It was a perfectly ordinary day. The sun was shining, dogs were barking in the distance, the air was filled with the smell of house paint and Harmony wished Loren was here. Maybe she could have talked him into being a heat sink. Or barring that, they could have sent him to go up and paint the roof. It was about time he learned anyway. He wouldn't have minded the heat, and she could have worked on the ground!

  Not that she was working up on the roof at the moment. It was the afternoon, and the sunny day had made roof painting absolutely torturous, so she'd come down and helped with the work at ground level. The Halili house had been in pretty good shape when the family had finally moved out and the company had taken possession, but there were still things that needed to be fixed. Some leaks that the family had decided to live with instead of fix, a bee's nest in a part of the eaves they hadn't known about, better piping for the sink because it had been too narrow and had actually been clogged when they'd gotten it…

  After working for Happy Homes for a couple of years, they were all familiar, irritating, disgusting problems. Still, it was a good living, and Steve was a good guy to work for as long as they were responsible and didn't waste the company's money by misusing materials. Loren was actually pretty good on that score. He was such a cheapskate he only used just the right amount of anything—

  Her cellphone in her hip pouch rang, and even muffled she recognized the tone she'd assigned for Steve. Putting down the paint brush she was holding, she got out her phone, wondering what he needed. "Hello?"

  "Harmony, I'm coming to get you. Norm just called, something happened…"

  …oh, shit.

  It was an HMS.

  Harmony found herself in a bit of a conundrum.

  On the one hand, she was trying not to be mad. Not at Norm, and not at Steve, and not at herself. Norm hadn't done anything wrong. Yes, he kind of had atrocious luck with real estate, but even so it wasn't every time. It was his job to find properties for the company so they could flip it and sometimes, when he managed to find a good deal, it turned out that the house was super haunted. Whether it was a violent ghost or two, a house that had gone unhinged from isolation, or even a demon… yeah, some of the good deals Norm had found had come with huge asterisks applying terms and conditions to them.

  The thing was, it wasn't every time. Often, they were just really good deals, they just happened to be somewhere inconvenient or there was damage that the owners or bank hadn't known about, or other normal hazards of buying real estate. And for the other thing… well, Steve had warned them not to go into the house. They were simply to go, do a visual analysis, and then come back home. From what Norm had said, they done exactly that, not even getting close to the door.

  But Loren had walked too close to a window, and something had grabbed him. Ghost, spirit or demon, it had dragged him into the house before it had started throwing things at Norm, forcing him to get out of the property before he was perforated by a kitchen knife. So she couldn't get mad. Nothing that happened was anyone's fault. Not Steve's and not Norm's.

  On the other hand, she was trying to ignore the call of despair. She could feel the magic inside her rising close to the surface, a tempting well of power that would drag her down to its depths, as she worried for her friend. Loren… he'd never been the athletic type, nor the kind of kid who'd gotten into trouble because of his fists and learned to use them. Yes, they'd gotten into their share of fights when they were kids, but fights among children very rarely resulted in death, even if only because most of the time they didn't have long enough to kill each other.

  And now he was in the mercy of a violent ghost, trapped in its house.

  She remembered her first HMS. Harmony had been working at Happy Homes for about… six months? No, nine months, she remembered Maddie's birthday had happened recently. It had been her, Steve and Malory back then, as well as their temp Flame Mage, Jim. The house had been a Norm find, and had been her first experience with Norm's luck. They'd already done as Norm and Loren had been supposed to do and given it a visual inspection from the outside. Steve had even done as Loren had and looked through an open window to check the condition of the interior.

  They had entered the house cautiously in broad daylight so they'd be able to see—well, so Harmony and Steve could see—while some of the boys had stayed outside, ready to call the police and vigilants or break down the walls if they needed a way out. Even before they'd entered, they'd smelled something was wrong. The air had been filled with the stench of rotting flesh and decay, which hard partially been the reason the place had been discounted.

  The other had been because a man had died there, getting into a standoff with the police when they had come to question him about a missing child. He'd fallen to gunfire, and the remains of the child had been found. The place had been abandoned as a result, boarded up and kept away from. The bank had foreclosed on the property, and had essentially left it to rot.

  They'd found the cause of the smell, a bathroom filled with dead animals. Rats, birds, cats, dogs… all of them were dead, their limbs ripped off, heads twisted, all dropped in a rotting pile on the tiles… as well as a payatin corpse in the same state, their tentacles ripped from their back and their jaw torn from their eyeless skull.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Steve had taken one glance and had immediately declared they were leaving, and that was when things had turned into a nightmare. A blood-covered mass of horns and claws and fur and fangs had erupted from the ceiling and tried to kill them.

  That had been Harmony's first encounter with a demon, and if she hadn't been a Symbol, she would have died.

  She'd gotten lucky. The demon had only managed to pulp her torso on the way down, causing her to involuntarily Symbolize, restoring her body through the change. The field of despair and weight she'd generated had managed to entangle the demon and keep it down, even as she's struggled to release her hold and effect on Steve and Malory so they could act.

  They had still needed to fight for their lives against the unholy fusion of what had once been a ghost and a keres, throwing all their magic at it to keep it from killing them. For good or ill, the demon had been trapped in the house the way the ghost had been, and they had managed to hold out long enough for the vigilants to arrive and attack it from behind…

  It hadn't been her last HMS, of which trying to get out of the house with the two ghosts who had murdered each other had simply been the latest. But in all those, she'd had backup. Malory and Steve had been there, and she'd had the depressing certainty that if she took a nasty hit, that would be enough to get her to Symbolize and keep her alive. They'd been prepared, and ready.

  Loren… he'd just been dragged in, with only his flame and his wits, and his tendency to still shudder when anything possibly ghostly that wasn't Sara happened around him.

  Harmony just stared at the road, ignoring both anger and despair. Apathy. She could do apathy.

  Norm had already called the police and the vigilant emergency hotline, but she and Steve had still gotten in the older man's car and rushed towards Galugod. Malory had done ahead of them, the payatin flying with Thaumaturgy to skip the roads and traffic.

  "I should have driven Norm myself," Steve said as he drove, his grip tight on the steering wheel. Harmony couldn't even wince as he slammed his other fist on the wheel in frustration, then hastily restored his grip even though the car didn't even wobble. "Sorry." He ran his fingers through his salt and pepper hair, looking pained. "Should have warned him about Norm's luck."

  "I should have done that," Harmony said, her voice flat as she tried not to be angry. Being angry wouldn't do anyone any good. Steve didn't need an angry woman distracting him from driving. "I've worked here longer than he has, I should have told him everything he needed to know."

  Damn it, she sucked at apathy.

  A pained looked came over Steve's face, and the pitch of the engine rose slightly as they went just the slightest bit faster. At this time of day, the highway south was more or less clear, allowing them to push up to the edge of the speed limit and just a bit beyond.

  They sat in silence for a bit, Steve concentrating on getting them to their destination as soon as possible. Objectively, they probably wouldn't be able to do anything. The vigilants—and the police, for all the good they would do—had already been called, and they'd be better suited to getting Loren out of the house. They were probably there already, rescuing Loren with a modicum of property damage and perhaps forcing them to buy the property…

  Steve's phone rang, the sound coming through the car's speakers. Harmony glanced at the dashboard, seeing Malory's name on the display.

  The spiritualist answered the call. "Hello?"

  "Hey," Malory said. "I'm here in Galugod. There's a problem."

  At the words, Harmony felt chains wrapping around her heart. She felt the magic inside her became just a bit more enticing…

  "The vigilant chapter here in Galugod doesn't have anyone who knows how to deal with ghosts." A tone of disgust came through. "When I brought it up, the operator tried to suggest a Necromancer."

  "Fuck…" Harmony groaned and was only slightly amused to realize Steve had said it at the same time.

  "Did you tell them what kind of response is needed?"

  "Eventually," Malory said. "They called a Thaumaturgist and a Spiritualist to respond but they're waiting on a someone with ghost experience from Tangway. They're flying in so they should be here soon."

  "Malory, can you see inside?" Harmony said. "Is Loren all right?"

  "The police have cordoned off the house, so I can't get close enough." The payatin sounded vaguely disgusted at the useless gesture. "But I can hear sounds from inside the house, and Norm says he's seeing flames through some of the windows and earlier he heard yelling, so Loren's still well enough to resist the ghost."

  Not for the first time, Harmony wondered how payatin actually saw the world. Everyone said they could see the shadows things cast and the darkness inside people's bodies, and she'd once seen a cartoon of how a payatin must see human and oni bodies as the spaces in the lungs and stomach and—no, no, focus. "Can you help him?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

  "No. The police are afraid this is a demon and yes, I know that's bullshit but that's what they're saying. Look, the ghost expert should be here any minute, and it sounds like Loren is still alive. If I go in now… I'm sorry, Harmony."

  The feeling of her power grew stronger, and Harmony allowed herself a little anger at how Malory was just standing around not doing anything. It did nothing to push away the feeling of her Symbolism being so easy to take hold of and use, and she let it go. Malory was just doing what she could, and while the payatin liked Loren well enough, they were hardly close. If it was Loni in danger, then the thaumaturgist would already be charging in, but it wasn't. "I should be there…"

  "You're too heavy for me to carry without slowing me down, and I didn't have any of my venecite on me to compensate," Malory said ruthlessly.

  Okay, maybe a little anger at Malory.

  …

  Ugh, she was such a mess. Harmony was going to need to talk to someone about this.

  Unless Loren died, in which case she was probably going to kill herself after flattening that house into the ground and ripping the ghost apart.

  …

  Ah, screw it.

  Reaching into her pocket, she took out a candy, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth.

  All through the two-hour drive, as the sun began to go down, Harmony prayed to the goddesses that Loren was safe, that by the time they got to Galugod the vigilants will have done their work, the house would be in ruins, and her best friend would be in the hands of the paramedics.

  Through all this time, their phones were damningly silent.