From the outside, the flat looked the same as the others in the hallway of the public housing building: nondescript and forgotten. Probably much like its inhabitants, people the government put in the “too-hard” basket and society largely ignored.

  Ever floated inside, two hands on his scythe. This flat in particular was very forgotten: wallpaper peeled from the walls while cockroaches scuttled across the musty carpet. There was one door to the side which he would have gone through if he wasn’t drawn towards the veil directly in front of him. Through it, he could see a small, sad kitchen that doubled as a dining room, the table and chair right up against the cupboards.

  He floated through the veil – and felt it caress his ghostly form.

  “What?” Ever turned, inspecting the material. But how?

  “Welcome.”

  He spun back around, tangling himself further amongst the veil. As he calmly unwound himself, he spied a ghost perched in the seat of the dining table. Her hair was thick as cords, bound in free-floating dread locks. She cocked her head to the side in amusement; she had no reflection in the crystal ball at the center of the table.

  “Estrella?”

  “I am she,” Estrella said. “I’ve been expecting you.” She smiled widely; even in ghost form, Ever could see that her teeth were quite discoloured when she had been alive.

  “So I’ve been told,” Ever said.

  “Yes, the one you call ‘Mentor’,” she giggled, her voice rasping, “He tried to reap me a long time ago. I told him that I would be useful to him one day… and here we are.” She spread her hands, as if displaying a fine array of wares on the table.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  There was no second chair, but Ever made to sit anyway, just so he could be at eye level with the ghost. “Why have you been waiting for me?”

  “All my life, I’ve told the fortunes of boring humans.” She leaned back and rolled her eyes. “It was always, ‘is my husband being unfaithful to me?’, ‘will my business venture be successful?’, ‘when will I die?’ Boring, boring, boring!”

  She leaned back in, resting her chin upon her tented fingers. “But you are not a boring human. You,” she snatched his ghostly hand before he could even react, “you are a special human, if a human you can even be called.”

  Ever’s eyes fell upon the crystal ball. In its center, it held the room that they were in, inverting it and shrinking it. “You… need me to be in human form before you can do a reading?”

  “That’s the first thing I need.” Estrella replied.

  “You… need to be able to touch the crystal ball as well?”

  “Very good.” She held up a third finger.

  “The crystal ball…” he stared at it, intuition prickling at the back of his neck, “it has to be able to see us?”

  “Clever, clever boy!” Estrella crowed.

  She glanced to the side, where the scythe had been hovering upright. The tip of its blade pointed at the ghost, as if magnetically drawn towards an eldritch north pole.

  Ever gazed upon the scythe, bringing up the sensory menu:

  SENSES

  Hearing

  Smell

  Touch

  Sight

  Taste

  “‘Touch’, ‘Sight’,” he commanded gently. The scythe broke off into two bowling ball sized orbs of white light, the first enveloping Estrella’s hands, the second her face. He stood up and turned into human form. Kneeling on the ground, he could see that grey smoke started filtering out from the center of the crystal ball.

  "What is it you wish to see, Death's apprentice?" Estrella said, hands caressing the ethereal space enveloping the crystal ball.

  Ever swallowed. “Show me what Carol, Roman and Jin are hiding about Zoe.”