“…and then Harmony suggested I speak to you,” Loren finished. “She said you could help me find a way to use the apartment by… well, finding a way to live with the ghost.”

Steve nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “I see.” He sighed. “I’ll be honest with you, Loren—can I call you Loren?—our company doesn’t really do this sort of thing. Trying to pacify haunted houses people are living in, I mean. Has Harmony explained what we do?”

“She described you as haunted house flippers.”

Steve nodded. “Exactly. I’m sure you can understand why it would be against our business model to do exactly what you’re asking. We can’t exactly buy and flip haunted houses if we let it be known we can pacify the ghosts so people can keep on living where they are. But… well, it doesn’t sound like your situation is complicated or dangerous, but I’ll need to know more before I can say for sure if we can do anything. You’re sure the ghost didn’t throw anything at you?”

Loren shook his head. “No. I think it might have moved my phone, though.”

“Could it have dragged it around?”

He nodded.

“Not a very experienced ghost, then. Probably relatively recent. Did it try to hurt you?”

A shudder went through Loren at the thought, but he blasted aside the feeling and glanced down at his arm. “It grabbed me, I think. I felt something on my arm and it started pulling me.”

“May I see? Your arm, I mean.” Loren hesitantly held out his left arm, and Steve examined it. “Hmm… would you say the grip hurt?”

He shook his head. “It was just strong.”

“All right. Now, I need to test something Loren, and for that I’m going to need to recite a spell. It’s nothing big, just something to replicate a hand grabbing your arm. I need to evaluate how much energy the ghost might have used to grab you. Is that all right?”

The thought of something invisible grabbing him made Loren shiver, even though he knew who was doing it and it would just be simple Spiritualism, but he set the feeling on fire. “Yes, that’s fine,” he said.

“All right. Please tell me if I’ve reached about the amount of pressure you remember on your arm. Ready?“

A nod, and Steve began reciting some keywords under his breath. Loren caught the word ‘hand’ and ‘grip’, but the rest of the spell was a soft-voiced blur. Then a gentle pressure settled around his arm. Neither hot or cold, it was… well, it felt like someone had wrapped a blood pressure cuff on his wrist, except it was only half a cuff because… well, he assumed that the spiritform was shaped like a hand. The spiritform was invisible, the amount of magic imbued into it not sufficient for it to start glowing, let alone pseudo-crystalizing. It was just slowly applying pressure on his arm—

“There,” he said, and the pressure stopped increasing.

Steve hummed thoughtfully and made a note on a pad. “All right. Now, I’d like you to brace yourself and while I try to pull you. Tell me when the force is about the same as how the ghost pulled you.”

The similarity to his childhood pediatrician was very strong. He nodded.

Steve muttered more keywords, and slowly the spiritform gripping him began to pull. At first it was easy to resist, slowly the pull became stronger and stronger until—

“Stop,” Loren said, and the pull on his arm ceased as Steven wrote more notes.

“Hm… Yes, I think trying to convince this ghost to coexist with you should be possible,” the Spiritualist said after a few calculations and consulting something on his phone. “Pulling at you like that took only a small amount of imbuement, probably from the heat they were siphoning of you while you slept, as well as the summer heat from that morning. They also didn’t cause any bruises, so unless they were being really careful, they probably didn’t have all that much imbuement to spend on interacting with you. We’ll have to check records to be sure, but they couldn’t have been dead for more than a year, possibly as little as six or even three months.”

“Is that important?”

“Well, it can depend on the circumstances of death, but if the ghost has only been dead for a short while and doesn’t have a large stock of imbuement, then they probably haven’t had time to become violent from isolation.”

V-violent from isolation?-! “That’s a thing that happens?”

“Oh, yes,” Steve said. “It’s only natural, when you think about it. Ghosts are imprints of human minds and souls on the environment’s ambient magic caused by intense emotion in the moments preceding death, so their basic psychology would be human too, even accounting for emotional extremes caused by violent circumstances. The effects of solitary confinement on human minds are well-documented, and fifteen days of it is considered torture by the Federation of States. It’s not all of them, but most of the very active ghosts we run into are doing it for attention. They don’t want to be alone, so they knock on walls and make doors bang to get people to look at what’s going on. If they’re just left alone…”

Loren imagined living alone, trapped. No phone. No books. No computer. Just him, alone in a room he couldn’t leave…

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He shuddered.

Steve nodded. “Look, I said that fifteen days is considered torture, but that’s for living people. Living people can sleep. With ghosts and spirits… well, it’s something they have to learn and it takes a long time to learn it. The only other way they can sleep is to use up as much imbuement as they could until they shut down. That’s why people attacked by ghosts often report bruising. The ghosts that have been alone for a long time don’t really have a lot of self-control. They’ll pull you hard, throw things around… it’s the same for spirits too, and probably for demons. Spirits learn how to people from contact with the living after all, and the living don’t really like being alone. This ghost of yours, they’re in a sweet spot. They don’t seem to have a lot of imbuement yet, so they probably ‘sleep’ a lot because they don’t have the imbuement to stay conscious. That means they probably haven’t been trapped in that room all alone for very long. You say the walls were painted recently?”

Nod. “The painting wasn’t very good, though.”

“Well, of course it wouldn’t be if the painters had to deal with a ghost who kept trying to get their attention because it was lonely. You’re probably the first human contact it’s had since they finished painting. And if it was lucky, it was asleep a lot between then and the time you moved in.”

“She,” Loren corrected.

“She, then.” Steve paused, then grimaced. “I forgot to ask… how old did the ghost look like?”

“Uh…” His brow furrowed as he tried to recall. Those brief glimpses, in the dark and while in a hurry… “About my age or so? Somewhere in their twenties? Thirties maybe, but they didn’t look that old.” He’d never been good at estimating someone’s age.

The Spiritualist sighed in relief. “Good. Little kid ghosts are the worst.”

“Because… because it means a child died?”

“That and kids can be nasty little monsters. Either they treat it like getting superpowers and beat you up for fun, or they’re traumatized and violent. The latter usually want to be left alone, then go crazy because they ARE left alone, try to get people’s attention, then get violent because the adults trigger their trauma.” Another sigh. “Well, we’re getting off-topic. I think we can help you. Just from what you’ve told me, the prospects look good, but we need to do some research to better understand who we’re dealing with.”

“Harmony mentioned interviewing neighbors and family?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Unfortunately, the interviews have to be done face to face, since if it’s over the phone a lot of people will assume you’re trying to get their personal information. We’ll need you to let us into the building and introduce us to the neighbors.”

Loren frowned, but nodded. “I can do that.”

“All right. All we really need is a name. From there we can find them on Tomepic, and then use her contacts to track down her family, her friends, her employer, and anything else relevant. Maybe a police report about her death, if they bothered to come. A cause of death would let us extrapolate her state of mind. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they had a Necromancer to check for foul play, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Once we have that information, we’ll be able to assess the best way to approach her about just… being roommates, essentially.”

A part of him squirmed uncomfortably at the thought, but he nodded. He still wasn’t sure about how he felt about essentially living with a ghost, but… well, given the lease, having the option would give him peace of mind. As long as she didn’t attack him.

Steve gave him a serious look. “Are you sure this arrangement is something you want, Loren?”

“I’m… still undecided? I mean…” He looked down at his arm. “I don’t think she tried to hurt me…”

“No, I don’t think she did either. However, if you do decide to go the roommates route, there will be consequences. It will mean you won’t have any privacy, for one thing. Ghosts are spiritual beings. They’re normally not visible, and this one will be in the apartment with you. Basically, whatever you do, you’re going to have an audience.”

Loren blinked, and then his eyes widened as he understood what was being implied. His thoughts when back to that night, and the bathroom… “Couldn’t we… ask them not to do that?” he said.

“You could. Can’t guarantee they’ll go along with it. They’ll be invisible, after all, and at least within the confines they’re fettered to they can move through objects. Enforcing anything will be difficult short of direct violence with magic, and… well, you need to sleep, they don’t. If you decide to go through with this, you’ll pretty much have to resign yourself to having someone watching you at all hours no matter what you’re doing. Inside that apartment, you won’t be able to keep anything secret from them.”

That… “I’ll have to think about it…”

Steve nodded. “Take your time. It only becomes an issue if we can convince them to let you live there, after all. But if the idea is too uncomfortable for you, then this might not be a course of action you’ll want to pursue.”

He nodded.

“Now, as to how much all this will cost, Harmony asked me to give you the friends and family discount.” A smile. “So, how about this: you won’t be charged for any services as long as Harmony is the one who does it. Of course, we’ll still need her to tend to her other work, so she won’t be able to work on your case full time.”

“That… sounds fair. Uh, do you have an estimate on how much it will be in the end? Harmony said something about it being safer to have backup when confronting the ghost…”

“Hmm… well, provided Harmony does all the work, I don’t see this going over three, maybe four thousand rings when we assist in confrontation and mediation.”

Loren nodded again, slowly this time. “That… sounds reasonable.” It seemed about the right range for skilled work, if what he remembered of his dad getting some welding work done at home was right. Most of the expense had been in materials.

“Great. Why don’t we go see Harmony and tell her the good news.” He put down his empty coffee cup. “Diwata, can you take care of getting this to the kitchen?”

Somewhere in the room, the sound of a little bell rang.

“Thank you, Diwata. You’re the best.”

Loren had started slightly in surprise, and looked around the office, with its old, dark wood furniture, wooden floor, and high wooden ceiling, wondering where the ringing had come from. He hadn’t noticed a bell in the room…

“Ah, Diwata is the animadomo of the house,” Steve said as he got to his feet. “Say ‘hi’ to our visitor, Diwata.”

The sound of the bell rang again.

“Uh… it’s nice to meet you?” Loren said hesitantly, still looking around and searching for the bell.

It rang again, sounding directly behind him. When he turned to look, however, there was no bell in sight.

“Diwata, please stop teasing the client,” Steve said with a fond sigh. “Sorry about that. It’s just her way showing how happy she is that the house is full of people again.”

“She’s… a spirit?” Loren said, hurrying after Steve out of the office. Behind him, he heard the air conditioner shut off, and the door of the office swung shut.

The air conditioner wasn’t the kind with a timer or smart app. The door hadn’t had a mechanism to close it.

When Loren glanced back, he saw a little coffee cup with a spoon sticking out of it moving across the floor as it hugged the wall.

He turned and tried not to run after Steve.