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I laughed. “Go on somewhere, Lady.”

“Gladly. Just know, whatever happens next, I want no part of it.”

I smirked. “You’re already part of it.”

“I strengthened your connection to the property. That is where my involvement ends.”

“That sounds like something an accomplice would say.”

Miss Veda gave me one final warning look before the glow around her began to fade.

“One more thing. Increasing your ability to affect the house does not give you the ability to force direct communication with the living. I can help you manipulate what is already connected to this property. I cannot make another person see you, hear you, or receive a message their spirit is not open to receiving.”

“So I can scare the shit out of people, but I can’t write my mama a note?”

“In extremely crude terms, yes.”

“This afterlife got too many damn rules.”

“It does. Now behave.”

“You just met me. How you know I don’t?”

Her laugh lingered in the room even after the rest of her disappeared.

I stood there staring at the empty space Miss Veda had occupied. The faint warmth that had surrounded her was gone too, leaving the room exactly the way it had been before she appeared, except now I knew there was a whole other side to death I hadn’t understood ten minutes ago.

For the first time since I died, I knew I wasn’t completely alone on this side. That probably should’ve been the biggest thing on my mind. Unfortunately for the family currently living in my house, it wasn’t.

I had tenants to evict.

***

By eight that night, they had settled into the living room with pizza boxes spread across my coffee table and decided to have a family movie night before finishing the unpacking. Shoes were kicked off near the sofa, half-empty cups sat on coasters, and blankets had been pulled from the basket near the fireplace like they had already been living there for weeks instead of hours.

The teenage boy picked Halloween.

Oh, you like scary shit?

Bet.

His sister curled beneath a blanket and complained, “Why would you pick a scary movie on our first night in this creepy house?”

The wife sighed. “This house is not creepy.”

I stood near the staircase, listening to her defend my house while the glow from the TV flickered across the darkened room.

“Aight.”

Since they wanted an experience, I figured I’d give them one.

The movie had been playing maybe fifteen minutes when I killed the lamp beside the sofa.

The room dimmed instantly, leaving the television as the brightest thing in it.

The girl looked over. “Did that light just go out?”

Her father barely looked away from the television. “Probably the bulb.”