Kayden’s ghostly companion was as successful as he had hoped.

“Look what I acquired, Kayden,” she said, sounding like an excited academic revealing her latest discovery. Her enthusiasm made her gleam brilliantly. He had to smile at the sight.

Which widened when he saw what she had to show him.

A middle-aged man was lying in the dirt. His beard was dirty and he wore a rough-spun tunic that was tied with a cloth belt. Not that different from Kayden’s own, just obviously less cared for.

“You actually caught one of them!” he said.

Mierin smiled with satisfied pride. “I certainly did. It wasn’t challenging once I managed to sneak up on them.”

She was certainly good at sneaking.

“You didn’t scare him too much, I hope,” Kayden said.

Mierin pouted a little. “I didn’t get to. He fainted just as I got going. A bit disappointing that I never got to show my full prowess.”

“I’ll be a willing test subject once we’re done with this nonsense.”

“You’re no fun, you already know me.”

“Ha. I feel like I barely know you at all!”

She didn’t reply to that, only looking thoughtful instead. Kayden headed over to her victim and lifted the man to his shoulder. For a cultivator, it was about as much effort as lugging around a fluffy pillow. Just nowhere near as comfortable.

“Alright,” he said. “Time to start the proper interrogation.”

***

Kayden didn’t exactly have a headquarters. Something Mierin wasted no time in pointing out.

“You’ll be interrogating him in there?” she asked after they had arrived at his abode.

Kayden paused at the front door. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing at all. For a cultivator, they certainly don’t pay you well, do they?”

“I’ll have you know this is the best lodgings in the entire village.”

“That’s what I mean.”

He stared at her. Then he shook his head before entering. This late, there shouldn’t be anyone to explain to why he was carrying around an unconscious man on his shoulders.

“Is it alright for me to enter your abode?” Mierin asked. She was peering into his lodgings like she was about to step into a new world.

Kayden blinked back at her. He was about to ask what in the world could be wrong with it when he understood her perspective. All this while, he had been focused on interrogating his senseless quarry. He’d gotten a little too excited that he had a live subject, a lead who could reveal everything.

Which meant he had forgotten that he had unwittingly invited a woman into his home. Specifically, to his bedroom.

Kayden cleared his throat. “My abode is no doubt humble, but I can assure that you’ll be comfortable.”

“You know that wasn’t what I meant,” she said.

“You’re making this awkward… Can’t you just pretend you’re haunting a victim?”

Mierin looked mightily offended. That wasn’t nice because it was like offending the sun—she started glowing brighter than before, making it difficult to look at her.

“I’ll have you know I stay out of people’s homes,” she said. “You have to give them some space where they will always be safe, just so the real haunting outside hits all the harder.”

“And here I thought you gave your victims some space out of the kindness of your heart.”

“When are we starting this interrogation of yours?”

Kayden wanted to complain that they had only stopped because she had made a fuss of being invited to his home. Though, if he was being honest, he had been itching for an excuse to talk with her. In other words, he was being too silly, so he adjusted the man properly across his shoulder and headed upstairs.

By the time Kayden had tied up his interviewee in a chair and awakened him with some judicious splashes of water, Mierin had appeared at the doorway to his room. It was almost adorable how she still hesitated to actually enter.

“Wha—” the man said, groggily, before shutting up as he saw Kayden standing far too close and far too threateningly. “Who are you—”

“Shh.” To emphasise the threat he presented, Kayden pulled out his Witherbloom and with a little channelling of energy, set it aflame. The man’s eyes widened. “You want to get out of here alive, don’t you? So keep quiet unless you’re answering anything. Make a single noise I don’t like, and you’ll never be making any noises ever again, understood?”

The man looked like he was having trouble taking in everything Kayden had said.

“Look, friend.” Kayden leaned in closer. “Just nod if you understood, alright? The only one doing the questioning here is me. Got it?”

“And me,” Mierin said.

Kayden jerked a thumb at the ghost in the doorway. “And her. Understood? Just nod, like a good little interviewee.”

The man turned his head mechanically to stare at the doorway. There was the slightest frown on his face. That was aside from the general dismay at his precarious situation, of course.

Then he finally nodded.

“Excellent!” Kayden took a seat in his own chair. He would have gentlemanly offered one to Mierin, but he wasn’t certain ghosts sat. Plus, she wasn’t even in his room. “Let’s get started. The sooner we’re done, the sooner you can get out of here, okay? So first thing’s first—what’s your name, my good fellow?”

“They call—” The man coughed. His voice had originally come out as an undignified squeak, which was rectified with a quick throat-clearing. “I’m Sarrel.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Great. Sarrel, let’s cut to the chase. I know you were one of the ones haunting the farms.” Mierin grumbled at that, probably at the idea that this man could ever truly haunt anyone or anything. “Who made you do it?”

“I have no idea,” Sarrel said.

“That was too quick.” Kayden brought his burning Witherbloom closer to the man’s face, letting him feel the heat. The flower could withstand high intensity flames for three days at a time. “Let’s try it again. Who were you hired by? Who pays you for your… services? I’d really like to not infect my little bedroom with the smell of burning flesh, if I can help it.”

“I swear,” Sarrel said. “I don’t know nothing about who’s behind this whole business. I just got a letter with all the details, and with money in it too.”

“And you just started ruining my good name and desecrating the art of haunting just because an envelope had some money in it?”

From her tone, it almost sounded like she was more annoyed about Sarrel besmirching the business of haunting with his amateur efforts than ruining her good name. Though, he supposed her name had never been good to begin with.

But the man pretended like he hadn’t heard Mierin. In fact, he wasn’t pretending. She had said that Kayden was the first person she could actually interact with.

Kayden repeated her question to Sarrel.

The interviewee looked a little abashed at the ridiculous phrasing. “I got a big debt, you see. Need to chop it down however I can. I thought scaring off folks at the farm just sounded like something that would be harmless. Like a scarecrow for people instead of dumb birds and beasts. I… didn’t know it was actually hiding some crooks.”

“So you know what they’re doing under the cover of darkness, do you?” Kayden asked.

“All I know is that they’re stealing something from the crop fields. I don’t know what for. The farmer never complains about any stolen crops.”

“That’s because his actual grains aren’t being stolen.”

Kayden didn’t elaborate further. He had promised he was supposed to the questioner here, not the one doling out answers. But he was stumped now. What else was he supposed to ask? The real culprits behind this whole operation had clearly hidden their footprints quite well.

“I’m going to need one of these envelopes and letters you got,” Kayden said.

“I can get it for you,” Sarrel said. He jerked in his chair a little testing, the binds keeping him in place. “Just—”

“Not so fast.”

“That’s right,” Mierin said, frowning at her victim. “He hasn’t answered if he’s seen my actual body.”

“Do you know anything about taking a body from outside the village?” Kayden asked.

Sarrel looked like his captors had lost their minds. “What?”

Kayden shook his head morosely at Mierin. “He’s clueless.”

“I can see that,” she grumbled.

Kayden turned back to the man. Sarrel looked he was trying very hard not to be hopeful about his eventual release. A dud. The man had proven to be worthless. Kayden had gotten all excited for nothing. He felt like kicking himself.

When he glanced at his doorway again, he barely caught Mierin leaving. He only drew level with her when she had come to a stop just outside his lodgings.

“Hey!” Sarrel said from back inside his bedroom. “What about…”

His voice thankfully faded by the time Kayden closed the front door behind him.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Mierin was staring out into the darkness. Her eyes were large and luminous, her expression somewhere between troubled and sad.

“I was perhaps filled with too much hope after capturing the man,” she said.

Kayden sighed. “Me too, to be honest.” He tried to summon some more positivity. “But we have other avenues to try. I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I was hoping he would be able to tell me about… well, me.” Mierin’s form dimmed. “Seems I was mistaken.”

Kayden was stumped for a reply. She sounded genuinely devastated. A part of him was aware how much her outlook had changed about the matter. When they’d first met, she had been so reluctant about finding out anything more about herself. But now, she was truly disappointed at the setback on the road to reclaiming the truth about her corporeal form.

“We can gather more clues,” Kayden finally said. He’d been searching for some concrete way of cheering her up when he remembered their little success. “We found one already, after all, Mierin.”

He put some emphasis on her name, hoping his attempt at encouragement would improve her mood just a bit. But it only made Mierin look forlornly out into the gloom of the night.

“I can’t see it, you know,” she said.

Kayden stared out into the dark. He saw nothing either. But then he switched on his spiritual sight. That was when the twists in the spiritual energy came into view, the tapestry of condensed power with the dark spots that had nothing in them at all. “I wish you could see it.”

“Yes… I could have used it to find out more. It doesn’t matter where or how far the little clues like my name are. A ghost has all the time in the world. I can take my time to reach the pieces of my identity adrift in this careless village. But how am I to do that when I can’t even tell what I’m supposed to be seeing?”

Kayden stared for a moment longer. “Give me a moment.”

She looked back at him as though intent on asking what he meant, but Kayden was already returning into his lodgings. He headed back all the way to his bedroom.

Sarrel smiled in relief when Kayden came in and approached. “Finally! Going to set me free?”

“Not yet,” Kayden said. “Sorry.”

“Then what—”

Kayden punched him. As a cultivator, he had been trained well. He knew just where to aim a blurringly fast punch to knock a mortal like Sarrel out. As soon as Kayden’s fist connected, Sarrel slumped in his seat, his consciousness once again taking leave.

“Sorry for the bruise,” Kayden said, inspecting the growing welt at the corner of the man’s mouth. “Actually, no. You’re a part of this whole business that led to old Nyester’s death, aren’t you? A knock-out punch is the least you deserve.”

Shaking his head, Kayden returned to Mierin. Thankfully, her despondence hadn’t made her disappear on him entirely.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Just silencing our guest,” he said. “Don’t want him screaming out, after all.”

Mierin’s eyes widened a little. “I wanted to practice my new scaring techniques on him!”

It took Kayden a couple of moments to understand what Mierin was implying. He scowled. “I didn’t kill him. He’s still alive. Just… a little uglier than before.”

“Hmm. I’ll take your word for it.”

Kayden smiled. Mierin seemed marginally more cheerful than when he had left her a moment ago. If she could focus on her haunting instead of the lack of her memories, then she was in a better mood now. But still.

“Here.” Kayden stepped past her and headed out into the night. “Follow me.”

Mierin was a little slow to follow his trail. “Where are we headed?”

He turned to face her briefly, smiling in invitation. “To get the rest of your memories. You might not see what’s going on with the spiritual energy, but I can. So all you have to follow me and we can retrieve everything we want.”

Mierin came to a stop. Her eyes were a little wide. “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“There’s far too many.” She raised her arms, her fists closing and her face twisting in a despair that she was trying and failing to keep hidden. “My identity is torn to far too many pieces. Those hollows you saw? There have to be dozens upon dozens. Possibly hundreds. You can’t go hunting after them one by one.”

“Why not?”

Mierin’s brows clouded over in anger now. “You can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re ill! Because I don’t want you to kill yourself trying to be some gallant bastard for my sake. For anyone’s sake.”

Kayden was a little shocked by her anger, enough to hesitate for a brief moment. “I’m not trying to kill myself, Mierin. I promise.”

She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You don’t think I see it? Those little moments you keep hiding away. Those times you keep trying top pretend everything is alright. Those coughs you hold back, those twinges that try to make you writhe and contort. How long will you keep lying to me, Kayden? How long are you going to pretend that you wouldn’t be running yourself to the ground if you went out tonight?”

It felt improper, but Kayden couldn’t help but stare at her flushed face, at her eyes that seemed to almost glisten with tears, at the way her fists were trembling ever so slightly. He smiled again.

Mierin’s eyes flashed like a volcano erupting. “Are you laughing at me?”

“No. I’m just appreciating hearing my name spoken by you.”

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Apparently unable to say anything coherent, she just turned away and stared into the distance, clearly not looking at Kayden any longer.

“I still intend to go out into the night,” Kayden said. “The chill, fresh air might do me some good.” He offered her his hand. “As would some nice company.”

She stared down at his hand. “I can’t take that. Literally, I mean.”

“Maybe. But I can still feel it, regardless.”

That brought up another little flush. Improper or not, he certainly wasn’t looking away. Eventually, Mierin sighed. Whatever feeling she’d let go finally allowed her to smile as well.

Her ghostly fingertips passed through Kayden’s. He did feel it. Just like the last time she had tried to touch him, it was a rush of spiritual energy like the leak from a spiritual dam, enlivening him. He felt better than ever.

Like he almost didn’t have Weeping Shadows afflicting him any longer.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Then let’s go out into the night.”