Page 213 of Silent Shadows

At this ridiculous, impossible family.

Found family stitched together under fluorescent light and exhaustion and impossible things.

I reach over and find Miles’s hand between us.

Across the RV, Owen clears his throat, breaking the silence. Everyone looks up and he takes a swig from his bottle. “So,” he says. Deadpan as ever. “That was fun.”

“What the hell do we do next?” Taylor says.

Owen shrugs, setting his drink down. “I might have an idea.”

epilogue

DAISY

Three Months Later

I wake up to the sound of an aggressive whisper-fight. Which, as it turns out, is louder than regular talking.

“You can’t just call it vibes-based science,” Maya hisses.

I hear Taylor gasp theatrically then stomp a foot. “Fine. Then I’ll call it science.”

“You cannot write ‘the moon told me’ in an expedition log.”

“But the moon did tell me. It is a fact. Science is facts.”

Maya sighs.

“If you two don’t shut up, I’m going to take the incense away,” Owen calls out from the bunk below, sounding half asleep and very over it.

“NO!” they shout in unison.

The Mystery Machine is parked at a random New Mexico RV park after a mini sabbatical for all of us. After the Bigfoot case wrapped, Taylor went back to Oklahoma to see her folks and help her little brother with his latest dirt bike build. Jax headed to Chicago to crash with some film school friends and returned with new equipment. We were already pretty close to Maya’s family on the Hualapai reservation near the Grand Canyon, so she took some time to hang with them. Owen went back to his apartment near Vegas to move his stuff into storage. And Miles Adler and I drove the Machine to LA to tie up loose ends there.

Unhinged and inevitable at the same time, it felt so surreal showing him my apartment, my life, the studio. Like introducing two versions of myself who should’ve hated each other. LA Daisy and Desert Daisy.

One built out of polished edges and expensive lighting and carefully controlled narratives.

The other was covered in dust, swooning over a paranormal investigator, and drinking crappy coffee simply because of the man who made it.

Miles took it all in with the same unnervingly earnest attention he gives any research.

Watching him walk through my network’s office nearly killed me. Partially because it confirmed he’s a Los Angeles ten. Partially because he approached the whole thing like an anthropologist dropped into an alien civilization.

At one point he leaned toward me and whispered, “Everyone here looks plastic.”

“They’re scared of irrelevance,” I assured him.

He nodded solemnly. “That tracks.”

But he still fit.

Not in a he belongs here way.

More in a he refuses to perform for anybody, but everybody likes him anyway kind of way.

Marissa loved him. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, because she weaponized it and still does.