"Lindsay," Jack said after he knocked on the door twice.

"It's open," I said.

"I'm really starting to worry—" He trailed off as he opened the door. "You look horrible."

With my dress laid at the foot of my bed and a trash can right beside me, I had the perfect setup for letting him down easy.

I forced a smile. "No, it's fine. I'm just trying to get as much rest as I can before Trailfest. What are you worried about?"

"You've been sick all night, haven't you? You look miserable, so I understand completely if you don't come." He smiled. "Hell, I'm just happy that you cared about it at all."

I didn't say anything and snuggled under the covers. I knew I was trying to look bad, but was I really that convincing? Probably not.

"I'll leave you alone so you can get some rest."

Just as he turned back for the door, Sierra came in from her morning class.

"Oh, hey, Sierra," Jack said.

"What's up with Lindsay?" she asked.

"She's pretty sick, so don't give her a hard time, okay?"

"Wait, so does that mean that we're canceling our visit to your professor's house to find out what the demon coin is?" she asked.

I bit my cheek. Dammit.

Jack turned to me with his eyebrows raised. "What is she talking about? And don't lie."

"I think she covered it pretty well, to be honest," I said. "You know, besides the fact that she thinks it's demonic."

"Was this a secret mission?" Sierra asked. "My bad, dude. I figured your best friend would be invited."

"You technically aren't invited, but we're letting you in so Dr. Reed can diagnose you with whatever paranoia thing you have," I said.

Jack crossed his arms. "We? Who's we?"

"Remember that guy from my ASL class that I don't particularly care for?" I said. "He got wrapped up in this."

Jack forced out a loud sigh. "What about me? I'm the one who dug the thing out of the ground."

"I didn't want to exclude you. I just thought that Trailfest would be more important to you."

"And I guess I thought it would be important to you too. You're supposed to be my friend, Smeagol."

"Look, Jack, all I was trying to do was spare us both a little pain. I didn't want you to miss such an important gig, and I need to find out what this coin is."

Sierra jumped in. "It tried to possess me. We need an explanation as soon as possible."

Jack glanced at her for a moment, then back at me. "Is she okay?"

I shrugged.

Without a moment of hesitation, Jack took a few steps closer to my nest of a bed. "Listen, Lindsay. I know you have a lot going on in your life, but I don't know until you tell me what you're up to. And it sure as hell doesn't mean you can keep whatever secrets you want from me, especially when I'm involved."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"You know exactly what I mean. And as soon as I finish playing tonight, you're going to tell me where we're meeting as a team. I helped find the coin, so it's not fair for you to keep its secrets from me."

I nodded slowly as my teeth took another layer off the inside of my cheek. That was perfectly reasonable, really.

He put on a smile. "Good. I'll see you then."

Just as he headed out the door, a ray of sunshine from the open curtains reflected off the coin like it knew we were talking about it.

I knew better than to think that Jack was okay with the strings I pulled to make my meeting with Dr. Reed happen, but there was no way he knew that I only wanted for him to have the time of his life playing at Trailfest. He didn't even know that I knew that he liked me, after all.

***

When evening finally arrived, Sierra, Dominic, and I knocked on the front door of the address Dr. Reed gave us. It was only a mile from campus, and the marigolds lining the porch brightened up the dirty white siding with yellows and oranges.

After a moment, Dr. Reed opened the door and gestured to Sierra. "Who the hell is this?"

"This is my roommate, Sierra Simmonds," I said.

"Whatever. Just take off your shoes and don't touch anything." She waved us inside, and her house wasn't too different from her office besides the size. With pieced-together ceramics and shiny metal trinkets on shelves and the walls, every room that I could see in the open floor plan had a replica of an artifact she found.

For someone so nonchalant about her class, she sure seemed to care about her work.

"You have replicas of things you found during your excavations?" I said. "That's so cool."

"These aren't replicas. Everything in this house is something I personally found during my summers in Turkey," Dr. Reed said.

"Shouldn't those be in a museum in Turkey then?" Sierra asked.

Dr. Reed gave a sarcastic smile. "When Turkish museums set up grids that stretch for hundreds of feet, dig everything up by hand, record every detail about its location and appearance, and preserve and restore the findings, then they can keep the shit they lost four thousand years ago."

Fair enough.

"So this is all from Turkey, huh?" Dominic said and picked up a bowl from a shelf. The lip had a few chips taken out of it from years upon years of weathering, and the color must have faded to a dull brown, but other than that, it was in okay shape.

"Most of it. I've collected a few items from Syria and Iraq as well since they're close to Titris Hoyuk."

"Tea tree what?" Sierra said.

"Titris Hoyuk. It was an urban settlement during the Early Bronze Age, and I've done most of my work there over the years," Dr. Reed said.

She didn't talk much about her personal work during class, so that was new. She usually stuck to the information in other people's PowerPoints.

"The Bronze Age? How is that supposed to help us with our gold demon coin?" Sierra asked.

"It helps because I don't care that Lindsay doesn't have a permit to metal detect, and I'm quite familiar with metallurgy. And honestly, I don't even know why you're in my house right now. I invited Lindsay and her asthmatic acquaintance."

"My name's Dominic. And I really think you should know that your entire house smells like smoke. Air fresheners aren't that expensive. Use them," Dominic said.

Sierra cleared her throat. "What he's trying to say is that your house is lovely, even if it is decorated with stolen artifacts."

"That's not—"

I interrupted Dominic. "So, Dr. Reed, do you have any new ideas on where and when the coin could possibly be from?"

"Let me get a closer look at it again. The craftsmanship is amazing from what I remember, but I didn't get the chance to properly record the design elements," she said. "My study is up those stairs, so I'll need a moment alone and silence from you three. I always get distracted by the damn refrigerator noises while I'm trying to work."

Alone? With my coin? I shook my head.

"What? Are you still afraid I'll add it to my collection?" she asked.

I nodded.

She chuckled. "I'm not going to keep something I didn't find. I have some sense of morality."

"You promise?" I said.

"Sounds to me like you're the paranoid one here, not me," Sierra said with a laugh.

I rolled my eyes and handed the coin over to Dr. Reed, even though she definitely didn't promise.

"I just want to get a good look at it and see if there are any comparisons to make. I'll be right back, so don't leave this room. Do you understand?" Dr. Reed said.

I wasn't quite sure where this room began or ended, since the whole floor was as open as it could be, but I agreed anyway, and Dr. Reed headed upstairs to her study with my coin.

"She's kind of a bitch," Sierra said.

There was a pretty decent chance that Dr. Reed heard that since she was just complaining about how loud the refrigerator was, but that wasn't my problem on either end.

"Yeah. I'm going outside before I die from the smoke smell," Dominic said.

From what I remembered, there was nothing to do out there and nowhere to sit except for the ledge of the front porch, but I watched as he headed out the door. That was included in Dr. Reed's "stay put" policy, probably.

"So what's his deal?" Sierra asked.

Apparently silence was out of the question. Sierra could never keep to herself.

"What do you mean? He just has asthma," I said.

"What's his major?"

I shrugged. "I only have ASL with him. He seems like a business kind of guy, don't you think?"

"I hope not. He's cute."

What? Where?

"You don't think so?" she asked.

Nope. "I don't know. I usually just get weirded out when I'm not the biggest jerk in the room."

"How bad can he be?" She smiled. "I hope he brought his inhaler, because I'm gonna take his breath away."

I got the vibe that in high school he was the type to sit at the front of the class and ask about the homework and had a few friends who tolerated him well enough, but he still kept a gun in his backpack just in case. And there was no way he had the sense of humor to laugh at that awful pickup line.

"Be sure to tell him that. I'm sure he'll find it funny," I said.

She gave a little chuckle but didn't say anything else. If she ended up saying it to him, I just wanted to be there to see his underwhelming reaction.

A few moments passed, and Dr. Reed still hadn't come back down to tell us what she thought about the coin. With Dominic still outside and Sierra on her phone, I turned my attention to the pieces of history all throughout Dr. Reed's house.

Unlike my parents' house, there weren't any photos or paintings on the walls. Instead, it was all artifacts, which was definitely more interesting than a cat, spouse, or dead mother, but it was someone else's past, not hers.

This woman had life all figured out, didn't she?

I wandered over to a shelf encased in glass on the wall, and inside were little figures made out of some type of stone. They looked like little angel Christmas tree ornaments with no ribbon to hang them, but if they were from four thousand years ago like she had told us, they were probably meant to be regular people.

For something so old and simple, the little stone figures wouldn't look a bit out of place in anyone's home, but in Dr. Reed's, they fit in perfectly.

"You like the Kaya family?" Dr. Reed asked as she came down the stairs.

I turned to her and nodded. "So these are little people?"

"Yep. And Kaya means rock in Turkish. I'm very creative." A trail of cigarette smoke followed her over to me, and the coin was still in her other hand.

So she hadn't taken it and ran. That was promising.

"Why don't you go get your new boyfriend so we can talk about what Dr. Reed thinks?" I said to Sierra.

The color drained from Dr. Reed's face. "Where'd he go?"

"He just went outside to get away from the smoke smell. Do you have a dead body in the bathtub that you don't want us to find or something?" Sierra laughed as she pushed on the door knob, but it didn't move. "Is it locked or something?

Dr. Reed let out a sigh. "Not unless one of you kids locked it. Hold this." She handed me the coin and opened up the door with no problem.

I laughed.

"Hey Asthma, you might want to hear this," Dr. Reed called. "Wait, who the hell is that pulling into the driveway?"

"That might be my friend Jack. He said he'd be over once he finished up playing at Trailfest, which I thought would go later," I said.

"Did you invite everyone in the damn phone book? Christ," she half-muttered to herself, then raised her volume just below a yell. "I ain't got all day. Let's go."

She had something to tell us, and with everyone there, hopefully, it was something good. Otherwise, I was just going to look stupid for getting a bunch of people involved with nothing.

-----------------------------------

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading. I took last week off of writing for my own sanity, so thank you for your patience!

So what do you think Dr. Reed might have to say?