Chapter 1

I was born with the eyes that see both worlds, and it's brought me twenty-odd years of nothing but trouble.

In school, I mistook the gentle woman ghost at the lectern for the teacher and spent years listening to gossip from the land of the dead.

Come final exams, I scored a zero in every subject, and a doctor nearly treated me for brain damage.

After I started working, a woman ghost who threw herself off the rooftop over and over latched onto me and forced me to expose the animal of a boss who'd killed her.

The boss went to prison. I got blacklisted across the entire industry.

So I hid myself away in a newly built residential complex where no one had ever died, took a job monitoring the fire-control room, and drifted along.

But the night the hurricane made landfall, two people burst into the control room.

"My daughter-in-law's going into early labor! The ambulance can't get through. You have to drive her to the hospital, now!"

I was about to say, isn't your daughter-in-law standing right behind you, perfectly fine?

Then I saw the woman's face, gray-white, her tongue hanging out the corner of her mouth, her whole body burned to black ash.

I turned toward the control console on instinct, and only then remembered that the fire monitoring for Building Six, where she lived, was down for emergency repairs.

Something felt wrong. I pulled out my phone at once to call 911.

Willow James's face changed in a flash, and she smashed both my phone and the pager in my hand.

The woman ghost behind her suddenly cried out.

"She stole the backup batteries from the fire alarm system downstairs, and the batteries caught fire out of nowhere and burned the apartment down!"

"The whole building's about to go up in flames! She and that animal son of hers want you off your post so they can pin every death in the fire on you!"

...

Seeing me stand frozen in the control room, Willow's droopy, hard-cornered eyes went wide, and she clamped onto my hand.

"What are you standing there for?"

"My daughter-in-law's waiting at the south gate, her water already broke! Get the maintenance vehicle and drive her to the hospital, hurry!"

Before I could get a word out, the woman behind her shook her head, weeping.

Her charred finger pointed toward Building Six.

"Don't listen to her garbage. By the time they dragged me out of the apartment I was already choked dead by the smoke. Those two animals, mother and son, saw how big the fire was, and since it was their own battery theft that killed the fire alarm, they don't dare call it in."

"Get people to put out the fire, hurry, the wind's too strong out there, and if you don't go the whole building's going to burn!"

"If you go with them, they'll say you abandoned your post when the fire started, and then they'll try to shake your property company down for money!"

Hearing her out, my chest went cold. I turned again, going for the backup cabinet in the fire-control room to grab the landline.

Willow rushed over and yanked the phone cord clean out of the wall.

Watching her cut my last link to the outside world, I felt my scalp crawl with fury. I spun around, jerked the drawer open, grabbed the emergency flashlight and the smoke hood, shoved the door open, and started for Building Six.

Willow saw what was in my hands, and her face changed.

"What are you taking those for? Can't you understand a word I'm saying? My daughter-in-law's about to give birth, the ambulance can't come in the hurricane, and if you don't drive us to the hospital someone's going to die!"

I looked at the phone and pager she'd smashed on the floor, and a hot surge of anger shot up in me. I shoved her aside.

"Get out of my way! I'm going to Building Six right now!"

The second she heard I was headed to Building Six, she grabbed at my hand in a panic.

"No! You can't go!"

"Why can't I? The fire alarm and the fire monitoring in Building Six are both dead. I'm the fire-control operator. I'm doing my job, going to inspect. Why shouldn't I go?"

I lifted my head and looked at her, my eyes locking straight onto hers, and she dropped her gaze at once, guilty.

I had no patience left for her. The thought of my coworker who'd gone to Building Six minutes ago to fix the backup generator, still no word from him, kept swelling the unease in me.

But I'd taken barely two steps when Willow, like she'd gone mad, dropped to the floor and clawed at my legs for all she was worth.

"My daughter-in-law's at the south gate! What are you going to Building Six for?"

"I... you... it's completely normal to lose power and monitoring in a hurricane. My daughter-in-law's about to die of a bad birth right at the complex gate. Why does your property company have to be so rigid about this!"

Lives were on the line. Frantic, I kicked her off me to break free of her grip.

"If she's giving birth, why doesn't your son drive her himself? Get out of the way!"

My kick knocked Willow sprawling to the floor, and in the dim light I saw the venom on her face, plain as day, not hidden at all.

"The hurricane's this bad, he can't drive! Your property company takes our management fees. Helping us out on a hurricane night is the most normal thing in the world!"

Willow stuck to me like a burr, clinging behind me, shoving me toward the opposite direction.

I couldn't hold the anger down any longer. I raised the flashlight, ready to knock her out cold.

And in that instant, the control room door was pushed open again.