"Oooooooooghrah," I said.

The world was ringing and I wanted it to stop.

I buried my head in my pillow and tried to fall asleep again. That didn't work, so eventually I reached out an arm and scrabbled for my phone. There was a thump and a curse. The cussing was from me -- I'd knocked my phone off the table. It was still ringing.

I levered myself up and answered the call. "Yes?"

"Dad?"

"Judy, hey! How's it going?"

"I'm okay," she said. "Mom wants to talk to you. Did I wake you?"

"No, no," I said. I was already sitting up. "I just left the phone on the desk. Is everything all right?"

There was the sound of the phone changing hands. "Charlie."

"Maricel," I said. "What's up?"

"You sound like you've been drinking."

Oh god. How to explain an astral hangover? "I'm just feeling under the weather, is all. My lips haven't touched one drop of alcohol."

"Went straight down your throat, did it? Why don't you magic yourself better?"

I groaned, and not because of the headache. "Do we have to have this conversation? Again? And I'm still seeing Judy this weekend aren't I?"

"You are. And we need to have this conversation because she has gotten into it."

My ex had never been comfortable with my career pivot into psychic mediumship. She'd tolerated it as a hobby and she hadn't minded when it started getting me out of debt. Certainly never complained about the stuff I got her. However, she refused to have anything to do with it personally and never mentioned it to her friends.

I suppose it was a bad idea to channel her dead mother and speak with her voice. That wasn't what had sunk our relationship but it hadn't helped.

"Listen, you've got to stop her thinking that she can see things," Maricel said. "She did something at school and her classmates are talking about it on social media."

"What did she do?"

"Ask her."

* * *

After my career pivot had gotten me out of a slump in late 2020 I'd moved to be closer to my kids. There was a park halfway between our apartments and I sat down at my favorite shaded bench.

I'd taken a painkiller and had bought a coffee. The throbbing in my head was beginning to unravel and I was looking forward to seeing one of the few truly good things I'd managed in this life.

Judy rounded the corner with a boy. All right, that wasn't weird. She was fifteen and starting to take an interest, although this boy was a fair bit younger. They were having an animated conversation.

I craned my neck forward and squinted. That wasn't a boy, that was Loki! He looked just like he did in God of War. I pulled out my phone and started googling. Yep. He looked just like his portrayal in the game. And it came out four years ago, so this couldn't possibly be Atreus's voice actor. He'd be seventeen this year and the boy before me looked all of eleven years old.

I did a thing where I shifted my sixth sense to my left eye and only my left eye. When I closed it, Loki vanished. I could still see my daughter and she still looked like she was talking to someone. So. She could see spirits, and they could appear solid enough that she didn't realize it.

I opened both eyes so I could see the both of them. They were almost at the bench.

"Hey Dad," Judy said.

"Hey, Jude," I said without thinking. She rolled her eyes, also without thinking.

"This is Arkady," she said. Loki winked at me.

"Hello, Arkady," I said. "Do you go to my daughter's school?"

"Ah, no," he said. "But I just moved into the neighborhood. It was getting expensive to stay at the hotel."

"That's a nice accent you've got there."

"Thank you. I am from Ukraine."

"Ah," I said.

"You understand. Judy has been kind enough to show me around."

"That's very nice of her," I said. "Do you like Burger King?"

"Thank you, but I should go. My mother is waiting at home."

"Your mother. Of course." We got up and shook hands. "It's been nice to meet you, Lo--I mean Arkady."

"Likewise, Charlie."

I watched him go. When I turned, Judy was frowning.

"What?" I said. "Did I handle that wrong?"

"It's just that I can't remember if I told him your name."

* * *

"How's Peter?" I asked her, after we'd gotten our food and found a better table.

"He's doing okay. Does his homework when I remind him to. Loses himself in his Switch every chance he gets."

I unwrapped my burger and wondered out loud if I should I have gotten him the gaming handheld. "It's like the only thing he thinks about."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

She took a sip of soda. "You did promise him a Switch if he kept his grades up. Mind you, I never needed a bribe to keep my grades up."

"Judy, darling, where you're concerned schoolwork is its own reward."

"Seems like the only reward I get these days."

She's said it in her usual perky way, but the words cut me. "Am I being a bad dad again?"

"I just think you try too hard to win him back."

"I'm not trying to win him back. That assumes I've lost him in the first place."

She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.

Judy's younger brother was twelve and still very attached to his mother. I was mostly responsible for the breakup. However, since she left and took the kids they'd been getting her version of everything. My daughter had always been the kid that would follow me around, so no problem there, but Peter was his mother's creature.

I sighed. "I just wish he'd tag along with you, without prompting." Maricel allowed the kids to visit every other weekend. Usually it was just Judy.

She patted my hand. "It's only for a few years. He'll wake up one day, and you'll be there, and then you can have your father-and-son time."

Again, there wasn't any sadness or heat, but there was a hook in her words.

"You're my favorite daughter, you know that?"

"Dude, I'm your only daughter."

"So tell me what's been going on with you," I said. "Your mom mentioned it had something to do with . . . spooky stuff?"

"Oh," she said, and she looked smug. "I helped a ghost move on, is all."

"That doesn't sound so bad. Well done!"

"Thanks," she said. "She didn't have a head."

* * *

She'd been sitting in class when she let her mind wander. It was just after lunch and the sun was pouring in from every window.

She looked out the one beside her desk and saw the nun. She was walking in the courtyard, leaning forward as if searching the ground for something. What it was, was rather obvious. There were bloodstains on her starched white guimpe, and above her neck there was nothing.

"I'd heard about the school ghost, of course. I thought it wasn't very original. But then, the Japanese hadn't been very original."

"Sure beheaded a lot of people," I said, and went for another bit of burger. I stopped and considered it.

Judy put her soda down. "I thought it was awful that she'd been searching for her head for almost eighty years. She didn't have eyes, for one thing, and she'd never find it in the well they'd thrown it into. People had long since filled it in."

"How'd you know it was in a well?"

"I just did."

I nodded. That happened a lot in this business.

"So I let my mind wander again and I realized I could send it out to fetch the ghost of the nun's head, and then I'd have it in my hands and I could give it to the rest of her."

"Just like that?"

"Well, I had to act right away."

And she'd focused, and breathed, and reached out with her hands. And without opening her eyes, she realized she was holding something heavy.

The average human head weighs around ten or eleven ponds.

"This was when your classmates noticed the smell?" I asked. According to Maricel, it had rolled over the desks, the essence of something that had spent years fermenting in a damp old well. Most of the kids couldn't see what Judy was holding but their noses weren't easily fooled. There was retching.

"All I know is that I held the thing out in front of me and ran."

I could see it. She sprinted down the hall holding that steaming spectral head. Behind her, classes slammed to a halt in the face of that awful primal stench. Judy made it to the courtyard where she handed the woman her head. For a moment she could see the nun as she'd been in life -- clean, surprisingly young, and full of smiles. Then the ghost vanished.

According to her mother, there was no official story. Some of Judy's classmates thought it might have been a prank but she was a good student and one of the more popular girls in her class -- definitely not the type to play with stink-bombs. Some thought they'd seen the nun, but maybe it had just been a cloud of flies. Who knew? It was all very confusing, and apart from a few puddles of vomit there wasn't any evidence that anything had happened. It was like the smell had only been in people's heads.

The principal had stressed, however, that if anything like it every happened again then Judy was going to be looking for another school.

"So Mom wants you to get this stuff under control," Judy said.

"Just like that?" I said. "After over a year of pretending she doesn't know how I've been paying the rent?"

"Oh, she believes in psychic stuff. She just doesn't like to think about it."

"A regular Aunt Petunia," I said. "You know, we usually help ghosts a little differently. We listen to their story and maybe get them to realize they aren't really still looking for their head. That helps them get in the right state of mind for what's next."

"Then you tell them to walk into the light?"

I shrugged. "Some of them see a light. Some of them see family. Or an angel. I don't believe in hurrying people along. They can go or they can stay. Anyway, they're usually much better for having talked to someone."

"Mom says I can hang out with you after school," Judy said. "I'm to bring my homework with me, and if you can find it in your schedule to teach me some of that 'wizard shit' then she'd appreciate it."

"She would, would she?" I said. I thought about refusing, as a joke, but it was more time with my baby girl -- how could I say No?

"It's a deal," I said. Judy's eyes lit up. "And you'll get me a Kindle if I do well?" she asked.

"Now wait a minute -- what's wrong with your phone? I read books on my phone all the time."

"It's nicer on e-paper. Anyway, you gave Peter a Switch and they cost about the same."

"Looked it up, did you?" I said, weakly. "Oh, fine."

"Yaay!"

"But I shall decide what it means to be doing well."

* * *

I walked her home. Peter was sitting at the kitchen table, playing a Zelda game on his Switch.

"Hey buddy," I said. "How's it going?"

"Hey Dad," he said. He didn't even look up.

Judy gave me a look and a shrug. He's just going through a phase.

I sighed. I sure hope so.

"Well, I should be going," I said. "Before your mom gets home."

"Bye Dad," Judy said.

"Peter?" I said.

"Mmm. Bye."

Loki sidled up to me on the walk back home. "Sup, dude?"

I looked down at him. He still appeared about eleven years old.

"Nothing much. BOY."

He winced. "That's going to be in the collective consciousness for a while, isn't it?"

"What do you think. BOY?"

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," he said, in a voice that hadn't hit puberty.

BOI.

"Okay, that's getting a little old!" he squeaked.

"Wasn't me." I said.

"Then who?" he said. He looked around.

DOWN HERE, BOI.

It was a fox the size of a cat, with ears like a rabbit's. It was a fennec fox, native to the Sahara.

"Oh, hey," Loki said.

I took out my Bluetooth headset and put it on without bothering to turn it on. It was going to be one of those walks.

"So," I said. "'Arkady?'"

"Even in Arcadia, there am I," quoted Loki.

"I thought that was Death."

"Him too."

"You showed me how talented Judy is," I said. "Don't think I don't appreciate it."

"You're welcome!"

"Did you have to befriend her, though?"

He kicked a rock out of his path. "I'll own that you take precedence here. You are her father. It's your privilege to mentor her."

He looked up at me. "But the path we're walking, you might not always be there for her. I've positioned myself as a backup, you might say."

THE GIRL IS GIFTED. GIFTS MUST BE NURTURED, TO THE BENEFIT OF ALL.

Set ambled ahead. In his fox form, with his dog collar, he looked like a lady's expensive pet. You could almost forget that a couple of trickster gods had taken an interest in Judy.

"Is she that important?" I asked.

"What do you think?" Loki asked.

"I know she is," I said. "But I'm a bit biased." We walked in silence for a while. "She is my baby girl."

"And we care about her, just like we care about you. So what's the problem?"

"It's just that I was waiting for my kids to grow up before introducing them to my god."

THAT IS UNUSUAL. MOST PARENTS DO IT DIFFERENTLY.

"They do, don't they?" I said. "But then, they usually go for nicer gods. Squeaky-clean gods. Gods who don't kill their brothers and bring Ragnarok down on their pantheons."

Loki thought about this for some distance. "We could bring in Gabriel."

TO TUTOR HER IN MATHEMATICS?

"It's all right," I said. "Look, I trust you, Loki. If it comes to that, I trust you with my life."

"I see."

"But when it comes to my kids, I don't trust anybody."

He laughed. "Good! I can work with that."