For my grandmother, Kathleen.

Though you are no longer with us,

you are no less loved.

The Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, is a real book written by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger (though some scholars suggest Sprenger’s contribution was more ceremonial than authorial). For the purposes of my plot, however, I chose to credit the creation of the Malleus Maleficarum to only one author, Heinrich Kramer. Jacob Sprenger, you got off lucky this time.

Lasting Peace Cemetery

Garland, Texas

“Donald Bartholomew Williams, get your ass back here now!”

My bellow still hung in the air when movement drew my gaze to the right. Just behind a headstone shaped like a small, weeping angel stood my uncle. Don stared at me as he tugged on his eyebrow in a way that expressed his discomfort more eloquently than a litany of words. In his suit and tie, gray hair combed back in its usual impeccable style, Don would look like your average middle-aged businessman to anyone observing him, except for one thing. You had to be undead or a psychic to be able to see him.

Don Williams, former head of a covert branch of Homeland Security that guarded the public against rogue supernatural creatures, had died ten days ago. Yet there he stood. A ghost.

I’d sobbed at his bedside when that fatal heart attack struck, seen to his cremation afterward, been like a zombie at his wake, and even brought his ashes back to my home so I could keep him near me. Little did I know how near to me Don had actually been, considering all those times I’d thought I caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye.