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the tether that tied her to Shai was the only sensible thing to do. What had she promised? A day, maybe two, and then they’d discuss more. Surely, after that night and all the distress the ghost had caused, she’d done work enough for the payment received.
    Besides, the longer she kept Shai, the greater the chances that the ghost would be called again to her body, dragged back along the second tether and into the cold shell of flesh that had once been her own. If that happened, what would keep the strange darkness from rising again? Black tears and vomit, breath and sweat, wrenched out of her regardless of what she demanded or desired.
    And that, right there, was the part of the problem that she couldn’t cut away. The darkness, she called it—had always considered it such, if only in the part of her mind where fears and bad dreams lingered. Now that she had seen it, felt it ascendant, she knew it had another name and one far truer: magic. Magic unlike any she’d known or of which she’d heard tell. Magic dark and languid, like thick oil, like branching smoke.
    Magic at last; her own magic. She choked back a bitter laugh. How long had she wished for magic, even the smallest glimmer? Her whole life, it seemed. She thought of the dark magic rushing uncontrolled from her throat and lips, leaking from her eyes and skin, and she shivered. Never had she imagined that having her wish granted could be so terrible, so horrifying or so cold.
    “What are you thinking?” Shai asked softly, and Xhea looked up from her knife. The ghost had come to kneel beside her—or tried to, instead hovering a hand’s width above the floor. She still had a lot to learn about being dead, but it wasn’t a bad first try for a ghost so new.
    That I’m afraid , Xhea thought, and don’t know what to do . Instead she said, “Shai, how did you die?”
    She expected the ghost’s usual denial, but Shai just shook her head.
    “Okay. What’s the last thing you remember? Before you met me.”
    The answer came after a long pause. “I remember . . . the dark. A long time in the dark.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Another pause, the silence stretching between them. “I don’t know,” Shai said, hesitant and unsure, as if Xhea might scold her for giving the wrong answer.
    “Okay.” Xhea sighed. “Don’t worry about it.” Shai wouldn’t be the first ghost to forget her death, nor the first to not know quite how it happened. Death snuck up on people in a thousand ways, fast and slow and by surprise, and its inevitability made it no easier to accept.
    Yet Shai seemed not to hear. “I remember . . .” she whispered, twisting her hands together. “I remember . . .” As if words might conjure the memories, bring them to the tips of teeth and tongue.
    “I remember the dark, and I remember . . . hurting. But there are moments when the pain stops, and my father is there. Those times, he’s with me.” Perhaps she was remembering the first moments after her death—the moments when she left her body? If so, it seemed her dying had been a blessing; caught in the memory of her pain’s ease Shai’s face seemed alight, the faintest of smiles gracing her lips.
    “But the rest of the time?” Xhea asked softly, thinking: Careful, now. Careful .
    “All of me, my whole body. Hurting.”
    “Did someone do something to you? Hurt you?”
    “No.” Her denial was almost inaudible. Shai shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “No, it’s . . . me .”
    “You hurt yourself?”
    Shai’s voice seemed to come from impossibly far away. “Only by living. By living and breathing, and the magic . . .” She shook her head again. Ghostly tears crept from the corners of her squeezed-tight eyes, sliding down her face to fall and vanish in midair. When she spoke again, the words were rushed and tinged with panic. “The magic . . . it’s sick, wrong. Broken. It’s all going wrong, all of it wrong—it’s eating me from the inside out and I can’t—I