It's been a week since someone smashed my car, and even though I managed to get it fixed without Gramps noticing the damage, I haven't driven it since. Anne's ghost continues to freak me out at least once a day, the note incidents leave me checking over my shoulder far too often, and besides that, the evidence of my sneaked alcohol and too many meals with Gramps is starting to show on my waistline. Not that I can't stand to gain a few pounds, but being in shape has always been a borderline obsession, and I've spent too much of the last couple of months curled up under the covers.

The fact that I even have that thought makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe, I'm headed in the right direction as far as my heart. My life, of course, remains a shambles.

The notes and Anne Bonny do give me purpose, as crazy as that sounds, and the second warning does nothing to dissuade my desire to get my hands on those archived documents. The fact that Anne's creepy ass pops up at work about every day and spends as much time as possible casting mournful looks at the locked door encourages me further, because even though I'm no expert, all of the movies suggest that ghosts go away when their business is finished.

I'm starting to miss her when she's not around, but she makes me sad, too. As though her moods have started to affect me.

Beau's dropped by for a few lunches, but he's backtracked to friendship territory. He's not the kind of guy who could ever be friend-zoned against his will, though, and his approving glances and slight touches have set my blood to a simmer that would leap to a boil with the slightest nudge.

Mrs. LaBadie is worse than ever today and truly has some kind of sixth sense when it comes to that damned locked door. She calls me away, assigns some additional menial task, anytime I even pause outside it. Quitting time isn't far off now, and she'll be waiting for me by the front desk. I stop in the bathroom first to wash the dust from my hands and wrists, partly because they feel gross but mostly as a passive-aggressive attempt to gain the slightest foothold of control in our relationship by making her wait.

The powder room is small, with one toilet, a single sink, and a window that's about shoulder high and covered with frosted glass. An idea pops into my mind, maybe something I read in a Nancy Drew novel as a girl, and without thinking too hard about it, I unlock the window. I'd left behind the law-breaking period of my life with the start of college, but Mrs. LaBadie's hawk eye makes it impossible to follow Anne's finger. She has no good reason—the archives are accessible to the public with an appointment, but even when I came in on my day off she refused to let me in, saying there was a cleaning crew present.

She lied, but calling her out on it won't get me inside. Sneaking is my only option.

The witch herself waits impatiently by the front door, her lips twisted in distaste. "Where have you been?"

"Bathroom. Listen, do you think I could make a copy of the key to the archives? Mr. Freedman did promise that I would have full access, since archival history is my area of study."

"You saying I don't know how to manage that room? That you can do it better?" She squints at me, her black eyes glittering in a way that makes me want to jump backward. It's not just a bad mood—it's like she hates me for a real reason, something I've done, but it's as mysterious as Anne's for choosing to haunt me.

I stand my ground. "No, but it's my area of expertise, and it's open to the public. I'd like to take a look."

"Only Mr. Freedman can authorize a second key, and he's going to be gone another ten days. You're welcome to ask him when he returns."

Old Ralph took a week of vacation and combined it with some librarian conference down in the Caribbean. Sounds like two weeks of vacation to me, but it's hard to blame the guy. I met his wife.

Mrs. LaBadie pushes into the early evening, then waits for me to walk down the steps before locking the door and pocketing the key. It's probably not smart to hoist myself through a window in broad daylight, which means I have a few hours to decide whether or not to chicken out.

I've been arrested in Heron Creek before, and breaking into the library is small potatoes. It's not as though it's going to damage my sterling reputation, though it may put the final nail in the coffin of my potential relationship with Beauregard Drayton. Imagine a Drayton, the mayor, dating a common criminal.

I push him from my mind, sure that he's already given up on the inkling that he'd like to get to know me better. Gramps is waiting for dinner, and I'm anxious to sit and chat with him. The thought—the hope—skitters through my mind that perhaps Aunt Karen called with an update on Amelia and the baby, leaving a throbbing behind in those empty caverns of friendship inside me.

Amelia doesn't have to be my friend anymore—that's her choice. We'll always be family, though, and she can't stop me from caring about her.



Gramps falls asleep in his chair before the supper dishes are clean, and I watch the last four innings of the Braves game to the sound of his raspy breathing, a laptop in front of me. He looks comfortable, snuggled underneath his fleece blanket, mouth hanging open as his snores drown out the postgame analysis on the television. He'll be fine there until I get home, then we can get up to bed together.

The night makes me jumpy, an undeniable fact that colors the edges of my vision with red. Heron Creek shouldn't scare me. It shouldn't scare anyone, yet I glance behind me, sure there's going to be a ghost or a crazy person dogging my steps at every turn. No one's there, though, and aside from the few restaurants that stay open after nine and the one bar I pass on my way to the library, the Creek is as sleepy and deserted as ever.

No one notices me leave the sidewalk and traipse around to the rear of my place of employment. It's darker back here, away from any streetlamps and lit signs. The unlocked window slides up under the pressure of my palm with no resistance and, most importantly, no noise. I have to jump a few times before my hands hook the sill, and it's clear that I need to do more than walk to work if I'm going to get back into shape.

My grunts don't carry far, and after a few more minutes of trial and error, I manage to hoist my hips over the painted wooden lip. It digs in, scraping hard enough that it'll leave a bruise, but there's no time to worry about that while my body is dangling half in, half out. The chance that anyone will wander back here seems slim, but there's no excuse in the world that will work if I get caught like this.

I kick my feet and use my forearms to tug my body forward, which doesn't work, until it does. I fly through the rest of the way, toppling face-first into the edge of the toilet.

"Holy shitballs, that's gonna leave a mark." Quoting Tommy Boy, even to myself, is usually good for a chuckle, but at the moment my face feels as though it's made of broken glass and pulsing pain.

My nose throbs, my vision blurs, and it takes more than five minutes of sitting still with my head between my knees before the dizziness subsides enough to allow me to stagger to my feet. The mirror reveals a weeping red line across the bridge of my nose, which promises to turn into at least one black eye. So much for Gramps not noticing I went out.

Oh well. Onward and upward.

There's no alarm system in the library, and no one else is in the building. Neither fact makes me slow down nor feel less watched, and my steps move quickly toward the front desk. Mrs. LaBadie keeps her key in the locked top drawer, but she doesn't know about my long and storied career picking locks with nothing but unbent hairpins. Another Nancy Drew–inspired talent. The multiple Carolyn Keenes had no idea what kind of delinquents she would spawn with those books.

I palm the key after making quick work of the weak lock, then move toward the archives. It's like forbidden fruit, this room—literally, if I take the note seriously, figuratively if I consider all the times Mrs. LaBadie has gone out of her way to keep me away. She's crazy protective of these stinking files.

The flashlight app on my phone offers plenty of light to work by, which saves me from the risk of turning on the light. My favorite scent in the world, the combination of weathered paper and cracking glue, washes over me as the door swings open, and I take a moment to breathe it in. To remember that this is where I imagined I belonged—wandering among history—before David sold me a different version filled with academic glory and babies on the side, only to steal it from under me.

It's funny that Anne Bonny should choose me. She's kind of a manifestation of my first love—history. Although I'm not sure I prefer my history quite so alive. Words on pages, primary sources are good enough.

There's another smell in the room, and it takes a moment before I place it as the same incense Mrs. LaBadie burns at the front desk. It, combined with her little stick figurines, has me half convinced she is some kind of voodoo witch, except no one around here would be so accepting if she is.

The question of where to begin vexes me for a moment, and curses stream through my mind. With any luck, they'll float through the air, out the front door, and straight into Mrs. LaBadie's dreams. This would be so much simpler if I'd had the opportunity to familiarize myself with the cataloguing system ahead of time. In daylight.

The better part of an hour skitters away before I locate the boxes containing documents related to Anne Bonny and her father's family in the local history section. Anticipation makes my breath too quick and my palms more damp than they should be while handling these kinds of things, but it's exciting—she's hanging around over two hundred years after her death, pointing toward this room, and the mystery of why is about to be solved.

Nancy would be proud.

The box contains fewer things than I expect. The moment the lid slides off, the feeling of being watched grows so intense that I glance around, sure Anne or maybe even Mrs. LaBadie lurks over my shoulder. There's nothing, not even a sound save the wheezing air conditioner working its ass off to keep the room at an appropriate storage temperature.

I don't want to take anything out of the room that's not imperative to my search, that I need to help the ghost cross over or whatever, but at first glance, there's nothing that seems important. There's a family tree, some information on her father's holdings in the Charleston area, including a land survey of his property, which was sold more than fifty years after his death.

It takes me longer to read the couple of oral histories attached to Anne, but they amuse me so I take the time. It seems the girl was destined to be a criminal from a young age, perhaps because her father treated her as the bastard she was, or perhaps because it was simply her nature. Either way, she certainly didn't fit the mold constructed for young ladies of her circumstances and time. There's one story about her stabbing a maid who displeased her and another account of a stabbing, this time a man attempting to take certain liberties with young Anne. Hard to blame her for the second. And since I've never had a maid, maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge on the first count, either.

Another recounting, this time how her father disowned her after she began her affair with James Bonny, and how she responded by burning down his entire plantation. Her father turned out to be right about ol' James, though, and I'm sure admitting her mistake really burned Anne's lady breeches when the time came.

There are multiple newspaper articles that chronicle the falling-out between father and daughter; they were a high-profile family, William Cormac a respected lawyer. Not the kind of man who expects to have a child turn pirate, never mind his only daughter.

A noise from outside the archives catches my attention, pulls me from two-hundred-plus years ago and deposits me back in the present. It's not a figment of my imagination, not this time. My gaze strays longingly to the bundle of information, which isn't nearly plumbed, and I make the snap decision to take it with me. Once it's back in the protective plastic, air dismissed and seal reinstated, I poke my head back out into the main library.

No one's around, that I can see. If there is someone in the library, it's imperative I get out of here as soon as possible, especially since there's a good chance it's my equal parts scary and annoying boss.

It's not a big place, and I feel well hidden among the maze of the stacks, but not well enough as it turns out.

"Gracie?"

The voice, combined with the sudden glare of a flashlight in my face, almost makes me pee myself. That it knows my name—speaks it—at least suggests this is no kind of spirit.

That it doesn't sound pissed off all but proves it doesn't belong to Mrs. LaBadie.

I put a hand up to shield my eyes but can make out nothing but a shadow. "Turn that damn thing off before I go blind."

The absence of the light doesn't do any good, at least not right away, and whoever busted me stays silent until my eyes adjust. Once they do, they almost fall out of my head. "Leo?"

My old friend sports a navy blue security guard uniform, pepper spray at the hip and everything.

"It's weird that you sound more surprised to see me than I am to see you. What are you doing here?"

"You sing on the street by day, security guard at night...anything else?"

"Yes. I pump gas on the commercial docks three days a week and bartend at the Royal Oak on the weekends, plus a few shifts here and there during the week."

"Oh." His answers lead to more questions, like why he doesn't have just one job or whether he's struggling with money since taking on his niece, but they all seem a little prying, seeing how we've barely spoken for years.

"You're avoiding my question, which is obviously: What are you doing in the library after hours?" His gaze slides to the plastic bundle still clutched in my hands, then back to my face, patiently awaiting a response.

It sucks that Leo and I spent years parlaying with each other on behalf of our respective clans. He knows my tricks, and lying to him has never been easy—at least, not getting away with it.

"I left this here." I wave the packet in front of me, hoping that keeping it moving means he can't get a good look. "I'm having trouble sleeping lately. Thought I might as well work on this project but realized I left it here."

"And you thought crawling in through the bathroom window and busting your face seemed like a good plan?" He shakes his head, but even in the shadows his struggle not to smile bleeds into my vision. "You look like hell, by the way."

"Thanks, I know. Gramps is going to freak out."

"How is the old coot, anyway?"

"He's good. Just old. Probably could still catch you and paddle your ass, though."

"Now there's a pretty picture."

We fall silent as the familiar patter dries up, flakes off, and drifts away. I can see him clearly now, even without the light. The moon shines through the windows and illuminate the spines of thousands of books, little motes of dust, and empty tables and chairs. It's creepy, actually, but less so with Leo here, too.

"Are you going to tell on me? Mrs. LaBadie already hates me, and I'd really prefer not to be fired."

"Because you're a loony, depressed drunk and no one else will hire you?" Leo arches an eyebrow, humor evident in his still twitching lips.

"You've heard about my tumble into town, I see."

"Yes. And the empty liquor bottles in Gramps's trash."

"Mrs. Walters has stooped to going through the trash? Yikes. How the mighty have fallen."

"It's unclear whether she goes through the garbage herself or pays poor old Luther to tell her if anything interesting falls out when he dumps it."

"Pays him in blackberry pies, you mean."

"I sure hope so. Can you imagine if it was anything more...deviant?"

"If you make me throw up, we both lose. You'll have to clean up vomit, and I'll get busted after Mrs. LaBadie finds the wet spot in the morning."

He snickers, and the uncontrollable sound makes me giggle. Somehow—perhaps from the too many hours I spent at frat parties my first couple years of college—I know Leo's holding back a joke containing the phrase wet spot. It takes us both a moment to get our juvenile senses of humor under control, but when we do, a warm familiarity replaces my mirth.

It may be true that you can't go home again, but laughing with Leo Boone feels pretty close.

"I'm not going to turn you in, Graciela. It goes against our Rules of Engagement, after all." I breathe a sigh of relief, even though it's dubious that our childhood war games extend into adulthood.

And if they do, I now owe him big-time.

"Thanks, Leo."

"And I'll even let you out through the front door."

My lips snake into another smile, and with it comes relief—that spontaneous happiness still has the ability to trump what I've started to worry is a permanent cynicism. "I don't remember you being quite so gracious when you've got the upper hand, Leo Boone."

"We all grow up, Graciela. Some more reluctantly than others, and some only when we have to." A sadness threads through his words, winding and tugging them into a sweater that can't quite keep a person warm.

"Marcella is beautiful, Leo. And she seems happy."

It's a guess, that his niece is his reason for growing up, but a safe one. Even though my words were almost a whisper, he winces.

"She's as happy as she can be, with no father and a mother in jail."

"Whose daughter is she?" My curiosity gets the better of me, even though he would be well in his rights to tell me it's none of my goddamn business.

" Lindsay's."

I struggle but barely recall her face. The only Boone girl is years younger than me. It's not as though remembering what she looks like would give me any additional insight. I knew no details about any of them, save Leo, and even that was a long time ago.

"If you have what you need, let's get out of here. I still have to make the rounds through the government buildings and the bank before I can call it a night."

"Sure, Leo." I pause. "But could we go out the side door?"

The look he shoots over his shoulder overflows with suspicion, but he changes his path through the stacks without pause. To his credit, no follow-up questions slip out. It's unthinkable to me to talk about the threats I've received with a second person within a couple of hours, but they're the reason for avoiding the front door.

Maybe if one person had to know, it should have been Leo and not Beau. The thought surprises me, but once it settles in, it makes sense. Leo knows me. We'd solved a few mysteries in Heron Creek, even if it was just who made out in the seven minutes in heaven closet and who just made whispered pacts to never tell that they didn't. He's different than Beau.

Leo's more like me—not willing to let adulthood body snatch us yet. Not in total. Together, we'd be more likely to turn over stones that don't include official reports and policemen.

He pauses after unlocking the glass door that leads into the alley between the library and the post office. When he turns toward me, there something shimmering on his face that's never been there before, not in my