Possession

PROLOGUE

I don’t like dying. No one does and no matter how many times I’ve done it and how much I know about what lies beyond that thin edge of existence, I still dread it enough to wish for no more—or at least only one more and stay down for good. I’ve died three times that I’m sure of and that’s enough for anyone. I shouldn’t complain—I’m still alive at the moment. I seem mostly normal, I suppose—I have a boyfriend and a pet and a job—but even those things aren’t quite ordinary: The boyfriend is an ex-spy, my pet is a ferret, and I work as a private investigator. I sometimes think it would be nice to just be normal and have a normal job and a normal family, but that isn’t going to happen. I have been down to death and back and whether that is the reason or whether it’s the other way around, I am a Greywalker—one of the rare few who can move through the overlapping fringes of the world of the normal and that of the paranormal. That here / not here world is the Grey and it lies just beside everything you see and contains everything you don’t and never want to. Magic streams and sings through the darkness and the mists of the possible as hot neon light in lines and tangles that burn with power; spirits, monsters, and nightmares are its native inhabitants and I am one of its naturalized citizens. I have been called the Hands of the Guardian—the eldritch creature that prowls the borders of the Grey—and the paladin of the dead. I remain in the “real” world as the go-between, negotiator, troubleshooter, and general fixer for all things Grey. I dance on a hair-thin high wire, balancing between the uncanny and the mundane while trying to keep myself alive a little longer, because I’m sure that my next death will be my last.

The thing about this twilight freak show is that I sometimes know more about the dead than I know about the living, and the ghosts and monsters just keep coming around. They all have problems and the problems seem to be stranger with each new case. Sometimes the Grey things impose themselves on my life with such force and vehemence that the world changes, even if only a few of us can see it. It’s part of my job to make sure these changes don’t destroy the balance between this world and the next without destroying myself or the people I hold dear.