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Annie sat between them on the ride back to town. She couldn’t handle buses, always fell asleep in them even back when they were kids on field trips. She was currently drooling on their shoulder.

Yulia had relaxed considerably and was reading through more material that they’d printed.

Walt was thinking hard and Hollis didn’t want to interrupt him. There was a conversation brewing that should wait until they got home, and he didn’t want to start it here, in public.

Walt surprised Hollis by turning to Yulia.

“Was there anything in there about what happened to my family that I should look at?”

Yulia grimaced at him.

“Takin’ that as a no.” Walt leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.

“It’s detailed and bad,” Yulia said, turning a page. “I’m upset just knowing about it.”

“Hollis and I... Well, we don’t know much about what you did in your basement. But I think you’re our best bet when it comes to figuring out how I can make amends. I need to go back home and face the music.”

“You guys haven’t gone to Rose Town since you’ve been together?”

Walt glanced at Yulia without turning their head.

“If this situation is my doing, I should be there to figure it out,” Walt said instead of answering. “Now, I’m no expert on this, but I can guess that we probably need a circle of protection like the one you did for you and Ann. One that I can stay inside but that other things can’t cross. We need something that can bind or banish spirits, maybe a cleansing incantation or—I don’t know. But if your magic works on me it might work on that, and I owe it to a lot of people to try.”

Yulia closed the files and laid them out flat on her lap. She gazed out the front window at the trees going by in the setting sun.

“I’m not a witch or anything. I just got scared enough to ask my daddy about Isese. He’d left that life behind in Nigeria, and he was really mad and asking a lot of questions, but I can’t fumble around with this. It’s serious. I don’t know how any of this works, I was just hoping for a solution.”

Walt laughed, soft, quiet so he wouldn’t wake Annie up.

“That’s all right, sweetheart. Your best is good enough for me. Trying is better than nothing.”

“I can’t promise things won’t go wrong,” Yulia explained. “I don’t know if whatever I make will banish you and the spirits at Rose Town together, or just piss them off. So, you and Hollis should talk about that. It’s one thing to go in knowing that anything can happen and another thing to be surprised by it.”

Walt nodded.

“What do you think will happen when Rose Town is free of all this? You think people will move back?”

Yulia snorted. “Absolutely not. It will take at least fifty years for its reputation to change in any real way. Maybe someone will try to build there again and nothing will go wrong, but people will probably still be freaked out until all the old people who remember it are dead, at least.”

Interesting.

What?

“Do you know how much that land is worth?” Walt asked.

“No, but I could probably look it up.”

Walt closed their eyes again.

“If it’s not too much, and things work themselves out, your family should buy it. Turn it into something new. It’s got good soil from the fruit trees dropping produce for decades. The mill itself can be sold for parts.

“There’s room for a dairy, you could keep chickens and rabbits. Some of the mill is set underground, so there’s potential for that too. It’s a gold mine with no guards, Yulia. Your old man might be hard to convince, but the potential is there. With good farmland like that, no one nearby would ever go hungry again,” he said.

“I mean, the land is cheap at this point, and my dad is the only adult on earth who would believe us about the haunting,” Yulia said with a scrunch of her nose. “Probably uninsurable though. Anyway, but what about people to work there? Who is going to want to run the dairy or any of that stuff?”

“Lotta kids round here gonna be looking for work when school’s out,” Walt said with a yawn. “If they’re brave enough to joke around while the spirits are angry, they’ll be brave enough for this.”