Chapter 14: THE ASSISTANT
The equipment shed key was brass, tarnished with age, smaller than I'd expected.
Ed pressed it into my palm like he was handing over something sacred. Maybe he was.
"You're not just carrying cameras anymore," he said. "Time you learned what to do with them."
Behind him, the shed door stood open—a converted garage filled with cases of equipment, filing cabinets stuffed with records, shelves of blessed objects and protective talismans. The toolkit of professional paranormal investigation.
"Welcome to the team," Lorraine said. "Officially."
I gripped the key hard enough to leave marks in my palm.
"I won't let you down."
"I know." Ed turned toward the house. "There's someone else joining this week. Seminary student, name of Drew Thomas. Young, eager, needs tempering. You'll show him the ropes."
A peer. Someone my own age—or close to it—to share the work. The idea felt strange after months of being the youngest person in every room.
Drew arrived three days later. Tall, lanky, with a nervous energy that reminded me of myself at the Morrison house. He talked too much when he was scared and went silent when he was thinking. We got along immediately.
October brought an antique shop in Providence. The owner had purchased a mirror at an estate sale—Baroque frame, clouded glass, something deeply wrong with the reflection.
I spotted it the moment we walked in.
"That one," I said, pointing. "The mirror in the back corner."
Ed stopped. "We haven't even started the investigation yet."
"I know what I'm sensing, sir."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he walked to the mirror, studied it, pressed his palm against the glass.
"Damn," he muttered. "You're right. Residue all over it. Previous owner must have died in front of it—sudden death, violent emotion. Soul fragment stuck in the glass."
"How do we help them?"
"That's the advanced course." Ed pulled a cloth from his bag, began wrapping the mirror. "For now, we contain it. Bring it back to the house."
Another artifact for the collection. Another soul trapped in an object, waiting for someone who knew how to set them free.
[CASE ASSIST: ANTIQUE MIRROR]
[+50 EXP, +25 FP]
November brought a family in Mystic. Their grandmother had died six weeks ago. Now she haunted them—not out of malevolence, but out of love.
She didn't understand she was dead.
I found her in the kitchen at 2 AM, trying to cook breakfast she couldn't eat for a family that couldn't see her. The eggs just passed through her hands. The stove wouldn't light no matter how many times she tried.
"Mrs. Patterson."
She turned. White-haired, gentle-faced, confused.
"You can see me?"
"Yes, ma'am." I sat at the kitchen table. "I need to tell you something. Something hard."
The conversation that followed was one of the most difficult I'd ever had. More difficult than Thomas Brennan, because at least Thomas had suspected the truth. Mrs. Patterson had to be convinced. Had to see her own funeral photos. Had to accept that the family she loved was mourning her.
But when she finally crossed over—when the light came and she walked into it with tears of joy on her face—the reward wasn't points or experience.
It was her granddaughter, three years old, waving goodbye to an empty corner and saying, "Bye-bye, Grandma. I love you."
December brought what looked like a demonic possession in Hartford.
A teenager speaking in tongues. Convulsions. Markings on the walls. The family had already called three priests. They were ready for an exorcism.
But something was off.
The "Latin" the boy spoke wasn't actually Latin. The convulsions followed a pattern that was more medical than supernatural. And the markings on the walls... I'd seen them before. In a hospital, months ago. In a room where someone had been dying slowly of carbon monoxide poisoning.
"Check the furnace," I told Ed.
"What?"
"The furnace. Check it. Please."
He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. But he checked.
The heat exchanger was cracked. The house was filling with carbon monoxide every time the heating kicked on. The family wasn't possessed—they were being poisoned. Slowly, insidiously, in a way that mimicked supernatural activity perfectly.
We evacuated them. Called the gas company. Saved five lives that would have died convinced they were under demonic assault.
Ed didn't say anything until we were back in the car.
"That was good work."
"Thank you, sir."
"No. I mean it." He turned to face me fully. "You've got good instincts. You don't panic. And you don't need to be the hero—you just need to solve the problem."
I waited, sensing there was more.
"Lorraine and I have been doing this for over twenty years," Ed continued. "We're not going to live forever. People like you, like Drew—you're the future of this work. You need to know that."
Something shifted in my chest. Emotion I didn't have a name for.
"I'll try to be worthy of that, sir."
"I know you will."
That night, back in my apartment, I opened the Hub.
[SYSTEM LEVEL: 10]
[STORE ACCESS: UNLOCKED]
The Store materialized as a new section of the mental space—rows of equipment, artifacts, blessed weapons, all locked behind Faith Point costs. I browsed until I found what I needed.
[WARDING AMULET — 500 FP]
[PROVIDES: +20% RESISTANCE TO SPIRITUAL ATTACK, MINOR POSSESSION PROTECTION]
I made the purchase. The points deducted. And in my pocket, warm and solid and real, an amulet appeared.
Not imagination. Not delusion.
Power.
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