I juggled the shopping bags and the vanilla latte as I tried to find the house keys in my handbag. It wasn’t going well and once again, I lamented the lack of ease that came with being a girl.

“You okay there?” Becca asked, sipping her cappuccino.

“I’m fine.” I lifted the keys triumphantly. “Found em.”

“Great.” She sounded less impressed than I was, but her good humour had returned after a couple of hours of shopping.

I unlocked the door and we pushed inside, dropping the bags at the bottom of the stairs as we removed our coats and hung them from the pegs on the wall beside the door.

“Jenny, love, is that you?” I cocked a brow and looked back at Becca who mouthed, ‘Dad’ and I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, here.”

The old man came stumbling out of the living room. His breath already carried the harsh smell of strong beer and his clothes and body were well past the time they should have been washed. Greasy black hair, streaked with grey and thinning at the crown, hung around his face while several days of stubble covered a face dominated by a bulbous nose, covered in tiny red veins.

“You got any money, love?”

“Not really,” I lied.

“Come on, you’ve been buying clothes, you can spare a few quid for your old dad can't you?”

I sneered, disgusted at the state of him. “No.”

His eyes darkened as he scowled. One meaty hand snapped out to grip my arm tightly as he pulled me close. The brown-stained teeth snapped as he bit off each word. “You lying to me, girl?”

“Get the fuck off me!”

The grip on his arm tightened and I readied a spell. Nothing lethal, just something with enough of a kick to knock him on his ass.

“Here,” Becca said, holding out a twenty-pound note. “Take this.”

His expression cleared in an instant and all anger fled as he eagerly snatched the money from her hand. “Ah, you’re a good un, girl.” His scowl reappeared for a moment as his eyes flicked back to me. “Not like my own nasty child. Won’t help her old dad with his aches.”

He was still mumbling to himself as he pushed past the two of us and pulled open the door. He left without a backwards glance and I swung to face Becca, my face betraying my anger.

“What did you give him money for?”

“Trust me, it was better this way.”

“Better for who? That old pisshead will just want more. You can’t enable them. They’re parasites.”

Becca didn’t reply but her disappointment was plain to read on her face and I felt a pang of something that I couldn’t quite recognise. Why I should feel anything just because she was upset was beyond me, but there it was.

I felt compelled to apologise, to say something that would erase that look she wore but I couldn’t think of anything. I just stared, as she glared back at me in the silence at the bottom of the stairs.

A knock on the door broke the immediate tension and I swung away from her to hurriedly open it, happy for the distraction. A young man was standing there in tracksuit bottoms and a grey hoodie.

His eyes were deep, dark wells, wide-set over a too-large nose and spotty cheeks. There was too much product in his hair and he reeked of cheap aftershave. In his hands were a handful of wretched-looking flowers.

“What?”

“C’mon, babe. Don’t be like that.”

Mark then. Jen’s on-again, off-again, boyfriend. Great. Just what I needed right then.

“Don’t be like what?”

“I’m sorry, alright. I said some things that I didn’t mean and I know I was wrong. I was just scared you were gonna leave, babe. You know I can’t get by without you.”

One thing was immediately clear. Aside from Jen’s appallingly poor taste in boys, Mark wasn’t her killer. There was no surprise on his face at seeing her body walking around and only the faint scent of desperation buried beneath the toxic mixture of weed and aftershave, that belonged to a boy who knew he’d messed up.

Not the killer then and not someone I had any interest in conversing with any longer than I needed to.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“We’re over,” I said. “For good.”

“Babe, please!”

“Not gonna happen, yeah. Just go away, I’m not in the mood.”

“I got you these.” He held up the pathetic offering and I had to wonder at just how low Jen’s self-esteem had been for her to keep getting back together with the scrawny chav in front of me. “C’mon, babe. I love you.”

Something about how he said that just set my teeth on edge and an already poor mood broke apart into something far worse. I met his eyes with my own and held him with my stare as my lips twisted into a sneer.

“I fucked your best mate.”

“What? Carl?”

“Yeah. We’re done, now piss off.”

I stepped back from the doorway and slammed the door shut harder than I needed to. When I spun on my heel, Becca was glaring with disapproval, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.

“Was that necessary?”

I shrugged. “Quick and easy.”

“Fucking slag!” Mark screamed at the door as he slammed his fist against it. “Bitch!”

I ignored him. He’d go away soon enough.

“You’ve probably ruined his friendship with his best mate and you didn’t even question him.”

“Didn’t need to. He’s not the killer.”

“How can you know that?”

“He doesn’t have it in him. He might knock his girlfriend about a bit, or play the hard man with his mates, but he doesn’t have the balls to kill someone.”

“And you do?”

I glanced down at the all-too-flat crotch of my jeans and laughed. “Not right now.” She wasn’t amused and I sighed. “I’ve known enough killers. He isn’t one.”

“How?”

“No coven gets powerful without slitting a few throats,” I said. “Mine is very powerful.”

She opened her mouth but closed it again and I smiled. I could see her struggling with the urge to ask as she argued with herself. Did she really want to know?

Curiosity won out.

“Did you…” She squirmed as she ran a hand through those dark curls, pulling them away from her face. “Have you ever…”

“Yes.”

Her eyes widened and her face paled but she stood her ground. Her tongue darted out, licking dry lips and she swallowed what she was about to say.

“Do you want details?” I offered, not unkindly. “Should I tell you it was justified? Something I had to do to save my own life?”

“Was it?”

“No.”

“Fuck!” She shook her fist at me. “I should banish your ghostly ass back to whatever afterlife you crawled out of!”

“I would rather you didn’t.”

“Who did you kill?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes! I have to know who the hell I am letting walk around. For all I know you could be a serial killer.”

“I’m not.”

“Why did you come back?”

“For my body.”

“No, that’s bullshit. Or at least not the whole reason.”

“Fine. Revenge.”

“Against who? Your coven?”

“Yes.”

She was silent for a moment as she digested that. There was fresh doubt in her eyes and her voice betrayed her fear. “No one escapes heaven for revenge. You weren’t any place good were you?”

“No.” I shuddered at the memories that sprang to mind. “It was a hell dimension.”

“Which?”

“Does it matter?” I shrugged. “They’re all pretty much the same. Punishment for the dark deeds you commit in life.”

“Only the worst people go there.” Her fingers were moving, dancing in the air as she traced symbols with them absently. As if she was already subconsciously preparing to cast me out. “Do you deny it?”

“No.” Another shrug. “I wasn’t a good person and I certainly wasn’t a nice one. Would I have gone to hell for my sins? I don’t know. But I was sent there. My soul cast into a hell dimension to suffer.”

“Why? Who would do that?”

“My sister.” My smile was rueful as I shook my head. “She was… is, a sadist. I don’t mean that lightly. She delights in the pain and suffering of others.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I continued softly. “Most of my family have a touch of that in them, but she truly revels in it.”

I paused for a moment as memories flooded me. Her face, the last time I had seen her as the knife sank deep into my flesh. There was excitement in her eyes. An almost ecstasy coming over her as she chanted the words of the spell that would catapult my soul into the darkness below.

She had writhed, legs pressing together as she fought against the excitement, holding it back as long as possible as she savoured my death and the torturous punishment she had served for me.

“I truly believe that she was brought to orgasm as she flung me into hell.”

“Fucking hell.” Becca’s wide-eyed stare was enough to make me chuckle and I waved a hand in apology as her cheeks heated.

“My family were not exactly close, but the coven came first.” I sighed again and brushed a stray strand of blonde hair from my face. “As soon as she had the chance to move against me, she took it.”

“So you want revenge against her?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it! Just a yes. No persuasive argument about why she needs to be stopped to save others?”

I laughed at the notion of such a thing. “No. I don’t care about saving others. She sent me to decades of torture and I want nothing more than to return the favour.”

There was a sudden and heavy silence and I glanced up, meeting Becca’s narrowed eyes as she gave me a hard stare.

“What?”

“Decades.”

“Huh?”

“You said, ‘decades’ of torture. But yesterday you told me you’d been killed three years ago.”

“Time moves differently in the hell realms. Some are faster, some are slower. By my best guess, I spent twelve years there for every one up here.”

Her hand went to her mouth, covering the small gasp of horror that escaped her. I looked away from her, refusing to see the pity that I knew would be in her eyes. I didn’t need that, I just needed her not to banish me.

If that meant opening up and telling her the truth, so be it.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered and I waved a hand in irritation.

“Don’t be. Like I said, I may have ended up there anyway. I wasn’t exactly a nice person.” I laughed again at that, the sound a little bitter even to my ears. “I’m still not.”

“No,” she agreed. “You’re not.” It was her turn to sigh then. “But, I think you could be.”

I turned to her in astonishment. “You’ve known me less than a day. How could you know that?”

Becca squinted her eyes, staring at me and I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was seeing deep inside my actual soul. It was not a pleasant feeling.

“I can see who you are, at your core. You’re soul may be grey and a little tattered, but it’s not black.”

“Huh?” It was my turn to be confused.

“One of the gifts of a necro,” she said, smiling. “It helps us determine if a spirit we see is worth helping.”

“And you think I am?”

“For the moment, yes.” She waved a hand towards the shopping bags. “So let’s get these bags upstairs and then see if we can figure out who killed Jen.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll help you stop your sister.” She held up a hand before I could speak. “No, I’m not helping you get revenge. She sounds like someone who will hurt a lot of people if she isn’t stopped. That is something I can do.”

“Thank you,” I said, surprised to find that I actually meant it.

Which was a new experience for me.