She's older than she looked inside the light. Or maybe death has finally returned the age the Church flattened out of her. Her hair is braided over one shoulder, and her hands are clasped in front of her like she's trying very hard not to ask for anything.
"What's your name?" I ask.
For a moment, she only stares. Names are hard when someone has spent years sanding yours down into a function. Then her mouth moves, and I hear it behind my teeth.
"Mara Voss," I say aloud, and write it down.
I don't reach for command. I don't push her toward a door because I can feel where one opens. I write her name and wait while the last of the Church's residue peels from her shoulders in dull flakes of light.
"You can go," I tell her. "You can stay for a while. No one here is counting you."
Mara looks toward the broken window where morning has started to brighten the rain on the street. She smiles once, smalland startled, then thins into the pale, clean bright of a person finally leaving a room where she was never meant to be kept.
I write the next name.
Jon Bell. Priya Shah. Thomas Eddle. A boy who only remembers "Mikey" and the smell of his father's coat, so I write Mikey and don't ask him to be more complete for my records. Some cross as soon as I say their names back to them. Some linger, touching shelves, looking at the ceiling, standing in the wreckage with the cautious suspicion of people who've learned that open doors can still be traps.
One ghost in a varsity jacket hovers by the register and gives the bent drawer a look of severe judgment.
"If you're staying, you need to stop looking at the damage," I tell him. "Adjust your expectations."
Soren huffs from the floor. It isn't quite a laugh, but I take it and put it somewhere safe inside my ribs.
The ghost gives me a two-finger salute and drifts toward the front shelves, where he settles with the air of someone prepared to haunt retail for a while. I let him. That's the difference now, or part of it. The dead aren't a crowd I survive by drowning them out. They're people. Annoying people sometimes, but people.
Ellis waits until the others have thinned.
He stands at the entrance to Vera's library, clearer than I've ever seen him, the last residue of the tower hanging from him in thin, dark threads. Adaro is dead. The tower network is broken. The Church's gathered light has gone quiet. Whatever held Ellis here is no longer a wall. It's a knot, and I finally have enough of myself awake to see where to loosen it.
Cain feels the change before I say his name. He looks up from where he's wrapping a bandage around Ira's arm with the focused gentleness of someone refusing to think too hard about anyone else leaving. His gaze catches on the space beside thelibrary door, and grief moves through the bond so quietly I almost miss it.
"He's there," Cain says.
"Yes."
Cain stands. He doesn't check the exits this time. He only crosses the room until his shoulder touches mine, not leaning yet, not asking for anything, just close enough that grief doesn't have to happen alone.
Ellis looks at him, then at me. "Tell him he looks terrible."
My throat tightens so fast it hurts. "He says you look terrible."
Cain's mouth moves around the smallest almost-smile. "He's always been rude when frightened."
Ellis snorts, and for one second he looks less like a ghost and more like a younger brother. "Tell him the hair is still a mistake."
"He says the hair is still a mistake," I say.
Cain closes his eyes. The almost-smile stays, but it trembles at the edge. "Tell him I'm sorry."
Ellis's face changes.
The sharpness thins enough that I can see the love underneath, stubborn and exhausted and still standing after everything that tried to grind it down.
"He says to stop making guilt a hobby," I say, because Ellis doesn't make me soften the message and Cain doesn't deserve a cleaned-up ghost. My voice catches, and I force the rest through. "He says if you spend the next century apologizing, he'll come back and haunt every pair of shoes you own. He says live, Cain. That's the point. You got out, so live."
Cain bends a little, as if the words have weight and he's taken them into his body. His shoulder presses harder into mine. I wrap one arm around his back before he can decide whether he needs permission for that too.
"I tried to find you," Cain whispers.
