“Godsend, Jenny!” Kael beams.
“Nice to meet you, Kael,” Jenny says. “Take care of my friend, okay? He might look tough, but he is not outdoorsy.”
“All pocketknife and map duties have fallen to me,” Kael reports. “But I’m not sure I’ve met this ‘tough guy’ you’re talking about.”
Jenny guffaws.
“Hey,” I protest, imagining her garage where Kael could be a podcast guest instead of the guy I’m freezing to death with. “Any chance there’s a bed and breakfast three steps from us? All I see is darkness.”
“Normally, being this pasty white would make me a human lighthouse,” Kael mutters, teeth practically chattering against my shoulder. “But right now, I’m too cold to provide much of a steady glow. What about the… Inskip Inn?” he asks, showing me a pin on his screen about thirty minutes away. “No phone number, and it doesn’t exactly scream ‘open for business,’ but…”
“Looks like the only thing around,” Jenny says.
“Will you stay on the phone with us?” Kael asks. “It’d be nice to talk to someone who isn’t a spreadsheet in human form.”
“Kael’s afraid of the dark,” I say.
“No.” He shoves me out from under the blanket, and cold air smacks me in the face. “I’d just like to talk about something besides money spreadsheets.”
My phone’s glow does nothing for the temperature, but I wrap one hand around it anyway and stuff the other into my pocket, planning to swap them in and out while we walk.
“Sounds like you’ve met Ash’s first love,” Jenny says.
Kael snatches my phone, handing me his to use as a flashlight. “It’s borderline unhealthy, right?” He’s already climbing over the low wooden fence that rings the cemetery.
“Jenny is my podcast co-host,” I shout after him. “And what are you doing?”
“You want to walk more than we have to?” he calls back. “Just don’t step on anyone.”
“Guilty of being a fellow FIRE follower,” Jenny admits. “And please be careful.”
Kael groans.
“I was trying to retreat with my spreadsheets in peace,” I say.
“Ash says I’m the scared one. He—” Kael yelps and lurches backward, a loose rock tumbling from the unmarked grave he’s just stepped on. “Oh, no.”
“Bad juju right there,” I say, laughing at his petrified stance on the little hump of rocks. “Well, get off it.”
He jumps and kicks another rock loose.
“Ghosts of Inskip Cemetery,” I call out, grabbing both stones.
“Don’t.” He gives me a death stare.
“It was Kael Wright’s foot,” I tell the mound, and toss the rocks back. “Haunt him.”
“You can’t invite that stuff in,” he mutters.
“When I say ‘be careful,’” Jenny adds from the phone on speaker in Kael’s hand, “that includes not disturbing ancient graves, okay?”
“It was an accident!” Kael fishes something from his pocket and crosses himself. “Rocky, tell your friends it was an accident.”
“What are you doing?” I ask, pretty sure it’s the same thing I caught him talking to in the fieldhouse kitchen.
“Nothing.” He tucks it away. “You want to talk about that ninety-two-year-old indebted man?”
“He told you about Pawpaw?” Jenny sounds surprised.
