Missie Alweathe smoothed the spiritual liability waiver against her desk and read the notification letter again. The new Spectral Registration Act required all haunted sites to register their spirits within thirty days. Her waiver protected visitors from ghostly incidents. It said nothing about protecting the ghosts themselves. She walked to the grandfather clock in the east wing hallway, its weathered wood frame carved with dates and initials. The ghosts had shown her what each marking meant: grave robbers who'd stolen jewelry in 1847, a medium who'd promised contact with loved ones but only wanted money in 1923, developers who'd demolished the family cemetery in 1978. If she registered the spirits now, would their names end up on another list for someone else to exploit? Missie pulled out her phone and photographed each carving on the clock. She'd need proof of their past betrayals when she argued for an exemption at the courthouse tomorrow. The courthouse appeared on the manor grounds the next morning, its stone columns and polished wood doors gleaming in the sunlight. Missie clutched her folder of photographs and marched up the steps. Inside, a clerk handed her Form S-47: Application for Spectral Registration Exemption. She filled in each box with precise script, attached photos of the clock's carvings, and wrote in the justification section: "These spirits have survived exploitation for over a century. Registration creates another public record for those who would harm them." The clerk stamped her application and gave her a case number. Missie walked back to the manor with the exemption request filed, but no guarantee it would be approved. Back in her office, she unrolled the scroll she'd commissioned last month from an elven authenticator. The elegant script detailed each spirit's history and their right to sanctuary. She'd ordered it as decoration, something impressive to show visiting decorators when they finally came. Now it might be the only thing standing between her ghosts and another betrayal. She hung it on the wall above her desk where she could see it while she waited for the courthouse's decision.

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.