“This is more important,” Aidan declared in a tone that brooked no disagreement.

“No it isn’t,” Finley disagreed.

“Yes it is,” Aidan insisted. “How can you honestly even say that? I was there when the you-know-who did you-know-what.”

Finley sighed. “Look, the way I see it, we’re not worth disrupting your perfect academic record.”

“You really can’t talk me out of this,” Aidan said with some amusement. “I don’t even know why you’re trying. I’m already strapped in.”

“I know. It was worth a shot.”

“Mm-hmm. My mind’s made up,” Aidan said as he set his head on the headrest with finality. “I’m coming.”

“And I appreciate it,” said Fin, “I just wish that you weren’t. I can’t help but feel like I’m putting your livelihood in danger. Maybe even your life.”

“You need me. Admit it.”

Fin smiled. “Alright, yes, I need you. In several ways. But it’s selfish. I feel selfish.”

Aidan scoffed. “It isn’t selfish to ask for help when you need it.”

RJ leaned over the seat in front of them, her sunglasses perched atop her head and a mysterious brown cocktail in one hand. “Listen to the man, Finny,” she instructed. “He’s full of saintly wisdom. Besides, we’re already on the plane. There’s no use in trying to talk anyone out of anything at this point. Foregone conclusion and all that.”

“You shut up,” he told her. “He could still request to leave the plane. We haven’t even taken off yet—” as he said those words, he felt the plane jolt underneath him as it began taxi-ing away from the terminal and toward the runway.

“You shut up,” she shot back, and sat back down in her seat just as a flight attendant came by to instruct her to do that exact thing. He heard her slurping at her drink. “Hit me up when we’ve passed twenty thousand feet, I’m gonna need at least two more of these,” she said and pushed the sunglasses over her eyes, leaning back in her seat to take a nap.

“Fucking A,” Finley muttered.

“Well said,” Aidan complimented. “But seriously enough, there was never any chance of you talking me out of this. I already explained to my professors before we left for Virginia that it was a family emergency. I’m coming whether you like it or not.”

“That’s what he said,” RJ snickered.

“Oh, you shut up,” Aidan scolded. She kept chuckling to herself all the way to the runway.

The flight wasn’t half as bad as the previous one, and thankfully no one was having any panic attacks, so Finley was mostly content to bask in Aidan’s thoughts and feelings and doze off during. It was clear that Aidan missed his family from how often memories of them surfaced in his mind. Fin had stayed with them with Aidan last summer for a week or so while he was taking summer classes to keep him from thinking about Teegan too much. He’d gotten to know them fairly well, and could perfectly understand how two such wonderful people had raised such a wonderful person. Aidan’s mind flickered and fluttered over childhood memories and recent conversations; Bella, his oldest sister had recently started dating someone new, and his younger two were busy with music and sports and hardly ever reached out to their older brother away at college. He worried for them the most.

“You should call your parents after we land,” Finley suggested.

Aidan didn’t seem surprised that Fin had been snooping on his thoughts, and shrugged. “Maybe. It’s been about a week, and we usually talk once weekly.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t visit them on this trip.”

“Nah. I saw them over spring break. Don’t be sorry, my folks see me plenty.”

Finley managed to get through the flight without a bloody nose, and he expected this was due to Aidan’s presence at his side. Aidan read a textbook the rest of the time while Finley tried his best to doze off, leaning his head onto his best friend’s arm for cushion. Aidan’s mind was meandering, half-focused on his sociology text and the other half focused on Finley himself with fondness; it made a pleasant backdrop to Finley’s own tumbling thoughts that would occasionally trip over a spike of unexpected grief toward Mara.

Then without really intending to, he remembered Teegan.

Her flight had been delayed, on the night she’d died. He was at a party in LA with his sister that she’d invited the both of them to. He’d heard that Teegan was on her way through downtown LA, but she’d never arrived. Finley learned about what happened around midnight; his dozing mind lingered on the events like they were a distant dream he was trying to recall, and he absently wondered why it is at the most seeming random of times that his thoughts would tend toward her. Perhaps it was the events of the funeral that brought her close to mind; Teegan’s own funeral had been an even more somber affair, with an empty casket he hadn’t been allowed to bear lowered pointlessly into the ground. Her body had never been released by the government, for reasons ill-explained. He could empathize with Félix’s plight, who had a similar inability to cope with his mother’s death as a result of the condition of the body. There was something integral towards caring for the remains of a loved one, upon their passing - something primal that was satisfied in knowing where the last remnant of them lied, whether it was in an urn or a grave. Finley had never been to Teegan’s grave after her funeral, because there was nothing inside of it. She simply wasn’t there.

Before he knew it though, he’d fallen asleep. It was thankfully dreamless, and he awoke disoriented to a bout of turbulence that sent spikes of anxiety through the passengers like autumn lives bristling through the fall air. He cracked his neck as he straightened his spine, and dismissed Aidan’s concerning gaze, centering himself in the moment he was in with a few deep breaths. Slowly, he reconstructed his walls, and shut everyone else out.

“We’re about an hour from landing in Atlanta,” Aidan informed him, “aaaaand your sister and I have come up with the most brilliant of plans.”

Finley quirked up one of his eyebrows as his sister unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned over the seat to gaze back at him. “Yep. We’re gonna conduct . . . A séance.” She made an unnecessary ‘woo-woo’ noise replete with hand-gestures.

“No,” Finley said firmly.

“What? Why?” She wondered honestly.

“Just, no,” he spat. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Come on, you haven’t even heard Aidan out yet.”

“Heard me out? This was your idea,” Aidan pointed out. “And it’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had, to be honest. I’ve heard worse ideas from your mouth.”

“What a ringing endorsement, Aidan, thank you,” RJ said sarcastically.

“I’m here for moral support,” he cheekily replied.

“Why in hell would you think this was a good idea?” Finley wondered, staring at his best friend.

“You may not believe in ghosts and shit, but I do,” Aidan said. “I’ve seen your sister do and say strange things. Is it such a stretch to think I’d believe a séance might actually produce something of value? Especially if your aunt was the person we were trying to contact?”

The thought of contacting his deceased aunt, who had died rather violently, did not instill Finley with a great deal of hope. It rather had the opposite effect, and sent a shudder down his spine. “This is an awful idea,” he insisted.

“You’re just saying that because it’s my idea,” RJ shot back. “Look, ultimately it’s my call whether or not I want to conduct a séance or not. And I say yes, so you can suck my dick. Besides, seriously, after everything you’ve seen, why are ghosts such a stretch?”

“They just are,” Finley irrationally insisted. “Look, I can believe in the phenomenon most people call magic. There’s documented, empirical evidence of it. There’s even good scientific theory behind the ‘why’ of it working, like Burns’ Alchemist Theory. I can even believe in teleporting guys delivering portents. Asking me to believe that the dead can contact the living? That’s a fucking stretch.”

Aidan just gave him a pitying stare before returning back to his textbook, while RJ scoffed and went back to her seat. Nothing more was said about the subject, and Finley breathed a beleaguered sigh.

Over the passengers’ internal litanies of violent sexual fantasies, boredom, guilt, and anxiety, Aidan’s mind stuck out almost like a sore thumb as a rare bastion of brilliant calm in the eye of an otherwise deafening storm. Finley felt a bit like it was cheating, focusing on Aidan’s thoughts and diving into his mind, but he knew the man wouldn’t object if he’d known. In a way, it was better than the previous flight; Aidan was thereafter primarily focused on his schoolwork with a single-minded intensity that Finley envied and could only reproduce in himself when it came to solving complex math equations.

It was a relatively quick flight across the country, even though they had one stop in Atlanta for about an hour - roughly seven hours in total of being in a cramped tin can suspended in the air with the same people would have been the equivalent of mental torture for Finley if it weren’t for Aidan and his sister there, bearing it with him.

He couldn’t remember ever being so eager to see the bright and punishing Los Angeles sun when they landed around noon, having departed in the early morning. He disembarked with a sigh of profound relief, mixed with grim determination to just get through this, get through the airport, it’ll be worth it when you see Tim . . . There was a flood of people’s impatient, striking, arcing thoughts like waves that crashed over him, and he would’ve drowned had it not been for Aidan deciding at that moment to grip his hand tightly and remind him of his steady presence at his side. Aidan’s feelings of love and support dawned gently over the relentless clamor of the others.

“Thank you,” Finley said in a low voice.

“Like I said, I’m here for moral support,” Aidan offered with a smile.

They touched down with a grumpy and inebriated RJ in tow, and managed to hustle her along to the baggage claim in time to get their luggage. Though at first it seemed she was wandering off toward the smoking area outside, she led them straight to a Hummer pumping out rap music that was waiting for them, with Timothee Dunn in the driver’s seat.

Six foot four, ebony-skinned and muscular, he looked as ageless as ever in a characteristic pair torn jeans that Finley could swear he’d owned forever, and white T-shirt with psychedelic artistic designs. The only detectable visual difference was the small Afro that Tim had grown in RJ’s absence that now extended a few inches beyond his head, giving him a look Fin wasn’t used to. He stepped out and immediately engulfed RJ in a nearly bone-crushing hug. “You crazy bitch!” was his greeting as he picked her up off the ground and spun her in a circle.

“I missed you too, you big fuckin’ lug,” she greeted back and pulled away from the hug with a face-cracking grin. “Lookit you!” She touched his hair fondly.

He slapped her hand down, and her expression became sheepish. “Don’t you know better than to touch a man’s Afro?” Tim grumbled. Then, he spotted Finley and Aidan standing behind them on the curb. “Fin!” He crowed and Finley braced himself for another hug.

This one was pleasant, however, and contact with Tim revealed nothing about the man’s emotions other than a mix of relief and excitement. It wasn’t as pleasant as Aidan’s hugs, but it was tolerable for Finley. Aidan was subjected to one next, to his best friend’s delight.

“It’s been ages! How’ve you been?” Aidan asked pleasantly.

“We should get you loaded up before we talk about all that,” Tim suggested. “It’s gonna be a long trip through traffic back to my place, plenty of time to catch up and all.”

“Good, I could use some us-time before hitting up Magpie,” RJ said, referring to her band’s record label that Fin knew was across town in LA proper, near Burbank.

“I figured we’d save that shit for tomorrow,” Timothee said. “Today is for chilling.”

“Agreed,” she nodded.

Fin and Aidan loaded their bags in the back of the Hummer and clambered into the back seat while RJ dominated the front. Aidan’s hand immediately sought out Finley’s own and gave it a comforting squeeze. The casual, simple intimacy of it made Finley smile. Together they all took off through LAX’ winding complex and out onto the freeway south toward Tim’s home in Long Beach.

“I’ve been good,” Tim said as they changed lanes and hit a stop. “I mean, I’ve been playing drums. That’s pretty much my life, so not a lot has changed for me.”

“That’s it?” Aidan laughed. “Just drums? No arrests? Not even one stint in the mental institution?”

“That’s Ms. Psycho’s job here,” Tim answered fondly, patting Jeri on the leg who took the criticism with aplomb. “I’m a professional musician, man. Drums are my life. I’ve been playing with this other band for a while, but they’re not as good. Been doing some recordings here and there, writing a little music too, and I got a nice studio set up at my house I can show you for free time jamming. Beyond that? Nah, my life is pretty simple. How’ve you been?”

“School, school, school,” Aidan said. “Our lives pretty much revolve around it. I’m at least two thirds done with my degree, so I’ll be getting my bachelor’s sometime in the next two-ish years, depending on whether or not I decide to do summer school.”

“What about you, Fin?” Tim asked, catching Finley’s eye through the rear view mirror.

Even at a distance and through a reflection, he received a sharp spike of information from Tim’s gaze. Instantly Finley became aware that Tim was dating someone new, and was very nervous about it. Tim’s mental image of the woman in question was strangely familiar for a reason Fin couldn’t identify, even if he was sure he had never met her before. “Same as Aidan, really. Who’s this new chick?” He asked, smirking.

Tim rolled his eyes. He was used to the mind-reading at this point, and had never started any drama over it, being RJ’s oldest friend and one of Finley’s good friends besides. “Her name’s Pamela, and she’s an artist,” he drawled.

RJ cooed eagerly. “Ooooh, tell me all about her,” she begged.

“None of that,” he said sharply. “Besides, knowing you, you already did a background search on her,” he added.

Jeri cackled. “I’m not that bad, am I?” She asked rhetorically.

“Just don’t tell me anything about her,” Tim warned. “I’d rather figure it out on my own. Although do tell me if she turns out to be some, I dunno, psycho murderer or shit.”

“She’s not a murderer, I can guarantee that,” RJ answered seriously. “Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll just fantasize about it in my head. My imagination is better than reality, anyway.”

“I’d like to hear about her from you,” Aidan threw in, looking at Timothee.

Tim perked up. “She’s great. I’ll invite her over tonight, and you can meet her. You’ll like her. She’s a brilliant artist - she designed the shirt I’m wearing, actually, and she’s super open-minded, and way smarter than I am. Beautiful, too.”

“How’d you meet?”

“She showed up at Magpie actually, doing album art for this other sorta jazz, indie group I’m a part of. They’re called Fountain Breath, at least for now - they’ve changed their names at least five times. We started chatting and hit it off. Actually have a date planned with her for tomorrow night, this’ll be our third hang out.”

“Fountain Breath? T, really? Should I feel betrayed?” Jeri scoffed.

“They can’t all be Resurrection Rose,” Tim offered.

“I always hated that name,” she added.

“Yeah, well, you were outvoted,” he said.

“There was nothing wrong with Wax Mother,” RJ defended.

Tim shook his head. “So many things wrong with Wax Mother.”

“Resurrection Rose has more of a ring to it,” Aidan agreed.

Finley zoned out the rest of the ride to Long Beach. The conversation continued in a pleasant lull of small talk as Aidan, Tim, and RJ caught up on their activities over the past year, with RJ sharing a few stories about her time in the asylum. Carefully, no one brought up Mara or Teegan.

Tim lived in Belmont Park, closer to Naples and Alamitos Bay than toward downtown Long Beach on a street called Vista. It was a dark gray three-story five-bedroom home that Finley didn’t want to know the cost of, lest he be disgusted by the housing market of southern California. Hidden behind some juniper trees in the front, the comfortable house opened up into a welcoming living room with a wall-to-floor bookshelf in the place of a television, with a neighboring sound system hooked up next to an old record player. Tim was a collector of old records, as far back as Finley could remember, and used to work in the local music shop back in Georgia where they grew up where he’d first started collecting. It was endearing to see after all this time that he’d kept up the practice.

Once Fin and Aidan had dropped off their bags in the guest room and gotten situated, they decided to take a brief power nap and curled up next to each other comfortably on the big guest bed, both equally exhausted from the flight and drive. No one begrudged them the space; even RJ seemed eager to leave them alone.

Before long, they woke up and returned downstairs to find Tim and RJ sitting in the kitchen and grinning like fools. “Anyone want some mushrooms?” Timothee offered. “I’ve got acid in the freezer too.”

Aidan laughed helplessly. “Hell of a thing to offer out of nowhere.”

“I’ve already taken my shroomies,” Jeri said.

“Me too,” said Tim. “We figured we’d share the love. Offer’s open, if not that’s cool too, no peer pressure here.”

“It’s been awhile . . . But yeah, sure, why not?” Aidan shrugged.

Finley was startled by the abrupt change of pace in the last few seconds, and looked to his best friend. “You sure?” He asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Aidan nodded his blond head and adjusted his rectangular glasses on his face. “Absolutely.”

Tim clapped once. “Sweet.” He pulled a small sandwich bag loaded to the brim with dried, long, bluish mushrooms and motioned Aidan over to a nearby black kitchen scale. “How much you want? I’ll measure it out. This is all stuff I’ve been growing on my own, all safe. Nothing weird in ‘em, just pure, free psilocybin cubensis.”

“You’ve been growing them?” Fin asked, impressed.

“Hell yeah. Got a whole grow operation up in here,” Tim grinned.

“It’s pretty sweet,” RJ added. “You should see his weed room in the basement.”

“Oh yeah, I got weed too.” He turned back to Aidan, who was eying the bag with mild trepidation. Fin could sense nothing but surety from his thoughts, however. “When’s the last time you did some?” Tim asked.

“About two years ago,” Aidan answered. “I think I had about three grams.”

“You looking for something more intense, or about the same?”

“I don’t think I could handle more, to be honest.”

“I’ll take about the same,” Fin threw in.

Aidan was surprised. “I thought you were against psychedelics?”

“I don’t mind them,” Finley corrected, “It’s just hard to, you know.” He waved his hands around his head. Aidan’s eyebrow rose in understanding. “But, we’re all safe here, so I’ve got nothing to worry about. I just don’t like doing them in larger crowds.”

“Well, that makes sense. Doing these in a crowd would be fucking horrible.”

“It’ll be great!” Jeri gushed. Her blue eyes twinkled in excitement. “We’ll hang out in the courtyard, play some music, have a chill afternoon before the party.”

Finley felt left out of the loop, and a little dismayed. He exchanged a look of trepidation with Aidan. “Party?” He queried uneasily.

“Yeah, around nine we have a little get together planned,” Tim answered easily. “Don’t worry, the shrooms will wear off before then. It’s barely one. Just a ‘welcome back from prison’ party for Jeri. It’s the band, plus some plus-ones. Plus you get to meet Pam!”

“How big we talking about here?” Fin asked.

Tim shrugged. “Ten, maybe twelve people?”

“That’s not too bad,” said Aidan.

“Maybe more, I don’t know, it’s only word of mouth. Basically it’s whoever the band decided to bring along. Might be a bit of a jam sesh, we’ll see.”

At that moment, the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” Jeri cried excitedly and ran off toward the door, sliding on the dark wooden floors in her black socks.

Tim had just measured out the mushrooms and handed Finley and Aidan their portions on little plates. “You ready?” Fin asked Aidan.

“Definitely,” Aidan answered, and they ate them raw. “So how long ago did you take yours?” He addressed this to Tim.

“About an hour,” he said. “I started coming up when you two woke up.”

“How much did you take?” Fin wondered.

“About five G. I’m a professional,” he added with a grin and a laugh. “I’m getting pretty toasty. Might go lay in the hammock out in the yard. Feel free to make yourselves at home.”

“ALEX IS HERE!” RJ called from the main room, and a vaguely Russian grunt followed this from Alexei’s direction.

“Sweet,” said Tim.

Alexei Kuznetzov was a six-foot even Russian professional guitarist, who to Finley seemed to always look like the epitome of grunge rock. He had long, wavy, messy hair, torn jeans and was always wearing one band-T or another as his more or less permanent outfit, with the exception of the costumes the band wore on stage. His moss-green eyes took in the scene around him with aplomb, and his thoughts and observations washed over Finley like gentle water.

He’d always gotten along well with RJ’s band members, in some ways much more easily than he got along with RJ. Most professional musicians - at least the ones that he’d met - were not highly invasive or anxious with their thoughts and feelings, with the exception of Jen Sugiyama who was a rampant and perpetual ray of sunshine.

“Did the party start without me?” Alex asked in his lightly accented voice. He eyed the shrooms that Aidan was still finishing on his plate.

“Hey Al,” Tim greeted with a white-toothed grin. “Nah, we just started. Are you partaking?”

Alex considered this. “I think I shall, yes, if that’s all we’re doing.”

“Sure, sure, measure some out, help yourself. I’ll be in the yard,” Tim said and stood up to stretch. He ambled his way slowly out of the kitchen and out the door to the back yard.

“I’ll join you,” Jeri offered. “You two comin’?” She looked to Fin and Aidan.

Aidan eyed Finley and there was a moment of silent communication. “Yeah, outside sounds nice,” Aidan decided for them, and finished his mushrooms. “Lemme grab some water first.”

Finley laid himself down on the grass some feet away from Tim who was in a crochet hammock situated between two palm trees. When Aidan followed soon after with a glass of water in hand, he laid himself down next to Finley and together they basked in the shade of the midday sun. Nearby, RJ noodled on her mother’s old guitar while attempting to tune it.

“This is nice,” Aidan announced pleasantly. “I think we needed this.”

Finley smiled. After the week or so that they’d had, he couldn’t agree more. “Yeah.”

“Man, this action is so fucked up,” Jeri complained. He glanced over at her and saw her examining the guitar in distaste. “I might have to send it in.”

“What?” he asked.

“The action.” She indicated to the fretboard, tapping it with her fingers. “The strings are too far away from the fret board, because it was so dehydrated up in the attic for all those years.”

“I didn’t know guitars got dehydrated.”

“Well, they do. When they’re made of wood they need humidity or they get fucked up, like this one. Like all wooden instruments.”

Tim looked over at her with a lazy smile. “Where’d you get that old thing?”

“It was actually my mom’s,” she explained. “I found it in my aunt’s attic and took it. We found a couple of things.”

“Like that rosary?” Tim pointed toward her neck, where Mara’s black and silver rosary sat in its new resting place. “Doesn’t seem like you to wear Jesus shit, despite the cross tattoo on your shoulder,” he laughed.

“Yeah, it was Mara’s,” she answered. “I like it. It’s got good vibes. And I originally got that tattoo to honor her, thank you very much.”

More solemnly and with a frown, Tim said, “I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I’m real sorry to hear about what happened to her.”

The thoughts of the funeral seemed so distant now, like they’d happened to someone else, in some other family, at some other time and place. “We all are,” RJ said soberly. “It’s okay though. Thanks. At least I got this guitar out of it. You know, I never had anything of my mom’s before. But this guitar, it means a lot to me.” She paused for a moment, and for not the first or last time, Finley wondered just what in the world she was thinking. “She brought it with her everywhere. I even remember sitting at her feet, listening to her play on it. I think that’s one of my first memories.”

“That’s a great memory to have,” said Tim. “My first memory, I think, is I remember my mama beatin’ my ass with a flip flop when she caught me throwing rocks at cars.” He laughed, white teeth flashing in the shade. “That, or it was crawling on the ground and finding a cockroach. Not the most pleasant memory, but it’s what I got.”

Jeri chuckled. “Explains a lot about you, T.”

Fin thought back to his earliest memories, and settled on one. “My first memory is of you bandaging my knee after falling off my trikey,” he said out loud, drawing RJ’s eye.

Her eyes widened. “Holy shit, I think I remember that. You were crying like a baby!”

“I was a baby,” he gently corrected.

“You must’ve been three or four,” she realized. “That wasn’t long after we moved in with Dad. It was your first trike. Dad was on the porch, drinking, laughing his ass off at the whole thing.”

Aidan chuckled next to Finley. “Well that explains a lot about you, Jeri.”

Fin turned to him. “What’s your first memory?” He wondered. He chose not to pry into Aidan’s brain for once searching for it, preferring the organic answer.

“Me?” Aidan thought back, eyes rolling back up to the clear blue Californian sky. His thoughts spiraled back to his childhood in a dizzying whirl. “My sister Arabella, pulling my hair,” he decided with a smile.

“You have a sister?” RJ blurted.

“I actually have three,” Aidan revealed. “One older, two younger. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you,” she said with a shrug. “I guess the subject of your family must’ve never come up with me.”

Aidan shrugged. “Well, whenever we’re around each other, there’s usually a lot of other shit going on. But yeah, I’ve got three sisters, two parents, they all live in Iowa except for the oldest sister, that’s Bella, who lives in Chicago now. She’s a lawyer for the DA. Real proud of her.”

“Huh.”

“The younger two, Chelsea and Skye, are still in school.”

“What do your parents do?” Tim wondered.

Aidan smiled fondly as he thought of his parents. Finley held a lot of love for them, for both the way they raised Aidan and the way they were as people. He couldn’t think of two more loving, deserving people that he knew. “When they’re not busy being sickeningly in love with each other, my mom runs her own shop - she sells crystals and jewelry in a little local joint. She’s very Wiccan. My dad’s a diesel mechanic, best one in the region. I come from whatever the opposite of a broken home is.”

“I’ve met his parents,” Finley told them. “They’re pretty fucking awesome people.”

“They sound like my kind of people,” said Tim.

“They’d love you,” Aidan said. “And you too, Jeri, even if you’re hard to love sometimes.”

She laughed good-naturedly. “Ouch!”

“I speak only the truth.”

“You do have a tendency to push people away,” Finley noted clinically.

She blinked in disbelief. “Am I being psychoanalyzed? Gimme a fuckin’ break, I’m on mushrooms.”

“What better time to be psychoanalyzed?” Aidan smirked.

“Aw come on, Aidan, don’t do this,” she whined. “I need a break from head stuff. I just got back from my aunt’s funeral.”

“Fine, fine.”

After a moment of pause, Timothee asked: “How’d she die?”

Silence reigned after this statement.

“. . . Badly,” was all Fin could say. No one else could say anything.

“Oh. I’m, uh, sorry for asking. I was morbidly curious,” Tim admitted honestly.

“It’s still a bit of a touchy subject,” Aidan added delicately. “Maybe another time.”

“Yeah, for sure. Sorry,” said Tim.

“It’s pretty complicated, T,” Jeri summarized for his benefit. “I’ll give you the entire spiel later. Let’s just try and enjoy the afternoon instead.”

Alex finally emerged from the kitchen and blinked as his eyes dilated in the added light. He pulled his hair back into a ponytail with a scrunchie he had on his wrist, and immediately went over to RJ and examined the guitar in her hands with a professional eye. “That instrument is fucking archaic,” he noted. “Where’d you acquire it?”

“Belonged to my mom,” she said.

“Can I see?” He demanded more than asked.

“Be gentle,” was all she added before handing it over. Finley was mildly surprised since he was sure no one would ever be able to pry that instrument from her fingers unless she was cold and dead, but she seemed to trust Alex far more than anyone else with it and easily bequeathed it over.

“The action needs adjusting,” Alex said. “Definitely needs new strings.” He put it through its paces and played a few riffs that Finley vaguely recognized, and some that he did not. “This feels like an old Spanish guitar,” he added.

RJ nodded. “It was, yeah. My mom was in a gypsy jazz band. It’s been sitting up in an attic for over a decade, gathering dust.”

Alex smiled. “It just needs some love. I can bring by some strings later for it,” he offered.

She smiled back at him radiantly. “I’d appreciate that, dude. Thanks. What kind?”

“I’ve got some of everything.”

“I was thinking of getting it treated.”

Alex shook his head. “Nah. Action’s bound to be high on old acoustics. These strings are dead, though.” Despite Alex assessment of the strings, Finley’s ear couldn’t detect anything wrong with the instrument as he played some classical pieces. I suppose that’s why I’m not a professional musician.

Timothee rolled out of his hammock and stretched. “I’m gonna go inside and make a smoothie. Anyone else want a berry smoothie?”

“I’ll take one,” Aidan said.

“Yeah, that sounds nice,” said Finley.

RJ added, “One for me too.”

Alex simply shook his head and continued noodling on the guitar, while RJ was content to simply watch.

They came up under the partly cloudy sky like that, enjoying smoothies in the sunshine, perfectly content to simply be. RJ, Aidan, and Fin soon ended up laying in a circle in the shade of the sun with their heads at the center as Alex played rambling tunes and Tim swayed in his hammock while tapping a drum beat on his legs, each of them lost in their own thoughts and experiences.

Finley’s ordinarily swirling thoughts that traveled exhausting miles in the span of seconds slowed to a blissfully mundane pace as he lay in the grass contemplating the universe in its infinite majesty. He could sense the thoughts of the others in his vicinity traveling at their own paces, with the exception of his sister who was as always a blank, black, impenetrable enigma. Aidan was a shining sea of possibilities and marvelous sensations, Tim was a burbling stream of consciousness, Alex a rushing musical river, and Finley himself felt more at peace than he could’ve ever thought possible considering the circumstances of the past few weeks. He lay there, absorbing it all. He could feel the tilting of the planet under his back, hurtling through the galaxy at an incomprehensible speed, just on the edge of reason . . .

“This must be a what a hypersphere feels like,” he realized.

RJ laughed. He could feel it in the earth beneath them. “Uh, what?”

“I second that ‘what’ and raise you a ‘huh,’” said Aidan next to him.

Finley struggled to explain. “Hmm. Imagine you’re in a dimension where you can only travel in four directions: up, down, left, and right. That’s the second dimension. A drawing of a polygon is in the second dimension. The third dimension introduces two new directions - forward, and backward. Like a cube, or a sphere. The fourth dimension introduces two new directions on top of that - past, and future. That’s the dimension we live in. With me so far?”

“Yes,” Aidan confirmed.

“No,” said RJ dubiously.

He felt it couldn’t be helped. “Alright, well, a hypersphere is a structure that exists in the fifth dimension. A regular sphere is a third dimensional object that when you stand on its surface, seemingly exists in the second dimension. That’s why you can’t see curvature of the Earth when you’re standing on it. It’s an analog for the universe - it’s theorized that we exist on the plane of a hypersphere. That this dimension we live in, this universe that we perceive as fourth-dimensional reality, exists on the curved surface of a fifth dimensional object.”

“And you’re thinking about this because . . .?” Aidan trailed off curiously.

“I dunno, I guess because I’m high,” Finley chuckled.

“You’re in pretty deep already,” Tim laughed, overhearing them. “Reminds me of the last mushroom trip we had. Al and I got into this super in-depth conversation about the nature of morality. He kept bringing Nietzsche up into it.”

“He’s the father of amorality,” Al defended.

“But he can’t qualify the experience of love, or universal compassion,” Tim disagreed. “Nietzsche raised a valid point, but you can’t deny he assumed that all people are basically the same assholes no matter where you’re at, which isn’t true. Some people fundamentally just aren’t assholes.”

“Everyone is an asshole to some degree,” Alex disagreed, “but I’ll concede that Nietzsche was a cynical bastard about human nature.”

“He’d just finished reading the Genealogy of Morality,” Tim explained to a curious Finley.

“Have you read Kant?” Aidan perked up, looking over to Alex.

Alex briefly stopped playing on the guitar to address him. “Only a little, and just for fun. I get what he’s saying about ‘good will,’ even if I don’t agree with it. Insofar as ‘good’ exists as a concept, I think it varies from culture to culture too much for there to be any universal definition of morality. I do agree with Kant that morality exists because we are inherently rational beings. We develop morality on a fundamentally rational basis.”

“You fucking nerds,” RJ criticized, groaning. “What a waste of a good mushroom trip. Did you argue about this the whole time?”

“It wasn’t really an argument, we just got into a debate about it,” Alex explained. “Not all of us hate intellectualism and philosophy with the passion of a thousand dying stars, like you.”

She made a jerk-off motion with her hand and completed it with sound effects.

Aidan continued Alex’s line of thought, ignoring her. “So, you agree then that logic and morality come from the same place - from a place of reason, from the rational human mind? What about his stance on lying?”

“I agree with Kant, more or less,” Alex nodded. “The categorical maxim makes sense, the way I understand it - if we act in a manner that, if our will became universally imposed, it would logically make sense to continue to do so because it benefited everybody. I just don’t think morality itself is universal, though. He was also a bit of a hardass when it came to the subject of lies; some lies can be beneficial, or are necessary in their proper context. What was that about Winston Churchill - he said truth in wartime is attended to by a bodyguard of lies? Something like that.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Aidan agreed. “Shame Kant was kinda racist.”

“Really?” Alexei looked disappointed. “I didn’t read into his biography. That is a shame.”

“He was a product of his time, never left his hometown in Prussia, basically sneered down at most other races and genders,” Aidan summarized. “Still, he raised good points. Best to take his philosophy with a grain of salt.”

“Oh man,” Tim laughed. “Do I want to know what he said about black people?”

“Probably not,” said Aidan. “He was a far cry from Sojourner Truth or Fredrick Douglass. Kant’s philosophy can be applied to everyone - that is, that every human was equally capable of individual logic and reason - but he tended to disregard anyone that wasn’t exclusively white and male as sub-human.”

“So what happened to Uwe?” RJ wondered randomly aloud, and sat up from the grass to look at Alex and Tim. “It was kinda garbled over the phone.” Uwe Yiranek, Finley knew off hand, had been their bassist of many years.

“Oh.” Alex seemed surprised. “I thought you knew in that way you just . . . Know things.”

“I don’t know everything,” Jeri frowned.

“She’s back in Ukraine,” he explained, “currently engaged and last I heard she was pregnant to boot.”

It took a couple of full seconds for Jeri to process this, but once she did she seemed to decide that she liked what she heard. And laid back down in the grass. “That’s good. Good for her. I hope it’s a girl. What am I saying; I know it’ll be a girl.”

“Wasn’t she your bassist?” Fin asked, feeling ignorant.

“’Was’ being the operative word,” Alex chuckled. “We can always find a new bassist. Shit, I can play bass in the meantime. It isn’t as if we really a live rhythm guitar the way we need live bass. We can always settle for a track for my part.”

“Yeah, ‘cause bitch you know I’m not playing the bass guitar,” RJ laughed. “My hands are way too small for that shit. But I’m seriously happy for Uwe.”

An executive decision was made at a certain point over Finley’s head that they would head down to Los Alamitos beach, but Finley was afraid it would be too crowded and elected to stay behind. While RJ, Alex, and Tim left with the old guitar in tow, Aidan volunteered to stay behind with him, and so the two ended up alone - at least together - in Tim’s big and empty house.

Eventually, the sun beat down on them too punishing to bear, so they found themselves back inside curled up around one another comfortably on Tim’s big black leather L-shaped couch.

“I’m so comfortable,” Aidan marveled, like he couldn’t believe it.

“I know,” Finley smiled. He could see Aidan’s thoughts written next to his own, like a mirror. For a moment, they were close enough that what the other felt was shared simultaneously; it was as if Finley had transferred his powers of empathy to Aidan. He would even put money on their heartbeats beating in the same rhythm.

He met Aidan’s gaze unflinchingly, and stared for he couldn’t possibly have known how long. As the time ticked away, a column of sun had found its way down to them and brushed Aidan’s head, giving him a halo of gold. “There’s a rainbow of color in your eyes,” Finley realized as he stared into Aidan’s hidden hazel depths.

Aidan smiled. “I see the same in yours,” he said. “It’s like, every color imaginable all at once.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It is. You’re beautiful.”

And for some reason, this made Finley cry. “I’m sorry,” he instinctively blurted as tears welled up, and started to go about the work of suppressing them. A tidal swell of unfiltered emotion threatened to spill out and ruin the moment, a mixture of grief from Mara’s death and fear for the future that had quietly been overwhelming him in his few and rare unguarded moments.

A wave of love overcame him as Aidan leaned forward to pull him into a hug. “Please stop fucking apologizing for having feelings, Finley,” Aidan quietly plead. “It breaks my heart.”

For some awful, awful reason, Finley’s mind reached back to Teegan. He’d forgotten all about it until that moment, but the last mushroom trip he’d been on had been with her. They’d spent the entire day out in the wilderness and fallen asleep talking to each other and laughing, looking at the stars. “Oh God,” he whispered into Aidan’s shoulder, staining it with shuddering tears. “I miss her so fucking much it hurts.”

“I know. I miss her too. Let it out, it’s okay.”

Finley didn’t know what else to do, so he simply let himself cry, because Aidan didn’t seem to mind and kept quietly assuring him with his presence and his touch that it was alright. Thoughts and memories of Teegan and Mara swam to the surface to dwell and mingle free with his anxieties over his sister and the future that had generated seemingly the moment Ramiel had first appeared and completely upended their lives. Is anything ever going to be normal again?

“Normal is overrated,” Aidan assured him.

It took a few seconds for the fact that Finley hadn’t expressed his concerns aloud to sink in. When it did, he sniffled and pulled back to stare at Aidan in confusion. “You heard that?” He wondered.

“Heard what? You lamenting normality? As if being normal is something to be proud of or aspire to?” Aidan rolled his eyes. “I said normal is overrated and I meant it.”

“Aidan, I didn’t say that, I thought it,” he gently corrected.

Aidan’s mouth closed in a silent ‘o.’ “Am I a telepath now too?” He asked, sounding excited.

Finley frowned. “I don’t think so . . . I think I must’ve put the thought there, so you could pick up on it. Sort of like how you taught me to project feelings, you know?”

“So you mean, you can communicate now mind-to-mind, like a Vulcan?”

“Sort of,” Finley struggled to explain, but he was too high to articulate it properly. “Meh, I’ll figure it out later,” he decided. “Now is the time for snuggles.”

Aidan readjusted so Finley could lay on him again, using him partially as a body-pillow. “That is always allowed.”

“Sorry about getting all . . . weepy,” Finley apologized again, out of habit.

“Seriously, stop apologizing,” Aidan chided gently. “There’s no need. I’m happy to be the shoulder you can cry on. You’ve also been through a lot in the past few days, and it might help you to keep that in perspective. You’re allowed to feel however you feel about it - that’s entirely valid.”

Finley wasn’t sure what to say to that. If he’d ever cried as a child, he was chided by his siblings for it or knocked over the head by his father until he stopped. Part of him felt criminal, having any kind of naked emotion open in front of other people - but he’d gotten used to it over the past few years with Aidan. He’d gotten used to it with Teegan too, and had let her under his guard - and oh, how that absence ached at him, like he was missing half of himself. He was starting to understand how Aidan had always been vitally there, reassuring and kind, even when Finley didn’t deserve it. “I do love you,” he admitted quietly. “Please don’t ever doubt that.”

“I never do,” Aidan promised.

He leaned up to look into Aidan’s kaleidoscopic eyes again, and asked, “Can I kiss you?”

Aidan responded by pulling him back down to meet Fin’s lips with his own in a searing, blissful moment of pure happiness that was cut short just as the main door banged open and his sister’s voice trailed from the doorway, along with Alex and Tim’s gently bickering tenors. “We’re back, nerds!” She called.

Finley pulled himself away, frowning at the door. “Can we ignore them?” He requested bitterly.

Aidan laughed. “Come on, there will be privacy later. Let’s say hi.”

The beach had apparently been too hot and crowded to enjoy, much like Finley had predicted. They’d come back after wandering around in the hot sand in bare feet and finding the odd broken pretty seashell. When he followed Aidan to the front room, he saw Tim and Alex taking off their sandals while RJ stood bent over on the front porch shaking the sand out of her mother’s guitar irritably and mumbling to herself.

“This is why playing music at the beach is overrated,” Alex told her.

“Shut up, Al,” she snapped. “I don’t care how right you are.”

“You guys alright?” Tim checked in, looking to Aidan and Finley.

“Never better,” said Aidan, and Fin nodded along. He’d wiped his eyes of their traces of grief before. “When’s the party?” He wondered.

Tim shrugged. “Probably around nine. It’s almost six, so I figured we’d order some food, then wait around for people to show up.”

“Sounds like a plan. I vote sushi.”

“I vote tacos,” RJ threw in.

“I also vote sushi,” Alex added, and then Fin simultaneously.

“Aww,” she pouted.

“Sushi it is,” Tim agreed and walked into the kitchen, pulling out his phone along the way and looking up the nearest sushi restaurant.

It took about forty-five minutes for food to arrive. They all killed time by playing card games and chit-chatting, trading stories and memories. Aidan refrained and chose to peruse Tim’s small library and settled himself in with a thick book of poetry by Pablo Neruda. Fin excused himself from the game eventually and found himself drawn over to Aidan’s side like a magnet for the rest of the evening, curling up next to him on the couch and closing his eyes, resting and basking in the man’s affection like an attention-starved cat.

“There is no space wider than that of grief,” Aidan read quietly, “there is no universe like that which bleeds.”

Fin opened his eyes to stare up at his best friend. “That’s . . . Deep,” he said.

“It’s the shortest poem in this whole book,” said Aidan. “I think it might be my favorite one that I’ve found.”

“Read me another,” Fin requested, quite enjoying the peaceful moment and the calming sound of Aidan’s voice.

Aidan flipped to a few random pages and perused for a moment, before settling on one with a smile. “I love the handful of the earth you are. Because of its meadows, vast as a planet, I have no other star. You are my replica of the multiplying universe. Your wide eyes are the only light I know from extinguished constellations; your skin throbs like the streak of a meteor through rain . . .”

They passed the time like this, until the next thing Finley knew, Aidan was shaking him awake. Slowly he wiped the sleep out of his eyes and met Aidan’s gaze with a sheepish grin. “How long was I out?” He wondered.

“About two hours,” Aidan reported. “I decided to let you sleep.”

“Thanks.”

“Tim said Jen and Loanna should be here any moment. Alex left but he’ll be back shortly. Tino will be by later.”

“Finny!” Jeri greeted with a wide, slightly inebriated smile. She had changed clothes and was now back in leather pants and a black top with such jagged rips in it that looked like it was falling off her frame. “Wakey-wakey, the party’s going to kick off soon.”

“Ugh, what time is it?” Fin groggily asked Aidan, turning back to him.

“About eight o’clock, give or take.”

“I told Tim my plan about the séance, and he’s on board,” she reported.

Finley groaned. “Not this again.”

“It’s my life, you can’t tell me how to live it,” she reminded him. “And besides, you’re not participating in it. So don’t be shitty!”

“I’m not?”

“No. I have other plans for you, little brother.” He didn’t like the smirk on her face as she said this, not one bit.

“Should we be worried about that statement?” Aidan asked of the air.

“Don’t worry your pretty head none,” RJ reassured him with a pat on his golden head. “Everything will be dandy. You’ll see.”

“Yep. Now I’m officially worried.”

The mushrooms had nearly completely worn off by the time Alex returned with a set of promised guitar strings for RJ’s antique guitar, and he immediately went about the work of re-stringing it carefully under RJ’s nervous supervision.

Jen Sugiyama was the first of the three errant Resurrection Rose members to show up to Tim’s house not long after Alex. He was the same height as Jeri and Fin, this time dressed in a studded blue pleather jacket with frills, jeans, and rainbow sunglasses; Fin’s experience of Jen had always been that the man himself was a twenty-four-seven spectacle, and he treated life itself as if it were a show to be performed. His appearance, and manner, were always deliberately showcased - Fin suspected from snooping on his thoughts that this was deep down because Jen simply craved attention. He was intentionally, and genuinely, quite charming. He announced his presence by singing at the top of his lungs and immediately engulfing Jeri in a bone-crushing hug as soon as she opened the door.

“I missed you so much,” Jen said once he had calmed down and pulled away.

“I missed you too, more than you know,” RJ reassured him with a grin.

He hit her on the shoulder with more force than he clearly intended. “That was for abandoning us to go to prison like a lame-ass.”

RJ rubbed her shoulder ruefully. “It was an asylum, it was hardly ‘prison.’ I spent like, one day in actual jail.”

“Still,” he frowned.

“It wasn’t really that bad, I promise,” she said. “Scheduled activities and set meal times a day - really it was better than the way I was living before, in a lot of ways. Anyway, don’t think of it as prison. Think of it as a mental health vacation.”

“You’re one crazy bitch,” Jen ascertained.

RJ nodded. “Yeah, that’s what T said. Come on, they’re in the kitchen.”

“Hang on,” Jen told her and turned to where Fin and Aidan were on the couch. He lit up at the sight of Finley and opened his arms for a hug; Finley was unable to resist, and stood up to hug him. It was a pleasant hug - Jen was filled with so much excitement that it nearly transferred over to Finley and he experienced a brief, giddy sensation. “It’s been ages! How the hell are you?” He asked, and broke the hug to look at Aidan before Fin could answer. “Who’s this?”

“This is my best friend Aidan,” Fin introduced, unable to draw forth the memory of the last time Aidan had interacted with RJ’s band members.

“Aidan! It’s lovely to meet you!” Another embrace was enthusiastically exchanged; Aidan had a wide grin on his face as the sunny Jen hugged him.

When Jen pulled away, he turned to address Finley again. “So what are you two doing here?”

“Babysitting my sister,” Fin reported dryly.

“He wishes,” Jeri scoffed, and grabbed Jen’s hand and dragged him off toward the kitchen. “Come on! I wanna show you my new guitar!”

“You bought another one?” Jen guffawed.

“No, I inherited one!”

There was a tentative knock on the door that no one but Fin and Aidan seemed to hear. The duo exchanged a look before Fin ambled over to answer it. On the other side, hand raised in poise to knock, was Loanna Chambers - a woman he’d only briefly met at the previous parties. She was the female lead singer and performer, and was roughly five feet tall with a halo of dark curly hair and a happy round face. She was dressed in a sun-dress of sunflowers, and seemed surprised to see him, and smiled as tentatively as her knock. “Hello Fin!” She greeted, sounding a little nervous as she looked up at him.

He did a surface scan of her thoughts to see where the nervousness came from; she was preoccupied with thoughts of his sister and her sobriety, and worried about Jeri’s condition after returning. Politely, Fin did not comment on this, although he shared some of her concerns. “Hey, Lo,” he greeted back, and opened the door wide for her to enter. He didn’t offer her a hug; he knew that unlike Jen, she wasn’t as physical with her affection.

“You must be Loanna,” Aidan said with a smile.

She smiled back. “And you’re . . . ?”

“Oh sorry, I’m Aidan,” he introduced, and offered her a hand to shake. She did so with aplomb. “I’m with Finley, we flew in with Jeri.”

“How is she?” Loanna honestly wondered, brows knitting in concern.

“Better than before,” Aidan honestly admitted. “Incarceration doesn’t seemed to have affected her as much as it should have, or she’s downplaying - who’s to say? But, it’s good to keep in mind that she’s . . . Been through a lot lately, with what happened to Mara and . . .”

“I heard,” she nodded and turned to look Finley in the eyes. She gave him a look not of pity, or sorrow, or pain, but was a mute acceptance of his grief. He was briefly struck by Loanna’s sincerity of character as she said, “My father died two years ago. It never goes away, but it gets easier over time . . . Or you get used to the hole they leave behind. Either way, it gets better, I promise.”

“I believe you,” Finley said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He could feel her pain for a moment through her eyes like a reflection of his own. RJ had avoided the subject or drowned it in alcohol, and Aidan had been there to pick him up when he fell down, and yet it was this veritable stranger who had finally given him something he hadn’t realized he’d needed - a feeling of absolution. There was a promise in her eyes that the pain would one day end.

Loanna attended to the kitchen with the others in subdued fashion, even as she was greeted with enthusiasm and hugs. Finley decided he rather liked her, despite never having gotten to know her very well. Neither Aidan nor Finley felt the need to intrude on the band’s reacquainting, and remained in the front room reading and lounging until Valentino came knocking.

Finley wasn’t actually sure what Tino’s surname was, he realized as he opened the door and met the long-haired, pony-tailed Cuban in the bright brown eyes. His answering smile was wide and friendly - “Finley!” He was greeted with a hug that he couldn’t deny despite his misgivings about hugs.

But what was his name? He’d only ever been introduced or credited as ‘Valentino.’ There had always been something secretive about Tino, something he avoided thinking even in his thoughts - perhaps because he thought the government could read his thoughts. Despite being a bit of a conspiracy theorist about that (and Finley was aware of the irony of being a telepath in this circumstance), he was generally a simple person. If you treated him well, he treated you well. If you let him talk your ear off once about weather-control magic, as Finley had done roughly three years ago when they had met, you were friends with him for life.

“It’s good to see you again,” Finley admitted honestly, pulling away from the hug. He opened the door wider so Tino could step inside, and introduced Aidan when the man waved from the couch.

Tino meandered into the kitchen after the others and once there was engulfed in a hug by a relieved Jeri. Soon after, the actual party showed up.

There were too many new names and faces to keep track of, each with their own tenor of thoughts, so Finley kept his mind under careful guard. Thankfully, Aidan stuck by his side throughout, so he never lost his grounding.

First there was Pamela who was a little late and apologized immediately to him for this despite not knowing who he was. She was an pretty Asian girl with warm brown eyes and a funky dual-ponytail, who could have been anywhere from twenty to forty and Finley wouldn’t have trusted himself to guess or ask for fear of being rude. Her introduction was largely drowned out by the presence of three more people that Finley didn’t know on the doorstep, each of them some kind of sound technician or studio assistant vaguely connected to the band.

That was when Finley lost track of all the people; it didn’t help that he generally disliked meeting new people just on principle, since most people weren’t aware that only about ten percent of their actual thoughts got spoken aloud. The rest were their shameful secrets that only he was privy to. He was treated to an endless stream of consciousness from the front door of a mixture of anticipation, glee, sexual urges, and a smidgen of anxiety as four more people followed the three that had followed Pamela.

Soon enough, he found himself back on the couch sitting next to Aidan, this time a great deal less comfortable than he had been. “I know you hate parties,” Aidan spoke up, “but it’s for your sister.”

“All the parties I’ve been to have been for her, actually. At least there’s less people here than there were at the last one,” Fin noted. Not that I particularly want to remember the last one. A nervous, gut reaction told him that something terrible was going to happen, at any moment.

As if sensing the turn his thoughts had taken, RJ rounded the corner from the kitchen and looped her arm under his, drawing him away from Aidan who blinked after them, startled. “We need to have a talk, brother mine,” she informed him in a low voice as she led them upstairs.

Once they were in the guest bathroom, the purpose for the desired privacy was clear as Jeri pulled off a hand-mirror from its position on the wall near the vanity sink, and with the other hand pulled out a little bag of white powder.

“Jesus,” was all Finley could think to say as she lined out several hits of cocaine with a business card and fished out a straw from her back pocket.

“Don’t bring religion into it,” RJ cautioned and sent him a wild grin. She passed the mirror over his way first, once it was ready. “I’m going to need you sharp for this, Fin. Don’t make me pull rank on you.”

He stared down at the small, really innocuous seeming lines, and he remembered Anton. It was the last party he’d done cocaine at with his sister, inadvertently summoned from memory; it was the last party either of them had been at, really, since the night had officially ended with Anton in the hospital and Jeri in jail for aggravated assault.

Initially it had been an easygoing evening. He’d gotten drunk or high in Anton’s company so often that it hardly mattered, another night. The man had always struck Finley as a little greasy, but harmless. Finley remembered nothing particularly out of the ordinary that night, only that he was feeling gloomier than usual since his thoughts kept tending toward Teegan and missing her. It had barely been six months since the funeral, and Jeri’s coping mechanism was to distract him with as much activity as possible - that included concerts and parties. By association, he gained access to the circles that she traveled in. Which, unfortunately, included Anton.

When Mandi came with a tearful confession after Anton left, it took him completely by surprise. Finley would never have imagined Anton violating the sanctity of RJ’s home by stealing from her, let alone violating Amanda herself. Mandi had been in shock, trying to articulate what happened even as she relived it over and over in her mind. Finley had been unable to erase the mental image from his own mind’s eye, so he’d kept it safe for Anton when they found him and implanted it in Anton’s mind instead. It had been his first attempt at projecting a thought - at controlling one’s thoughts - but it miraculously had worked . . . Until it didn’t. Anton relived Mandi’s worst memory until he died of a brain hemhorrage in the hospital, apparently induced by the beating he’d received when Jeri had tracked him down.

It hadn’t been traceable, what Finley had done, but his death held consequences. Consequences he was now looking at directly in that little hand mirror.

“Trust me, Fin,” Jeri urged when she noticed his silence. That had been what she’d said, right before the police had arrived to arrest her as she laughed and flirted with the man handcuffing her. The cop had thrust her against the hood of his car to cuff her while she had cackled. Trust me, Fin.

“Why are we doing this?” He had to know.

RJ looked him straight in the eyes and said, “I always knew you had a thing for Mandi. And I blame myself as much as you blame yourself for what happened to her, but it’s in the past now and we have to look forward. The future is full of cults tryna kill us and mystical teleporting men, Finley. Do you think you can handle it?”

“I meant the coke specifically,” he corrected.

“Oh. Well, because it’s fun, and I need you to be on the ball during the séance. Trust me, just do a line or two, and then we’ll talk. Real talk. Bathroom talk.”

He snorted the lines, less out of peer pressure - or so he told himself - and more out of his sheer love of cocaine and desire to get his sister to shut up. It was, by far, his favorite of the drugs Jeri always seemed to have floating around. Rather than numb him it seemed to have the opposite effect, enhancing his abilities while not robbing him of control in the way psychedelics seemed to. More alert than ever, he stared at his sister with wide, dilated eyes as she finished up her share of the lines and put the rest away in a pocket.

“Ready to do shots?” She grinned, and pulled up a bottle of Maker’s Mark she’d somehow acquired somewhere.

“Jesus,” Finley blurted again. “Alright, bring it.”

They took swigs back and forth until RJ was ready to talk. “Okay, so, okay,” she began, burped, and took another swig. “I need you to suspend your disbelief for me, for tonight,” she said. “You wanker.”

Finley burped in response.

“Good enough,” she decided. “But I’m serious here. For serious. I really need your help. I can’t do this without you.”

“Whatever you need,” he reassured her, noting that after he took a final swig of Maker’s that he felt quite nice and ready for just about anything. Especially since he knew he’d owe her for taking the fall for him from now until the end of time.

Out of the back of her pants, hidden beneath her tucked shirt, RJ pulled what appeared to be a pistol.

“Oh, fuck,” Finley blurted, holding his hand out numbly for the device.

“It’s not a real gun,” RJ assured him.

“. . . Wait, what—and why—”

“It’s a tranquilizer gun,” she quickly corrected. He stared at her in disbelief until she elaborated: “It’s loaded with a dart of a non-lethal dose of ketamine for someone roughly my weight.”

“Where the hell did you get this?” He demanded.

“Mikey,” she said flippantly. “He’s my new connection, since you ganked the last one. And don’t worry, I hid it in parts in your luggage, and no one even had to know about it. Try to keep up, Finley, God.”

His ‘bad feeling’ from earlier erupted into sheer anxiety. “You what?”

“I packed it back in Portland,” she further informed him, “as for the darts, just use your imagination, okay? It’s better than reality. Take another shot,” she instructed in a tone that he couldn’t disagree with, so he did. “Sal would do this for me if he were here,” she told him. “But he’s not here, so you have to man up and do this for me. Do what only he would do. I don’t entirely know what will happen during this séance. I’ve never tried to get their attention before . . . At least not on purpose. I’ll be open to more than just the dead. Who knows what’ll come through? That’s what the fucking tranquilizer gun is for. You’re on exorcist duty, my boy.”

“You expect me to use this on you?” He guffawed, holding it in the air.

“Only if I start floating and saying weird shit,” she said. “Promise me, Finley. This is important to me. Promise me you’ll dart me if I seemed possessed or start floating and talking gobbledygook.”

“Okay, I promise,” he swore, with the full intention of discarding the gun as soon as he could figure out a way to safely dispose of it. He didn’t feel the need to mention this to her though since she was wearing a very rare serious expression.

“Are you ready?” She asked, assessing him.

He put the tranquilizer pistol in his black jacket’s pocket where it was safely concealed, and nodded, passing her back the bottle of Maker’s. She took one final swig from it before putting it down on the bathroom floor, clapping and making her way out of the door. They had roughly finished off a fourth of it. He knelt down to pick it up once she wandered out of the bathroom, and took two more belts to calm his nerves. Pleasantly buzzed but not dizzy, and still on high alert thanks to the coke, he walked out of the bathroom and immediately had to close his eyes that were assaulted by the ceiling light.

He was treated to a hubbub of people downstairs rearranging a table in the dining room and moving chairs around in a circular fashion. Finley watched in bewilderment as people attempted to seat themselves at the round table only for RJ to get up from her chair and rearrange everyone’s seating positions, so that Tim was on her right, followed by Pamela, a stranger, and Tino, and Jen was on her left, followed by Alex, another stranger, and Loanna. Everyone else that wasn’t provided with a seat stood back to watch.

“What was that all about?” Aidan whispered from his left, drawing his attention and sending goosebumps up the back of Finley’s neck.

“Wha-nothing.” He fingered the tranquilizer pistol in his pocket, thought back to the three lines of coke and the fifth of Maker’s they’d finished off and for the life of him couldn’t figure a way out of this situation. Thankfully, the distraction of the séance kept Aidan from commenting on his sniffles. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we,” Fin muttered redundantly.

“Give the skepticism a rest for once,” Aidan suggested, folding his arms. “It’s what your sister wants, and it’ll probably result in nothing, so don’t worry your pretty head about it.”

“Okay, okay, shut up you limp-dicked fucks,” RJ’s voice carried over everyone else’s, causing a hush to sweep over the room. “Hey, we need candles. Tim, man, you got candles?”

“I have, uh, scented candles,” he offered, looking around at his living room.

“Ah, fuck it,” Jeri shrugged. “We’ll do without.”

“No candles? Worst séance ever,” Tino spoke up.

Jeri shushed him. “Shush! It’s my first one, lighten up,” she said. She cleared her throat and stared up at the ceiling and for a moment - if Finley didn’t know better - he’d say she looked a little lonely. Perhaps, frightened. The emotion disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and was replaced with a wry, characteristic grin. “Okay. How should I start?”

Everyone started muttering amongst themselves as Alex spoke up the loudest: “Dear dusty dead people,” he intoned, “please, if you could spare a moment away from you furious masturbation while watching the living, we could use your guidance—”

He was also shushed by Jeri. “Shut up, Al.”

“Mis muertos,” Tino interjected, “baja tus penes y aférrate a tus bolas . . .”

“Quit talking about dicks,” Jeri interrupted.

“The goal is to get their attention, right?” Jen said. “Should we put on a show? I’m ready to dance!”

“No, we need something serious,” Jeri objected. “It has to be serious, guys.”

“Is this the part where we all shake the table with our legs and go who-o-o-o-o-o-ah?” Alex said. “Ghosty ghosts, come here . . . !”

“Who are we trying to talk to, again?” Someone asked.

“My mother,” RJ revealed. This was news to Finley, as well as the rest of the room which was engulfed by silence. Finley could feel people’s curiosity busily buzzing, co-mingled with surprise, causing Aidan’s dismay to stand out above the others as different. “Yes, I’m sure about what I’m doing, stop giving me that look Aidan,” Jeri shot out locking eyes with Aidan’s for a moment before he rolled his up toward the ceiling in a gesture of repressed sarcasm. “Okay, everybody be quiet,” she instructed, “and don’t break the circle. Keep holding hands no matter what happens.”

“Do we have to?” Alex whined.

“Yeah, his palms are really sweaty,” Jen complained.

“Suck it up and shut the fuck up,” RJ shot at him. There was a hush as she seemed to concentrate on something that was on the table for a while, before up-turning her face and addressing the room. Finley saw out of the corner of his eye someone take out a phone and start recording. He wanted to put a stop to it, but he didn’t want to cause a scene, and was overly self-conscious now that he had a tranquilizer pistol in his pocket. He did a quick scan of the crowd now - there was a new strain of concern from her band-mates, particularly Loanna and Tim. Tino stood out in morbid curiosity and also as the sole die-hard believer in RJ’s abilities in the room; almost everyone was sure it wouldn’t work, except for Tino who for whatever reason was sure it would. Finley hoped nothing would happen. He really didn’t want to have to swallow the pill that ghosts were real. The last thing I want is to be aware of Mara or Teegan’s spirit out there, yearning to be heard and seen . . .

“Spirits of the dead,” RJ began, in a rare slow and serious voice. “We have gathered today to call out to one. María Alvarez, lost mother of three. Let her cross the great divide and speak to us here.”

The hush over the room was so quiet that you could hear the creaking of the floorboards as someone adjusted in their chair. Nothing happened.

“Let her cross over,” RJ repeated. Fin twitched nervously and fingered the pistol in his pocket. When still nothing seemed to happen to the tense room, she cleared her throat and screwed up her face in concentration. “Let me try this again,” she offered. “Spirits of the—whoa. Does anyone else feel that?”

She shivered as a rare cool breeze seemed to sweep through the room, leaving a chill in its wake. Everyone experienced it simultaneously, though no one broke the circle, there were many troubled faces where previously there had only been anticipation and curiosity. Now, a thread of alarm wove through the guests.

“Something’s happening,” Tino stated, looking around the room. He locked eyes with RJ. “Maybe try saying it again?”

She nodded. “María Alvarez, we call to you from the other side. Cross over, and—”

Every light in the house simultaneously went off, and shattered in an explosion of glass. There were shrieks and yelps as people broke the circle to shield their heads with their arms from the overhead light, and muted shouts as people simultaneously tried to keep quiet for the tense moment and also react accordingly.

The room was completely black. The dim light from the closed windows was negligible now that the sun had gone down, and people began to scramble and trip over each other. Tim was the first to come to his senses, and produced a scented candle in his hand and called for everyone to remain calm.

Finley got pushed into and stumbled forward over a chair that one of the guests had vacated, and ended up breaking it when he fell over causing a commotion in the dark. “I’m alright, I’m alright,” he grumbled and groaned, slowly pulling himself back up. “Ah, fuck that hurt.” It had gotten chilly enough in the room for him to see his own breath.

A hand tapped him and he grabbed at it as it pulled him upright. Judging from the feel of the person’s thoughts and emotions, it was Aidan. He squinted, trying to get a look at his best friend in the dark.

Aidan was fixated on a single point in the center of the room. “Finley,” he began in a low voice near Fin’s ear. “Does—has she ever done that before?”

“Done what?” He asked.

Aidan turned him around and redirected his gaze manually toward the center of the table, where people had started to gather and stare. RJ was floating over the center of the table, as if she were in water. Her shirt and hair billowed out gently and tangled in a puzzling pattern. Instinctively his mind reached out to hers, and rather than sensing that impenetrable box she was always in, a flurry of images swam past his mind’s eye too quick for him to process before it finished with the closing of a door, shuttering him into darkness. Then, there was that same, awful Sound.

There was little time to process this phenomenon, as nearly as soon as he noticed her, she opened her mouth to scream, and her mind was once more shielded from him.

It was an unearthly wail across several octaves and decibels, which should be impossible for the human throat to produce. It was as if it were a chorus of screams. Everyone panicked simultaneously, throwing up their hands over their ears and ducking for cover. Only one idiot stood out, holding his camera phone up toward the phenomenon and recording everything that happened.

The wail broke after a few seconds and Jeri began to ramble in a nonsensical language. “Finley!” Aidan cried into his ear, shaking him. “Do a thing!” He commanded.

Fin stared at him in confusion. “What thing? I don’t know what the fuck is happening!”

“ANYthing! SOMEthing!”

That was when he remembered the tranquilizer gun in his pocket, and RJ’s prophetic words. “Oh, right,” he realized, and pulled it out of his pocket, and prayed that the dark would conceal what he had to do.

He aimed quickly at her form in the dim light from Tim’s one candle, and pulled the trigger. It was noiseless over the din. Within seconds, the rambling coming from RJ’s mouth stopped and trailed off, and she fell from the center of the room where she was floating onto the table with a thud.

No one seemed to know what to do, and Finley experienced an adrenaline rush unlike anything he’d ever felt before. Finally, the phone stopped recording out of the corner of his eye as the man and the people around him began to murmur amongst each other.

“What the fuck was any of that?!” Alex demanded to know.

To try and dispel the panic that was welling up in the party-goers, Finley stepped forward. “That was, uh, that was my bad everyone,” he apologized, somewhat insincerely. “I accept full blame for that. I was on exorcist duty. I should’ve taken care of that sooner.”

The panic did not disperse and only seemed to increase after this statement. People began to wildly chatter to one another and stumble in the dark, which only irritated Finley further. “Hey, everyone just calm down, alright?!” He raised his voice, which was a rarity for him, drawing attention to himself. He was still feeling the pleasant buzz from the bathroom shots and the cocaine, and all the noise and panic from everyone was irritating.

Then, Jen Sugiyama had to go and make a mess of things by approaching RJ’s collapsed form, which had started to shake and produce foam at the mouth and announced in a panicked tone, “She’s overdosing!!”