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The last remains of the monster who’d eaten them.

They were everywhere. Dozens of them. Trapped in the spaces between the Veil, fading slowly, dying a second time. Not ghosts. Not souls. Just... echoes. The memory of being alive, stretched thin until it snapped.

These weren’t homeless deaths. Weren’t some strange accident.

This was a massacre.

And no one else could see it.

I looked down at my hands, translucent, flickering, held together by stolen fragments and sheer stubbornness.

How long until I look like them? And how did we stop this from happening if the very people set to investigate couldn’t see the truth?

I scanned the crowd of uniforms, searching for anyone familiar. Our team had left. Most of the SED, too. The powers that be had already decided this was a homeless encampment gone wrong. Maybe a gas leak. Maybe a fight. Nothing supernatural. Nothing worth their time.

But near the end of the street, talking to what appeared to be an actual unhoused person, was Hardy.

His partner stood beside him, gaze sweeping not just over Hardy and the man being questioned, but over the whole crowd. Watchful. Alert. Did they know this was bigger?

I threw a glance back into the shadows, then darted around the clot of officers and out through the wide garage door. I headed toward the only remaining SED I could find.

Hardy was maybe fifty feet away. Would he see me?

Probably not. Neither he nor his partner were SVs. They didn’t have the sight. I could wave my arms, scream in his face, and he’d just shiver and blame the cold.

But I had to try.

I crossed the distance between us, and stopped right in front of him. Close enough to count the stubble on his jaw.

“Hardy.” I waved my hand through his line of sight. Nothing. “Chris.”

He didn’t so much as glance in my direction.

“Dammit! Hear me, see me, sense me, something. I’m having a crisis here.”

Now I was one of those obnoxious ghosts I’d been bitching about. The ones who stood around wailing and waving their arms while the living walked right through them. No wonder they got so cranky. I wanted to throw something, preferably at someone’s head.

His partner shifted, gaze sweeping past me like I wasn’t there. Because to them, I wasn’t.

I turned away from Hardy, frustration curdling in my chest. If I couldn’t reach the living, maybe I could reach the dead.

Nat.

I closed my eyes and with the barest pull, I slid from this reality to the library. Easier than before—because I was almost faded, or because I was getting used to the change? I prayed it was the latter.

Books stretched in every direction. The fireplace crackled. And there, at his usual table, surrounded by towers of leather-bound texts, sat Nat.

He looked up, and swallowed hard, an expression crossing his face that appeared both resigned and sad. “Jude,” he said. He glanced toward the door of the alcove with the cursed grimoires.

“Hey, can I have your help with something?”

He sucked in a deep breath. “You should be resting. There wasn’t enough left of you for me to bring back here. I wasn’t sure you’d return at all.”

“I should be doing a lot of things. Like living my best life with my boyfriend, and taking care of my kid brother.” I crossed the room. “But there’s a psychopath trying to eat the world.” I slapped my hand on the table. Or tried to. My fingers passed through the wood, and I had to concentrate to make them solid again.

“Fuck.”

I took a breath. Forced myself to focus. My hand pressed flat against the wood, solid for now. “That warehouse crime scene we stumbled on? It’s Erlik’s massacre. The cops think it’s just an accident. But I can’t tell any of them. I can’t make them see.”