Beige.
There’s wall-to-wall shag carpet that’s soft under my socks. Sitting beside the staircase is a leather armchair with blankets draped over it, looking so comfortable I want to curl up in it and go to sleep again. There are three windows, all facing the front of the house. Under them is a sagging blue plaid couch. It’s a good thing nobody was silently stretched out over it during my stealth mission, or they would’ve locked eyes with me the second I peeked around the corner. Maybe that would have been better.
In front of the couch is a coffee table covered in water stains, a fake potted plant, some miscellaneous papers, and an open can of Red Bull. A huge TV is mounted on the wall opposite the couch.
“This is where we hang out and watch movies—sometimes, we have team meetings in here, if we’re going for more of a casual vibe that day.” She leads me down the hallway. “Donny’soffice is through there—all the way at the end of the hall is the kitchen.”
I glimpse Griffin standing with his back turned over the stove. The smell of garlic and melted cheese hits me, making my stomach growl so loud that DJ stops mid-step, side-eyeing me.
“Was that your stomach?”
“Guilty.”
She tells me they’ll get me fed ASAP, then brings me down another hallway branching off the main one right in front of the kitchen. DJ flips on a light to reveal a mudroom. One wall is lined with ten gunmetal gray lockers, and six are labeled with names handwritten on metal plates:DONALD,NICO,DJ,GRIFFIN,BENJAMIN, andZOEY.
“This is our prep room,” DJ says, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. “I know a lot of this stuff looks like it could be used to lobotomize you, but Donny developed it all himself.”
DJ bounces over to a laundry hamper, where a pile of black fabric sits in a heap.
“These are our uniforms.” She bends over to grab one and shakes it out, revealing a full-body black jumpsuit that looks like a skin-tight version of something Dad would’ve worn under his tactical gear. “There are super thin iron plates woven between the layers of fabric. We wear these under our regular clothes when we’re in the field.”
The memory of Nico in the Walmart parking lot surfaces: him leaning against that van with his hands in his pockets, telling me they actuallydohave matching jumpsuits. One corner of his mouth lifted when he said it, daring me to believe him. I thought he was being sarcastic.
A syrupy happiness spreads through me thinking about it, and I clamp my mouth shut to keep a goofy smile from taking over my whole face.
DJ pulls out another jumpsuit from the pile, and I suddenly forget what I was smiling about. Three long slashes run from shoulder to waist, the fabric shredded as if something with claws had taken a swipe at whoever was wearing it. Jagged pieces of metal protrude between the inner and outer layers.
It gets hard to swallow. “What happened to the person wearing that?”
“You mean me?” DJ holds up the suit like it’s a trophy. “I’m still alive—last I checked—but Griff went through two suits last month alone—he has this habit of getting way too close to ghosts during extractions—and Nico shredded one of his suits last summer when a Fragment used his arm as a chew toy. He only needed twelve stitches, so that was pretty good. Considering.”
I try to keep my face neutral, like hearing that Nico got his arm mauled by a ghost and only needed twelve stitches is totally normal information to receive.
This is what I signed up for. This is the job. People get hurt here. People almost die here. One person already has.
I dig my nails into my palm and force my face to behave. “What’s a Fragment?”
“Oh—okay—so there are seven types of ghosts, at least that we know of—Donny theorizes there could be more waiting to be discovered, but we haven’t found them yet. First, you have Echoes, which are basically emotional recordings stuck on repeat. Think of a bride who died in a car crash on her wedding day, walking the same stretch of road forever in her bloody dress. They lose their minds over time, and they rarely cause danger to people unless they figure out you can see them. It breaks them out of their cycle, then they become interested in you.”
That must have been what the ghost in the library was. I broke her out of whatever loop she was in.
How long had she been doing that? Years? Decades? Just stuck in one moment, alone with whatever killed her, until someone saw her. She must have been sad when I ran away from her.
DJ’s already continuing: “Then you have Fragments, which are ghosts tethered to specific objects or places. They’re territorial—superpowerful within their domain—but they can’t leave, so they’re not too bad. Parasites stick around because of attachment to another person, but it’s actually super sad. They lose everything that made them human and end up feeding on the life force of the people who can’t let them go, eventually killing them. Parasites usually cross over on their own after their loved one dies—unless their loved onealsobecomes a Parasite, and then it becomes this whole nasty cycle that can span generations.”
A hollow ache settles in my chest. If I think about that too much, I’m going to cry.
“The Unburied are souls that stick around because their faith was super intense, but had improper burial rituals, so they can’t move on. Usually super old. I’ve never seen one.” DJ’s talking with her hands now. “Poltergeists are the fun ones—they’re only strong enough to slam doors or turn faucets on or whisper creepy things in your ear at three in the morning, but they can feel things. Like, actual emotions we don’t see in other ghosts. Joy. Humor. All that good stuff. And they can’t hurt you or possess you or anything super scary like that, but they’re a real pain in the ass if they decide they like you. They get lonely—and clingy—they just want someone to talk to, but there’s nobody around who can hear them.”
I don’t know if that’s better or worse than being an Echo. At least Echoes may not be as aware of what’s happening to them.
DJ’s still going, barely pausing for breath. “Anyway—then there’s the Haunting Mass, which is what happens when you geta bunch of spirits all mashed together into one giant angry blob of collective consciousness. You find those in places where lots of people died all at once—prisons, battlefields, anywhere there was a massacre or a mass tragedy?—”
She’s walking backward now, and I follow her, trying to keep up with both her pace and the flood of information.
“They’re super freaking terrifying,” she says. “You do not want to get trapped in a Haunted Mass, trust me. But Possessors are our bread and butter. Those are what we deal with most because they’re the most dangerous and they’re actively murdering people.”
“Are all Possessors serial killers?” I ask.
