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ghost, the stronger your feelings for them, the more substantial they become.

    With each passing second, Sonia appears more solid, more alive. And I have to admit, in some ways, we would be perfect for each other. We’re both tied to this old theater, we’ll both be teenagers forever, and we’re both dead. Even better, I don’t have to worry about physically hurting her. No flesh. No blood. No problem.
    This could become more than the hope of love. It could become the real thing. But there’s something she has to be told first. She may not know what happened at my uncle’s ranch, but I thought she’d figured out what I am from the bottle of blood in the office mini-fridge. I guess Sonia didn’t realize what the liquid was or maybe in her ghostly state, some details are fuzzy.
    â€œSonia,” I begin again as she floats toward me. “There’s something you should know. I’m a monster, the same kind of monster—”
    Her cool fingertips press against my lips, and in her gaze, I see complete understanding, total acceptance. “No,” Sonia says. “You’re not.”

Amber Smoke
    KRISTIN CAST
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    F rom their place in the bowels of the Underworld, the Furies, Daughters of Night, summon their son. They are skeletal winged creatures, the black of rotting flesh thinly stretched across their hunched, quivering bodies, not much more than flesh sacks barely able to contain the power of each of their morbid talents.
    â€œAlekossss, come.”
    He was birthed eons ago from the womb of vengeance, conceived by jealousy, and grown in constant anger. Bred to defend mortals, he was sent from their underground realm to the world above, and there, away from their poison, he learned compassion. At first only so that he could mimic and blend. Later, after centuries, humanity took hold within him, causing the Furies unending confusion with their errant son, this man who grew up and away from them.

    Alekos appears, his Herculean body glowing from the descent, the return home. “Yes, my mothers?” He steps down from the ledge he was summoned to, his torn jeans dragging through the souls of the doomed as he strolls toward the three creatures in the dark. He can hear their wings rustling with the excitement of his return. Although he had been there only weeks before, they had not seen him in years. Time ticks by slowly below. As he approaches, they gently grab him and lead him farther into the nothing, farther from the whines of the tortured.
    â€œSsssit.” They command. He sits and puts his feet nonchalantly up on the table.
    â€œThe longer you’re up there, the more disgusting and human you become.” Their throats click and rattle as they speak as one.
    He removes his feet and snaps his fingers. Oil lamps flicker on, revealing a cave wet and putrid with chaos and death. The three figures huddle together staring at their son across a crude stone table on which sits a bouquet of night-blooming moon flowers the delicate color of infants’ flesh. Slowly they begin to rock back and forth as if they are one and not three. Their eyes are dark and endless, and drip with the blood of the tortured. The snakes in their hair alternate between attacking and caressing one another.
    â€œThe Fates have decided. Her cord isss being cut tonight.” At first they speak as one, then break apart, finishing each other’s thoughts.
    â€œYou mussst find her,”
    â€œgive her life,”

    â€œsssssave her,”
    â€œsso ssshe can”
    â€œgive usss”
    â€œvengeance.”
    The Furies click with amusement as his mind is flooded with pictures of a beautiful young woman: long chestnut hair, chocolate eyes, olive skin, and a black dress. They have chosen her for him. He blinks and stands. Alekos knows he was only there for this—the gift of his mission. It is now time for him to depart, and for the first time in centuries he