Barbie was the fucking killer.

  She was a ghost, she was fucking dead, she was the person behind all of this.

  I paced my own bedroom, the now stolen student records laid out on my table as I wondered how long I had before Samuel knew. The sketch of me Barbie had done at Sigyn’s birthday laid out beside them, signed with her name in the corner, sitting directly next to the signature on the student profiles.

  Barbara Ricardo, same bubbly B, same heart about the i, same bleed of the d into the o, it looked exactly the same.

  It still couldn’t have been fucking true.

  I’d been to her house, I’d heard her talk to her dad, I’d kissed her, held her, had sex with her, she wasn’t a fucking ghost. How was I supposed to believe that, how was I supposed to think she was fucking dead?

  Sigyn was asleep, somehow having cried herself into deep slumber and not woken up as I stumbled running down the steps. A small blessing I didn’t need to look her in the eyes, tell her the truth, I could at least try and figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do. How I could stop the killings, not lose Barbie doing so.

  She couldn’t have been the killer.

  Maybe she was a ghost, maybe, but that didn’t mean she was a killer, ghosts weren’t usually all that violent. It might have been a coincidence, something might have been stalking her, there had to have been some fucking answer. Barbie was nice, soft, she couldn’t have killed one person, let alone hundreds of people.

  She might have said the same thing about me.

  No, she was different, I looked like I’d been through a share of fights, I looked like someone who could kill. Barbie looked like a girl next door, she wore her cute little cross necklace all the time, she had a cute little laugh and small voice. I’d felt her up more than a little, and she didn’t have an ounce of muscle that could be used to hurt a puppy. She fucking wore cute little dresses and wore ponytails.

  I was wearing a fucking skirt and blouse.

  If she was a ghost she wouldn’t have needed to be strong in life.

  Even still, she had a dad who was alive, she talked to him, she was fucking worried about living with him. She interacted with humans regularly, lived in the sunlight, she apparently didn’t set off an EMF reader if Percy hadn’t questioned her. How was I supposed to believe that a ghost was doing all that?

  There were different types of ghosts, and I didn’t know all of them, maybe one could fool a detector like that and was that strong..

  I’d never seen her talk to her dad, only heard him speak.

  There was no fucking reason to think that she couldn’t have done it, no reason to think the evidence in front of me was a lie.

  I loved her, that was enough.

  Snatching up the student records I stormed out of the room, closing the door behind me as I went out into the backyard. Taking out my phone I cursed as I was forced to reject a third phone call from Misha and snapped a picture of Barbie’s entry just to be sure I had it if needed. That alone done, I pulled out my lighter and lit the papers, holding them until they had fully caught and laying them on the damp grass of the backyard.

  It’d be easy for Samuel to get access to them again, he’d immediately know I’d found something in them, but it bought me time. A few hours, maybe half a day, however long it took for him to tell Allie he needed to know Barbie’s name and could get access to them again. Not perfect, but maybe just long enough I could stop him doing anything that hurt her, not before I found out the truth.

  There had to have been a fucking truth there.

  Lighting a cigarette I checked my email and saw that Percy had followed through on sending me his number and, adding it quickly to my contacts, I called him. Each slow ring in my ear making me want to throw up more and more until the man answered, “howdy.”

  “Hey, Percy, it’s me,” I said, rubbing my forehead in deep thought.

  “Oh, hey, um, sis, how’s it going?” Percy said quickly, not at all sounding convincing as he told someone, “it’s my sister. The one down south.”

  “Sister?” I asked, furrowing my brow in confusion that he was just jumping to that lie, before asking, “can you talk right now?”

  “Oh, it’s a sure thing, just give me a minute,” he said, telling someone, “she needs some help with Geometry.” Several seconds later, the sound of a closing door, and the man whispered, “You know most people our age just text, right?”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I need you, my place, now,” I answered.

  There was a silence, and for a moment I thought he might have disconnected before the man muttered, “I…I mean I can’t lie I’m a deal flattered, but we just met again, I’m still getting my head around you being…well, you, you have a girlfriend that seems rather serious, I-”

  “I can’t deal with the pervert act right now, I already have too much of that in my life for you to get in on it too,” I snapped, closing my eyes in annoyance as I explained, “I…I know a lot more about the ghost we’re dealing with, but I need more information about ghosts. You can help me with that.”

  “How’re you wanting me to go about that? I know what I’ve been taught about ghosts and ain’t come up with much, and you learned most of that with me,” Percy muttered, clicking his tongue in deep thought.

  “My dad keeps the family catalog in his documents safe, it has details on different types of supernaturals and how to deal with them, been added onto for generations,” I said, knowing it’d be a bit better of a resource for this sort of thing. Misha’s journal told me about individuals, experiences. It had the knowledge of someone in the field talking about what happened and what worked. This was a shitty attempt at a how-to manual, but it was a better chance someone had dealt with this in a few hundred years than a few decades. “It’s a long shot, but I fucking need something that might actually help us here, help us help her.”

  There was more silence, this one almost feeling pregnant until he asked, “you know who this ghost is don’t you?”

  I took a long draw from my cigarette, blowing a cloud of smoke onto the air as I slowly admitted, “I do.”

  “You know how to stop ghosts, they all work more or less the same.”

  “I do.”

  More silence, a deafening innocence that left me alone with the sounds of the woods around me until he told me, “I don’t know the password to the safe.”

  “Zero, one, two, four, four, seven,” I told him slowly, frowning as I flicked my ash onto the ground, “he didn’t know I knew, I just paid attention to him opening it enough, even if he was worried that I’d turned traitor he’d have no reason to change it.”

  “Tell me again, I’ll see what I can’t do,” Percy, letting out a low sigh as the sound of fumbling paper rang out over the phone, “please don’t go and make me regret this now.”

  “The passwords zero, one, two, four, four, seven, punch the asterisk,” I repeated slowly, getting a noise of confirmation from the man, “I hate to ask this, but can you pick me up again? I know a place where we can work without anyone interrupting us.”

  “Something going on there?”

  “Just trying to figure this out at the last minute,” I muttered, not wanting to admit I was probably about to have a werewolf or two angry at me as I finished it off, “I’ll be at the gas station, call me when you’re there.”

  He agreed, and the man hung up as I sighed and saw Misha had tried calling me once more while I was on the phone. More than a little tired of it, I finally called him, keeping to the shadows of the yard as I started a slow walk down the driveway and heard it ring in my ear.

  He started, “Mary-” and I interrupted him as I snapped, “what the fuck do you want?! I know I haven’t called you in a few weeks, and I fucking lost the eye, but you don’t need to blow up my phone all day!”

  Misha waited a second, and I was ready to hang up when he finally told me, “I know what you’re dealing with.”

  I felt like I was slapped for a second, stopping in place as I slowly asked, “how did you know to call me about that?”

  “Small world for werewolves, Gevaudan’s my little sister,” he explained, confusing me more before he added on “I’m going to guess she didn’t mention that part.”

  “You didn’t fucking mention that fact!” I snapped, frowning as I tightened my grip on the phone and tried not to break down into a yelling fit.

  “Well, look, you didn’t mention you were Martin’s kid, I had to figure that out with a bit of disgust after I started thinking I might like you. I still have some conflicting feelings there,” the man muttered as though that were my fault, his voice distantly snapping, “hey, hey, don’t touch that, Circe said it was explosive.” and then back to me, “sorry, amateurs, long story.”

  “How the fuck are you Gevaudan’s brother?”

  “I was born Peter Misha Rivierre, Lyon was my mentor’s last name, I changed it after I became a werewolf,” Misha said, sounding almost a little humored by the idea as he added on, “Gevaudan and I aren’t as close as I’d like, we got into a big argument a while back. I only got my head out of my ass a couple years ago and apologized when I found out she had a kid, which…well, realized that was yours after I was already in LA and I put two and two together. She never mentioned she adopted through vampires, so I think communication’s become an issue all around for us.”

  I felt like there was something crawling down my spine, like I had a slime on me the longer I tried to draw this out until I asked, “have you dealt with this before? I couldn’t find anything in your journals, I asked the Shadow at the Crossroads, I can’t find shit like this.”

  “I cut out the pages after it happened, I…” he stopped, something like he was somewhere a hundred miles away suddenly, and his voice almost shaking he confessed, “I didn’t want to remember it, they’re a rare type of ghost, I figured if it came up again I’d have a good guess of what to do on my own.”

  “Why did Chaser know then?” I asked, furrowing my brow at the thought before adding on, “why the fuck did I need to wait a week to hear back from you, what’s such a big secret about this that everyone’s been acting like this?”

  “She knew, because the only time we’ve talked since she left was after I dealt with it. It was a bad time, one time I was willing to sit down and talk things out instead of just occasionally opening random envelopes of pictures,” Misha explained, almost somewhere between angry and sad, “your dad’s book called it a…fuck, it was like, a Scottish phrase or something? Bean something, Bean…something. It’s Bean and then something that’s spelled like Dune Mara Ithe?”

  “I’ll look for it, I’m having Percy get me the catalog,” I said, before explaining, “Percy’s a childhood friend, a lot happened, I’ll tell you about it when this is all done. Now, how do I help this thing?”

  Misha didn’t answer, and I thought I might have disconnected before he asked in something almost horrified, “you know who it is?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t ask me how to find it, how to stop it, you asked me how to help it,” Misha explained, that greasy feeling once more returning, “you can’t fix it.”

  “She’s a ghost, she’s not a fucking monster!” I snapped, wishing I could reach through the screen and rip out his throat for talking like that about her.

  “Look, I’ve dealt with this thing before, and you can’t fix it,” Misha said, his breathing unsteady as I took several deep breaths of my own. Slowly, his voice shaking, he started his story, “I lost someone I cared about to this thing, and worst of all I lost someone I loved.”