Chapter 38: "Ghostbusting with a Side of Possession"
In which Asterion borrows my body politely, chains some ghosts, and possibly invents spectral sushi.
It was a calm night in Havenbrook—
if by "calm" you meant completely crawling with paranormal freeloaders who apparently didn't know how to use a doorbell.
Ghosts.
Dozens of them.
Some big.
Some small.
All drifting around like somebody had opened an ectoplasmic Costco and announced free samples.
And in the middle of it all?
A glowing figure soaring silently above the rooftops.
Technically?
Evan Mercer.
Spiritually?
Mostly Asterion.
See, while I slept comfortably inside the mental space, Asterion had borrowed the controls for the evening.
With great power came great multitasking.
Apparently.
And now that my transformation had finally happened, he wasn't about to waste the opportunity.
He needed information.
What kinds of ghosts were coming through?
Were they your standard:
I died angry and now I'm going to make everyone's kitchen cabinets open at three in the morning
kind of spirits?
Or were we talking:
look into my eyes and your soul catches fire
class monsters?
Because if Havenbrook was about to become Ghost Central, someone needed to scout.
And me?
I was still learning how to fly without accidentally entering someone's bathroom through a wall.
So...
Asterion got night shift.
He flew above the city with my arms folded, my newly white hair whipping in the wind and green eyes glowing faintly.
His senses stretched outward.
Not just my new ghost senses.
His.
Ki.
Spiritual perception.
Nearly a thousand years of experience recognizing things that wanted to eat people.
Below us, the city was soaked in spiritual residue.
Thin ectoplasmic mist drifted between buildings.
Streetlights flickered whenever spirits passed.
And the ghosts?
Yeah.
They weren't here for a block party.
Some wandered rooftops.
Others hovered in alleys.
One was moaning dramatically beside a bus stop.
Asterion stared down at it.
"Why the bus stop?"
No answer.
Ghosts were apparently committed to atmosphere.
Most of them weren't particularly dangerous.
Low-level spirits.
Fragments.
Entities driven by emotion more than intelligence.
Bitterness.
Loneliness.
Confusion.
Anger.
The sort of things that might haunt a vending machine or steal one sock out of every pair because apparently death did nothing for maturity.
But there were a lot of them.
And that mattered.
The Gateway had changed Havenbrook.
The energy pouring from it wasn't enough to hurt ordinary people.
But to spirits?
It was a beacon.
Food.
Warmth.
A signal.
Come here.
Asterion stopped above an intersection.
Several ghosts below immediately noticed us.
Bad decision.
He raised one hand.
No dramatic chant.
No heroic pose.
Just—
a slight movement of his fingers.
The air split.
Thin glowing chains emerged from circles of spiritual light.
Beautiful.
Delicate.
And extremely not friendly.
They shot downward.
WHIP—WHIP—WHIP!
One ghost turned.
Too late.
A chain wrapped around its waist.
Another caught two more.
Several tried to flee.
More chains followed.
In seconds, half the intersection looked like someone had attempted to decorate it using screaming spectral Christmas ornaments.
The ghosts wailed.
Not exactly from pain.
More like:
HEY! I WASN'T DONE BEING A PUBLIC NUISANCE!
Asterion lowered us toward them.
He studied each one.
Fear.
Confusion.
Resentment.
Old emotions clinging to spiritual forms.
Most weren't truly malicious.
Just unstable.
He sighed.
"You're barely people anymore."
One hissed at him.
Asterion raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, I'm sure that was devastating."
He tightened the chains.
Then drew the loose spiritual energy out of them.
Not devouring souls.
Not destroying what remained of people.
Purifying the unstable ectoplasmic residue that had accumulated around their forms.
The excess Yin energy flowed into the formations built into my armor and then into my new ghost core, where Asterion carefully circulated it instead of letting it run wild.
Several of the weakest spectral constructs simply dissolved once the corruption holding them together disappeared.
Others became calmer and fled the moment he released them.
Asterion watched them go.
"Interesting."
Then looked out across Havenbrook.
There were dozens more.
Possibly hundreds.
"One problem down," he muttered through my mouth.
A pause.
"Several thousand to go."
He rose higher.
Mental checklist time.
Secure the area.
Measure the Gateway's Yin output.
Teach Evan how not to accidentally phase through a bank vault.
Track anything intelligent enough to hide.
Prepare the Mercers for larger manifestations.
And...
the armor.
Asterion looked down at my hands.
That was new too.
Very new.
The blue-black armor he'd built hadn't remained entirely separate during my transformation.
The dimensional surge had caught it inside the event.
Formation lines now pulsed beneath the surface like veins of cold light.
Some sections could vanish when I shifted toward my ghost state, then reappear as though being reconstructed from ectoplasmic energy.
The gauntlets responded directly to thought.
Sensors fed information into my vision with almost no delay.
The spiritual-energy channels reacted to my new ghost core instead of depending entirely on Asterion's ki or the rechargeable power source.
Asterion flexed one hand.
A blade extended.
Green-white energy traced its edge.
He dismissed it.
Interesting.
The equipment hadn't literally become flesh.
But spiritually?
It was bound to my transformed state now.
Close enough that separating the two would probably be difficult.
Asterion tested the connection.
Reaction time?
Excellent.
Energy flow?
Stable.
Ghost transformation?
Armor followed.
My parents were going to have approximately seventeen simultaneous scientific breakdowns when they discovered this.
Asterion smiled.
Not because of the armor.
Because things were moving exactly where he'd expected them to.
He'd been waiting for my potential to awaken.
Waiting for the Gateway.
Waiting for the right conditions.
The accident had been violent.
Messier than ideal.
But the result?
The path was open now.
My real training could begin.
And whatever fate had been gathering around Evan Mercer...
could finally start showing itself.
Perched atop Havenbrook's tallest clock tower like a gargoyle with excellent posture, Asterion surveyed the city with the expression of either an ancient war leader...
or a very tired babysitter.
Havenbrook had officially crossed from:
QUIRKY CITY WITH GHOST PROBLEMS
into:
CURSED URBAN FANTASY TERRITORY.
Ghosts moved across rooftops.
Drifted between alleys.
One stopped long enough to scream at a pigeon.
The pigeon screamed back.
Asterion watched.
"...Fair."
Wind pulled at my white hair.
The Gateway was supposed to simplify things.
And strategically?
It probably still would.
Garrick and Selene's idea was sound.
One controlled dimensional connection was easier to monitor than hundreds of unpredictable weak points.
But the Gateway had a side effect.
Leakage.
Not catastrophic.
Yet.
Still enough Yin and ectoplasmic energy had seeped into Havenbrook to make the entire city shine like a beacon to spiritually sensitive entities.
To ghosts?
Havenbrook probably looked like a five-star resort.
Energy.
Emotion.
Millions of human thoughts.
Fear.
Joy.
Grief.
Anger.
Late-night taco trucks.
Everything a spirit could possibly want.
Asterion looked down at a poltergeist struggling to flip a park bench.
The ghost strained.
The bench moved approximately three inches.
Asterion stared.
"You're not terrifying."
The spirit looked up.
"You're petty."
It hissed.
Asterion flicked one finger.
A spiritual chain wrapped around it and hung it upside down from a streetlamp.
"Reflect on your choices."
Then his thoughts turned inward.
To me.
Evan Mercer.
Teenager.
Student.
Former professional victim of gym class.
And now...
half ghost.
The transformation was extraordinary by local standards.
But Asterion had expected something like it.
Not every detail.
Not necessarily the white hair.
Definitely not me screaming about my DNA getting microwaved.
But the potential had always been there.
That was one reason he'd stayed.
One reason he'd trained me before I had powers.
Before the Gateway.
Before the change.
Power without the person underneath it being ready would have been useless.
Dangerous, even.
Now?
At least I had a foundation.
Asterion could feel the two sides of my existence.
Human body.
Ghost core.
Not fighting each other.
A hybrid state that shouldn't have existed naturally...
yet did.
And that raised another question.
Could something similar be done deliberately?
Not by throwing people into dimensional portals.
Obviously.
Even Garrick would probably object to that methodology.
Probably.
But spiritual contracts?
Stable bonds between humans and willing ghosts?
That was different.
Asterion had seen cultivators form contracts with spiritual beasts, elementals, weapon spirits, and stranger things during his life.
A compatible ghost and human might be able to create a controlled partnership without rewriting either one completely.
Mara.
Toby.
Lena.
Not necessarily them.
Not yet.
But someday?
Maybe.
A dangerous thought.
Worth remembering.
Especially because the weak spirits currently wandering Havenbrook weren't the problem.
They were symptoms.
Farther away...
beyond the Gateway...
stronger presences had started moving.
Asterion could feel them.
Not clearly.
Not yet.
But there were minds on the other side.
Old ones.
Hungry ones.
Things intelligent enough not to rush toward the first source of energy they sensed.
Those were the ones worth worrying about.
"Of course."
Asterion sighed.
"Nothing stays simple."
He stepped from the tower.
My body dropped.
Then stopped.
Hovering.
Asterion flew forward, my transformed body cutting silently through the night.
His control made flight look embarrassingly easy.
I was going to hate him for that later.
He summoned another spiritual chain and spun it once around one hand as he passed above a bakery that smelled equally of frosting and low-level haunting.
Another patrol.
Another ghost.
Another clue.
Havenbrook slept below.
For now.
Meanwhile...
I was having the time of my afterlife.
Inside the mental world, obviously.
While Asterion used my actual body to patrol Havenbrook, I was taking full advantage of the fact that my mind now knew exactly what flying felt like.
Endless sky.
No buildings.
No traffic.
No Dad yelling:
"EVAN, DON'T PHASE THROUGH THE REFRIGERATOR!"
Just freedom.
I rocketed through the clouds.
Dropped toward a forest.
Phased directly through three trees because apparently physics had become optional.
Then shot straight upward.
Green ectoplasmic energy burst from my hands.
I laughed.
"Oh, this is AWESOME!"
Backflip.
Corkscrew.
Dive.
Pull up.
I was getting better.
Still not good.
But significantly less likely to accidentally become part of someone's ceiling.
"If this is what being half ghost feels like..."
I grinned.
"...worth it."
Which was exactly when the universe punched me.
Something came out of the clouds.
Fast.
Human-shaped.
Female.
And moving with the subtlety of a guided missile.
"Wait—"
WHU-BAM!
The mental landscape exploded.
Trees disappeared.
The sky fractured.
I spun through the air like a haunted Beyblade.
"What the—?!"
Then a familiar voice reached me.
"What have I told you about enjoying yourself so much that you stop paying attention?"
Asterion.
Of course.
I stabilized myself.
Mostly.
"YOU COULD'VE WARNED ME!"
"That would defeat the lesson."
Another attack came.
I twisted aside.
Barely.
A woman hovered above the shattered landscape.
Not someone from my world.
Not anyone I knew.
She wore pale battle robes, her expression utterly calm.
Hundreds of razor-thin glowing seals floated around her like leaves caught in a storm.
I stared.
"Who is that?"
Asterion's voice answered.
"A training reconstruction."
"Of who?!"
"Someone unpleasant."
Helpful.
The woman raised one hand.
Every floating seal turned toward me.
"Oh."
Then they launched.
"OH."
Hundreds.
Maybe thousands.
Each carrying enough explosive spiritual force to ruin my evening.
My new instincts screamed.
I threw both hands forward.
Green energy erupted.
BOOM!
A barrier snapped into existence around me.
The first seal struck.
Then another.
Then fifty.
Explosions rippled across the shield.
I grunted.
But it held.
Mostly.
"YES!"
Asterion's voice sounded faintly approving.
"Better."
I smiled.
"You remembered you have powers instead of merely screaming."
My smile vanished.
"Thanks."
Asterion appeared beside me in his own spiritual form.
He looked entirely too relaxed considering the sky was currently trying to murder me with glowing talismans.
He examined the barrier.
"Your control is rough."
"IT'S THE FIRST DAY."
"Which is why we're training."
The woman attacked again.
I strengthened the shield.
"So this is training now?"
Asterion looked at me.
"Now you have actual abilities to train."
I blinked.
"Wait."
I pointed toward the explosions outside.
"Everything before this wasn't actual training?"
"Of course it was."
Oh.
Good.
"This is simply the next stage."
Less good.
Asterion folded his arms.
"Until yesterday, you needed to learn to fight as a human."
That shut me up.
"Movement. Judgment. Pain tolerance. Weapons. Awareness."
His eyes moved toward my glowing hands.
"Now we add your ghost abilities without allowing you to forget everything underneath them."
The barrier cracked.
"ASTERION."
"Repair it."
"I'M TRYING."
The training construct raised both hands.
A thousand more glowing seals spread behind her.
I stared.
"This seems excessive."
Asterion smiled.
That smile.
The one that meant suffering.
"You wanted powers."
"Oh, come on."
"Use them."
The sky turned white.
I groaned.
"You people really need to work on your definition of mentorship."
Asterion vanished.
His voice remained.
"Lesson one."
The glowing storm descended.
"Having powers does not mean you can stop thinking."
Then my entire world exploded again.
Most parents wake up in the middle of the night because somebody left the oven on.
Or because the Wi-Fi stopped working.
Garrick and Selene Mercer?
They woke up to citywide ghost-invasion alarms.
Red lights flashed across the bedroom ceiling.
Klaxons screamed.
And Dad's custom alert system began shouting:
GHOSTS! GHOSTS! GHOSTS! GHOSTS!
in the same robotic voice he'd programmed into the kitchen blender.
Mom still hadn't forgiven him.
"Oh, sweet spooky biscuits!"
Dad launched himself out of bed.
He landed in his slippers with shocking precision for a man his size.
"The citywide sensors are going crazy!"
Mom was already moving.
By the time Dad finished speaking, Selene had one leg inside her combat suit and a blaster charging on the bedside table.
"Low-level manifestations don't trigger the full network."
Goggles.
Gauntlets.
Holster.
"This is widespread."
Dad's eyes lit up.
"You're thinking what I'm thinking?"
Mom looked at him.
A grin appeared.
"Battle date night."
My parents were deeply concerning people.
Within minutes, they were fully equipped.
Reinforced Mercer combat suits.
Ectoplasmic shielding.
Exoskeletal strength support.
Ghost weapons.
Sensors.
Containment gear.
Years of hunting and laboratory testing had already made both of them far fitter and tougher than normal suburban parents had any right to be.
Their suits made the difference even worse.
Mom's boots locked.
FZZZT-KACHUNK.
"Readings calibrated."
Dad slammed one armored fist into the other.
"Ghost punchers engaged!"
They charged downstairs.
Neither checked my bedroom.
Mostly because they'd watched me come home injured from school and assumed I was unconscious.
Technically?
Correct.
My body just wasn't currently in bed.
The Mercer Battle Wagon roared to life.
Bright green.
Armored.
Heavily modified.
A tank and recreational vehicle brought together through questionable science and poor impulse control.
Dad slammed the accelerator.
The machine shot down the street with all the subtlety of a dinosaur on espresso.
"Ghost sonar active!"
Displays lit up.
Dad's grin faltered.
"Uh."
Mom glanced over.
"What?"
"We've got..."
More points appeared.
Then more.
"...a lot of pings."
Outside?
Havenbrook still looked mostly peaceful.
Streetlights.
Quiet houses.
Trimmed lawns.
One dog barking aggressively at a mailbox.
But through the Mercer sensor grid?
The city looked like a haunted Christmas tree.
Green points everywhere.
Mom frowned at the display.
"The Gateway."
Dad's expression became more serious.
"Leakage?"
"Possibly."
She enlarged the readings.
"The concentration's highest near our district, but they're spreading."
Their home remained protected.
The Mercer Barrier Grid hummed over the property, forming an invisible anti-spiritual perimeter.
Normally, almost nothing ectoplasmic crossed it unnoticed.
It had protected the house for years.
Occasionally confused delivery drones.
Once caused a raccoon to panic.
Long story.
Tonight?
Still stable.
Dad checked it.
"Home barrier's clean."
Mom nodded.
"Good."
Neither noticed the detail that should have bothered them.
Their supposedly airtight ghost barrier had never sounded an alarm when their newly transformed son flew straight through it under Asterion's control.
Not one warning.
Not one flicker.
Nothing.
That discovery would come later.
And it was going to cause problems.
For now?
Mom flipped the safety off her shoulder cannon.
"Let's find out who's wandering around Havenbrook without permission."
Dad grinned.
"Now you're speaking my language."
The Battle Wagon tore down the road.
Sonar pings accelerated.
Mom studied the signatures.
"They're not all hostile."
"Good."
"But I'm detecting several stronger entities."
Dad leaned forward.
"How strong?"
Another cluster appeared.
Mom's eyes narrowed.
"Strong enough that I don't want civilians meeting them first."
Dad grinned again.
"Oh, this is going to be awesome."
Mom stared at him.
"What?"
"You know I'm right."
Somewhere several blocks away...
a mailbox exploded.
Dad pointed.
"See?"
Mom sighed.
"Drive."