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The tabby cat batted at the woman’s robes, but its paw passed through the grey fabric. In fact, everything about the woman was grey, not just her clothing, and she was slightly translucent. Lyra could see the far end of the alley through her body.

There were a couple recessed doorways in the alley, but she would bet all the money in her pocket that the woman hadn’t used any of them and had drifted through the wall instead, because she was pretty sure she was looking at a ghost.

For the first time since she stepped from Boston’s rainy streets to the summer sunlight of this place, she began to sincerely wonder if she was crazy. None of this felt like a dream, that much was still true, but it didn’t matter where she was — ghosts weren’t real.

The woman moved toward her, and only now did Lyra notice that her feet weren’t quite touching the ground. Instead of walking, she drifted, moving through the cat who tumbled over itself in surprise. Lyra squeaked and pressed her back against the stone wall behind her, but the woman just paused right in front of her and tilted her face down at her.

Her face. It was completely blank. Not in the sense that she was expressionless, but in the sense that she didn’t have any facial features. There were slight dips where her eyes and mouth should have been, and a vague bump where her nose would have been, but other than that what should have been her face was a featureless expanse of pale, slightly translucent skin.

The woman’s hair was a darker grey than the rest of her and hung past her shoulders in thick waves. She looked ageless, more like a ghostly statue than a person.

When the woman spoke, Lyra had to clap both hands over her mouth again to stop herself from shrieking.

“Priestess, fear not. I have waited long for another of your kind to visit my temple once more. You are welcome here.”

The words were English. Lyra didn’t understand the context, but she understood the words, and that was enough to ease some of her fear and give her the first shred of hope she’d felt since that old woman started speaking gibberish at her.

“Can you understand me?” she whispered as she lowered her hands.

The grey woman inclined her head. “I speak to your heart, priestess, but your tongue is strange. You have the feel of the Great God upon you. You have traveled far. The doors to my temple are open to you, if you seek rest.”

Lyra stared at the apparition. Her heart wasn’t pounding quite so hard, but the reflexive terror she had felt upon seeing a ghost standing in front of her, real as anything, was being replaced by a creeping dread.

She clearly wasn’t in Boston anymore, but she was beginning to think she might not be on Earth anymore either.

“I’m not a priestess,” she mumbled, not sure what else to say. What are you? seemed like it might be rude, and the last thing she wanted was to piss off this translucent woman.

“You are,” the woman said with calm assurance. “Come. It has been years since my temple was tended to properly, but there is fresh water and shelter from the heat of the day.”

Lyra hesitated, but only for a second. She didn’t have any other options. This ghost woman was the only person she had met so far who could speak English, and all she had in her possession was the remaining bag of groceries, and her keys, wallet, and cellphone.

Her phone! Everything had happened so fast, and her hands had been full when she was carrying both grocery bags, and she hadn’t checked it yet. Now, ignoring the ghost for a moment, rudeness be damned, she reached into her jacket pocket with her free hand and took out her phone.

The screen turned on when she pressed the side button, but the little x in the corner where her bars of service usually were told her all she needed to know.

This ghost woman was all the help she was getting.

She rose to her feet. The cat rubbed across her ankles as the ghost gazed down at her, still a head taller than her now that she was standing. With a solemn nod, she turned and floated past Lyra, toward the alley’s entrance. Lyra followed her to the edge of the main road, then paused. The woman looked back at her, waiting.

“I’m sort of hiding from someone with a sword," she explained.

“You will remain unbothered in my temple, priestess.”

The woman sounded so certain that Lyra stepped cautiously onto the road before she could second-guess herself. The ghost moved on, clearly expecting Lyra to follow her, so follow her she did, though she was glad when the ghost turned the opposite direction from where she had fled from the guy with the sword.

She paused to look down the street. The small crowd that had surrounded her just minutes ago was gone, and the old woman was back at her washing. She saw Lyra looking and paused to make the same sign as before — a closed fist to her forehead, then extending her arm and opening her hand to the sky — before returning to her scrubbing with vengeance.

Lyra hunched her shoulders and refocused on the ghost in front of her. The woman floated slowly, unhurried as she waited for her. When she gestured at the building next to them, Lyra realized the temple was one of the buildings that bordered the alley she had been hiding in. She had been too focused on getting away from sword-guy at the time, but now that she paused to look at it, it was clear that this building was different from the others.

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The architecture of the front entrance looked like a temple. Two white pillars supported a small overhang that protected heavy, double doors made out of the same white stone. Above the doorway, a word was inscribed in the slightly darker yet still pale stone that the rest of the building was made of. The word was so worn that Lyra doubted she would have been able to read it even if she understood whatever language they spoke here.

Under the shelter of the overhang, next to the entrance, was a small table that held a vase of dried flowers and a shallow bowl, with a handful of copper coins and a quartz-laced rock.

“Be welcome, priestess,” the grey woman said. “May this temple be your home for as long as you linger in Kyokami.”

Lyra approached the entrance and paused at the doors. One had been left open about six inches, and the cat brushed past her legs to trot inside.

“Um, is the cat supposed to be in there?”

“She is welcome here. She was born in a basket under the offering table two years ago. I would be honored were you to name her, priestess. She has been a good companion in these lonely times.”

Why the ghost couldn’t name her own cat, she had no idea, but the question of names brought her back to something she had said previously.

“Is Kyokami this town's name?” she asked as she reached for the door.

Despite being made out of what looked like solid stone, it swung open easily. She stepped inside, and the sweltering heat of the day seemed to vanish instantly as the darkness inside the building enveloped her.

“I believe Kyokami is still considered a village, not a town, priestess, though I do not know when the last census was taken.”

The ghost’s words washed over her. It took her eyes a second to adjust to the building’s dim interior, but when they did, all she could do was stare in awe.

The room was a cross between what she might have imagined a temple to look like, and a library. A raised rectangle in the center of the room held a pool of clear water that spilled in a steady trickle over the edges to the floor, where it drained into small holes set at the rectangle’s base. At the back of the room was another door, this one made out of wood. Other than the doorway, every inch of the walls, all the way up to the ceiling, was lined with bookshelves. The shelves were maybe two thirds full of books, but they were books like Lyra had only seen in movies. Old and bound in leather, they looked like they should be in a museum somewhere, not gathering dust in this dim building.

The cat was already halfway across the room, and paused to look back at Lyra with a mew before she padded past the basin of water and made her way to the bottom shelf next to the door set into the far wall. The shelf was empty of books, and instead held a cat bed and two small bowls for food and water. The cat jumped into the cat bed and settled into the shape of a tabby loaf, watching Lyra through half-closed eyes.

A thick glass skylight was set into the ceiling above the water basin, letting in the room’s only light, though there were two unlit wall sconces on either side of the door at the opposite end of the room.

“This is… wow.”

Lyra wasn’t sure if it was the drop in temperature or the quiet — there was a steady drone of insects outside that she hadn’t even noticed until she entered the stone building and suddenly became aware of the lack of sound — but some of the tension that was making her chest tight eased.

She was still in deep shit, but the peace inside this temple at least gave her the room to breathe.

“The chambers underneath are prepared for your use, priestess, though they have not been thoroughly cleaned since shortly after your predecessor left.”

Lyra still wasn’t sure why the ghost lady kept calling her a priestess, but arguing the fact seemed like a bad idea when she desperately needed a safe place to gather her wits while she tried to figure out what to do next.

“The chambers?” she asked, turning to her unusual hostess. Her blank face was still off-putting, but she somehow fit in this dim and silent room full of dusty books.

In response, the woman floated across the room and paused next to the door while Lyra hurried to catch up. It was clear that the woman expected her to open the door, so she reached for the knob — it looked like old bronze — and turned it. The hinges weren’t as well maintained as those of the main door, and she had to put some weight into opening it. When it finally moved, the hinges let out a high-pitched squeal of disuse.

The door revealed a set of stairs that led down into darkness.

Lyra hesitated, and almost asked the ghost woman if there was a lantern or something she could use for light, when she realized her phone would work just fine. She had already taken it out in front of the woman once, and she hadn’t said anything about it. She didn’t seem too interested this time, either, as Lyra took her phone out of her pocket and turned the flashlight on.

The stone steps extended down a single flight before opening into a low-ceilinged basement room that was about half the size as the temple above. This, however, was clearly a living space. As Lyra turned with her flashlight in hand, she spotted a single bed set against the wall in one corner, a writing desk opposite it, and on the other side of the room, an armoire and a shelving unit filled with what looked like cleaning supplies, linens, and a few rolled up pieces of paper. Or, considering the general level of technology she had seen so far, maybe they were parchment.

There was another door set against that wall with a bar set across it. The ghost made no move toward it, so Lyra didn’t ask about it. She had more pressing questions.

“This room is… for me?”

“Yes, priestess. You are welcome as long as you wish to reside here.”

She hoped that wouldn’t be very long — any second now, she was hoping she would blink and be back in Boston, and all of this could fade into a strange dream — but she was pessimistic enough to know she shouldn’t turn down a place to sleep, even if it was a windowless basement and her landlord was a ghost.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it. “Though, um, it’s a bit dark. Is there a light somewhere?”

Her phone’s battery wouldn’t last forever, and it would drain even faster with the flashlight on. She didn’t have a phone charger with her, not that she thought it would matter if she did. She didn’t exactly see any outlets here.

“There is a candle on the desk, and matches in the drawer. The candle was made by the High Chandler of the City-State of Heliotheopoli. It can be lit ten thousand times before it goes out. Your predecessor left it burning constantly. You may wish to do the same, priestess.”

Lyra eyed the candle in question skeptically. It was an off-white pillar candle that looked as if it had been burned for an hour or two before someone blew it out. It was set in a stand that was backed by a shiny silver mirror, presumably to increase the output of the light.

She opened the drawer on the other side of the desk. The interior was cluttered with paper — not parchment, though she was still curious about the scrolls on the shelf — quills, what was probably a bottle of ink, and something that looked like it might be some sort of fountain pen, though the design was clunky and old. What drew her eye was a wooden box. The top had a rough surface, like sandpaper, and it slid open easily, revealing what were clearly matches inside, though they were bulkier than what she was used to and the tips were coated with white instead of red.

‘Thank y-” She looked up, but the ghost woman was gone.