Here we go.

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 54

As they often did when all the immediate things were said and done, work became boring. The anomalies were keeping their heads down, ARC Corp was busy picking up after the SDC and now putting together the research foundation named after Jaune's sister, and Vale was getting ready for the Vytal Festival. That promised to be interesting at least, but it was still a couple of weeks away and Blake wasn't one to tune in to all the pre-entertainment crap dominating the news in between constant news on the state of the economy and the rising price of dust. Again, she did her best to ignore news anchors bickering over the exorbitant price of ground-down human bodies, and the complaints from other businesses on how hard it was to find dust mines – which might have been because they didn't exist in the first place.

When a knock eventually did come at the door, Blake was desperate. "Oh, thank goodness!" She leapt to her feet, hopped over Timothy and yanked the door open. "Welcome to Arc-Cooooowahhhhhh! Uh." Blake coughed into her fist and tried again to form proper words. "Welcome… uh… come in?"

Weiss Schnee sniffed and stepped past her.

"Who is it?" asked Jaune, looking up from his laptop. "I heard someone at the doo-ooooowah-"

His words dragged on, voice peaking, showing her, with some relief, that she wasn't the only one to be struck by a bout of awkwardness when facing one of the remaining scions of a family you'd personally killed. Neither of them knew what to say and "Hey, how's it going? Doing all right after we killed your family?" didn't feel like the right choice. Then again, acting like they hadn't done anything at all might also be a horrible thing. Did they acknowledge it? Did they apologise? She didn't feel sorry, but politeness dictated she say something for having had a hand in killing Winter. Actually, politeness dictated she not kill this girl's family at all, so maybe she'd missed the boat on that one.

"H-Hey," said Jaune, half-laughing and half-coughing. "It's you. Uh. Hey. Welcome. So…" He leaned back, and Blake was suddenly reminded how vulnerable he was to just about anything Weiss might do. Jaune swallowed. "How are things?"

"My family is dead."

Blake cringed.

Jaune cringed harder.

"R-Really? I mean, yeah. Ahem. If it makes you feel any better, Winter became a huge monster before the end."

Weiss crossed her arms. "How is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"I… uh… We spared your brother."

"My brother is a childish brat!"

"Who deserved to die…?"

"No." Weiss scowled. "But it's not a redeeming factor for you. My family is dead, my assets have been usurped and I am – functionally – homeless. What am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to support myself?"

"Aren't you in Beacon?" asked Blake. "Don't they cover everything?"

"For now, yes, but what about after?"

The answer, to Blake at least, seemed obvious. "Work as a huntress. Wasn't that the whole idea?"

Weiss froze, then turned to fix a glare on her. "Stop being reasonable!"

"I'm… uh… sorry…? I just figured getting a job kind of wouldn't be a problem for someone training to become a huntress. It's not like you're being thrown out on the streets or anything."

"My family is dead, my parents executed, my home taken from me and my future put in incredible doubt and at the mercy of an organisation which isn't exactly known for being reasonable or merciful." Weiss punctuated each point with her left eyebrow rising just a fraction higher every time. "So, please enlighten me as to why I should be in a good mood. Go on. I would love to hear it."

No one spoke.

Blake cleared her throat. "I don't think anyone is saying you should be happy, but I don't know why you've come here. Is it vengeance? Because that won't make you any happier."

"Also," said Jaune. "Blake will stop you."

It seemed to be as much a reminder or a silent question as a statement. Blake rolled her eyes.

"I will stop you, yes. Timothy will probably also eat you."

Weiss closed her eyes and counted quietly to ten. It was just audible enough to hear. "-ten." She took a deep breath. "I am not here for vengeance. I am here… I am here…" Blood red crept up her neck to her cheeks, and Blake's stomach dropped out.

"No," she said. "No way." Her hand came up to point. "There is no way you're asking for a job!"

"What?" Weiss looked at her askance. "What are you talking about? Of course I don't want a job. I am Weiss Schnee- well, I'm still Weiss Schnee and I… well, I guess I do need money. Thieving rats that you all are." She cleared her throat. "But no, I'm not here asking for work. I wouldn't work for you psychopaths if your job was the last opening on Remnant. I am here to make sure there won't be any unfortunate accidents in the future, by offering my full cooperation in any clean-up or investigation. I wouldn't want some trigger-happy Arc to decide it's safer to murder me in the middle of Beacon."

"I wouldn't do that," said Jaune.

"Can you say the same for everyone in your family?"

Jaune's silence lingered. "I can promise it wouldn't happen in the middle of Beacon. They'd at least lure you out first."

Weiss' eyebrows rose to their highest. "How kind. But if it's all the same to you, I would prefer a bullet not introduce itself to my brain matter in the immediate future. Please ensure your organisation knows I came by to offer my…" Her lips twisted. "… apologies for what my family have done, and to express my desire to make amends."

"I'll put it in the system." Jaune promised. "Is that all?"

Weiss huffed. "That is all. I should go."

"No anomalies for us to look into?" asked Blake, somewhat desperately. "No strange events?"

"Only a Schnee visiting an ARC Corp office and leaving alive," groused Weiss, opening and slamming the door shut behind her. The blinds rattled, and Timothy hissed at it, waving his forelegs in the air as if he and he alone had chased the girl off. "Some Guardian Weaver you are. Why didn't you attack her and save is the telling off?"

"Hssss…"

"That was awkward," said Jaune. He placed an elbow on his desk and his chin in his hand. "I didn't know what to say or where to look. Yikes. Maybe I should ask dad what is being done with their inheritances. I bet he's actually gone and annulled them and left her and her brother destitute."

"A Schnee wouldn't know destitution if it hit them in the face."

"The Schnee are mostly dead, Blake. I don't think there's much point holding onto your anger anymore."

Huh. Good point. And she supposed the last two weren't old enough to have a say in how they treat the faunus. "Fine. I'm still bored, though. Is there really nothing anomalous happening in the whole city? What gives?"

"Sapient anomalies are smart enough not to cause trouble at a time like this."

"And anomalous items and non-sapient ones?"

"Honestly, we rely on people noticing those and bringing them to our attention," said Jaune. "And I guess with the Vytal Festival here, everyone is more focused on other things. I bet a lot of people are just out of their homes and going around the city. Something will turn up. Always does. I've not had a quiet month since I started. Give it a few days."

A knock came at the door.

"Or a few seconds," Jaune amended.

Blake wasn't so sure. Weiss had just left so she had half a mind to assume it was her again, but the shadow through the frosted glass was quite a bit taller – as most of the population of Remnant was when compared to Weiss Schnee. Blake went for the door, noticed Timothy, then hurriedly shooed him into Jaune's bedroom and locked the door. The spider scratched pitifully at the wood as she came back to open the main door. Outside stood a woman somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, with light brown hair and a weary expression. She had bags under her dark brown eyes, and obviously hadn't slept well.

"Hello and welcome to ARC Corp," said Blake. "Would you… like to sit down? Coffee?"

"Coffee, yes, that would be lovely." The woman walked like a zombie to the sofa and collapsed onto it. Jaune quickly logged out his laptop as Blake poured some hot water from the kettle into a cup and twirled the spoon around to mix the instant coffee granules. All the wealth Jaune had, and he couldn't even have bought them a percolator. Blake was about ready to buy the office one herself. She had more than enough money. "Thank you," said the woman, accepting it and taking a drink. She didn't even bother adding milk or sugar. "Are you…" She took a deep breath. "Are you the ghost hunters…?"

Blake winced. Was she desperate enough for a job to accept that title? Was she really? Apparently, she was. "We are the ghost hunters."

"I thought so. You're surprisingly well reviewed online for a joke- I mean, you have positive reviews."

Both she and her boss pretended they hadn't heard the slip there. ARC Corp's ghost hunting branch in Vale did have its own webpage and contact details, much like the adverts Jaune paid for in the phone books. Naturally, by virtue of being online, they had reviews – and were sitting at a steady four out of five stars. The reviews were often quite bizarre, even when positive. Meg Scarlatina had even left them a five-star review. Blake had read it.

"Hired to investigate strange noises and movement in the house and came back to find they'd discovered a huge wild tarantula and captured it for us. No noises since. Fast response, polite staff, and surprisingly good service for what I assumed was a scam company. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I would recommend them for any perceived paranormal activity. They won't find ghosts since they don't exist, but they kind of solve the problems anyway."

There was even a couple of reviews below that which were much the same, and most of which had actually been from Jaune handling cases before she joined. People were generally expressing embarrassment for having hired them, but then overall positivity for Jaune coming and solving their problems without finding any ghosts. They were happy because their beliefs were validated, and Jaune got to sneak out anomalies and give them a believable excuse for what they experienced.

"Look," said the woman. "I don't believe in ghosts. Never have and never will, but my husband and I have just bought a house in Vale – old thing, large and surprisingly cheap. The agency selling it said it was cheap because everyone claims it's haunted, but we obviously didn't believe that."

"But something has happened," said Jaune.

"Yes. We – that is myself, my husband and our four-year-old son – moved in two days ago. We moved out today. Two nights is two nights too many in that place. Things move, there are noises, and my son came into our room saying there was a person in his bedroom watching him sleep! When we went to look, his clothing had been pulled out the drawers and thrown all over the floor." She shook her head, eyes wide with fear. "I don't know if it's someone sneaking in or hiding in the walls or what, but we got out of there immediately."

"Where are you staying now?"

"In a hotel. We've booked a full week there, but we can't afford a new home and the agency have said they won't take it back because it was hard enough for them to sell in the first place." Her shoulders hunched up. "I hoped… well, you're ghost hunters, right? And this sounds like ghosts. We've told the police but all they did was sent two officers over to talk to us. They can't do anything without a crime happening, and the word of a four-year-old to tell if something did. But I trust my son, and he looked so afraid!"

It sounded like a case. The house might be anomalous, or something in the house – it could be an item or a piece of furniture. Maybe it could even be a room, like the child's bedroom. Blake's mind moved quickly.

"We'll take the case," said Jaune. "What we'll need from you is a set of keys and the location, and a few days to scope it out. We'll stay there and try to capture any paranormal activity and report what we find back to you."

"Can you get rid of it!?"

"We'll try our best, ma'am. And as you said, we're well-reviewed."

"Yes… I…" The woman looked at them both and groaned. "I can't believe I'm happy to have a pair of ghost hunters promise to look at our place. If my mother could see me now, she'd cough out a lung…"

/-/

Jaune pulled the van through the gates and onto a gravel driveway leading up to a rather large home that no first time buyer could have ever normally afforded. It was three storeys tall, with a peaked roof and wide windows covered by curtains. To look at the place, and the price they'd got it for, you would instantly think something was dodgy. That it was either on the verge of collapsing or being used as a drug den. Real estate this big did not go that cheap.

Except when it was haunted, apparently.

"We could make a business out of buying cheap haunted property, clearing out the ghosts and selling it off for profit," said Blake. "We'd be rich."

"We are rich. Money isn't a concern for us."

"Oh yeah. I forgot." Blake eyed him. "So, tell me again why we're driving a van best suited for abducting small children when we could be in a sports car?"

"Sports cars aren't what idiot ghost hunters drive." Jaune climbed out and slammed the door. "We have to look the part. You can buy a sports car yourself if you want one, Blake. You'll just need to get a license first. And find a reason to drive it since you live in the same building you work in." Jaune looked around and then slid the van door open. Timothy bounced eagerly inside. "Good boy. Calm down. You're going to be helping us with an investigation today. Yes, you are. Who's a good anomaly? Who? You are! That's right!"

Timothy hissed and skittered in an excited circle at the praise.

It was the work of a good twenty minutes to carry all their equipment inside. It was ironic that many of the tools used by "ghost hunters" were viable tools for them to use as well. Cameras might not catch ghosts, but they'd sure as hell catch anomalies, and thermal sensors and motion trackers could do the same – or see evidence of anomalies changing things. Blake and Jaune stacked them inside the hallway by the entrance when they had the door unlocked. The hall was long, and branched off left and right, while a big old-fashioned staircase stood in the centre, reaching up to two balcony corridors that went off left and right.

The place was honestly a bit of a mansion. Even more suspicious. Did those new parents not have a lick of sense about them? When something looks too good to be true – it's because it is! Once they had everything inside, Jaune locked the door behind them. Timothy was already exploring, though he stayed in the hallway and kept coming back every thirty seconds or so to make sure they were staying in the hallway as well.

"No immediate threats," said Jaune. "The couple reported they heard noises at night, and that's when the child saw… whatever it saw. I guess we'll have to wait until evening. Question is, do we stay awake or do we sleep?"

"We could do both. One keeps watch."

"Fair enough." Jaune picked up a camera on a tripod and let it rest over his shoulder. "I guess we should plant cameras first. Can you put one in the child's room? Maybe we should have you sleep there alone tonight if that's where the anomaly first appeared."

"Yeah, and maybe you should go to hell while you're at it," Blake said cheerfully. "I categorically refuse. You sleep in there alone."

Jaune shrugged. "Okay. But that means you have to stay up watching all the cameras in the dark while an anomaly haunts the house." Blake looked back toward the front door. When she looked back, Jaune already had a foot on the staircase. "Come on, grab a camera and let's go. Unless you want to split up to cover more gr-" He blinked as Blake sped over to him, a tripod camera in each hand. "-ound. I'm guessing that's a no. Blake, ghosts don't exist."

"No. But murderous anomalies do. It's those I'm worried about."

"Yeah." Jaune nodded. "That's fair."

They moved through the rooms setting up cameras and then going back downstairs for more. The house had eight rooms in total, not including the kitchen and living room and the long corridors. They made sure those were also monitored, with the cameras set up in such a way that a single door opening would trigger an alarm. They knew they'd found the child's room when they found a floor covered with clothing strewn about. There was a small bed in the middle of the room, a bookshelf with children's books to one side and, in the corner, a large heap of dolls.

Blake pointed at the smiling dolls. "I say we burn them right now."

"Blake, we can't just assume-"

"Jaune. Have you watched a horror movie at any point in your life?"

He rolled his eyes and said, "I've seen horror movies with creepy dolls, yes, but that doesn't mean we can just assume a collection of dolls is possessed by-" The pile suddenly spilled out across the floor. Dolls fell, as if the precarious manner in which they had been arranged had suddenly become too much. Without movement, without interference, and without any warning. Jaune and Blake stared at them, and then Jaune said, "Yeah, so, I'll go grab a match."

"Jaune, you are a human match."

"I'm not touching potentially haunted dolls with my bare hands," he called from the doorway. "You keep watch and make sure none of them try and escape. I'll be back in a minute."

The rat bastard left the room before she could say anything, and Timothy went with him, leaving Blake alone in a room with a number of silent dolls facedown on the floor in front of her, and Gambol Shroud in her hands. "I-I warn you," she told the room at large. "I'm a huntress. I'm armed, dangerous and jumpy. Don't test me."

Nothing tried its luck. A clock out in the hallway ticked loudly, though not as loud as her heartbeat in her ears, or the sound of her drawn breath. Blake backed up to the door, keeping her gun trained on the motionless dolls as she heard Blake and Timothy come back. Jaune didn't just have a box of matches, but a metal pole with a hook on the end. "We'll scoop them into the fireplace and burn them there," he said. "No reason to start a housefire if we can help it." He smiled. "I don't want a second one-star review."

"How did we get the first?" asked Blake, taking the pole and scraping at the first doll from a respectable distance. She dragged it out into the hallway and went back for another. Jaune then kicked it into a binbag.

"A housewife told me she'd found a ghost in her bedroom that kept haunting her whenever her husband was on long work trips, but it turned out to be her in her lingerie. I didn't find an anomaly in her house at all."

Blake stared at him. Was he-? Yes, he probably was that dense. She rolled her eyes and kept scraping, and soon they had all twelve dolls in the bag, which they carried down the staircase together. They then upended them into the fireplace, and Jaune struck several matches, setting them among the dolls as the wood crackled and burned. There was no release of souls, no screaming, no shaking or terrible green smoke piling out. Just the warmth of the fire and the perfectly mundane smoke escaping up through the chimney.

Honestly, Blake still felt better, if only for knowing she wouldn't be hunted by a doll with a knife.

"Okay, so…" Jaune took a seat on one of the sofas and placed his laptop on the table. "I guess we can use this as our base of operations. I'll check the cameras and do a little digging on the house. You know, see if anything strange happened with the original owners. Do you want to order us some pizza or something? We're going to be here all night."

Pizza sounded good, and she didn't want to cook. Not that she had for ages, anyway. That week under the influence of her Slaved Anomaly had been nothing but takeout. Still, she pulled out her scroll and dialled the number saved on her contacts. The tone rang dead.

"No signal."

Jaune looked up. "In Vale!? Huh, I've got no signal on this either."

"What do we do?"

"I mean, isn't that obvious?"

It was, in fact, quite obvious. Jaune picked up his laptop and they walked back to the front door, let themselves out, then sat in the garden while he did his research, and while she ordered them a delivery. Whatever the anomaly was doing was limited to the house, and unlike the Welcoming House it didn't seem capable of keeping them locked inside. The original family could come and go as they liked, and so could they. The food arrived fifteen minutes later and Blake paid and tipped, then carried back a large box with several smaller side orders. They made a picnic of it, while Timothy polished off a whole bucket of fried chicken – bones and all. He was a growing spider after all.

Though hopefully not too much.

After they finished off their picnic, Jaune set up his laptop and then did some research. There hadn't been a mysterious fire or a child who died in the house or much of anything, but the original owners had travelled a lot and not really used it. The house stood empty a lot of the time, only in use when they had business in Vale, and that meant it could have been home to an anomaly for much longer and no one noticed. It only came to light after they first sold it, and when people started trying to live in it more often.

Once he'd done that, he had her sit and operate the cameras so she could get a feeling for the software. It wasn't too hard. The worst part was that she could only look through one camera at once, though a vertical taskbar on the right did have buttons for each, with a little green light to show they were active. Red meant inactive, and flashing orange meant movement detected. On any given camera screen, a bar at the bottom let her drag left and right to zoom in and zoom out. It was an intuitive system and she didn't have much problem getting the hang of it.

"I think I've got it."

"Nice." Jaune was knelt behind her. "Hey, can you check the bedroom camera quick?"

"The child's bedroom?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Blake flicked through to find it. "I think it's camera twelve. Here." It showed the room. "There's nothing."

"Really?" He hummed. "That's odd."

"Is it? Why?"

"Because there's someone in the window watching us."

The sheer casualness of how he said that nearly had her missing the context. Nearly. Blake flinched and wrenched her head upward, catching sight of a face pressed against the glass a single second before it jerked quickly to the right and out of view. Her legs spasmed so much that the laptop bounced on her knees, and she had to catch it before it spilled off onto the floor. Desperately, she looked back at the screen. Nothing. No movement.

"So," said Jaune, still casual and still far too relaxed for her liking. "We know it doesn't show up on camera. That's a shame after we set them all up."

"HOW ARE YOU SO CALM ABOUT THIS!?"

"Eh." He shrugged. "We're out here and it's in there. What's there to worry about?"

"Uh. How about the fact you're sleeping in that very room tonight?"

"Oh." Jaune blinked. "Oh." he repeated. "Yeah, that's a thing. Want to swap?"

"No."

"I didn't think you would. I call dibbs on Timothy."

"What? I'm not sitting in a room all alone, Jaune!"

"And I'm not sleeping in that room without a six-foot spider clinging to the ceiling above me." Jaune paused to consider that statement. "Which I realise is a very strange thing to say, but I've kind of gotten used to waking up to him doing that. I haven't had a fly or insect in my room for weeks."

"Suggestion," said Blake. "I spend the night out here where I have signal."

"Leaving me alone in the anomaly-infested house with no aura and no protection? Motion denied."

"T-Then…" Blake was desperate. "T-Then Ruby! She always wants work experience."

"Do you honestly think Ruby will be any less of a scaredy cat than you?"

Blake winced. "Weiss…?"

"Would join forces with the ghost to kill us." Jaune rolled his eyes at her. "Blake, you've spent the last three days complaining about us not having a case. Now we have one and you want out. You are going to sit in that living room and watch cameras all night, and you are going to like it – and if I die because you couldn't keep an eye on me, then rest assured I will haunt you for the rest of your life."

Blake whimpered as Jaune stood and made his way to the house. She looked up to the window; it was empty. That wasn't as comforting as she thought it would be. Dimly, rain began to fall, forcing her to stand and shield the laptop and begrudgingly make her way toward the porch. Her free hand fell to the book at her side.

"You'll keep me company, right?" she asked it.

Not even the twisted lady of the lake would talk to her.

Blake's ears flattened against her hair.

Inside, Timothy was hissing and clicking its legs at the air, reacting to something that neither she nor Jaune could perceive or place. Maybe he could smell something lingering in the air that they couldn't. Or taste it. Some animals could do that. "Well, Timothy doesn't like something. That's a good sign."

"Is it?"

"Well, not a good sign for us from a health and safety perspective, but a good sign there's an anomaly active in the house." He scratched his cheek. "I suggest we do a quick check of all the cameras before we call it a night. Make sure none have been turned off or tampered with." He poked his head into the living room. "Okay; good news! The dolls have all burned and none tried to crawl out the fireplace."

"And the bad news?"

"No bad news."

Why didn't that make her feel better? Blake knew the other shoe was in the air and ready to drop, and the longer it didn't, the worst she felt. It made her feel like the anomaly was waiting for the opportune moment; that it was biding its time. And it probably was. The mother talked of noises, but no appearances until the family were asleep. Maybe it won't appear at all if I stay awake. Yeah, maybe it'll keep waiting for everyone to sleep and just give up if I stay up.

The floorboards above their heads creaked as if someone was walking on them. Blake's hand shot up, Gambol Shroud ready to give them a pair of peepholes through the ceiling and up to the floor above, only for Jaune to lunge and drag her gun down before she could fire.

"Blake, no! The review! Think of the review!"

"I don't care! And-"

With a screech, Timothy took to the staircase and raced up it.

It was stupid, she supposed, that she could feel such fear for the safety of a six-foot spider made of human teeth and impossible material, and yet like a dog owner watching their pup run into traffic, Blake watched her – their – monster spider rush up into the unknown and felt her heart lurch. Jaune wasn't immune either.

"Timothy, no!" he cried.

"Bad spider! Stop!" yelled Blake.

They raced as one to the stairs, then shot up them at breakneck speed. Blake reached the top first, ready to strangle anything that harmed Timothy to death – or undeath – with her ribbon. Jaune came up behind panting, hands on his knees. Timothy was safe, up on its hind legs and scratching and hissing at a closed door. Nervously, Blake crept toward it and placed a hand on the handle. Jaune nodded – from about six feet away, the bastard – and indicated for her to go in. Blake briefly considered shooting him, then decided the person with aura probably should breach a dangerous room before the person without.

The door creaked open to reveal a bathroom. The taps on the bath were on, twin pools streaming water down and causing the tub to overflow onto the tiles. There was a bath rug that had turned sickeningly mushy on the floor, but nothing else. The single mirror in the room reflected her and Timothy in the doorway, and Blake eyed it warily, fully expecting her to look away, look back, and see the reflection of another person behind her. Nervously, she reached over to peer into the bathwater, dreading a body or ominous shape. It was empty. Blake twisted the taps to turn the water off, then yanked the chain up to drain it. When she drew back and glanced to the mirror, there was someone behind her.

"EEEK!"

Blake whirled, terrified despite fully expecting it, only to come face to face with Jaune. "What?" he asked. "What is it?"

"You- You…" Blake clenched her fists and struggled not to drive one into his nose. She looked back, and sure enough it was Jaune's dumb face in the mirror. "It's empty. But something was here. The taps weren't on earlier. We'd have heard them."

"Camera is on the floor too," said Jaune, pointing. It was laid on its side in water an inch deep, and quite predictably it wasn't responding. "It's a good job are budget is in the millions because those aren't cheap."

Worriedly, Blake opened up the laptop, balancing it on her arm as she logged in. "Uh. We're going to need to dip into that budget as well," she said, angling the screen toward him. The main screen was black, and the taskbar on the side showed cameras one through twenty all with bold red lights against them. They'd been deactivated. Quite likely broken. "So, suggestion. We go home, buy more cameras, and come back another day."

"Why would we do that when we have it right where we want it?"

"Do we have it where we want it…?"

"It's afraid of us, Blake. It's trying to hide. We have it on edge."

"It has me on edge!"

"Then it's a good job you don't have to try and fall asleep tonight." Jaune clapped her shoulder and moved out the bathroom. "Come on, we might as well collect those cameras and put them back in the van. We'll just trip over them in the night otherwise. Timothy, heel!" he called. "Good boy, but don't run off again. What if you'd been hurt? You should let Blake take the lead."

"I heard that!" shouted Blake, turning to follow, only to pause in the doorway to the bathroom. The little hairs on her neck were stood on end. A quick glance back showed only her own reflection in the mirror. Blake shuddered and closed the door, then sprinted down the hallway to catch up with them. "Wait for me! Not so fast!"

The light switch in the bathroom flicked down, turning off.

Phasmo moment. But hey, at least it's polite enough to turn the light off. I mean, with how energy prices are going you've got to be careful about that. Time is money, Blake, and dust is people, so leaving the light on is literal murder in this world now.

Next Chapter: 29th May

Like my work? Please consider supporting me, even if it's only a little a month or even for a whole year, so I can keep writing so many stories as often as I do. Even a little means a lot and helps me dedicate more time and resources to my work.

P a treon . com (slash) Coeur