“What are they doing here?” Daisy asked, peering around me.

Kieran took the proffered letter. “It’s from Sodge. He says they are of better use to us here than at the house.”

“He…shipped the cats to us?” I asked in utter confusion, my question directed at the staff member, who was looking at me for answers. “What help could a couple giant cats be? Also, and I know I’ve asked this before, but why are they so giant? The mom and dad were regular cat size. Their siblings were regular cat size. Seriously, it’s been two days—are they even bigger? What grows that…”

I lost the thread of what I was saying as I glimpsed what was happening behind our late-night messenger. People ambled through the hall, slow and aimless, dragging their feet as though they couldn’t be bothered to lift them up. Some hunched or stooped, some curled to the side a little, some just let their heads loll. They looked like zombies, but they didn’t have bodies.

“What…” I stepped out of the door, joined by Kieran. The staff member stepped back, confused.

“See if you can find some cat food,” Kieran told the man. “And a couple of bowls of water. We have no choice but to keep them here. My house man sent them.”

He walked away, but my gaze had already shifted back to the spirits. An older man down the way raked his fingers against the wall, ricocheting off my spirit repellent. A younger woman, probably barely more than eighteen, patted the wall on the other side of the door. She, too, hit my magic and was pushed away.

The Line filled the hall with its ultraviolet colors, illuminating yet more spirits, barely more than wisps, their clothes holey and haggard and their skin translucent. They had hardly any energy.

“Why are they all here?” Kieran asked, stepping in front of me.

I wasn’t sure what he thought he’d do. Scare them with his stare?

The Line pulsed, beckoning. None of the spirits so much as glanced at it. It pulsed again, and again, beating that drum, calling its spirits home. I’d never seen this kind of insistency. I’d never felt this severe of a tug. Yet none of the spirits so much as glanced up from their directionless wandering.

This is my job—I have to help.

A Spirit Walker didn’t just take lives—Harding had taught me that. We could save lives. It was also our duty to help spirits find rest, wherever possible, something I’d been doing all my life. The sudden appearance of the Line, in addition to the way the spirits were clustering around me, made it perfectly clear that it was time for them to go home. Whatever Lydia was doing to keep them here, it was shitty.

A shape appeared at the edge of my vision. I turned my head, but it zipped away, moving beyond the veil—only to return on the other side of me. Or was that a different one? I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t feel it specifically.

The second I flicked my eyes or turned my head, the bugger took off. A strange sort of awareness fell over me, like at dinner. I was being watched. This felt different from the Demigods who’d shown up at my house in spirit.

Those shapes had shown up before, like I’d mentioned to Kieran. I remembered seeing them back when I first started learning my magic, usually when I was heading into or escaping from danger. Part of me wondered if it was Harding. He liked to watch me work. Was sending spiritlike wraiths as spies in his wheelhouse?

The writhing spirits in front of me reminded me that I had work to do. Power pumped through me, and I pulled Kieran back. I grabbed a couple of spirits at a time, just to see if any would rouse and talk to me. None did, and over they went, one by one, shoved as far beyond the Line as I could possibly get them while remaining firmly on this side of reality. While I worked, I watched out for any souls creeping up on me, stuffed in mice or whatever else. I waited for a Demigod’s spirit to appear out of thin air, or to grab me from the beyond, yanking me in after the spirits I was sending over. All was quiet.

After the last one sailed over, the Line gave one final pulse of power, re-energizing me, before its colors seeped from the hall. I stood panting, staring, a little amazed.

I’d never interacted with it like that. Although I’d been using its power for some time, it had never seemed like an entity in and of itself. And yet it had acted like it was looking out for those spirits. Like it wanted me to be its ally in saving them.

“I might’ve just picked a really big fight with the resident Demigod,” I said, wiping my brow. One of the cats purred loudly, and I realized they were lying on either side of me, like sentinels. “I’m not even a cat person. I think this is Harding’s idea of a joke. Somehow he did this, he must have.”

“The spirit world is just as much your domain as it is Lydia’s,” Kieran said, leading me back into our suite. “Your magic makes it so. This house might be hers, but the souls in it do not belong to her. The spirit world is not hers to claim. You have every right to exercise your ability freely.” He grabbed me a bottle of water from the snack fridge. “But yeah, that will probably really piss her off. So we have that to look forward to.”

I laughed, though it wasn’t really funny. I could’ve just created a problem. At the same time…the Line had basically asked me to. I didn’t know what its deal was, but I was pretty sure that it was best to do what it wanted.

I heaved out a sigh, ushered Daisy back into her room, and let Kieran wrap me in his arms.

“We’ll see how it goes tomorrow,” he said, then planted a kiss on my head. “If things remain this strange, I’ll take offense and we’ll leave, cats and all.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “What the hell was he thinking, sending those cats? They don’t even have names.”

“I have no idea. More importantly, who did he get to help him, because he doesn’t have the authority or control to get those cats here. The whole situation is incredibly strange. But as long as it doesn’t get dangerous, it’ll be fine. For now.”

The next morning, I didn’t bother with a dress. I pushed my heels to the side with the toe of my running shoes. I had on stretchy leggings that looked like jeans, a knife strapped to my ankle, a shirt that said, “I’m your huckleberry,” and a can-do attitude. I didn’t know what was going on in this monstrosity of a house, but today I had a mission. I would seek out more of those spirits, see if any would talk to me, and then send them across the Line. There was bound to be a somewhat fresh one coherent enough to spill the beans.

“My, my, don’t you look tired.” Bria was peeling a banana in the living room of the suite when I walked out.

I told her what happened during the night. As I was finishing, both cats trotted out of my bedroom.

“They tried to sleep on the bed,” I said. “The bed is big, but those damn cats are bigger. Look at them!”

“They’re huge, yes. Their eyes don’t seem like the eyes of a normal cat anymore. They kinda…glow.”

I gestured at them, mouth hanging. “Nothing about them is normal.”

“They smell like normal cats,” Mordecai said, twitching his nose. “I hate that smell.”

The male cat made a sound like a growl deep in its throat.

“It’s probably time for us to name them.” I checked the battery on my phone before slipping it into a small cross-shoulder bag. “Why do you think Sodge sent them? Did one puke on the carpet or something?”