The Monday after Thanksgiving, Trisha landed past lunchtime, after Susan and Mike left, and didn't give me a chance to even say hi.

"Have you seen the news?" she cried, and smashed the phone in my face.

I read the headline and frowned, trying to compute the words. Brandon Price is leaving Haunters after season ten. What the flying fuck?

Trisha saw me gawk and pushed me to the east parlor.

"May we?" she asked before pushing me in.

"Of course."

Trisha made me sit down on the couch under the window and left me there.

"Are you okay, Fran?" asked Ann.

"Yes, yes, I'm just surprised," I got to say before Trisha came back with both tablets and set them on the coffee table.

"You guys need to hear this," she said, browsing the whole article on her phone. "Hold tight. I'm gonna read it all."

"After a decade leading the paranormal scene on TV, Brandon Price announced he's leaving his award-winner show Haunters.

No reason for the living to fear, though, because the lead investigator of the famous team isn't going away completely, and not just yet.

We still have a whole full season of Haunters to enjoy, premiering next March and stretching all the way to Halloween as usual.

Asked about future projects, Brandon Price wouldn't give any hint. However, rumor has it he's working on a documentary or even a limited series, in which he would share with the world what made him decide it's time to look for new horizons.

Sources close to the king of ghost hunting suggest he may not be the face of Haunters anymore after season ten, but it doesn't seem likely that he will step away from his role as a producer for his show, as well as other projects for the same network.

Watch this space."

A thick silence followed the end of the article.

"Anybody home?" asked Trisha, putting her phone down.

The beeping of the touchpad showed Joseph was about to answer. Meanwhile, my friend shook me softly.

"D'you get what this article means, Fran?"

"Yeah," I replied. 'Cause yeah, I got it. I was surprised he'd actually followed through with what he'd said that morning at the hotel. But knowing him a little, he would surely come up with a new format to keep doing the same. I still thought he wouldn't be able to stay away from the limelight.

"At least we know they won't come back to investigate the Manor," said Joseph at last, showing off his particular sense of humor.

"What was that about a documentary?" asked Edward.

"Glad somebody noticed!" said Trisha. "I'm gonna call Isaac later, but bet they're talking about what happened here."

"A documentary about those days?" Lizzie repeated.

"That would expose what he did," said Ann. "All of it."

"He won't look good," said Edward.

"What do you think, Fran?" Joseph asked.

I scratched my head and shrugged. "I don't think he'll really show anything serious. Just something a little special for his last episode with Haunters, that's all."

Trisha rolled her eyes, snorted and stood up. "Je— Jeez," she grunted, leaving the parlor.

I glanced out with a deep breath, determined to keep anything related to Brandon from upsetting my life again.

"Feel like going for a walk, twins? Let me grab my jacket."

"It's about to snow," Edward warned.

"Really? About time! I love snow!"

The news about Brandon messed up Trisha's expectations completely: if the show was ending, nobody would call her with a job. We talked about it over dinner and I asked her about becoming a Youtuber. It took a lot of work and time to get a channel going, she explained, and even more to make a living out of it.

"How long?"

"A year or two, at least."

"Sorry, d'you have anything better to do as of now? Why don't you get it started and see how it goes."

The next question was obvious: what would be the channel about. She'd always been into horror and paranormal stuff, so it was just natural she did something related to what she liked and knew about. Yeah, but what. We lingered at the table for a couple of hours, brainstorming, until her phone rang.

"Isaac?" she murmured, checking the screen.

"He can advise you about this."

"You're right! They started off as Youtubers!" She picked up and I could hear the Haunter greeting her from across the table. I did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen while they talked, and brought coffee to the table when they disconnected.

"How is he?" I asked, sitting down. "Happy to be unemployed?"

Trisha shook her head. Looked like the news hadn't surprised Isaac. Being Brandon's closest friend, he could tell something was brewing from the moment they got back to LA after leaving Kujo at Pennhurst.

"He said something about taking a sabbatical to come up with a good project to keep going."

"Brandon said so?"

"No, Isaac. And he gave me an excellent idea for the YouTube channel: interviews with paranormal investigators, both pros and amateurs. There are so many of them, I can keep a weekly upload schedule."

"That's actually a great idea."

"And I could interview Brandon for the first video! Like, to make noise and get attention to the channel. And if your Haunter charming is too busy to waste an hour on Zoom with me, I can always ask Isaac himself."

"See? There you are. We could set up a cozy corner up in the study for you. All the bookshelves and the Victorian décor would make a nice background to speak about these things."

"Fran, I love you."

Trisha dived head-on into this new project, talking with Isaac every other day to ask for more advice. The Haunter minor seemed to have nothing better to do, and volunteered as some sort of producer-from-home for her.

I tried to step aside and let her be, not feeling at all like getting involved in something that also involved Brandon's friend. Mostly because the ugly truth was that I was dying to see him or hear from him. It was so weird, the way he seemed to have become a part of my life. I couldn't explain it better than that. But he was sort of there, inside of me, every day, in everything I did.

I ended up taking a break from my journal-to-novel project, because writing about those days with him made me relive every little thing with such intensity, it felt like I would look up from my computer and find him right there, in the same room.

I was at a complete loss to deal with it. So I could only try to push him away, back out of my life like he actually was.

December came with the promise of a winter even harsher than the last, and I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a couple of days and visit Kujo before the holidays, just in case another blizzard hit for Christmas, like in 2022.

Brett agreed it was a good idea, and he very casually suggested I should bring Amy along. You know, to help him delve into all the Gina and the ghost children thing. Needless to say Amy's calendar was swept as soon as I called her. Weekends were busy days at Pennhurst, so we would go the next Monday, when the asylum was closed to the public.

This time, Amy insisted that we should go in her car, so I made Trisha swear on seven holy books she wouldn't bring the Manor down, gave the Blotters explicit authorization to kick her out if she didn't behave, grabbed the new sleeping bag I'd bought for Kujo, and we hit the road in the red machine.

Of course Amy would bring up Brandon's news not five minutes away from the Manor. I tried to shrug it away, but she had a little bomb up her sleeve.

"He texted me a few days ago," she said, to my utter surprise. "Looks like he wants to use all the footage from the Manor to make a documentary or—"

"Or a limited series, yeah," I completed. "He wants to shoot an interview with you for it?"

"At the Manor, if possible."

I turned to her, frowning. "Come again?"

Amy glanced at me with a tight smile. "You haven't talked with him in a while."

"Nope. Why would I?"

"That's what I thought. He seemed to be looking for any excuse to see you."

"Did he say so? Or you're just assuming it?"

"Just saying."

"You assumed it."

"He also wanted to ask me if we had anything to do with his health improvements. Looks like he was able to drop all his medications from day one, and he was surprised he hasn't needed them again."

"Great! I noticed it when we brought Kujo to Pennhurst, and I was truly hoping it would last."

"Okay, enough. Speak up or I'm kicking you out of the car in motion. Why do you go porcupine just by hearing his name?"

I would've wanted to snort, but what came out was a heartfelt sigh. I didn't want to talk about it, but if I knew Amy, she wouldn't let go until I did. So I tried to tell her how I felt, that weird sensation that he was always around, and how much it made me miss him.

"There's a word for that, you know?" she said softly. "A four-letter word that makes half the world population panic, and the other half go bonkers."

"Oh, shut up," I snarled.

"So you're in the panicky half. Your loss."

"Fuck you."

We arrived in Spring City at about four in the afternoon to pick up Brett. The campus was buzzing with workers and volunteers, but Brett's face was enough to keep everybody from asking questions.

We had about an hour before the sun came down enough to go to Tinicum Hall, so he gave us a tour of the Mayflower building and Quaker Hall. He and Amy were so absorbed in their observations, I was free to explore pretty much on my own. However, the whole place was so ingrained in pain and sorrow, it felt awfully oppressive to me. No wonder it brimmed with scavengers and dark entities.

Brett wanted to take us down to the tunnels to head to Tinicum Hall, but I begged for a little fresh air and he obliged. It was really nice, walking outside in the sunset, breathing the cold wind that smelled of trees.

Amy stopped us the moment we had the entrance to Tinicum Hall in sight. She rested a finger across her lips and leaned in, narrowing her eyes in the dwindling light.

"Children," she whispered. "Four of them. They look like playing on the right side of the building. The woman from the other night is there, keeping an eye on them."

"You can see them?" asked Brett in awe.

"You don't?"

"I can perceive entities over there, but that's all."

"We need to work on your sight."

"Name the day."

I glanced at Brett with a mild frown. Yeah, it didn't take a psychic to see those two had some kind of chemistry going.

"Is Kujo around?" I whispered.

"Oh, my, there he is!" Amy covered her mouth, eyes like grapefruits. "Oh, Fran, I wish you could see him! He looks so good!" She turned to me and I was surprised to see the wet spark in her eyes. "He developed an animal shape. Picture a wolf the size of a grizzly, with long black fur. A warg, that. That's how he looks. Fierce but pretty in his own fashion." She looked ahead again, shaking her head slowly. "Oh, my girl. You should be so proud. All of us thought he was this heinous killer beast. All of us wanted to banish him. And you convinced us to help him instead. Damn, Fran. Look at him. We're so ignorant."

Okay, enough. I left the mediums praising the beautiful postcard of the ghost children playing under the watchful eyes of the nurse and the warg, and pressed on toward Tinicum Hall.

I was about to call him when I felt the ground tremble. So I dropped my bag and opened my arms, grinning from ear to ear. A heartbeat later, a faint mist of heat knocked me down on my back and I felt it brushing my face. My phone fell off the pocket of my jacket, repeating a single word that made me cry and laugh.

"Fran. Fran. Fran. Fran."

"Hello, my boy!" I managed to say.

The heat stopped brushing my face and retreated a little, enough for me to sit up on the grass. Amy's exclamation told me she was being hugged too, while Brett chuckled a step away. It was just a moment, before the heat wrapped around my back and shoulders, like the warg was standing right behind me.

We lingered in and around Tinicum Hall until midnight. I went down to the basement with Kujo, where my old sleeping bag was a disgusting wet rag covered in mold, and presented him with his new bed. Then we went back out of the building, before I caught something nasty in that awful environment. We found Brett and Amy on the right side, under the trees.

The big man had folded his arms, wearing a serious frown, and nodded every few seconds, his face turning from Amy to the empty space right in front of her, while Amy had a long conversation with Gina. I sat on the porch, my legs hanging over the edge, happy to just feel Kujo's heat against my side. He let out only a few words, but I didn't care. He was fine, and I got to spend those hours with him, so that was enough for me. I felt heat on my lap, and Amy confirmed he was resting his head there, closed eyes. He wasn't sleeping. He didn't sleep. Just like me, he was simply enjoying that time together.

Leaving was almost harder than the first time, but I somehow found the strength to say goodbye to him, promising to come back in a couple of months.

Brett had already booked us a room fifteen minutes away from the asylum. I was relieved to see it wasn't the same hotel where Brandon and I had spent our last night together, because it would've been just too much. I just got in bed and passed out, eyes still teary but happy to know Kujo had found his place, where he could be himself and live out of danger.

In the morning, Amy surprised me with a raw sketch of a big dog napping with its head on the lap of a small human figure.

"That's how you two looked like last night," she said with her warm bright smile. "Keep it. You can't take a selfie with him, so this would have to do."

"Is there any way I can learn to see him, at least vaguely?" I asked when we were back on the road.

"Maybe. It isn't something you can learn if you aren't born into it, but let me look into it. You're not a sensitive per se, but your living with the Blotters and the bond you share with Kujo may do the trick."

Back to the Manor, I found Trisha working on her laptop in the kitchen, trying to put together a list of questions for the interviews she was planning. I left her to it and headed straight to the third floor, to cuddle up in the loveseat before one of the windows. I would've liked to write or play the guitar, but I would end up crying like a baby, and I didn't want to.

Lizzie showed up about an hour later, to check on me like she always did when she noticed I was down or scared. She asked about Kujo, and telling her about the whole new dynamics he'd triggered in Pennhurst ended up cheering me up. We were still talking when the first snowflakes swirled softly outside the window in the sunset.