Some of them had lofty dreams before this, certainly. Audrey has made it clear from all her investigating and interviewing and organizing of notes made from stolen pens and craft paper that her dream was to be a journalist. Sometimes, when she's doing the dishes, the others can hear Lydia hum to herself. Ambrose was in law school, Ajay in medical school, and Fallon an aspiring musician. Eva should have had a dream. Never would she have imagined herself an account, but that is what she has become.

There was a little over twelve hundred dollars in the drawer, and some Canadian tire money even though there isn't one within two hours from here. Eva gave Este three hundred as promised, and Este has only spent their money on a few scarves she keeps in her bed. The rest, Eva has divvied out.

Over the past week, that is what she has been managing. The pastor has brought them more food since, so Eva has invested in other items. Everyone got thirty dollars to buy some clothes from the used clothing store in town. She's booked a motel room twice over that week so everyone could rotate using showers. It's far cheaper than the truck stop showers, which cost ten dollars per person. Living alone after leaving her mother's home, Eva had to learn to budget quickly, and with the cleaning supplies so they can wash their clothes and their bodies in the sink in their kitchen, as well as the clothes, and of course her cigarettes, Eva doesn't have enough for three more weeks here.

Of course, Eva has a bigger plan in store. She wouldn't have been an accountant before this, but the leader of a heist is something she could see herself doing. With her cigarette pinched between her fingers, she pours over the blueprints she made. One more place, one big payout, in a neighbourhood where people will recognize her.

She stubs out the cigarette in her mother's bedroom.

Lydia doesn't hear the sound of burning, humming over the washing dishes. Most people aren't around right now, and she wonders if she could do it, open her throat without croaking. Stage fright hasn't bothered Lydia for years. There is no stage. If the church didn't echo, she might go up and sink where the choir sits.

Her hands hurt from the hot water. She stops the tap and dries off her hands, stepping into the next room. Eva holds the burning piece of paper in front of her, looking at Lydia through the hole. Lydia feels her spine straighten. It takes a second to coax her shoulders into loosening. She feels like she needs to stretch every day, with or without Eva around.

"You know, I am surprised you don't put up with Barry," Lydia leans against the doorway. "Doesn't he unsettle you?"

"He doesn't unsettle you," Eva shrugs. "Shouldn't he?"

Lydia couldn't imagine being Eva. Breaking and entering like it's no big deal, lighting fires in churches, walking into a motel with fifty dollars and no identification. There is something about Eva that fits this kind of life. Lydia is good at performing, but she needs a script.

Eva smirks. For all her composure, Lydia has one tell. She thinks with her whole body, from the strong furrow of her brow to chewing her lip.

"If you have a question, you can ask," Eva says. "I only hiss, I don't bite. Just be gentle."

"I'm not usually gentle," Lydia sighs. Then, she peels herself off the doorway and steps forward. "How are you so confident?"

"Are you saying I shouldn't be confident?"

There's something to Eva's smirk that infuriates Lydia, and she swallows it, "no. I'm just asking how you manage it?"

"Can you ask your actual question?" Eva muses. "All this beating around the bush is so annoying. I'm on the last of my nine lives. Probably."

Lydia plants her hands on her hips, "you're going back to your own life, somewhat it seems. I can't. I can't sing. It doesn't feel right."

Eva rolls her eyes, "sing."

"I just told you-"

"Sing!"

A stammer starts to come from Lydia's mouth, "you're not listening, I can't just-"

"Sing!" Eva shouts, with her eyes wide and glistening, her hands thrown above her head, her blueprints fluttering in the air, and the entire world at her fingertips.

Lydia does.

The first notes of the first aria she learned come out of her lips. In a language she doesn't speak, she sings "L'ho perduta", or in English, I lost it.

~~~

If she had the money, Kaia would invest in earbuds. The hum of the old computers in the library, and the quick clicking of her mouse, are all starting to become grating. If she can get out of the other tasks, she has been here. On the first day, she researched her Jane Doe case, and there was very little information publicly available. She has discovered that she died of blunt force trauma, but not much else.

The only other day she made it back to the library, she spent her time doing Clare a favour and then researching her own social media profile. Something about it makes her sick. She's been commenting on other people's posts. She's been commenting on them at least twice a week. She can't tell exactly when she likes a post, but there are as many likes in her account from the two years since her death as there were in the two years preceding it.

She didn't keep researching that day. Instead, she went back to the castle and climbed to the top of the bell tower and screamed from it. The place was dusty and coupled with the screaming, she coughed and coughed all the way back down.

Today though, Fallon and Nico decided to come back, so she figured she might. The headphones might help her tune out their conversation.

"She's so beautiful," Fallon coos at the screen.

Nico smiles at their boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend? Kye anyway. Well, more accurately, Quinn Tessential, with a microphone in one hand and her eyes looking up at the ceiling. The shot is from below the stage, and it feels different. Before, Nico would help take all of Quinn's photos, and you can tell from the photo feed. There were poses in front of walls, in public, with other drag queens in Montreal. Nico can see the gap in photos when they died. Since then, every photo is of Quinn on a stage.

"She's doing better then," Nico smiles. "Like, she seems to be booking all the time."

In Montreal, though. Nico always said they were too gay for math, so it's easy to turn a blind idea to the difference. Several time zones. Hours in a plane, days in a car, years crawling through the boreal forest and then the plains and then tundra, and rural areas and city streets all the way to Kye.

Fallon wouldn't get it, Nico thinks. Her partner is here.

Yet, Fallon still hasn't talked to her fiancé. Each day feels longer and longer than the last. She has been practicing her proposal speech again in the mirror, and the words feel almost as right as they did then. Fallon is only good at being a grenade in the soil. Forgotten from some long-off war. If you don't disturb the dirt, she likely won't explode.

"You could message her," Fallon offers.

They thought about calling, but Nico doesn't have Kye's number memorized. If it weren't a cheap computer, Nico would send a DM with their voice.

Trying not to eavesdrop, Kaia clicks on the profile of the last known witness to her death. She could've done it sooner. Just, Kaia didn't like the aftertaste of her anger, at the idea she might have killed Rory. She isn't keen to feel that burn again.

Then she clicks on the profile.

She's still posting. The most recent set of photos pops up. Rory's hands, an engagement ring on her finger, her hand held by two others.

Kaia doesn't want to ache anymore. She's been stretching every day. Her bones had settled. It had been so long since she smiled and laughed. Leaving the library the last few days, making dinner with Clare and talking about 80s music instead of murder, playing a game of checkers with Audrey that they found, making crafts with Nico and Fallon, reading samples of Barry's poetry when they let Kaia, all of it. It wasn't this.

Kaia skips this photoset and goes to the next. Boxes stacked up in an empty apartment, a skyline outside she doesn't recognize, and a blanket on the floor. Rory in the middle of it, laughing with a wine glass in her hand. Across from her, Liam, the ex-boyfriend of Rory's that Kaia met during the tensest family dinner. He's got a wineglass too, and he's leaning forward, his eyes on Rory's and a wide grin on his face.

She powers off the computer, her hands rushing over the buttons. Kaia isn't sure exactly what happened the night she died. Likely, she won't ever be certain. However, she does know Rory, and the Rory before that night wouldn't be there with that man. She also knows that she wouldn't tell anyone the passwords to her accounts. The only way to get into them would be to get into Kaia's phone.

Of course, Rory knows the pin to Kaia's phone.

Fallon watches Rory leave, swallowing. She probably should follow, but Kaia is more of a private person.

"She's..." Nico trails off, watching Kaia leave. "She's got a lot going on. Unfinished business and all of that, right?"

All Fallon can do is nod.

~~~

From his spot in the church pews, Ajay doesn't hear Lydia singing, or the dishes washing. On Sunday mornings, they are supposed to be silent. Last Sunday, they cowered in the darkness, listening to the echoes of songs down below. On their first Sunday here, Ajay slept through the entire thing. Only now does he sit, in a pew second from the back, following the motions, mouthing along to prayers he doesn't know, and listening to the pastor.

He hasn't seen him since they all first met. Ajay wasn't there when the pastor last dropped off food. From the opposite end of the mighty room, Ajay sits and listens. He had always expected churches to have more echo. Each step the pastor takes feels muted. The man may be standing before them all, but when they all pray together, his voice is indistinguishable from the others.

He was worried his presence would alert people, but nobody seems to take much stalk in his presence. The church has more people than he could ever suspect, and he squished at the end of the pew of a rambunctious family. Chelster doesn't have this many Anglicans. At least, Ajay doesn't think so. If he had to guess, people are driving in from the boonies, from maybe an hour away or even further. Out there, in the farmland between the oil fields, there have got to be Anglicans out there.

Soon enough, the ceremony is ending. People begin to get up and shake hands and exchange niceties. Ajay peels out of the building. He cannot go downstairs now, not with so many eyes around. Any one of them could be on him.

He doesn't notice the one pair of eyes he should be looking for.

Ajay makes his way out of the front doors of the church. He exits through the parking lot, walking by. It's packed with cars, and so are the side streets, and he keeps walking until finally, there aren't any cars around him. There is a bus stop. He sits on the bench.

Normally, when Ajay looks for something he knows what he expects to see. Grades uploaded on a website, keys buried in couch cushions, cars before crossing the road. Ajay didn't know what to find in the pastor's face. Murderers look like everyone else.

"You shouldn't have done that."

He looks over, peering at Audrey who hovers above him.

"We're you spying on me?"

"Investigating is an ongoing process," Audrey answers plainly.

Perhaps one could say Audrey was spying, but Audrey wouldn't. Words are important. Spying just means to observe clandestinely, and Audrey does that every day. Is it spying to overhear a conversation without intention? Is it spying to notice someone is crying discreetly and being too uncomfortable to voice sympathies? Is it spying to watch Ajay all week looking for signs of whatever he is hiding from Leo, something that makes Leo so uncomfortable he won't explain what he thinks about it when pressed? Is it hiding to sit in the last pew in the church, close enough to see the hairs on Ajay's neck, and wonder what thing he knows that is making him startled whenever the church groans from the harsh wind?

Probably, but also irrelevant.

"What?" Ajay finally says.

Audrey's eyes narrow in as they lean in closer to Ajay, "I know you are hiding something. I'm going to find out what."

"I'm not hiding anything."

"You are," Audrey insists. Ajay's Adam's apple is bobbing. "You're scared of something. I thought it was the police, like you knew something about them, but now you're watching sermons and sneaking around churches."

Ajay smiles, "we live in a church secretly. Of course, I'm sneaking around it. Now look whose paranoid?"

"I don't find you charming," Audrey says.

The smile remains, though it is a shame. Ajay cannot help but find her beautiful, from the way she thinks and writes notes. Ajay has always been good at watching, and it's rare he meets someone better.

"Of the record?" he asks.

Audrey is picky about words. They hate those three in particular. Audrey sits down on the bench beside Ajay and nods. And so, he explains. He tells Audrey what he found with Ambrose in the bell tower, and what the cop said, and what Ajay thinks it all means. Audrey's heart races, irregularly they think, and if it were a different moment, Audrey might ask Ajay for help. He's training to be a doctor. It would be a shame to admit defeat, a bigger shame than having a medical emergency here and dying all over again.

"Okay," Audrey finally says. They understand why he didn't say a word. The truth is powerful, and most people pursuing journalism aren't inclined to contain it. Stories are powerful, and Audrey will bury this too. He doesn't need to know that. "I won't tell anyone, but I need a favour. Two nights from now, I need you and two other people who aren't cops to come with me. People who aren't going to ask questions. Maybe Ambrose."

Ajay would ask a question, but instead, he nods. Then, Audrey stands, heading back to the church basement, ready to make a plan.

~~~

It's been days, and Leo doesn't know what to do. The other day, he watched Eva light a cigarette, and he smelled a burning of something so putrid that he can only imagine it was his old flesh. Two nights ago, he took her lighter and hid in the bathroom, flashing it before his face. He swears the sparks of light are the same shade as the emergency lights in the factory. They seem too red even for a flame.

Yesterday, he kept thinking about it all.

Leo finally feels it. It's the church, he thinks. Ambrose found him in the pews last night and sat beside him. They sat there for hours. It was comforting, the silence. Everyone thinks Ambrose is strange, and Leo sees how they look at him the same. Unlike the others, he doesn't enjoy leaving the church basement. People stare at him.

Hours sunk into the room, the time rising around Leo like quicksand, and he didn't think he could be buried alive once more. Though Ambrose was a law student and not a pastor in a past life, Ambrose heard Leo's confession.

I don't deserve this new life. I never have. I never will.

It took more time, but Ambrose spoke. Words that Leo never thought would make sense came from his mouth. Ambrose held a bible and caressed it, and talked about how he never believed in things that weren't real. He didn't care for Jesus, and the church made him uncomfortable. Here, alive despite everything.

Besides, Ambrose always loved endings. Things that were long passed. Quebecois folk tales about time travel and trees, Latin, the stillness that the cold brings, and funerals. The present moment has never felt so real.

What people deserve isn't a real thing.

It felt good, that idea. There is no cosmic point, and if there is, he doesn't want to go looking for it. Except for the killer who escaped his grasp and a debt to amend, Leo had no unfinished business. Before it all, he wouldn't even let himself be a whole person; just an RCMP officer trying to save the entire world to make up for the loss of one person. Only now, is he alive.

"Where did it end?" Ambrose asked him, peering over. "Is that what is so terrible? You did something to deserve the death?"

"I was in a warehouse," Leo answered.

That was all Ambrose needed. Now, in the middle of the sermon, Ambrose and Leo are standing in the warehouse where Leo died, entering inside it. Ambrose knows it. He studied why all the factories in town shut down. He only cares for things long passed.

Leo enters with Ambrose, his heart thundering. He doesn't have his medication, and he supposes if he were to have an episode in front of anyone, Ajay would be best due to his medical training. Next, of course, would be Ambrose. While Ambrose likes to watch, he doesn't seem to mind the macabre. At least, not from what Clare has told Leo.

They twist through hallways, and Leo looks at the walls.

The emergency lights are on. He doesn't smell anything. There are whispers. It's a voice he recognizes. Leo soldiers on.

They step closer, and Leo feels a panic that is there as quickly as it is gone. He stumbles. Ambrose looks over, no hands up to help him.

It's interesting. Ambrose isn't sure where he died. He'd want to bottle, this, recreate it, if he could.

"What does it feel like?"

Leo closes his eyes. He braces himself against the wall, moving forward.

"Like," Leo was never one for waxing poetry. He plays guitar and wanted to write songs but could never figure out how lyrics work. "It's like something I buried deep inside me. Something that's coming out whether I want it to or not."

They haven't talked much about it, but Leo doesn't think anyone has gotten as close to the place they died as he did. He isn't sure, but he is the closest. Kaia did not venture this far. No one else has been here.

"No," Ambrose decides. "That is what it is. Not what it feels like."

"It feels like I don't want to talk about it," Leo snaps, wiping sweat off his forehead. He cannot walk forward.

"No," Ambrose says, unfazed. "That is what it is. What does it feel like?"

Leo swallows. One step forward. He thinks not about what it is, but how it feels. It is something he doesn't want to think about. It feels like a track he has run a thousand times, a path he is following through the snow by stepping in footprints exactly his size, it feels like putting on a second-hand shirt that he donated.

"It's..." Leo trails off. "It feels like déjà vu. It feels like I've been here before."

He can't push on further. He turns and walks out of the building. Ambrose shrugs, following him.

~~~

With Eva's permission, Clare was allowed to get a burner phone. A flip phone is cheap enough but plans for calling are not. She buys two twenty-dollar cards that will let her call for seventy cents a minute. It's an hour of calling that they are all supposed to share equally. She'll be the first to get it.

Barry came along to see if they could buy some sort of sauce or seasoning from the store. The pastor brought some cans of tuna and frozen chicken strips since the lack of protein was making them more sluggish. Barry's shoulders have been aching, and they massage them as they check out the six flavours of barbeque in the store. There is something to this town. It's simple enough that he can do things while focusing his attention elsewhere. Lydia. Poetry. Pestering the others.

"Barry, you got it?" Clare calls back to the man.

They nab a sauce that isn't spicy and hopes it might pair well with the water that is so spicy it gave them a violent stomach ache after a mouthful. The store feels tight for a convenience store, with shelves that tower above Barry and spaces that are so thin that Clare couldn't walk beside them. Barry drops the sauce on the counter and the man behind it scans it. After Clare pays, she takes the plastic bag, thinner than Barry's patience.

The pair walk outside together. It's nicer to be outside now too, Barry thinks. At least, in clothes he doesn't hate, that don't itch terribly, things are manageable. Someone is going to need to make another trip to the laundromat by the end of the week or else Barry will scratch off their clothes.

"You've got someone to call," Barry peers down in the bag. "I thought you were local."

"I am," Clare says.

They've mostly agreed not to contact their families, though Clare is sure not everyone is going to follow through. She misses her parents, and her brothers, and her dog. But she wouldn't call them. Her father didn't approve of Clare's job as an officer. One of her brothers is older than her now. She's got no idea what to do with all of this, couldn't rope them in.

Still, she imagines pressing record on a tape recorder.

"Something's weird," she admits, more to herself than Barry.

They scoff, "surprised they didn't make you detective before you died."

Clare scowls at him. There is no doubt left in her for her to give him the benefit of it. All of her doubt is spread everywhere, so thick. She's walking through shallow waters. The tide is coming.

"I was only two years out of the academy," she tells him. "I was doing good work, you know. They gave me an additional post as the Indigenous liaison officer because people actually liked and trusted me. I helped solve a series of break-ins, and I was closing in on a drug ring before all of this."

Barry supposes Clare wants them to be impressed. They shrug her off. Someone who rattles off all their accomplishments in one breath isn't someone whom Barry would pay much mind to. Besides, people who are successful and actually believe it don't feel the need to justify it.

"So, I'm sure you've cracked your death wide open," Barry rolls their eyes.

Clare walks away from Barry, in the opposite direction of the church. Barry is hungry though, and she's got his barbeque sauce, so they skulk behind her.

From the inside of her coat pocket, Clare pulls out the slip of paper with a number she got from Kaia. A library computer, and Clare probably should have gone with her but didn't. She dials the number, and as instructed presses buttons until she gets on the line with an operator.

"Yes, this is Rose Canosa," she says her mother's name, and she knows she doesn't sound like her mom. "Can you connect me with Mackenzie Brooks?"

Barry listens in from behind, maintaining a safe distance.

The answer, in short, is no. Clare isn't surprised. She knew this would happen. She tells the operator that she is a family member and wants to tell Mackenzie of a death in the family. It would be easier if Mackenzie Brooks was held provincially. The federal prison system doesn't allow incoming calls, only outgoing ones.

Then, Clare hangs up.

Barry only manages to catch up to Clare when she sits on the curb, ten minutes later. The girl power walks and her footsteps rumble the ground like Barry's stomach rumbles them. With a bag and nothing else, she's going to look like she's publicly intoxicated on someone's lawn. It's not abnormal for a town like this. Chelster is two hours away from the nearest town with a bowling alley. There are things to do in Chelster, but most up them result in law enforcement intervention.

"Can I have my barbeque sauce?" Barry holds out a hand.

Clare shifts through the bag as her phone rings. She picks it up.

"Hello?" the other line says. "You're... you're Rose?"

It's not like a podcast. The line is fuzzy, and his voice is shaky, and it's there in her ear and not in front of her, but it feels real around her. Mackenzie Brooks, standing next to a payphone, paying money every minute she hesitates. He definitely knows the name Rose Canosa, even if the operator didn't. Her mother read a victim impact statement.

It's also not like a podcast, because so many of them are American. In the federal system, calls between inmates and outsiders cannot be recorded by law enforcement unless there is an active warrant. Mackenzie Brooks doesn't seem like the kind of person who has a warrant out in his name still.

"You, you didn't plead guilty," she says to him. "Don't hang up. I'm not here to judge, and I'm not going to get mad. I just... why not plead guilty? It would have saved you time in prison."

There is no answer on the phone for a second.

"I'm not guilty."

It was an answer she should have expected, "look, I don't really get your motivations, and that's fine, but I just want to understand. Why didn't you plead guilty for your own sake, with all the evidence?'

She is worried he's hung up.

Barry, for once, doesn't feel impatient. They listen in eyes on Clare, indifference is impossible even though Barry cannot hear the other line.

"My lawyer said it would be much harder to overturn the conviction later if I said I was guilty in court. My mom told me to take the plea and I wish I had listened. I didn't... I just thought it was so unfair that I was set up. I didn't really care how the trial would make you and your family feel. Honestly, I only care now a little. We both got screwed."

"Why do you think you were set up?" Clare asks, counting down in her head. Her breaths feel ragged.

The boy on the other end sighs, "I don't know. I mean, I wasn't really good. I already had a juvie record. I guess whoever wanted Officer Canosa dead thought I'd make the conviction easy."

"But why would the police help cover up her death?" Clare continues. "Her partner was there?"

"Listen, lady, I'm being too nice. I'm not your fucking PI. I fucked you up with the long trial and you fucked me up right back with the sentence, so can we just call it even, and you look for damn answers elsewhere."

He hangs up. Clare hangs onto the words.

Barry sticks out their hand, "sauce."

~~~

For the tenth day in a row, Este walks to Jayce's house. She has spent half her money on scarves and an hour searching the storage room in the basement for a rusty screwdriver. All the scarves were red, all of them a boutique in town, and Este asked the shopowner to order more for her. Este's planning to come back once she buys more. This is her last. Ten scarves in as many days should be a message.

She invited Kaia for revenge, but Kaia is more interested in ironing out details. She doesn't seem to know things and people the way Este does. This isn't a guess for Este, or a hunch, or something that needs justifying. If Kaia wants revenge in her own time, Este will be there for it later.

For now, Este is getting creative. She rarely swears, letting one slip in front of Kaia was a lapse of judgement. She prefers words that are more cutting. These scarves are her words, and she has been painting Jayce's house with them. The door handle of his house was the beginning. Este put one under the mat on his porch so he could find it himself by stepping on the lump. She hung one from the wind chimes, discreetly, to see if he would notice how they were muted in the wind. It's been taken down since. On the windowsill, tied to the fence like a flag in the wind, strangling the flowers in the garden bed, and Este is only beginning.

Now, she stands in front of his house, his car parked in his driveway. Surely, he's home. This time, with the screwdriver in her hand, she has a plan. She walks up to the car and smashes the window.

The sound shatters, and the car alarm dampens the wind chimes.

Este takes off her red scarf, content it smells like her, and throws it in the car window. She turns around and starts to walk away. Car alarms go off all the time. Jayce won't be able to ignore this one.

"Hey!"

Este turns around. On the porch of her old house stands the mistress-turned-wife of her ex-husband. When Este faces her, she watches the flush of rage drain from the woman's face.

Kaylee Wood-Roswell is just as beautiful when she is surprised.

Este blows the woman who is fucking the man who killed her, and walks away smiling.

~~~~

This is insanely long. I'm also hoping to get more into dynamics now that they are like two weeks into their new lives. Are they any particular characters you are interested in interacting? I'd love your feedback.

If you haven't already, apply for Deterrent! I'm still looking for characters and I'm so excited to get it started soon! If you are needing help, please reach out. I'm still looking for some lovely ladies and enbies.