The dead woman appears at 3:17 AM.

I don't startle anymore. Not after twenty-three years of this. I simply open my eyes, register the figure at the foot of my bed, and reach for the lamp.

She's young. Mid-twenties, maybe. Red hair that catches the lamplight, though nothing about her should catch light anymore. She's wearing a cocktail dress, black, elegant, stained dark down the front.

The stain is blood.

Her throat has been cut from ear to ear. The wound gapes like a second mouth, and she points at it with one pale finger. Not frantic, not pleading. Just... showing me.

"I see it," I say quietly.

The dead appreciate directness. They've waited long enough for someone to listen.

She lowers her hand. Steps closer. The room temperature drops, not dramatically, just enough that my breath might frost if I exhaled hard enough.

"Three days ago," she says. Her voice sounds like wind through dead leaves. "He took me from outside a bar on Kenmore. Drove me to a house in the suburbs. Kept me in the basement."

I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest. My notebook is on the nightstand. I grab it, a pen already wedged in the spine.

"What's your name?"

"Rachel. Rachel Mendez."

"Rachel." I write it down. "I'm sorry this happened to you."

She watches me with hollow attention. She was probably beautiful once, full of life and warmth. Now she's flat. Hollow. A window with no one home.

"He's going to do it again," Rachel says. "He told me so. Told me I was the first of many."

"Did you see his face?"

"Yes."

"Can you describe him?"

She shakes her head. "I can do better. I can show you."

The dead have their own form of communication. It's not pleasant, but it's efficient.

"Okay." I set the notebook aside. "Show me."

Rachel reaches out. Her fingers pass through my forehead like smoke through a screen, and then I'm not in my bedroom anymore.

I'm in a basement.

Concrete walls. Single bare bulb overhead. The smell of copper and fear. My wrists are bound, no, her wrists. I'm seeing through Rachel's eyes, feeling what she felt.

A man stands before me. Silver hair. Wire-rimmed glasses. The face of a professor, calm and composed. He's explaining something, but the words blur together. Something about death. About balance. About how I shouldn't exist.

"You speak to them," he says. "The dead. You hear their voices."

Rachel's voice, my voice, cracks. "Please. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do." He leans closer. His gaze is pale and empty, like looking into a well with no bottom. "You're a corruption. A flaw in the natural order. Death should be final. But people like you... you make a mockery of it."

A blade catches the light.

I wrench myself out of the memory.

The bedroom snaps back into focus. I'm gasping, hands fisted in my sheets, throat raw with phantom pain.

Rachel stands exactly where she was. Patient. Still.

"His name," I manage. "What's his name?"

"He called himself the Collector."

The Collector.

I've heard that name before. Whispered among the dead who visit me. A shadow. A threat. Someone who hunts people like me, people who walk the line between living and dead.

"Why are you here, Rachel? Why come to me?"

"Because you're next."

Cold prickled across my scalp, down my neck.

"He's been watching you for months," Rachel continues. "Studying your patterns. Learning how you help the police without getting caught. He knows about the anonymous tips. He knows about the solved cases." She tilts her head, her wound gaping wider with the movement. "He's coming for you, Vera Lin. And when he takes you, no one will find you. No one will listen. No one will know."

"Unless?"

"Unless you stop him first." She steps back from the bed. Already fading around the edges, the dead can only maintain for so long. "Help me find justice. In return, I'll tell you everything. How to find him. How to stop him. How to survive."

I've spent two decades avoiding involvement. Taking the tips. Passing information to police through anonymous channels. Never connecting myself to the cases, never putting myself in danger.

But the dead don't offer deals lightly. And this one... this one has teeth.

"If I help you," I say slowly, "the police will get involved. Detectives. Investigations. Questions I can't answer without exposing myself."

"Yes."

"I've worked very hard to stay invisible."

"I know." Rachel's form flickers. "But invisible won't save you from him. He sees you, Vera. He's already seen you. The only question is whether you're still hiding when he comes."

She has a point. A terrible, undeniable point.

"One condition."

Rachel pauses, barely visible now.

"When this is over, when he's caught, you move on. No lingering. No returning. You cross over and stay crossed."

A faint smile touches what remains of her face. "Deal."

Then she's gone.

I sit in my cold bedroom, notebook in my lap, throat still aching with remembered pain.

The Collector.

Coming for me.

I look at the clock. 3:41 AM. Twenty-four minutes until the newspaper arrives. Forty-three minutes until the first coffee shop opens. Sixty-two minutes until I can pretend this is a normal day.

But it's not.

The dead have spoken.

This time, I'm going to listen.