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Ellery stood off to the side while Avery fiddled with their key ring, shunting her too-big jacket back up her shoulders while she waited, more to give herself something to do than because she was cold. Avery smiled when they opened the door for her, though it was missing some of the trademark warmth and charm she'd come to associate with them. It was strange how you could know someone for three days and already learn how to miss parts of them. Ellery did her best to shake off the thought as she walked into their apartment.
Of course it was overflowing with plants. Something Ellery was pretty sure was called pothos was spilling haphazardly out of its pot, twining loosely around the shelf it was on. As promised, there were shelves crowded with succulents upon succulents, and heat lamps basking their gentle light upon the tiny pots. It felt warm and a little moist in the room, almost like a greenhouse, though the chill from the outside was taking a while to leave Ellery's bones.
While Avery shook off their coat and shoes, Ellery drew towards the shelf stacked with books like a magnet—her favorite spot in any room. She smiled to herself when she saw the amount of plant care guides and botany books, and frowned a little when she saw a couple books on music. It made her sad to think of Avery alone in their tiny apartment with their plants and their synths, dreaming of a different life. An impossible life.
"You really do like books, huh?" Avery said, walking up behind her.
"You're serious about your music," Ellery said instead of responding, because the answer was obvious.
"Yeah, I guess I am," Avery said, smirking a little. They traced a gentle finger along the spines of the books. "Some of these I've had for a long time. Even when I was a kid, I wanted to be a musician."
Ellery tried to remember what she wanted and felt and thought about when she was small. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer." Avery laughed, and Ellery glared at them. "I'm serious! They make good money, and I've always been good at arguing."
"Well, isn't that the truth?" Avery laughed. "But c'mon, you must've had a dream before that. Or are you telling me even as an elementary schooler, you were in it for the money?"
"No," Ellery admitted. "It was the mock trials we did in middle school that made me decide that was what I wanted." She smirked, a little playfully. "I liked winning."
Was Avery blushing? No, Ellery was surely imagining it. "So what was it before that?" they asked her.
Ellery wracked her brain and couldn't come up with anything. She just remembered wanting something she could work hard and get recognition for. Astronaut? No, even as a kid, space felt too risky—rocket malfunctions and elevated cancer risks and the Challenger disaster. Doctor? No, she never trusted doctors—she'd figured out pretty quick that she needed to hide things about herself from them, and when that's the perspective you're working off of, how can it ever feel like a respectable profession? Scientist? No, too gooey—she'd associated the job with the horrible kiddy science experiments they'd made everyone do in elementary school. Athlete? Too physical. Veterinarian? Too cutesy. Teacher? Blech, too many kids.
"I wanted to a detective," she remembered all of the sudden. "When I was eight or nine. Like Columbo."
"You were watching Columbo at age eight?"
"It's a timeless classic," Ellery defended herself. "He's the greatest TV detective ever. He solves every case before the killer even realizes he's onto them."
"Okay, okay," Avery said with a smile . "I wasn't doubting its quality, just its child-appropriateness. I know it's never graphic, but there is a lot of murder in that show."
I was seeing far worse things inside my own brain for much longer than I've been watching detective shows, Ellery carefully didn't say. "Oh, it's not so bad," she said instead. "A little murder never harmed a kid, anyway. It's good to get them ready for that kind of stuff, so they're not as shocked when they see it happening in real life."
Avery's lips pressed flat, like they couldn't decide whether or not they wanted to smile at that. "You know, I want to be surprised, but you totally would say that."
"That's good," Ellery said, smiling up at them. "I like to be consistent."
Their eyes took on a different look to them—softer, sweeter maybe, but with a focused light to them. Embarrassed, Ellery looked away, folding her arms and staring down at her socks. When Avery spoke again, they sounded awkwarder than she'd ever heard them before, like they’d walked into a room expecting a quiet dinner party and encountered a massive elephant instead.
"Um, have you eaten yet?"
"Not since this morning," Ellery said, remembering her shoddy PB&J breakfast.
"I can make something quick for us," Avery said, winking and walking over to the kitchenette. They seemed to have recovered from whatever had been bothering them. "Pasta sound good?"
"Please," Ellery said, her stomach growling in agreement. She followed Avery deeper into the apartment, snagging a chair from their little dining table to sit and watch them cook.
In the warm light of Avery's apartment, the world of Charlie's little nightmare realm felt far away, though no less real. If anything, it was this tiny jungle that felt unreal, like a pocket dimension of calm inside the whirling storm that was Ellery's universe. She couldn't even access her sixth sense here, though whether that was because Avery's apartment was truly supernaturally neutral or because her powers had been frazzled and overtaxed by all the work she put them through during the ghost hunt, she still wasn't sure. It felt equal parts relaxing and disconcerting. If something horrible were to happen here, she wouldn't be prepared, but maybe it was possible she didn't need to be. Maybe all she needed was Avery and their calm little kitchen and the smell of fresh plants all around her.
No, Ellery thought, wrapping her jacket tighter around herself. That was a ridiculous thought. She always needed to be prepared. The haunting could have gone so much worse if she hadn't been. It was her sixth sense that helped clue her into why Charlie was there and what he needed to be told in order to move on, and most of all, it was what helped her deliver her closing argument. If she had let her guard down for one second, she could've doomed everyone.
"You know, I'm a little surprised you wanted to come hang out with me after all that," Avery said as they set a pot of water to boil. "Not that you're unwelcome or anything, but Tabitha seems... I don't know, a little overprotective of you."
"She can cope with me being gone for thirty more minutes. I'm not ready to go back to the estate just yet." Not when the ground felt like it was always seconds from falling out from under her, and the room she slept in reeked of death.
If she could even sense it at all the way she felt, tired and overwhelmed by everything that had happened to her. And wouldn't that be even worse, to be inside that house and not be able to feel the danger? How would she even know if something was going to happen?
"Fair enough," Avery said wryly. "Family can be complicated."
Ellery raised a brow at them. "Is Winnie overprotective of you? It must be strange, working for your relative."
"Oh, Winnie gives me plenty of space," Avery assured her. "I was more thinking about my parents. They, uh... haven't been very happy about some of the choices I've made."
"Right," Ellery said. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don't know how happy my mother would be with me. She never wanted me to set foot in the Holler if I could help it. When she talked about her past at all, she always made it clear she left for a reason."
"Why did you come back, anyway?" Avery said. "You don't seem the type to accept a funeral invitation out of pure courtesy."
"I had to," Ellery explained simply. "Scarlet Hollow was calling me home."
Avery paused from their task—rooting around through the cabinets for the pasta—to shoot her an amused look. "Ellery, sometimes you do say the strangest things. Not that I mind, of course."
"You're one to talk. You told me earlier getting possessed was cool," she accused.
"Penne okay?" Avery asked. When Ellery nodded, they pulled the box out and tore the cardboard tab off, pouring it into the boiling water. "I just think it's kind of exciting. Can you blame me? When you live in a town like this, you don't get much excitement."
Though Avery's tone was relaxed, something twisted in the pit of Ellery's stomach. That pretty much confirmed what she'd already suspected—that none of this supernatural business had been happening before she came to town, at least not anywhere visible. Not even in subtle, non-dangerous ways. She wondered darkly if it was really connected to the town itself, or if it was connected to her. Are the visions I get helping me prepare, or are they what's causing everything to go wrong?
Stop, she told herself firmly. Running yourself in circles about that kind of stuff never did anyone any good. If she was a harbinger of doom, there was nothing she could do about it, short of killing herself. It was better to focus on what she could do, which was using her powers to prevent tragedy in any way possible. She hadn't managed to coax Stella and Duke out of the woods, or the kids out of the mine, but she'd stopped Charlie. That counted as a success. The way forward was to keep preparing and being vigilant, not to get tangled up in the weeds of what ifs.
The silence had been stretching on for too long by that point, but she couldn't explain all of that to Avery. After all, she'd only just met them. And however open-minded they were about the supernatural, that didn't mean they would be willing to roll with the whole I have to follow a strict code of rules all the time in accordance with my mysterious supernatural powers or bad things are gonna happen and it'll be all my fault thing that Ellery had going on.
"You're always kind to me," she said instead, fishing for something else to talk about. "Even though I'm kind of an asshole." She let an unspoken Explain yourself hang in the air.
"I don't think you're as much of an asshole as you think you are," Avery said, stirring the pasta. "I mean, you keep taking time out of your day to come see me, don't you?"
"That's like, bare minimum friend behavior," Ellery said, rolling her eyes. "What, does no one else around here even bother to give you the time of day?" She realized half a second later. "Oh god, they really don't, do they?"
"I wouldn't go that far," Avery clarified. "It's just, I don't often come up number one on a lot of folks' lists." They winced as they said it. "I must sound like I'm throwing myself a pity party, don't I?"
"Yeah, but I don't mind," Ellery said. "I would hate living here too."
"You seem to be getting along well with Stella and Kaneeka, at least," Avery said, grabbing a strainer from a cabinet under the counter.
"Eh," Ellery shrugged.
She'd loved Stella at first, of course. It was hard not to. She was intelligent and boundlessly enthusiastic and took seriously the things that Ellery had always believed about the world—that the supernatural was real and it was everywhere, lying in hiding where only the curious could find it. But Stella always seemed to disappear when it really came down to it. Ellery just couldn't rely on someone who'd proved again and again that they wouldn't be there when it counted.
And Kaneeka... Ellery liked her just fine, but she wasn't sure the feeling was mutual. Kaneeka was closed-off and skeptical, and she had no room for Ellery and her sixth sense and all of her wild supernatural theories. Ellery couldn't count on someone like that, either.
Avery shot her a surprised look as they strained the pasta, and she clarified quickly, "There's ways I haven't always gelled well with them. But I don't like talking bad about people behind their backs."
"Only to their faces?"
"Shut up," Ellery said warmly. "It's fairer that way."
"Well, maybe we’re no one else’s number ones in this town, but at least we have each other," Avery said as they prepared the pasta for her, piling it into a cute little bowl decorated with painted plant leaves.
I don't need anyone else, Ellery almost said. It wasn't true, of course, and it wasn’t the kind of thing she usually thought. At least, it wasn’t the kind of thing she usually thought; her mystic inclinations were always providing vague and flowery-worded hints like that.
But it was strange. Even though her sixth sense was still offline, for a moment there, it had almost felt true.