The investigation was a bust.

Rai had given it more than enough time. He was at the tunnel when dawn hit - one hour before what previous witnesses claimed to be the optimal hour for ‘sightings’. He hung around after that too, because he had come all this way. A four hour drive through the chilly dark of the West Interstate woodland. Unlike his native Mainline district - which to be fair had no shortage of chilly dark corners - this branch of Interstate Highway 76 was desolate, devoid of homes, signs or streetlights. Forget lights, it barely qualified as a street. The paving had flaked out a mile back and from then on it was nothing but a vague track of flattened dirt and autumnal litter, which only happened to cut under a tunnel; a stone-walled hole in a hill seemingly cut by nobody, for nobody.

It had atmosphere, at least.

In some of the six hours of murky daylight that followed, Rai went to complete his business in the nearby town of Birdsing. Then it was back to the tunnel, and five more walk-throughs and circle-arounds and crawl-overs, a few more cans of coffee, some fuzzy radio, some fiddling with his camera, and not much else.

In his spunkier years, he would have given the tunnel another chance. Stayed a night; returned the next week; trawled and chiseled at the site; do it all again to be sure. He’d pore over photographs and footage and seriously consider if the way this shadow fell on that brick at this angle looked like a ghoul's face.

But as a grown man, wasting the remains of a Friday staring into some gloomy dark - it wasn’t even true darkness (the tunnel was too short to fully blot out light from either end) Rai was pretty sure S____ Valley Tunnel was not haunted.

With a sigh and exaggerated swivel on his heel, just in case any malingering spirits were in fact present and watching from a distance, Rai trudged back to the car.

—

He slid into the driver's seat, tracking leaf slurry over the mat. He scraped out what he could before slamming the door. That did little to keep out the cold. What remained of the sealing around the doors and windows was as substantial as the mush he’d just gotten off his shoes.

He dropped his camera on the dashboard and pulled off his gloves, slapped them down too. Copious amounts of tunnel wall lichen had somehow seeped under the fabric and onto his skin. The dirt was glaringly obvious due to a particular condition of his: the sky-blue aura, signature of his illustrious Life Fountain ancestry, members of whom could live centuries and recover from just about any injury with this miracle substance naturally formed in their bodies. But Rai, being only half Life Fountain, only ever leaked a weak membrane of aura through the skin of his hands.

It was better than nothing. Sometimes.

Visually, it was definitely something. When he stripped off his thick black gloves, he was left with his natural set of bioluminescent neon blue.

Grit clung to his glowing wrists, like freckles or like the beginnings of necrosis. That was a joke. His hands would probably outlast the rest of his body.

After failing to find anything useful in the glove compartment, Rai wiped his hands on the seat. The upholstery couldn’t get grimier than it already was.

Being his own light source had benefits when it came to investigations. He was never without a flashlight, for one. And any appendages suffused with light also healed quickly; his hands could utilize aura even if the rest of him couldn’t. But they screwed him over just as often. Light-damaged photographs. Flickers in the dark that he’d chase down just to find his own dopey reflection. Easy pickings for even the groggiest night guard, when the focus of investigation was an off-limits spookhouse. Failures of his own doing, and if not that, failure of genetics, which was even worse.

He got better at utilizing the light, and gloving up when necessary. He became careful, and got a job that acquainted him with the law. But no matter the effort, all ghost-hunting expeditions ended the same way. The tunnel was no different.

Not a ghost to be found.

Online rumours had come to nothing. Rai flopped back on his seat (which gave a weak croak and caved a little) and felt ambivalent. No, he was content; what would he have done if he had spotted some screaming spirit, some rattling tornado of bones?

Sad as it was to admit, there were other things on his agenda, especially for the upcoming weekend.

Feeling old, Rai sighed, quieter than he had for the benefit of lurking ghosts.

There was a stirring behind him.

In the corner of the back seat there sat a box; memento of their errand in Birdsing. Draped over the box and remaining space was Sao, Rai’s assistant. He was lounging (as he always managed, regardless of location) with his head on the box, hands folded over the front of his sleek navy peacoat. It looked paper-thin, but Sao never seemed cold in it. Under it was his usual uniform of dress shirt (silken) and slacks (tailored). Sao always dressed like he was ready to present to the board at HQ, even when he knew he'd really be spending the day scrunched like a hostage in the backseat of the world’s shoddiest car.

A regional newspaper he’d picked up for entertainment, in lieu of poor cell and internet access, covered his face as a makeshift sleeping mask. Not that he needed one. A bear attack would not have gotten between Sao and his afternoon nap.

Rai couldn’t help but notice Sao’s immaculate black loafers up on the seat. One leg resting on the other, heel just barely balanced on cracked vinyl. Not a speck of dirt, even on the sole, how had he done it?

Rai once again felt like a decrepit mess.

Not much time had actually passed since the ‘youth’ when he’d more obsessively pursued his spiritual sightings. Hell, spring the previous year he had spent five days back-to-back staking out a so-called haunted arcade (it had turned out to be squatters who were very good at avoiding those who came looking. They had enough of Rai stomping through at four in the morning, and surfaced specifically to tell him nothing was amiss and to please, please go.)

One year did not an old man make. But circumstances changed. One year ago he did not have this person filling out in the back seat of his car.

Sao had insisted on joining him rather than taking a free day of leave, as Rai initially offered him. The Birdsing business might have sounded like a nice trip to the countryside, but Sao knew Rai well enough to know the day would comprise mostly of tunnel-watching. Birdsing was the excuse.

Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he was even interested too. Sao had snoozed through the morning, but politely asked throughout the day if Rai wanted to go back for another look. An hour ago he’d asked if Rai wanted to stay that extra hour, wearing his cool little smile as he said it.

Whether or not Sao had even the faintest belief in ghosts was a mystery to Rai. Sao was capable of charming information out of a rock but rarely let go of anything sourced from his own mind that he hadn’t redacted to the bare minimum of coherency.

For that extra hour, Rai had been unfocused by the possibility Sao was cheering along the ghost hunt to patronize him (and hopefully no entities had passed by in the moments where he wasn’t at peak attention). But if there was condescension in that smile, he hadn’t picked up on it. Perfectly likely that Sao had wanted an extra hour to nap. But how comfortable could he possibly be with his neck bent over a cardboard box?

“How was it?” The newspaper shifted. Sao raised the editorial corner so he could peek out with one eye, unfurl a placid smile. “Hm? Something on my face?”

Rai knew little about his assistant, but he did know a major secret - that Sao’s face, neck and arms were covered in scars; one taking up the entire right half of his face. They were almost invisible right now, because Sao never stepped out of the house without his face on (as he put it). It was all paint and powder, that he skillfully applied - and removed - at will. Rai had only ever seen him without the mask because Sao had wanted him to.

The shock had served as misdirection. Anyone could have seen that. It happened three weeks after Sao was assigned to Rai’s office by HQ. They were waist-deep in an investigation and bodies were starting to surface. Sao had gotten himself involved, and things weren’t adding up. Sao’s touch phobia, an odd footnote on his medical record, was under scrutiny.

Sao took the questioning to the morgue restroom and scrubbed his face clean, revealing monstrous swathes of scarred skin, result of a torturous injury that spanned every part of him, its infliction so traumatic it was a blur to his memory - all indisputable reason for his aversion to skin contact. In that moment, damp and exposed and surrounded by mirrors, he’d looked painfully vulnerable. But that itself was a shield. He knew what he was doing - stopping the interrogation.

The scars didn’t answer the question that was originally asked, but any will to ask again was decimated. Rai had been the one doing the questioning.

It was one of the only times Sao had ever seriously struck back at him in disagreement. But all Rai had to do was let up and Sao forgave him. If that was part of the scheme, he was making it difficult to tell. Sao was mind-numbingly pleasant when he wasn’t the subject of scrutiny.

We already are friends.

That had been months later. Sao had said it, and shaken Rai’s hand. That had come as a blow too - skin-contact phobia and all. Although, Rai had been wearing gloves at the time. Maybe it was so shocking because Rai hadn’t really expected to ever be forgiven, let alone —

Why be suspicious? Things were good between them. A lot could change in a year.

Many detectives Rai knew became different people when they bought a house, got married, had kids. Got a pet or a dream car. It wasn’t maturation so much as softening up, because they put all their defenses into the safety of that special someone or something. Rai didn’t want to think he was that far gone. For one, Sao was his employee and they didn’t see each other every day. Sao didn’t need protecting, except when it came to Rai’s own on-the-job missteps, the kind that landed warnings from HQ in their inboxes. But even that didn’t happen much anymore.

Sao wasn’t an interloper or an irritation (generally), or an unwanted responsibility or a puzzle to be solved. Not anymore. Rai had lost the impulse to whip out a crowbar and pry for secrets. What would he do with them, and more importantly, with Sao pissed off and sad and possibly dangerous?

It was like that with ghosts too. They had to come to you of their own free will, or you could get cursed or spiritually maimed. Rai assumed that was the case. He’d never managed to catch a ghost. He did have Sao, though.

Something on my face?

Sensing a faint smile eking its way over his own face, Rai turned to the wheel, started the ignition. Reluctantly, the car rattled to life. “We’re done here.” And before he could stop himself, “Total bust, I should have known but - you know, the tunnel was on the way. Glad you were here to watch the box.”

He heard some shuffling as Sao readjusted himself. “Considering your working hours, time spent on a hobby is hardly a waste. It’s good to get some fresh air once in a while.”

“Guess so. And you manage to get any rest?”

It was more than half a joke, but Sao paused, rested his forehead against the window, looked out into fog. “Refreshed and renewed to face the hustle of the city again. I do find it strangely difficult to sleep in the woods, though.”

Another crumb Sao had dropped in the past was his dislike of camping. The cause? Rai guessed maybe another scarring secret, maybe an overarching aversion to outdoor sports.

“But I got plenty of reading done,” Sao said, flattening the newspaper. “There are an awful lot of furniture sales. Whole houses turning out all their antiques. Incredible prices.”

“Not a lot of buyers in this area.”

“Perhaps you should pick up a piece or two. The majority of the sellers are in Garland. We passed a sign for it on the way.” Sao licked his finger and leafed the paper open. “Too bad, we’ve just missed Garland’s Annual Courgette festival. It’s the most popular of the region’s dozen or so vegetable-themed festivals. You wouldn’t believe the amount of cheating that goes on in the Growers’ Contest. Just this year there were specimens with illicit cross-breeding, prosthetics, even faerie hormone injections…“

“Prosthetics on a cucumber? That’s a hell of an image.”

Too dignified to respond, Sao just smiled. His stomach gave a fittingly delicate gurgle.

A beat, and they both snorted. Rai slapped his glowing hands on the wheel. “Alright, unless you want to take a shot at the tunnel, we’re out of here. Dinner’s on me. It’s the least I can do for dragging you out all this way for nothing.”

“Don’t give me that again, I wouldn’t say it was for nothing. But I won’t say no to dinner.” Sao settled his elbow back against the window.

—

With the connection spotty, the phone GPS wasn’t behaving and Rai missed the imperceptible woodland exit they were supposed to take. They continued into the forest until the trees around them drew back on the right side of the road to reveal a wide, vacant tract of grassy flatland, the silhouettes of mountains just barely visible in the distance, a ripped-paper horizon softened by icy haze.

This was not the road they’d come in on.

Sao did a good job of feigning interest. “Look at that building over there. Is it a castle?”

Rai glanced over. At the far end of the field, two flat-topped turrets were sticking out over a cluster of greenery. Below the towers were stripes of gold and white. Lit windows - not abandoned. In a dip in the hills behind the structure was a flickering strip of silver; lake or pool or moat, whatever it was a modern castle-dweller preferred.

“Nice place for a vacation home. Great views, great defensive position,” Rai said. “You can see your enemies coming from a mile away.”

“Ah, and vice versa,” Sao said.

“Okay, maybe not so great strategically. When they’re closing in and you’re out of supplies, there’s gonna be nowhere to hide...”

“Is the sort of person who lives in a place like this the type who intends to hide?”

“By place like this, you mean a castle, or middle-of-nowhere Interstate?”

“Hm.” Sao watched the castle slowly pass by. “I’d like to meet this theoretical person. But just as likely it’s a museum or heritage site.”

With that point of interest dispelled, Rai turned his focus back to the road, a much less enjoyable endeavor. By the time the castle rolled out of sight, both of their stomachs were complaining and they had little idea where they were.

“I must have missed the turn,” Rai said at last.

“I didn’t see it either. I may have distracted us with talk of the castle.” Sao's politeness grated sometimes.

“Second try, then. I’ll turn this thing around.”

“Someone’s coming,” Sao nodded in the direction of the grass. “It couldn’t hurt to ask for some directions.”

The sunset had dyed the sky an unsettling hot pink, which in turn morphed the vast field below into a blaze of purple. Some fifty meters into the field was a perfectly formed bungalow (dusty pink in the dimming daylight) encircled by a thin wire fence that looked like threads. A van was leaving the lot and came up beside them on the main road (more of a dirt path than a busy thoroughfare).

Sao waved, and the van slowed, rolling a window down. Two catlike yellow eyes in a very young face beamed out at them from low in the seat, nestled among pallets of apples and some other fruit, and several large plastic bags. “Wow, new faces? I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen you guys around. Looking for someone?”

“We’re supposed to be on our way home to Mainline, but it would seem that we got lost along the way. You wouldn’t happen to know which direction might take us to the Interstate highway?”

“You’re pretty far. You’ll probably wanna turn back the way you came and go straight for three hours, maybe more, maybe less. I think that’ll get you back. Haven’t been to Core in a long, long time. But I do know the same road will take you to Garland in two hours. Big town, the signs and roads are a lot better.”

Home of the corrupt courgette-growers. Rai slouched over the wheel. He couldn’t see Sao’s expression from where he was sitting, but he doubted it revealed any annoyance. Likely the opposite. The boy in the other car was entranced, a clumsy smile spread all over his round pink face. Not exactly rushing to say goodbye.

Sao was having his usual effect.

A breeze swept over them, ruffling the boy’s head of bronze curls. The smell of ripe fruit blew from his window to theirs.

“Smells like you’ve got something good in there,” Sao laughed.

Rai pressed his face into his hands and groaned. They’d be here all night.

“Groceries, deliveries and stuff. From Garland, so trust me when I say I know the way there, down to the hour. And it’s the good stuff - or I wouldn’t have bothered making the trip. Here, take one –”

Sao pitched halfway out the window, which made the whole car sway (the suspension not being what it used to be). When he settled back into his seat he was holding the most flawless apple Rai had ever seen. Round and perfectly symmetrical, its skin soaked with redness. Illustrated instead of grown. In the sunset, it glowed.

“A work of art.” Sao turned it over in his (very clean) hands, held it up for Rai’s scrutiny before passing it back out the window. “I can’t take it, though, if it’s a delivery. Someone paid for this.”

A soft blubber from the other car. “Nonsense. I’m the one ferrying things around for them. Just take it as a little Temperance hospitality.”

The kid was trying to sound mature. The resulting affect reminded Rai of a grandfather in a Saturday morning cartoon.

“Well then, thank you very much. It’ll tide us over until dinner.”

“What’s that? You hungry, sir? Or is that sirs?” The driver grabbed the windowframe and pulled himself up with his lanky arms. Hanging onto the window, he looked like a monkey, smaller and younger than ever. Possibly not of legal driving age, Rai was beginning to think. “If you have an hour or so to spare, there’s fine dining to be had in Temperance. If you happen to be vegetarian, fruitarian, gluten-free, no problem. And, eh, don’t tell anyone I said this, but the town would really use your patronage. You'll love it.”

It sounded like the decision had been made for them.

“I’m headed there now to finish off these deliveries. Just follow along behind.” Running his amber eyes once over the state of Rai’s car, he added, “I’ll drive nice and slow.”

Sao cast a sidelong glance at Rai, with that ambiguous smile that suggested nothing one way or another. He rolled the perfect apple in his hands, like he was winding up an old fashioned alarm clock.

Even after the tunnel failure and the time wasted on a menial pickup at Birdsing, this was also going to be on Rai’s shoulders. He reasoned that Sao hadn’t complained about any of the above, but this point, Rai wished he would pitch a fit. He generally liked his assistant, but the lack of pushback was alarming at times. Sao was neither defenseless nor stupid, so Rai often suspected that he simply liked watching a person make decisions that would leave them flat on their ass. On the other hand, Sao had signed himself up to be sitting alongside that person, didn’t he?

As he had at the mouth of the tunnel, despite all the day’s gaffes, Rai felt strangely content. Let them both reaped what they’d sowed, then.

Rai called to the boy, “Lead the way.”