David pulled up to the haunted house ten minutes before he was expected, because arriving late was for amateurs and getting there too early was for interns. He used three of those minutes to sit in the Audi and review case notes for an upcoming deposition on his phone. Technically, it wasn't six yet, which meant he was technically still on the clock for his day job. Not that he ever really clocked out of working as a prosecutor for the city of Boston. He just spent his nights expanding his vocational horizons.

He had been juggling full-time work and a thriving private occult practice ever since graduating law school, not to mention weekly secret Society meetings, and he would rather donate his entire fortune to charity than walk way from any of it. David was like a diamond, forged under pressure and bound entirely in hard, cutting edges.

At two till, David straightened his collar in the rearview mirror, ran a hand through his wavy bronze hair, and locked up his car. Tonight's client was an eccentric heiress with a penchant for the occult and a recently dead husband, which was right up David's alley. He could be in and out before eight, with time for a workout and an hour or so answering work emails before bed. It was his ideal type of day: packed to the brim with meaningful, lucrative work and centered entirely around himself. The only thing that could possibly make it better was a round of athletic sex, which was off the table for reasons relating to David's lack of interest in almost all the men in Boston and his ironclad marriage to his work, or a stiff drink, which was off the table for reasons related to David's sanity and general well-being.

The widow lived in an ivy-covered Brookline brownstone with black-shuttered windows closed tightly to the world. David had to knock three times to get an answer, and when the door finally opened, it was only an inch.

"Who's there?" a reedy voice from inside demanded.

David tried — to no avail — to peer inside the darkness of the house. "David Aristarkhov. We spoke on the phone?"

"David who?" she pressed.

David flipped open his wallet and thumbed through the glossy cream business cards work had given him until he came to a few embossed black cards hidden in the back. He slipped one free and held it between his fingertips through the crack in the door. The silver script gleamed like a knife under the bright spring sunlight.

Spirit Medium and Psychic Intuitive.

"I don't know," the woman said after a moment. "I've changed my mind. I don't know if my Levi would want me to try and contact him after all this time. Come back tomorrow. We'll see how I feel then."

Cold feet, then. Typical. There was no way he was cutting his losses and driving back to Fenway now, though. Not now that he was wired after a long week on the job and ready to, quite literally, raise the dead.

"Miriam," David said, every syllable deliberate. His voice had the timbre of smooth, polished brass, without a trace of anything less than all-American. It was a voice curated for conveying utmost surety and bulldozing anyone who got in his way. "Why don't you just open the door a little bit, and you and I can talk about it?"

There was a long pause, but then the window obeyed him. People usually did, when he asked nicely. It was one of the innate, uncanny abilities that had been with him since childhood, like mediumship or perfect pitch.