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"Sorry," I muttered. "I'm just nervous."
He sighed heavily. "Yeah," he said. "Me too."
"What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked, trying to infuse an apology into my tone. "Surely you didn't come to see me off."
"As a matter of fact—" Theo reached for the handle of his car door and opened it. "I was going to—"
Before I could see what he wanted to show me, though, we heard the crunch of gravel under approaching tires. We both glanced up to see Luca pulling to a stop beside us.
"Buon giorno," he said, unfolding himself from the tiny car.
I glanced from Luca to Theo, trying to read the energy between them, and came up empty. Theo's expression was open and blandly pleasant, and Luca—well, Luca always sort of looked like he was about to start kissing his way up someone’s arm.
"Hey," Theo said, extending a hand.
Luca shook it—thankfully without any kissing—and turned to me. "Ready?"
I shot Theo a guilty look. "Uh—"
"I'm going with you," Theo said.
I stared at him blankly. "What?"
He bent and reached into the front seat of his car, then lifted out a cardboard box. "And I figured this might come in handy."
Luca peered into the box, and his expression lit with delight. "Ah!" he said. "How did you manage to secret it away?"
"I didn't secret anything," Theo said, holding the box out toward me. "Neath said we were done with it. It's supposed to go back to the lab to get accessioned, but I figured no one would notice if it wandered off for a day or two."
I took a quick, apprehensive breath. The book. I'd been thinking about it constantly since that night at the site, but I hadn't so much as laid eyes on it since Dr. Blanton had taken it to her apartment. I was almost afraid to look at it—what if that light came again, that heat? What if it exacerbated whatever had happened to me already?
Theo's brow creased. "River?"
"Yeah, yeah." I forced myself to peek into the box.
When lightning didn't flash and I didn't burst into flames, I let out my breath. The book looked—pretty boring, honestly. It was still crumbling, still dusty, still basically unremarkable. "Did you finish translating it?" I asked.
"Yep," Theo said. "We got most of it, anyway. There were some pages missing. And a lot of stuff that didn't make sense. Which is why—" He glanced at Luca now, his jaw tightening—"I was hoping I could go with you to talk to this guy."
I was sort of expecting Luca to protest, to give at least some reason that Theo shouldn't come. Instead, he smiled broadly.
"Wonderful," he said. "I think we will need all the help we can get."
A little of the tension left Theo's posture. "Great."
"Uh, excuse me," I interrupted. "Do I not get a say?"
Two sets of eyes swiveled toward me. Luca looked curious; Theo, slightly wounded.
"Is there an issue with me coming?" he said.
I gaped at him. "Yes, there's an issue," I said. "The issue is that we're about to go see a ghostbuster because I'm probably haunted."
”And?" Theo said, frowning.
I felt like stomping my feet like a toddler. "And I don't want you involved. I have no idea what we're doing and I don't want you to get hurt."
"But you're okay with him going," Theo said, tipping his head at Luca.
