With these bracing words, I marched to the door, flung it open, and found myself face to face with my father's ghost. Effectively startled, I stifled a shriek, stumbled back a pace, tripped, and fell into Lucian Drake's waiting arms.

From there, I glared up at my father's apparition and scowled.

"I wondered when you'd show up again," I muttered. "What use is having a ghost-dad, anyway, if you're not going to step in and help solve your own fucking murder?"

"Attempted fucking murder," he said in a clear and notably un-ghostly voice. "And as you've made rather a grand mess of things, I figured it was, indeed, high time I 'step in' before you make it worse."

I laughed with bitter incredulity and shook free of Lucian's hold as I regained my feet. "There's the dad I remember. Gods, I wish everyone could see what a fucking dick you really are."

He lifted a pair of gray, grizzled, and unusually solid-looking brows at me, and shed his coat. "Wish granted," he said.

I snorted, imagining that I looked completely unhinged, talking to thin air, but when I glanced at my companions, I found them all staring, open-mouthed with shock, at the very place my father stood.

"Wait... you guys can see him, too?" I asked.

"Of course they can see me, idiot," my father said. "I'm not dead."

Kyrie gaped silently, Lucian breathed a single word — "impossible" — and part of my brain was telling another to hit the reset button and put me back to factory settings, because something was clearly malfunctioning.

Meanwhile, Janelle took three steps forward and slapped my father, quite hard, across the face.

The crack of her palm against his cheek startled us all, and she rubbed her hand and frowned.

"Yeah, he real, alright. Dunno how, but he's no ghost."

"Impossible," Lucian repeated, his dark eyes ringed in white. "If he's not a ghost, he's an impostor, or... or something. I saw him dead. I certified his death myself."

"And you never make mistakes, do you, Lucy?" My father hung his coat on a hook by the door, like any casual visitor, and cast Janelle a disapproving look as he rubbed his face. "You know all my tricks; I thought you'd have seen through this one — or that my useless daemon would, eventually. Where is he, anyway?"

At this, whatever was left of my sanity departed, and with a feral scream I summoned every ounce of power I could muster, raised hands wreathed in white flame, and reached for my father with the full intention of burning him to a crisp.

A sharp blow on the back of my head put an end to that. My vision burst with stars, I fell, someone caught me, the noise of shouting filled my ears, and then everything faded to black.

❧

I woke on the couch, my head in someone's lap, and someone's fingers gently combing through my hair. Janelle leaned over, purple braids framing her kind, round face, and gave me a small, apologetic smile.

"Hey, kid. You okay?"

I blinked and winced as my head throbbed. "What happened?"

She grimaced. "Lucian saw you 'bout to make crispy-fried daddy and stopped you the only way he could. For my apartment's sake, I'm glad he did."

Carefully, and with Janelle's help, I sat up.

"That... really happened, then? He's really here?"

"He's really here," Janelle confirmed unhappily. "He's banished, for the moment — at least until I'm sure you're okay and not gonna treat anyone to premature cremation. He and Lucian are up in Tobin's room, pokin' 'round."

"And... Kyrie?" I asked, a little afraid of what I might hear.

Janelle sighed. "She in the doghouse, for sure; but she should know better than to think I'd stop loving her after one mistake. One big-ass mistake, yeah, but still a mistake. She was duped, and ain't nobody too smart to get fooled. I can forgive that. It's the trust that's gonna take time to get back."

She shook her head sadly.

"She locked herself in our room and had Lucian put up some wards. She's worried Evangeline might try something if she catches on to us. I just wish she'd been honest from the start. Might've saved us all a lot of trouble. Then again, if this is all by design, I guess things could be worse."

I sniffed. "The only good things about all this were Ro and my dad being dead. Now Ro is gone, and my dad is alive somehow. How could things be worse?"

"Well, we could all be dead," she pointed out, rubbing my shoulder carefully.

I realized I had a very important choice in front of me: I could either dissolve in tears and let Janelle hold me like a little kid while I cried, or I could pull myself together and do my best to understand what the fuck was going on and force my father to help me rescue Ro.

For a moment, things hung in the balance. A good cry in Janelle's warm, soft arms was sorely tempting, but hers weren't the arms I really wanted.

I wanted Ro; but if I ever wanted him to hold me again, I needed to get my act together, and fast. I had only the vaguest idea what might be going on, but if my father had gone to the trouble to fake his own death, had preserved the illusion for months, and only now decided to step from the shadows like Sherlock Holmes coming back from the dead, it meant things were coming to a head, and time was running out.

"Okay," I said, releasing a long breath. "I'm ready to hear what he has to say. Can you, um... 'un-banish' him, or whatever?"

"You sure?" Janelle asked, looking at me sidelong.

I gave her a slight, self-deprecating smile. "Yes, I'm sure. I promise not to light anything on fire."

"Alright then."

She took a deep breath and rose, but instead of doing some sort of 'banishment lifting spell,' as I'd imagined, she strode to the door, threw it open, and shouted at the top of her impressive lungs, as if my father and the Chief Vestiger were a pair of children on a timeout.

"LUCIAN! OSCAR! Y'ALL COME ON DOWN NOW!"

I laughed wearily and waited as I listened to footsteps descending from above. Janelle held the door open as they entered, and as my father came into view, a whole range of emotions hit my heart like a missile strike. Before I could sort through any of it, though, my attention was snagged by something at his back: the demure, slight form of Luke, who had followed them down, and clutched a white envelope to his chest.

"Elwood," my father said, nodding at me as if we were distant and vaguely unfriendly acquaintances crossing paths at the local club. "I see you've collected yourself."

I rose, steadied myself against the arm of the couch for a moment, and (conscious of several sets of anxious eyes upon me) crossed the room to stand before my father and looked up at him.

"You, of all people, should know that names have power. Mine is Ellie, and you know it."

He narrowed his eyes at me and frowned, transporting me to the past, when he might have crushed me with a word. Instead, to my surprise, he nodded. "Very well. Ellie. It's high time we all got on the same page. Lucian has filled me in on the current situation, and it seems to be worse than I'd feared. So, let me tell you my half."

He gestured at the couches and, reluctantly, I retook my seat, watching warily as my father settled across from me and vaguely aware of Janelle, Lucian, and Luke in my periphery.

"You might say that angels... fell into my life," my father began, interlacing his fingers around one raised knee. "It started as a single, seemingly unimportant case, and quickly dominated my every waking moment. The 'angelic threat' prompted me to seek knowledge I should otherwise never have had need for: memory manipulation, illusions, the absolute and inhumane domination of daemonic souls." He lifted his brows and took a breath. "Ironically, you might even say it is 'angels' that made a devil of me."

"Cute," I snapped. "Why are you alive?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "I am alive because I outsmarted the people trying to kill me."

"How?" Lucian leaned forward in his seat with his hands spread. "For fuck's sake, Oscar — how?"

My father drew a breath. "Not easily. Not... conveniently, for certain. I learned of their plan through a plant of mine." He nodded at Luke. "A young daemon whose witch had become involved with the cult in the hopes of a cure for a long and terminal illness. Sadly, no cure was to be had. The witch, however, was quite wealthy, and the cult was happy to strip her of every penny while selling empty promises."

His lash-veiled eyes angled at the carpet, Luke spoke in a soft voice, hardly above a whisper. "I was worried for Lisbet. She'd lived twice a normal life-span already. I loved her, but... all good things come to an end, sooner or later. There are good ways and bad ways to end things, too. Lisbet never clung too tightly to anything. She held her life light and joyously, until... Well, until she fell in with that Angelic Power crowd. Then it was as if she became a different person. As if her mind was poisoned. She... changed. Then she died, and I... wanted answers."

Luke's voice faded to an almost inaudible level as two large, silvery tears dropped from his downcast eyes.

"Nobody blames you, honey," Janelle said. "We just want to understand."

Luke nodded and sniffed, but my father took over then.

"Luke came to me, and that's what tipped me off about this new threat. I enlisted Lucian, and together, we began an undercover, unofficial investigation. Soon, we were in deep — over even our collective heads — and I suspected that I'd become a target. I knew it was only a matter of time until an attempt was made on my life, and Luke brought me the relevant information just in time."

"The poison," Lucian murmured.

My father nodded. "Indeed. Once I understood their plan, I had only a short time in which to invent one of my own. Fortunately, I had the right tools at my disposal."

He glanced up and met my eyes. His were dark and lined with wrinkles, but strangely sincere.

"I never liked to do it, Ellie," he said. "I had to. A 'necessary evil,' as they say. Ro brought me the poisoned cookies, but I never ate them. I took a concoction of my own and manipulated Ro's memory instead. Then I spelled the corpse of another man — a poor, unfortunate homeless fellow who'd died of exposure — to look like me just long enough to fool the authorities..."

He glanced at Lucian, who gave him a heatless glare in return, and hunched his shoulders.

"What about Ro?" I asked. "He's your daemon. Wouldn't he know if you were alive?"

My father nodded. "The only way to make it believable was to let him go, and so I did — with that one caveat: protect my son and solve my 'murder.' As I hadn't actually been murdered, I figured that would keep him around long enough for things to get sorted out. What I did not count on was that he would... choose to bond with you, of all people."

I shook my head, too confused to be outraged. "And your 'ghost?'"

He rubbed a hand across his mouth as if to hide a smile. "Remember when Luke Skywalker cast an image of himself across the galaxy in The Last Jedi?" he asked.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Janelle asked. "You fucking astral projected your fucking self into your own son's fucked up mind? No offense, Ellie," she added quickly.

My father merely nodded. "I did. And everything was going exactly according to plan. Until my son was nearly killed in a car accident today."

"Like you care," I scoffed.

"I do," my father said. "And not only for the reasons you think. Ellie, I—"

"We're running out of time."

This quiet interruption came from Luke, who held the white envelope towards me with wide, earnest eyes.

"Please. Tobin's running out of time. So is Ro. Please save them."

"What is this?" I asked, taking the offering and removing the thin slip of paper within, on which was written a single, unintelligible word.

"It is the name of Evangeline's daemon," Luke breathed, looking as horrified as if he'd just signed his own death warrant. "I found it among Lisbet's things, but I didn't know what it was until..." He glanced at my father.

"Until I told you what to look for," he supplied.

I squinted at the word. "Okay. What do I do with it?"

"Speak it," my father said, laying an unwelcome hand on my shoulder. "Speak, and summon the one who bears this name. Then we shall have answers."

Remembering Evangeline's shy little ferret-girl of a familiar, I quailed. Sophie couldn't be...

I looked down at the paper again. If Evangeline could disguise herself as a harmless baker, why couldn't her familiar have more than one appearance? Ro certainly did.

And Ro was my top priority.

I nodded. "Alright. Just... tell me what to do."

In short order, the furniture was cleared away, and Janelle had drawn a rudimentary seal on the floor with chalk, the main points lit with candles or marked with crystals.

I stood at the top of the seal, holding the paper in front of me, and read the name over and over while the others watched.

Finally, I shut my eyes, summoned my power in as controlled as way as I could, and spoke.

"I summon the spirit of Inguka," I said, a little uncertainly. "I command you, Inguka: appear before me, now."

Nothing happened, and I started to breathe a sigh of mingled disappointment and relief, when a rush of wind and black smoke erupted from the floor and shape took form.

It was not a cute ferret, or a shy girl, however.

It was a gigantic, spectral hyena.