The shovel twisted in my calloused hands as it bit into the dirt. Luckily for me, fall had only recently started creeping onto summer's doorstep, so I didn't have to contend with the pain in the ass that was partially frozen soil.

I lifted the shovel, tossing its load out of the hole before repeating the process. My rhythm slow and steady.

Digging up a grave was more of a marathon than a sprint.

I had been at it for... I wasn't sure how long, actually. But it had been dark when I started, and now the gray clouds overhead were hiding the sun.

I stabbed down again, and my shovel thumped into something solid. I knelt down and quickly cleared away the remaining dirt to reveal a dark brown coffin. It took some finagling with a crowbar and awkward maneuvering on my part--there wasn't exactly a lot of room in the grave to not stand on the coffin. But I managed to pop the lid.

The smell of old death poured out of the coffin, mixing with the scent of dirt and oncoming rain. I ignored the stench and focused on the coffin's occupant, a skeleton dressed in a formal suit.

I gave the skeleton a quick pat-down before finding what I was looking for in one of the suit pockets. A cassette tape in a worn protective case. I closed the lid but didn't seal it just yet. Instead, I pocketed the cassette tape then tossed the shovel out of the grave. I sighed as I looked up, only to get a fat raindrop to the face.

"Thanks, mother nature," I grumbled. "Way to make the atmosphere even more macabre." The lip of the grave was a solid foot above my head. But being short and wiry made climbing pretty easy. I grabbed the lip and pulled myself up out of the hole and onto the wet grass of the graveyard. My graveyard.

A ghostly, translucent hand appeared in front of me. I accepted the help as I climbed to my feet. The hand was ice cold but solid. "Thanks," I said as I looked up to meet the ghost's eyes.

Matthews was tall and thin, with a short beard and a seventies-style shaggy haircut. Not that I could call someone else shaggy since I'd cut my own hair more times than not. Matthews had a general college professor look going for him. With curious brown eyes and a brown suit jacket with slacks to match.

I pulled out the cassette tape but left it in its case, not wanting the worsening rain to soak it. "Are you ready?" Matthews didn't answer right away, turning instead to look around the graveyard. It was old. Older than mandated procedure and standard practice. That probably wouldn't have mattered so much in another town, but Silver Spruce was as odd as it was old.

Generations of strange caretakers and townsfolk used this graveyard, and it showed. Some sections were laid out randomly, while others were filled with the neat, orderly rows of headstones that you'd expect in such a place. But rubbing shoulders with those sections, with no landmark or signs to explain the difference, was...the rest of the graveyard.

A perfectly straight, vertical line of graves was directly to the left of one of the orderly sections. Each one marked with a cross carved from a different material, ranging from crudely etched wood to glistening obsidian. Further up the hill, the graveyard rested on was a ten-foot-tall obelisk carved from dark green stone. I never met the ghost that grave belonged to, but damn if I wasn't curious.

Off to my right, near the middle of the graveyard, was a patch of perfectly ordinary graves. Perfectly ordinary except for the fact that they'd been aligned so that their tombstones spelled out GUH. Like I said, Silver Spruce was an odd town.

I broke the silence after a few quiet minutes. "You don't have to be ready." Matthews turned to me, his face distant. I didn't look at him, keeping my gaze on the graveyard. "There are ghosts far older than both of us combined who aren't ready to move on yet. If you want, we can leave your unfinished business unfinished." Matthew stared at me for a while longer before finally shaking his head.

"No. I think I am ready. Ready to find out what comes next, ready to be done." I nodded at the man and started walking. Matthews followed a few steps behind. We walked to one of my favorite places in the graveyard. It was a wide ring of graves near one of the fences, close enough to be shaded by the towering pines. An old weathered stump sat in the center of the ring, big enough around to use as a small table. Resting on the stump was a worn, battery-powered radio, its cassette player open and ready to receive a tape.

We stopped in front of it, and I handed Matthews the cassette tape. "When you're ready." Matthews hands closed around the cassette tape without passing straight through it. Ghosts could interact with physical objects; it just took some of their magic. So they could only do so much before they needed to gather more. Matthews fiddled with the cassette tape, turning it over in his semi-translucent hands.

"Do ghosts always know?" He asked. "What the last request is, I mean."

I shook my head. "Not always. They usually have a general inclination, but sometimes they just don't have a clue. Sometimes they're ashamed and won't say it." I sighed and rested my hands behind my head. "And sometimes they're too crazy to care."

Matthew snorted, then shuddered as a gust of wind brought a patch of leaves tumbling straight through his chest. "You get a lot of crazies?"

I shrugged. "Feels like it, but they're the minority. Probably... one in ten ghosts I run into are off their rocker? Sometimes more, sometimes less."

Matthews eyed me as he continued to fiddle with the tape. He was stalling, but I certainly wasn't going to call him out on it. "What do you do? With the crazy ones, I mean. How do you get them to move on?" I forced a smile that I didn't feel and looked up at the man.

"Magic."

Matthews gave a rueful chuckle as he shook his head. "Magic, the supernatural. I'd say you're full of crap, but...." He held up his hands. Hands he could faintly see the ground through. "That would be rather hypocritical coming from a dead man." My smile turned genuine as we laughed. It was always easier to help a ghost with a sense of humor. It wasn't that uncommon either. People could react rather unpredictably when they realized they were dead. But humor, dread, and philosophy were the most common responses.

Well, four responses, I suppose. But it was iffy since most of the crazies were cracked long before they ended up in the ground.

I always felt particularly bad for the ones like Mathews. Not all ghosts...woke up, I suppose, would be the term immediately after their death. Plenty drifted in a middles state, sometimes for decades or more, before being broken from their trance.

Then they had to come to terms not only with their own death but a world that was radically different from the one they knew.

"Why ah- why do you bother with all of this last request stuff?" Matthews asked once our grins began to fade.

I shivered and slipped my hands into my pockets. The air hadn't actually gotten any colder, but most of my warmth had run off somewhere. I didn't look at Matthews as I answered, keeping my eyes trained on the stump instead.

"My magic... it isn't free. And the cost for forcing a ghost to move." I didn't shudder. But I felt a familiar wrenching in my gut as I thought of the cost. "It isn't a price I like to pay. Not when I have literally any other option. Plus..." I trailed off, trying to find the words.

"It feels right. Helping fulfill that last request. More respectful. My magic is the brute force option. Even without the drawback, it would feel...crude. To use it on someone who wasn't crazy."

Matthews nodded before reaching down and patting me on the shoulder. I took comfort from the icy fingers. After a second, I shook off the sick feeling and looked to Matthews. His hands were still fiddling with the cassette tape.

"Do you need me to do it?" I asked as gently as I could. Matthews shot me a sly glance. "Is that your way of telling me I need to stop stalling?" I chuckled. "No, I meant it when I said you don't have to be ready. You can stall as long as you need to." Matthews smile faded slightly as he looked down at the cassette tape in his hands.

"I think... I think I've stalled long enough." He started to move towards the stump when both of us spun at the sound of tires and spraying gravel.

A large black truck fishtailed its way into the graveyard's gravel driveway before skidding to a stop.

Not owning a car and being as far from a car guy as it was physically possible to be, I had no idea what the model of the truck was. But it was large, and its tires were so jacked up I would probably need a ladder to try and get in the thing. My magic was not suited to direct combat against anything that wasn't a ghost or some other form of spiritual entity. But it did a great job in making me a target to countless supernatural nasties looking for a free meal, and it had done so since I was a small child.

If there were ratings for survival instincts, mine would be a star athlete. And that instinct picked up on the warning signs from the compensating for something machine that had just barreled into my graveyard.

I told Mathews to stay put then made a beeline for a grave near the road. It was large and had an elaborate carving of a forest on its front. I ignored that and went around to the back grave. Unlike virtually every other headstone in the graveyard, this one had a thick bush growing up against the back of it. I reached in and grabbed the object hidden in the bush. Then I stood, keeping the grave between most of my torso and the truck.

The truck doors opened, and four men got out. They were dressed in dark clothes that seemed suspiciously close to a uniform. Black jeans and black leather jackets with tight white undershirts. They even had similar haircuts. The clothes would've made me laugh if they weren't being worn by four possibly hostile strangers.

My brain immediately keyed me in that something was off about the group. They were all in their early twenties, and all of them were unreasonably well muscled. And not in the way you'd expect from people riding in a jacked-up truck. They weren't top-heavy gym bros supported by two chicken legs. Instead, they had the type of solid build you see in fighters and soldiers. Built for performance over appearance. That told me they would whip my ass in an arm-wrestling contest, but a sense of danger didn't truly settle in until they started moving.

They did it together, each group member moving a few feet apart from each other in perfect sync like they'd rehearsed it. And they didn't walk. They prowled. Their motions filled with the kind of grace and confidence you didn't see in most humans. That was enough red flags to make me think they were spooks.

It was possible they were a group of heavily muscled, highly trained dancers that had decided to pay my graveyard a visit.

And it was possible that I was a foreign prince from a faraway land who would soon inherit vast wealth and an easy lifestyle. Possible, but I wasn't going to bet the farm on it, or graveyard, in this case.

The leader, who was walking a few steps ahead of the rest, stopped and waved. He was tall, definitely somewhere over 6 foot. He had short blond hair and a build I could only think of as bear-like with his broad shoulders that strained his leather jacket and a brick for a jaw. His eyes didn't fit with the rest of him. They were dark brown beads that took in his surroundings with a kind of weasel-like cunning.

Before the man said anything, I unveiled my aura as quickly as I could. An aura was what all Telss's and mages manipulated to do magic. And unveiling mine would make it impossible to miss for any spook who could see magic. He didn't react, which meant he either had a great poker face or couldn't see magic directly.

I typically kept my aura veiled to make it harder for any hungry predator to draw a bead on me. But I couldn't actually work any magic with it veiled. So with a mental effort, I reached out to my shroud, the boundary of my aura, and cut a paper-thin sheet from it. Then, with a quick mental image of ghosts and the impression of friendliness, I pushed that power out.

It zipped away from me in every direction. The magical ping should reach any friendly ghost in town. I hadn't had time for anything more precise, but that would hopefully be enough. It had only taken me a few seconds to send out the call, and I quickly veiled my aura and returned all of my attention to the leather jacket.

"That was quite the entrance," I said as I shifted my weight forward to lean on the grave. Rogers wouldn't mind. He was the one who told me to put the gun next to his grave in the first place.

Leather jacket flashed me a smile that didn't touch his eyes. "Today's our first day in town. I guess I'm just a little excited to make the rounds, see the sights, and get to know all the local spooks!" My hand tightened around the gun.

At least that confirmed they were spooks, but a new group of spooks in town wasn't necessarily a good thing.

Silver Spruce didn't get people moving in that often. People knew each other. People knew me. Well, they mostly just knew of me. But I knew what to expect from the people in Silver Spruce. But these greaser wannabes were an unknown. Well, from the way they'd come in, I doubted their intentions were particularly wholesome. But I didn't know what brand of bad they were yet.

"New to Silver Spruce!" I said, doing my best to appear relaxed. "We don't get too many new people. So what's brought you all this way?" Leather jacket gave me another smile that showed a few too many gleaming teeth. "Silver Spruce is about to get quite a few new residents!" He said with a chuckle. "And I figured we'd go see the Grave Keeper we've heard some grumblings about."

I scowled. The rumor mill often rolled onto my shoulders, and I could understand! I lived by myself above a graveyard at the northern edge of town. And frequently talked to empty air. The ordinary townsfolk usually just looked the other way and kept walking if they saw something supernatural. But most still didn't realize I was talking to ghosts. Or they just didn't want to think about it.

Typically the rumor mill just told people that I was the go-to guy if they had a problem with ghosts. But now, it had brought a crew of unknown spooks to my doorstep.

I made a 'go on' gesture at the leather jacket. "Alright, you've stopped by. Now what?" the man flashed yet another false smile before taking a few steps closer to me, putting him about ten feet away.

"Well, you see, a whole lot of spooks are about to be arriving in Silver Spruce over the next couple of weeks." I kept my face neutral, but it took some doing. I hadn't heard anything about a group of spooks coming this way. And while I was about as disconnected from the grapevine as one could be, several of my ghostly friends weren't.

My musing was interrupted by leather jacket. "Some of the spooks might not be as kind as my pack and me."

My brain lit up on the word pack. If leather boy was using terms like pack that narrowed down the kinds of spook he could be by a lot.

A werewolf or some other kind of were-kin. But a werewolf felt right to me.

"This is a pretty nice place," leather jacket said with a quick glance around. I didn't say anything.

"My pack could protect it, keep it – and you – safe from the other spooks. For a small fee."

I didn't say a word as I stared at the man. He couldn't really be doing what I thought he was, could he?

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"But if you don't...." The werewolf, and I was increasingly sure that's what he was, looked around again and put on a mournful expression. It was as fake as his smiles. "Then I don't think this place is going to stay so nice."

Wow, he really went for it.

I stared at the werewolf in equal parts, disbelief and amusement. "Did you honestly just go for a protection racket on your first day in town?" I shook my head and didn't try to hide the bark of laughter that rose from my chest. "God damn, that's so shameless I almost respect it!"

Leather jacket didn't take being laughed at well. His face darkened, and a low, rumbling growl sounded from deep in his chest. It wasn't a sound a human could produce. It was deeper, more savage than that.

It was a sound that didn't have any place in a world of metal offices and orderly cubicles. A sound that spoke to a part of the brain that remembered cowering in the dark, your stomach quivering as you prayed the predator it belonged to passed you by.

"Maybe I should show you why some protection is a smart choice!" The werewolf snarled. As he did, flecks of sickly yellow began to flash in his eyes.

There are things you should and shouldn't do around werewolves. I didn't have a ton of experience with them, but I knew a few and had fought a few. Doing the latter sucks. I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, most of the knowledge I had about werewolves centered around avoiding fights.

Don't look them in the eyes is a good one. They take it as a challenge. Don't turn your back on them is another good one, though that one varies depending on the pack you're dealing with. Some take it as a sign of trust, that you believe them to be honorable and that they won't attack at the first show of weakness. Others, well, take it as a show of weakness and attack.

But most of those tips were for avoiding conflict by not committing any werewolf social faux pas. One had to take a very different approach when dealing with a werewolf, or werewolves, who intended you harm from the get-go.

I didn't tense up before making my move. That was important when dealing with people that are supernaturally faster than you. You don't give any warnings, don't show aggressive body language, or give off any kind of sign until you're ready. Before leather jacket had taken more than a half step towards me, I very calmly pulled my arm and the double-barreled shotgun it held, from behind Roger's grave and aimed it at him.

He froze as he was suddenly staring down twin barrels. "Get back in your stupid truck, or I will send your John Travolta-looking ass to the ground with a load of buckshot through your teeth."

To his credit, the man didn't immediately charge me. I was more than willing to go through with my threat. And the calm voice I delivered it in seemed to convince him of that.

And I was glad he didn't charge since while a load of buckshot to the right place would put him on the ground, he'd only stay there for a handful of minutes or less. Werewolves were tough in all caps and underlined a few times.

It was technically possible to kill them without silver, which I was fresh out of, but it was also technically possible to dig out the foundation of a home with a spoon. That didn't mean I wouldn't rather have construction equipment.

Werewolves could heal from any injury that wasn't caused by silver. And the only drawback I knew of was that it took energy from them to heal. And the weakest werewolf was still strong enough to literally rip a human limb from limb.

Without silver, your only other real options were starving them or strangling them. Neither of which I could accomplish.

Which left me with trying to get out of this by playing off werewolf honor and pride. Those were huge for werewolves and typically interwoven so tightly that I couldn't tell them apart. Leather jackets sneered at me, or maybe my gun. Hard to tell from this angle.

The expression was far more honest than his earlier smiles. "I can smell what you had for breakfast from here! Do you think I'd miss the scent of silver? You shoot, and my pack will hold you down while I heal. Then," he snarled. "I will choke you to death with your own intestines!"

I blinked. I knew how to keep a neutral expression, but that caught me off guard. "That's got graphic quickly. You're not going to cut my throat or beat me to death. Instead, you're going to choke me with my own intestines? Why was that your go-to?" The werewolf glared at me, his eyes now completely filled with flakes of sickly yellow.

Leather jacket was searching for something to say, though I felt confident he'd settle on shut up or something equally clever. So I continued before he decided which come back to use. If I wanted to get out of this, I had to keep the man on his back foot.

"That's your plan? You're gonna have your pack hold me down while you will roll around for a while healing?" Leather jacket started to take another step towards me, but my words caused him to freeze. "I mean, you talked like you were going to do something yourself. But now it's sounding like you need your pack to beat one human." I shrugged, making sure to keep the gun pointed at him while I did. Though I wasn't actually aiming for his head, you don't tell someone where you're going to shoot them when they might be fast enough to dodge it.

Leather jacket growled, the sound even more guttural than before. He took a step forward, hesitated, then stopped. His growl deepened, and his jaw made a wet popping noise as it jutted forward. He shook his head, and his jaw popped back. I kept a tiny flicker of hope off my face.

My plan wasn't exactly a complex one. I had just needed to tickle the werewolf's pride.

He absolutely could spring forward and kill me. But he would almost certainly get shot in the process. Which would put him in the position of being hurt by a lone human, making him look weaker in the eyes of his pack. That was also why he had just held back his shift. He didn't want to look like he needed his other form to kill me. And it would only make him look worse if he had his pack hold me down.

He was in a bit of a werewolf catch twenty-two. If he left me alone, he would look weak. If he attacked me, he would end up looking weak. A tingle along my skin caused me to pay attention to my peripheral vision. The next and final step of my plan was ready.

Leather jacket was going to look bad regardless of what he did, and the shade of red he was turning told me he knew that. So I needed to convince him that leaving was the best of his bad options.

"Get back in the truck. Or do you think killing me here is going to do your reputation with Silver-Spruce's spooks any good?"

He sneered, showing off teeth that didn't look entirely human anymore. "Even if you managed to shoot me, I'll tear you apart before I finish pushing out the buckshot."

"I thought you were going to choke me to death with my own intestines."

"I – shut up!" He marked his words with a slash of his hand and a step forward. He'd been trying to close the gap during the conversation and had gotten close enough that I needed to shut him down before he took another step.

"And why would I care about how the other spooks react? I might be merciful and just give you the beating of your life. But at the rate you're going, you'll end up in one of these graves."

He gave me an ugly smile.

"I don't know if it slipped your mind or if you are unaware, but werewolves have a great sense of smell. We are the only living souls in a few square miles. So no one will know if I kill you."

I gave leather jacket a cold smile. His own sneering dropped slightly.

"You're half right. We are the only living souls around here."

My magic gave me the ability to always see ghosts. However, I was still able to tell if they were making themselves visible to others or not.

And with my not-so-subtle queue, every ghost that had gathered from my call stared fading into sight. They started in ones and two's. Agatha came first, her old bony frame and whirling hair cast in a sinister light as she appeared to my right, her eyes blank and glassy.

Leather jacket flinched liked he'd been tased as Ben and Rodgers rose from the ground less than three feet in front of him.

More ghosts quickly followed. Old men rose from graves, children with clothes that danced in an invisible wind stared with malice. Men, women, and children from dozens of time periods filled the graveyard. And every single one of them was staring at the gang of werewolves with sightless or hate-filled eyes.

"You can probably still kill me. Werewolves are tough, after all. But if you do, then," I trailed off and Burnard, a young boy, dressed as a Renascence noble, continued without missing a beat.

"You will never experience a night's rest again." The werewolf whirled towards the small child, only to spin again as Roger spoke from behind him.

"Every plan you make will be public knowledge." Then Ben from his other side. "We will spill every secret you have."

Then voices from the crowd started speaking out one after the other. "Everyone you speak to will know of your crimes."

"Don't you want to be able to sleep?"

The werewolves moved until their backs were facing each other as they were surrounded by the horde of ghosts. The chorus of threats, promises, and unnerving questions piled on until every ghost spoke in sync.

"And all of this will continue until your dying day!"

The werewolves ran. Leather jacket didn't even try and posture or make some other kind of threat. Instead, he turned and sprinted off far faster than any human ever could. I almost thought they would abandon the truck until one of the fleeing werewolves seemed to remember it. They scrambled inside, and the vehicle tore off, spraying even more gravel than they had on the way in.

We all stayed quiet while a few ghosts trailed the werewolves to make sure they didn't loopback. It was long enough for Matthews to join me behind Rogers grave. Before he could ask any questions, we received the all-clear.

Upon getting the all-clear, every ghost in the graveyard immediately broke into laughter. Matthews looked around in confusion. It looked like the unearthly horde act had gotten to him too. Rogers floated over to me, his bushy red beard split into a broad smile. "We haven't gotten to do the ghostly chorus act in years! God, I forgot how much I enjoyed that one." He laughed.

Matthews looked from me to Rogers and back again. "That one? Do you just have a bunch of routine acts readied in case you need them?" Rogers nodded before giving me an icy pat on the shoulder.

"They come in handy! Of course, we don't need them all the time, but when a group of thugs tries to pressure Alder here, we get to pull out one of the routines."

Ben floated up through the ground in front of me and shouted, "boo!" I stared at Ben for a second, then sneered and turned my attention back to Matthews.

"We have a lot of plans, actually. Plenty of my friends have spent more time than is probably healthy thinking of spooky ghost roles they can use when the time comes."

"Hey! Don't just sneer, then turn away!" I continued to ignore Ben as I gestured around us. "Then we have like, a handful of acts that all the old ghosts know."

Most of the ghosts I had just mentioned were waving to me before fading away. Despite the interruption, the morning had been set aside for Matthews last request, and he had asked for space. That was something all the ghosts took seriously.

Matthews nodded slowly while looking around at the departing ghosts. "I can see how that could come in handy."

"It's kept Alder alive more than once," Rogers said as he started to walk away. "Goodbye, Matthews." Rogers waved, and Matthews returned the gesture.

I finally acknowledged Ben with a condescending pat on his shoulder. "Go and think about what you've done, then come back with a less pathetic attempt to scare me."

Ben glowered down at me past a nose that had been broken more than once. "It's not my fault that you're jaded to so many ghostly scare tactics."

I scoffed. "Quit grabbing for the low-hanging fruits and come up with some new material. Now get!" I made a shooing gesture, and Ben floated off with some grumbling about how he didn't get any respect.

A few minutes later, it was just me and Matthews in the graveyard.

We walked back to the old radio and the even older stump it sat on. The graveyard was, pardon the pun, deathly quiet. The silence was even more pronounced after the chaos of a few minutes ago.

Matthews stared down at the cassette, his expression cloudy. I felt a cold anger towards leather jacket that had been mostly absent while he was threatening me.

Matthews had worked up the courage to move on. In a way, he worked up the courage to die again, only for that jackass to come barreling in. And now Matthews had to go through that again.

He had climbed up the cliff and steeled himself to jump into the waters below. Only to get jerked back from the ledge.

We didn't talk or joke this time. Matthews stood, and I waited. Eventually, he looked up and turned to me. Whatever he was going to say was cut off as yet another set of tires spun into the graveyard, sending even more gravel spraying.

"You have got to be kidding me!" I snarled. Spinning on my heel and stalked back towards the drive, in time to see a very different vehicle sliding to a stop. The van looked like a cousin to the mystery machine from Scooby-Doo. But instead of that classic paint job, it was dark green and covered with drawings of wolves.

In a brief glance, I saw a wolf in a night robe smoking a pipe, a wolf in a leather jacket with shoulder spikes smoking in front of a school with the words "stay in school" over its head. And a poker table half composed of serious-faced humans playing cards with the other half of equally serious-faced wolves, who were somehow also holding cards. The oddness of it made me pause, but a mixture of frustration and anger caused me to keep going.

I went right back to Rogers grave and picked up the shotgun, lamenting my sore arm as I did. I'd partially supported the gun with my leg, but holding it in place with one hand for so long had been a struggle. Then, the driver-side door practically flew open, and a woman launched out.

She was tall, blond, and had the same strongly muscled build as the earlier werewolves. That, all the wolf imagery on the van, and the fact that her eyes were bright red, made me think she just might be a werewolf.

That theory gained more traction as she crossed the distance between us far faster than a human body could manage. She stopped a few feet away and stared down at me with a frantic look in her red eyes.

I tried not to meet those eyes. With the way this morning was going, I kind of doubted this would be a pleasant visit, but no need to intentionally aggravate her until she whipped out the protection scheme.

"Are you the Grave Keeper?" She asked, her voice deep and desperate. I blinked and looked around. For a second, I considered saying no, but since I was the only other living person here, and werewolves were very hard to lie to, I decided lying probably wasn't my best move.

"Yeah, I'm the grave keeper."

"And you help people with ghosts?"

"...Yeah."

The woman gave one sharp nod and gestured to the van behind her.

"Get in the van."

I blinked again and took a few unconscious steps back. Which revealed the shotgun I was holding, but the woman was close enough that I doubted I could get a shot off before she was on me anyway. "Hard pass on that one. Big strangers, and strange vans, you know the drill."

I shifted the shotgun slightly, moving the barrel a bit closer to the woman. "Plus, you didn't offer me any candy, so frankly, your offer is a little insulting."

The woman crossed the distance between us faster than I could react. I barely managed a twitch of the gun before it was slapped out of my hand, the gun's lack of a trigger guard the only thing saving me from some broken fingers.

Then a hand was around my throat, and I was a few feet higher than usual. I had been choked one or two, three? I had been choked a distressing number of times before, and it never got easier. Even if you know staying calm was your best option, your brain hits the panic button when its supply of the good stuff gets cut off. As chokings went, this was one of the best since it ended almost immediately. The grip shifted to my collar as I was pressed into something solid. While being held up by the collar of your jacket was very uncomfortable, it was a lot better than being choked out.

I managed to look around enough to see that the werewolf had shoved me against the stone obelisk.

Said werewolf was currently growling. The sound was deep and strong enough to literally rattle my bones. "One of my pack is being possessed." The woman's voice came out stilted, random words turning guttural only for the next to sound totally human. "If you refuse to help him." The hand on my collar tightened and relaxed several times in quick succession.

I had been getting ready to try and knee her in the jaw. It probably wouldn't have done much, but if I was lucky, I might get her to clamp down on her own tongue. That plan probably had a better chance of getting me pasted against the obelisk than getting her to let go, but I was a little short on options.

But when she mentioned possession, I went limp. The fact I'd been up since before dawn, the frustration I felt at Matthews getting cock blocked twice, even the fact that I was being held a few feet off the ground, it didn't matter anymore.

Someone had ghost problems, and I helped when it came to ghosts, end of story.

Possessions were time-sensitive, they could last quite a while if the ghost was possessing someone with a strong will, but once they gained control, they could be off in any direction.

And it was only a matter of time before the body's original owner passed on.

The werewolf could be trying to lead me into a trap, but why bother? The woman could kill me with a twitch.

"How long ago?" To her credit, the werewolf only paused for a moment at my sudden change in demeanor. "Roughly seven minutes ago." I blinked. Hot damn, she had moved fast!

I was about to agree to go, but I wasn't alone here. I turned my head to Matthews, who had been shooting questions— which I had been tunning out— the entire time. "A possession is time-sensitive. Are you okay if I-" "Go." I hesitated. "Are you sure?" "Go." Matthews voice was firm.

I turned back to the woman, who'd been looking between me and the seemingly empty air with a mixture of confusion and desperate impatiences.

"Let's go."

I don't know why, considering how she'd been throwing me around, but when I said let's go, I wasn't expecting to get pulled to the van at terrifying speeds like a fleshy sack of potatoes.

By the time I got my barrings, the van door was shut, and we were off in yet another spray of gravel.