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"Erin, if you don't hurry, the pizza is gonna beat us back to your place."
"One more frequency change, please! I promise it'll only take a few more minutes."
From the door of the lab, Abby lets out a long-suffering sigh. It is six o’clock on a Saturday night. A Swayze Saturday night. But there were recordings from last night's haunted house visit, and after Hotlz and Patty had already left to go bar-crawling an hour ago, Erin thought she heard something in one of Patty's recordings. And Erin is the second-best of them at listening to EVP recordings, and the best of the remaining people in the building, and Abby was fine with fine-tuning the PKA meter. And on any other night, Abby would be glad to keep going until one or both of them passed out.
But there's pizza waiting. And Patrick. Who is one of the three guys Abby actually finds attractive.
After a warning finger and stern look at Erin, Abby heads down to the ground floor.
Kevin is sitting at the receptionist desk. Which is weird, because Kevin usually only stays around for a few hours on Saturdays. The latest Abby has ever seen him here has been quarter after four.
But he's here. His elbows are on the desk, and thankfully not on the keyboard. Accidentally typing over important documents. Again. His chin is resting in his palms, and as Abby approaches, she notices that there's a pensive look on his face.
She cautiously moves in closer. "Whatcha up to, Kevin?"
He blinks a few times, and tilts his head to look at her. "Just thinking."
Abby goes still. "What're you thinking about?"
He frowns slightly. Peers at her. "Can I tell you something?" he asks.
"Sure..."
"I've never told anyone this, ever."
Abby holds up her right hand in salute. "I promise I will keep it a secret. Scouts honor."
He frowns. "That's supposed to be two fingers."
Abby frowns back. "What? No. It's three fingers. I was a Senior Girl Scout, I know."
"Oh. I was just a Cub Scout."
"Cub Scouts do two fingers, everyone else does three fingers. And I can swear both ways if it'll make you feel more comfortable."
He bites his bottom lip.
She lowers her ring finger. "I promise."
He nods, relieved, and for a moment he's smiling. It drains away. He leans back in his chair – thankfully not hard enough where he falls back, again – and stares down at his hands. "When I was a kid, my mom took me to a decoration store. Can never remember which one. She took me to quite a few, actually. But this one time, while she was looking for pillows or something, I was over near the vases. And in the vases were these fake tree branches. Which is odd, when people can just go out and get real tree branches for free. But those branches were in the vases, and to keep them in place, there were hundreds of these clear blue-ish marbles. I stole three of those marbles. I was convinced I was going to be tackled on my way out, sent to prison, never to see daylight again. But I wasn't."
He goes quiet for a moment, and Abby nods, not sure where this was going.
"I felt bad about it. I still feel bad about it. Because as I added them to my box of my favorite things, as much as I liked them, they weren't mine. And even when I was playing with friends, or in school, in the back of my mind, I knew I had this thing that wasn't mine. No one else knew. But I did." He pauses, bites at the bottom of his lip. "It was my own tell-tale heart."
Abby raises her eyebrows. A chill sweeps down her spine. "Nice Poe reference.”
"I know all of Edgar Allan Poe's works," Kevin says. "Wrote one of my favorite poems. By a route obscure and lonely..."
"...haunted by ill angels only," Abby continues.
Kevin stares at her. “Where an Eidolon, named Night…”
“…on a black throne reigns upright.”
A long silence stretches between them.
"Yeah," Abby says. She sits down across from him. "I know 'em all now too."
"That's not my favorite poem. But it is my favorite poem. But it's not my favorite poem. And they’re our memories…"
Abby shakes her head. "They're not our memories," she says, softly.
"But they're our memories."
“I know.” They’ve been echoing around inside her head. “But they’re not our memories.”
The scientific part of Abby was already making a list of questions. How did Abby's memories of Rowan and Kevin's memories compare? Rowan was in Abby for only a few minutes, how does that compare to the few hours Kevin must have had? Are the memories going to stay, or are they going to fade?
She should have Holtz do the interviewing, Erin's professionalism and IQ drop when in the vicinity of Kevin. Although Holtz would ask the weird questions. Although some weird questions might be necessary. Perhaps get Patty involved so she doesn’t ask the weird-weird questions. Things go smoother with Patty around. Or at least things go smooth with Holtz when Patty is around. It’s cute.
But for now –
“I almost feel bad for him.”
“Don’t,” Abby says, and it comes out sharp. “Listen, I don’t know what growing up was like for you, but it wasn’t all that great for me. I was made fun of for being heavier than the other kids. I was made fun of for being interested in ghosts. I was made fun of for whatever reason they wanted to come up with. I was made fun of and never invited anywhere. And it sucked. And y’know, it would have been easy to just…” Abby makes a wide, angry arm gesture, “…give up on people. On everyone. It’s harder to open yourself up and still try and like people. Try and expect decency from people. Try and trust people, and–”
“I trust you, Abby.”
It catches her off guard. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, but her rant is fully derailed. The anger – her anger, Rowan may have added some memories but everything else inside her is hers – evaporates, and she’s just left off-balanced and off-center in the face of Kevin’s trust. “Thanks, Kevin,” she says. She stares at him. They’ve talked, sure, but there’s never been eye-contact like this. And for all his flaws… “I trust you too.”
He smiles, one of his normal wide and pleased smiles. He stands up, moves around the desk, and holds his arms out.
Abby lets out a huff of a laugh, but she gets up, and she hugs him.
“I’m so sorry, Abby! I’m having difficulty getting the exact frequency, and – oh, Kevin! You’re still here!”
Abby turns her head to see that Erin is standing there, staring at her and Kevin.
Erin takes a half-step towards them.
“Go away, Erin, this is a post-Rowan-possession hug only.”
“No,” Kevin says. “Everyone’s invited.”
Abby looks up at him, and nods. “You’re right.” She gives Erin her warning-eyebrows look, and then Erin is joining the hug. And hopefully keeping it a hug.
It’s actually a really nice hug, and Abby is smiling as they all finally pull apart.
“I’m in the mood for tacos,” Kevin says. “You two don’t mind locking up, do you?”
“No, no, not at all,” Erin says.
Abby hadn’t known that Kevin would still be here, and had planned on locking up anyway, so she’s letting her pass on this one.
After watching Kevin leave, Erin offers to do the locking-up. “Sorry for the delay,” she says, flicking all the necessary lights off.
“I didn’t really notice.”
“Had a nice talk with Kevin?” she asks, with the slightest edge of suspicion. But not the Kevin-related suspicion she sometimes gets. The holy shit Abby you were possessed you say you’re okay but are you sure you’re okay suspicion.
“Yeah. I did.”
Erin’s voice dips soft and quiet. “You wanna talk about it?”
Possession was always something they debated when they were younger, and Abby can’t wait to start that conversation back up. Just… not yet. “Later.”
Erin nods. Her look of concern shifts into a hopeful grin. “Pizza and Swayze?”
Abby hooks her arm around Erin’s “Perfect Saturday night.”