Eve glared at the door and Kyle’s retreating back. She felt drained, like when Chelsea was manifesting. Like she’d just spent the last eight hours studying one of the more annoying dead languages and her brain felt like a squeezed out lemon. Something in her head throbbed in time with her pulse, and she pressed her hand to her forehead. Right in the center, where it ached.

Jon looked around the diner, blinking slowly. “That seemed harsh,” he said. His voice was slow and thick, almost drunken. Ezra sat beside him, eyes wide and stunned, swaying ever so slightly.

“I’m not normally, like, nice to people who probably killed their girlfriend,” Eve said. The venom in her voice was half for him, half for Kyle.

He blinked again and nodded. After a second he asked, “What happened just now?”

Eve glanced between him and Ezra, a quiet twist of worry in her stomach. “Kyle came in and tried to figure out how much we knew,” she said. “You two were all over him.” Ezra was still staring into space, and Eve turned her attention to him. “For someone who doesn’t like the guy, you sure acted like you liked him.”

Ezra frowned and looked down. “I don’t like him.” He stared at his hand on the table, the one Kyle had touched.

Eve slouched back against the cushion, her head heavy. “Something weird is going on. You were both acting like…” she stopped, remembering the barista at Blackwater, so totally focused on Kyle that she’d spilled hot coffee on her hand and not cared. “He did this before,” she said. “When he talked to me the other day, the barista at Blackwater was acting exactly like you two. She wouldn’t look at me, barely spoke to me, she only cared about Kyle. He told her to give me a free coffee and she did.”

Jon frowned, his face and voice clearing. “I want to say I wasn’t going to tell him anything. But I was, and I don’t remember why.”

Ezra nodded and finally looked at Eve. “I have never liked him. He’s ignored me every time I’ve met him, and he walks around like an entitled jerk.” He cleared his throat and rubbed his shoulder where it met his chest. “But that didn’t seem important anymore.” There was a pause filled with the chatter and clink of the rest of the diner. “You really called him a steamed-cauliflower b-word.”

“I didn’t exactly plan out a roast for him; I had to improvise,” Eve said. “More importantly, Kyle is obviously more involved than he’s pretending to be.”

“He’s probably not a werewolf,” said Jon. He rubbed his thumb along the top of his water glass, making a high ringing sound that poked and scratched at Eve’s tired brain. She clenched her jaw.

“What makes you say that?” Ezra’s hands had moved to grip the edge of the table.

“Werewolves, as far as I’m aware, don’t have notable powers of persuasion.” Jon cupped his chin and sat back. “Maybe a vampire?”

Eve sighed. “It’s the middle of summer. If someone was a vampire, they’d be hibernating right now. Also, vampires aren’t real. Maybe he’s just a normal dude with some kind of hypnosis training.”

“Hypnosis doesn’t work like that,” Jon said. “And vampires are as real as werewolves.”

“Glad we can agree on that,” Eve said, crossing her arms. “Whatever Kyle’s doing must be why the police ignored him as a suspect,” she said, frowning.

Ezra slowly shook his head, not in answer to her question. “What did he do to us?”

“That’s something else we should look into,” Jon said. “What is Kyle, exactly, and what is he doing? And, is there also a murderous werewolf running around?”

Ezra swallowed. Eve rolled her eyes.

“We could do some research,” Ezra said. “I’m sure we could find plenty of sources about supernatural beings, if that is what he is.” Eve stared out the window at the cloudy sky. She knew where they could get quite a lot of information about supernatural beings, but that would involve Professors Donnelly.

Eve imagined how incredibly annoying her parents would be with Jon and Ezra and shuddered. Still, if it would get Chelsea and Kyle off her ass, it was probably worth it.

“I might know a couple of the folklore professors at Raven Falls College who could help identify whatever Kyle is,” she said.

“That’s so cool,” Jon said. He straightened up. “Can you introduce me? Raven Falls has such a great folklore program, if I hadn’t gone into philosophy I would’ve loved to join it.”

“It’s like an hour away, we don’t wanna have to drive that far, right?” Eve said. Visions of her father and Jon enthusiastically talking about some paranormal bullshit plagued her.

“That’s not that far,” Ezra said. “I’ve driven farther for a story.”

Eve sighed and nodded. “I’ll set it up for tomorrow if that works for you?”

“I have nothing else going on, so I’m happy with anything,” Jon said.

Ezra thought about it for a second. “As long as it’s after noon, that should be fine.”

They finished up eating and left WaffleHenge, stopping outside near a postbox.

Eve pulled out her phone and made sure neither of them could see her screen as she picked ‘Dad’ from her favorites and called him.

The phone rang, and she looked around, never lingering on anything long. “Hi peanut,” her dad answered.

“Hey, I have a question for you,” she said. “It’s kind of about my ghost problem?”

“What is it?”

“I have some help uh, investigating, and we need to know more about —“ she sighed heavily—“various supernatural creatures.” Her dad made a noise of agreement, and she continued. “Do you have some time tomorrow to talk about it? Office hours or something?”

“You want to meet on campus? I don’t have any classes after 3.”

“Great,” Eve said. “See you tomorrow.”

“Okay Sunflower, I love you.”

“You too.”

Hanging up, Eve turned back around. Jon and Ezra were looking at her. She tried not to look like she had a secret.

“Are you a student?” Jon asked.

Eve shook her head. “I used to be.” Ezra turned his focus on her, and she did her best to move the conversation away from herself. “Anyway, the professor said he’d be fine with us dropping in tomorrow. Figure out what you want to ask, and meet me at my apartment at 1 tomorrow.”

“Will do,” Jon said. “Will you send me your translation of the henge runes? Maybe I can find out more about what is binding Chelsea to you.”

Eve nodded once.

Ezra nodded, too, though he was more absent about it. He’d pulled out his notepad and was making quick notes. “Yeah. I’ll come up with some questions. See you then.”

“I need to go back to the henge.” Eve sighed and rubbed her face. “It’s gonna be a pain in the ass trying to figure out what the fuck those runes say, and I need to make sure I get the whole text. Hope I don’t get taken by the fairies or something this time,” she said. Jon laughed, and Ezra looked torn between amusement and concern.

“Don’t say that!” he said. “What if you did?”

“Then the fairies would have to deal with my bullshit instead of you.” Eve stared calmly at him. Jon laughed harder.

“Don’t say that either!” Ezra looked appalled.

Eve smiled. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing and waved to the guys as they split off in different directions.

***

The desk fan blew tepid night air into Eve’s sweaty face, and she half-wished Chelsea would come bother her, if only for the free air conditioning. She sat at her desk, knees up to her chin, as she focused on the transcribed runes. They’d stayed firmly on the paper this time, so she didn’t even need the pictures she’d taken. Harvey snored behind her computer as she scoured the internet for pre-Christian henge runes to compare her notes to.

“This is stupid,” she said to Harvey. He cracked one orange eye open. She was on page 3 of the search results and had found one paper by an Associate Professor Murphy, published in some obscure journal with a paywall. “Why is nobody studying this? There’s only one occult nerd out there interested?” She reached out to scritch under Harvey’s chin.

Eve emailed Murphy, who responded to her in minutes with a copy of the paper and an excess of gratitude for her interest, and got to reading.

And, despite the bloated, rigid academic style, Eve could appreciate the core of Murphy’s work. They guessed that the majority of the words hadn’t been redefined, only the words Christian monks would take issue with. Murphy spent a fair amount of time explaining the historical and religious context, which Eve didn’t give a shit about, but they also singled out specific words they suspected had been altered. Eve skimmed the paper for those words, writing them down in her notebook along with what Murphy theorized were the original definitions.

By midnight, she’d found the sources Murphy had used in their paper—specifically, the pre-Christian henge runes translated into other languages than English—and started a working dictionary to translate the altered words. She stood, Harvey jumping down to follow, and stepped over to the kitchen. As she pulled another energy drink from the fridge, she thought of Jon’s video, of the weighted sheet. She imagined being awake when Chelsea’s invisible body was dragged out into the living room. She put the drink back into the fridge.

“Goodnight,” she said to the air. The living room lights flicked off as she stepped into the hallway, Harvey padding quietly behind.