Chapter 1: Homecoming

Lukenaria Carpenter hurried through the dark, suburban streets of the Thunderhead Ward toward her father’s house, working out what to say to him after being dead for twenty years:

Hey Dad! I’m back! I’m a walking corpse, but it’s okay. We’ll work something out.

No. Too sudden.

Hey, Dad! It’s me! You know how everyone says the Age of Magic ended, or never existed? Well, bits of it are still around, and if you make a pact with a powerful entity, you can get their vestige and—

No. Keep it simple.

Dad, I missed you! I have so much to tell you—

That was it!

We’ll spend all night talking and it will be amazing.

Both sides of the street were lined with red brick houses, immaculate driveways, and neatly clipped lawns. With her undead vision, Lukie easily discerned the digits on the nearest letter box. Number 7. Getting close. She had to hurry. Tamlyn Tanner might wake any second, realize that she’d flipped through his notebook when he hadn’t been looking, and cut short her reunion with Dad. Once he’d been her friend in high school and they’d been the same age. Now he was nearly forty, and a police inspector, while she still looked seventeen.

“Stay away from your father,” Tamlyn had told Lukie. “Give him space and—”

“No!” Lukie had shouted. “That’s not how we do things! We trust each other like that!” and she’d crooked her fingers together. 

She missed her father terribly. For most of Lukie’s existence, he had been her sole parent: always there for her, grounding her flights of fancy with rock-solid certainty, fielding all her questions about life, school, and relationships. 

Twenty years ago, she’d gone to a party and been murdered. It had taken her that long to escape the Underworld, making a pact with her ghost lord patron to become a revenant and return to the world in her physical form. While her memories were fragmented, she remembered saying goodbye to Dad before she died. Getting her new car from him as a gift, kissing him farewell, and promising to be home before midnight. And she’d never returned. 

Now she was back, and once she explained everything, she and her father would resume their relationship as though she’d never been gone. Soon, she would be there, and he’d give her a warm hug, and—

Bestial howls echoed. She stopped and whirled around, trying to determine where the sound of wolves was coming from.

The empty streets mocked her.

A piece of paper skittered along the street on the night wind. Parked cars sat in their carports and driveways, their sleek, modern 2003 shapes more evidence that Lukie was no longer in 1983. She remembered to breathe, and the smell of the area flooded her nostrils: pollen from flowering bushes, fresh-turned dirt, and the reek of chlorine from nearby pools. 

And yet no sign of any dogs, apart from a faint yip-yip-yip sound from a distant terrier.

Perhaps she’d overheard a movie. No, then the noise would have come from a direction she could have pinpointed. 

She paused and studied the empty streets, and then the howls echoed again, within the space of her own mind.

Something supernatural had to be going on. She thrust her senses outward, reaching for Tenebra and the realm of the dead. The Veil, a metaphysical barrier, separated the living lands from Tenebra. Most times when Lukie perceived it, it had the solidity of a psychic cinderblock wall. Right now, it felt as flimsy as a shower curtain. The sense of the Underworld pushed against Lukie like a dark, lapping tide, and beyond that, a presence loomed.

Someone was watching her from the other side. 

“Hello?” Lukie tried. The observer pulled back, distant. Without rending through the Veil into Tenebra itself, Lukie did not know who or what it was.

She decided against crossing over. Tenebra was no place for a casual visit. Rather than the nice, gray purgatorial land of the dead that popped up in folklore and religious stories, Tenebra was horrible. It was a void, a tar pit full of trapped souls that consumed each other to survive. Some ran, some hunted, while others learned to build pocket dimensions in the darkness from their memories and obsessions, the most powerful becoming the ghost lord sovereigns of the Underworld. Lukie reached for her vestige—her patron’s soul fragment within her—but her own ghost lord’s presence was distant. No straightforward answers there.

She bit her lip. She didn’t have time for distractions, she needed to see Dad before she exploded within, before Tamlyn came.

Weird stuff from Tenebra could wait.

Dismissing the howls and looming watcher from her mind, Lukie checked a nearby castle-shaped letterbox: 23. Nearly there. She made sure that the sunglasses were still on—concealing her undead eyes—and sprinted until she arrived at her father’s home: 47 Barbican Street. The two-story, red brick house, with its manicured hedges, rose gardens, and the wide-spreading oak tree in the front yard was straight from a television show.

Why did Dad move here? It’s nowhere near the beach. 

The Thunderhead Ward was ten hours’ drive from Breakwater Bay, up the coast and inland. Tamlyn had contacted her father in person to tell him the official story about how she’d been killed and why. Giving some resolution. And yet, when Tamlyn returned to their motel, he’d refused to disclose any juicy details, apart from that her father was fine. As usual, Tamlyn had said they’d ‘talk later’ and they never did. No, that was not—

Another howl. 

What is going on? She hesitated. Was she putting Dad in danger? Cage had warned her that the mortal world of sunlight, pizza, and school was no longer her province. Barriers sealed it away from the hidden shores of the supernatural realm, and those should not be breached.

No. Lukie curled her hands into fists. She had to speak to her father.

But how?

Did she knock and announce herself? Whisper to him through a wall?

She approached the front door, listening to the night breeze. 

A faint, familiar snore rattled the air.

She knew that noise! Right in the downstairs living room! She squinted through a gap in the curtains.

A figure sprawled on a brown couch; a rough blanket pulled over him. Who was that elderly man? Why did he sound like Dad? He turned in his sleep, revealing his profile.

Her father, but different. Bald, with a lined face, and a visible paunch. No longer the muscular person from her memory.

Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Lukie considered. Perhaps I should wait for Tam—

Dad snored, grunted, and woke. He sat bolt upright, rubbing his head as though emerging from a terrible dream.

And he stared straight at her through the window.

“Hey Dad,” Lukie rasped. “I’m back.”

“Lukie?” Dad’s face paled with shock. His hands shook and fumbled by his side. He walked slowly to the glass pane between them. “No. It can’t be. You’re dead.”

She swallowed. Dad wasn’t supposed to be like this: old, trembling, and worst of all, doubting her existence. She forced her husky, undead voice into its former register. “I… returned from the Underworld. To see you.” Not the greatest of introductions, but once they talked, everything would be fine. When she’d crashed her bike or faked an assignment or lost track of time and broken curfew, all she needed to do was to speak to him. “I’m real, Dad!” 

He retreated a step. “I saw your body on the slab. And what he did to you…”

“I got the Baron, Dad,” Lukie explained. “The guy who killed me and Karra. Sucked his soul dry.”

Rather than being reassured, Dad’s eyes widened in shock.

Crap. Now was not the best time to explain to her father she was a horrible, undead monster. She raised her hands in the air. “Look, I’m doing this all wrong. Can we start again? Please. I’ve come back from the dead. I’m a revenant. Like a zombie, but more awesome. I’m still me, and—”

“You can’t be her. Lukie was cremated. We sprinkled her ashes on the beach—”

“You don’t need your body to be a revenant.” Lukie’s frustration mounted. Why didn’t he believe her? She was right in front of him. Her head throbbed and spectral energy bloomed around her. The weird presence from earlier was closer. No, this was more important. “I was trapped in the Underworld for twenty years, but then I got out and—”

“My daughter is safe in the afterlife with her mother. I don’t know what you are—demon, hallucination—leave me alone!” He slid the blinds shut. Muffled sobs echoed.

“Dad, please no. Don’t cry, it’s really me!” She thumped on the door, intending to knock, but the wood splintered off its hinges at her undead might. “Sorry!”

She peered into the gap. Inside was a modern living room: couch, bookshelves, a carpeted floor, and a large television. Impossibly neat and lacking the familiar clutter of guitars, surfboards, and car magazines that resembled the old house she’d shared with Dad twenty years ago. Her father huddled on the carpet, frozen. 

Lukie gritted her teeth. One more try. “Sorry about the door. I’ll fix it. Please, give me a chance to explain.” 

The sense of the presence from earlier rose again, like a mantle. Piss off, Lukie thought. I don’t have time for you. 

She turned her attention to her father, trying to figure out the best way to get him to see her and not some undead horror when a girl in blue pajamas rushed in front of her. Perhaps thirteen, with long dark hair and the tan coloring of the Varuvals, the Stormfield's traditional peasantry. Also: completely human and not half-elven like Lukie.

The girl brandished a piece of antler. “You don’t belong here. Begone!”

“Who are you?” Lukie stopped in her tracks.

“His real daughter,” the girl challenged. “A wizard of great power!” She stabbed the horn wand directly in the air.

“What are you talking about?” Lukie growled. A wizard? Really? Normal mortals weren’t supposed to know about the supernatural realm. Cage had said that ancient rituals protected the ordinary world from what remained of the magical. Yet that paled against the fact that she’d been replaced. Dad had remarried and gotten a proper human daughter. In Lukie’s fragmented memories, she’d only kissed her father goodbye a few weeks ago; and now she’d been forgotten; substituted with a newer, better model.

 She grated, “Go. Away,” and stretched a hand to shove the girl aside.

The ‘wizard’ struck Lukie’s arm with the antler, which shattered into a dozen horn shards. A sharp pain stabbed through Lukie’s entire undead form and her limbs became molasses. She staggered, arms flailing, and her sunglasses slipped off, revealing her blank, red glowing eyes. She grunted, stunned. What was going on?

The mounting layers of spectral energy erupted.

A howl echoed and a hunched, canine-like humanoid figure bounded through the broken door and lunged at the girl.

Lukie struggled to her feet. Damn it; she’d heard those howls earlier and dismissed them. She’d led the creature here, where it could prey on her father. Her impatience had put everyone in danger. And now she couldn’t fix her mess and save the New Girl, as annoying as she was.

Sluggishness gripped her limbs—that antler, whatever it was—prevented her from dealing with the monster immediately.

“Sienna!” Dad shouted and charged at the creature, distracting it from clawing the girl.

The dog thing stood on its hind legs and knocked Lukie’s father to the carpet with a single swipe of its clawed fingers. 

The hiss of spectral energy rippled in Lukie’s ears. Undead fed off souls. And this thing was draining Dad, just as she’d drained the Baron’s existence.

No, no! She’d only wanted to talk! To catch-up! She tried to shout, but no sound escaped her lips. Instead, she screamed inside, wishing for a chance to do this again, correctly from the beginning.

Sienna fumbled on the floor for her broken antler.

Finally, the lassitude left Lukie’s limbs. She rushed at the creature, tackling it. She sensed souls as aural phenomena, and the monster seethed with chaotic music: chiming gongs and wailing screams. And overriding that was a simple, acoustic guitar melody, like the ones her father had played to her on Bellsday evening after they came home from the Surf Club.

Lukie staggered with horror. That was Dad’s soul. Not drained but collected.

The creature had stolen her father.

And it was all her fault.

“Give him back!” she yelled as she attempted to strangle the creature.

The dog-thing reared and threw her against a nearby bookcase, which cracked and broke.

Dad slumped on the floor, not moving while the girl screamed and clung to him.

The dog-thing lunged away through the front garden, reaching the dark street and sprinting into the night.

“I’m sorry!” Lukie cried. “I’ll fix everything! I’ll get him back, I promise!”

A light clicked on upstairs. Footsteps echoed.

This new family could deal with Dad’s fallen form; she would track that monster and save his soul.

She turned and gave chase, stifling a scream, her hands curling into fists. 

She’d ruined the lives of the people she cared about.

Again.

Chapter 2: Repercussions

Sienna wailed and shook her father. He stared lifelessly at the ceiling. Blood stained his torn t-shirt from where the dog-thing had clawed him. 

“Zeran!” Sienna squeezed her father’s shoulders. “Wake up!”

He didn’t respond.

Her first encounter with the supernatural, and it had been a disaster.

As a burgeoning wizard (or as much as someone could be in the age where magic was mostly gone), Sienna had been planning her initial descent into the Indigo World for some time. She’d read everything on the Sparkchasers Forums, learning about vestiges, relics, werewolves, and other-dimensional realms until her head exploded. Tomorrow, she planned to report on a haunting. It would be two hundred years since the Stonefell Massacre, and something had to be happening in her local cemetery at midnight. 

Now that all dribbled from her mind as she watched her father bleed.

“Sienna!” Her mother’s voice cut into Sienna’s shocked panic. A lawyer with chronic insomnia, Maggie often kicked Zeran from their shared bedroom when she tried to sleep, and Zeran preferred the couch in the summer as it was cooler.

Maggie studied the scene with her owlish, blinking eyes, taking in the smashed door, unmoving husband, and screaming daughter. She ran into the kitchen and returned with their bulky first aid kit, expertly unzipping it and removing the scissors to cut away the remnants of Zeran’s t-shirt from the wound.

“Sienna! Call the police and the ambulance while I do this.”

“Is he—”

“Still breathing. Hurry.”

Relief washed over Sienna. She grabbed the handset, only to hear the crackle and hiss of the modem. Swearing, she ran upstairs, where she’d been in the middle of reading a post called ‘The Shadow King: The Mad Ghost Haunting the Stonefell District.’ 

She disconnected the call, tore downstairs again, and dialed 121 for the emergency services. She had a cell phone but couldn’t remember where she’d left it at the moment.

“What is your address?” The dispatcher’s voice was a calm baritone like smooth honey.

“47 Barbican Street! Stonefell District! Thunderhead.”

“Phone number?”

She gave it.

“Name?”

“Sienna Elystania Carpenter.”

“What happened?”

“Zeran! He got attacked by a woman! She had red, glowing eyes! The front door’s broken off. A dog mauled him! He’s bleeding.”

“Ma’am, who is Zeran?

“My father.”

“You call him by his first name?”

“Yes! So what? Send the police and an ambulance right now!”

“They’re on their way, ma’am. Please remain calm.”

Sienna bit her fingers as her mother covered Zeran’s chest in bandages and medical tape.

“He’s alive but won’t wake.”

The dispatcher kept her on the line while she answered questions. Maggie gave an odd stare when Sienna talked about the woman with red glowing eyes. Was that really Lukie? 

It couldn’t be a coincidence—especially as Inspector ‘call me Tamlyn’ Tanner had visited earlier to tell Zeran that they’d found Lukie’s murderer.

Time blurred and Sienna lost track of what she was saying. She hung up when the dispatcher told her to. Sirens wailed outside and paramedics entered. They surveyed the scene, checked Zeran’s pulse, and transferred him to a gurney for transport to the hospital. One of them trod on the shards of Sienna’s antler wand, crushing it into the carpet.

Sienna’s eyes misted. “Zeran, I’m sorry my relic broke and I couldn’t save you from the Shadow King.”

She thought she and Maggie would ride in the ambulance like they did in television shows, but the paramedics told them to wait for the cops. 

Maggie called Uncle Izdan, reported events, and how he needed to come here and fix the door as soon as possible in case the gang returned and stole the stereo and the antiques.

Gang members? Where was Maggie going with this?

Sienna ran outside, hopping from one leg to the other, until finally, the police arrived in a sleek blue sedan car, emblazoned with the golden stag logo of the Royal Venators (or Venison—a reference that Uncle Izdan and a lot of others found amusing). The doors opened and two uniformed police officers emerged: a tall dark-skinned Seastrider human man with shaved hair and octopi tattooed in his forearms, and a burly dwarrow woman with thick, braided sideburns who came up to her partner’s waist. They studied the broken front door, torn off its hinges.

Sienna raced to greet them, waving her arms. “Hey!”

“Hello,” the dwarrow said in a deep voice. “I’m Officer Darkendelve, and that’s Officer Tidebringer. You called emergency services?”

“Yes.”

“Make sure you speak the truth,” Maggie interrupted, having finished her call.

“I’m not lying,” she protested.

“Tell us,” Darkendelve said. “Hold nothing back.”

Sienna sat on the couch while Darkendelve listened sympathetically. Tidebringer strode about the lounge room, making notes. She explained how she was upstairs, on the computer. “And then I heard Zeran shout ‘Lukie’ downstairs.”

“That was his first daughter, who was murdered twenty years ago,” Maggie interjected.

“Zeran was arguing with the girl. Saying she couldn’t be Lukie, and she kept insisting she was,” Sienna recalled. She tried to restate as much of the conversation as possible. “Zeran ordered the person to leave. She smashed the door open and sicced her dog on him.”

“What breed?”

“It was big, with gray skin. Not a regular dog,” Sienna said. “Red glowing eyes, like hers.” She wiped her nose on her arm as she remembered Zeran throwing himself at the beast. Maggie thrust a lace handkerchief in her direction. “It came to me, and Zeran got between us to protect me. And then it mauled him.” She blew her nose and kept answering their questions until Darkendelve had stopped writing in her notebook. 

“Probably a half-ogre hailer,” Tidebringer said. “They can get as strong as an ox when they’re high.”

“Hailer?” Maggie asked.

“Hail is a type of methamphetamine. Common in the City, but it’s spreading into the outer suburbs as well,” Tidebringer said. “She broke in here looking for things to steal, and to feed her habit.”

“She was half-elven,” Sienna objected. “I saw she had pointed ears.”

“That’s probably why Zeran was so confused,” Maggie said.

“It was Lukie,” Sienna insisted. “Back from the dead!”

“I’m sure she’s at rest and in the Precursor’s Garden.” Maggie placed a restraining hand on her daughter’s arm. “We had a regional detective visit earlier in the day to tell us they found the original murderer from twenty years ago.”

Sienna listened in horror as they pulled apart and transformed her absolutely true accounting of events into rationalized nonsense. Zeran was under stress, so of course, he’d confused the intruder with his lost daughter. Sienna was ‘excitable’ and ‘imaginative’ and must have channeled her father’s excitement. The horrible, monstrous, gray-skinned half-human, half-dog thing was simply a large mastiff breed.

The community on the Sparkchasers Forums warned that the people of the Golden World were immunized against the supernatural, but it was another thing to see it happen.

Darkendelve stretched. “Yeah, these juiced half-breeds are desperate. Breaking and entering, attacking with a dog. That’s the problem with different hominins mixing.”

“Aren’t you being racist?” Sienna asked, disbelieving that police officers were saying this. 

“A lot of offenders are half-breeds.” Darkendale tugged her sideburns.

They asked more questions and left. Tidebringer advised the police photographer would come in the morning and take pictures of the broken door.

The two police officers drove off.

“That’s it?” Maggie complained. “They weren’t here for five minutes. Isn’t this supposed to be a crime scene? I pay taxes for this?” 

Maggie was the type to signal head waiters at fancy restaurants when her order was the slightest bit botched. She grabbed her phone again and dialed a number. “Inspector Tanner, sorry to call you so late…”

Sienna fumed as the nice Inspector received Maggie’s stupid version of events. This was so wrong.

When Maggie had finished, she laid her cell on the bench. “Your uncle will come by and secure our house while we go to the hospital. Wait here while I get ready.” She breezed upstairs.

Sienna snatched her mother’s phone, unlocked it (the code was 1234), and redialed.

“Tanner,” a man’s voice came.

“Tamlyn! It’s me, Sienna,” she said. “Listen, Maggie’s got it wrong.” She took a deep breath, and even knowing it was pointless, she told the authentic account. “The woman that broke in, it was Lukie. Zeran recognized her. They were talking, and she smashed the door. And she summoned a dog…”

The inspector spoke in crisp sentences and didn’t speculate. Already he seemed a thousand percent more competent than Darkendelve and Tidebringer.

After she’d finished her recital, she vented her frustration. “No one believes me. They made up some stupid story in front of me.”

“I believe you,” Tamlyn said.

Sienna sighed with relief.

“Unfortunately, the police will stick with their version of events. 

“What do I do?” she asked.

“You stay with your father. I’ll deal with this.”

“Do you know about… the other side?”

“I’ve dealt with the Indigo World before.”

That phrase meant Tamlyn knew about the genuine state of affairs. Relieved, Sienna asked, “How do we stop Lukie? What if she returns and tries to kill Zeran again?”

“Let me handle this,” Tamlyn promised. “Look after your father.”

“But, but—!”

“Trust me.” He hung up.

Sienna closed her eyes. What did Tamlyn know about the supernatural world? How would he find and kill Lukie? 

Sienna collected her shattered antler from the floor. The relic had worked, and she’d stunned the undead horror. With nothing else to do, she taped the wand back together as she waited for Maggie to return from upstairs.

Chapter 3: Anneth

The bitter truth about being dead hit Lukie as she chased the soul-stealer through the late-night streets. Over the past few weeks, she had been living in Tamlyn’s house, soaking in new music and television, and forgetting she’d been murdered. Pretending to be a stranded time-traveler from 1983, and that it was possible for her to rebuild her life. Now those fantasies were shattered. She’d enabled a creature to reave her father.

You’re a soul-sucking undead monster. Everything you touch turns to shit. Look at what you did to Dad.

She’d never resume her former existence, get no older. Cage warned her to keep away from normal people, only she hadn’t listened. After she’d confronted the Baron, she’d vowed to be a better, kinder, more compassionate being. Yet, she’d hurt Dad with her petty selfishness, the way she’d ruined the lives of her high school friends. Why didn’t I stay away?

She threw her anger into the chase. She was fast and didn’t tire, but the creature was quicker than her. Her quarry ran like a person scurrying on all fours, rear in the air. Like someone had melted, pushed, and pulled a wax human form into an approximate dog shape, with weathered, oily gray skin. She followed the creature down an alleyway, across streets, and through vacant, weed-filled lots. She nearly lost sight of it as a low, crumbling wall rose into view. Beyond the structure, tall, graceful trees stretched in languid rows, their long branches whipped by night winds.

The dog-thing cleared the stone boundary with a single bound. Lukie ran to the base and jumped but couldn’t reach the top. Instead, she punched the masonry, making a handhold, and pulled herself upward and over, dropping into the middle of an old graveyard. Lichen-spotted headstones lined the area in neat rows. Carved statues of angels and guardian beasts topping monuments reared against the well of stars above. While this was a place of grief and remembrance for mortals, the abundance of spectral energy flowing through the region energized her, like being at a disco.

The creature continued running, knifing between sepulchers and towering walls that held the columbarium niches for funeral urns.

Lukie increased her speed, pushing her undead flesh to the limit.

In the far distance, the beast clawed at the air. 

Lukie caught up to it and crash-tackled the monster. For a few brief moments, she sensed her father again: a chaotic medley of acoustic guitar notes, buried under a wild chaos of ringing gongs and howling voices. 

“Give Dad back!” she demanded. 

The dog-thing reared, throwing her off. With one paw swipe, it slashed through the Veil into Tenebra, revealing a red sky beyond, and the shadowy outline of a castle formed of darkness. Faint howls and cries echoed from that place, and the reverberations of a ringing gong throbbed at the base of Lukie’s eardrums.

The creature slipped through the rent. Before Lukie could follow, the breach between dimensions sealed.

“No!” Lukie raced to where the portal had been, waving her arms in the air. The thick, bitter sense of Tenebra overwhelmed her through the paper-thin Veil. She pushed with her mind, trying to contact the presence she’d sensed earlier. “Listen, you’ve got Dad’s soul. Please, I didn’t mean for that to happen. Give him back!”

Silence answered her.

Want some help? A dry, familiar voice probed into her thoughts. It belonged to her ghost lord; the powerful undead being she had made a pact with. Without that bargain, Lukie would have remained a mere shade within Tenebra, prey for the ravenous predators. With it, she had received a vestige—a soul fragment from her patron—that enabled her to return to the living lands as a corporeal revenant. All in exchange for eternal service.

While ghost lords were mighty, their power was centered within Tenebra. They needed a revenant to influence the physical world, and to address the unfinished business they may have had during life. Lukie’s patron, the (sigh) Dark Detective, claimed to be a seventeen-year-old crime-solving prodigy when she’d been alive. She’d lived overseas in the League of Independent States, former colonies of the Stormfields that had seized territory after a series of brutal wars against orcish empires. As part of their agreement, she’d wanted to open her detective agency again, with Lukie as her sole employee. Although, so far, Lukie hadn’t exactly been sure what this entailed.

“Yes!” Lukie gulped. “I couldn’t reach you earlier.”

It’s easier when you’re on resonant ground—graveyards and places of death. Suburbs aren’t great for magic.

“It’s Dad!” Lukie punched the empty air. “That dog-thing carried his soul into Tenebra.”

Yeah, there’s a ghost realm across the Veil. Lukie had the mental impression of her patron sitting on the couch in her dilapidated apartment, watching an old television screen filled with static.

“How do I get into it?”

Usually, you can’t unless the ghost lord of that domain lets you in, or if you’re deemed to be a native of that realm by the ruler.

“Usually? What’s the exception?” Lukie twisted her hands together.

That place is vulnerable now. The Veil between the living lands and Tenebra is marshmallow soft. Perhaps it’s got to do with a historical anniversary. I’ll try to smash into it, create a gap, and then you sneak in and grab your old man. This is an incredibly risky, dangerous, and foolhardy idea. Let’s do it!

“Thanks!” Lukie’s gratitude flooded their link. Usually, the Detective kept her emotions and direct feelings away from Lukie, but now she sensed a sharp, raw grief through their shared vestige. She saw an image of a short man painting a wall in the old apartment, who turned, about to say something, and—

The memory snuffed out.

“What happened to your father?” Lukie asked.

Gone. Let’s deal with yours. Focus on cracking that place open like a can of sardines. I’ll flick you the power, but you have to be the one channeling it.

“Is this like when you gave me that ability to drive souls to the afterlife?”

No. That was me giving you a glass of water. This is me opening the floodgates and drowning you with a reservoir of stormwater. For a short time.

“It sounds dangerous.” Lukie swallowed. Now that her patron was close, an edge of foreboding itched over her. She barely knew the other girl, and she had the feeling that the Detective was withholding knowledge from her. But that wasn’t important right at the moment. “Give me the power! I’ll do anything to save Dad!”

Raw spectral energy bubbled through Lukie, swamping her in a tidal wave of chill, deathly magic. She sank to her knees as forces engulfed her. The sound of dark wings hammering against an ethereal wind drowned her consciousness.

Focus! her patron snapped.

Lukie imagined a sleek surfboard and leaped on it, paddling through the stream of raging power. Reality tore open, revealing the ghost realm she’d seen earlier: a red sky, a shadowy castle outline, and the hunched forms of skulking beasts. The reverberating chime of a broken gong rang, distant howls echoed, and voices wailed in confusion and terror.

Lukie ran toward the portal, waving her arms. “Dad, I’m coming!”

For a second, she pushed her way across the Veil to the other side. She stood in a castle courtyard, drenched in shadow. Dark towers reared above her against a sanguine sky. Hunched bestial figures stalked in the corners and snarled, turning to face her with burning eyes.

Then the realm repelled her. The rent sealed, ejecting Lukie, sending her flailing backwards against a headstone.

“Dad!” Lukie grasped at the empty air. “I didn’t see him. Send me more power! We have to try again.” 

Sorry, sunshine. I’m pooped.

“Are you okay?” A long weariness seeped into Lukie’s senses. The Detective was hurt. The vestige of the ghost lord beat like a caged bird within her.

Been better. It’s not completely lost. Lukie had a mental image of the other girl resting on a couch with a cloth over her face. Two things crossed over before that rent sealed. If they’re locals, they can escort you into the realm with them.

“I’ll check.” Lukie searched through the graveyard. So much for not hurting anyone ever again. “Why did that thing take Dad’s soul to begin with?”

Something was listening to you. You cursed the girl to ‘go away’ and the presence reacted.

“But why?” Lukie insisted. “I didn’t really mean for that to happen.” Frantically, she searched for anything unusual amidst the rows of moss-eaten tombstones, carved guardian beasts, and spreading broad-leaved trees. 

You’re on a different frequency now, sunshine. Sometimes things are listening to you, and sometimes they’ll answer.

“But—”

“Help!” a panicked voice called in the distance. A woman in a tattered red gown sprawled in the wild grass. Long dark hair flowed about her high cheek-boned face. Blood dripped from a vicious cut across her forehead. Even in her disarray, she resembled Anneth Bluetower, the lead guitarist from Outside Sky, Lukie’s favorite rock band—the world’s greatest. Anneth? Here? For a few moments she burned with excitement at seeing one of her idols, then she reminded herself the real Anneth was now in her fifties and not likely to be in a graveyard in the dead of night. So, who was this? 

The woman reached out a hand. “Help—help me—”

Lukie ran to the other woman’s side. “You need an ambulance.” She attempted to assist the woman to her feet, only to find her fingers slipping through the other’s insubstantial form. “You’re a ghost!”

A sliver of discordant violin music echoed in Lukie’s mind. Hunger gnawed at her undead belly, and she stiffened, frightened. After she’d consumed the Baron, it had been easy to forget she ate souls to survive. She needed to feed again. Soon. On what? No, not going to eat this woman. She’d find something later.

“A ghost? No.” The wounded figure struggled upright. “That cannot be… I must—Wait. What should I do?” She buried her face in her hands. 

“What’s your name?” Lukie asked, studying the other woman. She looked about thirty, with stark black hair and a tawny complexion. The cut of her vibrant red gown suggested a different era. It flowed from a tight bodice to billow around her ankles. Lukie dug through her knowledge of movies, recalling watching romances with Karra. She must be from hundreds of years ago. When everyone went to balls, had horses and carriages, and the men wore top hats and ascots.

The ghostly woman regarded her with startled green eyes. “I—I do not know.”

“You came from a ghost realm.” Lukie pointed to where the rent to Tenebra had been. “With a red sky and a black castle. My Dad’s there. Please, you need to take me there so I can rescue him.”

“What is this you speak of?” The woman stared in confusion.

Lukie made a fist. Amnesia. Great. But common amongst the undead who’d been fed upon by something powerful, like a revenant. “Can I see if you’re alright?”

“I suppose?” The woman blinked as Lukie reached forth, fingers passing through her insubstantial form. A single violin played a slow, mournful tune. More violins or a full orchestra were needed to complete the thin melody. The woman’s essence felt intact—her soul hadn’t been consumed. And while her memories were absent, something remained within the woman’s mind.

“I think you can remember,” Lukie said. “Maybe your amnesia is temporary, because of the shock of leaving Tenebra.”

“Yes, I felt your touch,” the ghost murmured.

Wait, she sensed me reading her? None of Baron’s victims, half-chewed souls imprisoned in Tenebra, had been aware of her tasting their spiritual essence, but then again, their capacity for reason had diminished each time the Baron fed from them.

“Are you sure that you have no idea about that place?” Lukie prodded.

The ghost shook her head and squinted upwards. “No. Save that I had some terrible purpose about me, and yet while I sense the urgency of that task, its true nature is gone from my mind.” Her insubstantial hands attempted to grip Lukie’s face and bring her close. The ghost studied the revenant with an intense, hungry expression. “Do I know you, child?”

“No. I’ve never seen you before.” 

The woman pulled away and regarded the stars and ring above. “I thought… No. There is only silence within me.”

“Let’s figure this out,” Lukie paced, frustration mounting. To get to any place in Tenebra that wasn’t the endless void required memories and personal connections. Lukie had only been able to sneak into the Baron’s realm as they’d both been to the same school. If this ghost couldn’t remember the Red Sky Realm, she couldn’t escort Lukie there to rescue Dad.

“What do you know?” Lukie tried.

“Darkness,” the ghost whispered. “And now, I am here. What is going on?” She brushed her dark hair back, revealing pointed ears.

Another blended human/elf. The first other person like her that Lukie had met, and like her, the woman had human eyes, rather than the whiteless elven eyes Mama had. Perhaps blended elves didn’t inherit that feature.

“And yet, it is pleasurable to stand here beneath the stars,” the woman mused, staring upwards.

Lukie cleared her throat. “Do you mind if I call you Anneth? You resemble her, and she was an amazing musician.”

Anneth shrugged. “When you say that name, I know it is not mine. Still, it will do.” 

“I’m a detective.” Lukie grinned. That sounds pretentious. “I can help you. I handle cases like this all the time.” Well, once. I had to find my killer.

The bloody cut across the woman’s face gleamed under the bright light of Marmaruk, the thin planetary ring visible in the star-strewn summer sky. 

“I—I would be most grateful for your assistance,” Anneth whispered, her eyes dark pools under the ringlight. Her intensity reminded Lukie of her lost girlfriend. Perhaps if Karra had lived to her thirties, she might be like this mysterious woman. Lukie stretched forth her hand, and Anneth touched it with her insubstantial fingers.

The discordant gong chimed again. Lukie and the ghost staggered away from each other, and for a brief second, wails and screams filled Lukie’s mind.