Page 25 of The Turning of the Tables

There was something Ward and Mason had done to Beyond the Veil that allowed both Sylvia and Archie to manifest whenever they wanted to. Most of the times I’d seen a ghost it had been here—when I’d come to drop something off or ask for a consult on a bone, like now—and it had been either Sylvia or Archie.

“Still,” I told Ward.

He shrugged. One of the reasons that Ward Campion is extremely likable is that despite his power, he wasn’t a dick about it. He always tried to be polite-ish at crime scenes and did his best not to mess anything up for us, which was more considerate than about a third of the uniforms who traipsed all over the place and whose shoe prints we had in a massive file because they just kept doing it.

“How long can you keep doing this?” Elliot asked.

“A while, as long as I’m here or at the house,” Ward replied. “We did some extra warding and sigil work to make both places power nexuses, which makes it much easier for me to do things here or at home than anywhere else.”

“Huh,” was all Elliot had to say to that.

I watched Eugenia writing for a little longer, then went to make myself a cup of tea in the kitchen. I paused, then turned back. “You want a coffee or tea or anything?” I asked Elliot. He’d finished his own cup of coffee a while ago.

He blinked, then looked back at me. “Oh. Um. Sure.” He went back to staring at Eugenia.

“Which one?” I asked, holding out a hand for his empty cup when he didn’t actually provide me with any additional guidance.

“I’ll just—” he tore his gaze away from the ghost again, then turned. “I’ll come with you.”

We walked down the short hallway, and Elliot immediately went to the cupboard and pulled down a mug for me after setting his own on the counter, reminding me that he’d been working in this space for a little over a week now. I selected a packet of rooibos tea, then held out the tea box toward him. He flicked through the packets while I filled and hit the switch on the electric kettle. He went with earl grey.

“You almost done with the table?” I asked leaning back against the edge of the counter so I could take the weight off my bad leg, trying to ease the ache in my knee.

He nodded. “Getting there. I should be done in another week. I’ve been working out of Taavi’s storage shed, and I should be able to bring in the pieces and fit them together tomorrow—you wouldn’t happen to be available, would you?”

“Weren’t you going to Maymont?” I asked, half-teasing as I took the kettle off the heater and pouring water first in Elliot’s mug and then my own.

He nodded his thanks. “That’s on Sunday,” he replied. “Which is why I’d love help tomorrow.”

I shrugged, pulling off my mask to sip my tea. “As long asnobody gets murdered and I get called in to deal with it,” I replied. That was the reality of being a CSI.

Elliot’s lips quirked. “Obviously,” he replied. “Goes without saying.”

I’d forgotten—he knew the patterns of crime scene life because of Hart. Homicide detectives got the same phone calls we did. “Sure.”

“Ward and Mason have a basketball game to go to with their nephew, Hart’s still up to his eyeballs, and Taavi has a shift at work with the kids—they’re supposed to be learning about plants or some shit,” he rolled his hazel eyes. “In preparation for the Maymont trip.”

“Sounds fun,” I remarked.

“I’m not usually much of a kid guy,” he admitted. “I guess kids are fine in small numbers, but I don’t really know what to do with a whole pack of them.”

I laughed. “Chase them, I’d guess.”

“Great.” He rolled his eyes again, but the corner of his lips was turned up as he sipped from his mug, betraying the fact that he wasn’t actually upset about helping to chaperone kids on a field trip. “You want to come help?”

“Sorry, drag brunch day.”

Elliot’s eyebrows rose. “I’m sorry?”

“Drag brunch day,” I repeated. “Noah knows somebody, so we do it once a month.” Specifically, I’d give the regular bouncer a break and would sit and look pseudo-intimidating and let a bunch of women and gay guys flirt meaninglessly with me—while Noah tended bar.

“Drag—brunch?” Elliot repeated, clearly not understanding what I was talking about.

“You know what drag is, right?” I was preparing myself to be horrified at a gay man who didn’t know what drag was.

“I know about drag queens and drag races,” he answered, “but I have not heard of a dragbrunch.”

“Well, take the drag queens and add brunch,” I replied. “And you have drag brunch.”