"" sang the voices inside me.

Without me.

I watched myself from across the room. Holy mother of goblin nards. Is that what I look like in a trance? I was lit up like a calavera on a Lite-Brite board. And moving. I could see myself moving. My body swayed and swayed like an unmoored ship in a storm, then suddenly straightened with a spine cracking snap. But I couldn't feel it. Bet I would in the morning, but I certainly didn't now. Couldn't feel anything. A cool numbness engulfed me from head to toe.

"The fuck," I said.

Nobody responded.

Everybody at the table was staring at me. Well. You know, not me, me. My body. At what I was beginning to suspect, was my possessed body. Which was... uh... new for me. Can't say I'd ever found myself this side of the summoning circle before.

"Greg?"

I waved a hand in front of his face. The air around it felt soupy and thick. Greg just stared, mouth agape and transfixed on my glowing form, fingers threaded tightly through mine. Not, like, my fingers. My body's fingers. Across the table. I reached down—felt like trudging through a choppy sea, invisible waves beating back my best efforts to swim forward—and tapped the back of Greggy's hand with a finger.

Pixie dust. I could hardly feel the pressure of his hand under mine. No texture of his smooth skin. No hint of either a chill or warmth. Just. Nothing.

I pressed down harder.

Nada. No reaction. Not good.

"Hey," I said to my body. "Get out of here. Séance is over. I'm pulling the plug."

She—they—whomever it was piloting my skin casually flipped my hair back and smirked right at me. Eyes black as the endless void. Okay, I admit, that looked pretty fucking sick. Taking my bones for a joyride, though? Not cool.

my body said, just totally, and aggravatingly ignoring me.

That bitch.

"Cheap charlatan!" wailed Dmitri. "Tis Rosemond, my truest love, I summon. Stand, er, waft aside pesky wenches!"

My tongue clicked.

Three voices answered. "

And then a singular, birdlike voice tweeted out alone, "I was the berries, wasn't I?"

"Possessing of glorious will and boldness," a second responded, timid as a mouse, barely above a whisper, dropping my gaze into her lap as she did.

Then another, louder, alto-like woman's voice, leaned my body deeply back into her chair, so sharply I worried she'd give me whiplash. "?"

Ugh, is this what I sounded like?

Sloane snorted. "Ain't this some shit."

" that same voice responded.

Oh, this was heckin' weird. No bueno. I did not like this.

"Who're you?" Greg choked out. "What've you done with Isla?"

"Yeah, bitch," I yelled at myself. "Who invited you?"

I gave myself a look. I knew the look. The one where my eyes rolled as if to say: 'you did, skank.'

Well fuck you too, body.

Enough was enough. This was my show. I flung myself across the table, arms wide and ready to tackle these squatters out right out of my skin. Annnnd passed right through myself. Are you shitting me? I could slide across a glass table, somehow pass through the bones atop it, and pass through my own skin like this was some Harry Potter bullshit, but the floor could hold me? Because I straight up crumpled onto the ground behind my body's chair.

And I—she—they—my body­ didn't even blink.

The voices in me sighed. They rolled my neck as if to crack it. "Oh, sugar bean," sang that twittering one. "Your bearcat's just taking a little snoozy right now. Don't you worry, everything's jake."

"I am not taking a little snoozy!"

My body beamed at Greg. Literally. The glow of my bones intensified as I looked at him, grinning like a literally possessed lunatic. Wasn't a cute look. "Look at you, gumshoe! Been a minute but you're looking spiffy as always. Don't suppose you got some dough for the bar? Since you missed me so much."

"Missed you like a kick in the teeth," he said.

My mouth widened. The smile revealed all my shiny black teeth visible well past the edges of my lips. A Cheshire cat grin if I ever saw one. "Bet Curtis owes you some cabbage, eh? I know you two took bets which of the club cats I was canoodling."

"Ye wagered on my personal life, Gregorio?" Dmitri hissed.

Greg was a gambler? Hm, kind of made sense. He sure took a gamble on me.

I crawled around the table to crouch between myself and Greg. "Busted," I whispered in his ear. Was that a shiver that just ran through him? Or just a grimace?

"Fanging hell, Dmitri, you drained Pearl!"

The voices threw my head back and cackled. Candle flames flared for a moment. When they spoke, it was as one: ""

The deepest voice inside me responded with a snort. ""

"Pearl and Rusti? Well fuck me in half," snickered Sloane. "I know who you are. Dmitri's still got your fucking letters."

"Language!" gasped the timid voice, barely above a whisper.

"Oh, come off it," I, me, the real me, snapped back. "You've clearly never been in my fucking mouth before."

"What letters?" Greg said, tearing his gaze off Christmas-lawn-ornament-me to look at the others. Damn. He totally would've laughed at that mouth joke.

Across the table, Dmitri looked, dare I say it, sheepish. He avoided his wife's sharp gaze. "You found the letters?"

"Only more than twenty fucking years ago."

One of the spirits inside me whistled. She leaned in close to me. Well, technically Greg, but my own face hovered only inches from me as she whispered in my guy's ear, flickering and fading with every inch she moved. Oh, my goblin tits was that a zit on my cheek?

The timid voice whispered with hot breath: "Love letters. Dmitri was most ardent to confess his undying affection. The centuries he pined to be reunited with me. I was his wife in a past life. His truest love. Reincarnated to—"

" said the one I think was called Rusti.

"Hush, trollops!" yelled Dmitri; he turned to Sloane, who'd been eyeing him in disgust. "They mean naught to me! Frauds and harlots! These thots abused my aching heart and abandoned me to wallow in solitude, absconding in the daylight never to return! The nerve of them to show their achingly beautiful essence in my home again!"

"Seriously?" moaned Julian. "You believe the ghosts were scamming you, but not the barista?"

The vampires ignored him. Sloane narrowed her eyes to mere slits. "I stayed through all your lonely-hearts club batshit and you still managed to throw your dart shaped cock at a fresh one."

Greg was still. Eerily so. Those blue eyes trailed my out-of-control limbs like a hawk. Or a shark. Or a psycho stalker serial killer. And his jaw was clenched so, so tight. Those lovely teeth of his visibly ground through the little hole in his cheek. His grip on my hand, my physical hand, had grown so fierce my fingers were turning plump and purple.

"Greg?" I whispered against his cheek. "Darling, I, uh, am thinking I may have given you some bad advice. I know, wild, right, coming from me? But hey, babe, if you could hear me, maybe, uh, maybe you should let go of my hand. Break the circle. Maybe? Kind of jonsing to end this chat pronto and that'll usually do it."

He sneered. Fangs dug into his bottom lip.

"You've been dishonest with me, Dmitri," Greg seethed, voice a feral, core shaking growl. The shades inside me turned to study him. "I don't like that. Just how many more Rosemonds have you seduced and misplaced?"

"" Rusti, laughed. ""

"Cool, yeah, okay, so nobody can hear me, huh? Shit!"

I stood up and kicked my own shin under the table. My body didn't budge, my foot passing right through myself. For a moment, I caught my own eyes. Narrowed and black and judgmental. "Oh, you can see me, can't you babes?"

They pursed my lips as if to shush me.

Rude.

I moved to the shelf of lit candles. Blew on them. Hard. Puffing my cheeks and practically spitting. No dice. Flames stayed lit. Okay, so that didn't get me back in my body. What next?

"Ladies," Greg said. "If Dmitri didn't kill any of you. How did you die?"

"."

I spun on my heels. "Who!"

"Who?" asked Greg.

"Rosemond, that whore!" That soft, timid, mousey voice shrieked.

Oh, shit, plot twist.

Agatha stomped my feet, shaking the bones on the table. One of the thorny chalices on the bar cart burst, spraying bits of crystal and gold all over Julian's back. He flinched and swore and kind of, sort of, looked like he was rutting against the table leg too (I mean, whatever gets you off, I guess?). Tried tug his own hands out of his masters' grips, but neither Sloane nor Dmitri released him. Or seemed to care.

"."

"Apologies," Agatha released a shaky breath.

My gleaming bones swayed in shuddering, hazy movements. Like a film with missing frames. The shades inside me seemed to twitch and jerk my neck and shoulders in all directions as they conversed.

That could not be good for my spine.

Also pretty sure the capacity limit on my meat bag was one thanks very much.

"I-if nobody h-here," Julian stuttered, his attack on the table slowing, "is actually Rosemond reincarnated, then, h-how'd she kill anybody?"

For once my thoughts aligned with this jackass. That was an intriguing question. Rosemond would have to be one heck of a powerful haunt to stretch herself across the veil and into the corporeal realm to commit murder. I mean, it's not that it don't happen. Plenty of horror movies out there are truer than you think. But when it does... there's a reason the premise of haunted houses falls solidly under horror.

"It was early morn," Agatha spoke, voice returning to her apparent customary softness. "Dmitri had fallen into slumber after a long night of our—" a bright shimmer blossomed on my cheeks. Guess that's the closest a ghost gets to a blush. Agatha cleared my throat. "I wished to take the air and watch the sunrise. The gardens were lovely then. The rose bushes in full bloom. My family planted them, you see—"

"Boring," piped Pearl, "skip all the small talk, will you, Aggie?"

Agatha huffed. "Fine. I fell into an open grave."

Silence stretched across the table.

"Cool story, sis," I snarked in my own ear.

"To which Rosemond's pallor spirit so cruelly lured me!" she continued. "I saw the lady, hair red and billowing, dressed in the white of her finest gown, strolling among the gravestones. I thought she an intruder, but she did not turn to me as I called after. I followed her across the gardens, stepping exactly as she stepped so as not to rip my own nightdress on the thorny roses—see, I was giving context, Pearl—but as I stepped to follow her over the path across a headstone, well, I fell in the ground. She laughed as the dirt collapsed atop me, suffocating me to silence."

"Hop skip and jump a hundred years," My body convulsed unnaturally, neck practically spinning, as Pearl took over. Troll tits, I was going to be so damn sore when I got back to myself. I swallowed. If I got back to myself. "I'm minding my own bees wax, just having a smoke one morning out the top window, when I see it too. Gave me the willies the way this paper-thin sheba floated through the yard. Thought I must've drank too much the night before and went to shut the window. Jumped right out my own skin when the ghost appeared in the room beside me. She pushed me right out! Got all covered up in dirt, just like our girl Aggie."

"."

"That seems..." Greg started. What was he thinking? Far-fetched? Unreal? Impossible for a ghost to have such physical dominance on this plane?

"Seems pretty fucking similar to what I saw," said Sloane.

The ghosts split my face into another toothy grin. "."

"She led me to your gross ass love notes."

"." Again, they loosed that dreadful laugh. A warble in my throat suggested they were making me hoarse. Cool. "."

"I wasn't dumb enough to go to some white ass vamp's home on a first date."

"?"

Sloane seemed to squirm uncomfortably in her seat. Shots fired. These babes did not hold back. Heck, if it wasn't for the fact they were holding my body hostage I'd be living for all this spilled tea.

"She protected me," Dmitri declared, nodding. "My Rosemond."

The living, unliving, and the restless dead all groaned in hauntingly exasperated unison.

Dmitri gave no fucks. "Even from beyond the grave my truest love's loyalty is fierce! She saw the deception these rotting quims preyed upon my vulnerable husk of a heart and rescued me."

"You convinced me," snarled Sloane. She made to furiously yank her hand free of Greg's, but he kept a hold firm. Damn it. "I was twenty-fucking-years old, and you came at me with this reincarnation bull-fuckery. You preyed on me, you rancid cheese bag. How the fuck you explain that?"

"As a mistake. I upped the fuck."

"The term is fucked up, my Liege—you know what, fuck it. It's useless trying to stop you from making the same mistakes over and over and over," harrumphed Julian. "No matter how hard I try to protect you, really protect you. You don't listen to me, Master. You're upped fuck. The both of you."

Julian stood up, but both Sloane and Dmitri tugged his arms, dropping him back into his seat.

The trio then erupted into a blast of overlapping shouts and arguing to rival the breaking of a thousand violin strings over the subtle notes of werewolf claws scraping down a chalkboard on a Sunday morning.

Greg pressed his eyes tightly shut. I could see his jaw tightening. That tongue rolling around over his sharp teeth.

"Know thy place unworthy servant!"

"Nah, he's right, all this shit's fucked! I'm tired of it. Aye, ghosts! Bring me Rosemond on the fucking line. Skank said she could do it. I dug up bones and shit for this. I want to talk the nasty cu—"

"."

"Don't fuck with me!"

"."

Dmitri straightened, puffing out his chest. "My true beloved is missing, Sloane. Her soul has returned to this earth. This is why Gregorio is here! To find her!"

"," the ghosts whispered.

Uh, hey, was I the only one who noticed the wind kicking up around here? Or caught the stench of smoke and sulfur seeping into the room? Or the way those shadows in the corners seemed to leer at me? No? Nobody? Balls.

Smokey tendrils from the shadows seeped like oil along the walls and ceiling and floor. They oozed and inched their way closer to me. To me, me, not my body me. Whispers of the dead and whatever other ghouls resided in the Netherworld echoed throughout the room. They were coming for me.

See, this is why I don't leave my little door open for this long.

"Cut the fucking shit and just admit the bitch has never, and will never, be rein-fucking-carnated," said Sloane. "You fooled us all with that jawn for long enough."

"Ye's jealousy is unbecoming, woman. Our union was a fling, as they say. My love for Rosemond is as undying as I and her spirit is not, and cannot, be present here if she is alive on the mortal plane!"

I tried tapping on Greg's shoulder again. He didn't notice. Phased right through him. Boy seemed like he was barely paying attention to the chaos as the table anymore. He bit his lip and furrowed those bushy brows in an adorable show of concentration, evidently deep in thought. Not so deep he couldn't ease up on his grip, though. I noticed my body's hand was still clasped firmly in his.

That was kind of sweet, how steadfastly determined he was to keep my anchored.

"Ugh, Greggy, come on, please hear me. What's going on up in that cute head of yours, huh?"

I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes.

He blinked.

Woah.

"Hot damn. I couldn't get into her apartment without permission," he muttered. Greg shook his head afterward, as if surprised he'd uttered that aloud. "Pearl?"

My neck turned to him. Us. Slow. Too slowly. The angle seemed unnatural. My hollowed, glowing face hung in a scowl. I couldn't tell her void eyes over there was glaring at me or Greg.

"How long has Rosemond been gone?"

My body shrugged. "Sugar bean I don't even know how long we've been lollygagging here. Hours? Days? You tell me."

Greg's shoulders fell.

A shadow quivered in its corner.

Dmitri flung himself against my shoulders, shaking my body roughly. "Where is she now! Tell me where my beloved has gone." What the heck, dude? Was everyone trying to scramble my brain like eggs today?

An unchecked snarl rose in Greg's throat.

"."

"That's not good enough!"

"Dmitri, your hand, pal," growled Greg. "Hold on to her or else we'll lose the line!"

"Yeah, uuuh, actually, Dmitri," I shouted. "You can let go now. Just drop it. It's fine. I'll be fine."

"Go ahead, husband, drop it and leave poor Lily the fuck alone."

At the mention of Lily's name the room shook. Flames surged on the candles. Rosemond's bones vibrated with a buzzing intensity. Oh, and my body jolted up from the table. It rocked as my knees kicked it. The chair flung backwards, seemingly of its own accord, cracking against the wall.

A rough snap ricocheted through the room as my hand twisted Greg's wrist into an impossible angle. Yeesh that had to hurt. Boy held on tight, though.