Proving that she could do something other than cry, the ghost screamed at me, her face all but pressed to mine. No one else reacted. It was really ear-piercing, so someone would have reacted if they could hear it. It was just another one of those things that only I could perceive—lucky me.

For a long time I’d thought that was the only thing I could do with ghosts—observe them. Then I’d met a vampire who could steal the power of those he consumed. He’d taken the power of a walker like me, and he’d been able to do more.

I focused my attention on the ghost, borrowed a little Alpha from Adam, though I didn’t really need it, and said again, “Go away.”

She disappeared abruptly, and there was a crash somewhere below. I heard Tad, who’d preceded us, run down the stairs to the main level. Asil, like a lot of the older werewolves, didn’t make any noise when he ran.

When Adam and I got down there, Tad was sweeping up glass in the kitchen while Asil watched. It looked as though the ghost had managed to dump all the dishes that had been in the drainer by the sink onto the floor.

Tad looked at me as he dumped the shards in the garbage. “I thought you said all that she did was cry?”

“I think,” I told him apologetically, “that when I walked through the ghost without my usual mulishness, although she didn’t quite manage to take me over, she did succeed in pulling herself a little closer to this world. She’s probably going to be a little more of a presence here until the effect wears off.”

“We have a ghost.”

“I told you that already,” I said.

“Cool.” He set the dustpan on the counter and grinned at me. “Haunted houses are nifty.”

“Tell me that when she keeps you up all night with her sobbing,” I told him. “But if she gets too obstreperous, just let me know. I might be able to make her leave you alone.” I hadn’t done a lot of experimentation on that front. Ghosts had so little self-determination—bound as they were by the rules of their existence—taking any control away from them seemed like a crime. As long as they didn’t try to possess me or bother my friends, they were safe from me.

“‘Obstreperous,’ huh,” said Tad. “I see you’ve been using that Big Word of the Day calendar I got you last Christmas.”

“That is irrefragable,” I told him solemnly.

Silverless, de-magicked, and vowing never to play word one-upmanship—or even Scrabble for that matter—with either Adam or Asil (What exactly was a quicquidlibet, anyway?), I drove to Kyle’s, where we would meet with the Cantrip agent and everyone else.

Adam only raised his eyebrows when I told him I would drive—which meant he was really exhausted. He closed his eyes as soon as I got the car on the road, and no one said much on the trip. Probably, with two dominant wolves who weren’t in the same pack, it was just as well.