A/N: Media is necromancer Ness! 

Hadrian and I are ghosts in a ghost town.

I can't believe my eyes. Following my father's advice, we made our way to the poorest districts of Minoa, filled with rows of houses crammed side by side. I've been here many times, but never alone. Never like this.

Yohan's district had never been quiet. Still. Eerie. The streets are pitch black, and Hadrian's hand finds mine to keep beside me. He lifts a hand, and a glowing orb sits inside it, blue light shimmering off walls of brick and wood.

We look at our surroundings and back at each other, mouths agape.

I say it aloud: 'I've never seen anything like this.'

The streets aren't just empty. The houses are empty. No candles glow within, no movement shows life inside. The windows are boarded up on most houses, and the doors are painted with a great red "X". In a street where at least a hundred people once lived, there's now none.

Each door was the red X. My fingers point to it, nudging Hadrian for his opinion.

'The flu?' I whisper. 'There's this many?'

Hadrian pales. 'With this many dead, the Underworld is about to be flooded.'

Something stirs in my chest— a flicker of emotion, a weakness— I don't know. I push it aside, deliberately not examining it. Instead, my eyes harden and I let go of Hadrian's hand. His warmth leaves me in the cold Minoan air.

'There must be survivors somewhere,' I say. 'We have to find them.'

Hadrian nods, taking a step away. I watch him as he looks out across the night, his face sharp angles and shadows. 'I can help. I can sense life energy.'

I fold my arms. 'I didn't know that.'

He spares me a glance. 'You didn't want to learn by the book.'

I cast him a wry smile. 'Agreed.'

Too proud to ask him how he goes about sensing energy, I pretend to be absorbed in staring at the sky, watching the stars twinkle above. But out of the corner of my eye, I watch Hadrian's orb vanish, and the night returns with a hiss. When he's so still I'm not sure if he's even there, I see him open his eyes.

There's a hint of blue glowing there in his irises, a glow I've seen before when he's used his powers. I'm impressed. He looks damn cool.

Less so as he strides ahead of me, an owner leading his dog. Not even a comment. I harrumph, before following the darkness that shifts around him. My eyes, it seems, are adjusting.

Or maybe they're just used to finding Hadrian anywhere.

We walk for about five minutes, until we're several alleyways down. The air is thick and cold, frost crunching beneath our shoes. Frost? I shiver. In autumn?

There's something wrong about this place.

Abruptly, reaching a street, Hadrian stops. The house that beckons to us is larger than the others, and set back on its own plot. There's no X on the door, so I start to suspect that whoever lived inside had managed, with a little more wealth than the others, to stay out of harm's way.

Hadrian beckons for me to knock. With his ghostly blue eyes, he's hardly the man to go knocking on doors looking for goodwill. It's up to me. He vanishes into the darkness beside the house as I step up and rap on the knocker, three times.

I rock backwards and forwards on my toes, trying to stay warm. After a tense ten seconds, I'm certain nobody is about to answer. After all, it's the middle of the night. But somebody does. A man with a quivering lip and a wife clinging to his side opens the door, both with eyes wide with fear. They keep a good two-foot distance between them and the door, and each clutches a face mask to their mouths.

The man trembles. 'Hello?' Seeing me, his gaze falters, confused. 'Oh. You're not the watchman. You're not here to tell me Jenny's dead?'

'Jenny?' I ask, shaking my head. 'I don't know her.'

The woman at his side visibly exhales in relief. 'Jenny is my sister,' she explains. 'She lived a few streets over.'

Her eyes flick to the poorer streets. The woman's accent is rougher than the man's, with the tang of the dock workers'. She married up, but her sister didn't.

The man at her side looks steely all of a sudden, as though he hadn't been a sickened mouse a minute ago. 'No news is good news, sweetheart.'

His wife seems to think differently. She frowns at me. 'What are you here for, then?'

I'm worried now that she won't know Yohan's family. If she lived three streets across but a class above him, why would she mix with him? But I have to try.

'I'm trying to locate a child's family,' I say. The sombre tone of my voice registers, and the couple's faces drop. I continue, 'There's nobody else around to ask.'

'I see,' says the woman, and she nods. 'We may know. Felant— my husband— works with a lot of them. He's their overseer. Factory north of here producing toys. All's that's stopped now, though, with the Blood Shrew.'

Blood shrew? Is that what they're calling the disease?

'Blood shrew?' I repeat, questioning.

The man— Felant— nods. 'That's what the workers started calling it. Seems like no big deal at first, then the next moment, poison is spreading through your body and you're dying. Shrews are vicious things.'

I suppress shuddering at the description, my father appearing again in my mind's eye. Instead, I describe Yohan and give them the details I know.

'And he has a younger sister, named Bella...' Felant repeats.

He is leafing through a file he's picked up from his study. The couple haven't invited me inside, and it's not hard to guess why. Even still, the wait as they flick through the pages to find the information I need is agonising. The chill bites nastily.

'Here!' they hand me the entire page, ready to shut the door. From an upstairs room, I hear a baby stirring.

'Thank you for your help,' I murmur, tucking the page inside my breast pocket. I turn to walk away.

'Wait!' the woman calls. She hesitates, Felant looking curiously at her.

'Is Yohan...is Yohan okay?'

My swallow before shaking my head drags out the dreadful moment. But I don't know what else to do. Their faces fall considering he was a boy they barely knew. But the couple seem agonised.

'And Bella...she caught the Shrew too?'

'No,' I say, shaking my head much more easily this time. 'As far as I know, she didn't catch it.'

They breathe out a sigh. 'Maybe she's immune,' the woman says.

Felant ruffles his wife's hair. 'She probably is, love.'

As he's about to shut the door, I hear her say, 'We could take her in.'

I walk away before I can feel invested in such an outcome.

Halfway up the street, Hadrian materialises next to me. Without a word, I pass him the paper and he scans it, already knowing I've seen it. We both walk in companionable silence, but one in which we fear what's around the corner.

Literally.

When we arrive, the house looks like any other. Short, squat, boarded up, empty. That's all that's left of Yohan's childhood home. The door isn't even locked. I push it open, and Hadrian goes in first, a glowing orb in his hand lighting the way. The stairs are covered in dust, and something else.

My nose crinkles at the smell. I've smelled dead bodies before, and there's no mistaking the stench. My hands ball into fists, nervous and tense. The smell gets stronger as I follow Hadrian through the dark house.

The furniture casts shadows that make me jump. With Hadrian's light, at least we can see: the house is scarcely decorated, with some tables and chairs in the kitchen and an old, worn worktop. A stove sits empty and unused, a layer of dust coating it. We wade through the silence and stale air, finding nothing in the sitting room but a worn-out couch and side tables, upturned. As though, in those final moments of occupancy, a scuffle had ensued in the house.

The stairs creak as Hadrian steps his foot onto them. Dark liquid has pooled and dried along each ledge, and it looks black in the light of the blue orb. My eyes frown as I step over it, registering faintly that it's not black, but red.

All too late, I look up, and spot the body.

The hallway is narrow, and there's two rooms. One is a children's room, with bunk beds and a large teddy bear. The other room isn't lit by the orb yet, but there's enough light to cast a beam across the bed inside it. And there's something sprawled across the floor, hand stretched out.

Hadrian's orb flickers. A wind stirs. When I glance at him, he's frowning in a way that I know he's thinking.

Something is here.

He knows it.

I take a step closer to him. The body on the floor doesn't move as he sends his orb floating towards it, away from his hand.

The light bobs, dancing macabrely. Rats, nibbling on Hell-only-knows, scatter at the intrusion, squeaking. I want to look away from the sight, but I can't.

The woman— it was probably a woman, judging by the copious amounts of long once-golden hair— is lying sprawled, her head bent at an unnatural angle, and her clothes hanging in a way that shows the tear down the side. Bile surges in my throat, and my stomach contracts, threatening to vomit. I thought I was tough, but this is something even Hadrian shudders at.

She tried to run, my gut tells me. That's why her clothes are torn. She was forced to the ground. She was beaten and...

A horrified gasp escapes my mouth. Her skirt has been pushed up, and her undergarments are tugged down. Her skin has blackened with decay, but by the odd twist of her legs, they would have been black with bruises too.

Hadrian takes my hand. I realise he's shaking as much as I am.

Yohan's mother tried to run.

His father pulled her back. Raped her. Beat her. Accidentally or otherwise, killed her.

And Yohan saw.

I remember all that I spoke in Yohan's words. Things fit into place. Hadrian's mouth tightens as the orb that he cast out flickers and dies.

A greater wind rises this time, pulling at my hair and bringing the hairs on my arms to a stand.

Yohan saw, and tried to tell. So his father put him in a hospital...

...even when he wasn't sick.

'That son-of-a-bi...' I begin, but then a roar erupts through the darkness.

Hadrian shoves me behind him as a figure rises, glowing and unearthly, from the floor. I bite my tongue to stop from screaming and taste blood.

The figure has probably been humanoid at some point, but where humans have limbs, claws raked at odd angles. A lop-sided head has twisted into a beak and pitless, black eyes. The figure has the long body of a snake, writhing and floating.

'What is that?' I cry.

The figure screams in fury, and the whole house trembles. Bits of dust rain down, and the floorboards creak beneath us.

'It's either a mendaghast or a reveghast,' Hadrian yells, and I see him twist into a fighting stance. Without thinking, I copy him, feeling for the power that thrums through my veins. Even in my panicked state, I start to clear my mind and open it, just like he'd been teaching m.

'And what, may I ask, is a mena... a reva...' I shake my head, frustrated. '...thingy?'

Bang. The body of the figure lashes out, taking a chunk out of the wall where Hadrian had been a moment a go. I see him roll to the side, a dark blur moving with rapid precision. He strikes the creature's scales with something that blasts it out of the way, sending it reeling.

'You didn't want to learn by the book, remember?' he yells, and he leaps out the way of a claw that sweeps towards him. I'm about to argue when one comes my way and, quick as I see it, I'm hurtling in the other direction.

God damn him, I say inwardly. He's really not letting that go.

'Alright, fine, I don't care what it is!' I yell as the creature roars again, turning back to slam its tail towards me. This time, it clips my skin, sending searing pain through my arm. Warm blood pools, dripping more onto the stairs. 'Just tell me what to do!'

At a very inappropriate time, I see Hadrian's suggestive smile. His eyes glow brighter, and I wonder if that inner part of him is already surfacing. 'You know, I like it when you want to be ordered around by me.'

He raises a knife, pulled seamlessly from his belt, in one swooping motion and drives it into the creature's back. The creature screams before disintegrating.

'Well, glad that's over,' I say.

Hadrian gives me a flat stare. 'It's not. We have to trap it by magic, because I don't have that mask I can use to command any spirit!'

I open my palms at him in a gesture that says I plead innocence. 'Tell me what to do!'

The creature reappears, and suddenly it's flying away. No, it's not— I realise the second before I hit the wall that it's me that's flying.

I hit the wall and slide down it, falling hard onto the bottom of the stairs. Bits of plaster and brick cascade down, filling my hair and lungs. I cough, easing onto my knees. Upstairs, I see Hadrian interrupted from kneeling on the floor beside the body. He's dodging the monster, but I can see it's fast.

Every bone in my body protesting, I realise that for once, I'm going to have to be the distraction.

I leap towards it, and my movement catches its eye. It stops trying to get Hadrian, and he gives me a grateful glance before returning to the side of the body. I hear him chanting, and a white line begins to sear around the body's edges.

Whatever he's doing, I have to help. I jump and duck and roll, giving the monster enough ground that it doesn't switch target but also aiming not to get badly hurt. Twice it gets my jaw, sending me spiralling.

Realising that I'm tiring, I plant my hands and feel the earth rumble beneath my feet. Vines crack through the floor, pouring upwards and outwards to protect me, circling me until they form a thick, defensible wall. I flick my wrists and the vines split, wrapping around the monster while it thrashes and screeches. Its tail catches up to me, swiping me off my feet and hitting straight down the side of my face. Breathless, I roll up to see Hadrian standing and chanting a spell. White light flashes, and a whirlwind rises inside the circle of light he's been drawing. His black hair whorls around his head, circling. He looks to me.

'Now, Ness!' he yells, 'Drive it this way!'

I don't need to ask. With a scream, my arms fling out and the floor splinters in front of the monster. The wood has snapped and broken at my command, sending shards that drive the creature back— back into Hadrian's circle.

White light flames around it, engulfing the creature. Hadrian watches, eyes glowing hot blue, with a smile of satisfaction. Then, the flames are dying and the light that was once a humanoid monster is pouring back into the body.

I blink as I see a young woman rise instead, ghostly and pale. She's in the same form now as Yohan was.

Did we just...fight an evil spirit? I shake my head, uncertain. This ghost doesn't look evil. With a bright smile she turns and surveys us both. Her eyes are intelligent and kind.

This time, Hadrian speaks.

'I am sorry for that...in my focus, my body changed form beyond what I could handle. My name is Agaha, and my daughter is in danger. Please, help me.'

For a monster that was trying to kill us only a few minutes ago, I'm sceptical. But Hadrian agrees eagerly, eyes excited.

'Ness, I was wrong! She's not a mendaghast or a reveghast!' Hadrian's smile makes my lips quirk up all on their own. I smother them.

'Lucky day,' I say, shrugging. He still hasn't explained what they are.

'Mendaghasts are Spirits of Betrayal. In their life, before they died, someone betrayed them enough to keep them attached here. Reveghast is someone that wants revenge.'

'But she's not those.'
The girl beams.

'She's not,' Hadrian agrees, and for some reason, I want to kick them both. I have a funny urge to stomp down the half-broken stairway.

'Then what is she?' my tone is neutral, bored. I'm anything but.

'She's a desighast,' Hadrian says, 'It means she's stayed behind for a purpose.'

I look at the glowing ghostly figure, now contained by Hadrian's white lines. Her smile gets brighter.

'That purpose,' she explains, 'Is my children.' 

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MERRY CHRISTMAS GUYS! I hope you had a great day of feasting and reading. I got a new planner that I'm using to make sure GSQ and my other stories move a bit more quickly. Writing has been short these last few months. I apologise (again). 

I have a few more chapters of plot building to go before BAM! Y'all will think 2016 was lovely compared to 2017... ;)

Only kidding....partly. What do you think Hecate is up to, and what's happening in Minoa?!

Also, if you like my work, check out ROSE TINTED. It's also being posted (and is part of the reason I've not updated as frequently my other works). It's a romance novel rather than fantasy, but please check it out if you have time. 

lots of love

Larissa

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