Wingtip shoes made quiet thumps against the carpet as Isaac strode into his study and shut the heavy wooden door behind him. The room had the feeling of meticulously organized chaos. Dark oak bookshelves lined both walls, brimming with books and bizarre statues, jars with strange objects in them or looseleaf paper bound up tight with string. Clutter without being a mess, the tops of the bookcases were lined with more bizarre statues, wooden boxes, and strange clockwork mechanisms. The walls, where they were visible around the bookcases and under the various framed artwork that hung on them, were covered in a deep red and gold damask wallpaper. He crossed the faded, once brilliantly colored oriental rug to a standing coat rack by one wall.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the onyx necklace. Slipping it around his neck and tucking it underneath his shirt, he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a peg. The man undid his thin black and green striped tie and tossed it onto the coat rack as well. Walking to the large ornate fireplace, he crouched down to start the fire.

He began to grumble under his breath as he went through match after match. Jabbing at the wood with the fire poker, he tried again.

“Want some help?” came a sarcastic and disgruntled female voice.

Sharp grey eyes turned to the rest of the room but saw no one. He unclipped his cufflinks and folded up his sleeves and began to jab at the wood with a fire poker again. “No,” he replied simply.

“Mm-kay.”

Another few minutes passed as Isaac continued to fail at lighting the fire, crumpling up a paper and stuffing it into the pile of damp logs.

“Seriously, all you gotta do is ask.” She was still very clearly annoyed, wherever she was.

“No,” came his simple reply again.

A sigh, and then, “Men.” Suddenly the fire sparked and flared in front of him. He fell back, startled, his long black hair falling in front of his face. He stood up quickly and ran his hand through it to straighten it.

“Appear,” he snarled angrily at the room.

“Why?”

“Make yourself visible.”

“You didn’t say why.”

“I will not talk to an empty room. I will not tell you a third time.”

“Make me,” she snickered from nowhere.

“As you wish.” He touched the necklace through his shirt. The girl suddenly screamed in pain and appeared in mid-air, her form falling to the ground with a loud thump.

“Shit!” She glared up at him and began picking herself up off of the carpet. “That hurt! Want to tell me how the hell you did that?!”

Walking up to her with seemingly no expression on his face, he reached down towards her and toyed with a dark blue lock of her hair momentarily - rubbing it between his fingers as if he were testing the texture. She swatted his hand away and took a step back. “So you can take completely physical form. That is unusual but convenient,” he muttered half under his breath. The girl half suspected that he wasn’t talking to her at all.

“Don’t touch me! And you didn’t answer my question. What the hell did you do to me?!”

Whoever he was, he seemed completely uninterested in any sort of conversation. Turning away from her, he walked to his desk and sat down in a wooden swiveling chair. He slid a book over the glass top and opened it, flipping to a half-empty page. Picking up a pen, he began to write, his back to her.

“Hello?!”

The long-haired man raised his head up from his work for a moment before lowering it again and resuming writing with his left hand. “I suppose the simplest and most direct way to explain it would be thus: you belong to me now.”

“Excuse me?! What the hell does that mean?! Look, jackass, you don’t own me - are you some kind of psycho?!”

He let her finish before hooking his black hair behind his ear with the push of a finger. Without turning, he spoke with the same calm demeanor. “I took a piece of your soul. Inside this necklace is a shard of you. I had intended to gather a few weaker spirits to do what I need. Instead, we found you.”

“Hold on - you… took a piece of my soul?!” she fumed. “How the hell can you even do something like that?!”

“Yes. And the how is actually rather simple. The right piece of stone from my collection, the right time and place, and here you are.” He placed down his pen and swiveled around his chair to face her. He gestured simply with both of his hands as if he were referencing the most common of situations.

“What, magic?! Are you telling me you used magic on me? Don’t tell me that shit’s real.”

“You seem to post-date the Retribution. You should, therefore, know very well that the supernatural and other such things exist. Did you not stop to think that perhaps that was not the end of it? You are dead, and standing here in the middle of my house.”

“Magic. Seriously?”

“It would appear so.”

She felt rage slowly boil through her being. She vanished, then dashed at him. She moved quicker than a living person could, having no body to drag along with her. She wasn’t quite sure what she meant to do to him - she only knew she desperately wanted to hurt him.

He touched the necklace again, making no other movement. The girl screamed and crashed to the ground from mid-air, pain crawling through her body. She lay there for a while before pushing herself back up to her feet.

“What’s to stop me from just stealing that thing when you’re asleep?”

“You wish to try? Go ahead.” He pulled the necklace out from under his shirt and simply sat back.

She reached towards the stone, and then stopped short. She straightened up, her eyes narrowed. “What’ll it do to me if I touch it..?”

“Ah, you are not as dimwitted as I suspected.”

“Cut it with the insults, alright, psycho? What’ll it do?”

“I suspect nothing. You cannot touch your own soul.”

To prove his point, she reached forward - and her hand passed uselessly through the stone. She tried to pick it up again, and nothing. She snarled in rage and stomped away from him.

“There is nothing you can do. Best to simply accept it,” he said as he swiveled back around in his chair and resumed writing.

She glared at the back of his head as she turned over thought after thought. She desperately tried to think of some vicious retort, some inescapable insult. The longer she went without coming up with one, the more frustrated she became. Turning away, she began to pace around the room silently. If he cared, he did nothing about it. She was helpless - completely stuck. She almost wanted to cry, but, she wouldn’t give him that victory.

“Y’know, if you’re going to do this to me, you don’t have to be such a dick about it,” she said quietly.

The scratching of the pen on the parchment paused for a few moments before continuing.

“So what does this mean?” she finally asked.

“Pardon?”

“What does it mean, you 'taking a piece of my soul?' What now?”

Leaning back into the wooden chair, Isaac swiveled it around on the pivot to face her. Taking the glasses off his face, he rubbed his eyes tiredly. Slowly replacing the glasses, he finally turned his grey eyes on her. “It really is simple. If you disobey me, I can put you in complete agony. So you will fulfill my requests of you. You are tied to me until I set you free.”

She wasn’t even aware something like that was possible, but, clearly, it was. The man in front of her had caused her to feel the first pain she’d felt since she had died. Something told her that it was completely pointless to argue about. And really, what could she do? It was obvious she couldn’t touch him. Call the cops? Yeah, right. “Great,” she said through clenched teeth. “So what do I do now?”

“Amuse yourself with something else until I need you.”

She stared at him as a strange and awkward silence descended between them.

“So what’s your name?” she asked finally, her arms folded. She figured she should know the name of the man she’d be cursing.

“Isaac. Isaac Ostheim.”

“Muse.”

“What?” He turned his head just barely towards her.

“My name’s Muse.”

“Charming. What is your real name?”

“None of your business. You call me Muse.”

“I’m sure I could. Whether I will or not remains to be seen, I suppose.”

Growling loudly in frustration and with a desperate need to either punch him in the face or get away from him, Muse chose the latter. Dissolving, she floated down and pushed through the floor of the study. Gliding through furniture and walls, she pointedly ignored everyone in the house until she came to an unoccupied room. Floating formlessly across the kitchen and over the counter, she moved herself up and wedged herself above the cupboards.

Great. This is just great. Dead, and now… abducted… or whatever… I wonder if there’s like… supernatural police… or… something… She took hold of a cupboard and opened it, and slammed it back shut again, the noise and the action making her feel better.

This. She slammed it again, harder.

Just. Wham.

Sucks. Wham.

So. Wham.

Damn. Wham.

HARD!

“OW!” Thud.

Having been focusing so hard on abusing the cabinetry, she hadn’t noticed when Victor had walked in. She had apparently smacked him square across the face as she threw the door open. He was now laying on his back, gripping his nose, whining in pain. She took physical form reflexively, biting her lip, and reached down to help him up.

Seeing a hand trying to help him, he blearily reached up. “Huhn? Oh - thanks.” Taking the hand offered to him, he let it help him up to his feet. Blinking away the rest of the pain, he finally was able to focus on who was standing in front of him.

He screamed.

Recoiling from her, he fell against the fridge, his back slamming up against it painfully. Terrified, he began to brush himself off where he had touched her, as though acid had hit him.

Muse rolled her eyes, her form disappearing in a rapid swirl of grey smoke that disappeared half a moment later. “Great.”

Victor stood there, staring at the kitchen, his eyes darting around. “Um. Are… you still… here?” He rubbed the side of the face where the cupboard had smacked into him.

“Sure,” she replied, floating shapeless by the hanging pan rack. She rotated it idly with a push.

Victor watched the pots slowly rotating around in a circle, motivated by - to him - some horrible invisible force. “So… uh… Whydja hit me? I didn’t do anything…”

“‘Didn’t do anything,’ right. Look, who-ever-you-are… I cracked you in the face without realizing it. I’m not sorry, as far as I’m concerned, you deserve it for helping put me in this stupid situation.” She did, honestly, feel kind of bad for hitting him in the face. But only kind of.

“Hey, look, about that, I’m sorry for Isaac, he does that kind of crap, but I didn’t… I didn’t even know what we were there for, so, please, don’t.. like… hit me again, okay?” He winced, and touched his fingers to his nose again, checking to see if it was bleeding.

And he’s a vampire? Seriously?

“That’s why I was taking it out on the cupboard. Seeing as I can’t hit that jackass in the face…”

“Where are you anyway?”

“Over here,” she poked the hanging pan rack again.

“How’re you doing that?”

“It’s a dead person thing. We don’t always have bodies.”

Victor laughed nervously. “Oh, yeah, of course, we - wait, what?! We?! Who’s we?!” He looked around the kitchen again, drumming his fingers on his thighs, clearly wondering what kind of invisible monsters were now roaming the room.

Muse snickered again. The vampire was clearly scared out of his mind. It was a ridiculous concept. “Sorry. Don’t worry, no one else is here.”

“Are you sure?!”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?!”

“I… can see other ghosts, dumb-ass.” Muse wondered how hard she had actually hit him in the face.

“Oh, right,” Victor said, glancing around the room in paranoia. “Hey, uh, could you like.. maybe… be somewhere? It’s kind of weird talking to thin air.” He muttered out the last part, embarrassed.

Finding the inane conversation with the vampire was lessening her frustration, and with nothing better to do, she appeared sitting on the counter. Victor visibly jumped, still pressed back against the fridge like there were sharks in the tiling of the kitchen floor. “Sorry again,” she said with another half-laugh. “I forget that the comings-and-goings can be abrupt.”

“Kinda.” Victor slowly unglued himself from the fridge and sidestepped. Opening the fridge, he pulled out a beer and nudged the door shut with his foot.

“So why the hell’re you afraid of me, anyway? You’re a damn vampire, and I freak you out?”

“Yeah, well… never met a ghost before. See, you’re like dead-dead. I’m just… semi-dead. I never went the whole way.”

“Never met a vampire either. The war started only a few years before I died - wasn’t over till after. So I never actually met any vampires. You guys were always myth and legend, and after word got out, everyone was too busy trying to kill you all for me to go introduce myself to one.” Now that she thought about it, Muse looked at him curiously. The man in front of her was certainly cute as hell, but not what she would picture when she thought of a vampire. She guessed she expected them to look a little bit… freakier.

“So we’re even.” Visibly stomaching the nervousness, he moved to hold his hand out to her. “Victor,” he said and flashed another bright grin.

“Muse.” Muse took his hand as he shook it and couldn’t help but notice the smile. “Bet you get all the ladies with that.”

“It’s a hobby. Hey, Muse is kind of a weird name.”

“It’s a nickname. 80’s goth. It happened.”

“Ugh. 80’s. Bad, bad hair.” Victor shuddered dramatically.

“Hey! I like my hair. What’s the excuse for yours?” She stuck her tongue out, drawing a playful growl out of him. Like a lightbulb going off, he looked down at her hand, still in his. Letting go, he started to poke her in the shoulder. “I can touch you.”

“Yeah, imagine that.”

“Why? Last time you went all…” He gestured wildly. “Whoosh.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “I can control how solid I am. It’s a matter of degrees, really. I think. Again, I’m not sure.” Muse had never tried to explain it to anyone before. This was the first ‘real’ conversation she had had with anyone on the subject.

“Huhn. Neat,” Victor said and drank another swig of the beer. He poked her a few more times for good measure, a grin still across his face. “So can all ghosts do that?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

They both turned as another man entered the room. Muse wasn’t sure what she noticed first. The fact that it looked like he had just crawled through a puddle of dirt and oil, or the weird blast goggles he had on top of his head, messing up his sandy-blond short spiky hair.

“Eric!” Victor yelled. “Check it out! It’s the ghost! Only her name is Muse-” Victor spouted, pointing at her as he babbled. “She’s dead, but she can make herself, like, touchable, and… and…”

Eric looked at Muse apologetically. “Hey. Name’s Eric. Excuse my big brother, he’s excitable.”

“I noticed. It’s all right, exciting wouldn’t exactly describe my… existence until recently. Wait,” she narrowed an eye and looked between the two. Victor clearly looked to be the younger one of the two. Eric had grey touching the temples of his sandy-blond hair. “Big brother?”“Vampire. Stopped aging,” Victor said with a faint smile that never quite reached his green eyes.

“So you’ll be around for a while, I take it?” Eric asked, sharply changing the subject. He grabbed an unopened beer out of the refrigerator and cracked it with an opener he fetched out of the dish drainer. He scratched at his chin, the stubble betraying the fact that he hadn’t shaved in a few days.

“Mm. I guess? Until the butt-munch upstairs changes his mind.”

Eric brushed his hand down his shirt, which read ‘There’s no place like 127.0.0.1’. Muse was sure that made sense somewhere, but ‘here’ wasn’t it. The swipe of his hand left a rather noticeable black smudge across the grey fabric. “Isaac? Yeah. He can be an ass sometimes, but he’s good at what he does.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Whatever he wants.” Eric swigged his beer and propped himself up against the counter across from her. “Dude has some serious voodoo shit going on. I don’t know honestly. We just live here and work for him.”

“Oh, good. You’re employees. Here I thought there was something else going on.”

“Huhn?” Victor stared at her, lost.

“Oh, with, I don’t know, a bunch of dudes… in a house… together…”

“Hey!” Eric exclaimed. “It’s nothing like that!”

“I don’t know, that big guy looks like he’d be one hell of a-“ Muse was cut off as the cap from Eric’s beer bounced off of her arm. “Ooh, more violence. I see how it is, everybody just abuses the ghost,” she cracked. She should be mad. She should be trying to murder them. Honestly, she wasn’t a violent person by nature, and something about their antics was calming her down. It was… normal. Human. And some of the first interaction she’d had in twenty years.

“It’s not like that.” Victor picked up where his brother had left off. “It’s like… well, we uh… we’re kind of mercenaries, I guess. We’re… we’re…” He looked over at the thinner blond and snapped his fingers as he grasped at words.

“Hitmen,” Eric finished. There was a long pause as she stared at them incredulously.

“You’re serious,” she said flatly.

“Yep. Isaac’s the boss. Pays us all, we get hired out, we go and kill people. Sometimes it’s professional, sometimes it’s personal, sometimes it’s… just for fun.” Eric swigged down the last of his beer and went to get another one. The man could put it away at a practiced speed.

“Riiight. Christ. This ought to be interesting.” Muse yawned suddenly. “Nngh. Excuse me.”

“Ghosts get tired?” Eric asked, cocking a brow.

“Well, yeah… I don’t know. I do too much, I get tired,” she offered uselessly. “Hey, do you know anywhere I could curl up out of the way? Getting woken up when somebody walks through you is really crappy.”

“I… can imagine,” Victor said, tossing his empty beer bottle into a bin next to the sink.

“Huhn.” Eric stepped up to her and lowered the blast goggles onto his eyes.

“Oh, here we go…” the vampire groaned out.

“I guess it makes sense,” Eric started, muttering distractedly. “The electromagnetic field around you is distorted, that’s for sure… it seems to almost bend around you, in some kind of flux. It spikes, then it depletes itself.” He fidgeted with a dial on the side of his goggles. “It could be possible that you’re some kind of sentient semiconductor. Almost like a… heterojunction bipolar transistor but not quite. I can’t locate where the energy storage would be. I wonder if you’re photovoltaic or electro-voltaic… Maybe you’re electro-photovoltaic.” He snickered at some apparently private joke. “Anyhow, that would result in discomfort on both parts if someone were to walk into you, grounding out the inherent electromagnetic charge… Logically, the best place for you to be would be somewhere with minimal foot traffic, such as a storage location… “

“That means what, exactly?” Muse leaned back away from Eric as he leaned towards her. The little guy was… weird. Seemed harmless, but weird.

Victor snickered. “No, it means the attic’s out of the way if you need to curl up somewhere.” He snagged the back of Eric’s t-shirt and started to drag him backwards. “Leave the nice ghost alone, Eric. You can scare her later with all your stupid techno mumbo-jumbo.”

“Hey, but-“ Eric stammered, not wanting to be interrupted.

“Seriously, dude.”

Muse dissolved, slipping out of her physical form. “Uh… goodnight?”

“You, too,” Victor replied.

Pushing up through the floors and rooms, she headed towards the aforementioned attic. There was little else for her to do except get some rest. There was no use screaming, no use crying about it. What was she going to do, whom would she complain to? One way or another, she had to make use of this situation.

Hopefully, she’d at least get a few laughs while she was at it.