In and out. Just breathe in and out. It was the only thing Danni was trying to focus on. Opening her eyes and sitting straight up, she was determined to rid herself of thoughts and feelings that didn’t belong to her anymore. Dyed charcoal-colored hair stuck to her face and was tugged out of the half-assed braid she had managed to throw it into before going to work last night. She’d had back-to-back calls for love-sick people all evening and then the final one to make an appearance was of course a college girl hoping to hear back from her unrequited love after his untimely death. In order for her to contact him, Danni had to jump through her. From there she’d basically road shotgun in the woman’s body. Sitting in the woman’s body felt like ill-fitting clothing, pulling her in ways that didn’t feel quite right. As her head turned, she saw what had been hidden just out of normal people’s sight. She wasn’t sure how exactly anyone could get any work done with the ghost making such a fuss. A grim reaper had come to take him to his afterlife, but the guy wasn’t getting it. Saying things like “I’m not dead! I just have to finish this class and I graduate!” Blah, blah, blah.

To which the reaper, who had made eye contact with her for a brief moment, winking at her, replied, “Sure, buddy and you don’t find it strange at all that you’re reading sideways?” Danni obviously couldn’t interrupt the lecture happening from the girl’s body, but Blaine knew she was currently in the brunette bombshell made obvious by him dragging the man over to her. The woman turned her head back to the greying man in tweed, forcing Danni along with her.

“Go ahead and say goodbye to your beloved. And make it quick. I don’t have all night.” Blaine’s gravelly voice reverberated in her skull. There was a sharp shuffling and a squelching, which she assumed was his head bobbing from the strands of viscera. He’d shoved him up to the woman.

“Beloved? What? Who even is this?”

Ouch.

“Such a shame. Making people waste their valuable time on nothing. You’re telling me, you don’t even know this woman’s name? You’ve sat in the same class for the better part of a year and nothing comes to mind?”

The woman’s head glances back to where the spirit had been sitting, not seeing him holding his head upright and squinting at her. “No. Look, I’m gay. She’s nice looking and all but not my ‘beloved’ or whatever. Wait- is this a test?”

A deep sigh. “I hope your client won’t be hurt too much by this, Danni. You can always lie. I won’t tell.” He’d whispered the last part in her ear brushing her cheek with his chin.

It had taken some convincing but eventually, the spirit went without struggle, which was nice. She let the woman she had been inhabiting go and was suddenly slammed back into her own body. The candles she had lit for ambiance were snuffed and she was cold in her living room. Alone. She’d scuttled off to bed and had been racked with dreams and nightmares that weren’t hers.

“He sure does have pretty eyes though…” she mused, picking out her basic outfit for work, thinking of those dark eyes surrounded by thick, ginger lashes. It hadn’t been the first time she’d seen him or talked to him. For the past few years, she’d worked with him to get the spirits that hung around the funeral home after they were supposed to move on. He was always insufferable.

Also, sometimes he was useless, regardless of how much she enjoyed his flirting with her (not that she would ever admit that to him). Some ghosts he couldn’t force. They were normally stuck because of the way they died. If they were in denial and couldn’t be convinced or if they died horribly, the reapers sometimes had an issue getting them to pass over. Wanting revenge or to simply wait for one person or another to show up for them. That’s why her family offered the soul connection service in the first place: to make it easier for them to move on.

Blaine looked all human with the exception of a half skull mask covering the top of his face. It looked like a really good Halloween costume. The edges were completely fused to the skin underneath, looking almost painful in some places. A swath of ginger hair jutted from behind the broken edge of the frontal region of the skull. Underneath the knocked-out teeth, half of a smirk would normally be lurking. Inside the eye sockets was a small patch of pale skin, a shock of ginger eyelashes, and dark brown eyes. Most of his body was cloaked in a burgundy tweed suit and leather gloves, which was his most rotated outfit. A gentle wafting of black smoke seemed to leak out just slightly at the seams, leaving him in a halo of darkness. She stroked her own cheekbone in thought. What would it feel like to touch the bones on his face?

Walking down the stairs to her little kitchen, she flips the electric kettle on as well as the coffee maker. While that’s running she checks on the status of her new addition to the family, an orange and grey tabby named Loki. He managed to make his way in through a window that wasn’t all the way shut during a rainstorm a few weeks back. She was glad. The number of ghosts that bothered her regularly had dramatically dropped since his arrival.

There was a knock on her window just as she had bent down where Loki was napping in a pile of dirty laundry that was left forgotten in front of the washer. “But they haven’t stopped yet,” she sighed to herself. She walks over to the window and opens it. “Finally! I was waiting forever for you to wake up!” The voice belongs to a teenage girl. She’s dressed in ripped jeans, muddy flannel, perpetually wet hair, and running dark makeup. There are bruises covering her throat and wrists, marring her brown skin, that will never fade with time. She doesn’t wait for an invitation before walking through the wall and disappearing only to reappear on the stool in front of her kitchen table, which is just a piece of wood mounted on the wall with chairs in front of it.

Looking at her sitting expectedly, a huge, bright smile smacked on her face, it was hard not to have her heart squeeze for the girl. “Sorry, Maggie, I had a long night last night,” she says while pulling out two mugs and preparing her tea and Maggie’s coffee. The ghost managed to look somewhat bashful. The slight blue tinge to her was the only indicator that she was anything other than a young woman. “It’s ok. I just… get lonely sometimes. George hasn’t been around in a long time.” The girl’s eyes well with unshed tears. Danni doubted she would ever be able to actually cry again. That would be a release and Maggie was stuck, trapped in terrible memories.

George on the other hand was one of those helpful spirits. He stuck around to look after the younger kids until they were ready to meet their reaper. Almost like a grandfather to most of them, it was odd that he would be gone for so long without telling someone. His technical title was Guardian. He worked closely with her family. Maggie was the closest to him, latching on a parental figure.

She must want me to help, she grumbles to herself internally.

Another look at the girl relishing in the smell of her coffee, as she can’t actually drink it anymore, and her mind was swayed. “I'll look for him and find out what’s going on,” she raises her hand when Maggie jumps out of the chair and starts thanking her, “but you have to promise me you’ll stay away from that house.”

Of course, it was the house where she was brutally assaulted and murdered. She couldn’t leave it alone and all it did was hold her back from healing. After the initial shock, the girl nods her head silently. She couldn’t help but think of her little sister. “Good. Now get out. I have to finish getting ready.”

***

Pulling up to the little shop, she sloths her way out of her beat-up Civic and drags through the doors. The door smacks behind her, carrying with it the tinkling of bells. Danni raises her tumbler filled with the nectar of trickster gods (pistachio coffee) to the front desk boy, Kevin, in greeting. Kevin was a twenty-two-year-old with dark green and purple dreads and an eyebrow piercing. Probably the main character. He smiles back, blessedly not bothering to ask her about her day. She just wanted to continue the silence for a while.

The shop was filled to the brim with all manner of intriguing items relating to the occult. Anything from sparkling crystals for the baby witches just dipping their toes into something other than the Southern Baptism that ran rampant in this part of the world, all the way to the bones, railroad stakes, and sheep blood. She pushes open the door with a smiling sun painted on the front that leads into her ‘office’. It’s really just a heavy oak desk, a few bookshelves, a bean bag chair, and a mini fridge.

After hefting her two bags onto the desk, she flops into the chair in front of it and clicks the computer on. She spends an hour replying to emails and messages from the shop’s website before there’s a quiet knock on the door.

“Come in,” she calls, aggressively clacking on the keyboard to finish answering a question from someone who was clearly a fan of Dungeons and Dragons. They were wearing a long robe that draped over them like a blanket. The hood of the robe hung limply over their face, obscuring everything but a thin-lipped mouth. Thin was generous, given she’d seen more on a bird than the person in front of her, almost as if they were a dried-out corpse. Quietly, they closed the door behind them and glided through the room. If it weren’t for the immediate prickle of fear that ran up her spine, she would have laughed.

Snapping out of it, she smiles brightly. This was just another eccentric client, she was sure. “Good morning and blessings. How can I help you today?” She saw the pale skin stretch into something like a smile as they turned and ran a scrawny, white finger of the spines of her books in the corner absentmindedly.

“I’m not sure you can help me. I’m looking for a text. Something ancient.”

The voice that escapes the shadows is wheezing and dry. As if this really were a corpse come back to life. Suddenly, he turned sharp on his heals and slammed his palms on her desk with a strength she hadn’t imagined he’d possessed. With him towering over her, she could glance the dull sunken, eyes that sat amongst pale, taught skin. Every fiber of her being stood on end, willing her to tear away from his gaze of run for her life. And yet she stayed, stock still, her hands still resting on the keyboard in front of her.

Even as the putrid smell of decay wafted over her, making her eyes water, she still couldn’t look away. The dark, emptiness of the man in front of her making her thoughts melt into nothing and swirl out of her head like a toilet flushing. They were replaced with a white, hot terror that engulfed her. Just as she began to fear she may never move from where she currently sat spiraling in infinity, he moved away from her. Immediately, the shock falls off of her, as if she had been holding her breath the entire time and was just now allowed to breathe. And in fact, her own breathing came out harsher, more labored. How odd. Why had she been so worried, again? He was back to perusing the books on her shelf.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“But I think, in the coming future, I might have use of you. Enjoy your day.”

With that, the shambling corpse glides from the room, the soft click of the door the only real noise he made the entire time. She bends her head down and continues to work on the advertisement she had for the buy one, get one crystals, a gentle smile on her face.

***

The day went relatively quickly. After locking up for the day and sending Kevin home, she ran through for some cheap tacos. No medium work tonight meant relaxing but also meant she was going to have to take care of George before she could. How exactly she was going to do that was the question though. Most of the time they just gravitated toward her, even when she was doing medium work she only ever needed to let go and there they would be, knocking down the doors trying to get to her. She had no clue how to actively search for them. ...She did, however, know someone who did. It was just a matter of bribing them, hence the tacos.

Her mother lived in the main house on an obscenely large plot of land. Back when she had been married to their dad, he’d managed to purchase a falling-down plantation-style home. Really, an estate, or it had been before the swamps had leaked over into the 500 acres of land, successfully making the majority of the land unusable to human hands. Because of that, the property had been left to rot for decades. Through knowing the right people and being born at the right moment, they’d been able to purchase it for dirt cheap and fix it up.

It had the main house and one other living quarters, as well as a barn. Danni had given her little sister the separate living area leaving her with the barn to redo. Not an easy-going project but YouTube exists and she knew people to come hold things while she figured it out. Surrounding the entire property was a thick mass of forest and swamp. Their older brother decided to live on his own at a university up in Tennessee. Really he was the only sane one of them, having been the main one to grow up with the parents during the reconstruction. As she slides her key into the lock of the door, she hears her mother call out that it’s unlocked.

Walking in, she can smell the honey and roses wafting from the kitchen. A large staircase is immediately in front of the entrance, its ancient, hand-carved wooden railing curling upwards towards a long hallway. “Boof!” A gentle nudge to her hand alerts her to the family dog, Ozzy’s, entrance. His tail swayed in a peaceful manner that only an old dog could do. The once black fur surrounding his muzzle and eyes was now a silver color and he didn’t move quite as fast but he was still a sweet boy. “Is that a roguishly handsome young man coming to steal my valuables,” her mother calls from the right, no doubt the source of the sweet smells. With a final ruffle to Ozzy, she makes her way towards the kitchen.

“Yeah! I was just bribing the guard dog with belly rubs.”

She dips into the kitchen and is greeted by her mother in her usual jeans and cheesy t-shirt, today it had the words ‘My friends call me a witch except they use a ‘B’!’. She’s drizzling pink-colored cookies with honey. Off to the side, there’s a rack of already decorated cookies with candied rose petals. “What’s...all this,” she asks, a hint of nervousness in her voice. She should be used to this but sometimes her mother goes too long without doing something crazy, lulling her into a false sense of normalcy. As she drizzles the honey, she twists the spoon this way and that, drawing sigils no doubt with the liquid before it quickly joins together. She doesn’t lose her rhythm as she answers back, “Love cookies. It’s close to Valentine's day and the girls at the book club are feeling lonely. Speaking of, here: have one.”

A cookie is magically transported into Danni’s hand and she’s ushered to the table where she sits without hesitation. Her mother has made it back to the counter before she can blink. “Mom, you know I’ve got too much to worry about other than a man,” she complains even as her mouth waters at the sight of the treat in front of her. “Then don’t think of it like that. Just think of self-love. Although, I do wish you would find someone to dote on you a little. You work too hard.” Her mother always worried, even when she was little. Danni always seemed independent and able to take care of others, but it came at the price of overworking herself all the time. In order to make her happy, she bit into the sweet and involuntarily thought of warm hands rubbing her scalp. By the time she swallowed, it was the smell of tobacco smoke. She ignored the intruding memory that belonged to whoever. “Yeah, but if I’m getting pampered all the time, then I may never want to help anyone anymore. Especially you, with all your ‘projects’ that usually demand me to move heavy things long distances.” Her mother just hums in response, comfortable sitting quietly with her daughter.

Realizing she still has the paper bag filled with rapidly cooling tacos, she sets it on the table in front of her. “Actually, I did have a favor to ask you. It’s about Maggie and the other spirits that hang out on the grounds.” When her mother continues to decorate her cookies, using the listening-with-one-ear technique as mothers are apt to do, she tries again. “I think I want to summon a spirit. He’s gone missing and...I’m worried.”

Adora, the woman who never bats an eye to the strange and occult, who makes it her life’s mission to be the most eccentric human this century, has the gall to look shocked. Usually, it’s the opposite. Danni is usually far too tired to go out her way outside of work. Just because she had a gift, didn’t mean she always wanted to use it. She sets her spoon down in the and wipes her hands on the front of her jeans. “Now that’s a new one, dear,” she lilts, curious and mischievous as she sits across from Danni, resting her chin on a powdery palm. “Is it finally calling you? Are you ready to dive deep into the forces of the universe?”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s George.” At this, her mother is suddenly all business. Her face twists into deep concern. “What do you mean missing?” Danni recounts Maggie’s visit that morning. “So now, I was hoping to bribe you into helping me try to summon him, if he hasn’t passed over,” she finishes sheepishly, eyes flicking to the bag in front of her. Adora reaches and gently squeezes her daughter’s hands. “Honey, of course I’ll take your bribe.”

With that, they set to work, forming a plan. Danni agrees to help finish making cookies and they eat a few along with their tacos. After cleaning up the kitchen they begin drawing a circle with powdered eggshells around the table, making sure to only have three chairs pulled up. One for each person. Ozzy’s bed is lined with his own circle as he lays, dozing, in his bed in the corner. Candles are lit and the lights are turned down low. With the sun quickly diving below the horizon, it becomes dark fairly quickly after they sit down.

They join hands. Her mother takes a deep breath, prompting her to begin breathing in unison to start the meditation cycle. The room becomes heavy as her mother begins her speech. Danni whispers in rounds as she does. “Give us clarity to see truth and strength to stand against those who would do us harm.” Her own voice circle around the commanding tone of her mother, flowing like smoke around stones. “Deities of life and death allow us, for a moment, to bend the space around us. Implore a deceased to enter our home, our circle. Allow us to have our questions answered and our minds soothed in the knowledge that what we will hear is truthful. To feel at ease that our strength will protect us from those that would attempt to enter to do harm,” she finishes just as the candles snuff and a chill fills the room.

Danni opens eyes that she hadn’t realized she’d closed in her meditation. Across the table, a figure sits. A glow emanates from the shadow. The outline of the brim of a hat stands out against the dim light in the window. “Where the hell am I,” a deep, twitchy voice yells from under the hat. Fortunately, she recognizes the voice immediately. Unfortunately, it’s not who they were hoping for. The spirit in front of them was a problematic soul who was existing in death like how he lived, slinking through the shadows and avoiding his fate. He would often cause trouble, sometimes evening going as far as adding to the endless cycle of the deceased. “Yeah. What are you doing here,” Adora asks, confused.

“Man, I don’t know! One second I’m having a quiet night to myself, chatting up some lovely ladies and next I’m sitting here.” This particular ghost had been a person with a heavy addiction to narcotics while alive and had died after taking his one of many children hostage, attempting to convince the mother to stay with him. She’d taken a twelve gauge to him. It was all over the news years ago. His name was Jonnie. Since then he’d been trying to get high again, using anything he could find. Being dead didn’t mean you were immune to everything. Usually, there were witches that were willing to use that to their advantage. They’d use the energy of a soul for dark practices and in return they’d create a sigil or spell to make them feel, well, alive. Temporarily.

Sighing to herself, Adora seemed to land on an idea.

“Universe must be sending you for some reason. So, tell me, do you know an older gentleman by the name of George?” She folds her hands as he gets offended.

“Who do you think you are?! You can’t just kidnap me and just start demanding answers from me. I have rights!” The man was scrawny and dirty. The hat he wore was ripped and stained from years of neglect. His gray hair was patchy and slick with grease and grime. The teeth that he did have were yellow, one chipped in the front. Wild, red-rimmed eyes set sunken into their sockets ringed with dark bags. The stained white t-shirt he wore didn’t cover the track marks that scared his skin.

“Well, to be frank, we weren’t expecting you either and I’m getting the impression that I don’t want you hanging around here anyway. But, the universe gave you to us for a reason so,” Adora, with the iron will of a woman well versed in the occult and dealings of the paranormal, straightened her shoulders and spoke will finality in her voice, “Do you, spirit, know anything about the Guardian George who has guided many in their journey to the beyond? He has gone missing and we need information. I know you must have heard or seen something. Weasels like you always know something. Don’t bother lying, you’re under my roof and in my circle, I’ll know if you try to deceive us.”

At first, it seemed to have shocked the dead addict into silence. It couldn’t last forever. His expression twitched into one of humor and sneakiness. The cockiness of someone that had experience in matters like the one where he sat currently shone through his wide, sloppy grin. “I ain’t gotta tell you anything. And if I don’t tell you anything then you can’t get rid of me, right,” he declared, stretching himself out in the chair. Danni’s eyes go wide as she looks towards her mom for confirmation. It would suck if she managed to get her house haunted by accident.

The older woman simply smiled at the apparition. She takes a few steps towards him, to which he instinctively leans away from, only to stop a few paces from him and lean her hip on the edge of her table. “Of course you’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like, sir! I would like to let you know that we do have frequent guests, some of which I believe you’re familiar with. Though it seems these days you do a very good job at avoiding them. I’m afraid here won’t be a good place to do that.”

It seemed that he had determined that he was outmatched and his free ticket to a permanent residence wasn’t working out the way he thought it would. After grumbling under his breath something to the effect of ‘damn witches’ he says, louder this time, a bite to his voice, “Well, what the hell do you want with me?”

Adora flashes what was surely the smile that had both entangled her father and sent him to an early grave. “Good choice, dear. Now can you tell us everything you know about George?” It didn’t take much after that. He spilled his guts about how he had planned to threaten the old spirit to help hide him or at least make him look good to Death. He had been coming up to the lake where George normally sat in the early mornings when an enormous black shadow came from nowhere and engulfed the old man. George hadn’t even made a noise, just disappeared. “So I bounced. No way in hell was I gonna hang around and find out what that thing did to him!” Now it was Danni’s turn to say something. “It was just a shadow? And there was nothing else to it?” Annoyed, the apparition scoffs.

“I don’t know, man. Like I said,” each word is punctuated harshly, “I didn’t hang out to find out.”

She leans back in her chair, realizing she had been sitting forward with anticipation. That bath was going to be so nice after all this. Exhaustion washed over her and she scrubbed her face to try to alleviate it at least until she could go home. “If it weren’t for that damn reaper showing up, I wouldn’t have had to go down by that creepy clown fucker.” At this, her eyes snap back to his greasy face. “What’d he look like?” The ex-druggie scratches his chin even though she was positive he couldn’t actually feel it. “Ginger, dark eyes, tall,” he finishes, clearly self-conscious from not having sexy, brooding eyes. Hmm. Twice in one week. Oh no. Guess I’ll have to get in touch with mister tall, dark, and sarcastic.