Anna often had a hard time sleeping. She tended to be kept awake by all sorts of things that ran through her mind. Every once in a while, she would start talking with these things out loud and then a bang on the wall would remind her that her brother in the next room didn’t appreciate her quirks.

That night, however, she fell asleep quickly. It was too bad then that she was awoken just a couple of hours later by a rattling in her bedroom. Her eyes cracked open and she found herself face to face with some strange animal observing her intently.

Anna backed away with a start. The animal looked like something between a fox and a wolf. Maybe a coyote or a jackal, although these species didn’t live in her part of the world. What was this one doing in her bedroom?

“Hey, are you a dog?” she asked.

Initiating conversation with a predator isn’t the most intuitive response. Screaming and scrambling away is what generally comes to mind. However, at that point Anna wasn’t sure yet whether this was actually a wild animal, or another one of her visions. What’s more, this “dog” didn’t seem wild at all. It scratched the bed cover as though it was trying to tell her to come with him.

Once it had her attention, the animal went to the bedroom door and waited there, casting a few glances back to check if Anna had got the gist. “I can’t let you in the house,” she whispered. “You’ll wake up everybody.”

The door was already cracked open. The animal pushed it with its snout and was off. Anna ran after it into the dark corridor, calling it quietly back to her with no success. To her relief, it didn’t go very far. The dog stopped in front of the wall, just opposite Victor’s bedroom. Anna looked around and couldn’t find what was of interest in this particular spot. Then, the animal started scratching at the wall and Anna noticed something for the first time.

“Why is there a door here?”

The dog kept at it until she opened, revealing a flight of stairs. It rushed to the unknown upper floor, while Anna hesitated to follow it any further. She’d never been there before, and as far as she knew, neither had anyone else in her family.

Soon, curiosity got the better of her and she carefully went up the eight steps that led to an attic. A small window illuminated the beams that ran along the ceiling with the faint moonlight. Just in front of it, the strange dog sat and waited for her.

Wreaths of blue smoke suddenly started curling around the animal, who grew taller and taller as the legs turned into human legs and arms and the pointy ears receded into the head. At the end of the process, the animal was gone and all that was left in its place was some boy wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

“Anna, wait,” the boy said when the little girl seemed about to run back down the stairs.

“W… who are you?”

The boy hesitated a moment. “My name is Luca... But you must keep this, and everything I’m about to say, to yourself. Do you understand? If anyone learns about this, if you tell anyone about this, then bad things will happen. You must keep it a secret.”

The little girl froze in fear. It wasn’t that Luca was particularly scary, but even her weirdest visions had never reached such a level of weirdness.

“Anna, do you understand?” he insisted.

“Y… yes.”

Luca sighed and scratched his head. “You can see and hear things that other people can’t. You have probably already noticed... What you see are the souls of the living and the departed, and the spirit of everything that exists. They like you because you can understand them, you listen to them. They tell you about... the true state of things. What will happen, what has already happened. That is why you will become the next Seer.”

“I don’t want to be a Seer, I want to be a vet,” Anna interjected.

Luca clearly hadn’t planned for this. “I mean… I guess… You still have a few years to go, so don’t worry too much about it. For now, just make sure you wear this at all times.”

He took a small velvet pouch out of his jeans pocket and extracted a silver bracelet from it. He then kneeled down and gestured for Anna to come closer. She took a few wary steps until she was close enough to see what Luca had in his hands.

“This is for you,” Luca explained. “It’s a concealer. That way, the spirits won’t bother you too much.”

“But I like talking with them.”

“Now yes, but soon you will become very popular and they’ll all want to be with you. The bracelet will hide your power, so they won’t recognise you.”

“Like Cinderella!”

Luca gave her a puzzled look. Anna felt the need to explain her point. “When Cinderella went to the ball, no one knew it was her!”

"Sure, why not.”

He fastened the clasp of the bracelet around Anna’s wrist. She observed it a moment and seemed satisfied with it. “You know, maybe I can be a vet and a deer?”

“A Seer? Yeah, we’ll see. I have to go now. Just remember to wear the bracelet at all times and don’t talk about any of this.”

Luca walked toward the window. He opened it and sat on the windowsill with his legs dangling outside.

“You’ll be back?”

“Of course, I’ll watch over you. If there is anything, I’ll be there. Go back to bed now.”

He let himself fall down and disappeared into the night. Anna went up to the windowsill and waved her hand. “Bye bye, mister Luca!” she whispered.

***

I prided myself on a job well done as I headed back to my place in the Underworld. I had been expecting some screaming and crying, because what else can you expect from a seven-year-old kid. On the whole, I was happy with the way things turned out. The only aspect that filled me with dread was the thought that I would be stuck checking on Anna until she became the Seer.

Finding the door to my place unlocked was a grim reminder that some strange soul lurked in there. Indeed, Alexandra lay on the couch, reading a book she must have found somewhere in the Ghost Market, given that I didn’t own any.

I meant to drop dead on the couch, but because she took up most of the place, all I could do was squeeze in between her feet and the armrest. When she finally deigned look up from her book, I noticed she wore a black eyepatch that covered her right eye socket. “Where were you?” she asked.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Did you go…” she paused and lowered her voice, “look for the Seer’s successor?”

Her question took me by surprise. I ended up stuttering like a rubber ball falling down the stairs. “What? No! Wait, how… when…”

“There’s a rumour circulating in the Capital of Shadows. I heard that they are looking for the next Seer.”

What was the point of top secret information if nothing could be kept secret in this hen pen anyway? The Ferryman must have been gossiping around, as usual.

“You shouldn’t listen to rumours.”

“What else do you expect me to do, Mr. Grumpy? I’m alone here all day.”

One day, I’d like to see the Messenger let a random person stay at his own place for an indefinite amount of time. Then, he might understand the sort moral anguish he’d forced on me. It had been a couple of weeks already and Alexandra showed so sign that she was getting ready for reincarnation.

I tried to bring up the subject as innocently as I could. “So… How’s the memory going? Have you started forgetting yet?”

“Yes!” she said, smiling like she was so proud of herself. “Today, I forgot that my birthday was on May 17 and that my favourite colour is red.”

I stared at her. She must have been kidding me. “You didn’t forget at all, then.”

“I guess I forgot that I forgot.”

Right. I better go to bed before I lost my patience. As I got up, I mumbled, “What’s with the eyepatch anyway?”

She pointed to it. “This? I think it looks better this way.”

I shrugged. “You never worried about it while you were alive.”

“I had other things to worry about.”

Great, I felt bad now for not being nicer to a poor soul with a sad past life. It wasn’t my place to ask about it, so I went to my bedroom.

Karma must have wanted to punish me for waking up little kids in the middle of the night. I say this because, the same night, while I was sleeping in my bed, I was suddenly woken up by a terrible noise. Before I even had the time to get up and hide in my closet, a group of five or six individuals barged in and circled my bed.

I sat up and all I could mumble was a heartfelt, “What the…”

They wore some kind of bulky hazmat suits that covered them from head to toe, which gave me a really bad feeling. Who would need such protection in here? I could already guess, and I didn’t like it. My heart beat so hard that I thought it might break a few ribs while trying to break free from my chest. I really didn’t like this.

A booming voice resonated from one of the suits. “Luca, we were sent by the Light Stag. You must come with us.”

Angels. They were angels. The one closest to me handcuffed my wrists and another one yanked me out of bed. I stumbled on the cold floor as they pulled me out of the bedroom.

“Wait, where are we going?”

“We are taking you to the Light Stag. In Heaven.”

Fear turned into panic. They had to be kidding.