Cecelia couldn’t concentrate.

  Sure, she could toss old file after old file into an old cardboard box of ‘nope, not reted,’ with ninety percent certainty she wasn’t missing anything, but if anyone asked what the files were on? No idea. She technically had css right now, but that sounded even more tiring (and it wasn’t like she’d been pnning to go anyway).

  Mid-afternoon on day two and she was no closer to getting back to her project. At least Martha had convinced her that there was no way her machine had caused the air blimp. It was too small scale and hadn’t been activated since yesterday evening.

  “—and another ‘probably mold or carbon monoxide poisoning,’” Neal grumbled, shifting through his own stack of files. “How come no one’s uploaded all this yet? Searching with keywords would be so much easier and we wouldn’t have to physically put everything back.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Have you heard of this ranch in a desert where people see ‘ghost’ dinosaurs? I haven’t seen the case come up yet here, but we’ve gotta have it. I always thought that was a cover for a weed store, but maybe they’re like Martha.”

  “Hmm.” Sheesh, the guy talked a lot. Or maybe Neal talked a normal amount, Cecelia didn’t know. All she knew was that she’d been paired up with the other intern ever since getting back from the park and she couldn’t remember half of the things he’d said. Neal wasn’t bad to be around, just… not what she was used to. The few friends she’d made at the university were busy with internships, jobs, family, or all three. And at P.A.R.A.L.L.E.L., she and Neal were assigned to different agents to help or different tasks to do and, somehow, didn’t cross paths all that much.

  Picking up another file, Cecelia opened it to find— “A map?”

  “What?” Neal scooted over and Cecelia started spreading out the folded paper on the floor. It was old, sketched in pencil and pen, and the loud crinkles from even the lightest touch made her worry the map would tear in her hands. “I knew some of these were misbeled – full disclosure that I was half-assing the ‘reorganizing’ yesterday evening because I was tired – but this just seems lost.”

  Looking at the map, Cecelia squinted at some numbers in the top right corner. “This is no use,” she realized, pointing to the date. “Look, it’s over a century old.” Skimming the paper (why did old-time writing have so many damn loops and curls?!) the brunette could make out a few words. “The overall yout’s still mostly right, but I doubt the buildings will be.”

  “I don't think the buildings matter,” Neal said. He stabbed his pointer finger onto one square with an arrow pointing to it. “This says—”

  “You can read it?”

  Neal gave her a ft, unimpressed look as his gsses slid down his nose. “It’s cursive, not Latin.”

  “Looks the same to me,” Cecelia muttered as her face heated up.

  The other intern chuckled before tapping on the map to get her to look at it again. “These notes are about paranormal activity. Like… here.” He pointed to a rectangle with a lot of squiggles beside it.

  “I think that’s my apartment,” Cecelia said before she could stop herself. Pulling out her phone, she brought up the map app and tapped ‘home.’ Then she zoomed out so the lines and streets on her screen matched the paper map. “Yeah. That’s my apartment.”

  When she looked up from her phone, she found Neal grinning at her. “Nice! You must see and hear stuff all the time!” He pulled off his gsses, then reached into one of his pockets for an orange cleaning cloth. “Seriously, maybe I should move….”

  The thought of having someone her own age, who she knew and would see a lot living next door, was odd. A good odd, but it didn’t matter. As soon as she got back to her project, nothing here would matter. “If you want somepce dirt-cheap, sure,” Cecelia replied, making sure the words came out casually. “There’s a few imprints, but I’ve seen and heard nothing active that didn’t have an easy, this-world expnation. Except for yesterday.” Shaking her head to change the topic, Cecelia tapped the map on her phone and zoomed in a little more. “Look,” she said, pointing at a rge square a little below her building. “That’s where the blimp was.”

  “It’s beled ‘airfield’ on here,” Neal said, leaning over the paper map. “Wait a sec.” He reached over to where he’d been working. “With the ghost blimp yesterday, I put anything reted to airships in this pile.” He showed Cecelia the folder he grabbed.

  It was unimpressive. “There’s only two things.”

  “There’s not a lot on airships anymore. But….” He flipped to the second paper in the folder. “I saw those street name on here… yeah. A proposed air blimp airport — or nding area or whatever it’s called for blimps -— near Mickey Street and fifty-three-hundred.”

  “Why would anyone put an airport of any kind in the city,” Cecelia wondered out loud. Her apartment complex was more on the east side of the city, but the area was still full. “Even if blimps are quieter than pnes, that still seems too risky.”

  Neal nodded, giving her a silent reassurance she hadn’t asked a stupid question. “That’s what I thought, but looking at this map, there didn’t used to be so many buildings in that area. Your apartment is one of the st ones before an open space around the proposed airport.”

  “And the blimp was nding,” Cecelia remembered, realizing where the other intern was going. “Wherever world the ship was from, the airship port must have been built instead of the buildings that are there now in ours.”

  Neal was quiet for a moment. Then, “They must not have had the Hindenburg.”

  Cecelia wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not. “Guess not.” Her attention wasn’t focused on the airship port square anymore. Instead, Cecelia pointed to a smaller square more north. “Does that say ‘The Flickering Fme?’”

  “Uh...” Neal adjusted his gsses as his eyes followed her finger to the possible restaurant square. “Yeah. Must be a family business.” He titled his head and hummed. “I didn’t know Reed Park was so close to it.”

  Cecelia hadn’t either. Actually, all three locations looked a lot closer to her apartment on the map than she’d thought they were. ‘Even the agency isn’t that far from all three.’ Which made Agent Fisher’s car even more silly. “And the notes beside the restaurant?”

  “Lots of noises,” Neal read. “Crashing pots and pans, shouting. That type of stuff.” He leaned closer to the map again. “And twelve confirmed murders in the immediate area.”

  “Yay.”

  “Hey, there were eighteen listed beside your pce.”

  “Yay,” Cecelia repeated. “That’s lower than I would have expected,” she added after a moment. She shifted her legs underneath her but, after a few hours, there just wasn’t a comfortable way to continue to sit on the floor. “You’d think most pces would rack up dozens after a hundred years.”

  “Well, it did say ‘confirmed,’” Neal slowly replied. “But, uh, I’d like to think murders aren’t that common. I know they are, but I’d like to think it.”

  ‘Except that’s not how reality works. Especially not this reality.’ “Anyway, we should show this to Agent Fisher and the others.” Folding the map along the crevasses, Cecelia stood up. Neal followed her lead, stretching as he did so. “They’ll just send us back to ‘research’ while they look over it, but at least we’ll have done something.”