Reg awoke the next morning to the sound of heavy furniture being dragged across the floor. His eyelids eased open. Pale morning light poured in from the gap between the curtains. There was frost on the window. A fresh layer of white snow blanketed the drab buildings beyond. It was the sort of cold, uninviting morning best spent in bed under a warm heap of covers.
He rolled over, tucking the blankets under his chin, but the racket outside of his bedroom door prevented him from drifting back to sleep. It sounded as if someone was lugging a full dining set up and down his hallway. This was made all the more troubling by the fact Reg didn’t own a dining set. Not even a basic table and chairs. What was the point when he had a perfectly good couch? Tera was the only one who came over anyway. There wasn’t any need to impress her.
Reg stubbornly closed his eyes. Whatever it was, it could wait.
His rickety headboard shuddered when something heavy struck the shared wall. Bits of broken drywall sprinkled down over him from the cracked ceiling above. Reg ignored it. It was probably just the apartment settling. Or Tera knocking something over while searching for where he’d hidden his diary. She liked to leave him notes in the margins.
Or a vengeful spirit, his thoughts contributed unhelpfully, seconds away from blowing your apartment to pieces.
Ah, sweet, sweet, terrifying motivation. Nothing got Reg up out of bed faster than a jolt of cold panic. He flung the warm blankets aside and heaved his protesting body from the sunken indent it’d made in the mattress overnight. He grabbed his robe from the exercise bike serving as a clothes rack, threw open the bedroom door, and followed the commotion into his office.
Reg barely made it past the doorway. He jerked to a stop, overcome with horror. A mini tornado had swept through his office. An abnormally neat one. Color-coded stacks of books rose off the floor like miniature towers. Dusty cardboard boxes lined the walls of the room—boxes that should have been in the closet, stashed away out of sight, where they belonged. Reg’s desk had been moved too. It was shoved against the shared wall, hidden beneath half a dozen more boxes.
Reg’s accusing stare settled on the guilty party. “What in blazes are you doing?”
Nick towered at the center of the office, arms folded over his ghostly chest, admiring his handiwork. “Reorganizing.”
No, no, no! It had taken Reg ages to get the closet doors to close around all of his stuff. That was the whole point of having a closet. To keep the things Reg didn’t want to deal with locked away safely out of sight forever. And that was only the closet! He didn’t want to consider the time it would take to rearrange his bookshelves back to their former state of organized chaos.
Nick’s velvety voice pulled Reg from his spiraling thoughts. “Seeing as you are unwilling to help me, I thought I would help you. Once we have your life put back together again, perhaps you will feel inspired to stop wasting time with the authorities and solve my case yourself.”
A single word tumbled free from Reg’s thunderstruck mouth. “How?”
“I told you, through organization. We will start with this room and then move on to the next. An organized life is a productive one. You will see.”
“No.” Reg flung his hands into the air, gesturing to the neat piles of books and boxes. “How are you doing this?”
Ghosts couldn’t normally manipulate objects from the living world on their own. There were two exceptions to this rule. During manifestation, as Reg had done with Spencer and the pen the day before. The second exception required an extremely powerful spirit, one often on the path to corruption. Even then, their ability to manipulate the living world was limited to flickering lights, jiggling door handles, and the occasional levitating chair.
This was not that. This was something more. Something worse. Nick had rearranged an entire room without a lick of assistance.
“I shall demonstrate.” Nick bent over and lifted Reg’s copy of The Modern Fae Field Guide from a nearby stack of books with a single hand as if the leather-bound volume weighed nothing at all. “See? Simple.”
“You’re growing stronger,” Reg said, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat. Based on the rapid progression of Nick’s power, it wouldn’t be long before he made the jump from rearranging furniture to leveling an entire city block in a single go.
“That is not all. Come see what I have unearthed in the closet.” Nick moved to the cluttered desk. A dozen rolled posters stuck out of the topmost box. “Your home is so bare, Reginald. Colorless, void of life. I wondered if perhaps you simply lacked any style of your own, but then I found these.”
The tips of Reg’s ears burned red-hot. “Don’t touch those!”
Nick did so anyway, either oblivious to Reg’s embarrassment or merely indifferent to it. The yellow apparition selected one of the posters at random and unraveled it with care. “Now this, this is something. This is the furnishing of a man who is comfortable in his skin. He is odd, but proud. His choice of decor proclaims to the world ‘I enjoy children’s cartoons and I am unashamed of it!’”
Where was the damn table salt when he needed it?
“Stay out of my stuff!” Reg snatched the poster from the ghost’s translucent hands and rolled it shut. “And that animation is for adults, by the way. Not children.”
“Then why is it not on your wall?”
That was harder to explain. Sometimes it took hitting rock bottom to realize you weren’t the person you wanted to be. Determined to make lasting changes, you gathered the broken pieces and started life anew. Reg’s first step had been to get rid of every reminder of his past self. He stripped the shelves, tossed out the clutter, and then, surrounded by nothing but bare walls and a blank home, realized it was never the stuff that had been the problem.
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Still clutching the rolled poster, Reg pointed at the open doorway. “Get out! Go.”
“I have not finished organizing.”
“And you’re not going to, either. Go haunt the living room while I decide what to do with this mess.”
“Very well,” Nick sighed, turning to go. His gargantuan form ducked through the doorway and disappeared down the hall. “I shall reorganize the living room.”
“No, you shall not!” Reg called after him. “You’re going to sit on the couch and not touch anything.”
He didn’t catch what unintelligible thing Nick muttered under his breath. Seething, Reg marched over to his desk and ripped the top drawer open to discover Nick had gone through his personal effects as well. Reg found his cell phone in the very bottom drawer, along with what looked like every unidentified cable in the apartment. He turned his phone on to find a message from Tera, stating she was out fetching her truck. She’d be back by to help him fix the bathroom door afterward.
Reg set the phone on the edge of the desk to keep from throwing it. His heated stare traveled the room once more, unsure of where to start. His gaze lingered over the stack of moving boxes with Lilly’s name etched on the front. He closed his eyes, groaning. He did not have the strength to do this today.
The chirp of Reg’s cell phone spared him from any decision-making. He checked the name before answering. “Oh, thank gods, Marco. Tell me you found something.”
A gruff voice crackled back over the speaker. “Well, well, well, look who’s back in the game. I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away for long.”
Reg pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s not what this is.”
“Mhm. So this missing person’s report on my desk just filed itself then, huh? This wasn’t your subtle way of asking for your job back?” Marco’s tone switched from patronizing to harsh. “I’m annoyed, to be honest. You went and wasted police time when you should’ve just come to me directly.”
“What are you talking about?”
Reg heard the rustle of papers in the background. Finally, Detective Valdez found the information he sought. “This missing person of yours, Nickabott Dare. An officer went and checked the address you gave as soon as the call came in. She was greeted at the door by Mr. Dare himself.”
Reg’s blood ran cold. “What?”
“Filing a false report doesn’t reflect well on you, Reg. There are easier ways to get my attention.”
“That can’t be right, Marco. There must be a mistake. Can you double-check? I assure you, Nick is dead.”
“Are you telling me you made that report in good faith?”
“Yes!”
There was a deliberate pause before Marco asked, hesitantly, “Are you feeling alright? This isn’t another, uh...episode, is it?”
“No,” Reg insisted. “I’ve got Nick’s ghost in my house as we speak. He reorganized my office this morning!”
Marco offered an alternative explanation. “I heard you had a little run-in with a tonic toad yesterday. Are you sure you aren’t having some kind of reaction? They can make you hallucinate all kinds of crap.”
Reg resisted the sudden urge to claw out his eyes. “No!”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you. There’s no missing person, Reg. The report’s already been dismissed.” Marco added, reluctantly, “You could bring your little ghost pal into the station to make a report themself, but I'm not making you any promises.”
It wasn’t possible. Reg couldn’t take a corrupting ghost to the station. The city had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to vengeful spirits. Some overeager officer would take one look at Nick and make the worst decision of his career. And then when it was all said and done, after the dust had settled and the bodies were counted, all fingers would point back at Reg for letting it happen.
Reg ran a hand down his weary face. “I can’t.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Reg wasn’t about to admit that he was harboring an actively corrupting spirit. He couldn’t lie about it, either. He deflected, pleading his case one last time. “You’re making a mistake, Marco. Reopen the case. Something’s not adding up.”
“I can’t help you, Reggie. Go get some rest. Call me when you’ve slept whatever this is off.”
This time Reg did throw the phone. It bounced harmlessly off the wall and landed face down on the carpet. Throwing his phone wasn’t enough. The fury that’d been silently festering for the past three months heated to a boil, bubbling over. Reg shoved the dusty boxes from his desk onto the floor, scattering old paperwork across the room. Why? Why was this happening to him? He’d done everything he was supposed to! He got out, gave up the casework, found himself a new career, and still, his old way of life was dragging him right back in. He didn’t want this. He didn’t ask for this!
“Is this part of your cleaning process?” Nick’s deep voice emitted from the doorway. The gargoyle’s hulking yellow aura stood just outside of the office, gripping a box of open breakfast cereal in one hand. He popped a handful and chewed. The resulting crumbs fell through his incorporeal body and littered the floor between his feet. Nick appeared unfazed by it. “I have concerns.”
“What are you doing with my cereal?”
“I am partaking in a human ritual.” Nick fished another handful out of the box, explaining, “They call it emotional eating.”
Reg gestured to the growing pile of crumbs on the floor. “You can’t eat!”
“That does not make my emotions any less valid.”
Reg zeroed in on the brightly colored cereal box. His panting breath slowed. Hunger stirred within his empty stomach. All things considered, he could do with a little emotional eating himself. The polite thing would’ve been to squeeze past Nick. Reg stormed through the yellow apparition instead, snatching the box from the ghost’s hand as his stomping steps carried him down the hallway and into the living room. Static electricity buzzed across Reg’s skin. He ignored it and plopped down onto the faded flower-print couch, eating dry cereal straight from the box.
Each bite tasted like sulfur.
Nick’s ominous yellow glow moved down the unlit hallway. “I overheard pieces of your conversation. From your outburst, I assume you have come to realize what I have been telling you all along. The authorities are useless.”
Reg chomped through another mouthful of dry cereal. The roof of his mouth tingled, aggravated by the dark energy that followed Nick into the room. Reg swallowed anyway. “The cops are convinced you’re still alive.”
“That is not possible.”
“Well, obviously I know that.” Reg angrily chewed some more before adding, “They met someone at your residence claiming to be you. There’s no case as far as they’re concerned.”
Nick settled onto the couch beside Reg, his ghostly face furrowed in thought as he slowly digested the provided information.
“Given the banishing spell,” Reg said, “I suspect we’re dealing with something of the magical variety.”
“A sorcerer,” Nick growled.
“There are worse things in this world than sorcerers.” Reg had encountered more than a few during his lifetime. It was ironic, in a way. People like Reg and Nick spent their whole lives being called monsters when, in reality, their accusers had no idea what true monsters were. They’d never sleep again if they did.
“Now what?” Nick asked.
“Only one thing left to do.” Reg leaned back against the lumpy couch cushion and closed his eyes. “Talk to Tera and convince her to let me do something really, really stupid.”
