Fatimah laughs, a clear, silver music that cuts to his spine. “Since you believe in ghosts, I’ve got one for you. It’s about the Nu Gui.”

A pulse of recognition. “That’s cheating. Teke-teke is old world mythos.”

“No,” Fatimah disgorges a wad of chewed-up gum, affixes it to the alloyed surface. It moans a whalesong reply and Allen twitches, like a man impaled on a jolt of electricity, eyes sliding away from the dark corners. If he just withholds acknowledgement, surely, he can deny them existence, those jittering, staticky things in the margins of his eyesight. “She’s not. Teke-teke isn’t just a construct of Old China. She’s a metaphysical meme.”

“This is lame, Fa—”

“They say—” A defiant interruption. Allen shivers, riveted. Fatimah’s voice is silver, is gold resin, is entrapment honeyed and resonant, irresistible as the siren lure of a black hole. “—that myths can be divided into two categories: oral and memetic. One is deathless, one is not, surviving so long as the concept remains intact.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Allen purses his mouth. Neither adolescent lust nor fear of the known can counteract candor. “Oral tradition is memetic. That’s the whole point. What you’re saying is an oxymoron, and Fa—”

“You’re making it too scientific.”

“I’m making it too scientific?” Incredulity wells, hot, metallic. “You were the one teasing me about believing in ghosts and—”

“So you do believe in ghosts!”

“Argh!” Allen chucks his arms into the air, a hundred heartfelt profanities interlaced with that single expulsion of exasperation. “No! That’s not what I meant! And even if I did, it’s beside the point. Anyway. My point is you don’t have a point.”

His diatribe is received with a look and then discarded with a laugh. Fatimah tosses her hair and continues, relentless, triumphantly brazen.

“They say—” She begins again, stressing the words just so, with just enough charm to make Allen’s heart jump. “—that the Nu Gui is the vengeful spirit of a suicide who meets their end in a bloom of red—”

Allen feels eyes on the back of his hands, his mouth, his skin, and he shivers in reply to the weight of their scrutiny. “You mean they slit their wrists?”

“Ugh. You have no poetry—”

“This isn’t exactly a laughing matter. You—”

“Whatever. Anyway, like I was saying, the Nu Gui is the spirit of a woman who either committed suicide while wearing red, or was buried in red. Ordinarily, it’s a one in five billion chance that the dead will return, but something about that color pulls at them, especially those who died unfairly.”

Here, Fatimah’s eyes turn glassy, glazed, carefully pared of emotion, her mouth the dark slit of an emptied throat.