "Can you be any less smooth?"

"Can you be any jerkier of a savior?"

"I could, actually. I could make you repay me." When Isaac stood up straight, arms still locked in Max's grip, they came nose-to-nose. Max disregarded that.

Isaac mockingly rolled his eyes with a sardonic smile Max rarely saw on him. "Repay you how, my dashing hero?"

"I don't know! How are heroes usually repaid?"

"Traditionally?" Isaac laughed. "A kiss."

Max was about to retort, but he froze when the unspoken implications befell upon him. Isaac must have come to a very similar realization, because his eyes were wider than Max thought his own were. He started radiating heat like some kind of air conditioner, and Isaac wasn't much cooler to the touch. Max's hands fell from Isaac's shoulders to his waist, but Isaac didn't move save for letting his elbows fall.

It was nothing, same as every other situation they'd been in over the six years they'd known each-other. He would pull away, Isaac would shake whatever 'this' was off, and they'd be back to normal. No matter how many times they touched, found the other's gaze, or had a moment of blissful tension, nothing would ever come of it. He could pretend to see a spark in Isaac's eyes. He could pretend the hands that found his arms so often were there to quell something more, but it wasn't in the stars. The problem, without doubt, was that he really didn't want to let go. He had Isaac right there- right there literally in the palms of his hands, and there was no guarantee it would ever happen again. He heard Isaac swallow hard. "Max…"

He blinked and forced his hands from Isaac's waist, already missing the electricity he'd felt between his fingers. "Sorry."

"No!" Isaac gripped Max by the arms and put his hands right back where they'd been, sending perplexing signals through the entirety of Max's body. He blinked and tensed up, feeling Isaac's hold tighten when he did. Was he supposed to be happy, excited, worried? He didn't know. Isaac's face wasn't giving him any answers. He just looked livid and mortified. "Max, we…" He watched with great interest as Isaac bit down on his lip, wondering what it would have felt like to be the one nibbling that skin. It was a thought that often crossed his mind, but he rarely indulged in the idea. "We... I think…" Isaac's eyes drifted to their shoes, any trace of determination Max might have seen dissolving away and dying, pools of blue darkening in the worst way possible. Before Max knew it, whatever hope he'd been feeling fell through. "I think we should get home."

The hands that'd been so firm before fell away, leaving Max only with a feeling of loss.

He jumped as his cell phone buzzed in his pocket, both a surprise and a welcome distraction from what'd possibly nearly happened (probably not, though). Isaac turned his attention to the ringing and raised an eyebrow. "It's nearly nine at night. Who's calling you?"

Max took the phone back out and looked over the screen. "Isabel."

"What? Did we leave something there?"

"Maybe…" He pressed the green button and brought the phone to his ear. "Yeah?"

She sounded panicked, more panicked than he'd ever in the history of knowing Isabel had heard her sound. She spoke fast and in shallow breaths, leaving more than a little room for miscommunication. "What?" Isaac's already-raised eyebrow roamed further. Max shrugged at him, still just as clueless as he'd been a few seconds ago. "What do you mean?" Isabel rattled off some earlier happenings in words he could hardly understand. "Okay, so where'd he go?" He heard shuffling on the other end, the sound of Ed's distant voice, the revving of a car, and then Isabel's anxious mumbles and some numbers. "Got it. See you in a little while." Max hung up the phone and stuffed it anxiously into his pocket.

"What happened?" Isaac watched him struggle to put his phone back, tension visibly rising in his shoulders again. Max shrugged, but that was only because he couldn't think of a better response.

"Spender's gone missing. We're meeting at the dojo. Come on."

They'd tried. They really did. They'd gotten to the marked spot in less than twenty minutes after getting the call. They'd split up, Isaac with her and Ed with Max, and even then they'd gotten separated from each-other. She knew exactly how long they'd been searching, she just truly didn't want to believe it. Three hours- they'd been searching for three hours. Up and down every inch of the Mayview woods had to offer, five times, and there wasn't even a sign Spender had ever been there. She'd dialed his number over and over and over again but every single time his voice mail answered. "Mister Spender!" Isabel gasped at the dirt she'd accidentally kicked into the air, reaching her arm over her mouth to try and sway the odds of her lungs collapsing in her favor. The bridge of her nose stung like hell, reminding her that she was still not at full health.

That's the last thing I need to be focused on right now!

"Mister Spender!" She called out to the empty forest, twisting in circles so that she didn't miss an inch- not one inch. If she saw movement she'd go for it. He had to be in the woods somewhere. Alive. He had to be. Someplace in the distance she heard Isaac sounding just as desperate, calling out to their teacher with little hope of a response, his voice cracking and croaking because he was just so riddled with the fear she also felt. Even with all the foliage and space that divided the two of them, she could hear it clearly. His voice was so deep with dread and panic that she had to block it all out to keep herself sane, because it couldn't be true but she knew it was and reality was strangling her like a thick rope around her throat.

He was dead. Richard Spender was thirty-two years old and dead.