I knew I’d found the ghost auction when I saw the red threads. They exploded out of the stairwell and plastered themselves against the walls and ceiling, like a blood vessel network scalpeled out from a living body, or a game of cat’s cradle gone very, very wrong. In the dark museum gallery, they lent the stairwell a red glow.

  “– So I said to him, ‘No way, that’s not what we agreed on.’ And you know what he said?” A group of men in crisp black suits strode under a grotesque bronze sculpture that resembled a monster’s maw. (“Rainbow,” the plaque had called it.) The man in the center was waving his arms. “‘That is what we agreed on’! That’s what he told me! That lying green-faced liar!’”

  “I’m sure you’ll get an even better one tonight, sir,” replied one of the other men. He must have been the personal assistant, because he was the one cradling the rosewood casket and stepping carefully.

  The first man – the auction patron – snorted. “Trifles. There’s no ghost worth my time tonight. I’m only here because my father-in-law’s client gave him that as a gift, and the old geezer says we can’t afford to offend her by blowing it off, but do you see him attending this auction?”

  For him, a trifle; for me, what remained of one of the most important people in my life. I stepped out from behind a sculpture that resembled a heap of intestines. (“Party Balloons,” said the plaque.) “If that’s how you feel, sir, I’d be happy to take it off your hands.”

  The men halted. Two moved up closer to their boss, while the rest fanned out around the sculptures.

  I held up both of my hands, making sure they could see that my palms were empty and there was nothing concealed between my fingers. My wide sleeves fell back from my wrists to my elbows, showing that my forearms, too, were bare. “Peace. I mean you no harm.”

  “Out of the way, girl!” barked one of the bodyguards.

  “I’d be happy to, only I really need that paddle.” I tipped my head at the casket.

  Out of the corners of my eyes, I monitored the spread of bodyguards. They formed a loose semicircle with me at its heart.

  “You see, sir, I really need to get into that auction, and it seems that you’re not interested, so....”

  I lowered my arms and shrugged. Small, wooden shapes tumbled down from my shoulders and clustered around my wrists, waiting. The wide sleeves hid them from view.

  The auction patron snorted. “Don’t waste my time, missy.” To his bodyguards: “Remove her. What are you waiting for?” The two closest to me charged.

  Sigh. This was why my family never put me in charge of talking to customers.

  “Go!” I commanded. “Attack!”

  Snapping my hands up, I sprayed wooden puppets at the bodyguard to my right. They were small, only a palm’s length in height, but each was fully articulated and had tiny painted faces. They landed on his shoulders and started to punch his head and neck. He roared and smacked at them.

  “Dodge!” I cried, and the puppets switched from punching to scuttling. One wriggled under his collar and dropped down his back. From the way his eyes bugged out and he started to shimmy, it was tickling him inside his shirt.

  One down. Grinning, I flung up my arm to shoot more puppets at the other bodyguard.

  Too late! Moving faster than any normal human could, he was already in my face. I had a split second to register the trail of green smoke in his wake before he crashed into me and bore me to the floor. A ghost user!

  Shoulda guessed, I thought, right before my skull cracked against the marble and stars erupted across my vision.

  Dimly I could hear the crunch of wood overhead, and I groped for control of the puppets. “Fight,” I croaked, but I couldn’t see if it worked.

  The black and purple stars blinked out at last. I punched the bodyguard right between his cold, glowing, ghost-green eyes.

  A howl. He toppled backwards. I pushed myself into a crouch. A sideways glance showed my puppets wrapping silk around the first bodyguard’s shoulders while he bellowed and struggled to break them. Good. He was under control.

  The ghost user bodyguard lunged towards me, and I dodged, but it was a feint. His ghost-strengthened boot connected with my side in a kick that hurled me across the gallery. Green-faced ghost users!

  He flew at me, trailing green smoke. The motion rucked up his pant leg, and I spotted the knot of red silk, the same shade as the threads in the stairwell, peeking out from under his sock.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Before I had time to target his ankle, his fist came at my gut, trailing more green smoke behind it.

  “Block!” I cried.

  Puppets leaped at his fist and pushed against it.

  “Attack!”

  I dropped and rolled towards the ghost user. He tried to jump away, but my puppets dove at his chest and threw him off-balance. I swept my leg into his ankles, and over he went.

  “Untie!”

  The ghost user sucked in a sharp breath. His eyes blazed up, and even his face took on a green tint, as if green flames burned inside his skin.

  My puppets were dancing around his ankle, reaching for the red knot. He pinched one between his thumb and forefinger and flicked it away. It smashed into a window on the far side of the gallery. Glass cracked. The puppet fell to the floor in a patter of splinters.

  Ugh! I hadn’t even gotten into the auction and I was nearly out of puppets!

  “Wait!” I called to the ghost user. “You know what this means, don’t you? You know what family I come from?”

  His eyes narrowed, but the green light in them faded. “Yes?”

  “So isn’t there anyone you want? Like, really, really want?”

  His eyes flickered to the side, to the clump of bodyguards surrounding the auction patron. They were shielding him with their backs while hustling him toward the stairwell. Green-eyed, green-faced wretches!

  I hurled a puppet across the room. It clattered to a stop between them and the first step. “Block!” It sank into a crouch with its tiny fists raised. One puppet wasn’t nearly enough to stop them, but –

  “The Sigilla.” “She’s a Sigilla.” “One of them.” “But they never show their faces!”

  No, we did not. Yes, this was absolutely going to be a problem. But what choice did I have? I had to get into that auction.

  I flung out my arms at shoulder height, bent them at the elbows, and bowed from the waist like a giant puppet myself. “A pleasure to meet you all.”

  Running footsteps. I spun, too late. The ghost user arced through the air on a tide of green. An instant before he came crashing down on me, the auction patron shouted, “Stop!”

  He jerked sideways in a flash of green. The glow vanished from his eyes, and he dropped to the floor with a yelp. He took a wary step away from me, moving like an ordinary human once more. A piece of bleached silk thread slithered down his pant leg to pool limply next to his shoe. He ground his heel into it and glared at me.

  Must have been an expensive ghost, one he was hoping to expend gradually. I shrugged an apology. Maybe his boss would buy him another one.

  “Ms. Sigilla,” the patron auction’s voice broke in. One of those too-bright grins was plastered across his face. I itched to hurl a puppet right into those gleaming, overcorrected, over-whitened front teeth. “Shall I address you as Ms. Sigilla?”

  “That’ll do,” I answered curtly.

  He nodded as gravely as if we’d settled the matter of world peace. “Ms. Sigilla, I apologize for this unpleasantness. If you had only introduced yourself from the start, I’m sure we could have come to an agreement.”

  I had tried to talk first, although I supposed my communication skills needed work. Hey, I hid in the puppet workshop all day. I wasn’t one of the customer-facing members of the clan. “What do you want for the auction paddle?”

  Incredibly, the man’s grin widened until it nearly severed his jaw from the rest of his face. “I run a vast enterprise, and as you can imagine, not everyone in that enterprise is on the same page. Some even attempt to leave! After I devoted so many resources to their training too! The ingratitude hurts me – ”

  “You want me to bind them to you.” Like a ghost to its master, or a human to their spouse.

  “It seems a reasonable trade for entrée to this auction, does it not?” He said it in so reasonable tone too.

  “No. Not even close.”

  Ghost auctions happened every full moon. Human bindings happened only when Avus Lunus sent a roll of official pairings to our patriarch to carry out.

  “And yet, this is the one ghost auction you must get into, is it not? Otherwise, why go to such lengths? Why reveal yourself?”

  I gritted my teeth. He had me there. “It’s hard enough to perform one binding. An entire organization? Impossible.”

  “As impossible as getting into that auction without a paddle?”

  “More so.”

  Outsiders had no idea how closely guarded the finished puppets and the silk thread were. Each puppet was the embodiment of a human life. The spool (singular) of red silk was used to bind humans irrevocably to the most important people in their lives. Only the Patriarch and his heir, my uncle, were privy to the specific security measures involved. Still, even an outsider should be able to guess that we wouldn’t just leave the puppets or thread lying around for any minor member of the clan (such as me) to meddle with.

  I might be able to sneak into the gallery where we kept the network of puppets. I might be able to locate the pair of puppets I needed and bind them together. But no way would I have the leeway to run around rearranging dozens. Not to mention that multiple threads radiated out from each puppet, and each thread connected to a different puppet that was in turn bound to many more. That explosion of threads in the stairwell was meant to evoke our gallery, in fact.

  I folded my arms across my chest and faced the man before me squarely. “I can perform one binding for you. You will not find any other Sigilla willing and able to do that much.”

  He tried to stare me down, but I refused to blink.

  At last, he heaved such a disappointed sign that you’d have thought he were giving up the ghost of General Hannibal or Caesar Augustus. He snapped his fingers at his personal assistant. The young man leaped forward and presented the casket to me. I opened the lid. As soon as I lifted the paddle from its silken nest, a gossamer strand looped around my ankle, stretching to the auction patron’s ankle. I rotated my foot experimentally, and the thread moved without resistance.

  I pointed down at it. Unlike the red bonds sanctioned by the Avus Lunus, this thread, an emblem of the duty owed to another, was a shimmery white. “Tug on that three times when you have a name for the binding. I will find you.”

  Without waiting for his response, I turned my back and strode toward the stairs. The network of red threads blazed and lashed out at me, but I held up the paddle. As soon as they brushed against it, they retreated back to the walls. I bounded down the steps.

  Behind me, I could hear the man boasting, “Well, well. I guess I do need to thank the old geezer after all.”

  Chiharu Shiota's art.