The Secret of Anti-Silence

The chamber had been sanitized of its horrors. Where flesh had once pulsed along the walls, only sterile concrete remained. The feyborne trophies had been catalogued and removed, leaving behind empty hooks like accusatory fingers.

"What exactly is it you seek, detective?"

"A jacket."

"Mmmm?"

"It's not mine, but it might be from my world."

Omokumaru's snicker carried notes of condescension. "How mildly interesting. Perhaps then it's true."

"What's true?"

"That a significant rift has opened. It would be my duty to shut it, as I have so many cosmic event horizons over the aeons." Her gaze sharpened like a blade being drawn. "Mayhaps you ought be brought in for examination."

My mouth went dry as dust, but before she could elaborate on that threat, I spotted it—Mary's red jacket hanging from an evidence hook like a flag of surrender. The light satin caught what illumination filtered through the warehouse's grimy windows.

I grabbed it, feeling the familiar texture between my fingers. This was definitely hers.

Omokumaru touched the fabric briefly, and something shifted in her expression. "Otherworldly, indeed."

The memory struck me like lightning—the black kitten that had led me through the maze to this very place. I'd completely forgotten about that strange guide in the wake of my new life.

"Do you know of animals that usher people between realms?"

The Royal Guard's leer was sharp enough to cut glass. "Were you always a detective?"

I shook my head, explaining my abandoned studies in Taoism, my family's priestly lineage in a world that might as well have been a fairy tale to her ears.

Omokumaru didn't smile. She simply watched, filing away information like a bureaucratic demon.

"I ought to get to another case," I said, the silence stretching uncomfortably.

"Indeed."

As we exited through the barrier, she turned to me one final time before beginning to dissolve back into energy. "The Empress would want council with you in the near future."

And then I was alone on the street, Mary's jacket clutched against my chest like a prayer book in a burning cathedral, wondering exactly what kind of attention I'd attracted and whether survival was still a possibility.

---

Within the familiar geometry of my office, Xiao Ru pressed her palms to her temples with the desperate intensity of one seeking to contain some internal tempest. "Ow ow ow! It felt like someone was banging pots and pans inside my head!" she said, wincing. "And there were definitely voices in there being all angry and shouty!"

I found myself transfixed by the reddish jacket I had retrieved from that sterile house of horrors, its satin surface drinking the office's wan light with an almost sensual hunger.

"What's got you staring like that?" Xiao Ru asked, tilting her head with curious concern.

"It belonged to my partner."

A shadow passed across her features like clouds obscuring moonlight. "Your… partner?"

The admission emerged with the hollow ring of confession. "Briefly, my detective partner. We shared nothing but mutual antipathy. Mary was…" I paused, feeling something cold and final settle in the chambers of my chest. "But duty demanded… did it? Does such obligation retain meaning in this realm of demons?"

The question lingered between us like sweets from some forbidden fruit. Those robed figures still walked free, their dark work accomplished, yet duty felt like a garment tailored for someone else's body. Perhaps then, this life was a gift, and seeking answers would only bring folly.

Xiao Ru approached with the cautious grace of a doe sensing predators. I reached for her, my fingers finding the warm silk of her cheek, lingering there as if to draw sustenance from her vitality.

"Tell me, Ruru—what manner of voices possessed you?"

"They were super mad about something! I couldn't understand a single word though—it was like listening to someone yell in a language that doesn't exist. Really scary ghost stuff!" She shivered dramatically, nuzzling into my touch.

Ghosts… a language not of the living—curious indeed.

---

At the shrine, I discovered myself in communion with Ami, the violin banshee whose translucent form flickered like candlelight in a drafty mausoleum. Her spectral fingers caressed her ethereal instrument with the intimacy of long acquaintance.

"Something malevolent breathes within these walls," she murmured, her voice carrying the hollow music of wintery winds through empty halls.

Before I could respond to her warning, she reacted to some presence my undying senses could not perceive. Chains of pure luminescence materialized from the aether, binding an invisible force.

The tengu's daughter began to manifest—her form solidifying yet fundamentally wrong, as though death had rearranged her spiritual anatomy. Words spilled from her lips in reverse, syllables twisted into unnatural configurations by rage.

"Can you understand her?" I asked.

Ami nodded grimly. "She wants revenge, but she's trapped. The way she died was… extremely lame."

I raised an eyebrow as the ghost's cheeks flushed dark blue with embarrassment.

Through Ami's translation, the pathetic truth revealed itself: the shapeshifter had dispatched her victim through the most mundane of methods—a simple extended leg, a tumble down stairs, a neck snapped like kindling. The ghost's cheeks burned sapphire with mortification.

I felt the contagion of her embarrassment seep into my own spirit.

"Is there a way to fix her voice?"

"Not until she calms down."

An idea struck me. "Play your violin!"

When I suggested music as remedy, Ami drew her bow across ghostly strings, producing a melody that seemed plucked from memory's deepest wells. The tune carried echoes of familiar harmonies, yet twisted into minor keys that spoke of love transformed into mourning, of joy curdled into perpetual sorrow. It reminded me of Pachelbel's Canon.

The ghost's backwards fury began to subside under music's gentle tyranny, her agitation cooling like fever breaking at dawn.

Ashley, Lady Kageyama, and Xiao Ru arrived as the spirit achieved fragile tranquility. Yet Xiao Ru's eyes held shadows that had not been there before, her ears twitching with the nervous energy of prey sensing stalking death.

"There's still something building up in here," she said, her usual brightness dimmed by worry. "Like when you can feel a thunderstorm coming, but… worse?"

The ghost's revelation struck me with the force of prophecy: What if the moon hadn't just been gathering energy—what if it had been storing it here, in this shrine?

"Is there a way for vampires to see aetheric flow?" I asked Ashley.

She nodded. "But you wouldn't be able to. It's a difficult skill—requires training and focus."

"So you can't either?"

"No. But Serena probably could."

I felt that familiar chill of pieces clicking into place. "Have the days seemed different lately? The twilight… weaker than normal?"

Ashley considered this. "Hard to say. There might be a luminometer somewhere, but why would this unhallowed residue coalesce in such a place?"

A terrible suspicion was forming in my mind—something about energy gathering, storing, building toward some catastrophic release.

"Fetch Serena," I said, my voice carrying more urgency than I'd intended. "Something's wrong here. Very wrong."