And Zee walked through the blackness that filled the mirror’s frame as though it were just another doorway. He said something that I heard with my bones and not my ears, and the frame was filled with a mirror once more.

“That is one I thought would never change,” said Asil thoughtfully.

“He loved my mother,” Tad told him. “Love is more powerful than anything, even an old grumpy fae who knows how to hate.”

Asil gave Tad a thoughtful look. “Indeed?” And then he looked back at the mirror. “Love is both useful and powerful—but seldom convenient.”

“I don’t know about that,” Adam said. “I’ve found it pretty convenient.”

“That’s not what you told me,” I corrected him, and he laughed.

The ghost tried to give me trouble again on the way back down the stairway from Zee’s mirror room. But I wasn’t stoned by fae magic this time.

“Go away,” I told her.

“Mercy?” Adam was just behind me, and he put his hand on my back.

“Not you,” I told him. “It’s the ghost.” He growled, and it made me smile.

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.