“The Choker. My name’s…The Choker.” Squinting his piggish eyes, the ghost flicks a fat tongue over his full lips.

“I will ask again.” Sharkie’s irises flare bright red. “Have you chosen trial by combat?”

The ghost curls his hands into fists. “Yes, combat.”

“Select your opponent.” Sharkie grins, his knife-like teeth glimmer in the pale light. “First, we offer XP-22.”

The Choker eyes our ‘fighting ghoul.’ With barely-there skin and the muscle tone of toilet paper, anyone could crush XP-22. In fact, the Choker would probably snap him in three seconds or less, but I don’t think he’ll choose to. Ghouls look mighty terrifying, even the weak ones. Most humans avoid them.

The Choker is no different. “I’ll pass.”

Sharkie moves his thin arm to the next figure in line. “Second, we offer Sheila, the Limus demon.”

Sheila’s fourteen red eyes whip about her upper body, finally stopping to glare at the ghostly human. She stretches wide the black hole that serves as her mouth, letting out a gurgling roar. When that girl puts her game on, she’s terrifying.

“Hmm.” The Choker’s beady eyes give Sheila a long stare; the entire Arena seems to hold its breath.

I glance at Sheila and shake my head. Limus demons are almost as easy to kill as XP-22. The trick is, they’re super-flammable. One match and you turn a six-foot monster into a puddle of harmless goo. But like XP-22, they look worse than they actually fight.

The Choker frowns. “Nope.”

“And third, we offer the quasi-demon, Myla.”

The Choker’s eyes slowly scan me from head to toe, his creepy gaze lingering on the curves under my t-shirt and sweats. Rage shoots up my spine. What a scumbag. If he stopped thinking with his pants for two seconds, he’d notice my demon tail instead of my boobs and butt. Some quasis get stuck with pig- or bunny-bottoms, but I hit the jackpot: the long and thin variety with an arrowhead end. Even better, it’s coated in dragon scales, so the thing’s nearly impossible to block or cut.

But the Choker isn’t being smart. He stares into my big watery brown eyes and long lashes; I shamelessly blink in fake-terror. For trial by combat to be valid, the soul must have a chance at winning. They get three options, two of which are relatively easy to defeat. Then, there’s me, the one nobody should pick. Except they always do.

“I choose her.” His thick mouth stretches into a vicious smile. “I’ll fight Myla.” In a low voice, he adds: “You’ll find out why they call me the Choker.”

I jam my hands in my pockets and fake-shiver. And you’ll find out why they called me to fight you, dickhead.

Sharkie thumps his staff on the ground again, and the ghostly Choker turns into two-hundred fifty pounds of real human. “So be it.”