Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bess

3.15pm

911 @HS

Bess

3.16pm

not really a 911 but I have a case for you, come in whenever you can, xoxo

Bess

3.20pm

I have snickerdoodles

Nancy

3.21pm

be right there

Nancy can't help an eye roll at Bess's text messages. Without her meager, yet reliable wage from her job as a waitress at the Claw, it's not like she can really afford to pick her cases. As Keeper at the Historical Society, something right in her wheelhouse might have just fallen on Bess's lap for her.

She lets herself in, calling out Bess's name. "In here!" Bess calls back from the archive room. When she finds her, her friend has half a dozen books spread out on the desk before her, maps of the woods she's smoothing with her hands. "Hey, Nancy, you're here. Good. Come on, sit down."

Nancy studies Bess with a quirked eyebrow. "Are you already putting up the murder board?" she asks as she takes a seat next to Bess, giving a quick glance to the mess scattered across the table.

"No, just sorting out everything you'll need, that's your job," Bess shakes her head, lost tendrils escaping her bun that she absently tucks behind her ears. "Have you heard of the Wellness Therapy Center that just opened in Sylvan Woods?"

Nancy chuckles. "What makes you think that I would have? Wellness and therapy just aren't words that rhyme with Nancy Drew."

Bess crinkles her nose at her. "You're trying to be cute but you do know you sound alarming, don't you? Anyway, I had a visit from the owner, Mariana Delacruz, who thinks there might be a haunting. Guests have been reporting unusual activity."

"Don't you miss the time when people weren't aware of things like ghosts and maledictions?" Nancy laughs to herself. "Now everybody in Horseshoe Bay just so easily leans into the lore." Nancy takes out her notepad and pen, ready to write down. "Define unusual."

Bess bites on her lip, trying to remember everything Mariana told her. "Low murmurs, like someone singing a song. Some sad, gloomy tune, quite depressing, Mariana told me. A weird message written on a mirror with lipstick, but the woman occupying that room with her husband didn't recognize the shade and no one at the center reported theirs missing. And two women reporting headaches and missing time they couldn't account for."

Nancy frowns. Freaky messages in lipstick or blood is a pretty common thing around here, it wouldn't be Horseshoe Bay without its lot of threats. But unaccounted time? "Mmh, that's strange. How long?"

"Not that long. Maybe fifteen, thirty minutes tops. Both said they remembered heading somewhere, and then found themselves somewhere else with no recollection whatsoever of how they'd ended there or what they meant to do in the first place."

"Definitely sounds like a possession," Nancy says, nibbling at her lip, thinking. "Remember when George was possessed by Tiffany's spirit?" Nancy asks, choosing to avoid the subject of Odette to spare Bess the heartache. "It felt like Tiffany would just slip in and out with George being none the wiser. Or maybe this is just some haunting residue, God knows what lurks around in those woods."

Bess's lips twitch in a pout. "That's a shame, I thought that Sylvan Woods had something about them." Her face softens for a second, her hand moving to give Nancy's a squeeze. "I mean, what's up with Horseshoe Bay and creepy woods, anyway? I'm never taking a romantic stroll in Gorham or Stratemeyer Woods, and though there is something to be said about Icarus Hall, it's not like Grisham Woods are much better. I don't understand people who just feel at home in the woods."

"Yeah, I bet you don't," Nancy laughs. Bess, with her skinny jeans and perfectly manicured hands, is just about as much at home in the woods as Nancy is in a kitchen. She tips her chin at the books Bess took off the shelves. "Did you find anything? A murder, a disappearance?"

Bess sighs. "I wish. These woods just have centuries of history, it's impossible to narrow it down so quickly. We need more intel. Mariana agreed that it's best for you to get easy access to the premises, so she'll help you any way you need. And she's ready to pay a lot," Bess adds. "The center just opened, and a couple already left because of all the strange things happening. And she does not believe that bad publicity is good publicity."

Nancy reads quickly through her notes. "Well, first things first, I'll need to go there and talk to these two women, they -"

Bess clears her throat, a curt little sound as her brow furrows. "Yeah, no - Mariana asked if you could investigate on the down low," she says. "She doesn't want people to start panicking and for more guests to leave."

Nancy drums her fingers on the table, thinking. "Well, if she's willing to let me in, I guess I could go as a maid or something? Definitely not a cook, though," she chuckles. "Speaking of, where are the snickerdoodles that were promised? We had a deal, Woman in White."

Bess's eyes widen, deer caught in the headlight. "Yeah, about that..." she starts with a tiny, high-pitched giggle. "They're still in the oven. I think."

"You think?" Nancy feels the crease between her brows deepening. She'll have permanent wrinkles before she turns twenty at this rate. "Bess, what -"

"Bessita? You in there?"

Nancy's head turns so fast at his voice, her neck almost snaps. He can't be here, what's Ace doing here? She glares at Bess, who only claps her hands. "See, just in time!" she beams at her, before she calls back: "We're in here!"

Ace enters the archive room, arms heavily laden with Tupperwares straight out of his mother's kitchen. Even through the plastic lid the sweet aroma fills Nancy's nostrils, cinnamon and chocolate making her mouth water. Ace pauses in his tracks when he sees her, a slow blink of his lashes before he schools his features and gives her a polite smile. "Hey, didn't know you'd be there. I would have brought more cookies for Ryan."

Nancy's heart constricts at his thoughtfulness. Ryan will make comments about missing Rebecca's cookies, and Carson will casually ask about her friends even though he knows exactly how well George is doing with her law apprenticeship, just to poke her about the state of things between she and Ace. It's been about a month since that day at his apartment and for the most part, Nancy's been able to avoid being alone with him - she's barely spent any time with her friends, anyway, what with all their busy schedules, pursuing new paths of their own. Every time she's seen Ace, he's been...well, Ace; soft voice and soft eyes, looking at her like she's a puzzle he's still trying to solve, no matter how hard she pushes him away.

Nancy forces herself to smile, praying her chin doesn't start wobbling. She wasn't ready to see him; she needs a minute to pull up her walls, make sure there's no crack in her façade that he can find his way into. "Hey," she says back, testing her voice. It comes out steadier than she expected, and Nancy's glad. "Maybe Ryan can just take classes from your mom. He's a grown man, after all, he can learn how to make his own cookies."

It makes Ace smile, a brief flash of his teeth before he shakes his head and picks the box on top, handing it to her. "Or maybe Bess can learn how to share," he says.

"Bess doesn't like that option," Bess pouts. "And she'd like it to be known."

Ace only rolls his eyes, putting the rest of the boxes on the table before giving her a quick, one-arm hug. "Duly noted. You don't need three boxes, Bess." He smoothes his hand over the sling of his messenger bag, looking between the two of them with a curious, crooked brow. "I brought my laptop and the ghost detector I've been tinkering with like you asked. Is this for one of your cases?" he asks Nancy.

"Great," Bess says, drawing a chair out for him. "I don't know if we're dealing with a ghost or a spirit yet, and yep, there's a difference, but this will be a good start."

"So what's going on?" Ace asks after he's settled in, laptop open before him to a blank document. Nancy can't help smiling when she realizes he's ready to take notes, too.

"The Haunting of Sylvan Woods, episode one. Some supernatural entity is terrorizing a bunch of couples who are just trying to align their chakras," Nancy says with a chuckle. "Bess was just about to go into the details of my undercover story."

Bess does that thing again, that little high-pitched laugh she does when she's nervous or embarrassed. Or caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "Yeah, about that...the thing is, I think it'd be best if you could get closer to the guests? And as a maid, I guess you could, like, snoop around, but you wouldn't get all the info you need..."

"What's that place about?" Ace asks. "Couldn't she pose as a counselor or something?"

Bess snorts, so unladylike for her. "I'm sorry," she says, still laughing, "but Nancy? Giving love advice?"

Nancy glares at her again, hoping this time it works. "You don't need to say it like that." Turning to Ace, she waves absently at his laptop. "It's a wellness and therapy center, did you hear about it?"

Ace shakes his head. "Like I have time for therapy." He starts typing on his keyboard, and Nancy can't help leaning in, stopping short of her chin brushing his shoulder. "It's a couples retreat. Pretty standard offer: hikes in the woods, couples therapy and support group, trust exercises, bonding activities," he starts reading. "I guess your ghost just doesn't stand love. Case closed."

"Case definitely not closed," Bess waggles her finger at him. "I promised Mariana I'd put my best people on it, and I intend to do so."

Ace tilts his head to the side, giving her an amused look. "Your best people? I'm honored, Bessita."

"Shh, you," Bess chides him.

"What do you suggest, then?" Nancy asks. "You said Mariana was willing to help, so what did she have in mind?"

"Well..." Bess starts, and Nancy instantly regrets asking. She knows what Bess will suggest before she even says it, and she dug her own grave and now Bess is gently tucking her in with that half-gleeful smile. "With that couple who left the retreat, a spot just opened and I figured...you guys could go, and, you know...investigate from the inside. What better way to get to ask people about what happened and snoop around than to be among the guests?"

What better way than to pose as a struggling married couple when acting on her feelings could kill Ace, indeed. Nancy can feel a headache pounding in her temple, or maybe it's just her heart trying to escape her ribcage. She can't do this, it's too damn risky and she can't risk Ace - ever.

But he surprises her, as always. "I have a few days off coming up," he says quietly. "I could help, if you want me to."

He doesn't look her in the eye; his gaze is focused somewhere above her shoulder, at the wall behind her. He's giving her a choice, but Nancy knows Bess is right and this is their best shot. "Don't you want to enjoy your days off, though?" she still asks softly. She turns to Bess. "What are you up to? You could come with me."

"We'd be a hot couple, but who would stay here if someone else needs help?" Bess asks, crossing her arms over her chest. "And we can't ask Nick and George, it'd be just so cruel after everything they've been through."

Nancy wants to point out that it's cruel for Ace and her, too, but she can't, so she presses her lips firmly together, her fingers curling into loose fists. How is she supposed to pretend to be married to Ace without triggering the curse? He'll hold her hand, or call her honey, and - what then? How many warnings do they get before it's too late?

"It's just undercover work," Ace says, as if reading her mind. "Just a few days of pretending. We've gotten pretty good at that over time, haven't we?"

Nancy's heart breaks at the tone of his voice, something dejected and defeated as he shrugs. Bess says something, a comment about another Drew Crew adventure, but Nancy can't focus on anything else but the way Ace's mouth twitches into that sad smile. It's been about a month; how many times has he replayed that film in his head since, wishing he could change the ending?

He'll never know how much she wishes she could do the same. Go back in time and unbreak his heart; tell him how much she loves him, how much she wishes she could be with him, free to love him. There's nothing Nancy can say now that will erase the pain she's caused him; if only healing could be as simple as a potion stashed in one of the Historical Society's vaults, something simple and seamless like dressing a wound or stitching back slashed skin, something Ace has done for her time and time again every time she's needed him to. Even when she pretended she didn't.

Nancy planted the smallest seed in his mind that she can live without him, even when it's a lie. She's the one who's been avoiding him, the one who backed away from the silent vow they made to one another to always be there. They used to always be so in sync, seamlessly understanding each other, relying on each other, and now she doesn't know where they stand, not when Nancy feels like she keeps falling apart whenever she remembers the way it used to be, the way it could have been, if only. Without him she's just a shadow of herself, and she hates that she's the one who drew that sad smile from him again.

Together has always felt right. She wants them back. Wants her best friend back, her partner back, the part of her she can't function without - and if she lets it, there is a small part of her that knows, deep down, that Ace feels the same. Nancy allows herself to relish it for a second, just a fraction of a moment when she forgets that everything else hurts. As unmoored as she feels without him, she has to become her own anchor, tether herself back to reality and the task at hand.

"Okay, you're right," she hears herself say. She'll have to figure it out later, how to protect Ace from herself. She must.

"Wonderful," Bess says excitedly, giving her the same smile as those twin girls in the Parent Trap. "I knew you'd come to your senses and see this is the best plan, so I took the liberty of booking you a spot at the retreat under the name Hardy, starting tomorrow."

Nancy feels the slackening in her jaw. "You did what now?"

Bess nods her head to herself a couple times. "Yeah, I know you two would, like, totally hyphenate in real life, but I figured it was best not to draw attention on the name Drew. Mariana told me that most couples are from out-of-town so they probably don't know who you are, but it's not good for business to widely proclaim that you have a detective among your guests, so...for the time being, you'll be Mrs. Hardy. What now?" she asks, looking surprised at Nancy's stunned expression. "I'm not asking you to play the proper little housewife, just - not look too much like yourself. You know, no amplifying glass or black beanie to go breaking into people's rooms."

Ace chuckles, visibly relaxing at her side. "Yeah, I don't think that's what's bothering her, Bess."

"You didn't know Ace's last name was Hardy?" Bess asks, completely missing the point. "I know girls love a mystery, but that's a bit much, don't you think?"

Nancy shakes her head, wiping her hand across her face. "And I presume you also came up with a backstory for us?" she asks tiredly. "What brings Mr. and Mrs. Hardy to a couples retreat? Has our whirlwind romance consumed itself to ashes?" Even just saying it sends a cold shiver curling around her spine; Nancy bites at the inside of her cheek to keep herself from saying more.

Bess only shrugs, leaning her chin on her palm. "No, I figured you guys could come up with something. It's not like couples therapy is mandatory or anything, you can just mingle with the other guests a little, you won't have to share much. Besides, you have until tomorrow to come up with a good story, that's plenty of time. But I do have something for you," she smiles at them.

Bess stands, going to fetch a little box in one of the vaults. She puts it on the table before them, beaming at them insistently until Ace opens it. "Wedding rings?" he says as he reveals two matching bands, a sort of intricate wooden design with a rune engraved on the inside. "You just have wedding rings in case of an emergency?" he teases her.

Bess rolls her eyes. "Well, this is sort of an emergency, isn't it? We need to help this ghost move on so they stop ruining other people's chance at love. And they're evil spirit repellents," she says, nodding her chin at the rings. "I figured it couldn't hurt, especially for you, Nancy. Ghosts have made a habit out of latching onto you, you should be extra careful."

"Well, we should be safe, considering we're not a real couple," Ace says. He reaches for one of the rings, trying it. It's a tight fit, and Nancy's eyes can't help but being drawn to the flex of his fingers as he waggles them. "Not my style, but it'll have to do," Ace chuckles.

Nancy snatches hers before Bess can suggest Ace puts it on her.

Ryan insists on carrying her suitcase down the stairs, no matter how many times she keeps telling him it's not even that heavy. "Where are you and Ace going again?" he asks for just about the third time.

Nancy sighs, a lost lock of her hair flying before her eyes as she does. "A case at that wellness therapy center in the woods," she explains as she fixes her hair. "It shouldn't take long. And remember, if you can't reach me on my cell phone because of the bad signal there, don't mess up with our covers. If you must call the landline, ask for Mrs. Hardy, alright?"

"Oh, yeah, that's it," Ryan puts his palm to his forehead with such exaggeration, he could run for an Oscar. "That's the thing I keep forgetting. How my only daughter got married without even telling me."

"Ryan..."

He fusses over her, uselessly helping her into her jacket. It's sweet, though, so Nancy tries not to roll her eyes. "What's next, huh? Don't you dare pull that people learn they're grandparents every day bullshit on me."

"Oh, but that'd make a great backstory for our cover," Nancy pretends to get excited. "Married and pregnant at nineteen, our families not supporting us putting a strain on our relationship."

"Hey, you know I totally support you," Ryan frowns. "I just would appreciate it if Ace could come over for dinner once before he puts a ring on you next time, alright?"

Nancy bites on her bottom lip. She doesn't know if she wants to smile or cry, to be honest. Even if this is nothing but a pretense, the weight of her fake wedding ring is very real on her finger - and so is the weight of pretending with Ace. Lying about her true feelings for him had hurt so much, and this feels like poking an open, bleeding wound, this travesty of a relationship when the tangible reality of it remains forbidden to them. "I'll make sure to tell him."

"Please do." Ryan smoothes her hair like he would with a young child, smiling softly at her. "You look pretty like this. Cute, really."

Nancy feels the flush warming her cheeks. She's followed Bess's orders and found the least Nancy clothes she owns: flower dresses she used to wear when her mom was still alive, an old cardigan of Kate's that's soft-worn and that still feels and smells like her. Nancy looks more like a kindergarten teacher now - denim jacket and shirtdress and white sneakers - and she took the time to put braids in her hair, two she fastened at the back of her head with a pearly comb that belonged to her mother. She does look cute, and cute is what she was looking for. Cute doesn't scream private investigator. "Thanks," she tells Ryan, still feeling embarrassed at his attention.

He cups her cheek, gently patting it with a fond smile. "You look just like Lucy like this. I wish I had pictures of her to show you, she was just..." He swallows, his eyes fluttering close for a second before they meet hers again. "Ace is going to have to try real hard not to give you heart eyes all the time, you look so lovely."

"Our marriage is falling apart, he'll be fine."

Ryan rolls his eyes. "I still have hope." He grabs for her suitcase again. "Come on, Ace will be there any minute now."

Ryan rolling her suitcase down the alley and putting it in the truck of Florence, and patting Ace on the shoulder, is a rather surrealist scene to witness, Nancy muses. No matter how many times she explained it to him, Ryan still looks like he's walking her down the aisle to her husband.

"Well, off you go, you two, then," he says, one hand squeezing Ace's arm, the other clasping her shoulder. "Don't play heroes, alright? If you need help, you give us a call. I'm sure Bess has plenty of secret weapons in that archive of hers."

"Are you offering to deliver them in your Batmobile?" Nancy teases him before she gives him a quick hug on impulse.

Ryan chuckles in her ear, hugging her back. "I would and you know it. Ace," he adds, turning to him with a more serious expression on his face now. "You'll look after her, won't you?"

"Ryan..." Nancy sighs. "We're -"

"I will," Ace speaks over her, soft and firm all at once, and Nancy feels sick, heartsick over it, his steady promise to take vigil over her no matter what. "I won't let my first pretend-marriage end in a divorce, and I'm not planning on being a widower, either, so..."

Ryan laughs, patting him on the back with a grin. "That's my man. I'm sad I missed the part when you mention 'till ghosts do us part in your wedding vows."

"Once again, we're not actually married, you didn't miss anything," Nancy rolls her eyes before she slides into the passenger seat, buckling her seatbelt. "Ace?" she calls out. "You coming?"

Ryan says something, too low for her to hear. It makes Ace chuckle before he finally settles in the driver's seat, turning the ignition on and backing away from her driveway. "He said that you taking the lead was the realest thing about this fake marriage," Ace explains before she can ask. "I'm with him."

They love you...I'm with them. It echoes in her head, in her heart, any reply she could have closing up in her throat, choking her, her heart drumming like crazy in her chest. Nancy pinches her lips together, focusing her gaze on the road so Ace doesn't see the gleam in her eyes. Luckily he seems to get it - still attuned to her despite the growing distance between them - and the rest of the ride is silent, perhaps more tense than companionable, but not uncomfortable. At the end of the day, can all the promises they made to each other be still true? What she once wanted to tell him is true, will always be true - he's hers and she's his, that's just the way it's meant to be.

She doesn't know how to live in a world where this truth is no longer the north star that guides her home.

It's not a long drive, and they get to the retreat before Nancy can realize it. She's already unbuckling her seatbelt when Ace stops her, his fingers delicately wrapping around her wrist. "Wait, Nancy, can you - wait a second, will you?"

His touch burns her, and Nancy forces herself not to recoil. Not in disgust, never, but in fear.  Ace shouldn't be touching her. Hell, she should have never agreed to be this close to him, it's madness. She gulps around the knot in her throat, making herself look him in the eye. "What is it?" she asks in a low voice.

"I - I have something for you," Ace says, just as hesitant and soft. "It's, uh..." He picks something from his breast pocket, and Nancy's eyes widen as he pulls out a ring. Ace smiles softly, something coy and beautiful that sends butterflies flying around in her belly despite her best efforts. "Couldn't let my pretend-bride be the only one without a beautiful ring, now, could I?"

"Ace..." Nancy shakes her head, and this time she can't help the welling in her eyes, no matter how hard she presses her eyes shut to keep the tears from falling. This is too much, he's too sweet, too pure, too kind-hearted, she can't do this. "I - I can't, you shouldn't have -"

"It'll look perfect on you. It'll be your something blue, alright?"

Nancy can't help staring at the ring. It looks old, ancient - but gorgeous. The band is made of gold roughened over the decades - centuries even, perhaps - and the stone is an oddly pentagon-cut sapphire. She's never seen anything like this and she can't look away. "Where - whose ring is this?" she asks, her voice so close to a murmur Ace has to lean in. "Ace, this isn't the sort of ring you just - get anywhere."

Ace sighs, and so close his breath fans over her face. "It belonged to my grandmother," he starts.

"Ace, I can't."

"Of course you can. My mom was right, you know," he chuckles softly. "It suits you. Matches your eyes."

Nancy gnaws at the inside of her lip. Ace looks so soft, so open - sharing a family heirloom with her like it's a completely normal thing to do. "You told your mom about your fake marriage?"

Ace shrugs. "I'm her only son. Fake or not, I wasn't gonna hide it from her." He takes her hand in his, gently, his touch so light and cautious as if she were a bird he's afraid to scare off. "I've been trying to be...more honest with her. Everything we do, it matters a lot to me, but it's also...dangerous, sometimes. I figured that whatever happens to me, happens to her, too, so I owe it to her to try and be more open. I told her we were working on a case and that we had to pretend to be married and she's the one who gave me the ring."

Of course she did, Nancy muses. When she thinks of the way Ryan acts around her about Ace, she can only imagine how Rebecca is with Ace, too. What has it been like for Rebecca to watch her son be so miserable these past few weeks? Has he been talking about his feelings with her? Is Rebecca trying to send her a message, a desperate bottle in the sea of trouble they're drowning in? Still. "I can't risk losing it. Ace, it's too much."

Ace shakes his head. "This is the only thing of value my grandmother took with her when they fled Europe to come live in America. This ring, its story - it spans decades and continents and oceans. I don't think its fate is to get lost in the woods." Before she can pull her hand away, he slowly slips it on her finger. "Our fake-marriage might be falling apart, it won't be because your fake-husband is cheap."

He says it with a half-grin, playful and teasing, but the emotion in his voice is palpable; Nancy can see it, feel it.

His hand is warm around hers, his thumb absently stroking over the stone. Nancy allows herself to enjoy it for a second, beat after precious beat, her heart synced up with his.

Until she hears it. The crack in the rearview mirror.

to be continued

Chapter Text

Nancy's out of the car and dashing for the retreat so fast that she can hear Ace jogging behind her to catch up with her, the crunching of her suitcase he's trailing behind him on the pebbled path echoing in the otherwise quiet morning. "Nance," he calls out after her in a whisper, catching hold of her sleeve at her elbow. "Wait -"

"Don't call me Nance," Nancy forces herself to hiss through gritted teeth as she pulls her arm away, Ace's hand falling in the space between them.

The shadow that flickers in his eyes chills her to the very bone. In that moment she feels like the frozen-heart killer; Ace looks utterly devastated, as if she'd just crushed his heart in her palm, stolen the last breath out of him, or perhaps something more - his last hope. He looks down, readjusting the strap of his duffel bag over his shoulder. "Okay," he says flatly. "I'm sorry."

"Ace..." Nancy shakes her head, biting at the inside of her cheek to keep herself from reaching out to him. She didn't mean it - of course she didn't - she just needed to distract him; she knows Ace wants to talk about the broken glass and they can't be having this conversation. Who knows what would happen if Ace starts connecting the dots and calling her out on all the strange things that keep happening? Does Ace even just saying something about the curse put him at even greater risks? "We're supposed to be having problems, you can't call me Nance," she explains lamely, an unspoken like that hanging in the air as she casts her own eyes down, knowing that if she met his he'd see right through her blatant lie.

They are having problems, and the way he says her name has always been her safe place to land, so keeping him from wearing his heart on his sleeve, from letting his love seep into every syllable and for her not to soak in it...it's possibly the cruelest form of torture for the both of them, merciless and unyielding and theirs for -

until she can fix it. She has to.

Nancy isn't sure she has the self-discipline to deny him time and time again if she doesn't soon, not when all Ace does is keep showing up with his unrelenting love and patience. His warmth melts her icy exterior, keeps her brittle heart from completely shutting itself to the rest of the world - it's what made her fall in love with him, and it's what's tearing them apart now. Ace just knows her too well for her to keep pretending that saying goodbye to him wasn't the hardest thing she's ever had to do, he's too smart for his own good, too good for her, too good with her, and -

"Yeah, no, you're right," Ace says as he digs the toe of his shoe in the gravel, his fingers flexing around the handle of her suitcase - as if he were trying to ground himself. "Can't fix our marriage with a few pet names." He tips his chin at the front door, shrugging. "Still wanna give it a try, though?"

He bounces back so easily, swallowing his hurt, Nancy has to nod eagerly, hoping against all hope that someday she'll do enough good to erase all the pain she's been causing him. "Yeah," she says softly, soft like he always is. She opens the door for him, letting out an I'll make this right in a murmur he doesn't hear as she trails behind him. It's a silent promise to him Nancy can swear on her life, knowing full-well she'd do anything to save his.

Ace is already smiling at the pretty brunette at the front desk when she joins him, flanking herself at his side without standing too close in what Nancy hopes is the right stance for a struggling married couple whose motto could be I might love you but I don't like you very much right now. "Hi, I'm Ace, and this is my wife -"

"Oh, you must be the Hardys!" the woman beams. "Welcome to Worth Fighting For! I'm Jenny. Mariana told me you'd be arriving today, just let me call her, she wanted to personally greet you." 

She reaches for the landline, an old rotating phone that looks out of time but perfect with the rest of the home interior, Nancy notes as she takes her surroundings in. From the outside, the wellness center looks like any other cabin in the woods, and the inside matches: cozy and welcoming and warm, with a fireplace running; a couch and a few chairs in the waiting area, quilted blankets thrown over their backs; wood panels and huge bay windows with no curtains to filter the soft morning glow; walls and shelves lined with paintings of landscapes and sunrises and a variety of trinkets that remind Nancy of Thom's home office. Ace should feel right at home here - her Eagle Scout and bow and arrow enthusiast -  he who used to come around here on fishing trips with his dad.

"Mariana will be right there," Jenny informs them before she hands them a key, old-looking and rusty despite the newness of it all, perfectly matching the style of the place. "Here's the key to your room, you've got the Peony Suite. It's one of my favorites, you'll see, the view from the balcony is gorgeous especially around dusk." She gathers a few leaflets in her hands, and starts explaining: "Breakfast is served between 6:30 and 8:30, lunch between 11:30 and 1:30, and dinner between 5:30 and 7:30. Here's a program of all the activities. You don't need to sign up beforehand, you can just show up to any you want to take. This afternoon we have a scavenger hunt in the woods for example, if you're into this kind of things. It's really all about bonding with your partner and rekindling your team spirit," Jenny says with a smile. "If you have any question, I'm always here. Oh, here's Mariana."

Another woman emerges from what seems to be a nearby office, a relieved smile tugging at her lips upon seeing them. "Mr. and Mrs. Hardy, welcome!" she greets them. "So glad you could make it. If you follow me, I'll show you to your room."

They fall into step, following Mariana to a flight of stairs with forest green carpeting that leads to the first floor where all the guest rooms seem to be. Nancy files their names in her head - lavender, wallflower, lily of the valley and tulip - as they reach the final and fifth room, theirs for the upcoming days. Mariana opens it, holding the door open for them to come in.

With its name, Nancy expected the room to be filled with bouquets of peonies, their wonderful fragrance filling her nose, a few petals scattered across the bedspread; tacky flowery sheets and curtains from another time; hell, even matching His & Hers flowery pajamas like in one of those Hallmark movies Ryan adores. But the decoration and style are much subtler: a bunch of white and blush pink peonies blooming in a vase on the coffee table, floral-print drapes that are almost see-through and that swirl in the morning breeze with the bay window leading to the balcony wide open, a frame with dried peonies behind the glass hanging just above the bed.

Ace drops his bag on the floor near her suitcase, going to smell the flowers. "Peonies. Love, happiness, romance and rebirth," he says as he strokes a petal between his fingers. "Did you get them at Lily's? I don't know anyone else who would have such beautiful blooms so early in the year."

"Yeah, we did," Mariana replies. "We keep the woodland wildflowers for the common rooms, but we get our bouquets from Lily. You know her?"

"I'm working with her husband. Imagine trying to surprise your wife for your wedding anniversary when she's the one running the flower shop," Ace smiles. "So he asked me to go instead."

Nancy files that piece of information in her head, too - all these things from Ace's daily life she's no longer privy to. If she hadn't been avoiding him, this is something he would have told her and they'd have laughed about it considering their history of tricking Lily. Did Ace tell Lily the flowers were for his mother? For her? Did he go to Leo's piano recital in this reality too? She doesn't know what he's up to anymore, how his job at the morgue is going. She hasn't been to his apartment in a month; has he fully settled in yet? Did that Polaroid of her he used to have in his locker find a spot on the fridge or on a wall, or did it get lost in translation during the move, thrown to the trash?

Nancy shakes her head, willing herself to push this kind of thoughts away. They're here for a case; she needs to focus on that. Pulling out her notepad and pen, she starts: "So Mariana, I saw four other rooms. Does that mean there are only four other couples beside us, the staff and you around here?"

Mariana nods her head. "Oh, yeah, that's it. There's Jenny at the front desk whom you already met, she also does the cleaning, then there's Eddie who takes care of most outdoorsy activities, and Moira, our therapist. Only Jenny and I stay the night here, Eddie's only here part-time and Moira has a practice two towns over, so she schedules her sessions here according to her schedule there."

Nancy scribbles it all down in her notepad. "You have an all-access key, I see. Who else?"

"Just Jenny and me. We never go into anyone's room without permission, though," Mariana says with a serious expression. "This isn't a hotel, we're not catering to a clientele who wants clean towels every day or breakfast in bed, so Jenny only does laundry and cleaning when asked. I take care of the cooking so there's no cook, but we do get food delivered every two days. The delivery man doesn't go anywhere beside the kitchen, though."

Nancy nibbles on her lip, thinking. If only Mariana and Jenny have access to all the rooms, then by all means they should be the first two suspects - if this were a normal case. "Is this the room where the strange message on the mirror appeared?" she asks.

"Oh, yes. Let me show you." Mariana guides them to the bathroom, where the message is still scribbled in messy, round letters and red lipstick that's dried now. "I told Jenny I would do the cleaning for this room, she was really spooked out after it happened. All of us were. But I figured it'd be best if I waited until you were here to show you before cleaning it."

Nancy nods her head in approval. "Yeah, you did good. Ace, will you -"

"Already on it," Ace says, pulling up his phone to take a picture. "I should have told you," he reads. "Should have told you what? Mariana, do you happen to have anything signed by the guests? So we can compare the handwriting?"

"Mmh," she frowns, biting her lip. "Not much more than their signing on the contract, I'm afraid. But there's a scavenger hunt this afternoon, maybe I could ask them to write their names and time on a piece of paper? I haven't supervised what Eddie has planned, so I don't know if there are, like, riddles or games where they'll need to write. But I can ask Jenny to have people signing or something."

"That would be good, yeah," Nancy agrees. "So I gather that the guests who occupied this room before us left right away?"

Mariana lets out a sigh, wiping her hand across her brow tiredly. "Yeah, the Reynolds. A sweet couple, really, I'm certain that a few more days here would have helped them greatly. But Mia, the wife, got really scared after this. I tried reassuring her, but honestly, if this is a bad joke it's still very creepy and I'm not so serene myself," she says, shifting on her feet awkwardly as she remains at the threshold of the bathroom, arms hugging herself. "No one else other than the Reynolds, Jenny and I, could have had access to this room. The window's just too high and small," she says, pointing a finger at the porthole-like window that wouldn't allow anyone, even the skinniest person like Bess, to fit through.

"How many keys do you have, though?" Ace asks. "I saw the key cabinet behind the front desk, is there a copy of your key there?"

Mariana's eyes dart up at his question. "I mean, yeah, there is. I always have my key with me, and Jenny wears hers on a keychain tied to her belt loop, but yeah, there's a third copy just in case. But Jenny's always at the front desk, so..."

"Not when she's busy cleaning up," Nancy notes. "Do you keep track of the cleaning schedule anywhere? Do you think you could find out if Jenny was busy cleaning someone's room when it happened?"

Mariana nods her head. "Yeah, we keep track for health and hygiene regulations, I could check it out. But..." She pinches her lips together, looking for her words. "I know I might sound crazy, but I don't believe it's a prank. There's just...a weird atmosphere around here."

Nancy makes a move to go back to the room, relief visibly flooding Mariana's face as they move away from the weird writing. She takes a seat around the small table in the living area, and Nancy and Ace join her. "Our friend Bess mentioned some humming and singing," Nancy starts. "What else?"

"The humming comes from the woods," Mariana says, her hand coming up to flick the gold cross she wears around her neck between trembling fingers. "Mostly at night. Just last night, Eddie built a campfire and we were all outside in the backyard and we heard it again. Some guests reported hearing it during a hike in the woods, too. Three days ago, Emma Sullivan came back from the hike with a headache and went back to her room to lie down for a bit. Next thing she knew, she was in the dining-room with no recollection of how she'd gotten there nor why. Happened to Luisa Ramirez, too."

"Can you tell us more about the other guests? And what room they're in?" Nancy asks.

Ace surprises her when he takes her notepad from her and starts drawing a map of the first-floor, getting the order of the rooms right, pen hanging above the paper as he waits for Mariana to elaborate. "Okay, well, all the guests arrived on the same day, that was on Monday. The Reynolds, Mia and Joshua, had the Peony Suite. I remember specifically assigning them this room because Joshua mentioned Mia's love for peonies. I think she had a peonies and roses arrangement for their wedding."

"They're the favorites of many a bride-to-be," Ace comments with a nod of his head. "Sorry," he apologizes for the interruption, but Nancy can't help smiling at him.

"Then there are the Sullivans, Emma and James, they're in the Lily Of The Valley Suite, just across from yours," Mariana goes on. "David and Luisa Ramirez, I think they might just be a couple of years older than you, actually, I put them in the Lavender Suite. Nahla and Melanie Holland-Jenkins, in the Wallflower Suite. And Liam and Sarah Griffin-King have the Tulip Suite. Jenny and I have rooms downstairs, between the kitchen and my office. There is a sixth room up here, but we had a plumbing problem so we won't be able to receive guests before a full bathroom remodeling."

"It'd be a great help for our investigation if we could have access to all the rooms," Nancy starts. "Would you be okay with giving us a copy of your key?"

Mariana nods, yet she still looks anxious as she brushes her dark hair away from her face. "Honestly, the faster you find out what's happening here, the better I'll sleep. But...it'd really mean a lot to me if you could do it as discreetly as possible. I didn't tell anyone about hiring you guys because I don't want to scare people away, so if they see you snooping around..."

"We'll just blend in," Ace reassures her. "Nancy's the best at breaking and entering without leaving a trace, which now that I say it out loud doesn't sound so great but..." He lets out a chuckle that draws a tiny smile from the other woman. "It's a very specific skill set that no one else has, I'll tell you that."

"And Ace's a tech genius, if you give him access to your laptop and security system, he'll find anything," Nancy can't help saying. They've all rallied around her - the Drew Crew - but Nancy's well-aware of the fact that they've made her better and that she'd be nothing without them now.

Nothing without Ace who rounds out her edges and sharpens her wits, keeps her on her toes, challenges her, supports her, bounces ideas with her, the two of them finishing each other's sentences easy as breathing. Her first case alone after the curse, Nancy's felt his absence keenly, viscerally, half of her missing without Ace by her side; Ryan tried to fill in, bringing take-out to Icarus Hall to make sure she ate at least once a day, and Bess helped with knowledge from her position as Keeper, but it just wasn't the same. Nothing's been the same.

Mariana hands them her own key, squeezing Nancy's hand in hers as she takes it. "Please, you're my last hope. This is the work of a lifetime, I can't just stand here and watch it fall apart."

Nancy watches as Ace opens his duffel bag and starts settling in, pulling out clothes that he stores in the closet, his laptop and a bunch of equipment she's never seen before on the table. "Is that an ear-piece?" she asks, fingers skimming the electronics with a cocked eyebrow.

"Yep. I put a bug under the front desk so we can listen in what goes on there," Ace says with a shrug. "I figured, if Jenny's always there, people are bound to come talk to her about everything."

Nancy bites at the inside of her cheek not to smile, failing desperately so if the gleam in Ace's eyes is any indication. She didn't even see Ace doing it; all she saw was the smile he gave Jenny and how her insides twisted from not being the receiver. "And do I want to know where you even got those?"

"My dad's a cop, are you really that surprised?" Ace grins at her. "I have more bugs, if we want to plant them elsewhere. My ghost detector is still a work in progress, but I guess we could make the most of that scavenger hunt to install it in the woods."

"Yeah," Nancy agrees. "And Bess gave me some crystals to ward off evil spirits," she says as she opens her suitcase and starts setting the crystals around the room as Bess instructed.

As she puts one on the nightstand, Nancy can't help a shudder at the sight of the king-sized bed. There's a couch in the room, but Nancy knows Ace would argue with her if she suggested she take it for the night - and it's definitely too small for Ace's tall frame. Pretending to be married before strangers might be one thing, but what will happen when they're alone behind a closed door? In the middle of the night, when her body inevitably curls around his, or his arm loops around her in his sleep? What then?

"Is it too small?" Ace asks her, bringing her back.

Nancy's brow furrows. "What?"

"The ring," Ace says, tipping his chin at her. "You keep playing with it. Is it too small?"

Nancy looks down. Without realizing it, she's been anxiously fiddling with her ring, twisting it around her finger. Her heart skips a beat as she remembers Ace putting it on her just before, the warmth of his hand, the heat in her cheeks. "Oh, no, it's perfect," Nancy says. "More than perfect, actually, it's stunning, Ace," she confesses, emotion overwhelming her again. Nancy runs her thumb over the cornflower blue sapphire, dazzled by its beauty and the history it carries. The love. "Speaking of, we should get our stories straight," she starts without looking up at him. "About our marriage, I mean."

"Oh, yeah, sure," Ace agrees, too briskly to sound unaffected. Nancy can't blame him; just hearing him call her his wife felt like a sucker punch. "Whatever you want to go with."

She should have let Bess deal with this part, Nancy muses. Bess would have come up with a convincing story, something worthy of ending up on the back of a book. After a brief but intense summer fling, Nancy and Ace tied the knot to everyone's surprise and their parents' consternation. Nancy and Ace found purpose, direction and meaning in each other, and thus began forever, until forever started crumbling down. Nancy and Ace are star-crossed lovers, their love put to the test again and again until they started questioning its very strength. Can love be enough, after all?

"I guess...we could go with something easy, no need to go for an elaborate story," Nancy suggests. "We got married pretty young and our parents disapprove. It takes its toll."

Ace runs his hand through his hair, nodding. "Yeah, sounds like my dad. Not that he has anything against you," he rushes to add. "But he clearly wouldn't be happy if I showed up on Shabbat with a wife out of the blue. My mom, on the other hand..." He shakes his head with a chuckle. "We should just avoid mentioning my mom, I can't pretend she wouldn't be ecstatic."

"We should avoid mentioning anything unless we have to," Nancy agrees. "How long have we been married, though? People are bound to ask."

Ace gnaws at his lip. "I don't know, how long does it take to start having marital problems? We're fast learners, though, so..." he shrugs. "I guess a June wedding would be nice."

Nancy ducks her head to hide the smile that finds its way to her lips. She can't help picturing it: Ace with his hair a little longer like he used to wear, golden and flipping in the breeze, the glint of his earring in the sun, a white or cream gardenia for his boutonniere, or maybe something more colorful matching her hair or her bouquet. She can almost smell the sea air as she imagines them standing at the bluffs, surrounded by their parents and their friends.

The vision is everything she never knew she wanted until Temperance stole it from her, the very possibility of a future together - of finding a safe harbor in the midst of the storm, tying an anchor to him, a peace well-earned after so long lost at sea, finally touching ground and taking root there. To grow where she's been planted with him.

"And if anyone asks what we're doing, I could say I'm a dishwasher and you're working as a waitress to pay for your college tuition," Ace goes on. "It wouldn't be a lie. Maybe your dad doesn't like me because I'm not a good provider."

Nancy lets out a tsk as she shakes her head. "Half of my dads is crashing on our couch, who is he to judge? Besides, this isn't 1950 anymore. I don't believe we'll need to go into details, we should be fine." She reaches for the leaflets Jenny gave them, eyes skimming today's program. "There's a group session starting in five. Might be a good place to start to meet everyone else and get a feel of them, right?"

Nancy regrets it the moment they sit down amongst the other guests and the therapist, Moira, a tall, slender redhead, gives them an encouraging smile. "Welcome, you two. Would you mind introducing yourselves to the rest of the group?"

She does mind, Nancy thinks, when the four other couples suddenly all turn their attention on them. The Sullivans are around her dad's age, maybe a bit older, while the Ramirez do look like they're barely of age, or perhaps it is all the trauma they endured that makes Nancy believe she and Ace look older beyond their years. Liam and Sarah are holding hands, but too forcefully, Nancy notices; Sarah's shoulders are tensed, her grip on her husband's hand one meant to fool people into believing they're fine. Or perhaps she's only fooling herself. Nahla and Melanie, on the other hand, are almost back to back, looking in opposite directions. Nancy shifts on her chair, mirroring them as she puts space between she and Ace, her hands nervously smoothing the hem of her shirtdress.

Ace seems to sense her unease and chooses to speak for the both of them. "Well, uh, hi, hello everyone," he starts, awkward and charming as ever. "I'm Ace, and this is Nancy. We grew up around here in Horseshoe Bay and we got married last year."

Bess would scold him for not making it sound more epic, Nancy thinks as she looks up from her lap. Sarah's looking expectantly, as if waiting for more on their story, while James's gaze wanders between the two of them. "High school sweethearts, uh?" he half-groans. "Didn't know they still made those."

"James," his wife hisses his name, giving his thigh a hard slap that echoes in the otherwise silent room. "Oh my God, please don't mind him," she rushes to apologize.

"It's okay," Ace says smoothly, chuckling. "We get that a lot. Most people think we're fools, getting married so young - and people who don't say it straight to our faces probably say it behind our backs. But when you know, you know, right?" he asks around with a small, shy smile.

"See?" Emma says, glaring at her husband. "They may be young, but that's a good man right there."

"Such a good man that they need couples therapy after a year," James says with an eye roll.

Moira claps her hands, bringing their attention back to her. "Alright, that's enough. Thank you, Ace, Nancy, and welcome to our group. Today, I thought we could try a new exercise in which each one of you will try to come up with one word that embodies the one thing you seek to repair, fix or reignite the most in your relationship with your spouse. It could be anything, and please, let's all remember that this is a safe space," she adds with a wave of her hand, "and that it's essential to the process that you don't judge or make comments on what the other says, alright?"

She stares at James and Melanie as she says it, Nancy notices, whose entire posture and energy radiate troublemakers. James visibly couldn't care less about being here and was dragged by his wife, and Nancy wonders what Emma seeks to repair with a man so obnoxious.

Then it dawns on Nancy that Moira expects her to speak up, too. That she needs to come up with a word that sums up the sea of conflicting emotions she feels for Ace: how he'll always have a piece of her no matter what, how he'll always be her partner, her best friend, the one she's proud to love and who's proud to love her in spite of all her flaws, the one who sparked a fire within her when she believed herself to be all burned out, the one whose light shines on the darkest of nights. How is she supposed to explain that? How is she supposed to tell a bunch of strangers that this is what she desperately wishes to reignite - a world where Nancy and Ace are meant to be together, because if they're not, then she doesn't know anything?

She barely hears the others. Nahla's intimacy is met with an eye roll from Melanie that Moira chides her for, and Sarah's grip on Liam's hand looks painful when he says trust. Nancy's ears are buzzing, her eyes jumping from one to the next, her throat closing up as she feels the vice-like grip closing in on her.

Ace's voice pierces through the fog, his choice of word breaking her heart in a million pieces. "Connection," he says softly, hands on his lap as he toys with his fingers.

And then she does it before she can stop herself: Nancy reaches for him, cupping his knee with her hand and squeezing it. It's not much, it's definitely not enough, but it's a start. She never meant to make him feel alone, or worse, lonely in a crowded room; Ace always saw her for who she is, and seeing herself in his eyes has been both humbling and empowering, she never wants to make him feel unseen. Their bond has always been the one thing that kept her going, and she knows this is what Ace means: he's not begrudging her for avoiding him, nor is he sour that his love confession went unanswered. He misses their connection, the way it both made them feel like part of something special, and Nancy knows just how scary that loss feels because it's been eating her alive for two months now, two months that feel like two years, his absence carving itself in her very soul, hopelessness and helplessness mingling and poisoning her veins.

She doesn't realize she's crying until she feels Ace's hand on her face, his thumb wiping beneath her eyes as he cups her cheek. Nancy wants to resist, pull away; but she leans into his touch anyway, praying against all hope that this is acceptable, a friend comforting a friend, a loophole in the wording of the curse that their protective rings might just keep away for a minute. Just long enough for Ace to know that she's trying her best to stay afloat, that this, them, this beautiful thing they have is worth holding onto, worth fighting for; that he's the man who inspires her to be this optimistic, hopeful woman who still chooses to try and pick up the pieces instead of leaving it all behind. That pretending not to love him is the hardest thing she's ever done, and he deserves the truth, the safety in the knowledge that she loves him and will pledge to spend the rest of her life proving just so once she's figured out how to break this damn curse, once she knows he's utterly safe from her.

That at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing: he's the one she's willing to take a very big leap of faith for, even if the universe is trying to keep them apart - because the universe keeps pulling and tearing them apart. Isn't this what soulmates are, after all?

"Faith," she tells only Ace, her vision blurred by her tears. Have faith in me, Nancy thinks. Have faith in us, she prays it reaches him.

There's something in Ace's eyes then, something she can't quite name. It make her yearn to let herself drown in them, knowing he'll always row them back to shore; it makes her long for the feel of his arms around her, his mouth on hers, the memory as vivid and real as if she'd truly experienced it.  

She pulls away before the impulse gets the best of her and they're both doomed.

to be continued

Chapter Text

There's a knot in Nancy's throat, unshed tears having her in a chokehold - so much so that she barely notices it at first, the warmth radiating from her ring. Not warmth - heat, scorching heat as the intricate design of the wood only seems to intertwine tighter, wrapping around her finger like a vine. She can't help waggling her hand at the uncomfortable sensation, and in her peripheral vision, Nancy sees Ace mirroring her; he's frowning as he twists his own ring around his finger, teeth gnawing at his bottom lip. 

Her eyes flutter up and around as she turns on her chair, making a bee line to the huge bay windows; Nancy sees no crack in the glass, when she'd expected the windows to shatter at Ace's soft touch to her cheek, at the earnestness in his voice and eyes. Could it be that their rings are protecting them from the curse somehow? That this is a warning in its own right, Temperance's curse stalled by the protection runes engraved on the inside of their wedding bands? But what about Florence's rearview mirror, then? 

Back at his apartment, it'd been their almost-kiss that set off the alarm; in the car, it'd been the tenderness, the obvious love Ace couldn't hide behind any pretense. Their marriage may be fake, but the reason why he gave her this ring is not, the promise that he wants to do this again someday so very clear. Is this the limit they can't dance around or risk tiptoeing? Is the intimacy linked to romantic love forbidden to them, each moment when her soul is reminded of the beauty of the world by his one step too far? Could it be that the love they have beyond all that, a love that transcends romance and desire - a love that wills the good of another, unconditional, affectionate and loyal and virtuous - is their safe haven?  

This is the way they've always loved each other, beyond right and wrong, beyond jealousy and hurt and any and all notions of claiming one another; he's hers and she's his because this is the way they operate, existing without boundaries, her brain his brain: Ace as her right-hand man, her moral compass, and Nancy as his greatest advocate, the one who sees his truest self, the one who's brilliant and smart and so kind he could move mountains. 

He already did, in a way. When he sent every wall around her toppling down. When he taught her that loss and pain and misery and loneliness might have driven her story forward until that point, but that she could turn them into healing, into love. It's his love for her that helped her walk away from the bluffs unscathed, entering a new life where she felt whole again and knew that all that she was was not contained in that pit of despair her friends and family had helped her climb out of.  

Can this love survive and thrive despite the curse? She's tried pushing him away to no avail - can she keep him near? Ace's given her time and space, but he's always here anyway, in her heart, in her mind - and it's been such torture, this knowledge, absolute and undying, of his love for her, too, when she knew she should just let him go. Maybe it's time she sees it for what it is, though: not a virtue but a promise to keep, a reward after wandering, so lost, on the road less travelled on - a harbinger of happiness to come and look forward to, not doom. Maybe should belongs in a parallel universe, in that dimension that didn't happen, that she can stop from happening. Maybe all that remains is their will, stronger than any curse, strongest from the lens of their love for one another; Nancy has to believe it, if she wants their unexpected beginnings to later spring.  

Their gazes lock - Ace's eyes an infinite pool of questions, none of which she can answer with certainty. They are safe for now, it seems; she's not keen on pushing the boundaries just for the sake of testing her theory, not when she knows it would mean putting Ace at the mercy of an enemy she knows to have none. Nancy flexes her fingers, the lingering burn fading, before she looks down at her lap and buries her hands underneath her thighs to keep herself from reaching out.

Yearning for him when he's right there before her eyes.

She feels his gaze on her, his eyes sizing her up, trying to look for a tiny crack he can find his way into, her reaction fanning a spark of hope inside him he's praying could be coaxed into a flame. Nancy lifts her hand, fingers playing with her necklace, seeking comfort and encompassing strength in the familiar locket, as if she could feel her mother still with her. What would Kate say? 

If you love him, don't let go.

But what does Kate's advice even mean anymore when she was the first one to leave her? Long before that, wasn't it Lucy's love who doomed her, too? How come that love is both the remedy and the curse?

"How about we work in pairs?" Moira suggests, breaking her out of her musings. "Let's switch it up a bit, shall we? Pick a partner, and you'll be working with them and try to explain to them what you seek to repair in your relationship. Sometimes it just feels easier to talk to a stranger," the therapist explains. "And it brings a new, fresh perspective."

As if she were in any state to talk any more about her feelings, Nancy thinks, nervously rubbing her knuckles against her temple. She feels before she sees Ace's hand wrapping around and cupping her knee, instantly noticing the quiet way he's tapping his thumb against it - Morse code, of course. He hardly needs more than one letter for her to get it - L for Luisa, half of the two people they first need to investigate. This exercise is the perfect opportunity for a private chat, and if the way Emma Sullivan is looking at Ace like the son she never had is any indication, Nancy's pretty sure that her fake-husband will be her first pick.

He's someone else's first pick, too, though. Mrs. you can shove your trust where the sun doesn't shine is looking at Ace with a glint in her eye that makes Nancy uneasy. Or, well, she figures any wife would be annoyed at another woman looking at her husband like that - like she cares less about repairing trust with her own husband and would very much enjoy making him pay for his mistakes with someone else's. 

So, really, it's not at all because she sees red, or green, that Nancy bumps into her on her way to Luisa Ramirez; no, if she somehow shoves Sarah Griffin-King to the side by pretending to trip on her own feet and apologizes profusely for her clumsiness, it's only to give Ace a few more seconds to make his way to Emma before Sarah snatches him. That's it. There's nothing more to it 

"That woman's trouble," Luisa hisses as soon as they pull their chairs in a corner of the room to get to work. She tips her chin at Sarah with a disgusted look, her nose crinkling. "Can't stand these two, with their holier-than-thou bullshit. You should have shoved her for real."

"I didn't -" Nancy starts, but stops at Luisa's pointed look. "Okay, maybe I did. I won't take it to heaven, but...we're Jewish anyway. I'll try and make this life count tomorrow."

Luisa grins, a cute little gap between her front teeth showing. "Good. I think he cheated on her, but that's no excuse for the way she prowls around like she's some maneater." She looks over at her own husband who narrowly avoided being Sarah's next victim by partnering up with James; Nancy's not certain David really won there. "Now, that's a conversation I'd love to hear," Luisa snorts. "You're new here, so let me catch you up. Emma is the sweetest, really, she's like a mother to us all, and I don't see why she's trying so hard with that husband of hers, he's just so..."

Nancy lets out a chuckle. "He's something else, isn't he."

"Yeah, that," Luisa agrees. "They're empty-nesters, their youngest just left for college. It's actually one of their kids who signed them up to come here. It's really sad, you know, spending all your life with someone and all of a sudden your kids are all grown-up and gone and you realize you share nothing. Although honestly, I don't think anyone could ever share anything with that jerk," Luisa sighs. "You should hear the way he is. Always complaining and groaning about how he didn't want to come here, or how he doesn't need to be told how to treat his wife. She's sweet, she could find herself someone else instead of holding onto that old grump, that's a shame."

Nancy hums, non-committal. So Luisa's a talker and a bit of a gossip - she can work that to her advantage. "So what's Sarah's and Liam's deal, according to you?" she asks her, starting easy.

"Oh, he definitely cheated on her," Luisa nods her head, her features twisted in an almost delighted expression that has nothing to do with the genuine empathy she was showing Emma just moments before; Nancy can't find it in her to blame her for it. "I just know it. But they're just so into looking like the perfect couple, and I'm like, if everything's so perfect, then why are you here, you know? I just think it's dumb to come here and pretend everything's fine. It's not like we care about their lives. I'm not gonna live-tweet their next fight so their hometown can hear all about it." Luisa shakes her head, rubbing a hand across her swollen belly. "My money's on the nanny. They've got four kids under six. Four," she emphasizes with round eyes. "I bet the nanny doesn't chew his ear off about church and charities."

"Nannies seldom do," Nancy agrees. She looks over at Sarah, who's definitely not letting Melanie say one word as she talks animatedly with her hands. On the other side of the room, Ace and Emma look quieter, Ace giving her all his attention in that way he does. Shaking her head, Nancy chooses not to linger on the reasons why her fake-husband is the best, lest it shows all over her face. "What about them?" she asks, tipping her chin at Nahla and Melanie.

"Mmh, that's a tough one. They just had a baby, and things are just tough at the moment. It's not really making me feel any better," Luisa adds with pinched lips. "Nahla keeps talking about how Melanie's only ever focused on the baby and keeps pushing her away and she doesn't feel like she can bond with their son without Melanie hovering, and I'm like...what if I become like that too? David and I don't need that."

Nancy feels bad, all of a sudden: for listening to these people's stories, for pretending to be just like them. She doesn't want to know what brings Luisa and David here; doesn't want to see the myriad of tiny little cracks in what should be a picture perfect of a happy couple expecting a baby. She doesn't want this woman to tell her all about her life, only for Nancy to lie to her in turn. 

But Luisa doesn't seem to mind. She keeps talking without Nancy prompting her. "I know I'm a bit of a nightmare right now," she confesses. "And I can't just blame the hormones. David's no picnic either, but I'm definitely the worst of us right now. So hearing Nahla complain about how pregnancy and motherhood have turned her wife into this..." She half-shudders. "I was talking about that with Mia, but then..."

"Who's Mia?" Nancy asks, her brow furrowing in pretend-curiosity.

"Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, you didn't meet her," Luisa says. "Mia and Joshua. They just left. They were here before you and your husband got here."

"Oh, why did they leave so early? Isn't this a two-week retreat?"

Luisa frowns, looking around her at the other pairs, all seemingly busy with actually doing what they were asked, before she lowers her voice. "I really shouldn't be telling you this..." But I'm still going to, Nancy thinks. "But they sort of left in a hurry. Something weird happened."

"Something weird? Weird how?" Nancy asks as she leans in closer, too. From the outside, they look like two friends sharing a private moment; Nancy hopes Ace is getting as good information as she is with Emma.

"Oh, I think it's just a prank," Luisa shakes her head, as if trying to take back what she just said. "I mean...I wouldn't put it above Sarah. See, Sarah's been making eyes at everyone since she got here, it's like, really pathetic. But she really laid it on thick with Joshua. And then this weird thing happened: there was some weird writing on their bathroom mirror, you know, like, movie-weird. Lipstick and all. And so Mariana asked us all if we'd lost ours, and Sarah said no, I mean, of course she said no, but really, she's been trying to get even with her cheating asshole of a husband ever since she first set foot here, so..." Luisa crosses her arms over her chest. "I don't think the quiet of the woods agrees with her."

Nancy nods her head as Luisa talks, trying to look fascinated by her tale. She can't help staring at Luisa's mouth though, at the shade of her lipstick - it's not the same as the one on the mirror, but Nancy has seen Bess's make-up bag, she knows how many lipsticks one can fit in one small toiletry bag if needed. What if Luisa did it but can't remember it? Or Emma? How would have they snuck into the Reynolds's room though? She'll need to find a way to look into that.

"That's so messed-up," Nancy says, shaking her own head. "When Mariana called us to tell us a spot was newly vacant, she never said -"

"Oh, no, no, don't worry about it," Luisa rushes to reassure her. "Really, honestly, I'm sure it's just Sarah messing with us. She's just a very unhappy person, it's just obvious. It's a shame Mia and Joshua left, they were really nice, I was really rooting for them, you know? God, I know, that sounds so weird," Luisa says with a chuckle. "But it's true. They just really looked like all they needed was to spend some time together to remember how good they were. You know, I get it. Time, you just never seem to have enough of it, do you?"

A day and a half - that's what she and Ace had. Nancy has to bite at the inside of her cheek not to cry, the taste of copper filling her mouth; it brings her back to the feel of it on her hands, Ace's blood, his contorted, lifeless body in her arms. She swallows around the knot in her throat, hating herself for the way her brain just had to go there; for how she never seems to be able to escape it, memories coming back to the surface as vivid flashes, brought upon by a brush of his hand, this low, soft dip in his voice or the mere mention of his name. No matter the distance she's tried putting between them, something always brings her back to him, Ace the number one thought at the forefront of her mind at all times.

Time was never in their favor, their timing never quite right - they could have had weeks if she'd been brave enough to tell him how she felt when he came back from his road trip. They could have had a real first kiss if she'd been brave enough to accept his love when he confessed it. They never had time because there was always some emergency, some ghost to hunt, some mystery to solve. Even this quiet retreat in the woods isn't real downtime, just another case in the most dire of times for them.

She'd been ready to slow down and have a real talk. To make time for it. And now she's terrified that one wrong word could mean the end of it all, of any and all possibilities - of Ace and Nancy.

"Yeah," Nancy agrees, half-choking on her answer. 

Luisa misinterprets her emotion for regret when it's so much deeper than that, so much darker, laying a gentle, comforting hand on her arm. "That's not gonna happen to you. Just look at your husband," she adds, her lips tugging up into a smile as she nods towards Ace. "Just look at the way he looks at you."

Nancy follows her gaze, eyes locking with Ace's. He was looking over at them - at her. For how long? She used to be able to pick him from a crowd in mere seconds, sense the subtlest shift in his body language or breathing; now she can't help doubting her every instinct about him.

But Nancy recognizes that small smile - the one that asks are you okay? but tells her everything's gonna be alright at the same time. She answers with a small dip of her chin and the slightest shrug of her shoulder - in another time, in another place, they looked at each other just like that, their bond a comfort and a tether anchoring them to one another. Maybe Luisa's right; maybe she needs to hold onto that. Maybe that doesn't have to change.

Emma says something then, bringing Ace's attention back to her as he reluctantly looks away, breaking their connection.

That's the word she would have picked if she'd been asked first, Nancy realizes - perhaps not everything is lost, and they can be found.

"I can't believe you got all the juicy gossip and I had to listen to Emma complaining about how her husband wasn't always like that," Ace shakes his head as he walks, absently reaching behind to offer his hand to help her keep her footing on the uneven path.

Nancy accepts his help, eyes focused on the piece of paper she's holding, their latest clue. "At least it saved you from being ravished by that hubby thief."

Ace lets out a chuckle, pausing in his tracks as he reaches for her elbow instead. "And how does that make you feel, Mrs. Hardy? To know everyone wants a piece of your fake-husband?" Ace asks, imitating the therapist's voice.

He's teasing her, and Nancy's glad for it. She was afraid Ace would want to talk about the group session, but they spent all of their lunch break sharing intel they gathered from Luisa and Emma. "Hardly everyone," Nancy snorts. "And if I were her, I'd be more careful. I'm pretty sure I know enough about murder to get away with it."

"You're spooky, you know that?" Ace says, running a nervous hand through his hair. "See, this is why I wanted to marry you. I like that in a woman."

Nancy rolls her eyes. "Are we still on the right track, Mr. the woods speak to me?" she changes the subject. Nancy looks around, trying to find any noticeable landmark she recognizes; once or twice she's stalled as she followed Ace, hoping their little trip through the woods wouldn't lead them anywhere near where Lucy was buried. "How do you even know where we are right now?" she can't help asking in wonder.

"Easy," Ace shrugs. "See that line of trees near the stream?" he asks, pointing to trees whose bark is grey, thick and corky. "That's black ash. So this means that this is Beaver Creek. And we're heading to the hawthorn valley, which is northeast from here."

Nancy puts a palm to her heart. "My Eagle Scout hero," she pretends to fawn over. Only she's not pretending, and Nancy really hopes Ace knows. The conversation they had back at his apartment still rings in her head - his fear of lacking, of not being good enough for her.

She never wants him to feel like that again.

Ace smiles, something small as he keeps leading the way. "Honestly, are these clues really easy, or are we just really good?" he wonders aloud.

"I don't think most couples go around solving mysteries for funsies," Nancy shrugs.

"Well, maybe they should," Ace says. "Keeps you on your toes, and it's good for the brain." He looks around, listening for the sound of the wind in the leaves or the scrunch of feet. "We haven't seen anyone in a while. You think they're still stuck on clue number one?"

"Mmh, I have hope for Luisa and David, but the others probably can't be bothered to share the map or even try and figure it out together," Nancy muses. "Speaking of...isn't this the hike trail they all went on?" she wonders as she takes in the bed of wildflowers by the creek. "Luisa told me about yellow flowers."

"Daffodils," Ace tells her. He lets his backpack slide from his arm, opening it to take out his ghost detector. "Might be the right time to take this out for a try."

"How does it work?" Nancy asks, tilting her head in curiosity. She's used to Ace and his laptop, fingers dancing across the keyboard, all those programs he has to hack into almost everything; it's something else, seeing him tinker and engineer his own detector, her heart swells up with fondness and pride.

"Well, I've been thinking about it since..." Ace starts, chewing on his lip. "Let's just say that my little stay in the liminal space got me thinking." He sighs, visibly as uncomfortable as she is to talk about it and the confession that followed. Ace shuffles his feet on the ground, fingers playing with his detector. "At first, I saw the liminal space as this...I don't know, this plane of existence that we can't see or feel but that's just there anyway, you know? And I started wondering - what if it's a threshold to a place where ghosts and souls and spirits go when they can't rest or move on?"

Nancy nibbles on her lip, staring at him. "Are we having the heaven and hell debate?" she asks him with a cocked eyebrow.

Ace scratches at his neck. "I don't know, maybe? My point is, the moment I started seeing it as this place of transition, that's when it got me thinking that maybe what we needed was...a way of finding an opening. A door if you will. Or a breach - where it's porous and those tiny residual pieces of life linger."

"And how do you do that?" Nancy asks.

"That's the million-dollar question," Ace agrees with a shrug. "It's a work in progress, I don't know if it'll work, but...you know how passive infrared intrusion sensors work, don't you?"

Nancy nods her head. It might not be typical teenage knowledge, but she knows a thing or two about breaking and entering and how to avoid being detected. "You mean motion detectors?"

"This one detects body heat," Ace corrects her. "Actually, I've spent quite some time in the archive back at the Historical Society, reading up on haunting and ghosts. I was trying to find a way to avoid being sent to the liminal space again, and how spirits could move from one plane to the other. See, right now the detector can sense our body heat. But it can also sense shifts, and I hope it can sense some...less tangible ones."

Nancy frowns. "You lost me there."

Ace lets out a chuckle. "You know how, sometimes, you can feel a chill in the air when you're scared? Sometimes our emotions cloud our perception of the world, and I wondered if maybe this was what the liminal space was about. A sort of emotional space where all these feelings we bury, all these emotions we can't name, just go to and...wait, I guess. And maybe these feelings give shape to spirits. Maybe they give them some piece of their life back. Maybe that's the door between our world and theirs."

"Ace, that's..." Nancy shakes her head, letting out a soft sigh. "That's amazing."

"If it works," Ace dismisses the praise.

But Nancy won't let him. "No, it is amazing." She reaches for the detector and he lets her take it. "So...if there's a shift, then it means that something else is there with us?"

"In theory, yeah."

"Do you think this is what happened to Luisa and Emma, then? They walked past a breach and a spirit possessed them?"

Ace puts his hands in his pockets, nodding. "I guess so. We've met our fair share of ghosts, enough to know they can't write on mirrors. So my money's on some spirit worming themselves and taking over because they needed to...finish something. I should have told you," he says, his brow furrowing. "Maybe they died before they could say something that could have meant a lot to someone. Something that could have changed their life."

Nancy averts her eyes then, focusing on the detector in her hands. If she died now, would her spirit be trapped in the liminal space, too? She can't imagine moving on, not when there's so much in her heart that's been left unsaid, not when her heart is so full of Ace it's threatening to explode.

Luckily, she's saved from pondering much longer on that when they finally reach what Ace calls the hawthorn valley, dozens of centennial trees surrounding a clearing with wildflowers blooming everywhere, snowdrops and sweet violets and spring crocus. The evidence that they solved the previous riddle takes the shape of another piece of paper pinned to a tree, a bow and arrows deposited underneath. Ace goes to pick up the message, reading it out loud: "The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true." He turns to her with a grin. "Sounds like a book quote or something. Do you think we should hide this? I'm not sure what would happen if Sarah finds it. It definitely wouldn't help the center's reputation if she aims at her husband instead of the target."

Nancy rolls her eyes, bumping his elbow with hers. "Here, look up, here's the target," she says, pointing at a branch. "This feels like this scavenger hunt was specifically designed for you. It's your moment to shine. Years of archery camp, all leading up to this moment."

"I went one summer," Ace laughs.

"But you've got great aim."

"I'm a fast-learner," he shrugs. He picks up the bow and quiver, getting into position, before he hesitates and turns to her. "You know, I could just teach you how. I know how you like to learn new things."

Nancy gnaws at the inside of her lip, shifting awkwardly on her feet. Part of her wants to - but part of her also knows that this is madness, allowing herself to be so close to Ace. "It'd be faster if you just do it," she says though.

Ace looks around. "I think we're well-ahead of everyone else, we're so winning this, we can take some extra time to have fun. Isn't this the whole point of this?" Ace asks with a shrug. "Have fun, get to work as a team, see how good it feels?"

"It is," Nancy agrees softly, adjusting the little scarf around her neck to anchor herself. It's exactly the whole point of these bonding exercises the retreat offers, but...they're not a couple, and any spark they'd rekindle could fuel a fire she couldn't extinguish. Nancy doesn't need anything or anyone to remind her just how good the two of them feel together, she knows it deep in her bones - that's the problem. Her shoulders sag as she sighs, surrendering to her own heart. "I guess I could give it a try."

"Sweet," Ace grins, transferring the bow and quiver to her as he takes the detector from her hands and puts it away in his backpack. He moves around, his fingers wrapping around her arm as he guides her at the right distance from the target. "Wanna try on your own first?"

Nancy nods her head. She plants her feet firmly into the moss of leaves, reaching for an arrow, and...can't seem to fit it and align it with the string. Her fingers keep shuffling and the arrow falls, and Nancy groans in frustration. "Can you just -" she waves her hand.

"Here, let me." Ace takes the bow from her, fitting the arrow in the slant and handing it back to her. "Be careful with the way you place your fingers. Keep them low, or else you'll snap the string into them and that really hurts."

Nancy nods, getting back into position and aiming for the target. She draws the string back but it's harder than she expected, the tension in the string making it hard and her arm aches from the effort; the arrow falls miserably before she can even try to take her aim. "This is silly," she whines, half-annoyed at herself for failing, half-annoyed at Ace for witnessing it. "You should just do it."

"You need to let go," Ace tells her softly. "Here, try again," he says as he comes up behind her to correct her stance. He rests a light hand at her hip, placing his foot in between hers and guiding her into position. "You're all tense, you're not gonna shoot anything like that. This is - it's all about your gut, you can't overthink this. You have great instincts, Nancy. You should trust them."

He lets go, taking a step back, and Nancy knows that the slight trembling in her fingers has nothing to do with her lack of experience but everything to do with Ace's fleeting touch, with the way he's unknowingly quoting himself. The last time he said that was more seconds before their car crash, moments before she came to and found him on the side of the road...

Nancy shakes her head, hoping against all hope that the tears won't fall as the arrow flies and lands nowhere near the target. She shuffles her foot in frustration, and feels Ace behind her again. "Here. Don't look at the arrow, focus on the target. Move up your elbow like this," he goes on, wrapping his fingers around her arm to rotate it. You're gonna hurt your arm until you find the right position that suits you, but here's a good start."

Another try, another failure. Nancy can't concentrate, not with the warmth of Ace's body seeping into hers. "How am I supposed to know if the position is right?" she asks, half exasperated and half curious and eager to learn, to master this. Ace knows her, he does; she never does anything by halves.

"You'll just feel it," he says, so close to her ear Nancy visibly shivers and he has to see it, feel it. "I know you don't like this," he goes on softly. "You never leave anything to chance, you're always so prepared and methodical and that's what makes you you, but..." He shifts, impossibly closer despite the already nonexistent space between them, her back pressed to his chest, his hand at her hip and his other arm wrapped around hers to guide her. "Sometimes you need to let go of some of your control to master something."

"You know I'm not good at that," Nancy says in nothing but a murmur, staring right ahead of her, knowing perfectly well that if she turns, even just slightly tilts her head she'll come face to face with him, blue staring deep into blue, lips so close.

"And I know you like to be good at everything, so why don't you see it like this - learning how to let go is just another trade you need to master," Ace says. He lets her draw the string back and corrects her stance one last time before letting go just a little, his fingers loosening around her arm but still lingering. Nancy feels his breath fanning across her cheek, his heart beating at her back, jumping from his body to hers.

This time the arrow hits the target right in its center.

Ace's fingers at her hip tighten and splay against her shirt, the tips brushing at the small slice of skin showing with the way her shirt rode up as she drew the bow. She feels the heat of them licking up her spine and Nancy leans into him despite knowing better, her body moving instinctively towards him, like it remembers how, could never erase the memory. Ace's mouth is just an inch away from hers, his breath mingling with her own, heavy and sharp as he moves closer, lifting his free hand to her face -

and the glass of his watch shatters and breaks, the ticking so loud in Nancy's ear before she pulls away as if she'd been burned.

Ace's eyes grow wide as he lets her go, turning his wrist to take a closer look at his watch. "What the - this is the third time," he says, stunned and confused. "Nancy," he speaks her name with that tone of his that brooks no argument. "Nancy, what's happening?"

Nancy shakes her head, taking a step back, another, until her back hits the bark of a tree. "Ace, stop - you have to stop," she pleads him, feeling the tears well in her eyes, hot and burning.

"Why?" he still pushes, and really, she can't blame him, it makes no sense, this one step forward three steps back dance she keeps pulling. "Nancy, if you're in trouble, you -"

He pauses, then. Mouth opening and closing, eyes growing wider. Nancy rubs at her eyes with her fists, hiding her face like a child afraid of the dark - but she knows there are things far more terrifying now, things lurking in the dark, feeding from it, growing stronger every time she allows herself to let her guard down.

She can't stay here. Can't stay so close when she's too weak to resist the pull of him. Nancy drops the bow and quiver, arrows clattering down in a bang on the ground as she starts running, Ace's voice carrying as he calls out to her, Nancy, wait, Nancy, Nance, but Nancy keeps running, she runs until his voice becomes an echo of a murmur and then all she can hear is her pulse thrumming in her temples, buzzing in her ears, the taste of bile flooding her mouth, her lungs burning. She runs until she realizes she didn't follow the path they took earlier, until her feet hit a path of dirt and rocks and she finally stops, leaning her hands onto the bark of an old tree, two initials engraved on it she knows all too well.

LS. The one spot she'd hoped to avoid. The one place she's never found the courage to come back to. She's wanted to; almost asked Ryan a couple times before backing down. Nancy never visits her mom's grave too often, either. She knows this is the way most people grieve, mourning at the cemetery where their loved ones have never been anything but dead rather than miss them in the places they were alive; but Nancy carries Kate and Lucy wherever she goes, in all these places they filled with so much life before they had to go. This is the way she chooses to see it, the only way that's kept her going.

Nancy traces the letters with trembling fingers, her tears starting anew. What would Lucy say? She never got to let the pain become love, never got to heal and grow and blossom into the young woman she could have been if not for this town. What would she say now: seeing Nancy let herself fall apart like this, letting fear control her?

She's only ever heard her voice on videos and recording. The few things she's gathered about her, Nancy found out from reading Lucy's diary and from Ryan's rare but heartfelt stories. She can't imagine what Lucy would say; can't hear how she would sound, soft or soothing or strong. Nancy rubs at her eyes, willing the tears to stop so she can think, but they won't.

"Nancy."

His voice breaks through the haze, the fog wrapped around her head. Nancy refuses to turn around, to look at him; she can't have Ace see her like this, not when she knows that his arms are the only place where she feels warm and happy and safe and how easy it would be to let herself fall when he's there to catch her.

She ignores him, looking at anywhere but him as she plucks wildflowers, gathering a bunch that she holds onto tightly, keeping her hands busy. In her peripheral vision she sees Ace standing there, feels his worried gaze on her - feels the love, too, overwhelming, a tidal wave that crests and washes over to meet her shore. He stands there and watches her without a word as she lays the flowers down above the spot where Lucy rests; she stands there and watches him as he comes closer, picking a stone before he kneels by the grave and lays it next to the flowers.

"The Hebrew word for pebble also means bond," Ace explains quietly. "Flowers, as beautiful as they are, eventually die. Stones are permanent...like the love that binds us," he adds in a whisper.

He rises from his kneeling position, standing beside her in silence for a while. Nancy's crying subdues, tear tracks still staining her cheeks as her breathing goes from labored to shallow to a little bit more even. It starts dawning on her again, the fact that Ace is starting to understand, that she's put him at even greater risk, that -

"Nance," he says softly. A prayer, a plea. Almost a promise. "Nancy, I'm going to count to ten, and then I'm gonna hold your hand, alright?" Ace says, so soft, infinitely softer, she barely hears him over the tempestuous thud of her heartbeat. "It doesn't have to mean anything," he adds, "nothing more than a friend comforting a friend. It's allowed, right?"

She doesn't know anything anymore. Doesn't know what to do with Ace knowing, or figuring it out, cogs turning in his head that haven't worked in hers for a while.

"I'm not gonna hold your hand because I want more," Ace says. He's speaking with that voice again, that tone of his that's gentle and soothing, that tone that says I can help you carry it. "I'm gonna hold your hand because I believe that's what you need right now, someone to hold you. And if you want me to call Ryan, or Bess, I don't know, if you want me to go, I will, but -"

"Don't go," Nancy croaks out, throat hoarse and burning.

Ace nods his head. "You know I'd never leave you. Not if I have a say in it," he adds as an afterthought, one that pierces right through Nancy's heart. He never wanted to leave her but he did, she lost him and he doesn't know, he doesn't know but she does, she remembers everything.

Remembers how Ryan never wanted to leave either and how she lost him too; remembers Ace standing right beside her like he's doing right now, his hand wrapped around hers, fingers intertwined, the front of his shirt soaked with her tears as he'd held her during Ryan's funeral; how he'd been her only tether to reality in the days leading to it, taking charge of everything for her and she'd been so grateful for him, for his warmth at night, for his hand in hers. Remembers Ace waiting for her after Owen's funeral, when Bess had been pulled in by the rest of the Marvin family and Nancy had stood there all alone, not knowing what to do with herself until Ace texted her to tell her he was there if she needed. Remembers the warmth of Ryan's hand on her shoulder at Celia's wake, a quiet affair, so quiet she'd almost convinced herself she wasn't suffering until they'd gotten home only to find Ace, Bess, Nick and George with food from the Claw and board games and her heart had swelled up twice its size at the sheer comfort of the outpouring love in the house.

So much pain, so much love. Two sides of the same coin, perhaps. Every time Nancy has felt like falling apart, Ace was right there - like he is now.

She sees his lips moving - he's really counting, and so she does, too, counts with him. He's giving her an out, waiting for ten before reaching out so she can back away if she wants. His words keep ringing in her head - it's allowed, right? - and Nancy reaches out first, tells herself this is just like holding Bess's or George's hand. Ace is her friend, her best friend, and this is a love nothing can touch, a love she won't let anyone touch.

"We're gonna need to talk about this," Ace says after a while.

She knows. But for now all Nancy can focus on is the gentle rub of Ace's thumb across the back of her palm. Her eyes drift to his broken watch and she forces herself to focus on the ring he gave her instead.

Glass, just like flowers, is fragile - but stones are enduring, like their love.

to be continued

Chapter Text

There's a steadiness to Ace that he brings to everything; a permanent, unwavering fixture in the seasons of her life.

It's winter again: a year has come and gone since Kate's passing, but the woods are startlingly alive in the upcoming spring, the first days of sun shining through, leaves billowing in the wind forming a mosaic with dozens variations of green. It's hard to feel cold and empty then, even as they stand at Lucy's grave, when blossoms in all shades are sprouting everywhere, pale pink and soft blue; yellow weeds poking valiantly through the once-frosted grass, white petals slowly adorning the trees - and Ace's hair looks golden in sunlight, the glint catching her eye.

There's his warmth, too, radiating from where he stands so close; from their laced fingers, his wedding band resting together with her engagement ring almost like an infinity symbol. He's giving her hope and faith into the everlasting when nothing else ever does. They've earned this, Nancy muses; destiny, fate and fortunes, they've got nothing to do with them, shouldn't. They've fought for each other, have given up so much, as much as they want to take now - her hand in his, her whole heart too, where she knows it's the safest under his gentle care.

"I'm sorry," Ace says quietly, so quiet she almost misses it if it weren't for the utter silence in the clearing, no birds chirping, this time and space for them alone.

Nancy's brow furrows as she turns to him, never letting go of his hand. "What? What are you sorry for?" she asks him, confused.

Ace draws a shaky breath, running his free hand through his hair. His gaze is fleeting, meeting hers before it jumps off, to a spot above her shoulder to the ground. "For whatever happened to you. For - what happened that scared you so much you thought you had to face it alone."

His words pull her from the now into the could have been, into this land between dream and reality where Ace had been the sweetest and the brightest, his love shining through the darkest of nights and the darkest of days in the aftermath. And because she has him right next to her, Ace in the flesh, his hand as warm as it'd been curled around her thigh or cupping her face, Nancy lets herself fall into the abyss. In that erstwhile elsewhere she's been trying so hard to forget, pushing the memories away, burying them so deep inside - so much so that there have been mornings when she woke up and forgot, for a fleeting, impossible minute, that this isn't the only life she's led lately.

Temperance's curse. Ryan's death. The void, the ache, the pain; the utter, desperate rage, the agony, the hopelessness. Ace trying to reach out to her through it all: the sorbet piling up in her freezer; hushed voices at the door, her dad thanking him for coming but telling him she wasn't up to seeing anyone; the unanswered texts, each one still etched into her brain, how she'd heard them in Ace's voice as she read every single one.

If you ever need anything, I'm here.

My mom made those cookies you love.

What about game night? Bess said she'd like to invite Addy.

Nancy, you know I'd do anything. I just need you to tell me what you need.

It's okay if you're not okay. I'm not okay either.

Nance.

I can't bear the thought of you alone. I know I can't help, but I can be here.

She hadn't answered any of them; kept her phone on silent most of the time, only half-remembering to text her father every few hours to reassure him and keep him from dropping back home to check on her. Nancy had known that Carson and Ace talked, then; known that they all did, asking one another about the state she was in. One text to her dad to tell him she'd had breakfast would reach Ace eventually, and Nancy had taken comfort in that, in telling herself that she wasn't completely shutting him out - that he knew she was as okay as she could, when Nancy had felt like she'd never be again.

But she had. One morning she'd showered and dressed and left home, driven to The Claw, seen him - she'd had all of him then, his voice and his touch and his heart and his strength and his softness, all of him to herself, cherished and beloved, until she hadn't anymore.

How is she supposed to tell him that? That she will never be sorry enough for risking him? That he has nothing to apologize for when he was, he is and he's always been, the one who keeps showing up, who always supports her, who loves her so much he breathed life back into her when she's the one at fault for him taking his last, dying one?

There's a lump in her throat Nancy can't swallow around, a fresh batch of tears welling up in her eyes. She looks down, quickly wiping at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve, focusing instead on Ace's fingers wrapped around hers. How long has he been holding her hand - five, ten minutes? Her ring around her finger is tingling like the trickle of warm water; a warning not to go further, to be careful not to overstep into dangerous territory. Against her palm she feels Ace's own ring warming up - he must have figured that out too, but he's standing still, waiting for her to make the first move.

To show her hand, a risky roll of the dice with nothing less than his life on the line.

The seconds stretch on like hours as Nancy silently argues with herself, weighing the pros and cons of opening up. Pondering what she can say, what's safe; how much is too much, and how to convey that it's been tearing the heart out of her body to avoid him; the irreparable void he left in her life, this unbearable sense of self-imposed loneliness, cold, dark, hollow loneliness just as hard for her to carry as it seems to have been for him. An icy block of regret sinks into her stomach: should she have gone to Bess for help? If those rings somehow seem to stall the curse, could she have asked for them earlier? Did she just lose another whole month for nothing?

She let fear consume her. She let Ace let her drive him away because she was so scared of the consequences, of her memories too, so much that she forgot he was the best part of her, the one who bounces ideas with her and who can solve anything.

"I'm scared," Nancy confesses in a small voice, shaky and frail but the sound is deafening to her, nothing like her. Nothing like the Nancy who used to barrel through life with no fear, never meeting an obstacle she couldn't overcome or a case she couldn't solve. Nothing like the Nancy who would have never admitted to weakness to anyone before Ace weaseled his way through her walls, finding the cracks in this tough shell she's erected around herself. "But I wasn't alone. I never was. You were - you are always there."

It's not entirely true - it's so far from the truth, when she can still feel the metallic taste of copper on her tongue from his blood and her blood. But it's still her truth - no matter where she goes, Ace follows.

Even though she was alone in the end, she was never alone before. And it makes all the difference in the world: between heartbreak and heartache, between devastation and rebirth.

There were Ace's texts and the pints of sorbet lining up in her freezer; the bouquets of flowers Carson pretended were from friends and people from Ryan's past when Nancy knew they were all from Ace. Irises, cornflowers, gladiolus flowers in vibrant blossoms, pink and yellow and purple and white and red and blue, all symbols of hope and strength and remembrance of his love and presence for her; same as Ace wears his heart on his sleeve, Nancy had carried him with her. Always.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Nancy goes on. Ace's hand around hers twitches involuntarily, she believes, and she squeezes back, holds onto him, allows them both to tether themselves to one another in this moment. In this truth. Nothing seems to matter more to Nancy in that moment than for Ace to know this.

But Ace shakes his head, a loose lock of hair falling across his forehead that Nancy yearns to brush away and tuck behind his ear; let her hand linger there, softly cupping his neck and pulling his head down as she stands on her tiptoes, closing the impossible gap between them. "But I did," Ace says in a strangled voice, emotion overwhelming him as he suddenly lets go of her hand and takes a step back. His hands go to his hair, fingers nervously racking through it and messing it up. "I was mad at you," he admits, like a little boy confessing a misdeed and believing it a real sin. There's a sheen in his eyes when they meet hers, unshed tears welling in the blue, the exact shade of a troubled sea in the middle of a storm. "I knew something was wrong, that you had to be in trouble, but I was still mad at you. For pushing me away. For not letting me help. I was mad at you, Nance."

"Ace -"

"I was mad at you," he repeats, his gaze hollow, half-dazed as he shakes his head. "I should have helped you and I was mad at you. You don't do that to someone you -" Ace pauses, stopping himself short of saying something he can't take back. Something that will kill him.

Nancy's fists curl at her side. She wants to reach out and hug him, wants to fold herself into him and around him, to lay down the armor and let him be her shield against this darkness and be his. She wants. "You had every reason to be," she tries to placate him. "I lied to you, and I -"

Ace looks dejected, shaking his head again; his whole stance screams defeat and self-deprecation. "I should have fought harder for you," he says, denying himself her comfort.

And that's it - the fear that Ace truly believes he's not enough is stronger than the fear that's been crushing her for all these weeks. She'll find a way to protect him, she'll give her life for him - but Nancy won't let him believe that. Gently she spins him, hands lifting slowly until they land on his shoulders and she tugs him to her, the whisper of his name slipping from her salt-crusted lips. "Ace. I'll say this once and I need you to listen to me: if I'm still standing, it's thanks to you. You're the one who kept my heart from breaking, no one else. I need you to know that." And then she adds, softer, hope for the hopeless: "And we're gonna find a way out of this, I swear. I just need you to trust me a little while longer."

Ace bites his lip and lets out a sigh that wraps around her heart in a tendril of hope. This, she knows; there's an intimacy that colors this little sigh, a history, theirs. This sigh means he's listening; it means he won't argue with her about it. It means he's all in. "You know I trust you," Ace says softly. "It's never been about that."

He might have reacted to her anguished Trust me, I'm doing this for us, okay? with unease and hesitation, but he'd still run, still trusted her. Behind the fear and his obvious concern for her, the trust there had been clear and resounding.

"And I trust you too," Nancy swears, almost a vow. "I just can't tell you more, it's too dangerous."

Ace nods his head slowly, his mouth pulling in that small smile of pinched lips, this look on his face that says he wants to say more but won't. For now. And it's in this moment that Nancy wishes she didn't know how it felt to kiss him, how his lips felt against hers, or exactly how he tastes; she wishes she didn't know because Nancy believes that if she didn't, maybe she wouldn't want to kiss him so badly now.

There was dreaming about it and experiencing it, a whole new world in between fantasy and actual memory. Dreams had this hopeful quality, a sheer possibility that might come true, while memories were long gone and buried and yet always finding ways of resurfacing in the most dire of times, sucker-punching her. Nancy attempts to calm her racing heart, trying to dispel the remnants of their time together, this residual shadow of a another life that clings to her every step.

She thinks she's succeeded until she feels his lips brush her forehead, feather-light soft, almost absently, gone before she can fully register his touch, before he goes from tiptoeing over the line to entirely crossing it. The sound that comes out of her mouth is a whimper, and Ace pulls away, steps away for real this time, giving her space - perhaps to them both, his hands longing to hold her as much as hers do. "Okay," he says, his simple acceptance of anything she has to offer characteristically his, but his tone is decidedly solemn. A promise to never doubt her again.

"Okay," Nancy echoes, hoping he hears the same in the unsaid. "We should, uh - we should get back to that last clue, I don't want anyone to catch up with us, we need to get going."

Ace shrugs, fishing a piece of paper from his pocket. "It was the last one," he says, handing her the little note. "We won."

Nancy unfolds the paper and reads: Look how far you'll go when you listen to your heart. Collect the moments one by one and reminisce about the good times tonight: a very special surprise awaits you in the winter garden at 7.

Nancy nibbles at her lip, unable to keep the visual at bay - a dinner date with Ace. A French fry and a coffee mug; no curse, no Bess and George and Nick around; just the two of them. Her hand laced with his in Florence, his jacket thrown over her shoulders. Maybe he'd be wearing that rainbow jacket she loves so much and that Nancy hasn't seen in a while. Or perhaps he'd dress up, the memory of Ace in that waiter getup for the event at the country club they'd catered hitting her like a wall of bricks: black tie and vest, sleeves rolled up his elbows...

Nancy shakes her head, taking a deep breath to steady herself. She definitely doesn't need to let her imagination run wild like this, not when they're only mere hours into this retreat and they have yet to share a bedroom. She doesn't need a fresh batch of new visuals to join the ranks of all these things they can do in the middle of the night in her dreams. "Okay then," she says, then pauses, not knowing how to follow through. She looks around, unable to remember which path she came through just before. "How about you get us out of the woods?"

Ace lets out a chuckle. "It's really not that hard, you know. Maybe after all of this is over..." he starts, waving his hand between the two of them, "We could go camping?" He sounds adorable, hopeful - and dare she think it, in bloom.

Nancy regrets putting up her hair in braids, her face clear of any lost curl so that Ace has to see her pink cheeks. "Eager to impress me with your Eagle Scout prowess?" Nancy teases him instead, eager herself to fall back into their usual banter, into playful territory where everything's safe. Safer, at least. Where she doesn't let herself picture it: bickering about who gets to pick the radio during the road trip, hands brushing, pints of sorbet and holding Ace's coffee while he's driving; watching him build up camp, a fire, huddling together for warmth; lying on the hood of Florence to watch the stars... "Should we add this to our backstory if anyone asks? How you wooed me with your skills?"

Ace tucks his hands in his pockets and it's a good thing, Nancy thinks, because it keeps her from reaching out; it'd be so easy to forget about the curse when they're like this, playing lovebirds in the woods - when it's all she's ever wanted. Nancy falls into step with him as he guides them on the right path. "Never pegged you for the swooning type," Ace laughs quietly. "I'm pretty sure you already meet most requirements anyway. And some more."

"Aren't I already Scout-adjacent by marriage?"

Ace gives her an eye roll, looking like he has to resist the urge to bump her shoulder with his. "I would need to ask about that."

"Please do. And maybe you could mentor me in the meantime?" Nancy offers. "My knowledge about the wildlife could definitely be improved."

"I thought you'd never ask." He grins then, quick as thunder, before he visibly forces himself to swallow whatever he was about to add. But Nancy hears it loud and clear anyway.

That's my girl.

And on the walk back to the cabin, she allows herself to relish it - the knowledge that Ace believes in an after, in a version of reality where the curse is broken and they can be together. That he still wants that. That someday, she will be his.

That someday, she'll get to tell him about her experience in the dreamscape, in that fortune Temperance weaved, and how none of it could ever rival with the reality of being with him once more, for real.

There are the memories that have been haunting her, taunting her with what she couldn't have - but maybe there are the memories she can look forward to make with him again.

Perhaps there's a power in hoping Nancy hasn't tried yet.

Jenny looks up at them with wide eyes as they enter the lobby. "Oh, you two are back already?" she asks, sounding surprised and impressed. "Wow, that was fast."

Nancy and Ace exchange a look. The whole scavenger hunt took them under two hours; was it supposed to keep them busy until dinner? "Oh, well...this one just really likes puzzles," Ace explains smoothly. "You should see her with the Sunday crossword."

Nancy pauses mid-eye roll, sensing how fond she looks, which doesn't scream struggling couple at all. She crosses her arms over her chest instead but still feels so exposed, her undercover acting skills abysmal compared to Ace's, he who acts so smoothly, nailing this enamored husband who's here to win his wife back down with honors.

Jenny smiles back at Ace, visibly swooning at how sweet he is. Nancy doesn't have to pretend to frown at that; sure, Ace's dotting husband act is sweet, but he's her fake-husband and Nancy be damned if she lets anyone give doe eyes to him right under her nose. Especially a pretty brunette not unlike all the pretty brunettes Ace is usually sweet on. "So we have this coupon to redeem," Nancy intervenes, leaning her elbow on the counter at the front desk and showing Jenny the note. "What's this special surprise, uh?"

Jenny beams at her - oh, so she's not only beaming at sweet husbands. Maybe she's just lovely. "But it wouldn't be a surprise if I told you now, would it?" she says, clapping her hands excitedly. "All I can say is, you definitely won't need a compass for tonight. After all this teamwork, you deserve to relax and enjoy a nice break. Speaking of, there's a hot tub in the back porch, if you two want to -" She pauses, her walkie-talkie springing to life with static sounds followed by Eddie's voice. "Oh, excuse-me," Jenny apologizes as she answers the call.

Nancy turns to Ace, cocking an eyebrow at him. If Jenny was looking at them, she'd probably misinterpret the gesture and be secretly thrilled to see husband and wife sharing a look and about to go rekindle their romance in the hot tub. But Nancy sees this - all the other couples still lost in the woods and struggling to solve riddles she ate for breakfast when she was twelve - as the perfect opportunity to snoop a little.

Ace tilts his head in turn, tipping his chin at Jenny. Eddie's voice is amused as he asks for help, asking Jenny if she'd mind coming out and joining him to help out the other couples because he can't do it all. Jenny agrees, then turns back to give them a grin. "Well, not everyone seems to have your knack for mysteries, so I'll be heading out to help. If you guys need anything, Mariana is in her office. You have full access to the hot tub and the yoga studio if you feel like it, but really, you do you," she rambles before she grabs for her jacket and leaves.

Neither Nancy nor Ace need to be told twice.

"Okay, so the room to our left is Sarah and Liam's, and the one to our right belongs to Luisa and David," Ace says as he studies the map he drew. "Across from us is Emma and James, to their left is Nahla and Melanie, and then there's the sixth unoccupied room at the end of the corridor. Which one do you want to go searching first? Or do you want us to split?"

Nancy shakes her head. "No, I don't want to take any chances and miss something. We should start with Luisa's," she suggests, tapping her finger on the map. "I'm not ruling out anything supernatural, but she also has the room closest to ours so...who knows. Maybe this is just intimidation or jealousy or something, and she snuck into the room somehow."

Ace goes to the bay window, opening it and stepping onto the balcony. Nancy follows him and gasps silently at the beautiful view; Jenny didn't exaggerate about that. Ace frowns as he studies the gap between their balcony and the other one. "Honestly, I guess she could have jumped," he starts cautiously, "but really, that's a stretch. She's, what, maybe 5ft 3 tall?"

Nancy nods, turning to the other side, to Liam and Sarah's balcony. "Sarah's taller, though," she muses.

"About your height, yeah," Ace agrees. "She seems like a troublemaker."

Nancy snorts. "Oh yeah? What clued you in?"

Ace has the good grace not to outright laugh. He only lets out a chuckle. "If we're going with supernatural, Luisa and Emma are our main suspects. If we're going with who's the most annoying, I think we shouldn't dismiss Melanie and James. Melanie was sitting just beside us and whatever's going on with her and her wife, I'm sensing divorce soon, and a nasty one. And James...well, he's just an asshole, right?"

"Yeah, the lipstick thing doesn't mean it had to be a woman," Nancy agrees. She runs her hand through her hair, thinking. "The thing is, for now we have to consider all options. We don't know if the Reynolds were targeted in particular, and we don't know if the haunting has anything to do with that message on the mirror. So let's search those rooms, see if we find that lipstick first, then anything out of the ordinary. How many more bugs do you have?"

"Enough to put the entire center under surveillance," Ace says. "I was thinking that I should probably start running through the audio files from the one I put at Jenny's desk tonight. I have this software that spots key-words or pre-recorded sentences, but maybe we should still listen to everything just to make sure."

"That'll put a damper on our romantic evening," Nancy says with a pout. "I'm not sure our surprise involves listening in to other people's conversations."

Ace gathers his equipment. "Maybe our marriage is failing because I'm too focused on my work and never make time for us," he offers.

"Too focused on washing dishes?" Nancy laughs. "I know you're very committed, but come on. We can't not go. It'll rouse suspicion if we don't even try. Besides," Nancy starts cautiously, "if any of us needs to learn to make time, it's me. You don't have to bear the cross of our failing marriage alone."

It makes Ace smile, a small thing that still makes Nancy's heart skip a bit. "You know what? I think our marriage's not half-bad," he says softly. "Perhaps a bit unconventional, considering we're not actually married, but..." He shrugs. "Not half-bad."

"Not half-bad is almost pretty good, when you think about it," Nancy agrees, ducking her head to hide her smile. "Come on, let's go."

Having Ace with her makes everything easier, Nancy muses as they start searching the rooms. Ace is methodical, taking pictures of everything before they touch anything to remember where everything was and put it back to its rightful place. Nancy would have just blamed the chaos on the ghost, if asked.

The search of David and Luisa's room doesn't lead them anywhere. If Luisa does own a shade of lipstick close to the one from the mirror, Nancy can't say for sure that it's a perfect match - and it still doesn't mean she did anything. David could have written that message on the wall, after all.

Ace's going through Sarah's toiletry bag when he calls out to her, holding a thin case of contraceptive pills. "I don't want to presume I'm an expert, but how effective is birth control when you only pretend to take the pill?" he asks Nancy with a raised eyebrow.

Nancy comes closer, and Ace shows her a small inside-pocket in the toiletry bag; inside are stashed tampons and the pills haphazardly thrown in. "Oh. Looks like someone doesn't know they're trying for baby number five."

"Five?" Ace's eyes widen. "That woman had four kids? Wow."

Nancy waggles her fingers at his face. "Focus."

"I just meant she doesn't look like she had four kids, that's all," Ace raises his hands in defense. "She's the one who wants to - I'm not -"

But Nancy's not listening to him, resuming the search of the toiletry bag herself. "Luisa told me that Sarah was hitting on Joshua Reynolds hard. She could have written that message to mess up with him and Mia." She finds three different lipsticks, opening each, but only one looks like it could be a match. "Funny how everyone swore they didn't have a lipstick like that, but this is the second one we find that's pretty close," Nancy notes.

"Funny how people tend not to say the truth unless there's a warrant under their nose."

"Warrants are overrated."

"Agreed."

With every room they search, Nancy's unease grows. She starts imagining how she would feel if someone went through her stuff like this, uncovering her most personal secrets. There's a bottle of antidepressants in David's night table; no less than half a dozen books in Emma's suitcase, as if she hides in her readings not to face the reality that her husband probably doesn't notice her unless he's barking. Nahla and Melanie's room marks the most hostility: all the throw pillows have been placed in the middle of the bed like a wall separating each side, the matching armchairs around the coffee table in Nancy and Ace's room pulled to separate corners of the room here. Even in the bathroom, all their toiletry things are neatly separated, the toothbrushes in the singular glass the only exception.

Nancy sighs, racking her hand through her hair in frustration. "We have five lipsticks that could be a match, this is going nowhere."

Ace stands from his kneeling under the coffee table where he planted a bug. "We haven't searched the sixth room yet," he tries cheering her up. "Maybe there's a ghost in the plumbing, maybe it's the key."

Nancy chuckles, rolling her eyes. "Why didn't I think about it?" she laughs.

Then she freezes as she hears footsteps in the corridor growing nearer.

She meets Ace's eyes and he's on it in a second, grabbing her elbow and pulling her toward the balcony. He's just closed the window and he's pushing her flat against the side of the wall at the same moment as the door opens, Melanie's high-pitched voice following: "You didn't even try," she half-complains, half-barks.

There's the thump of something dropping to the floor (her shoes?) and then of a door opening (the closet?). Then Nahla answers, sounding just as annoyed: "Aren't you tired of always whining about the same thing?"

"I'm tired of you never making an effort."

"I came here, didn't I?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Nahla."

Nancy's breath hitches as a hand closes around the knob of the window. Ace holds his breath too, pressing himself against her so that his shadow doesn't make their presence known.

"Don't walk away when I'm talking to you!"

The hand at the knob lets go and both women start fighting, loud enough that Nancy sees the perfect opportunity for their exit strategy. Tipping her chin at the balcony leading to James and Emma's room, she cocks an eyebrow at Ace until he gets it.

He easily jumps onto the other balcony, flattening himself against the wall as he checks through the window that the room is still empty. Then Ace turns back to her, reaching out with his hands. "I've got you," he whispers.

But Nancy's eyes flicker down to the gap between the balconies, not big enough that she worries she can't jump, but she doesn't have Ace's long legs and needs some boosting that she definitely can't have unless she steps back to gather speed, right in front of the window.

Ace seems to get her predicament immediately. "I'll distract them."

Nancy watches him as he sneaks into the Sullivans' room, and a minute later, she hears a knock at Nahla and Melanie's door. "You happy?" Nancy hears Nahla snarl before she opens the door, her tone changing instantly to something softer. "Oh, Ace, is that it?"

"Yeah, sorry to bother you," she hears Ace say in a voice that's louder than his usual tone. "My wife has a headache and it seems like I forgot to pack the painkillers," he says, sounding contrite. "Do you have any?"

"Oh, sure. Mel?"

The question hangs in the air with the nickname, and Nancy wonders how much of it is for show and how much is real. They just had a baby; Nancy can sympathize with the stress it puts on a couple and all the changes it brings. She can't even begin to imagine what it did to her parents all these years ago, when the duty of raising someone else's baby befell them.

She hears Melanie's footsteps and the bathroom door opening, then Ace's voice as he chats Nahla up about the scavenger hunt, giving Nancy the opportunity to take a run-up and jump onto the next balcony, the sound of her half-crashing down covered by Ace's exaggerated story of how competitive she is and how exhausted she is now that she spent all of her energy during the game. "We've got this surprise awaiting us tonight but with her headache, she might just end up dozing off," Ace sighs. "Anyway, thank you, I won't take up more of your time."

"No problem," Nahla replies.

Nancy waits a beat, until she hears Ace scraping his nails against the door. She opens it as quietly as possible, before following him back to their bedroom as fast as she can on tiptoes. Luckily they cross path with no one else and Nancy closes their door with her foot before she leans against it, letting out a long exhale. "That was close," she says with a heavy sigh. "I didn't expect anyone so soon."

"Sounds like they gave up on the game," Ace replies as he plops down in an armchair, putting an earpiece in his ear and grabbing for his laptop. "Wanna listen in? I'm gonna start with the bug at Jenny's desk before dinner."

Nancy takes him in - the domesticity of doing this with him. Back at Icarus Hall, she's gotten used to being on her own once more, but she can't deny this is so much better. Can't pretend it wouldn't be nicer to have Ace with her there, too: Ace bringing her pizza or take-out when she pulls an all-nighter instead of Ryan, Ace going back to being her guy in the chair instead of all the hours Nancy has lost trying to get by on her own without his skills. She's avoided the morgue at all costs while he was on shift, but it'd be so good to be able to work as a team once again - to pretend to sneak into the morgue but knowing Ace will just share anything with her.

She shakes her head, chasing the visual away. Those are dangerous thoughts - allowing herself to imagine the future when the present is still so uncertain. It'll lead her to lowering her guard down and she can't risk it, can't risk him. Nancy twists her ring around her finger, a reminder that without it, the worst could have already happened.

Three warnings are two warnings too many.

She slips it off her finger along with her sapphire ring, gently placing them on her nightstand. "You mind if I take a shower first? I scratched my shins against some ivy, I'm a little itchy. And I'm pretty sure I must have some tree leaves in my hair."

"You look great," Ace answers earnestly before he nods his head. "Yeah, go on, I'm taking the first shift," he waves his hand absently, ducking his head.

Nancy smiles to herself as she goes to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She puts her phone on the bathroom counter, flicking through Spotify to find the right playlist to listen to while she's trying very hard to forget about her fake-husband being on the other side of the door while she gets naked.

She's humming along the song as she steps under the spray, some soft tune about haunted houses and fading memories but a love so strong you'll always recall. Nancy loses herself in the moment, soaking in the hot water and focusing on every sense; the sweet scent of her green apple shampoo filling her nose, her fingers kneading at the knot in her right shoulder, the melancholy in the singer's voice seeping in every word as one song morphs into the next.

It's a punch to the stomach, how close to home it hits.

And I can go anywhere I want, anywhere I want, just not home.

Nancy gnaws at the inside of her mouth not to cry. She's just gotten Ace back into her life in some capacity, she doesn't have time to lose it like this and cry in the shower like some lovesick teenager.

She's so focused on not crying she doesn't catch the slight static, the tiny dip in the voice pitch as the song goes on; this edge of desperation, the sobs that ricochet against the tiled walls as the voice cracks. The rage, too, quiet and loud at the same time.

You had to kill me.

In the bedroom, Ace's ghost detector starts beeping, unbeknownst to either of them.

to be continued

Chapter Text

Nancy steps out of the warm water, feeling an instant chill run through her at the sight of the bathroom mirror.

The steam from the shower fogged the glass, melting the message there - lipstick stains like blood drops that she's quick to erase with the first towel she can grab, smearing the red all over the mirror. She sighs under her breath at the mess she made, making a mental note to ask Mariana for some cleaning product, before she turns to the adjacent wall covered in small mirrors with intricate metal frames and of various shapes, flower and sun and star, some no bigger than her hand, about a dozen mirrors arranged haphazardly and reflecting her face back at her. Almost as though all the versions of herself she was or could ever be had gathered to look down on the final draft, the shape of the girl she's become.

Nancy feels - and sees - her frown furrowing deeper. Worn out, relentless - this is the Nancy who's been running for so long to try and numb the heartache, she never takes the time to catch her breath. Not unless Ace is there to catch her. She forces herself to relax her features, exhaling slowly - there she is, another Nancy, another variation, a Nancy who's tired, always between the devil and the danger, but there's a flicker of hope in her eyes, too. A tiny spark fanned by wishful thinking, that perhaps running into the fire will save someone else. Ryan. Ace.

Nancy closes her eyes, tiredly running her hand through her dripping hair. She could pull it back in a side ponytail, or let it curl loose in a waterfall braid; it'd be as if she's recasting herself, shedding the persona of Nancy Drew, the girl who lost everything, to become Nancy Hardy, darling and beloved wife. A young woman with blossoming dreams looking every bit the blushing bride on her husband's arm. They were happy, once; they can be again.

She shakes her head, droplets of water rolling down her neck, her back, impossibly cold as they trace down her spine. There's no iteration of Nancy who can be without Ace, and every Nancy staring back at her as she opens her eyes again knows it.

Haunted - that's the word for what she sees. How she feels. Words desperately trying to claw their way out of her throat that she must swallow back. What would she write on a mirror if she could say what she wants to say?

I wish to know

the fatal flaw that makes you long to be

magnificently cursed.

"Oh, for God's sake," Nancy groans under her breath, reaching for her phone and turning the music off.

She can hear the sound of Ace's fingers dancing across his keyboard in the silence; can easily picture the way his brow furrows and his teeth nibbling at the corner of his mouth, red from the bite - like they were red from her lips  against his once. Nancy sighs, shaking the visual out of her head.

Her phone buzzes to life, Ryan's name flashing on the screen. Nancy answers it, putting it on speaker as she starts brushing her hair: "Oh, hi, Ryan. What's up?"

"Just wanted to check in," Ryan says. "Carson's still at the office, and..." He lets out a chuckle. "I guess I'm just not used to being home alone. Is this what being an empty-nester feel like?"

Nancy feels her mouth twitching up in a smile. Ryan's kind of cute, but ridiculously so. "You do realize I've been gone for less than a day?"

Even through the phone, Nancy can picture his eyes widening comically. "So, how's married life?" Ryan changes the subject quickly.

Nancy rolls her eyes. There's a twig still caught in her copper curls and she tugs at it with a grimace. "Fine."

Ryan sighs so loudly, Ace has to hear him. "Okay, be like that." He pauses, hoping to prompt her into confidence; when he realizes it doesn't work, he sighs again. "How's your investigation going?" he asks instead. That's the thing about Ryan; he always asks. Waits up on her at night to make sure she has dinner, asks about her cases, cares.

"Ace thinks there might be a ghost in the plumbing."

"See, I really appreciate that we've reached that stage in our father/daughter relationship where things like this no longer surprise me," Ryan deadpans.

There's another pause, silence stretching between them over the line. Nancy almost asks if there was anything else he wanted when she realizes what this is truly about: Ryan missing her and worrying about her now that she's out of his sight. For someone most people saw as selfish and self-centered, Ryan is perhaps the most observant person she knows besides Ace and he's noticed - how she's been avoiding Ace, dodging Bess's calls, focusing on work and spending almost every waking hour at Icarus Hall. Nancy's seen him watch her with those eyes, warm and filled with concern, hoping she'd open up and talk to him.

On more occasions than Ryan knows, she almost did.

There had been a morning when her fingers shook so much at the thought of driving that she let her car keys fall and she swore to herself so loud, the sound alerted Ryan who'd come to the mudroom to check on her only to find her half-choking on sobs over something as dumb as dropping her keys. His eyes had widened and he'd looked at a loss as to what to do for a second before he'd switched to full-dad mode, grabbing his coat and gently tugging her hand to follow him. He'd driven her around town all day then: to get office supplies, to Icarus Hall where he'd helped her build shelves. He'd been terrible at it - something else that Ryan Hudson had never done before - and Nancy had helped him read the instructions, his hands steadier than her own that were still trembling in fear of letting anything, anyone, go. He'd offered to drive her quite a few other times after that, and Nancy had let him every once in a while, hands clenched in tight fists on her lap whenever night fell and they drove in the dark. She'd seen Ryan's gaze wandering to her, eyes narrowing at the obvious tension in her body, and his fingers would always curl around the steering wheel as if he were bracing himself to say something while also knowing she wouldn't be happy about it or would dismiss him.

He'd ask how her latest case was going instead. Or what she wanted for dinner. One time he'd started ranting about Jean who'd teased him about his expensive taste in herbal tea. What does D.A. Rosario know about the exquisite nutty taste and floral aroma of Tieguanyin oolong tea? Nancy had laughed a little then, and Ryan had smiled as if it were a victory.

Perhaps it'd been - for a father to see his daughter laugh again after weeks of darkness looming over like a shadow clinging to her back.

There had been countless moments like this one - Ryan squeezing her shoulder, putting a cup of warm coffee before her, asking about her day, folding laundry, this worn-out cardigan she'd worn in another life until it no longer smelled like him. Every time Nancy's heart would soar, words bubbling up to the surface but dying on her tongue. Ryan would ask if she was okay and she'd nod her head, give him a small smile, say yes, all the while gnawing at the inside of her cheek not to cry.

She'd told her father and he'd helped in the way he always did, being her tether to reality, reminding her that she was the captain of her own fate. But Ryan - he'd understand. If she told him all about the fortune Temperance weaved, about this alternate life, the curse, he would understand. He'd want to ask Bess for help, offer to stay up late at the Historical Society to go through any and all old volumes about curses and protection magic. He wouldn't stand still; he hardly ever does, always hovering, always wanting to be involved and help - be there for her.

Nancy wishes she could have let him. Let him help her. They've all been trying to teach her that for the past months: to lean on others, to rely on them, trust them, ask for help. And now that she's ready to, now that she's learned to see it as strength, she can't. If she'd told Ryan before he would have moved heaven and earth for her, and who knows what would have happened then? What it would have meant for Ace's safety?

She hears Ryan clearing his throat. "Anyway, I didn't want to - bother you or anything, I-"

"You never do," Nancy says softly, tentatively. A truth she's never spoken out loud - how much she's grown to care for him, to love him. Not in some misguided attempt to put the broken pieces of her heart back together, or to replace the love she's lost; she loves him in all his ridiculous, dorky, helpless glory. Loves that no matter how ridiculous he can be, he'll grow instantly serious the moment she needs him to. Loves that however dorky he is, he's finally being his true self, the man he could have been if love had been enough to save a life. Loves that as helpless as he used to be, he's her rock now. "We won a scavenger hunt, and our prize is some surprise date night, so -"

"Say no more," Ryan says excitedly. "Date night is sacred, or so I've been told."

"By whom?" Nancy chuckles. "Did you learn that while watching Hallmark movies?"

She can hear him roll his eyes. "Aren't brides supposed to be all sugar and spice and everything nice? Say hi to Mr. Hardy for me, will you? Can't believe I had to wait for him to put a ring on you to know Ace's last name," Ryan chuckles good-heartedly.

"Fake-married," she reminds him.

"Same thing," Ryan laughs. "You know, I'm definitely no marriage-material, but I believe you two should really make the most of this retreat to talk, yeah?" he suggests softly. "Try and get out of this weird limbo you've been stuck into lately."

There's no pretending she doesn't know what he means. Nancy turns off speakerphone, bringing her phone to her ear as she leans against the bathroom counter. "We're working on that," she admits hesitantly. "But it's something we've got to..."

Nancy lingers, not knowing how to finish her sentence. Up until now, she's been doing this all on her own: avoiding Ace, busying herself with work, head buried so deep under the sand she'd managed to persuade herself that she could go on like this. Ace would move on eventually, she'd kept telling herself; one day she'd see him with someone else and it'd hurt like hell but at least he'd be safe. And if he waited for her...

Then Nancy likes to tell herself she would have done the right thing. Put some distance between them, uproot herself; find somewhere else to grow, no matter how excruciating it'd be to live without Ace - to have to rip her own heart out.

"Work on your own?" Ryan offers kindly, sensing the shift in her tone.

Nancy's glad that he's not here because she knows he'd gaze at her with that soft, inviting look; but at the same time, she can't help feeling this pang of loneliness anyway. At home, both her dads have been looking after her, taking a vigil over her broken heart, each in their own way; it's the first time ever since the night at the Veil that she'll go to sleep without either one of them checking up on her, asking if she's okay one last time for the day. "Something like that, yeah," she says at last.

"Well, don't forget we're here for you, okay?" Ryan insists gently. "You don't have to do everything on your own. You know, pieces solving a puzzle, that's good, too."

She almost teases him about Hallmark wisdom but closes her mouth. Ryan's right; now that she knows what it feels like to have a crew, real friends, she's felt out of sync with herself as she worked on her own. "I know, Dad."

He takes it like a champ, Nancy muses, only taking a second longer to answer. It warms her heart, saying it not out of despair and agony. It's quite an undertaking, to love someone so much a simple word opens a whole new world. "Good. I'll let you get ready for your date, then. Have fun."

"As long as our date night isn't in the hot tub, we should be safe from the ghost in the plumbing."

"Smart thinking. I'll tell Carson you guys are okay."

"We are. I - I'll call you tomorrow, alright?"

Ryan lets out a chuckle. "Nah, you're busy, it's fine. Just let me know if you need anything."

He hangs up then, and Nancy lets out a sigh. As kind and of good will as Ryan is, what can he do against a curse casted out by a 200 year-old occultist hell-bent on dooming her entire bloodline?

What can she do?

Ace startles as she leans over his shoulder, letting out the cutest little squeaky sound. "Nancy," he hisses her name as he brings a hand to his heart. "You spooked me."

"Ghost-hunting isn't for the faint-hearted," Nancy laughs as she takes a seat beside him on the couch. "Found anything interesting?"

Ace takes out an earphone, handing it to her. "Here, I need a second ear." Nancy takes it from him, leaning instinctively closer. Ace starts rewinding the audio file and explains: "Okay, so there you have Jenny talking to herself about schedule-related stuff, nothing out of the ordinary, but then..."

Nancy can hear the sound of Jenny's nails as she taps them against the desk; her clicking on the mouse as she browses her online schedule. She mumbles some words, lets out a sigh about the delivery guy being late; then she starts humming, singing under her breath.

Ace pauses the audio clip. "Did you notice the slight hitch in her breath before she starts humming?"

Nancy shakes her head. "No, play it again." He does, changing the speed of the audio file and slowing it down. Still, Nancy has to focus real hard to catch it; when she does, it's all she can hear all of a sudden. Beyond a dip in Jenny's voice, Nancy knows that sound, this tiny half-shuddered breath in between heartbeats - the same thing would happen when Odette took over George's mind and body.

Ace holds up a finger and resumes playing the file, speeding it up this time. When the song ends, there's this sharp intake of breath again and then Jenny starts tapping her fingers again, almost as if she wasn't aware that she'd been singing at all, resuming what she was doing before. "I've listened to it three times already, and I can only catch a few words here and there, not enough to find the song," Ace explains. "I tried running it through SoundHound but it's either too old or not famous enough. All I've got so far is thunder, heart and drum."

"You think she was possessed?" Nancy asks. "George would never remember what Odette did or said."

"Maybe," Ace shrugs. "Or maybe this place is just driving people crazy. You heard Mariana, they've all been worrying about the humming that comes from the woods, maybe Jenny was just singing after all. But...there's this catch in her breath, it's unusual."

"Yeah, I agree," Nancy concurs. "Can you play it again? I wanna try."

Nancy leans her elbows on her lap, closing her eyes and covering her face to help her focus. It takes her three times before she shakes her head. "It's not heart, it's heartbreak," she says. "Play that part again." She gathers another couple of words - war, rifle - before she freezes. "Wait, what's that sound? Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"That - I don't know, it's like scratching?" Nancy suggests tentatively, wrinkling her nose. "Wait, no, it's the sound of a pencil on paper. She's writing something! Play it again, the whole thing this time. Close your eyes."

With her eyes closed, Nancy feels like all her other senses are on fire. She can feel the heat of Ace's thigh as he bumps his knee against hers, then stills; she can hear his breath slowing down as he tries to focus, the way he swallows, the sound of his lips pressing together. His hair still smells like pine trees. "She's writing the whole time," Ace's voice comes out thick, almost hoarse like this.

"Yeah. What are the chances that whatever she wrote is still somewhere on her desk?"

"Only one way to find out." Ace clasps his hands on his thighs. "I'll go distract her while you snoop around."

Nancy cocks an eyebrow at him. "Be careful if you cross paths with Sarah. God knows what she'll do to you if she finds you all on your own."

Ace gives her an eye roll. "Too bad I don't have some of the Handsy Drew antidote left."

Nancy narrows her eyes at him. "You know what?" she waggles her finger at him. "New rule in this marriage: no teasing each other about misfiring spells."

"We should probably start writing them down."

"I bet Moira would find that very smart and mature of us."

"We're kind of her star pupils, aren't we?" Ace smiles. "I don't think anyone else took therapy very seriously." He stands, checking the time on his phone. "Dinner's in thirty minutes. I'll just go tell Jenny I need some help to make date night extra special."

Nancy puts her chin in her hand, sighing dramatically. "Go on, go put all these other husbands to shame."

"You'd rather go use your stellar undercover skills?" Ace quirks an eyebrow at her, a sly grin twitching at his lips. "By all means, I wouldn't want to steal your thunder."

"See, maybe we can discuss this attitude during the next therapy session," Nancy snorts. "I might not be the best at improv, but I'm not the worst."

Ace doesn't even dignify her poor attempt with an answer. Instead he just tells her: "Give me five minutes, alright. Then you can do what you're best at: investigating."

Nancy gives him a thumb-up, rolling her eyes at herself at how lame it is once he has his back to her and leaves their room. She reaches for his laptop and earphones, choosing to make the most out of those five minutes to listen to the recording again.

Nancy listens to it so many times, she doesn't even notice when she starts humming, too.

Jenny's desk is immaculate, everything neatly organized; Nancy's impressed and even considers asking her to come work for her as a secretary at Icarus Hall.

She flicks through the book signing: Nahla's spidery handwriting just below Ace's name confirming hers and Melanie's place as second back as they gave up the scavenger hunt, then Luisa bearing down on the pen so hard the ink spilled on David's signature, Liam's indecipherable signature, then Emma's messy one, the pen stroke so soft Nancy can hardly read it - nothing that looks like the loopy, curly letters she erased on the mirror earlier. Nancy pushes the book aside, focusing on going through Jenny's elaborate system as quickly as she can.

She dismisses anything written with a pen - both she and Ace agreed that they recognized the sound of pencil on paper. Jenny has a collection of glittery ball-point pens organized rainbow-style and a single, funny and inspirational, good vibes only engraved pencil. Nancy can't help smiling - can Jenny get any cuter? She's exactly the kind of woman Ace should like: sweet and lovely like Bess, kind and helpful like Amanda, fun and outgoing like Laura. Being with her would come with no complications, no curses; her love wouldn't be the most dangerous thing in the world.

But Ace loves her.

He does.

It's the saddest thing in the world, to love in a world that has silenced them. But if he's her sadness he's also her hope, and he loves her light as much as he loves her in the dark.

Nancy doesn't need anyone telling her this is worth fighting for.

Footsteps in the stairs break her out of her reverie, followed by a nasal voice hissing: "You're not gonna bother Jenny about this, Mel."

Nancy barely has time to duck under the desk as Melanie rounds the corner, the sound of her high-heeled boots drumming on the floor like a marching band. "She's not even here," she whines as she leans her elbows against the desk.

"Which you could have inferred from calling the front desk and getting no answer," Nahla sighs exasperatedly. "Come on, Mel. Let's just get back and wait the others for dinner."

"I'm leaving her a note," Melanie says, leaning over the desk to grab a sticky note.

Nancy curls up in an even smaller ball, but Nahla saves her, grabbing her wife by the arm. "That's it, you're being ridiculous. We've been here a week and you've never wanted to use the hot tub before, and now that it's booked you want to. That's just you being contradictory as usual."

"I just think that it's not fair that they've only been here a day and they're getting this amazing private night just because they probably have nothing better to do with their free time than to go to escape rooms," Melanie snaps.

It takes a second for Nancy to catch up - that Melanie is complaining about them winning the scavenger hunt and what appears to be a date night in the hot tub, after all. She almost wants to tell her that she and Ace are just two highly logical and compatible people who'd rather join forces than snarl at each other when she remembers that she's hiding and that they're not even a real married couple to begin with. Besides, this place is about healing, not competition.

They totally won this, though. Game night Ace crushes.

Melanie and Nahla keep arguing, their voices growing fainter as Nahla finally manages to tug her back to their room. Nancy's straining her ear to make sure no one's around before she slowly backs out from her hiding place.

And that's when she sees it - a bunch of sticky notes in the trash bin, all crumpled. She takes them all, unwrapping one and reading: I tried resisting, in vain. William would not relent. Time and time again he would tell me you were gone and he was here.

Nancy frowns. This sounds like the middle of a story, not the beginning - and yet she has no trouble imagining the ending.

Men have always had a hard time taking no for an answer.

She forgets all about the bunch of sticky notes she was trying to rearrange to make a story the moment Jenny knocks on their room's door and leads her to the winter garden with a beaming smile. Jenny looks like a schoolgirl, down to the blushing cheeks and fidgety fingers. "The winter garden is all yours tonight, with a private access to the hot tub too. If you feel like taking a stroll under the moonlight, please do notify me, though," she says, her smile fading a little, nervousness tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I know you two seem at home in the woods, but it's really another story in the dark. Wouldn't want you to get lost."

"Yeah, I think we had enough for one day, but I guess that's what you get for marrying an Eagle Scout," Nancy chuckles. "Where is Ace, anyway?"

Jenny's grin only grows wider. "You know, I have a good feeling about you two," she says softly. "It's so obvious that you guys love each other a lot and all you need is some downtime for yourselves." She pauses at the door leading to the winter garden and reaches out to briefly squeeze Nancy's arm. "So enjoy yourself tonight, will you?"

Jenny opens the door for her before retreating back to her desk, and all of Ryan's beloved Hallmark ingredients are there for a magical, romantic night: candlelit dinner, soft music playing in the background, a champagne bucket waiting for them by the hot tub on the porch. Anyone would rekindle their spark in such a beautiful environment.

But all Nancy sees is Ace fussing over a bunch of wildflowers in a vase. She wonders what Lily would have to say about his choices: daisies, violets, almond blossoms, among others. Perhaps it's safer if she doesn't know. "Ace..."

"Friends can gift each other flowers," he shrugs. "I could get Bess flowers. Or Nick, even. The loft could do with some flowers."

Nancy sighs softly, shaking her head. "I think that'd be a very beautiful development in your friendship."

"So do I. Bros over...well, whatever, those are friendship flowers, nothing to see here," Ace rambles as he starts pulling her chair for her.

Nancy takes a seat, toying with her fingers. "I...I don't think we should talk about this," she starts slowly. "I don't - I don't know the rules, I don't know what's safe and what's not. I don't even know if saying this isn't already too much."

Ace nods his head, his teeth absently gnawing at the corner of his mouth. "Then we don't talk about it," he agrees. "We just figure it out." He lifts the silver cloche off the nearest dish, revealing pesto shrimp. "Oh, maybe we should take notes for the Claw. Love the food there, but you know what they say about variety."

"Spice of life? Don't you think our life is spicy enough already?" Nancy asks with a cocked eyebrow.

Ace only ducks his head, hiding a smile. "I wouldn't trade it for the world. Any of it." He looks up and Nancy can see he means it, has never doubted it; Ace doesn't know how much he'd be giving up, though. It scares her as much as it thrills her to know he wouldn't change his answer if he did. "Did you find anything at Jenny's desk, by the way?" he changes the subject, his cheeks taking on this rosy hue that probably matches hers.

"Oh, yeah," Nancy says. "Almost a dozen sticky notes, I was trying to put some sense into it when Jenny came by to pick me up."

"You wanna go back upstairs?" Ace asks. "We can just bring this all back to the room and have dinner there, we don't have to do - all this," he says as he waves his hand around the room.

Nancy nibbles at her lip. "Mmmh, I kinda think we do, though," she says. "I heard Melanie whine about us winning this thing, it'll look suspicious if we skip it. And I really don't want to give her the satisfaction that our marriage is worse than hers."

"That's a good point," Ace agrees. "Would it be mean of us to rank these couples?" he asks as he puts her plate before her, reaching for her wine glass to fill it. "Because I honestly don't think we're the most likely to divorce here, which I'm oddly proud of."

Nancy laughs, letting herself fall easily into their banter. "You know, hearing Melanie whine like that might have put her above Sarah in my own personal Most Annoying ranking. Who would have thought?"

"Wow. All in an honest day's work," Ace whistles. He fills his own glass, twirling it before he brings it to his nose, pretending to inhale it with the upmost expertise. "I wish I knew something about wine. Do you think Ryan could teach me?"

She almost teases Ace about this bromance he has going on with both her dads until it hits her just how much he must miss it. She remembers Ace being there for her and holding the fort in the days following Ryan's passing; she remembers the sorrow in his eyes when she'd finally emerged from her grief a month later, only then realizing the damages. She remembers the hole in her heart from thinking of all those missed opportunities, all these moments she would never share with Ryan again.

Nancy clinks her glass against Ace's instead. "I think that can be arranged." She tips her chin toward an envelope in the center of the table. "What's that?"

"Maybe the first clue to our next scavenger hunt?" Ace shrugs one shoulder. "They probably figured that whoever won would just love to spend the night doing another."

"Yeah, that's definitely what most married couples do at night," Nancy laughs as she reaches for the envelope. She opens it with her knife, taking out the pink sheet paper within. She brings it to her nose and inhales: "God, I think that smells like roses, they're really pulling out all the stops. Okay, so, let's see what this is all about," Nancy says before she starts reading. "Life can get in the way of marriage very easily, and you may feel like you've been drifting apart, ships passing in the night. Tonight is about taking a little trip down memory lane and reminiscing about the frivolity of courtship - honestly, this sounds like we're gonna go on Romantic Meditation 101. Step one, find your inner lover in lotus posture," Nancy snorts.

"You're joking, but I'd pay good money to watch you stand still long enough for meditation," Ace teases her. "Or yoga. You definitely need to relax. You know what, let's just enlist for yoga class tomorrow morning."

"So Sarah can try and climb you when you're showing off in perfect tree pose? Over my dead body," Nancy deadpans. She stares at Ace until she can see him swallow nervously. "Good."

He takes a sip of his wine, averting his gaze. "You're scary, you know that? You're really nailing this crazy possessive wife thing down."

"See, my undercover acting skills aren't that abysmal. Okay, where was I again?" Nancy starts skim-reading again. "This is super corny, it's almost cute. Oh! There's a quiz! We're gonna nail that, quizzes are like brain teasers."

Ace rolls his eyes fondly at her. "First question: who's the most competitive about being the best fake-married? Easy. You."

Nancy narrows her eyes at him. "No, the first question actually is: do you remember what your spouse was wearing the first time you met?" She starts frowning. "That's crazy, who's gonna re-"

"White tank top, blue stripes, dark denim skirt," Ace answers right away. When she looks at him with wide eyes, he chuckles softly. "Your hair was - a bit curly, like you'd just stepped out of the shower," he adds, waving his hand around.

"Wow. How do you - do you have some enhanced photographic memory I should know about?" Nancy lets out with a chuckle, ducking her head to hide her smile. "Sounds like that's the sort of things a wife should know. What if that's question number two?"

Ace takes the piece of paper from her. "Nope, you're fine. Besides, I'm pretty sure that you knowing about my secret half-brother in WITSEC qualifies you as an acceptable wife more so than remembering what I was wearing the day we met."

She remembers, though. The fading letters on his old archery camp shirt, the R and H almost falling off so much that it read ACERY. It'd made her laugh as he introduced himself and she'd almost asked if he'd done it on purpose when George had barked at her to hurry up. She'd given him one last look, admiring the way his muscles bunched under the fabric as he loaded wine boxes, before George had dragged her back inside to introduce her to the broom and water bucket. She'd only half listened to George's instructions as she kept thinking about Ace's eyes and how pretty they looked highlighted by that olive green shirt.

Nancy starts pondering if a young bride should or should not let it go to her husband's head that she's been daydreaming about his pretty eyes since day one, but Ace's laughter interrupts her musings: "Okay, question number five is a doozy: you have one minute to pitch your love story to the Hallmark channel, what do you tell them?"

Nancy can't help a giggle, reaching out for the paper: "You're lying, it can't be - oh wow, no, that's a real question. God, does Ryan secretly work here?" she laughs, wiping at the corner of her eyes with her hand. She hasn't laughed so hard in weeks; she hasn't seen him smile so carefreely in just as long. "Okay, wow. First of all, we're definitely selling the rights to the Movies & Mysteries channel, right? Ryan's been catching up on those movies with the detective and the English literature professor and it's actually quite good."

Ace grins at her, mirth twinkling in those gorgeous eyes of his. "I - I don't know what to do with that piece of information. Nancy Drew, willingly watching Hallmark movies? Wow. Maybe we do need to reconnect."

"Oh, shut up," Nancy blushes, dismissing him with a wave. "Ryan's just been lonely without - well, with my dad spending so much time with Jean, I've had to keep Ryan company, okay?" she explains. "And I'd much rather have our story be told through a murder mystery than one of those cheesy holiday movies."

"They are making an effort to include Jewish traditions, though, I'll give them that," Ace shrugs. His face softens then, his mouth twitching into that small smile she loves, the one she's come to realize means I love you. Maybe all his smiles do. "I think it's really sweet that you're spending more time with Ryan."

She's promised herself she would never turn down an offer to stay home and watch a cheesy movie or whatever home edit show Ryan loves so much again. She's let him fuss over her, care for her as if she were ten years-old all over again.

She knows the utter despair of losing him - she never wants to waste any more time.

For the past weeks, she's hold onto Ryan, trying to drown the thought that she couldn't do the same with Ace. That she never got to grieve the loss of him, forced back into action, a call to arms, an axe in her hand, everything moving too fast and too slow all at once; watching the town heal and rise from its ashes, people moving on with their lives while she stood still, still stuck in that world she'd lived in, the two of them now leading parallel lives, always close but never crossing anymore.

When she meets his eyes again, Ace is giving her that look - so inviting, she almost tells him. She could tell him about Ryan's passing, couldn't she? It has nothing to do with the curse. She could tell him and Ace would find the right words.

But she doesn't. If the dam breaks, she knows neither of them is ready for the floodgates.

"You know what?" Nancy says instead, forcing herself to smile brightly. "The real question is, who do we cast as Bess? You know she'll be forever mad at us if we get her wrong."

That makes Ace grin even wider. It's a sucker punch right to her gut, just how dashingly handsome he looks when he smiles. He should smile more - she wants to make him smile like he did on that morning in bed every day. "You're right. I don't think this marriage will work out against Bess Marvin's mighty wrath."

Nancy leans against the threshold of the door as she watches Ace piling up plates and dishes. "I don't think you need to wash the dishes here, Ace," she sighs fondly.

"Call it job conditioning," he shrugs. "I feel bad about Mariana waiting up on us to go rekindle our romance to clean up.  It'll take me ten minutes tops."

It'd make a good topic for the next therapy session - who else checks acts of service on their kink list? - Nancy muses. "Okay, I'll just go upstairs and start working on that sticky note puzzle."

"Don't solve it without me," Ace says, his voice dipping to a pleading tone. "Or at least pretend you didn't if you do."

Nancy laughs. "Sure," she indulges him. She could make it harder by tearing down the sticky notes so they'd have to put all the pieces back together, it'd take them a good fifteen minutes more.

It's the champagne that's making her so bubbly and giddy, Nancy thinks as she walks back to their room; she almost starts to regret it as she feels a slight pounding in her temple. It'll be a fun challenge, though, to see how long it takes her to piece the notes Jenny wrote under the influence.

Nancy starts organizing the notes, trying to find caps and first names, places, sentences that seem to have been cut in two different sticky notes. Jenny's handwriting seems to get sloppier, more rushed, at times; Nancy's eyes are drawn to an unfinished word.

Heartb-.

Under her breath, Nancy starts humming again, in unison with the humming coming from the woods.

Her pulse drums faster in her temple, her face tipping down as a headache starts pulling her under.

Nancy rolls her neck, trying to shake this weird feeling off as a shadow passes before her eyes, blurring her vision; she blinks her lashes a couple times but to no avail. Her ears start buzzing, the low pitch of someone's voice getting louder; she needs to listen to it, to be closer.

She's up to her feet before she knows it, making a dash for the bay window and the balcony.

to be continued

Chapter Text

Her hearts starts stammering, colliding painfully against her ribcage, so hard and so fast it threatens to burst out of her chest. Nevertheless, she wills her soul to stay steadfast and reminds herself of someone else's words, words she'd never fully understood until now: the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril. Foolish are those who claim to fear nothing, and she has every reason to be afraid, she knows it; lets that knowledge sink in, the harsh cold thrill of it run down her spine.

If she doesn't find a way out, she'll die.

"Oh, you really didn't have to do that," Mariana says with a sweet smile as she finds him in the kitchen. "You're a guest here."

Ace gives her a smile in return, shrugging one shoulder. "It really was no problem," he says as he finishes drying the last plate, handing it to her to tidy away instead of adding it to the rack. "Besides, you already have enough on yours...pun intended," he chuckles.

Mariana laughs politely as she takes the plate from him and puts it away in a cabinet. "Dishwasher humor, I like it," she gives him a fond look. "Are you and Nancy on any lead?" Mariana asks nervously. "I feel kinda useless, not being able to help you more."

"You already helped us a lot by letting us come here and giving us a key," Ace tries placating her. Mechanically he starts helping her tidy the kitchen up, passing dishes and utensils over to Mariana, grabbing for a dish towel to start wiping the kitchen island. "We've noticed some...unusual things," Ace starts slowly, trying to find the least weird way to tell her that her staff and guests are being randomly possessed by the spirit of a poor, lost soul who seemingly couldn't move on and who has a taste for depressing tunes. "It's still a bit unclear to us at the moment, but we've got some experience with this sort of things."

Mariana chuckles. "You know, when my grandma told me that Horseshoe Bay was this adorable, quaint little coastal town, this really wasn't what I pictured."

"Ghosts aren't quaint enough for you?" Ace quips, winking at her. "It's sort of become part of our routine here, it almost doesn't throw us anymore."

"I was imagining something like The Holiday, you know? Cute little cottage, finding myself a cute husband over the getaway weekend. Definitely no ghosts," she laughs quietly, her hand finding the gold cross around her neck again as her features twist into a more serious expression, something akin to fear and disbelief. "I can't believe ghosts are real. It's...unnatural."

"Is it really, though?" Ace wonders aloud to no one in particular. At Mariana's frown, he shrugs. "I mean, so much of our lives are spent leaving things unsaid. Is it so weird to imagine that maybe, just maybe, prints of us just don't fade from the people and places we touched?"

Mariana presses her lips tightly together, fingers now clutching at her pendant. Ace wonders how much comfort her faith brings to her in these trying times; can't help contemplating how his own never quite gave him as much direction and meaning as these past few months with Nancy and their friends did. Sure, faith had helped his family a lot, sometimes cementing them together despite the cracks in their foundations that Ace remembers trying to hold onto with shaky fingertips. He remembers being six and thinking that the world was ending because his dad, this mountain of a man who had always looked like he could carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, had crumbled; he remembers being eleven and his mom insisting that he stay one more week at archery camp and enjoy himself, remembers her tiny, frail voice, how she'd sounded on the verge of tears and yet Ace hadn't asked, he hadn't asked because he was afraid of the answer and he'd heard his parents and their anxious whispering and he'd prayed at night, prayed that everything would be alright even if it seemed like the ground was about to shake underneath him and uproot him all over again.

Faith had hold them together, but lately Ace has come to realize that faith in people, in himself, anchors him more.

Even if he's been feeling like he's lost in the woods without his true north guiding him.

The woods are her only option.

She used to spend hours wandering in them when she was a young child still, when her mother wasn't obsessed with the idea of turning her into a proper young lady; when her father still laughed at the twigs caught in her unruly hair. Then he'd laughed less and less, until he'd all but forbidden her to go one day, stating that her place was at the house, under her mother's tutelage. And then he'd left, with all the other men from around town.

She'd go, though, at night - to meet Matthew by their secret spot, after the yellow flowerbed and the meadow, deep into the hawthorn valley. Even months after his enlistment, she'd still go there, praying for his safe return.

William had never set a foot there. All he'd done was try to lock her in and tame her, the same way her father did before.

No more.

Mariana ponders his words for a moment, and silence lingers. Ace doesn't push her; it's in his experience that not everybody is ready to embrace the supernatural, and honestly, what good did it ever bring them? He's lost count of how many times they almost lost one another, but the bruises on Nancy's body, dark smudges left by the all-too powerful grip of the Wraith - that he recalls clear as day. The terror in her eyes on the night at the Veil, too, that look forever seared and tattooed on the back of his own eyelids.

Perhaps Mariana doesn't need all of that in her life right now.

"You look awfully young to know so much about heartache," Mariana says after a while, so quiet Ace almost misses it; so quiet he does wonder if she spoke so low on purpose, in order not to offense him or hoping that he wouldn't catch her words.

She's not much older than he is, Ace muses, early thirties at most. But for a woman who's made a living out of helping others fix their marriages, he now knows that she hasn't found her own prince charming. What kind of heartache has she endured? And what made her push forward, choosing to see the good in everything and fight for love to win?

He shifts on his feet, feeling uneasy. Ace wishes he could say there were clues he didn't see, but it's not true; it had all been there under his very nose, Nancy's anguish, her growing distant with everyone, the obvious lies she weaved to keep them from finding the truth. Ace had seen it all, and he hadn't found a way in. Isn't that so much worse than being a clueless fool, after all?

"I don't mean to pry," Mariana says coyly. "It's just that - I know you and Nancy aren't really married, but I couldn't help picking up a vibe."

"Ah," Ace scoffs gently. "A vibe, I've heard that before." He nervously tucks his hair behind his ear, giving Mariana a shrug. "It's...complicated, to say the least. When we first met, she had these huge walls around her and I thought we'd...I don't know, I thought most of them had tumbled down. But I know she's going through some stuff that I can't really help her with, and..."

He catches a glimpse of his broken watch, painful reminder of whatever evil that's looming and that made Nancy choose to keep him in the dark. It doesn't get lost on Ace that once again, he's the weak link - the one causing Nancy pain and heartache and anxiety. The one with the faulty ancestry who almost caused the apocalypse; the one who made her betray her own common sense and principles to save him and who resented her for it; the one who betrayed her trust in the first place, back to a time when Ace hadn't known just how very shaky trust could be, and how much it could mean to him, to have someone like Nancy innately place hers in him.

He swallows thickly, suddenly unable to be apart from her a moment more. The past two months have been utter agony, and no matter the troubled waters they are still wading through, the past day has been the closest they've been in so long, Ace can't wait to see her again, be close to her, even after just a few minutes.

He's never had big dreams - never pictured himself going to some fancy school, or travelling the world. And for so long, Ace had seen it as a lack of ambition on his part, a mind too narrow that left no room for greater and bigger things. He's working on it; he's moving forward. But at the end of the day, he does have a dream, something very simple, perhaps too mundane for anyone else but maybe it's time to lay that particular ghost to rest, the way he's been defining himself through others' eyes.

He dreams to spend just another moment with Nancy. Even if it means spending the night trying to solve a mystery together. Perhaps it makes things better, even; he counts these moments when her brain and his brain feel like one as some of his most cherished memories.

"I - I shouldn't bother you with all that," he quickly shoots an apology to Mariana as he pushes off from the kitchen counter. "I should probably just go up back to our room, help Nancy."

"Yeah, sure," Mariana nods, looking pensive. He's at the door when she calls back softly: "You know, for what it's worth...maybe this is the perfect time and place for you guys to sort out whatever's going on." Her teeth dig into her bottom lip as she shrugs. "You know, if it's important to you, then it's worth fighting for."

Life hadn't felt worth living for anymore after she received that letter.

Her world had ended, stopping on its axis, on the precipice of an impending collapse. Her fingers had started shaking so badly the maid had gently grabbed her arm, forcing her to sit. And then her eyes had watered as she read the words over and over, letting their meaning fully sink in.

If he was dead, then so was she. There was no life without him.

She hadn't realized she was truly dead inside, only pretending to go on with her days, until the moment she laid eyes on him once more and felt her heart jump back to life again.

She hadn't realized that getting him back only meant he was now hers to lose a second, real time.

Not until she saw a pool of blood spreading around his head, slowly trickling through the threads of the rug, tainting the snow white fabric a deep, dark red.

And then she'd screamed. Couldn't help it, the raw, animalistic cry escaping her throat before she could even think of trying to muffle it.

He'd looked up and spotted her, eyes so wide and bloodshot, they'd almost looked red. For a second they'd stared at each other, the hunter and the prey, and she'd stood just as still as he did, hands gripping the stair railing so hard her knuckles had turned white.

She'd grown up wandering in the woods. She knew when a flock of birds would take flight even before they batted a wing. He was coming for her, she could feel it.

And then she'd started running.

Ace balances the wine glasses in one hand, holding the unfinished bottle of wine Mariana insisted he take for a mystery and chill night in the other. "Hey, Nancy -" he starts as he pushes the door open with his elbow working the knob, letting himself in as best as he can. "Look what -"

There's a clatter as the bottle and glasses cascade out of his grasp, crystal breaking in a thousand shards as they hit the floor, the cream white rug instantly turning burgundy. But Ace can't see anything past Nancy - hands clasped around the edge of the balcony, a leg balanced over the edge.

"Nancy!" he screams, her name slipping past lips so dry and knots in his throat that feel like he swallowed glass, but she doesn't turn around, doesn't even startle. He's running to her, stepping onto the glass that creaks horribly under his shoes, just as she pushes up with her other leg.

She resists immediately; starts thrashing in his arms as he pulls her back onto safe land, hissing and scratching at his arms with her nails. She manages to draw blood but Ace doesn't let go, keeping his iron-clad hold around her as he drags her back into their room, hastily closing the window behind him.

"Nancy," he repeats her name, trying to keep this sharp edge of terror off his voice but failing desperately so.  "Nancy, wake up, you've got to wake up," he says in her ear, trying to soothe her. "Nancy."

"Let me go," she all but growls in a voice that's not completely hers, a higher pitch, horror coloring her tone as she headbutts him suddenly, the back of her head hitting his nose violently.

Ace can't help it: he lets her go, pain searing in his face as blood starts flowing, the warmth of it filling his mouth. Nancy escapes his hold and she looks like a wild animal with her wide eyes and messy hair falling in her face, the look of terror on her features fading a little as she takes him in.

"Nancy," he speaks her name again, softly, hoping to bring her back. "Nancy, you've got -"

But Nancy shakes her head, taking a step back away from him, stunned shock taking over. "Matthew," she whispers. "You can't be - oh."

Her face distorts in pain and Ace's eyes roam over her frame, looking for the reason for the shift in her demeanor. He finds it easily - she stepped with bare feet on the broken glass, and Nancy reaches for her foot, clutching at it while trying to keep her precarious balance with her free hand reaching out for something to hold onto.

Ace reaches for her, holding her wrist and Nancy seems to remember that he's the biggest danger here, pulling away frantically. That's when he notices it: the absence of her wedding band on her ring finger.

"Nancy, your ring!" he hisses, shaking her. "Where did -" He spots it on her nightstand, alongside her engagement ring, and Ace doesn't have a choice. He all but pushes her onto the bed, making the most of her losing her balance and the confusion to grab for her ring and forcefully slip it back on her finger. "Nancy, you've got to fight this," he commands her as he cradles her hand in his, pushing at her shoulder as she tries to stand. "Nancy, fight this!"

"Matthew," she calls him again, but the fight's leaving her, her voice getting lower, almost a whimper as her head rolls to the side and she lets out the heaviest sigh, her body trembling as she closes her eyes.

There's blood everywhere.

Ace takes a moment to observe the damage. The rug is ruined from wine and blood both; so is his shirt, soaked through from a nosebleed that's still making it hard and painful to breathe. He thinks he did a decent job of bandaging Nancy's foot but he's no Bess, and Ace can't help wishing that the others were here. Bess is a better nurse; George would keep her cool and Nick would know the next step.

He can't call for Mariana; can't let her see Nancy like this, not when he's not sure that she's out of the woods. After reassuring himself that she'd just seemingly dozed off and not fainted, Ace did the only thing he could think of to make sure she couldn't hurt herself again: he tied her wrist to the bedpost with one of her scarves, the look of horror on her face replaying in his mind as he did. Whoever this Matthew is - and whoever Nancy thought she was - she was terrified, and Ace knows that the taste of copper he feels in his mouth isn't just from the blood but from the guilt, the heartbreaking guilt of knowing he was the one who scared her, the one she tried running away from.

He lets out a shaky breath, wiping at his face and pushing his hair away with a nervous shudder. The scene he's looking at looks like a horror movie; how did they go from a romantic date night to this?

Almost on autopilot, Ace starts cleaning up the glass on the floor as best as he can with no broom. He rolls the rug and stashes it in the trash bin, sweeps at the broken glass with his shoe and tries pushing it into one pile in a corner. He barricades the window, pushing the dresser in front of it, and locks their bedroom door. Only when he's satisfied that if she were to wake up and find a way out of her restraints, Nancy still couldn't escape their room without alerting him, does Ace allow himself to do a quick clean-up in the bathroom.

He leaves the door open so he can keep an eye on Nancy and proceeds to take a good look at himself. His nose is already taking on this deep, bluish color -  there'll be no covering it, not even with all the foundation in the world - he'll have to find a good excuse for the others tomorrow morning. Ace thanks his lucky star that Eddie decided to take everyone out for a night of stargazing or else their immediate room neighbors would have heard Nancy's screaming and dashed into the room. Mariana's business would have shut down immediately if he'd been found with his wife bleeding and screaming at him and very obviously trying to get away from him.

Gingerly, Ace pokes at his nose, hissing in pain as he does. It's not broken, or at least he doesn't believe so, but it hurts like hell. He tries cleaning up around the bruise, washing his face of all the blood; Nancy's fingernails left half-moon indents on his arm, too, tiny droplets of blood beading up there. He takes off his shirt, running it under hot water and scrubbing it with soap, the water turning pinkish as the fabric soaks up.

Making his way back into their room, he finds Nancy still out of it. He searches his bag for a clean shirt and puts it on, and after a quick glance around to make sure there's nothing dangerous left, Ace lets himself sink into a chair by the table, his breath coming out in big puffs as he feels his chest constricting.

He forces himself to take deep, slow intakes of breath, exhaling through his mouth. Once, twice, five, ten times until he feels like he can breathe again without seeing the walls closing in around him. One look at Nancy's sleeping form and her fiery copper curls and he has to start all over again, blood swimming before his eyes.

Then his eyes land on the pieces of paper Nancy was trying to assemble before she presumably was possessed.

The story they unfold sends a chill running down his very bones.

Bess picks up her phone on the third ring, and Ace's words tumble out of his mouth in no order, so much so that Bess all but shushes him with a whistling sound. "Ace, slow down, I don't understand anything you're saying," Bess tells him. "Slow down. What happened to Nancy? Is she okay?"

"She took off her ring and forgot to put it back on and that damn ghost got the jump on her," Ace explains quickly. "Your crystals did nothing to protect her, she -"

"Don't go blaming the crystals," Bess interrupts him. "They repel evil spirits. Maybe lost souls don't count as evil."

"She was about to jump off the balcony!" Ace roars, hot and feral, his blood boiling in his veins now. "So excuse me if I don't care about that poor lost soul right now, they almost killed her!" There's silence for a moment, and Ace puts his face in his hand in shame. "Bess, I'm sorry, I-"

"No need to be sorry," Bess soothes him. "I'm thinking. We need to be more careful until we figure out more. Did you put her ring back on?"

"Yeah, as soon as I realized she wasn't wearing it."

"Good, that's good. With any luck, she'll come awake in no time now," Bess tells him. "Listen, Ace, you did good, alright? Tell me again what happened."

Ace tells the tale once more, answering Bess's many questions about every detail. "What did she say, exactly?"

"Matthew - you can't be..."

"Can't be what?" Bess muses. "And she looked stunned when she saw you? Not afraid, stunned?"

"I mean, she was definitely still afraid, but yeah, she looked stunned. Like I wasn't who she was expecting to see," Ace clarifies.

"Okay, now tell me about that story again, slower this time."

Ace starts reading: "The letter arrived on a Tuesday, declaring you lost to me. I couldn't believe it, never willed myself to. I waited for your safe return for months. Everyone believed me mad, and soon Mother said I needed to take off my mourning veil and live again. I tried resisting, in vain. William would not relent. Time and time again he would tell me you were gone and he was here. Mother forced me to take on a veil again, white this time. I didn't want to. I never wanted to." He swallows thickly, feeling sick to his stomach as he skips the last part. "But he took what he wanted nevertheless, under God's covering. I do not need to draw you a picture. That union wasn't a happy one."

Over the phone, Ace can hear Bess's little choked-up breath. He wishes he could have softened the blow for her, the story of the woman from the woods hitting too close to home so soon after Odette. Still, Bess bravely soldiers on: "So is it safe to assume that William is the villain of the story, and Matthew her long-lost beloved?"

"Uh, yeah, maybe. Do you think you could find something with those two names?"

"Yeah, sure, there definitely aren't thousands of Matthews and Williams in Maine," Bess scoffs, not unkindly. "Honestly, why couldn't it be Tarik or Diego? This will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I need more."

"There's this song we've been researching," Ace adds, suddenly remembering it. "We don't have much, but -"

"I'm coming over," Bess tells him firmly. "We can put Ryan on archive duty, I'll ask Addy to help him after she drops me off. But I need to see Nancy, make sure she's as okay as she can be."

Ace's gaze travels to her sleeping form, to the frown still etched onto her skin even as she rests. "Fuck, I didn't think about Ryan or her dad. We can't tell them, they'll freak out."

Bess lets out a sigh. "I'm not any more eager than you are, but they deserve to know." Bess clucks her tongue tiredly. "Listen, let's not say anything tonight, okay? I'll come over, we'll try figuring out this mess, and tomorrow I'll ask Ryan to help with research. Say you needed help on the field and we need him to step up, he'll be happy to help. We can let Nancy decide if she wants to tell him."

Ace almost tells Bess that he's sure Nancy won't, but what does he know? From the little he's gathered, Nancy and Ryan have grown closer over the past couple of months, and even before that, Nancy's been taking it to heart - trying to be more open with those who love her. But just thinking of calling Ryan to tell him that his daughter is currently unconscious and injured after she got possessed by a wayward spirit who almost made her kill herself is too much for Ace right now.

He's not sure he'll ever be able to articulate the thought properly - that had he stayed in the kitchen a moment longer to chat with Mariana, they would have found Nancy bleeding out on the ground, his beloved long gone.

Ace can't suppress a shudder, and his hand absently reaches out to pinch at the bridge of his nose. He pulls back with a hiss, rubbing at the crease between his brows instead. "Bess? Bring your first-aid kit, please. And as much make-up as you can. The other couples are out stargazing so you'll have to park ahead of the road and make it here on foot. Don't come alone, ask Addy to walk with you."

"You're scaring me, Ace."

"Sorry. I just don't want anything to happen to you, too." Ace wipes at his brow, letting out a shuddering breath. "On second thought, maybe you should just wait and come in the morning. Nancy's gonna need to rest, and I don't want you to risk -"

"Ace, I'll be there as soon as I can," Bess tells him. "Tell you what, I'll drop by George's first, alright? See if Victoria is there and can be of any help. But I'll be there as soon as I can, I promise. You two just hang on."

She makes him promise not to worry too much and Ace doesn't bother pretending to lie, just lets Bess end the call as he turns his chair more fully so he can watch over Nancy.

Watch the gentle rise and fall of her chest, his own constricting again at the thought that he very well could have lost her forever.

She stirs awake with a shuddering breath, a slow exhale that ends up in a cough. She tries leaning up on her elbow, only to find her movements restricted by her favorite blue necktie. "What the -"

"Nance. Oh my God, you're awake."

Ace is there beside her in a hot second, hands busying themselves with untying her. "Ace, what's going on?" Nancy croaks out, her mouth so dry her words come out half-torn.

"I'm so sorry, but I had to," Ace says. "I didn't want you to hurt yourself." He helps her sit up with his arm wrapping around her back, his eyes searching hers. "Do you remember anything?"

Nancy shakes her head, regretting it instantly as she feels her pulse pounding in her temple. "No. Wait, no, but -" She takes a good look at him then, and can't help recoiling at his face. "Ace, what happened to you?"

He shakes his head too. "Never mind that," he dismisses her with a wave of his hand. "How are you feeling? Any dizziness? Headache?"

Nancy nods her head a couple times. "Yes and yes," she mumbles, raising a hand to rub at her temple. She catches a glimpse of her ring and frowns. "Wait, I- oh, fuck, I forgot to - so why -"

Ace only stares at her, and she almost wants to shake him, tell him to tell her what happened. But Nancy understands what he's doing - letting her remember on her own terms.

She slowly massages at the skin of her wrist, and Ace grimaces at the redness there. He said he tied her up to protect her - from what? He's the one with a half-broken nose. Nancy reaches out to rub at the back of her head that feels sore, too, a small bump poking beneath her fingers as she does.

She remembers, then. Remembers the pain in the back of her head as she jammed it in Ace's face. Her eyes jump to his arm where she finds distinctive marks from her nails cutting into the skin, and a quick examination of her fingernails has her finding crusted blood that's almost all dried-up now.

And then Nancy remembers it all. The fear that had coursed through her veins as he'd wrapped his arms around her, the singular, instinctive thought racing through her mind that she needed to escape him and run far, far away - that he was going to hurt her.

Kill her.

Not her, though. And not him, either.

"Oh my God, Ace, I did this to you," Nancy says in horror as she reaches out with her palm, stopping short of cupping his cheek when she also remembers that this isn't allowed. She tries pulling her legs to her and hisses in pain as she drags her foot across the mattress; sees the bandage covering it, a half-torn towel that's soaked through in blood.

Ace opens his mouth then closes it, allowing her the space and time to take it all in as Nancy's gaze travels around the room. She notices Ace's shirt, different from the one he wore earlier; the deep, almost maroon shade of the rug; broken glass on the floor. Nancy swallows, the copper tang coating her tongue and flooding her mouth.

"I thought he was going to kill me," she whispers to herself, trying to find her bearings. "That's why I - I thought I could jump, run to the woods," she explains.

Ace sighs shakily, his hand finding her knee. "You would have killed yourself."

"No, no," Nancy says with a shake of her head. "I knew I could make it...because I'd done it before." Upon hearing herself, Nancy freezes. So does Ace. "I know, that sounds crazy, but I knew it."

Ace's brow furrows, but he keeps listening. "And who were you running from?" he asks gently.

"He was going to kill me," Nancy repeats, briefly closing her eyes to catch an elusive glimpse of the man with the bloodshot eyes. But all she can see is the pool of blood, the eyes of the other man staring up blankly at the ceiling, unseeing. Dead. Dead like Ace had been in her arms, and the man looked just like him. Nancy feels her eyes welling in tears, her throat closing up. "He killed him and I saw him, so he came after me."

"It's okay, you're safe now," Ace tries reassuring her, his dulcet tone soft and soothing. He doesn't know what to do with his hands; he looks like a disarticulated puppet, wanting to touch her but not fully doing so, hands hovering at her shoulder, her arm, softly patting at her hair. "No one's gonna hurt you now. Bess is on her way, and -"

"I need to let her in," Nancy interrupts him. At Ace's wide eyes, she raises a hand in defense. "We need to know what happened to help her, I need to let her back in."

Ace's mouth presses in a tight line as he shakes his head. "No way," he says firmly. "No way I'm letting you -"

"I'm not asking you to let me do anything," Nancy tries softly.

"I almost lost you!" Ace roars, surprising them both. He stands from the bed, and starts pacing, running his hands through his hair in frustration. "Fuck, Nancy, you almost jumped before I could catch you," he says. "You almost died. None of this is worth you risking yourself."

Nancy gnaws at the inside of her mouth. Nothing has ever felt worth risking him, too. But this is what they came for; this is what they do. "This woman, whoever she is - she went through something so haunting she couldn't move on. I can't leave her like this." Ace opens his mouth to protest, so Nancy stands, tries to hide the wince as she steps onto her injured foot to go to him. Slowly, hesitantly, she reaches over, curling her fingers around his arm - the tips of them covering the marks she left earlier. "Ace, no one deserves to feel stuck like this. I know all too well what it feels like to let someone else go through it."

She lets it sink in - watches as Ace's hardened features slowly soften, his mouth still pulled into that worried pinch she wants to kiss, make the worry melt away. He's fighting his every instinct to put her first, Nancy can see it - almost sees him running through every option in his head, anything to spare her.

Her hand roams up, to his heart, where she lays it flat, taking strength from the steady beat. "You said it yourself, Ace. What if she died before she could say something that could have meant a lot or changed someone's life? We can't silence her, not again."

He looks torn, but he doesn't deny her. Instead Ace only covers her hand with his, holding onto her fingers tightly. "I'll be with you every step of the way," he promises, to her or to himself, Nancy's not quite sure. "No more splitting up to cover more ground, okay? It's you and me from now on."

It's a dangerous promise, one he shouldn't be making.

One she shouldn't relish in.

And yet Nancy still nods her head. "You and me from now on."

to be continued

Chapter Text

Despite their best efforts, their room still looks like a crime scene, Bess, George and Victoria starring as the crime scene unit detectives of the haunting of Sylvan Woods.

George is the unimpressed, snarky one. The only thing missing is sunglasses she'd dramatically pull up over her head. "Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to clean a wine-stained rug?" she narrows her eyes at them like they're animals and spilled the wine on purpose.

"Don't forget about the blood," Bess chips in unhelpfully, staying true to her chaotic cute self. Looking at Ace, she grimaces, scrunching up her nose. "God, Nancy didn't half-ass breaking your nose."

"It's not broken," Ace says, at the same time as Nancy raises her hands in defense, saying: "I didn't mean to!"

Victoria only looms around, taking a look at the crystals. She'd be the aloof detective who never does her share of work but always finds the culprit and announces it like it's so obvious. "A protection spell?" she wonders aloud. "That's a very good job, Bess."

Bess starts beaming, but Ace can't help glaring at her. Nancy puts a hand on his arm, trying to placate him. She can feel the tension oozing off of him, the tautness of his muscles, the almost feral clench of his jaw; he's nowhere near done talking about how ineffective he finds Bess's crystals. Nancy begs to differ, even if she won't contradict him now.

What if it were thanks to the crystals that he came back to the room right when she needed him the most?

What if they were bound to protect each other against all odds - even when Nancy believes that their love is doomed?

George hands Ace an ice bucket. "There, for your nose," she says with an almost amused grin. "Have you come up with a cover story about that? Besides the obvious option that your wife is a psycho."

"Yeah, I don't think that even my post-breakup make-up can do anything to properly hide that," Bess pouts.

Ace rolls his eyes, grimacing as he does. "I was hoping we'd deal with this haunting tonight so we can escape this place before breakfast." At his side, Nancy can't help tensing, and he adds, softer: "I don't want Sarah to think you're an abusive wife and try stealing me away."

Nancy smiles up at him. Ace is right; they should be out of here as soon as they can. Looking back, they almost crossed the line so many times in one day already - what would happen if they stayed for the entirety of the retreat? They've yet to share a bed and Nancy doesn't allow herself to imagine what it'd feel like - to let Ace wrap her into his arms after everything they went through.

George turns to her mother, looking at her expectantly. Victoria shakes her head. "Without this ghost's identity, we can't help her spirit depart peacefully. What we can do, however, is calling to her. The more we learn about her, the more likely we are to find out what's keeping her tethered here."

"I'd wager that witnessing a murder is traumatizing enough, even when you're dead," Nancy offers.

Victoria waggles her finger at her with a grin. "Very true. But why is she acting up now, after all this time? This is the work of a ghost who's had time to process their death and grow into their abilities." She stops at the coffee table, quickly reading through the pieces of the story Nancy reassembled. "Most ghosts don't have the power of speech," Victoria says, echoing a lesson she taught them a long time ago. "But this one managed to get her voice heard. Who wrote that?"

"Jenny, the girl at the front desk. We have a recording," Nancy says.

Ace picks up his laptop, replaying the audio file for Victoria. She frowns as she listens, her fingers tapping against her thigh. "I know that song," Victoria says, humming along.

"Should I add Shazam under clairvoyant to your résumé?" George snorts.

But Victoria shushes her with a wave of her hand. "That's a memorial service song," she nods her head with confidence. "It used to be played for soldiers. Women would embroider handkerchiefs or pillows with it."

George raises a cocked, impressed eyebrow at her mother. "And how do you know that?"

Victoria shrugs. "Ted's father was a Civil War reenactment weirdo. Ted was actually conceived at -"

"Oh my God, shut up," George lets out a loud whine. "Why does everything have to do with the Civil War around here?" she asks no one in particular.

"You Americans and your obsession for your battles," Bess says with a shake of her head.

"I'm personally getting tired of it," Ace says grimly. "But at least it's giving us a timeframe. We're looking for a Matthew who supposedly died during the Civil War, but somehow returned."

Bess sighs. "It's cute that you think this is actually helping us. Still too many Matthews."

Ace tilts his head to the side. "Well, maybe we can use a Ouija board to ask the ghost to spell out his last name."

"We don't need a Ouija board, we have you," Victoria proclaims ominously. "Whoever this ghost is, she seems to have made an attachment to Nancy and found a kindred spirit in you. We'll use that bond to our advantage."

But Ace shakes his head, pointing a finger at his bruised nose. "Last time we met, things didn't exactly go well."

"I was just stunned," Nancy tries explaining. "I mean, she was. She'd just watched him die before her very eyes, and then..." Nancy closes her eyes, chasing the memory. Emotion floods her, her heart and the woman's heart beating to the same painful tune. "She loved him. She thought he'd died during the war but he came back, and then..." She remembers the pool of blood, the deranged look in the other man's eyes. "He didn't just die. The other man, he murdered him. Her love came back to her and she lost him for a second time."

Bess reaches for her hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. For a moment, Nancy almost reckons that Bess knows; there's just something in her eyes, an undecipherable wave of sympathy and kindness that seems to twine around her, wrapping her in the warmth of her friend's love. "Ready to avenge your dead lover-adjacent?" Bess asks her with a small smile.

Nancy nods her head. "You need to tend to her foot first," Ace reminds them softly. "And, not to rain on anyone's parade, but the last time Nancy got possessed we made quite a ruckus around here," he waves at the state their room is in. "The others will soon be back from their stargazing outing. Maybe this isn't the best place for this little séance."

"Your ghost seems to have an affinity for the woods. We'll go there," Victoria says. "In the meantime, do you mind sharing that ice bucket and get me some champagne?"

"I can't believe Ace doesn't know better than to try and wash blood off with hot water," Bess shakes her head as she wrinkles her nose at Ace's blood-stained shirt hanging out to dry in the shower. She picks it, starting the washing process all over as Nancy sits on the toilet lid, slowly unrolling the makeshift bandage Ace did around her foot. "The wound's not deep," Bess states as she gives the injury a quick glance. "Ace did a better job out of taking care of you."

"He always does," Nancy says wistfully. She probes at her wound with tentative fingers, and despite the surge of prickling pain, it's gone as quickly as it came.

Bess gives her a small, encouraging smile. "Yeah? Things seem...less tense between you two," she starts slowly.

Nancy ponders her answer for a while. So much has changed in the last twenty-four hours; from despair and heartache and a fear so great it'd blinded her to her greatest strength - the love they all share - to a tentative hopefulness, shaky and fragile but there, small embers fanned into a delicate spark. Ace has almost figured it out; there's not much sense in hiding from Bess anymore. "I...haven't been quite open about things lately," she says cautiously.

Bess cocks an eyebrow at her, as if to say you don't say. "And are you ready to change something about that?"

Nancy bites her lip. There's something about Bess's gentle bossiness that makes it impossible to say no to her. "Yeah."

"Good," Bess nods her head, a loose curl falling from her bun that she tucks behind her ear. "How about we take a look at your foot first, help that poor soul, then take care of whatever's been troubling you?" she offers kindly.

Nancy reciprocates her smile. She's been a fool, keeping things to herself and underestimating her friends. When has being a lone wolf ever helped her in the past?

Bess uncaps a small glass vial, pouring a deep evergreen powder into a small porcelain bowl. "What's that?" Nancy asks.

"Homemade willow and yarrow powder. And a teeny tiny bit of a secret ingredient."

Nancy can't help grinning. "Is it love?" she teases Bess.

Bess rolls her eyes. "Ah, if only I knew how to encapsulate it in a bottle," she sighs. "You don't want to know the secret ingredient, it's yucky. But this should help heal the cut nice and fast. If it works out, I may just end up making a batch of it and give you a bottle each. It's kinda crazy how many times one of us gets injured, but you win the cup for most sliced."

Nancy grimaces. "I don't know if I should be proud of that or not."

"You definitely shouldn't," Bess shakes her head as she adds water to the bowl and starts stirring. "I'm going to make a cataplasm. Can you cut two lengths of gauze please? Long enough to wrap twice around your foot."

She gives Nancy clean gauze and a pair of scissors, and Nancy busies herself with Bess's instructions. "Could this work on Ace's nose too?"

Bess makes a pout. "Mmh, no. I'm no doctor, but I think he probably has minor cartilage damage. It should heal up fine on its own in a few weeks. All he needs is ice and painkillers - and probably avoiding his mother until the swelling and the redness have disappeared."

Nancy winces, thinking of Rebecca's reaction to her son coming to Shabbat dinner looking like he just came out of a boxing ring after hell rained on his face. It would put a serious damper on their relationship if Rebecca knew he was in this state because of her, and Nancy wouldn't risk losing cookie privilege; Ryan would never forgive her.

Bess starts applying the poultice, dressing her wound; Nancy gnaws at the inside of her cheek as she puts her shoe back on, hoping Bess doesn't catch her.

Two worried platanchors are too much a force to reckon with, even for a Drew-Hudson, Hardy-adjacent legacy.

Maneuvering three outsiders out of their room proves itself a challenge they can't face without the help of Mariana, not after they heard some of the guests returning to their rooms.

To her credit, she only lets out a small gasp at the state of their room before she puts her hand over her mouth to quiet herself. George stands awkwardly in front of the pile of broken glass, trying to hide it, but Mariana's gaze roams around the room, her eyes widening at the damages of Ace's face. Nancy's pretty sure she even spots the way she favors her uninjured side, putting most of her weight on her other foot.

Bess reaches for her arm, gently giving it a reassuring squeeze. "It looks worse than it is, honestly," she tells her with a smile.

"The rug begs to differ," George snorts under her breath. Despite George's best efforts - and recent experience with a blood bucket - the rug still drips red.

Bess glares at her, but Mariana's only half-listening. "Do you need to see a doctor?" she asks Ace with a shaky voice. "Jesus Christ, I never wanted any of you to get hurt. I didn't know ghosts..." Her voice trails off as she blinks slowly once, twice. "Ghosts. What do I know about ghosts?"

"It's a constantly evolving discipline," Victoria says kindly, drawing Mariana's attention to her and to the fact that there are two unknown people in her wellness center. "I'm Victoria, I'm a clairvoyant, I sometime help out these younglings on their path," she introduces herself. "Also, I commend you on your champagne, it was wonderful."

George rolls her eyes so hard Nancy believes this might be the day they finally get stuck. "Mom."

Mariana shakes her head to herself, muttering something in Spanish. "Alright, what can I do to help?"

"We need to go out in the woods," Nancy starts. "But we can't have anyone see Bess, George and Victoria. And preferably not Ace either," she adds with a grimace.

Mariana nods her head. "Well, James is reading in the lounge room, and Luisa asked if she could make herself a snack, so she's in the kitchen. Everyone else went back to their rooms. I guess I could go distract James, and I'll text you when I see Luisa heading back to her room?"

Bess beams at her. "Tell you what, Mariana - if you ever get bored out here in the woods, you might just find yourself a spot in our crew."

George makes for a comfortable makeshift pillow, and Nancy tells her so.

She narrows her eyes at the look Nancy and Ace exchange as Ace opts out of holding onto Nancy, using the fact that he needs to face her to interrogate her as an excuse, but George only shrugs, sitting against the bark of a tree and letting Nancy settle before her. "This feels cozy," Nancy says playfully.

"Don't get used to it, Drew," George pokes her in the ribs as she wraps her legs around Nancy's front to secure her hold on her. "Please try not to break my nose. You know how the food service industry is - or, well, I assume you remember some of it, considering how little time you did spend waitressing. I can't afford to scare away patrons because of my face."

"Duly noted," Nancy replies.

She watches Bess and Victoria working in tandem, Bess making a protective circle with candles, twigs and rocks around them, and Victoria murmuring incantations to herself as she starts a small fire; they're far enough into the woods that no one should see the smoke from the cabin. Ace is busy walking around the perimeter with his ghost device in hand, spreading salt to deepen their shield.

"Nancy, when Ace picks on our otherworldly guest, you'll take off your ring," Victoria instructs her. "You need to relax. She needs to feel welcome if we want to get her to talk. Don't resist."

Nancy scoffs. "Any advice on how to do that?"

Victoria doesn't take the bait. "Just open your heart. If she feels drawn to you, there must be a reason. A kinship that brought the worlds of the living and the dead together. So don't be afraid of that closeness and open up."

"I don't know how I feel when you half make sense, Mom," George sighs behind her. "She is right, you know," she adds lower, only for Nancy. "You've been closed off lately."

"Is this therapy or an exorcism?" Nancy says, letting out her breath in a puff.  "Because we tried therapy this afternoon. Not a fan."

"Don't let Mariana hear you," George scolds her. "Now, come on, please don't break my nose for real. Why didn't Ace take his handcuffs with him? This would be so much safer."

Nancy resists the urge to argue that the ghost wouldn't feel safe inhabiting a body shackled up to a tree - mostly because she's trying real hard not to let her mind drift to all the uses Ace could have of those handcuffs of his, or one of her neckties again.

Nancy is saved by the beeping of Ace's ghost machine. "She's here," he says in a murmur as he settles back within the circle with them, sitting near Victoria.

Bess reaches for Nancy's hand, slipping her wedding band off her finger and clasping her hand in hers. Nancy can't help feeling like the picture is wrong - Ace should be the one holding her hand, rubbing her back, giving her strength. But he locks eyes with her, giving her the tiniest nod of his head, his mouth twitching up in a small smile Nancy has to reciprocate, the memory of another time when their positions had been reversed so very clear in her brain.

Ace had trusted her to save him, then.

Nancy needs to do the same.

She lets her lashes flutter until her eyes close, resting her head against George's shoulder. Despite the tightness of George's hold around her, Nancy forces herself to conjure up the visual of a comforting, safe space.

Her mind leads her to Ace's bed - or perhaps it's her heart. Nancy's not quite certain which leads the other when it comes to him. The only thing she knows is that she'd felt happy and warm and content in his arms, wrapped up in his scent and sheets, the delicious weight of his body pressing against hers grounding her. His arm around her shoulders, fingers stroking up and down her arm. The coarse hair on his legs tickling hers as she settled one thigh between his. The gentle press of his lips to her forehead, temple, chin.

The picture shifts, then, blurring at the edges.

The vows are perfunctory. She's asked to say I do, and she does; William lifts up her veil and leans in, and she tells herself that it'll be over soon. His mouth pressing against hers feels wrong, no matter how many times he's kissed her now. He takes her hand and beams at the crowd of guests, and she can't help thinking how different his hands feels compared to his brother's.

He thinks her distaste comes from the cane, from the childhood leg injury he sustained that left him forever physically impaired and unfit for combat, but it's not that. Not at all. She thinks that Matthew could have no legs, no arms, and she'd still love him with all of her heart. William simply is not the one she loves, and no matter how many times he reminds her that his brother is gone, her love for him is not.

Life with William feels dull, and she starts becoming annoyed with herself because he's trying, God, he's trying to be a good husband. There are dinners and balls and dresses and silk ribbons, but all she longs for are the afternoons she spent in the woods with Matthew, reading up books he stole from his house for her. He'd introduced her to a world beyond Bible verses and household instructions on how to be a good wife. With him, she'd felt free.

She lies with her eyes closed at night, fingers clenching in sheets as she waits for William to roll over and fall asleep. She hopes things will be different when she bears him a son.

She opens her eyes, and her heart almost beats out of her chest when she sees him. He's here - alive and well and smiling at her. She tries reaching for him but finds her movements restricted.

"Hey, hey, don't move, you need to rest," he tells her in a soft, kind voice, but she doesn't recognize it. The man has Matthew's beautiful blue eyes, and his strong jaw, but the voice is wrong, and he seems to feel it because his brow creases a little. "Hey, just - take a look, okay?"

He lifts a small mirror before him, angles it so she can look at herself, and she lets out a cry. "What - where am I? Where's Matthew? What did you do to him?"

"I didn't do anything to him," the man tells her, and there's an earnestness to his tone that she can't help latching onto like a lifeline. "I was hoping you could tell us what happened to him. After he came home."

She shakes her head, her eyes welling with hot tears that make her vision go blurry. It's all coming back to her in a flash, the blood, the hands, the fire.

She starts coughing as she inhales smoke again, her breath catching in her throat as it closes up.

The maid scrubs at her skin a bit too forcefully, but she doesn't find the strength to tell her. She almost hopes she could peel her out of her skin so she could be reborn as someone else.

Her mother only gives her a disapproving glare, almost as scalding as the water from the bath. "You're not to go to the woods again," she tells her as if she'd brought this onto herself.

She only meant to take a little walk, have some fresh air. She felt like suffocating in the house, with the way William beamed at her constantly, staring at her growing belly. She'd wanted some privacy, some space to think, and the woods had always been her home.

By the time she'd felt the first cramp and started bleeding, it was already too late.

The following day, William had forbidden her to leave the house unaccompanied. He might as well have killed her then.

"What happened to Matthew?" the man asks again, bringing her back from her trance. "They told you he died in the war, but he didn't, now, did he?"

She'd been hanging the laundry out to dry, one of the rare occupations that allowed her to go outside the house without being reprimanded by William, when she saw him.

At first, she hadn't believed it. It was all but a trick of the light. It had to be William coming home earlier than expected. But as the man came closer, it'd been impossible to mistake his confident strut and beautiful smile for his brother's. The resemblance between the two stopped at portraits: whenever one started speaking, or smiling, all their differences shone. William had grown in Matthew's shadow despite being the eldest, always eclipsed by his brother's sunny disposition and easy charm.

She'd let the basket fall to the floor, clean, fresh linen scattering to the ground. But she hadn't cared. She hadn't cared because he was here, his arm in a sling but alive and breathing, and he'd caught her as she threw herself at him with the same ease he used to when she'd run to him when they were younger.

"I should have told him to leave," she croaks, tasting brine on her lips from tears she couldn't keep from falling. "It's my fault. He died because of me."

It's so much better than she ever dreamed.

When he left for the war, he'd left her with two things: the memory of his kiss and the promise of more when he'd return and make her his wife.

He swears under his breath as he tries untying the laces at the back of her dress but fails with only one hand, and she spins around with an exasperated sigh. "I missed you so much," she tells him, and she's crying, she realizes it when his eyes widen in horror. "I thought you were dead."

He tries opening his mouth but she silences him with a kiss. She doesn't want his words - only wants to feel him. The rest could wait. She dropped her hands to the front of his trousers and he followed suit, bunching up her skirt around her waist. The rest could wait. There would be other moments like this when they weren't in a hurry, when her body wouldn't need his so desperately, to feel his heartbeat echoing hers, a proof of life as he thrummed inside her. The rest could wait.

The world could forget about them, as long as she could stay in his arms.

"Tell me what happened. We can't help you unless you tell us."

She bites at her lip, hard enough to draw blood. The man makes an involuntary movement, leaning forward to touch her arm and she jumps back - back into someone, the same someone who has their arms and legs wrapped around her.

"Let me go," she hisses. "Please, let me go."

Someone squeezes her hand. She looks up, only now realizing that the man isn't the only one here. There's an older woman beside him, and this girl who's holding her hand, looking at her with soft, sympathetic eyes. You can trust us, they say, and she wants to.

Wants them to know the truth.

it was torture, being separated again.

But Matthew had to leave, she understood that. Had to come back and introduce himself properly, come to see his brother first. William would see reason - he knew how much they'd loved one another, how much they loved each other still.

Oh, how wrong she'd been.

"He knew Matthew wasn't dead," she sobbed, feeling her heart ache just like it did when she'd found out. "He knew, and he never told me."

"Who knew? William?"

She nods her head, shaking, and the arms encircling her relax, hugging her more than holding her back. She folds onto herself, bringing her knees to her and hugging them tight. "I heard them shouting. He knew, and Mother knew, and she - she let him - she let him -"

This time, the man doesn't stop himself from reaching out to her. Gently, he brushes his fingers to hers, and she surprises them both by holding on tight to him. "He can't hurt you anymore. We're here to help you," he says, in that voice that doesn't belong to Matthew but suits him nonetheless.

He looks just like Matthew did before he left for the war.

She hopes he gets to grow older than Matthew ever was when he came back, if only briefly.

"You can't help us, it's too late," she says before she starts crying again.

The reunion is nothing like she imagined.

She pictured the two brothers falling into one another's arms. No matter their childhood feuds, she knew they loved each other more than words could say. She'd seen William mourn his brother, had felt a brief kinship to him then, both lost in their grief.

But William narrows his eyes at his brother, and the shadow that crosses the dark blue orbs has nothing to do with shock or disbelief.

He knew, she knows it. Knows it deep in her bones. He knew Matthew was alive all along.

"He dismissed the cook and the maid, and he sent me to my room. But I listened in," she confesses, her head low, gaze focused on their linked hands. It's not her hand and he's not Matthew, but she feels oddly at peace, being held by someone who cares once again.

His thumb rubs a soothing circle over the back of her palm. Just like Matthew used to when he held her hand while she read, never wishing to disturb her but still needing to feel close to her in some way. "What did you hear?"

At first she doesn't hear anything, just hushed voices as William ushers Matthew into his study.

But she knows that walls have ears here. She rushes to the bathroom, where the vent is connected to William's study on the floor below. She made that little discovery during one of those long baths she took to postpone the moment when she'd inevitably need to make her way to their marital bed at night.

She pushes her little vanity stool closer to the vent, and listens. William's voice sounds colder than she's ever heard before. He's always been awkward, sort of socially shy around others, but she never saw him as cold. "What are you doing here?" he asks, accusatory.

"Aren't you happy to see me, brother?" Matthew says, and his voice is harsh, too, nothing like silk and honey with her. "I wrote to tell you I was on my way home as soon as I was allowed to travel. But you didn't tell Melinda, now, did you?"

"Mother burned the letters," she chokes on the words, on the betrayal. She'd cried for weeks after she learned of Matthew's death; had cried just as much after her wedding. "Mother knew Matthew had survived. He'd been injured and presumed dead, but he was rescued by a farmer and his family. He had a head wound so deep he -"

"Lost his memory," the girl behind her finishes for her, and she's surprised to hear the choked emotion in her voice.

There's a silence that they fill for her, and she's thankful - for not needing to say the words herself. "It took him a while to get better and remember who he was, and he wrote to you and his family. But your mother had planned your wedding and she didn't want you -"

She nods her head, and the man doesn't finish his sentence, letting the implication linger. With Matthew dead, William had become the sole heir to a fortune bigger than her mother could have ever expected her to marry into - she couldn't let that go, not after the death of her own husband, not when she needed William's money and reputation to keep living up to the standards she'd held herself to for all of her life.

"William and I were already married when they found out Matthew was still alive," she keeps on, finding strength in those people willing to help her when no one else had. "Mother and William figured there was no point in telling me the truth. They wrote to Matthew to tell him I'd moved on, and that he needed to do the same. He was so badly injured, he took almost a full year to be deemed healed enough to travel. But as soon as he could, he came back to me."

She doesn't tell them about that first year of marriage. She can't. Not now that she knows that everything William did to make her fall in love with him was just a ruse. All this time he'd known - every time he kissed her he'd known she wasn't his to kiss. Every time she cried herself to sleep, he'd lain still beside her, pretending not to be the cause.

She can't believe she ever felt guilty over not being grateful enough that he'd still want to marry the empty shell she'd become.

"What happened?" the man asks again, this time tilting his head until he meets her eyes. "What happened to you?"

She hears the commotion, a door being yanked open and slammed, raised voices, Matthew calling out her name. "Melinda!"

She rushes to the landing, but by the time she leans down, he's already lying on the floor. She doesn't see William doing it, but if she had to guess - William pushed his brother and he fell. She can't imagine that he would ever intentionally hurt him.

Not until she sees the marble bust in his hand, the one that usually rested on the pedestal table in the entrance hall, dripping with blood.

And then William looks up and sees her.

She starts thrashing, and the arms that had let loose try to anchor her once more, but she sees red, sees the black of William's dilated pupils as he leans over her, bearing all his weight down on her to keep her down, his hands around her throat. Thumbs press into her windpipe and she chokes, her own eyes bulging as she tries to gasp for air in vain.

"What - Victoria, do something!" she hears the man scream, and the next moment his mouth is on hers as he breathes oxygen back into her lungs.

She can feel her body - not her body, the redhead's - going limp and she never wanted that, never wanted anyone to suffer like she did, but she can't fight it. She feels hands on her neck - delicate fingers instead of strong ones, gently brushing against her skin, tilting her chin up, cradling her jaw, but she feels the thread of life slowly leaving her, like it did all these years ago.

As she looks up one last time, she's happy to meet Matthew's clear blue eyes, at the very least.

It's more than she ever could the last time.

to be continued

Chapter Text

So this is what it feels like to be dying, Nancy can't help musing with an unbearable sadness, a painful stab of guilt overwhelming her as she realizes that she's doing this to her friends again - forcing them to witness her recklessness and face the consequences.

She tries calling out Ace's name, wants to tell him that she's still here, but no sound comes out of her lips that are cold and limp underneath his as he desperately attempts to breathe life back into her.

"It is not your time yet."

Nancy's head snaps, and she sees that she's not alone. The woman standing next to her is smiling at her even though it's so very obvious that her heart is aching, tears gleaming in her eyes as she looks at her with a sort of powerful fondness that wraps around Nancy and warms her from the inside. Nancy can't help staring hungrily back, taking in every delicate feature to remember her by, and reaches out with her hand.

The woman's skin is warm, the scent of roses tickling Nancy's nose. She wears her hair in a chignon at the nape, auburn curls framing her face; her eyes are this indescribable shade, hazel, green or blue,  Nancy can't tell but they oddly remind her of something that stays elusive, just out of reach from her conscious mind. Nancy's thankful that she gets to meet her like this, the picture perfect of beauty and youth, her skin unblemished by the marks from the hands that wrapped around her throat in her last moments.

"I never meant for any of you to get hurt," Melinda goes on, looking down as her cheeks redden in shame. "All I wanted was - I just needed someone to know what he did. I- I couldn't let him get away with it, not after what he did to Matthew..."

"I know," Nancy tells her kindly, squeezing her hand. "We won't let your story be forgotten. We'll find a way to make this right. My friends -"

She turns around again and watches as Ace keeps on with chest compressions and delivering rescue breaths while Bess is crying silently as she gently cradles her head. Victoria is holding George's hand, chanting under her breath to break the spell. Is this what Ace went through when he was stuck in the liminal space? Standing there, helpless, as he saw the world bursting with life and going on without him? Is this what's happening here? Melinda's despair and rage over what happened to her love tethering her to these woods for over a century until they found a vessel, someone who would find the words and share them?

"They love you," Melinda says, her face glowing with the most powerful kind of ache, half-happiness, half-infinite sorrow. "Hold onto that and never let go. He loves you so much, I could feel it."

Nancy shakes her head, feeling wetness welling in her eyes. "I can't -"

"You can't let anything or anyone keep you from filling your life with love," Melinda says firmly. She takes Nancy's hands in both of hers, tilting her head until their gazes lock. "Do you hear me? Don't make the same mistake I did. I should have never believed them. I should have listened to my heart who knew that Matthew would come home to me. I should have run away with him. Love is fundamental. You need to promise me that you won't waste a single minute."

Nancy bites at her lip. Her situation is so much more complicated than Melinda's, and she almost tells her - but what good would it do? She felt Melinda's love, too; knows that she would have defied heaven and hell and any curse to be with the man she loved. So she swears. "I promise."

"I don't regret loving him, even if it meant I had to lose him. You have to hold onto love, Nancy. Love is the answer." She cups her face affectionately, her thumb catching a tear on Nancy's cheek as she delicately strokes across her cheekbone. "You need to go back now."

Nancy feels a chill running through her, followed by heat spreading through her body like a wildfire. Her chest hurts and she starts coughing, and she sees herself - her limp body in Ace's arms - start almost convulsing. "Wait, I can't - I need to know more to help -"

"Go." Melinda gently pushes her as Nancy reaches for her, her fingers closing around the other woman's arms. "Go, Nancy. You belong in the light, remember that. Don't let yourself drown in the darkness."

She pushes her with more force then, and Nancy catches the sweet scent of roses one last time as she inhales sharply and feels herself falling and falling and falling.

Then she doesn't feel anything anymore.

Bess is crying but he can't help her, can't do anything for her because he needs to save Nancy - can't let her sacrifice herself again for everyone else, can't lose her, can't even fathom the idea - so Ace starts another series of chest compressions, counting aloud, hoping that the sound of his own voice can drown out the crying and his own treacherous heartbeat hammering painfully in his chest as Nancy's remains so quiet he's starting to lose hope.

Bess is holding her head and checking airways, and she gives him a small nod, her tears rolling and falling on Nancy's pale face in the moonlight. So Ace keeps going, five, ten, fifteen, he loses himself in the process, arms starting to throb from the effort and lips wet and filled with brine from both his tears and Bess's as he cradles Nancy's head and presses his mouth to hers again.

He feels the dread sinking in as Nancy still doesn't breathe, hanging onto sanity by a bare thread, then realizes that this icy coldness seeping through his veins is from the fire that burned out, the last flames dying as the wind picks up, black smoke billowing to the night sky.

"Come on, Nancy," Ace pleads her. "Don't do this. Come back." He starts applying pressure to her chest again, this time clinging to the helplessness, ready to bargain anything to have her back. "Come on. I'm not losing you tonight, come back, you've got to come back." His arms hurt and he has to resist the urge to shake off the soreness, but he feels a hand on his shoulder then.

"Let her go," Victoria tells him softly. "Ace, let her go and -"

"I can't let her go!" he yells at her, losing count of how many compressions he's at. "I- I can't -"

"She needs to come back on her own," Victoria insists, and George is at his side then, too, her hands covering his, and for a moment Ace thinks she wants to take his spot to give him a break but George is trying to loosen his hold on Nancy and he can't help tightening, knuckles turning white as his fingers clench and curl.

"Ace," George speaks his name so gently, clear like water cascading down the river. In a battlefield George is always a force to reckon with, to be admired from a distance with the way energy fuels through her like a forest fire; he's never heard her voice like this, so frail, like a little bird that fell from the nest and broke its wings.

He lets her pull him up, her arm sliding around his back as she tucks herself under his armpit to prop him up. Bess comes to the rescue, her hand gripping his painfully, and then Ace follows the motions like a puppet, Bess and George and Victoria taking control of his strings as they start reciting the same incantation from earlier and he echoes them instinctively, eyes focused on Nancy's shape on the ground, his mouth contorting in a grimace or a silent cry as he takes in the purple shade of her own. Her skin is eerily white, her red hair like a river of blood amongst the tree leaves, and he can't imagine what his life will be like if she doesn't come back to him, so he doesn't allow himself the thought.

Instead he clings to every memory of her he has - of his spirited, lively, vibrant love - hoping the love they share will be enough to save her.

To tether her to the world of the living.

To anchor her to him.

So this if what it feels like to be burning, Nancy thinks as she sees the flames engulfing the mansion, hiding away the truth of what happened within these walls forever. Then she feels the fire in her lungs as oxygen fills her and tries clawing its way back, closing in her throat as she coughs and half-chokes back into awareness.

The first thing she's aware of is the scent of smoke, whatever herbs and plants Victoria burned for the ritual tickling her nose and throat, still raw from breathing again.

Then there are arms wrapping around her, clinging to her, and panic seizes her. Ace cannot touch her like this, this is too much, she needs to push him away, and -

"Nancy. Oh, Nancy." It's Bess's voice, shaky and wobbly, openly crying, but it's George's arms holding her, Nancy realizes as she blinks and slowly comes to.

George brushes her hair away from her face, takes a good look at her before she buries her face in Nancy's neck, hugging her to the point of pain. "Don't ever do that again," she half-threatens, half-sobs. "Seriously, Drew."

Nancy can only nod, feeling so light-headed she can't manage to say a thing. Tilting her head hurts and sends a pulsating drum to her temple, but she still does until she can catch Ace in her periphery. He's standing with Victoria, arms crossed so tightly over his chest Nancy can see the muscles bunching under the fabric, can picture the veins almost popping from the strain; he's physically holding himself back and she hates it, hates that this is what they must do in order to keep him alive.

But the way he's looking at her has the world bursting in screaming color, the white of his teeth as he bites into his bottom lip a moonbeam glowing in the otherwise pitch black night, his steady, solid shape a beacon guiding her home.

They love you.

Nancy can feel it, feel the love in George's warmth, Bess's choked tears, Ace's whole demeanor, his love an arrow seeking her as the target he's aiming at and landing smoothly right in her heart.

Ace had said the same thing, too, once upon a time.

I'm with them.

As he looks at her now, Nancy knows he's no longer hiding behind all these tiny ways people have to say how they feel without saying it. He wants to love her but he doesn't know if he can, but he understands now - that something is broken and they need to fix it. He won't let her run anymore, not until every crack has been filled with the light that gets in.

I love you, his eyes say, and Nancy lets hers flutter close.

I'm with you.

She comes awake with a silent gasp, her body still burning, cold sweat slicking her skin, the fabric of her shirt clinging to her back.

Her eyes take a moment to get used to the dark. Instinctively, she pats around, searching for Ace and expecting him to be next to her in bed, wanting him close.

He's not. It takes her another moment to reconcile the ache she feels inside at his absence with the shape she discerns as she squints her eyes. Reaching to the nightstand to flick the light on, Nancy can't help the wave of fondness that surges over her as she sees him.

Ace is sitting in a chair, blocking the way to the window. She's pretty sure that he must have sworn to himself that he would keep vigil over her all night and stay awake, but Nancy's glad that he got some rest, even unwillingly. His head is tipped down, chin resting against his chest in an angle that must be uncomfortable for his neck, arms that must have been crossed over his chest once now falling limply over his lap. He changed into his pajamas but he's still wearing his wedding band; a quick glance down and Nancy sees that they're matching, her own back on her finger along with her engagement ring that she's relieved to see no one took off for the night, plaid PJ bottoms she stole from Ryan, red when Ace's are blue, his maroon shirt contrasting with her navy one.

Memories flash before her eyes. George briskly helping her into the shower, afraid that she'd collapse or faint, making her promise that she wouldn't with the same tone she uses to warn Jesse when she goes out late at night with her friends; Bess's anxious voice through the door, asking if they needed help before she turned back to Ace, trying to soothe him. His strong arms slipping under her shoulders and knees as he carried her back to the cabin, the ends of his hair tickling her face as he would dip his head down as if to check her breathing every now and then.

She misses those arms around her. Misses the freedom of relishing their warmth, this sense of safety they bring, even if she's only ever briefly experienced it. Nancy brings shaky fingers to her mouth, the sudden memory of Ace's lips against hers making her whole body tingle. He shouldn't have - he took a huge risk to save her, he shouldn't have, he could have -

She wouldn't have let anyone else go to him if their positions had been reversed, though, Nancy knows.

Slowly, she sits up straighter, then balances her legs over the edge of the bed. Her foot still hurts as it touches the floor but Nancy gnaws at the inside of her mouth not to cry out. Her whole body hurts; her muscles ache, her breathing still comes out in painful puffs, and her throat feels so raw she wouldn't be surprised to be coughing for a few days. But Ace is all the balm she needs as she drags another chair close to his and drapes the blanket over the two of them as she settles down next to him.

Ace sighs in his sleep, something soft that curls around Nancy's heart. He shifts a little as she tucks the blanket over him, and rests his head on the back of the chair; she mirrors him, his breath fanning over her face with how close they are. She tucks her hand beneath her cheek, curling in the chair like a cat as she watches him sleep; slowly, she tucks a loose lock of hair behind his ear, traces the line of his jaw with a lone fingertip, reminding herself of the vow she made to Melinda.

They will beat this. She's been looking at this curse from the wrong angle, seeing it as this mystery she couldn't solve, when she should have seen it as a mystery they had yet to solve.

Love is fundamental. Ace had said that, too, and he'd been right.

He'd said so many things - taught her to let the pain become love, shown her that she still carried all these moments inside her, a broken mosaic she had the power to repair if she allowed herself to be loved, to let someone else help her carry it.

It's time to kick the monster out of your house.

As she closes her eyes again, Nancy believes it might be just so.

When she stirs awake next, sunshine filtering through the blinds warming her skin, Nancy's tucked neatly in bed, wrapped in a little, warm cocoon that she soon identifies as a wall of throw pillows at her back, and Ace curled around her as snugly as he can without actually touching her.

He's got one arm tucked under her pillow though, his fingers coming just short of twining in her hair, almost as if he'd fallen asleep doing just so until his grip had loosened during the night. Nancy traces his lifeline with her fingertip, wondering if anyone can ever truly untie themselves from someone they love. She opens her own palm and covers his, willing whatever strength still flowing in her to merge with his and protect him.

Even in sleep, Ace recognizes her, seeks her out, fingers loosely curling around hers. In the moment between sleep and awake, half-caught in a dream, Nancy manages to persuade herself that this is safe - his bones calling out her name, and her answering the call.

"Oh my god, Ace, what happened to your face?"

Sarah's clutches firmly around his biceps, Ace looks at a loss as to what to say. Even Bess's magic make-up couldn't hide the full extent of his bruises. Nancy sighs, heaving herself up from her chair and going to Ace's rescue.

He offered to fetch her another cup of coffee, but her noble knight is the one in distress now. "Shower sex, it gets slippery," Nancy offers as an explanation to the other woman with a huge, beaming smile. "Come on, honey, we don't want to embarrass Sarah with the story."

She tugs at his sleeve, leaving both Ace and Sarah with an open mouth and wide eyes. Ace remains silent until he sits down, bursting into laughter then. Nancy can't help sighing, her heart so full at seeing him so carefree after the night they had, Ace's smile like a shooting star in the night sky. "I can't believe you just said that," Ace says, wiping tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

Nancy shrugs her shoulder, letting it fall dramatically. "I don't like the way she looks at my husband," she says, clucking her tongue.

"Ah," Ace notes with a grin. "Maybe we can add this to our story. How possessive you get and how you murdered all my exes."

Nancy rolls her eyes. "Cute," she says, stealing Ace's toast from his hand and taking a huge bite. "We won't need a story for long. Once Bess finds out how to craft the proper farewell spell for Melinda..."

She lingers, not knowing how to finish her sentence. Even though Nancy believes that Melinda is somewhat at peace now that her story was heard, they still need to open the door for her; find the threshold holding her captive in the liminal space, let her spirit move on and hopefully find Matthew again. Bess texted them earlier to say she'd recruited both Addy and Ryan to help out, three pairs of eyes scanning documents in the Historical Society's Archive better than one. Bess believes that once they find out Melinda's identity, they'll be able to track down what happened after the night of the fire and murders, find out what William did in the aftermath, and how they can get justice for the two star-crossed lovers.

In the meantime, Nancy watches fondly as Ace butters another toast for her, sliding it across the table and embellishing a sigh. "You know, I think I'm gonna miss that," he says softly.

"What? Making me toast?"

Ace lets out a chuckle as he shakes his head. "No, just...this," he says with a shrug and a wave of his hand between them. "The domesticity of it all, I guess."

"I don't think most couples see ghost hunting and solving mysteries as domestic, though," Nancy muses.

"Their loss," Ace says. "I believe that having common interests is a solid foundation to any relationship."

"The couple that solves mysteries together stays together?" Nancy quips in.

Ace waggles a finger at her. "Exactly." He looks away then, his gaze following the sunbeams piercing through the clouds. "It should be a beautiful day. What do you want to do today? No hike for you with the state of your foot, but maybe there's some outdoorsy activity we could still do, if you want."

She thinks of Melinda and Matthew, holding hands in the woods, just enjoying being with each other. She thinks of all these moments that were stolen from them; reflects on all the time this damn curse took from she and Ace, too, forcing her to stay away, to push him away, to hurt him to protect him.

No more.

Nancy nibbles at her toast, pondering her words in her head. "We don't have to do anything, we can just...be."

I don't care what else you have in your head, I'm with you.

Ace tips his chin down in a small nod, seemingly understanding the underlying meaning. "I like the sound of that," he says softly, Nancy's heart melting like butter on her toast at the tenderness in his tone.

He smiles at her.

I thought you'd never ask.

Her fingers graze the bed of yellow flowers, her lashes fluttering close at the sound of Ace's voice lulling her to sleep.

"“What do you want then?" The old answers came easily to mind. Money. Vengeance. Jordie's voice in my head silenced forever. But a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, and unwelcome. You, Inej. You.” Damn," Ace lets out with a whistle. "I thought we'd reached peak romance when he plucked out that boy's eye for her, but this is another level."

He puts down the book Mariana recommended them for a romantic hangout - Nancy has to admit that a gang of misfits and criminals going on a heist weren't her first idea of romance, but that three hours of Ace reading to her has changed her mind. Or perhaps it's just the sound of his voice, the lilt and cadence it takes as he reads working its magic on her, Ace's funny asides and comments keeping her from fully falling into slumber but Nancy wouldn't trade it for the world.

"Keep reading," she whines at the interruption.

She hears him swallow - Mariana let them into the kitchen to prepare a little basket of snacks and a thermos bottle of coffee. "My phone just buzzed," Ace offers in apology. Nancy cracks an eye open, sees him scrolling with his thumb. "It's Bess. She says they found something."

"Yeah?"

"And she says she'd rather talk about it in person."

"Oh."

Ace laughs. "Yeah, oh. How much do you wanna bet that William was James's great-great-great something? It would explain why he's such an asshole."

"Or Melanie's," Nancy points out as she leans up on her elbow, annoyed to have her nap interrupted by Bess's impromptu findings. "Do we have to go now?" she asks Ace.

He shakes his head. "It'll be suspicious if we leave in the middle of the afternoon," he says. "We can wait until later tonight. Have Ryan call the landline and say there's a family emergency."

"There's always a family emergency," Nancy agrees. "Maybe there are no cookies left and he needs us to get home ASAP to get him some."

"Sounds about right."

"Oh, Nancy. I heard you and Ace were leaving?"

Luisa's distress sounds genuine, and it makes Nancy ache for her. She invites her in as Ace finishes packing up their things, Ace offering a little shrug and a smile to Luisa. "Yeah, it's my dad," Nancy grimaces. "He fell down the stairs, broke his leg. I just really don't want him to be alone."

"He's pretty helpless without us," Ace adds in.

"Yeah, no, I get that," Luisa nods her head, smiling at them in sympathy. "It's just too bad, you guys are the only cool people around here," she says with a sigh. "Do you think you might come back?" she asks, sounding hopeful. "Check out if he's okay, then come back after he's settled in?"

Nancy shakes her head, hating to disappoint her new fast-friend. "No, I don't think so. He lives alone, and like Ace said, he's pretty helpless."

"Yeah, of course. It's not always easy to watch your parents grow old, is it?" Luisa says kindly. "Well, by all means, it was nice to meet you guys, if only briefly." She leans in, wrapping Nancy in a hug. Nancy's surprised, but she squeezes back, seeing Ace watch them with a curious, cocked eyebrow. "Sorry about that," Luisa apologizes as she pulls away. "I'm just - emotional, don't mind me."

"It's alright," Nancy gives her a smile. "Tell you what. If you and David enjoy seafood, Ace and I work at this quaint little restaurant in town, The Claw? You should stop by after the retreat is over, dinner's on us."

They exchange phone numbers and Luisa leaves, but not before she hugs Nancy another time, then Ace. "Look at you, joining the adorable wives club," he says with a grin.

"Hey, take that back," Nancy narrows her eyes at him. "I'm not adorable, I'm mighty and powerful."

"And adorable."

"I'll pluck out your eye if you don't stop."

"You wouldn't dare."

No, she wouldn't, Nancy muses, and there's no convincing Ace otherwise, so she shrugs and focuses on collecting the few clothes and things she took out of her suitcase during their short stay in the Peony Suite. "Do you think Luisa and David will be okay?" she asks Ace.

He's folding his blood-stained shirt that's still in dire need for a wash, despite Bess's miraculous intervention that saved it from eternal damnation. "Yeah, I think they're just stressed about the baby."

Nancy does a double-take. "The baby? She's pregnant?"

Ace narrows his eyes in turn, looking confused. "Well, yeah? At least I assumed so. Did you see how much she eats? And Mariana told us she'd asked to go into the kitchen to make herself a snack barely an hour after dinner. And that's without counting this five minute-long hug she just gave two virtual strangers."

Nancy stares at him, impressed at the clues he collected when she missed so much.

Perhaps married couples should solve mysteries together, after all.

Nancy can't imagine a better hobby to share with her husband.

The drive back into town is a quiet one.

Ace looks tired, his shoulders slouched as he drives, and he has to shake off his arm a couple of times to get feeling back into it. Nancy doesn't offer to drive because she's even more exhausted, and she finds some comfort in knowing that tonight Ace will be back in his own bed and get some real rest, perhaps far away from her but safe.

She plays idly with her engagement ring, dreading the moment when she'll have to let go and give it back. In less than two days, Nancy got used to the feel and weight of it on her finger, to the commitment between them that needs no ring nor vow to be real - but the ring is a nice reminder, a beautiful one Nancy can't help but admire. "You told me this was your grandmother's only treasure. How old was she when they fled Europe?" she asks Ace.

There's a tick in his jaw, and for a moment Nancy believes she's made a mistake, or said something insensitive. But then Ace tilts his head to her, a small smile playing at his lips. "She was four. Her father took her and fled to America just before the war started. It belonged to her mother, she died when she was just a baby," he answers her unsaid question. "My mom told me this ring has been in the family for generations. She tried tracing its origins, and she went all the way back to France in the fourteenth century."

Nancy presses her lips together, letting the weight of his words sink in. "That's quite a ring to give your fake-wife," she says, her voice just above a whisper.

"Nancy." He says her name like it's the only truth he's ever known. Ace focuses back on the road then, his tongue briefly darting over his lips to wet them. "You know there never was anything fake between us."

She looks away, her cheeks flushing with heat. "I know," she admits softly. I love you.

She can't wait to be able to say it without fearing that his windshield breaks into a million pieces.

Nancy's surprised to see Ryan at the Historical Society. He looks even more surprised, his eyes widening at the state of her, and Nancy winces as she tries seeing herself through his eyes: sleep-deprived, pale and sickly, and that's without knowing the full extent of what happened the night before.

"Nance," Ryan says as he engulfs her in a tight hug, then cups her face with both his hands as he examines her. "Jesus, you look awful. What sort of retreat did you go to? It's not a good retreat unless there's a spa day."

She laughs in his embrace, allowing herself to relish in the warmth and openness, Ryan wearing his feelings on his sleeve. "I missed you too, Ryan. I'll let you cut us some cucumber slices when we get home."

"You cut the cucumbers," Ryan says, before he gasps at Ace's face. "What the hell happened to your nose?"

"Shower -"

"He slipped in the shower," Nancy interrupts him, glaring at Ace who only grins at her. "So what did you guys find?" she asks as she turns to Bess. "Did you find the proper ritual?"

"Oh, yeah, that shouldn't be a problem now that we found more about Matthew and Melinda," Bess says dismissively. "We found out quite a lot, actually. You guys should sit down."

Ace frowns. "No conversation starting with you should sit down ever ends well," he says, gripping at the back of a chair.

"It's a long story, just sit down," Bess rolls her eyes.

He pulls out a chair for Nancy, opting to go sit beside Bess and leave the chair next to Nancy for Ryan. Ryan instantly crowds her, squinting his eyes as he examines her face with a frown. "I'm not sure cucumbers will be enough," he says dramatically.

"Ryan!"

"Okay, okay," he holds his hands out in concession. "Sorry!"

"So, story time," Bess interrupts them with a stern look worthy of an experienced librarian, effectively shushing them all. Rebecca would be impressed. "With all the information we gathered - three names, Melinda, Matthew and William, of around twenty to thirty of age during the Civil War, coming from two wealthy families and a fire, Ryan and I managed to find something."

"She says it like it was a lot of information, but really, it wasn't," Ryan grimaces. "Do you know how long it took us to even get any sense of the families who lived in Horseshoe Bay back then?"

"Not long enough to finish a book," Nancy says absently. At Ryan's confused look, she just waves her hand. "Sorry, go on."

Bess takes a long, slow, punishing sip of her tea that has them staring at her and patiently waiting for her to want to continue her story. "So, we found this press clip from the local journal from 1867. Deadly Fire at Bloomwood Manor." She spreads the laminated copy across the table dramatically, like a cop in one of those murder mystery movies. "The article paints a delusional story about the return of a soldier declared dead two years before going unhinged and starting a fire at his brother's house to exact his revenge on him for marrying the girl he once loved."

"That's bullshit," Ace says, outraged. "This is so not what happened."

"I know," Bess says soothingly, "but that's what the article says. The sole survivor was William Bloomwood, 27, heartbroken widower of Melinda, 25, his late wife who was in the bath when the fire started and that he couldn't reach because the stairway crumbled."

"He killed her," Nancy hisses between gritted teeth. "The bastard killed her and his brother, and then he set the manor on fire to hide the bodies."

Nancy can't help shuddering at the cold calculation it took. To kill his own brother in a fit of rage, and because he was desperate and terrified of his wife leaving him, was one thing; but to go out after her and strangle her, then make up a whole story about his brother going mad and setting the house on fire and not being able to save Melinda from the flames? That took ruthlessness to an entire new level.

One she only knew one person to have ever reached: her grandfather, Everett Hudson.

"How did anyone ever believe that?" Ace asks as his eyes scan the journal. "I mean, didn't anyone know Matthew from before the war? How could anyone believe that he'd come home and do such a thing?"

Bess shrugs, tucking a curl behind her ear. "I don't know, Ace. From what I read, the house staff corroborated the story. They said they'd been dismissed for the night, but that both brothers were agitated. Who know what really happened. Maybe William paid them off, or maybe they genuinely believed that war had messed Matthew up enough to commit such an atrocity."

"Little did they know that William was the real culprit," Nancy says bitterly. "What happened to him, in the aftermath?" she asks. "When I spoke to Melinda, she said that she couldn't move on without making sure that everyone knew what he did. She seemed so...broken at the idea that anyone could believe Matthew was a bad person, but vindictive, too. She didn't want William to go unpunished."

Bess grimaces, biting at the corner of her lip. "He did, though. He gathered a lot of sympathy, the poor man who lost both his brother and wife on the same night," she says with a shake of her head. "He came from a rich family, so he had quite enough money to rise from the ashes. He remarried quickly into an even richer family, and he eventually became mayor of the town."

"You're kidding, right? A murderer, mayor of Horseshoe Bay. Really," Nancy says, shaking her head and briefly closing her eyes. "Why am I even surprised? Our history is gushing red."

"Hey, look at the date," Ace says, tapping the press clip with a finger. "March, 2^nd, 1867. It was the anniversary of Melinda and Matthew's deaths just a few days ago. Do you think that this is what started all of this?" he asks Bess.

"Could definitely be a trigger, yeah. I think that it was the invasion of the land that acted as a catalyst, more likely, though," Bess says. "I mean, the couples retreat was built on the same spot as the Bloomwood manor used to be. All these people going there with heartache and fear, right in a land of tragedy...I think that the combination of it all called out to Melinda's spirit, their pain fueling her own."

Nancy turns to Ace, remembering his theory about the liminal space, emotions we bottle in taking a shape of their own. Had Melinda's grief found an echo in all of these people? Had Mia Reynolds, the woman in the Peony Suite before them, been possessed too without realizing it, and written the warning on the mirror herself? Melinda's spirit had latched onto Emma and Luisa then, and succeeded in transmitting her story through Jenny, too, before she'd found a kindred spirit in Nancy.

Why had she been the ultimate vessel?

"We did a bit of research about Melinda, then," Ryan goes on. "We found their marriage certificate. They were married on July, 1^st, 1865, William Theodore Bloomwood and Melinda Charlotte Hudson."

Nancy's blood runs cold. Of course. It had to be. Their entire bloodline was cursed, and no Hudson had ever been happy; why would she be any different? "If she was twenty-five when she died, then it means that she was born in...1842. So she was younger than Temperance, perhaps around Charity's age. How were they related?"

"Melinda's mother, Margaret, was Temperance's cousin," Ryan explains as he unrolls a parchment with the Hudson bloodline.

"Temperance was only ever interested in finding a living heir from the seventh generation, someone who could bring her powers back to life, so she never bothered with relatives who died before having children," Bess adds in. "And that particular Hudson line ended with Melinda."

"We found no evidence that they even knew each other," Ryan says. "Even in a town as small as Horseshoe Bay, you can always avoid your annoying relatives. I guess Temperance was just too busy doing her own thing to hang out with the rest of the family."

"Sounds like the bitch," Bess approves, her resentment towards the woman she saw as a mentor, then turned traitor, still raw.

"Okay, so if Temperance was our great-aunt, that makes Melinda...what? Our great-something-cousin?" Nancy asks, trying to take it all in. "That may explain the bond between us. But that doesn't explain why she reacted the way she did to Ace. Unless we're cousins or something?"

As she says it, Nancy grimaces at the mere thought. She knows, on some level, that the Hudsons and the Marvins are somewhat related and that Bess is sort of her cousin, twice or seventeen times removed. But to be related to Ace? Even in a small town like Horseshoe Bay, that would be far-fetched.

"God, no," Bess shakes her head, and it shows on her face, the way she scrunches up her nose at the word cousins like this isn't how she planned to have her platanchor and best friend be united. "While we were doing research on William, we found out that he died without an heir. His second wife died before him, which left the estate to the town."

"That is, until enters our new, secret player," Ryan says with a flourish as he pushes away the paperclips on the table and spreads new ones, including a portrait of a young man that bears a striking resemblance to Ace. "This is Fenton," he announces proudly.

Ace leans in, observing the portrait. Nancy does too, noticing immediately the sharp set of the man's jaw, the slope of his nose, and the clear blue eyes. "He looks just like Matthew," she says. "Like William, too, but more like Matthew." She thinks that the kindness shines and shows in both.

"That's because they're brothers. Half-brothers," Ryan corrects himself. "John Bloomwood, the patriarch, had an affair with a woman from the village, Laura, before he married Matthew and William's mother. Thus was born Fenton, his first child raised in secret by his mother and her husband who was none the wiser. Both Fenton Sr. and Jr. died in the war. The son fought and died during the battle of Gettysburg."

Nancy's eyes widen. Everything had happened so fast, Lev's death triggering Ace's dreams, and her own primal, desperate need to save him, they hadn't stopped to think about Ace's algorithm and how it hadn't worked out that he could be a potential target.

"So that's my ancestor?" Ace says, eyeing the portrait with a certain unease. It was because of him that he'd inherited a piece of Charity's soul, so Nancy understood his alarm.

Bess nods her head. "He left a wife and a son behind, Frank. After William's death, it was revealed that Fenton was a Bloomwood, too, and even if he was born out of wedlock, his heir could claim the Bloomwood estate. But Laura left for Europe with Frank to reconnect with her Irish roots," Bess explains. "It got a bit trickier to trace them there, but I -" She wets her lips, looking guilty. "Well, I did a little bit of digging, and -"

"She did something illegal," Ryan fake-whispers.

"I did not!" Bess whines. "I mean, yes, I did, but -"

Ace shakes his head, chuckling. "Bessita, what did you do?"

Bess lets out a loud sigh, gathering papers in her hands just to keep them busy. "Well, I had an intuition, alright? I just followed my instinct."

Ryan rolls his eyes. "Well, since she won't own up to it..." he starts. "She impersonated your mother to have access to your birth certificate, which then allowed her to investigate your entire bloodline."

"What?" Ace laughs, eyes widening from both surprise and fondness. "Okay, never mind the details. You decided to turn to a life of crime because of an intuition...based on what?"

"Your middle name."

He cocks an eyebrow at her. "I told you that in confidence."

"Well, you should know that everything you say can and will be held against you, especially if it helps me solve a mystery!" Bess says defensively. "Between that and your resemblance to Matthew, I based my theory on Fenton being your ancestor, and I decided to move up your family tree starting with your mom and dad, see who was connected to whom. Frank had a son, Joseph, who had a son...I retraced their steps from Ireland to Germany, where your grandfather, your mom's father, was born in 1934."

"And you learned all that just by using Ace's birth certificate to access all these records?" Nancy asks, her features creasing in interest. "That's good to know."

"As if you needed more ways to snoop around," Ace teases her fondly. "So, my ancestor was related to the man who was in love with Nancy's cousin, seven, no, wait, six times removed? What are the odds?"

Ryan raises a hand in defense. "We did not do the math. But I'd say the likelihood is strong in Horseshoe Bay." He turns to Nancy, cupping her shoulder with his hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. "You could do with a little less ghosts, you know. You can't take on all the family feuds."

"It's not like I ever mean to," Nancy counters, then pauses. In spite of all the pain and heartache, in spite of the war and the blood, there was love, too - tremendous, life-changing love. Matthew and Melinda had been unlucky, it's true, but the love they shared, nothing and no one could ever touch it.

What a gift to experience that, if only briefly.

Her mind wanders to her brief encounter with the woman she now knows to be a part of her family.

You have to hold onto love, Nancy.

She looks at Ace, then, this curious edge to his features as he looks back.

Love is fundamental.

She turns to Bess, who's smiling at her, looking more triumphant than she has in a long while.

Love is the answer.

"So what's the next step?" Ace asks.

"For you to get nose surgery, probably," Ryan deadpans. At Nancy's glare, he shrugs. "I'm just saying."

"You should talk less."

"Alright," Bess says. "I talked to Victoria, and she'll help me with the ritual. We figured it would be better to keep you two out of the way, this time," she adds with a meaningful look. "As for fixing history...well, as Keeper, it is my duty to bring to light new intel about Mayor Bloomwood. The good thing about him never having children is that it won't hurt anyone to find out he was an asshole."

"Member of the Cain and Everett Club," Ryan nods, looking deep in thoughts. "Jesus." He turns to Nancy, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Come on, you. I'm driving you home. You need a solid twelve hours of sleep if we want to avoid permanent wrinkles here."

Nancy resists the urge to roll her eyes. "My suitcase's still in Florence's trunk."

"I'll get it," Ryan says, opening his hand out as Ace throws him the key.

He grabs his coat and leaves, and they stand there, the three of them; Nancy averting her gaze, Ace leaving a foot between the two of them, and Bess eyeing them carefully. Ace clears his throat, and starts slipping off his ring. "Time to give this back," he says.

"Mmh, maybe not?" Bess says with her lips pursed. "I mean, with all the lingering ghost energy around here, maybe you should keep them for a little while longer? Just in case."

"Just in case of what?" Ace asks. "Do you think we have another set of mystical relatives hanging around, just waiting to latch onto us?" As he says it, he shakes his head. "Never mind, anything's possible, you're right."

Nancy catches the glint in Bess's eye, and gives her a small, grateful smile. If the rings can keep the curse away, even a little bit, until they find a proper way to break it, then she won't be asking for a divorce anytime soon. She'll take any moment with Ace that she can have where she doesn't have to worry that his every breath will be the last.

Reluctantly, she twists her engagement ring, slipping the beautiful sapphire ring off her finger and handing it to Ace. "Thank you," she tells him simply. "Thank you for sharing this with me."

Ace toys with the ring, not quite meeting her eye. "I'm sure my mom will be happy to lend it to you again, should the occasion arise."

Nancy can't help a giggle. "Yeah, who knows? We need to hone our undercover skills."

Ace chuckles, pocketing the ring and patting the spot where it rests over his heart. "Always happy to add new skills to my résumé."

"You ready?" Ryan calls out from the front porch, interrupting yet another moment.

Nancy sighs fondly, letting Bess wrap her in a hug before she announces that she's going home with Ace to take care of her poor little injured platanchor with an authority that no one, not even Ace, dares defying. "See you around?" Nancy tells him tentatively, nervously tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. The absence of the sapphire on her finger catches her attention in her peripheral vision, and her heart clenches.

She can't deal with his absence any longer.

"Yeah," Ace says softly. "I'll go to the library, ask my mom if she has that book. Maybe we can meet for book club?"

Nancy smiles at him. "I like the sound of that."

Nancy's awaken by the scent of something burning, and for a second panic seizes her before she realizes that it's just Ryan's attempt at cooking.

She hears hushed voices while she wraps herself in Ryan's cardigan that she stole from him and has no plan of returning, but by the time she joins him in the kitchen, he's alone. "Hey," she greets him, "Did I just miss Dad?"

"Hey, good morning, did you sleep well?" Ryan smiles at her, still looking a bit concerned. "Carson left an hour ago for trial, but he said he'd try to be back for lunch, he wanted to see how you feel. That was...Ace just dropped something for you," he says, tipping his chin at the kitchen island.

"Oh." Nancy drags a stool and sits there. On the island lays a box, and she doesn't even try resisting the urge to shake it to guess as to its content.

Ryan drops a plate of half-burnt bacon and overcooked pancakes with a grimace. "Sorry about that, when I heard the knock at the door I just went and -" He shrugs. "I think I'm getting better with the pancakes, though, aren't I?"

The pancakes look the same as usual: too big and thick, probably from too much flour. But Nancy smiles at him anyway, happily digging in. She catches the time on the oven - 11:15 - and speaks around a mouthful: "Did you make breakfast just to drag me out of slumber? Because that worked."

Ryan lets out a chuckle as he pours her coffee. "Yeah, I gotta admit I didn't expect you to sleep that long. And I mean, you needed your sleep, but I also wasn't gonna face a famished Nancy, so..." He points a finger at the box. "You're not gonna open that?"

Nancy wipes her fingers on her napkin, reaching for the box. "Is this for me or for you?" she teases him. Slowly unwrapping the bow, she opens the lid, revealing the book inside.

"What's that about?" Ryan asks, cocking a curious eyebrow.

Nancy feels the smile twitching at her lips. "It's about a crew of underestimated misfits, defying expectations," Nancy summarizes quickly.

"Sounds like you lot," Ryan says, an amused smile playing at his lips. "I guess that retreat went well for the two of you, despite the ghost thingy and Ace's half-broken nose, then?" he gently enquires.

"Mmh," Nancy hums absently as she opens the folded little note, tracing Ace's handwriting with her fingertip. Mom only had two copies left, seems like we got lucky for once. There's a second book, we're in for the long haul. There's a bookmark at the last page they read together, and Nancy rereads a couple of lines, hearing them in Ace's soft voice.

For some reason, those words had comforted her. Better terrible truths than kind lies.

The truth was she'd tried to sneak up on Kaz plenty of times since then. She'd never managed it. It was as if once Kaz had seen her, he'd understood how to keep seeing her.

Nancy closes the book, only then realizing that the box isn't empty. There's a small velvet pouch, and she opens it with trembling fingers, already knowing what's inside. She bites her lip at the ring, tracing the sapphire with her thumb. Every instinct in her tells her to return it, that this is too much, too dangerous. That if Ace ever wants to give it to her, they should wait until it's safe.

She slips it back on her finger where it belongs anyway. Enjoys the feeling for a moment before she takes it off and opts for unsnapping her necklace, sliding the ring along her locket on it. At her side, Ryan wordlessly offers to fasten it for her.

If Ace wants her to wear it, he'll have to ask. It's only proper.

There's another small note in the pouch, one that has her heart soaring way up high and above the dark clouds.

Now it's yours.

the end