Missie Alweathe's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By afternoon, a crowd had formed on her lawn. Seven decorators stood around the shadow person with their equipment, arguing about spectral density and manifestation patterns. One pulled out a fog machine from his trunk—purple and gleaming—and set it running to demonstrate how he created his own 'hauntings' at parties. The mist swirled around the base of the pine tree, but the shadow person didn't waver or blend with it. The contrast made it more obvious: the decorator's fog dissipated in the breeze while the spirit remained solid and still. Missie watched from the porch as more decorators arrived, some with cameras, others with notebooks full of questions she didn't want to answer yet. She needed to stop this before it spiraled further. Missie strode down the steps and planted herself between the decorators and the shadow person. "Tours require appointments," she announced, her voice carrying across the lawn. "And signed waivers. No one enters without both." The decorators protested—they just wanted to verify the readings, to understand her technique. But Missie pulled out her phone and showed them her waiver form with its twelve pages of terms and conditions. "Schedule through my office. One group per week, maximum four people, east wing only until renovations finish." Three decorators left immediately. The others exchanged looks and started pulling out their calendars. Missie walked back inside and sat at her desk, staring at the elven scroll on her wall. She'd wanted recognition, wanted her peers to see that her work meant something real. Now she had it—decorators were already filling her appointment slots for the next two months—but she'd lost the luxury of waiting until everything was perfect. The manor looked exactly as it always had: wallpaper bleeding in three spots, skulls reorganized but still slightly off-center, renovation materials scattered through the east wing. Her ghosts had been ready. She was the one who hadn't been. She opened her exemption case file and added a new document: operational guidelines for controlled professional visits. If word had spread this fast, the courthouse would hear about it too. Better to show she could manage the attention responsibly than let them think she'd created chaos. The shadow person was still visible through her window, standing by that pine tree like a banner announcing what made her work different from every other decorator in the region. Missie had spent months protecting her spirits from exposure. Now she had to figure out how to let people see them without losing control of what that meant.