They came and scraped at the walls of her house with their tools and voices, telling each other grimly that she was there. She slipped around the edges of their sight, knowing it, too, more sharply and frantically than she had before they’d forced open the door.

She was there, reading over their shoulders as they flipped through her books. There in the bedroom, raking fingers through her hair as they rifled the sheets. There when they started setting out the tools that looked more like traps, telling each other they’d be rid of her soon.

And as they set the snares, as the ecto-sensitive whine of their tripwires squealed taut through her house, her home, the cool, clear, curious white of her filled with a new hum, too, of scarlet vengeance. Ghosts were cunning and cruel, those living, snare-setting men told each other, and would understand only too late that it was only true if they were hunted.