Eva tried her best to bathe in their bathroom sink to get the dirt out of her hair. Barry kept complaining about the smell. She has been rinsing herself in the sink for a better part of an hour when Fallon leaves. She is the first, unable to sleep. Eva doesn't worry if it's her. She knows Barry is an idiot. It is not her that smells, but the body they have shoved into the storage room, through the blankets they forced into the cracks in the door.

She returns to the main room after forty-five minutes of dipping her hair in the cold water. It could have become warmer, but Eva did not care to burn herself. She does not mind the cold the way the others do. Perhaps because she didn't die in the warmth of the day, in the arms of someone who cared about her.

Opioid deaths are so common around here that Eva is surprised there isn't someone there like her.

She whips her wet hair around her head. The sun is not yet rising. If she were to go outside, like so many of the others, her hair would freeze in chunks on her head. Only Ambrose is still there.

She pulls a cigarette out of her pocket and lights it. He looks at her. She drags in slowly and exhales, the air blowing into the room.

"Better smell than death, isn't it?" she cackles.

Ambrose shrugs. It smells like death in it's own right. Like the old age home of an aunt he barely remembers seeing, the stench in the walls just like of the old and the smell of dirt. Maybe that's the body. It's hard to think with so many spells.

"I thought we might be Gods," Ambrose admits. "Didn't you?"

Eva huffs, gesturing wildly with her cigarette, "I mean, did you think you were the kind of person who would become a god? I know who I am, Ro. Do you?"

Ambrose shrugs, "no idea."

She looks him up and down. He's handsome, probably. Not her type. He would be more handsome if he knew it, she thinks, and maybe that makes him more her type. She grabs her jacket, still dirty, and starts to shrug in on.

"Come on," she says. "We should go get that new lockbox."

~~~

It is irresponsible to let out all your heat at once in a cold like this one. It didn't return in the hours since she got back. Just knowing about the bodies in the church, literal and figurative, she became as cold as if she too were inside a coffin.

She wonders if she has an unmarked grave. She wonders if she was cremated, if they could even find her body, how many unmarked graves there are in town.

Kaia couldn't keep in the heat, and it's long gone now. The anger she felt, the need to let it out. Kaia has always been good at making herself smile. Even in the cold. Even as she stares up above her, bathing in the soft gold glow of the streetlight above her head, feeling the first snow of the year fall on her face. She stops moving just to feel it rain, the light and the snow, down on her face.

She never even liked the cold, unless it was an ocean wave on a hot day. She shouldn't have let all her heat out at once. Now, Kaia doesn't even care, and she isn't trying to make herself not care.

It reminds her of the day she first came into Canada, when she knew nobody and nobody knew her. She always hated being unaccepted. One of the benefits of going somewhere new is that there is no one beside you denying you.

Clare is behind Kaia by quite a distance. They left together, told the others they were going to search for Leo, but they didn't walk together. Kaia was just a bit quicker. She moves steps ahead, and Clare doesn't try to catch her. Actually, they are surprised Kaia invited herself along with Clare.

Clare catches up, cautiously. They don't cross the corner. Clare peers for Leo, who isn't here. They should spread out more, maybe see if they can find Fallon, who also was looking for Leo.

It would be impossible to fill all of Chelster with all the things Clare should do but has not. It would require the entire boreal forest, towering around the town. So, Clare doesn't think of more ways to find Leo and Fallon. Instead, they look over at Kaia.

"No sign of Leo, eh?" Clare asks.

Kaia shrugs, not looking. She can feel herself smile just a bit.

"You're right," Clare calls out. They hug their arms around the body, snow landing in their hair. "I mean, about me. Not Leo. I always wanted to do good things, and I might have winded up dead all for that."

Kaia furrows her brow, looking at Clare.

"It isn't about me," Clare points out, still calling loudly. The neighbourhood is quiet enough that anyone would be able to hear their muffled voices through the walls. There is no snow on the ground yet. It melts. No cushions to hide them. Clare has done a lot of hiding. They still can't join Kaia in the glow of the light. "I can't apologize for it. I mean I could, but it wouldn't actually mean anything. I might like to help you."

Kaia looks at Clare, the smile on Kaia's face still there, but her eyes narrowed in to look at her.

She reminds Clare of the pool of water in the forest. Sparkling, deep, so dark it's unknowable, and Clare has always loved things without answers.

"What have you been researching in the library?" Kaia asks.

Clare looks at her, "I don't think it's really that important."

Kaia laughs, shaking her head, "you don't think your death is really that important?"

"Not anymore than anyone else's," Clare answers.

Kaia blinks. She doesn't feel proud to admit it, but to Kaia, her death and the reason behind it has mattered more than anything. Audrey dug up her body to get back at her death, perfectly-poised Este has drunk herself into a stupor after a confrontation with her ex-husbands new wife, and Fallon doesn't stop crying at night. Then there is Clare, in the middle of this whole mess, and not even caring about herself.

"I think," Kaia puts her thumb to her own lip, feeling it. Her fingers are colder than her face even though snow is in her eyelashes. "Were you always like this?"

"Like what?"

"So ready to give yourself up to everybody," Kaia points out.

Clare stares at Kaia. She's not smiling, and Clare feels like a traitor to the cause of ending Kaia's misery, "unfortunately. That, I think, is what I thought cops should be like."

Kaia barely acknowledges this, "I think you should worry about yourself too, Clare."

"All I am is worry."

"I think I've noticed," Kaia points out. "Well, that's not true. You aren't just worry. There's probably some ectoplasm or unfinished business or something."

When she smiles at her own joke, she realizes she had stopped. Usually, she never lets herself stop smiling. Not in life, rarely in death. And it happened in front of Clare. It's probably happened many times, and only now is she realizing it.

Kaia lets herself not smile. This time, it's intentional, "so, you'll help me and I'll help you."

"Solve our murders?" Clare asks, hoping it is that Kaia is offering but also hoping for so much more.

Kaia laughs, "at least our murders. Maybe even a dozen more."

Sometime shortly after Kaia and Clare left, Este forced themself off the table. The ground felt slanted beneath their feet. For a second, they stood, unaware of why they had forced this plight upon herself.

~~~

Este should be used to the world spinning without them. That is what their death was, after all. This is unnerving, more so than the smell of the body which prompted her to stand up.

"I should help look for Leo," Ajay had said. He glanced at Este. Then, he grabbed a jacket. He was about to throw it to them, and then stopped.

Este had stepped closer to him. They'd taken it from his hands, put in on their arms. It felt more difficult than threading a needle. They did it though, and then Ajay had let them leave the front door first.

He remembers walking behind them, hands ready in case they fell. Ajay didn't think Este would appreciate him point out how they stumbled on the stairs. If it weren't for Este standing with a face that looked drained of all the blood in it and only had the sickly green tinge of their veins, he wouldn't have gone out. Clare can handle herself. Este probably could too, but Ajay didn't want them to have to do it alone.

They walked through the streets. He's been glancing over, shoulders hunched up to his neck as closely as possible, while they walk in the middle of the road. Over the past thirty minutes, their steps have become more solid and firm, and the coldness has returned the blush to their cheeks. Ajay doesn't complain about the cold on his neck, and he doesn't complain that at least once a block he hears a horn in a random step.

"Sober yet?" Ajay asks her.

Este smirks, looking at him, "find Leo yet?"

Ajay chuckles, "I wasn't actually looking for Leo."

No, of course he wasn't. Este has a good sense of when people are lying, even if they can be sure what truth is hidden. If Este had to guess, Ajay was out here looking for her.

He's good-looking. Of course he is. The worst part is, he carries himself like he knows it. He's got a smile that could win over everyone in their country let alone just in Chelster. His shoulders are broad and his arms are bulky, but that is hard to notice beneath his winter coat. When he lifts his hands out of his pockets, she can see the veins bulging out of the back of his hand.

A powerful woman is an asset. A powerful man is a threat. Este knows they should be scared around him too, maybe even more than Jayce. At least Jayce is a ghost she knows.

"I hope you're not implying I can't handle myself," Este grins, peeking up at Ajay.

Ajay swears that for the second time his heart stops, just from the sight of Este's gaze upon him.

"I've never implied anything," Ajay rolls his eyes. "Not once in my life."

"And in your death?"

He laughs, almost, but there isn't enough air in his lungs or heat in his dead heart for the sound to really resonate in the cold air.

"You're quite the character, aren't you Ester?"

No one calls Este by that name anymore. None of their family living in the borders of Chelster, not that Este could see them if they wanted to break the rules the basement dwellers had agreed upon. Este wasn't really aware that Ajay would have known their full first name.

Ajay learned it from Audrey. He speaks English, Hindi, Punjabi, and German, but not a word of Spanish. Consequently, he has no idea what the name means, what it means to Este. It was a thing to test. To see if Este would let him alone have a bit of herself to share.

"I'm not sure what you mean by that," Este smiles. "I'm just me."

Ajay laughs, "you can't expect me to believe that you are unaware of your extraordinary existence."

Este stops themselves from winking at him.

A powerful man is a threat. A charming man is even more dangerous.

As an aircraftman, Ajay is familiar with some tactics of war. None of them could rise to the challenge that is Ester Del Castillo. He stops walking. It's time for the bigger test.

"I knew what about the box that Leo found," Ajay tells Este. "Ambrose and I found it together. I thought it was best to pretend we didn't know about it. Audrey knows too, and she's blackmailing me to keep it quiet."

Este peers over at him. Why would Ajay share that? It implies a closeness, perhaps, that Este does not think they share. Not just a closeness between Ajay and Este, but a closeness between Ajay and the others. They share a basement and little else. At least, that is how Este thought about it.

"Aren't you worried I'm going to blackmail you?" Este asks.

Ajay winks at her, "I think you like me too much."

~~~

Audrey has cornered herself off in the storage room. She has a scarf tied around her face and plastic blue gloves they stole from the kitchen upstairs on her hands. While she is no doctor, she has seen detective shows before. All while huddled on the staircase watching them when she was supposed to be in bed, all as a child. Audrey was not allowed to watch television, unless it was an Audrey Hepburn movie. She dropped the habit of sneaking onto the stairs when she was ten, finally understanding that her mother was right; Audrey could achieve greatness as long as she was not idle. After that age, the only time Audrey had her eyes closed for more than five consecutive hours was when she died.

Audrey died close to a decade ago. The body might be her height, but Audrey doesn't know how bones sit in the body, how flesh might spread them out or the weight of all her muscles and blood might compress it somehow. Ajay was supposed to help her. He left though, clearly with a pointed glance, and so she is here on her own.

Mostly.

She picks up the skull from the rest of the bones. There is flesh still on it, rotting, putrid. She pries open her jaw to look at the teeth. That is something Audrey knows from detective shows. There is a crack in the skull, reportedly where she fell and hurt her head, and Audrey doesn't know enough to know if the crack was delivered post-mortem. She just wants to know if the body is actually hers.

The door opens. Nico slips inside the room.

They have bound their face with a balaclava from the bin. Their hair, the curly mass they need to be cut more and more given how little Nico is able to take care of it, makes the mask even hotter. It is such a change from how they were outside. The balaclava smells like cigarettes, which Nico finds odd considering that one cannot smoke a cigarette in a balaclava. At least it masks the smell before them.

"I found some more little knives in the... well in the kitchen," Nico points out. They hold one out for Audrey. "Carving knives. You know, for like pumpkins. Pumpkin carving stuff."

Audrey doesn't take it. She peers into the mouth of the skeleton. The teeth are straight, uniform, much like her teeth. Audrey's teeth were as perfect as she was. The game then becomes looking for any imperfections in her grin.

A game which Audrey is most experienced in playing.

"Give it here," Barry says, from his corner in the room.

He is perched on a stack of chairs pressed into a wall. Barry has his arms crossed over his chest while the scene plays out before him. He would not be here if Lydia hadn't offered to help Audrey. Rather than help though, Lydia has sat on the floor, leaning against the stack of chairs. Her eyes have shut, her head drooping a bit. Barry regrets that he can't see her face from this angle.

Lydia is so big, however, it's impossible to see all of her at once. There is the girl who played with Barry's sister, the woman who sang in an opera hall to crowds, the woman who loved him almost enough, because there is never enough of anything for Barry. Never enough pearls, enough money, enough people to tell him they love him.

Because of his angle, and because of the scarf on her face, Barry is unaware that Lydia is pretending to sleep. Her eyes are shut, but they flutter occasionally. They peak open now, since Barry is distracted.

She looks at the body on the floor. Lydia could not imagine touching it, but Lydia could always use more people to rely on. No one likes Este at the moment, Eva is unreliable, and Barry is exactly as he always is. Audrey may also be in the shithouse at the moment, but that is the perfect occasion for Lydia to offer her a hand.

Unfortunately, Audrey is aware of this. She'd rather be alone with the body.

"Do you..." Nico stumbles over their words. "I can help a bit, if you'd like. Just... how long will it take?"

"Faster if we got the cops or the med student," Audrey turns to look at the crackle in her skull. She traces it.

Nico swallows. They've already got multiple groups of people looking for Leo, and both Clare and Ajay tactically avoided helping out Audrey. Nico couldn't bring themselves to look for Leo. The anxiety Nico felt when Fallon left wasn't about if they would find Leo. There are not many places to hide in Chelster. No, Nico was worried they'd have to ask Leo to come back to the church basement, where there are bloody earrings and a dead body and nothing but ghosts in the room. Nico was worried Leo would say yes.

At least for now, Nico can rush to get the body out of there and then Leo will have a home to come back to sleep, and not just a cot.

"What can I do?" Nico manages.

Audrey shrugs.

Barry rolls his eyes, "you're never going to find out, you know. You're not a scientist."

"Maybe we can dig up Lydia next," Audrey smirks.

Barry jumps down from the stack of chairs. He knocks into Nico when he bursts out the door. Ambrose and Eva are getting their coats on. Barry ignores them, rushing through the room to grab his coat and shoes. He heads up the stairs with his winter gear in his hands.

Nico rubs his shoulder. It hurt. Ghosts can't hurt that much, can they?

Lydia opens her eyes now that he's gone.

"Going to go get him?" Audrey asks.

Lydia shakes her head. She did get him, she thinks. The old version of her got him to die for her, and this version got him to crawl out of the dirt in the forest to join her.

"We both know you don't care about finding out about this body," Audrey focus drifts to Lydia and her eyes are sharp and wide.

Lydia shrugs, "I mean, I care about helping you find out what you need."

Audrey scoffs.

When her head turns back to the skull, Nico grips onto the pairing knives tighter. They are sweating in the balaclava. Bodies, dead ones anyway, don't do well in the heat. The basement is cold, but nothing is cold enough. The walls won't contain the smell. Really, very little can contain the dead.

~~~

Fallon does not find Leo. She wanders to the park where she and Nico spend time. Leo is neither there nor in the church parking lot. He isn't outside any nearby convenience stores. Fallon does not know Leo well, but she knows he has no money and there is no one in town who he loves. Really, the only thing tying him to Chelster is his death.

She doesn't know about how most people died. One conversation, more than a week ago, where she had her shift lifted for Clare to inspect her scars crosses her mind. Leo didn't have any either. He died in a fire.

Fallon remembers his death in that moment. He died years before her. She didn't know his name, nor that it even was him, but she remembered the news about the warehouse fire which burned down around an RCMP officer.

There was a lot going on then, and Fallon hopes that is why she didn't connect the two events. She hopes it isn't because she was too focused on herself to think about the others, even though that is likely what is was.

Fallon grew up around here, and it takes her the better part of two hours to walk to the area of town where there are abandoned factories. It's near the outskirts. If Eva is right, Fallon might disappear if she isn't careful.

Leo isn't easy to spot. He is sitting on the edge of the road outside of the warehouse. One head rests on his knee, propped up next to his head. He's tired. There was no reason to come back here. He couldn't go to the police, who still have yet to follow up with them about their disappearances. He might have been able to go to the pastor, but what then? Vigilante justice? Repenting? He would need a Catholic church for that, and Leo cannot repent.

They are dead, Leo is sure of it. He once thought this life was purgatory, but he was wrong. Purgatory implies that there is a possibility to be made clean and whole after death. If this half-life was an in-between it is no longer one. Hell is accepting your own fate.

Fallon finally sees him and walks closer to him. She sits next to him on the ground, no words coming from her mouth. While Fallon can always talk, she can never say the right thing.

"I know," Leo sighs, shaking his head. "I know I have to go back."

He dislikes the cold of the evening. The quiet is welcome, at the very least.

Fallon wraps her arm around Leo's, tucking herself into him. She leans down, resting her head on his shoulder. He's cold too. She expected him to be hot still, to be burned maybe. It's irrational, unfair even.

"I'm upset too," she whispers. "I think that's the right reaction to have."

Leo nods. He feels her beside him. Together, they still cannot compete with the cold of Chelster. The building that burned with Leo inside it burned many years ago. The fire has not touched this place for closer to ten years.

Even still, it is dead. One might expect workers in factories even at night, but no one drives down here. There is no industry in Chelster. Small jobs in odd shops are in town, but the real money making work is in the oil fields far away. In the far north, up in the territories, groceries are so expensive that orange juice is a luxury. Leo remembers hearing other recruits talk about the costs. It's been a decade since he died, and he wonders if it has gotten any better. He barely remembers trailing through Chelster the night he died, but even this place seems worse.

It is not just him who died. Leo knows that. It never was just him. Now, it's not just them either. It's women with bloody earrings. It's a town with a low literacy rate and a high number of DUIs. It's a province which dies when the winter comes and doesn't come back to life when the snow melts.

"No," Leo disagrees. "I don't think it's right to wallow. We need to change things."

Fallon doesn't tell him her answer.

We can't change anything.

"Like what?"

Leo stiffens, "well, we need to..."

And then he stops. Because he can't do anything without risking everyone's lives. Revealing the pastor requires revealing themselves. The streets are much colder than the church basement. A wind blows and Leo leans in closer to Fallon, protecting her from the chill.

When Leo doesn't finish his response, Fallon feels herself get smaller and smaller and smaller.

"We don't have to go back," Fallon whispers. "We can't, really anyway."

Leo rests his chin on her head.

Tears slip down her cheeks, "we can never go back, Leo. We can't."

He nods, "I know."

Fallon squeezes him tighter.

He holds her. Leo realizes this is a new thought for her. Unlike Fallon, Leo is acutely aware they can never go back. Many things cannot be undone. The bells in the belltower can never be unrung. You can't unlight a match.

Worse, things can't be unknown. They know about the pastor. They know that they have bodies, that they did die, and that they can't undie. They can never leave Chelster, many of them can never find their loved ones again.

They can never find a place among the living. Very little survives in this cold.

~~~

As they head for the lockbox, Eva offers Ambrose a cigarette. To her surprise, he takes it. He puts it between his lips. Eva leans into him close with a lighter. She lights both the ends of their cigarettes at the same time, and they pull back, puffing them.

They walk through the streets together, mostly quiet. Eva has been so busy trying to unsettle everyone around her that she hasn't had much time to think about how Ambrose himself is unsettling. She never expects him to loosen up, always expects him to flinch at her advances, but he doesn't. That is how Eva, walking through the streets, realizes she finds herself unnerving, in an abstract way.

"No one is going to want to stay even with the lockbox," Eva finally says. She exhales.

There is something great about being the warmest thing in a cool night. All of her heat expelling in it. She barely remembers science classes, but she knows she is getting colder because she is making the world heat, just by standing in it with blood in her veins.

Eva is dead and alive, and the most alive she has ever been too.

"I'm going to rob my mother's home," Eva chuckles, grinning. "Hopefully I can scare her too. Maybe you can teach me how you do it."

Ambrose hasn't seen his family. He got the news from Audrey and didn't read it until everyone else was asleep. His brother killed him and he's out of prison now, recently. He hadn't thought about seeing his mother.

Would she know he isn't a god right away, or would she realize just as slowly as he did?

"I don't think I scare you," Ambrose tells her. He frowns, "I think I scare everyone but you."

Eva laughs. Her head is itchy still, from the dirt still in the strands.

"You aren't scary, Ro," she points out. "No scarier than anyone else anyway."

~~~~~

Holy Hell. This is so big. But like, I think it's good. Do you have a favourite moment? Let me know in the comments! Hopefully the next one will be out soon, but if it's that long, absolutely no promises.