“Sunflower?” Jon said, his voice rising into several question marks. He glanced at Ezra and they shared a look.

Eve clenched her jaw and glared at them. “Don’t fucking call me that.” Ezra wouldn’t, he was too nice. But Jon was thinking about it, weighing the pros and cons. After a second, he surrendered, raising his hands. The glint of mischief in his eyes didn’t fade, and Eve knew he hadn’t really let it go.

“Anyway, as I said: be careful with wolfsbane. Aconitine is a potent poison.” Caroline paused. “Or did you want it for poison? ”

Ezra’s face paled.

“No we don’t want it for poison,” Eve said. “We might have a werewolf on our hands, though the evidence is inconclusive.” She tried to sound objective about it.

“It would be hard to tell if someone was one outside of the full moon,” Alex said. “Though they might have a visible scar where they were bitten.”

“You could try giving them wolfsbane,” Caroline shrugged. She made a considering face. “If you use it in a small enough dosage it shouldn’t completely stop their heart. And it is traditionally one way to cure lycanthropy.”

“In some lore, all you had to do was say the werewolf’s name to turn them back into a human. Or give then a good scolding,” Alex offered.

Eve looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “That’s…”

“Interesting,” Ezra said quietly. He wrote in his notepad quickly. Eve saw in bold letters, “EVE SCOLD WEREWOLF?” It was underlined three times.

“What do werewolves have to do with your ghost?” Caroline asked.

“We believe the spirit may have been killed by one,” said Jon.

Eve didn’t want to talk about werewolves anymore; if Kyle wasn’t one, which he definitely wasn’t, there was no point. “How could we tell if a person is a vampire, demon, or fairy?” she asked.

“Spilling rice, or something?” Ezra said.

Alex nodded. “Vampires traditionally have arithmomania, which means that they’ll compulsively stop to count the grains of rice, or salt, or any other small but numerous thing if you spill it in front of them.”

“Like Count von Count from Sesame Street,” Jon said excitedly. Eve pressed her fingers to her forehead and closed her eyes.

“Exactly.” Alex nodded. “You could also try to sprinkle them with holy water. Vampires, demons, or the undead would react negatively to that.”

“I would also react negatively to someone sprinkling water on me, to be fair,” Eve said.

“But you wouldn’t be burned,” Alex said. “And you wouldn’t be burned by iron, either, unlike a fairy or demon.”

Ezra sat there nodding along, taking notes and looking serious.

“Okay, great,” Eve said, standing. “We know what to do now, so let’s go.” She didn’t want the guys and her parents to get too friendly with each other; there was too much potential for embarrassment down that road.

“You’re not going to stay for dinner?” Alex asked. He blinked and looked sad. Eve looked out the green-covered window.

“We need to go,” she said. “Plus, I drove the guys here.”

“Your friends are welcome to dinner, of course,” Caroline said.

“Another time,” Jon said. He smiled warmly at her and Alex. “It was wonderful to meet you, though.”

Ezra nodded, made a noise of agreement, and stood. He was only half paying attention.

Finally, Eve hugged her parents and they left, heading back to the car. Afternoon sun had turned the interior into an oven, and Eve sat carefully on the edge of the driver’s seat to start the car before rolling down all the windows and waiting.

Jon had taken off his jacket and slung it over one shoulder. Ezra barely even noticed. He was too busy biting his thumbnail, like he had been since they’d left the Folklore Department, and thinking about whatever he was thinking about. Eve narrowed her eyes at him.

“I kind of love your parents,” Jon said slowly. He looked at Eve like he’d just had an epiphany.

Eve sighed. “Join the fucking club. Every year there’s some dumbass English Lit kid who gets obsessed for some reason.” Because her parents were young, and cool, and casual with the students. Because they liked memes and weed. Eve didn’t fucking know, and she didn’t care. She flung open her car door and sat inside, keeping her arms away from the steering wheel. She closed the windows and pointed the a/c vent at her face.

Jon sauntered to the car, jacket slung over one shoulder, and Ezra trailed behind him.

“They really know a lot,” Ezra said as he sat down. He slowly pulled out his notepad and opened it, staring at one particular page.

Eve made a face as she started driving. “Yeah about this kind of thing. Ask them to do taxes or remember to get the oil changed and you’re fucked.” She took a breath. “But if you really wanted to get them talking, you’d have to ask my mom about textile arts, and my dad about how memes are modern folklore.”

“Seriously?” Ezra asked. He was finally paying attention, and he seemed…not happier, necessarily, but maybe more hopeful than he’d been that morning.

Eve nodded. “Seriously.”

Jon twisted in his seat to see Eve and Ezra. “What are our next steps? Ezra, you were taking notes, right? Can I see them?”

“Yes,” Ezra said slowly, drawing it out as he looked over the pages frantically. When he apparently didn’t find anything too objectionable, he handed the notepad to Jon. He coughed to cover a squeak when Jon very purposefully brushed their fingers together.

“Okay,” Jon said, smirking. Eve rolled her eyes. “We have a few possibilities: vampire, demon, or fairy.”

Eve pursed her lips as he read. “What are we supposed to do if we discover he is one of those things? That doesn’t make it easier to prove he killed Chelsea.”

“She might not need legal justice to move on,” Jon said. “If we stop him from killing others, or expose him, that might be enough for her.”

“God, have you thought about how crazy that sounds?” she asked. “Let’s stop this killer, who is maybe not human, from killing more people. What if he kills us?”

“We have each other,” Ezra said. “He can’t kill us all.”

Luckily they’d just pulled up to a red light, so Eve could fully turn around and look at him.

“‘He can’t kill us all’?” she said. “He literally might.”

“He was able to get to Chelsea because she trusted him,” Jon said. “None of us trust him.”

“If we all look out for each other, we’ll be fine,” Ezra insisted.

Eve glanced at him through the rearview mirror. He looked as earnest as ever, and she scowled. “I mean, I’m still down,” she said. “I’m not about to let this asshole go around mind-controlling people, including you two, so if that means we have to catch him, so be it.” She was quiet for a second. She should have just moved away. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. Now she was going to have to be worried not only for herself but for these nerds. “But I don’t want the actual murderer murdering us.”

Ezra nodded and took his notepad back, then looked down at the floor of the car. “He might not be a murderer, though,” he said softly.

“Is this about the werewolf again?” Eve asked. Some of her annoyance bled into her voice. “We already know Kyle isn’t one, and we know he killed Chelsea.”

“We don’t,” Ezra said. He closed his notepad and stared at the cover. “We don’t know he’s the one who killed her.” Jon glanced back at Ezra, his face thoughtful.

“Who else could have possibly killed her? Why in the world would this ‘werewolf’ have even been able to kill her?” Eve’s voice rose a little as she spoke.

Ezra swallowed hard, and he looked up at her, then, through the rear view mirror. His expression was pained. “We don’t know for sure it was Kyle. And if it wasn’t, if she was killed by a werewolf, or even if Kyle is a werewolf, we need to know for sure.” He paused, voice sounding choked.

Eve squeezed the steering wheel and glanced back at him. Fuck. He was gonna cry again, and it was Eve’s fault.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jon said. “Don’t worry, Chelsea will get her justice.” He reached back and patted Ezra on the shoulder.

Ezra, head bowed and pressed into his hands, nodded once. “Right,” he said, voice muffled and despairing, for some reason. “No matter who it is, we’re going to get justice.”