Nothing But Bones

20: The Joker Goes To Tim Hortons

She wakes up to the sound of squeaking and claws on the side of a tub. She doesn't open her eyes at first; she just pushes Kepler away gently and tries to sink under the water. He's insistent, though.

Groaning, she sits up, wipes water from her face with the heels of her palms, and opens her eyes. "What, Kepler?"

He drops her phone on the bathmat. A shining field of white against an artist's rendition of a black hole, there Elton is: he lost track of time; is she hungry?

Tiff groans. She dries her hands as well as she can with the edge of a towel and texts back, "Yes. Give me five real minutes."

She looks at the state of the bathroom, the half-finished EMF reader, and the fact that he said he wanted to go somewhere good. She immediately amends, "Scratch that. Make it seven."

After a second, Elton texts her back. "Cool shit."

Dressed in comfortable clothes with the knowledge that they'll be heading back to the house after they eat, Elton grabs the camera he uses for his adventures. It isn't the best as far as what some of the more professional ghost hunters use, but it's good enough. It can switch between night vision and IR, so what more can he ask for? He also makes sure to grab his digital recorder, spirit box, and several bottles of water. He made sure to bring a second umbrella. He's just that kind of guy.

Seven minutes and some change later, he's back at the Beaverdell Hotel. The rain hasn't stopped at all. A steady assault of relentless drops comes down on his car while he waits for Tiff, drowning out the music he's trying to gently air-drum to. Modest Mouse isn't the greatest band for that anyway.

By the time Tiff pulls herself out of the tub, gets dressed, re-bandages her neck, puts the hair-in-the-bobby-pin in the makeshift EMF reader, shoves everything back in her bag, and remembers to brush her wet hair, it's been a little more than seven minutes. She gets there, though, holding what definitely looks like a portable radio under her shirt.

She swings herself into the passenger's seat like she did this morning; Kepler bounds in after her, dragging rain into the car. "So! Sorry about the wait. Apparently seven minutes isn't a real amount of time."

Elton gave Tiff a look, but laughed. "So it seems."

She shrugs. "I have issues with time. It isn't just the gnome."

Pulling away from the hotel, Elton drove off towards their destination... "So I talked to Ben today. Bryce goes by Ben now, by the way."

"Yeah, he told me." She frees the black plastic portable radio from its hand-painted fabric prison and fiddles with the back panel. "I already changed the contact. It's short for Benson. I already knew that."

"Awesome. Oh, so...." He fiddles with his stereo, changing the song far too many times. "So Ben told me everything. About what he did, what you did."

"Fuck—" Her breath catches in her throat. She didn't even tell Ben about half of it, did she? How would he know? "Tell me he didn't."

"He did. About Oneiron, the dreams, and what he did to that poor kid. Said you and your friends saved everyone."

She slouches down in her seat and tries to breathe normally. "Oh. Right. Yeah. I guess so."

It's easier to watch the rain while she considers saying what she should and simultaneously shouldn't say. It's a question that has to be asked, though, isn't it? For the second time in the past three years, she's in a place where nobody knows her, what she is, or, importantly, what she's done. Denny and Drake, who were there and helping the second time Oneiron died, are back in Lake Wonder; Darius, who was under the table with her when she threatened to kill a non-existent dog, is god-knows-where; Priscilla Cain is dead and buried for good now; and there's no way for anyone to know any of it unless they were there. Let alone Ben. Let alone Elton.