5: Joshua
Joshua sat at the Goths’ table at lunchtime. He had no choice in the matter.
He’d been distracted by a giant Christmas tree in the center of the cafeteria. It reminded him that the holiday was barreling down on him like a freight train. He needed to buy presents for everyone on his list. He needed to create a list.
Who did he need to buy for?
His sister Bethy, their mom and dad, Decker and Seth went without question.
Cabot? When Joshua was growing up, he never had to buy presents for his “cousins” even though they would see his dad’s family on Boxing Day. (They had to be the only American family that even celebrated Boxing Day.) Cabot was more like a big brother than a cousin; so yes, Joshua needed to get something for him.
Elise? If she didn’t have family in Boston to eat Thanksgiving dinner with, then she had no one to celebrate Christmas with. She was Decker’s godchild and Cabot’s girlfriend all wrapped up in one. Joshua had no idea what to get her, but he should have something for her to open on Christmas morning. It would be awkward if everyone got a present from him except her. What did you get a beautiful older woman without being creepy? Jewelry was out—that was a boyfriend-only kind of gift. A warm scarf? That seemed as uncool as getting underwear and socks from your parents.
Decker might know of a perfect gift for Elise. He’d ask him when he got home.
With that decision made, he realized that the wolf had taken advantage of Joshua’s distracted state. It had found Maisy in the chaotic cafeteria, sat down beside her, and leaned uncomfortably close to be petted.
“Stupid wolf,” Joshua muttered as Maisy patted his head.
All activity had stopped at the table as the Goths—and Ji Su’s snakelike spirit guide, Nam-gi—stared at him in nervous surprise. Ji Su, Allie, and Maisy took up three of the eight seats. The spirit guide had been wrapped around Ji Su’s neck like a choker, but it slithered down into her lap. There was evidence that other Goths were in line getting food; books and bags were stacked on the table, saving an unknown number of chairs.
“Was this seat taken?” he asked. Maybe he could escape if he’d just stolen someone’s seat.
The Goths looked surprised and then glanced behind Joshua.
“He can sit there,” a female voice said behind him. “There’s other seats.”
One of the most beautiful girls that Joshua had ever seen claimed the chair at the far end of the table. She was prettier than any cheerleader at his old school, but her beauty seemed effortless. She wore no makeup, her black hair fell in stunning natural waves, and all her clothes seemed effortlessly elegant. She seemed a little young to be in high school. Based on all the disappointed looks from the tables around them, she was extremely popular, at least with the male population of the school.
Without comment, the Goths shifted a pile of books from beside Joshua down to the girl. She ignored Joshua and focused on the food on her tray.
Maisy patted Joshua on the hand. With a wash of warm affection, Maisy let him know with her inverse empathy that the pretty girl wasn’t really ignoring him, that she was too shy to introduce herself.
Tal sat down beside Ji Su. “Hey, cool, welcome to Gothland! You probably caught my name in homeroom, but if you didn’t, I’m Tal Palfrey.”
He no longer wore the black garbage bag. Tal had on instead orange-and-taupe camo pants. He seemed no more embarrassed by the outlandish pants as he had been by the plastic skirt. “I’m a senior—obviously. Honor roll student. President of the Drama Club and the French Club. One-quarter Choctaw. One-quarter Cajun. The other two quarters…we’re not sure of. Originally from Hugo, Oklahoma, now hailing from Watertown. Palfrey means ‘horse’ because one half of my family is a long, long line of mediums. The other half is an equally long line of circus performers.”
“Circus performers?” Joshua echoed. “Like clowns and ringmasters?”
“C’est moi!” Tal grinned. “After I graduate, I’m going to college for either acting or film studies. I like acting but I also like telling people how to put on a cool show.”
The orange-and-taupe camo pants made sense now.
“Alisha Thompson. Allie—please.” Allie introduced herself. “I only use Alisha for school forms. I’m sorry about this morning. I’m a boarding student and I went home for the holidays. I missed…” She waved vaguely to indicate all the insanity that happened to Joshua. She blushed, glanced at Tal, and seemed to decide to borrow his introduction format. “I’m a senior. Honor roll student. I want to get a degree in Forensic Science. The University of New Haven is my first choice, but I’ll consider anyplace that offers me a scholarship. If I can’t get a full ride, I’ll probably go to Excelsior College in Albany and commute from home. I’m the secretary for the Asian Studies Club. We mostly watch anime, read light novels, and celebrate Japanese and Korean culture. We’re looking for members…if you like that stuff.”
Maisy radiated unease. As if she had whispered her fears aloud, Joshua knew that she wasn’t sure what she was going to do after she graduated. Her inverse empathy had no practical uses. She was envious that the others had such clear goals. She touched Allie’s hand and indicated the pretty girl studiously ignoring Joshua.
Allie took the clue and introduced the pretty girl. “That’s Ottilie. She’s a freshman.” Which would make her only fourteen or fifteen compared to Joshua’s seventeen. Allie thought for a moment and then added, “She’s a Grigori.”
“She’s a Virtue?” Joshua said in surprise.
Everyone at the table flinched. Great, he’d obviously said the worst thing possible.
Ottilie frowned at him and then ducked her head. “Virtues are not the be all and end all of being a Grigori, despite what my parents might think. Dominions are just as important, if not more so. Dominions do the real grunt work of running a monster-hunting organization that spans the world. They gather information and analyze it so that they can make the best of our resources. Virtues are just glorified executors.”
“Elise is the only Grigori that I know,” Joshua said in his defense. “I don’t really know much about her—your family.”
“We’re not related,” Ottilie said. “The Grigori is a race descended from angels. We are from the same tribe, but her family traces down from the first elder of the East Coast Tribe. Her people are in Philadelphia running Central Office. I’m from a less exalted branch centered in North Carolina. No one even remembers we exist.”
That would explain why Elise thought she was the only Grigori in the city. Her grandfather Saul had to move Decker out of Philadelphia because his sister disliked the vampire.
“What are you doing in Boston?” Joshua said. There was a moment of surprised silence at the table.
Joshua blushed as he realized he’d followed up with the second worst possible thing to say. “I mean, there are other private schools that you could go to closer to home—isn’t there?”
“You really don’t know anything,” Allie said. “I would have thought Seth would have told you something about your family history.”
“Seth and Thane Cabot were busy fighting Wickers and whatnot,” Tal reminded the others. He leaned closer to Joshua so that he could lower his voice. “There was an accident during your great-grandfather’s reign. For some reason, all the little kids except your grandfather had been left alone with the teenage puppies to watch them. No one survived to explain exactly what happened, but apparently one of the puppies bit a youngling. She went feral. Things cascaded out of control from that. Everyone under the age of eighteen was either torn apart or went feral and had to be put down.”
“In terms of Blackridge,” Ji Su said, taking up the narrative, “the accident meant that the school was going to be mostly empty for a couple decades—at least until your grandfather had kids of his own. Your great-grandfather decided to open the school to non-werewolf children. The locals felt that it was in their best interest to step forward and make sure that your grandfather—who was just a youngling—was safe from all dangers. They enrolled their kids here at Blackridge. It worked so well that your great-grandfather established a scholarship program to ensure that we could attend, no matter what.”
“Not all packs have the wherewithal to build a school like Blackridge,” Tal said. “My family used to live down the street from the Oklahoma Court. They have always homeschooled their kids.”
“The Albany pack has their own private school,” Allie said, “but they don’t give out scholarships. To be fair, Albany isn’t as well to do as the Boston one. Their school is closer to my family, but we couldn’t afford the tuition.”
“Blackridge is the only school run by wolves that will allow a Grigori to attend,” Ottilie said “We don’t have our own private schools—that would make too much sense. Most families do homeschooling until we’re thirteen. We learn the basics: reading, writing, and stabbing things. Then most of us go to Greece to try and become Virtues. Over eighty percent of people wash out and become Dominions. Utterly pointless in my opinion—why train for something you can’t possibly become? I didn’t want to waste my time. Blackridge was the only real option for me.”
“Why?” Joshua asked, mystified. “What about public school?”
“You don’t know about angelic glamour?” Allie asked.
Joshua shook his head. They all looked surprised and dismayed.
“He doesn’t know anything,” Allie whispered, a mix of surprise and horror.
“We could tutor him,” Tal said. “Like during study halls and stuff, fill him in on how the world really works.”
Ji Su shook her head. She took out a piece of paper and slid it out for the others to look at. “He’s going need all the help he can get just to keep up with his classwork. I already have Ajax helping him with AP Comparative Government.”
Tal’s eyes widen as he read the paper. “Dude, why so many Advanced Placement courses? Normally people only take one or two a year.”
They were looking at Joshua’s class schedule.
“The Wolf King said I had to take them.” Joshua said. “I was taking AP Physics C and AP Chemistry at my old school. I don’t want to drop them after putting so much effort into them, especially the physics. The king added AP European History, and AP Comparative Government and Politics.”
“Oh, that is brutal,” Tal said. “Does he want you to fail?”
“I don’t think so,” Joshua said. “Seth says that I don’t have to take the placement test for European History and Comparative Government, I just have to take the classes.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Allie muttered.
“Welcome to Ancient Child Rearing Logic 101,” Ottilie said. “The king probably considers Joshua to be Seth’s heir and thus wants him to have the education of a prince. Politics and history are fundamental in dealing with wolf packs. The king is thousands of years old, he doesn’t care about test scores, GPA, or college applications.”
“Well, I can help catch you up to speed on European History,” Tal said. “It will help me to go over it again in detail.”
Allie nodded. “I can help with the Chemistry.”
Maisy looked sad. Joshua sensed that she wanted to help. She silently let him know that she hadn’t taken any Advanced Placement courses as she hadn’t decided on a career path. She wasn’t sure what to do with her abilities, which sometimes felt like a handicap. The future vaguely frightened her.
Ji Su spread her hands. “I’ve focused on economics, psychology, and English Composition.”
Ottilie, head down in embarrassment, quietly blew raspberries. Since she was a freshman, she wouldn’t be able to help Joshua with his coursework even if she wanted to. She looked unhappy with the fact.
“I don’t understand why you all want to help me,” Joshua said. Even when he was the standing army of Unpopular, no one ever offered to help him with his classes.
“Your cousins and brothers were our friends,” Ji Su said. “Your family died protecting us. Just last week, you nearly died saving this city. Of course we would want to help you.”
Joshua was surprised that they knew about the events of last week, but Ji Su was a medium with a spirit guide. (Said ghostly snake was peering over the edge of the table from Ji Su’s lap to watch Joshua closely.) Winnie had known weird things. Winnie had helped Joshua because of her unrequited crush on Cabot. She hadn’t been afraid of his wolf because she had attended Blackridge.
“Your family opened up their school even to me—daughter of their long-standing enemy,” Ottilie said. “To be a sanctuary against those who would make our life unbearable.”
“Who would hate us for being different,” Allie said.
He slowly nodded. “Okay.”
“I think Vijay is taking Physics,” Tal said. “He can help out with the AP courses. I’m sure he’ll be happy to have someone else geeking out over hard science.”
“Vijay didn’t come to school today,” Allie said. “Has anyone seen or heard from him lately?”
This prompted the others to take out their phones and check.
“He wasn’t here for play practice Friday afternoon either,” Tal said.
Maisy gazed anxiously at Allie.
“No, I haven’t heard from him,” Allie said as if Maisy had asked her a question. “That’s why I asked; our club is working on a scanlation, and he was supposed to bring his translated section in for our meeting this afternoon. He might have gotten taken by something. We might have to track him down and do an intervention again.”
His wolf distracted Joshua by cramming a huge sandwich into his mouth. It forced his attention back onto his lunch. To his dismay, he discovered that his wolf had plowed through all of the food he’d brought from home. Without noticing, Joshua had already eaten his banana, drunk his thermos of hot tomato soup, stripped the meat off the three large drumsticks of fried chicken, eaten his apple pie, and slurped down his chocolate pudding. There were only bones, banana skin, and empty containers to show that the food had even been in his bag. Even distracted, though, Joshua couldn’t miss the fact that he was eating a monster-sized sandwich. He could barely chew, his mouth was so full.
What in the world?
Joshua had made a normal roast beef sandwich that morning. Or at least, he thought he had. Sometime while he was distracted, the wolf must have piled the entire package of sliced beef onto the long crusty hoagie roll. Seth had introduced Joshua to the joy of cheese beyond plain American. The wolf had added a slice of every type that Joshua had bought to sample. Munster. Havarti. Sharp Cheddar. Pepper Jack. It had also used an entire refrigerator-worth of condiments. The resulting sandwich was a half-foot tall and rained mystery toppings as Joshua struggled to bite into it. He tasted two types of peppers and olives, mayo and mustard and horseradish and BBQ sauce and maybe honey. There were tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, and possibly cabbage.
The discussion about Vijay paused as the Goths eyed Joshua’s sandwich with surprise and dismay.
“You know…” Tal recovered first. He pointed at a giant piece of lasagna on his plate with his fork. “The food here is really good. Restaurant level.”
Ju Si backhanded Tal without even looking at him. “Leave the wolf alone.”
“There’s a line,” Joshua managed to say before the wolf took a second bite.
They all eyed the student lined up with trays on the other side of the cafeteria. It wasn’t a long line, but it was slow moving.
“Yeah, maybe packing your lunch is a good idea,” Tal conceded.
“With his class load?” Allie said. “He doesn’t have time to pack a lunch like that every day.” Allie meant the five-course meal followed by a sandwich piled high with the entire contents of his refrigerator. “Maybe he could have a snack until the line goes down. Or maybe we could get a lunch for him, so he doesn’t have to stand in line.”
“We’ll work it out,” Ji Su said.
Joshua’s mouth was too full to answer. Nor did he know what to say. He didn’t want the Goths buying him food. It ran close to the borderline of a bully beating up wimpy kids for their lunch money. Yet it might be a good idea to enlist their help; they were volunteering. He wasn’t sure what was left in his fridge. He probably needed to go food shopping after school. He’d only gotten a few hours of sleep because he’d been so nervous that he had lain awake half the night. He felt a little blurry around the edges. (Although that could be the wolf pushing to be let out.) Maybe he should take a nap after getting home. He had thought it would get easier to handle the wolf. Seth implied it would. It felt like the wolf was slipping out of his control more and more.
He focused on chewing and backtracked through the conversation. Everyone had been concerned about Vijay until the wolf distracted them. He swallowed and asked, “What do you mean Vijay got taken? Like by Wickers?”
Ji Su shook her head. “Vijay is a medium.”
“Like you and Winnie?” Joshua said.
“Yes and no.” Ji Su pointed down to the ghost snake in her lap. “Winnie and I have spirit guides. Vijay doesn’t have one.”
“Why not?” Joshua asked.
“It’s not a matter of choice,” Ottilie said. “It’s more of a bloodline thing. Either you get one at birth or you don’t.”
Joshua remembered that Winnie’s father had the spirit guide called Dorothy. After he died, Dorothy continued to protect the book that had been his life’s work to restore. Sioux Zee didn’t have a spirit guide, but she was the Wise Woman, so maybe she wasn’t a medium. He didn’t ask the Goths as he didn’t want to derail the conversations—more—from what might have happened to Vijay.
“I’m from a long line of mediums but no one in my family ever had a spirit guide.” Tal waved at the empty space around him to indicate a lack of weird ghostly companion. “It was easier to act normal growing up without an ‘invisible friend’ but it really limits my career paths.”
“Career paths?” Joshua echoed, confused.
“A medium with a guide can make the big bucks,” Tal said. “You make money by holding a successful séance where you talk to a ghost that can provide the information that the client wants to know. You can milk the gullible by going through the motions and awing them with theatrics—which is my family’s fallback—but it’s a lot of risk for little reward. There’s a reason my grandma ended up with the circus. It’s not a career path that I personally want to take.”
“Spirit guides are exactly that,” Ji Su explained. “They guide spirits. They can either guide specific spirits to a medium or act as a guard, shooing away unwanted ones. They can also sense ripples in the spiritual wavelengths. So, if there’s a crazy knockdown fight between the Prince of Boston, a Thane, a Virtue, Silas Decker, and a bunch of Wickers—you get a heads-up that leaving the city for a while might be a good idea.”
Her ghostly snake nodded its head as if it was following the conversation and agreed with the assessment about fleeing. It explained how Ji Su knew about the fight.
“A medium without a guide needs to run a crapshoot of which ghost they contact during the séance.” Tal continued on the economics of being a practicing psychic. “The biggest bucks come from families trying to find missing loved ones. With a guide, you can get a spirit that actually knows something. Uncle John might be living with a rich widow in Florida or lost control of his car, went into the Charles River and drowned, or was killed by the next-door neighbors and buried under their rose bushes. Without a guide, you’re pissing into the wind. You might get a spirit that knows what happened to Uncle John but you’re more likely to get some little old lady who is only worried about what happened to her cats after she died.”
“Or worse,” Ji Su said darkly.
Tal nodded unhappily at the possibility. “Much worse.”
There was a moment of silence as they considered Vijay’s possible fate.
“What’s worse?” Joshua said.
“Doing a séance is like opening up all the windows and doors of your soul, then turning on an ‘Open’ sign composed of hundred-foot-tall letters,” Tal said. “You get everything in the neighborhood trying to move in and set up shop. You can use protective measures to limit what can gain access to you—but the more you need to fish about for the right ghost, the greater the danger.”
“There are some things that you can’t classify as ghosts that can possess us,” Ji Su explained. “We use the general term of ‘spirits.’ Catholics would call them demons—but the church is generally clueless and slaps that term on anything that they don’t understand…”
“Like everyone with an ability is a ‘witch’ to them,” Allie muttered angerly.
Ji Su plowed on. “Demons are a certain range of spirits from a very specific layer which has been quiet for a long time.”
“Like it lost its hold,” Tal said cryptically.
“Spirits are monsters without form.” Ottilie took up the explanation torch. “Without a body, they’re harmless whispers on the wind but with a body, they can be extremely powerful and dangerous. They are said to have abilities beyond what the host has—which can make them deadly. Some are mindless as breach-borne but others are more rational. Some are benign but those usually don’t set up house in a medium without a general disaster looming on the horizon. Exorcism is the only way to drive a spirit out of a human—which is the preferred method. Push comes to shove with my people, though, killing the medium is often an easy solution to the problem.”
This got all the Goths staring at Ottilie, who blushed.
“It’s just a warning how my people think,” she said in defense. “Not that I agree with the practice. Most of my people operate in a bubble without any contact with anyone outside of their tribe. Beyond the local butcher, I don’t think my mother has ever talked to a normal human, let alone a medium.”
“I texted Vijay on Saturday to see if he got his translation done,” Allie said. “When he didn’t get back to me by Sunday, I started to worry. I tried to check his location then, but his phone is off.”
“Last time I saw him was at lunch on Thursday,” Ji Su said, and then added for Joshua’s sake, “Vijay doesn’t live in the dorms. I think his parent’s house is warded—they’re very traditional.”
“Wait, there’s dorms?” Joshua said with surprise. Seth had never mentioned dormitories.
“They’re more like a group home than a dorm,” Ji Su said. “One for girls and one for boys. We share rooms and have a house mother that makes sure we get a decent dinner and go to bed at a decent hour.”
It turned out that all the girls lived at the school dorms but none of the boys did.
“We don’t meet the ‘need’ scale. Either our parents make too money—like Vijay’s—or live too close to the school, like my mom does.” Tal slid his pumpkin pie toward Joshua as the wolf had finished the massive sandwich.
Joshua ate the pie as the Goths conferred on Vijay’s last known whereabouts.
The Wickers had tried to kidnapped Winnie, but the ghost of Marie Antoinette and Winnie’s spirit guide, Fred, foiled their plans. While Marie possessed Winnie’s body, Fred had sought out Joshua. Winnie hadn’t been the Wickers’ only victim: they had kidnapped, enslaved, and killed a multitude of people. Memories of the college student pleading for his life before the Wickers killed him flashed through Joshua’s mind. He shuddered.
At least Vijay seemed to have gone missing after all the Wickers were dead.
“Can I help?” Joshua said.
“No!” the Goths all said together.
“Ghosts and wolves are a bad mix,” Ji Su added. “Ghosts know that wolves can’t hurt them directly, so they don’t watch what they say or do. Wolves can hurt the medium when they lose their temper.”
That sounded about right, based on how snarky the ghost Wonder Woman Alvarado had gotten during the séance that Sioux Zee and Winnie had held.
“I meant not me directly,” Joshua said. “I could call Seth and he could do his ‘Prince Peeping Tom’ thing.” Seth checked in on Joshua every few hours using the ability. It would be annoying if Joshua hadn’t been kidnapped by witches and nearly killed the week before.
Allie and Tal looked to Ji Su. She shook her head. “The prince could find Vijay if he had a spirit guide. Without one, though, Vijay would feel like every other human in the city.”
“Even with a ghost riding Vijay?” Tal asked.
Ji Su spread her hands. “What can I say? While wolves can sense spirit guides—at least some of them can—ghosts are invisible to all of them. I think it has to do with how much ghosts project into our reality. Spirit guides operate much more on our plane of existence. Wolves can’t perceive the ghosts until they mount a horse and then the wolves can only perceive the horse, not the ghost.”
“Ghosts ride horses?” Joshua asked.
It got him another surprised and dismayed look from all the Goths.
“A ‘horse’ is a medium,” Tal said. “That’s why my surname is Palfrey. We’re from a long line of horses that ghosts can ride.”
Ottilie added, “The name highlights the fact that the spirit is responsible for any crime that the body commits while the spirit possesses the medium, not the medium themselves.”
“In Wild West terms, the posse should head out for Billy the Kid, not his stallion,” Tal said.
Joshua nodded even though he only vaguely understood the problem. Seth had explained his powers when they were searching for the Wickers. With over four million normal humans within the confines of the Boston metro area, Seth couldn’t pinpoint individuals unless there was something unique about them. Younglings—children born to werewolves but not yet a werewolf themselves—and Grigori were different enough from regular humans that they could be spotted during a search. Dr. Huff wore a signet ring to identify her as the royal vet. Seth could vaguely sense Winnie because of her spirit guide, Fred. Witches were too close to being a normal human to be picked out unless they were casting a spell.
Joshua had known Winnie was in danger because her spirit guide had come to him for help. He found her not by following Fred, who he could barely see, but by using an app on his phone that located his friends. Judging by the way that the Goths had frowned at their phones, they’d already tried that trick.
“What about Nam-gi? Couldn’t you send him to find Vijay?” Joshua said. Everyone made another face as if he had said something stupid—again. “What?”
“I probably will but not here in school,” Ji Su said quietly.
Tal expounded on the plan. “She needs to set up protections before sending out Nam-gi. It might seem like we’re just ‘talking’ to the supernatural and they’re drifting around ‘listening.’ What we’re actually doing is projecting into the spirit’s realm—meeting them halfway, so to speak. While we’re in their territory, we’re vulnerable to anything that might be nearby, looking for a horse.”
Was that why the ghost of Wonder Woman couldn’t hear Joshua during the séance?
Maisy patted him on the head. She added that Joshua couldn’t have known since he’d grown up with normal people.
“It wasn’t like this while we were growing up,” Ji Su said. “Wolves somehow block a lot of the bad from happening. Either they burn up excess power or by their very nature make supernational wards against evil, or because they’re very scary things to piss off…”
“Or all three,” Tal said.
“Whatever the reason, while your family was alive, we were safe,” Ji Su said.
“Another reason we’re actually happy to have you here at school with us,” Tal said. “Why we’re willing to help you.”
Happy? Tal was happy that the wolf had taken advantage of the newest distraction to eat the rest of his lasagna?
“Trust us to take care of it,” Ji Su reassured Joshua. “We’ve done this before.”
“Lots of times,” Allie added.
“Laissez les bons temps rouler,” Tal murmured.
“Hopefully with you in town,” Ji Su said, “we’ll have to do it less often.”
He didn’t want to be the standing army of the Unpopular, but he knew—firsthand—how dangerous some of the spooky things in Boston could be. The Goths would be utterly helpless to the Wickers’ constructs like the huntsman, its hounds and the fetch that had been sent to kidnap Winnie.
“Tal, let’s exchange phone numbers.” Joshua took out his phone and held it out so they could do a quick electronic swap. “That way you can call me—you know, if something really bad grabbed Vijay.”
He picked Tal out of the Goths because he didn’t have the nerve to ask the girls for their phone numbers.
“Good idea.” Tal tapped his phone to Joshua’s and hit share. “You don’t know anyone else in the city. That way you could call one of us if you need help.”
“Oh, yes, that is a good idea,” Ji Su agreed and held out her phone too. The other three girls shifted toward him, phones ready.
It wasn’t exactly what Joshua was thinking. Technically, he’d never traded numbers with a girl before. Bethy didn’t count as a girl—she was his sister. He had Elise’s and Winnie’s contact information but again, they weren’t really “girls.” Winnie was nearly thirty and he’d copied Elise’s info from Decker’s phone. He quietly tapped his phone to the girls’, gathering numbers. He felt a blush start to creep up his cheeks.