The Night She Met a Ghost, She Clung to the Reaper and Called Him Daddy

“Dad, this uncle’s hand is so cold.”

When Su Wan’s voice drifted over the bubbling medicine pot, Gu Yan was standing in the back room of the apothecary, holding the Book of Yin and Yang.

He looked up and saw his little airhead raising a hand stained with cinnabar, her fingertip poking the chest of a living soul floating beneath the rafters. It was a delivery driver who had just been hit by a car. He was crying and begging to go back for the missed calls on his phone.

“L-Little girl, you can see me?!” The soul was so frightened that it drifted into the corner of the ceiling.

Su Wan tilted her head. “Mm-hmm. You smell like bitter almonds, just like Auntie Zhang after she was cursed last week.” She turned and rummaged through the medicine cabinet for a packet of joss paper. “Dad said burning this can buy you passage. Take it and go find the sister in the Underworld. Don’t float around here, or you’ll knock over the mugwort I’m drying.”

Gu Yan’s hand froze around the book.

He should have realized sooner. This little airhead could hear the dead say they were hungry, tell whether a ghostly object was “cold from having just died” or “ice-cold from ten years of resentment,” and even recite by instinct a rebirth incantation that the Underworld clerks themselves couldn’t always remember.

It wasn’t until a fantasy drama filming in the entertainment industry caused a citywide sensation that he finally understood. When a wire suddenly snapped, everyone saw “a hand” shove an actor in the back. Five blue-gray fingerprints appeared clearly on a reflector used during a night shoot.

“Dad, save me!”

Su Wan’s scream, mixed with the crash of shattering porcelain, pierced Gu Yan’s ears.

He rushed into the dressing room and saw her cocooned in resentful energy, still stuffing sticky rice into her mouth,