Chapter 1

  Memories and Flame.

  The air hung heavy with an unnatural tension, a sensation that prickled at the nape of my neck and sent a shiver racing down my spine. The weight of broken wards reverberated through the night, a cold pit opening in my stomach, accompanied by a rising dread that something sinister was stirring in the shadows.

  I took a cautious step back from the counter, my instincts screaming at me to run. Shadows danced and flickered around me, imbued with a life of their own, as if the darkness had come alive to mock my fear.

  Without a second thought, I bolted into the streets, the night cloaked in a shroud of flickering city lights. In my haste, I sent a short man tumbling to the ground, my previous fatigue forgotten in the surge of adrenaline that coursed through my veins. I raced through the city, my feet moving instinctively through alleys and forgotten side streets, leaping over fences and gates, each breaking ward sending icy chills racing down my spine.

  When I finally arrived, the street was a cacophony of chaos. People crowded the pavement, a fire truck, flanked by several police cars, blocked the way for those trying to approach. The acrid stench of smoke and burning debris filled the air, choking me as I pressed forward, driven by a desperate need to see.

  My old home was engulfed in flames, fire licking at every window like a hungry beast. A police officer tried to stop me, but with a whispered mnemonic, my voice hoarse and urgent, I placed my hand on his shoulder. His eyes glazed over, distant and unfocused, before he returned to his vigil, allowing me to slip past him toward the inferno.

  With a slow creak that escalated into a thunderous crack, the roof caved in, sending rubble tumbling down in a chaotic implosion. I stood transfixed, watching as embers soared into the night sky like ominous fireflies, each one a flickering reminder of the days spent within those walls.

  The world around me faded into muted shades of grey as I stood there, paralyzed by dread, contemplating the horrors that had been unleashed. One larger ember caught my attention, its wild, discordant cackle echoing through the air, a sinister laugh that seemed to mock my despair.

  Just as dawn began to break, I felt a hand on my shoulder, firm and reassuring, pulling me from my trance-like stupor as I watched the last of the embers die, each one a memory forged in that now ruined house.

  “Lad, ye cannae sit there all night,” Doc said, his broad face etched with concern, the lines of worry deepening in the early light.

  “Let’s get ye,” I began shaking off both Doc and my stupor. I hadn’t realized I had fallen to my knees, which now ached and protested at my mistreatment.

  “I need to check the basement.” By some twist of fate, while organizing the basement for the Soul Cage, I had removed a significant portion of the relics, packing them away and splitting them between my safe house and my apartment. Many of the old tomes and scrolls now sat in my hidden study, waiting for me like ghosts of the past.

  “Ye must be kidding, lad. That place is still burning.” Doc halted my progress, his grip firm as he led me away from the chaos.

  Before long, we stood in front of an old apartment complex I knew all too well.

  “Which number is it?”

  I pressed the intercom button for apartment 14, my heart aching.

  “They won’t answer; it’s daytime, incorporeal dead li…” My explanation was cut off when the buzzer sounded, followed by Lila’s voice crackling over the intercom.

  “What? What? What? In the middle of a raid, who is it?”

  Doc raised an eyebrow at me, bushy and sceptical.

  “It’s Bart.”

  The door buzzer sounded again, granting us entry.

  Stepping into the apartment was like walking into a tomb. Dust hung in the air like a shroud, and the sparse furnishings whispered of neglect. A sagging sofa leaned against the wall, while a hefty desk cradled a computer, its screen flickering like a dying star as it played an MMO all on its own.

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  “Hi, Barty. You could have called; Veronica is asleep,” Lila’s voice crackled through the speakers, a ghostly echo reminiscent of an old intercom system.

  “Lila, meet Doc. Doc, this is Lila,” I said, sinking onto the sofa and sending a cloud of dust swirling into the dim light. “Lila is a poltergeist who inhabits and controls electronics.”

  I couldn’t help but remember the first time we crossed paths. I had been hired to investigate a case of embezzlement at a local business, one of those few in the Mundane I took, a job that turned out to be anything but ordinary. That’s when I met Lila.

  In life, she had been a reclusive genius, a whiz with all things tech. But the world had a way of chewing up the vulnerable, and Lila had fallen through the cracks, due to her mental health. She died at her computer, energy drinks strewn around her like empty promises, a testament to a life lived in the shadows.

  Just weeks before her untimely demise, she had lost her mother, her only source of support and care. I guess it didn’t matter which side of the veil you lived life was just cruel.

  After passing, Lila found herself adrift in a digital limbo, her accounts for the games and hobbies she loved frozen in time. In her desperation, she resorted to hacking into a business’s accounts, skimming money in a futile attempt to reclaim a semblance of control over her lost life.

  It was after meeting Lila that I decided to help the undead. If I could solve their murders, I could give them one less reason to linger on this side of the great veil, for some it was enough, for others like Lila they needed a little more.

  The living mundane folk viewed the undead as creepy, antisocial figures, unsettling in their presence, or smell even if they didn’t know they were corpses. Incorporeal spirits could only be seen by a select few, their means of interacting with the world severely limited.

  Even on our side of the veil, their existence was hardly better. They couldn’t pay with time like the rest of us, and the corporeal dead faced the added burden of their decaying vessels, which often succumbed to unnatural urges, urges for violence or the taste of human flesh.

  The perpetual decay would eventually turn them into mindless, shambling creatures driven by hunger, lost souls wandering the night in search of something they could never reclaim; I often had to end the caporal undead when their urges became too much.

  I dragged my hands down my face, trying to scrub away the fatigue that gnawed at my mind and body like a hungry rat. “I’m going to crash here for a while, Lila. Can you let Veronica know I’ll need her help tracking down a particularly nasty tooth fairy going by the name of Grim? Or at least that’s what he last used, mostly look at break-ins near dentists, he has a thing for teeth.”

  I shot a glance at Doc, who wore a frown that could curdle milk. The apartment was a forgotten dump, nothing broken or filled with rubbish but dust covered everything and clung to the corners like forgotten memories, the air thick with neglect and the scent of stale regret. “Before you start your lecture, Doc, I own the building, it was condemned when I picked it up, there is no water or plumbing not that it’s needed, the power comes from a large diesel generator I got in the basement, got it from a sell off of old construction goods. They pay what they can; most of the rooms are occupied by the undead in one form or another. I asked Lila to take Veronica under her wing while she adjusts to her new… life as one of the dead. I think Veronica will help balance Lila out.”

  My gaze drifted to the flickering computer screen, where Lila’s game avatar dashed through a cavernous passage, flanked by a group of oblivious players. They had no idea their fearless leader was a ghost, navigating both the digital realm and her own spectral existence. The irony wasn’t lost on me; in a world where the living and the dead often clashed, here was Lila, thriving in a space where she could a phantom in a pixelated paradise, dancing on the edge of reality and the afterlife, not many undead or living had such a luxury.

  “Doc, any chance you could put a rush on my order? I’ve got a feeling I’m going to need it.” I sank into the worn leather of the sofa, tilting my fedora low to shield my eyes from the dim light that seeped through the blinds.

  “No can do Lad its being rushed as it is,” came Doc’s gruff voice, laced with a hint of unexpected warmth. He shuffled toward the door of the cramped apartment, the floorboards creaking under his weight. “but I can get ye a few things in the meantime, no charge. I get the feeling you’re already paying a steep price.”

  But his words were lost in the haze of my fatigue, slipping away like smoke in the night. I had already drifted into the murky depths of sleep, where my dreams were merciless, prowling like shadows in a back alley, waiting to pounce.