PROLOGUE

Someone had once told Natasha that if she found a job she loved, she'd never work another day in her life. But here, in an empty building at ten minutes to midnight, Natasha thought that whoever said that needed a slap in the face.

There were some silver linings to the job, of course. Natasha got to flex her creative muscles in a city where there wasn't much demand for creativity at all. That meant that whenever jobs in the special effects niche cropped up, Natasha usually landed the gig. It didn't hurt that this little slice of Oregon was what the locals called Ghost Country, so there were quite a few theaters, indie films, and even the occasional vampire LARP club that required her services.

And of course, haunted houses.

She glanced at her watch and stifled a groan. 11:52 PM. The rest of the crew had cleared out hours ago and left her alone to apply the finishing touches. Perks of being the boss. She should be home, feet up, binging some mindless reality TV. Instead, she was working on perfecting the practical effects for Shadowland, a haunted attraction she'd become best friends with over the past two months.

‘Slasher Room. Done,' she said.

Natasha pushed back a strand of red hair and left a smear of fake blood on her temple. She surveyed her handiwork, dismembered limbs in every corner, severed heads on spikes, a torso hanging from the ceiling with its ribcage splayed open to reveal silicone organs. It was all terribly realistic, even if Natasha did say so herself.

Time for the next job on the list, which according to her mental checklist was the last one before she could finally send her invoice to the guy who ran this place. She rounded a corner into what had come to be fondly known as Granny's Parlor, where an animatronic crone rocked in the corner with two white eyeballs fixed on a TV playing static. Natasha gave the old woman a wave as she passed.

‘Evening, Mildred. This might be the last time we…'

The granny launched up from her seat and cackled. Natasha nearly leaped out of her skin. She'd forgotten that Mildred was hooked up to the mains now, so every five minutes, the crazy old woman would jump up and scare the hell out of whoever might be in her blast radius. It raised Natasha's pulse a few notches, but it was nice to know that her creations were working as intended.

At the end of the hall loomed Natasha's masterpiece – the Chamber of Reflections. This place was the crown jewel of Shadowland because it was more than just morbid imagery and a few bloody props. On the surface, it was a typical room lined with mirrors, each angled slightly differently to create a dizzying, infinite reflection effect. No different from the kind of mirrors you'd see at a carnival or funhouse.

But that was just the beginning.

Natasha crouched down by the control panel she'd set up, a mess of wires and switches that looked more at home in a mad scientist's lab than a haunted attraction. This was where the real magic happened – carefully timed light sequences, hidden projectors, and a state-of-the-art sound system that would make visitors question their very senses. The punters would see phantoms in the mirror that wouldn't be there in real life, but just as they caught onto the trick, the live actors would emerge from the corners.

‘Alright, baby. Let's see what you've got.'

She lost herself to the job, to the familiar rhythm of wiring and programming. Most of the visual effects had been put in place, so now it was just a matter of tidying up the electronics and ensuring everything went off at the right time. Some of the props were triggered by proximity, some after a predetermined amount of time. In the Chamber of Reflections, most effects were activated by the sensor pads beneath the floor. Natasha peeled up sections of the interlocking squares one by one, checked the sensors were blinking green then smoothed the flooring back in place. So far, so good. Just twenty of these bad boys to check then, as far as she was concerned, Shadowland would be good to go and she'd be twenty grand richer.

The minutes ticked away as Natasha fell into the zone. She tweaked light levels, adjusted projection angles, and fine-tuned the audio tracks. It was just her, her work, and the occasional cackle from Mildred two rooms over. It wasn't until her stomach growled and demanded a midnight sugar fix to keep the energy up that she stopped moving for the first time in an hour.

And Natasha was just about to head to the break room when a sudden thump from another room cut through the hush.

Natasha's feet froze on the interlocking floor. ‘What the…'

For a moment, she debated ignoring it. After all, in a place like Shadowland, things going bump in the night was par for the course.

But the responsible part of her brain – the part that liked getting paid and keeping clients happy – whispered that she should probably check it out.

Probably one of the props falling off the wall. Maybe that painting of the little boy with black eyes. Apparently, glue wasn't enough to hold him in place either.

Natasha grabbed a hammer from her toolbox, stalked out of the Chamber of Reflections, past Mildred, down into the Omen-inspired room. She expected to find something lying on its ass, but to her surprise, everything was intact. The cross-shaped gravestones were still standing, and the painting stared back at her just as it did yesterday.

‘Hmmm,' she said. ‘Guess I was just…'

Thud.

Natasha froze again. Same sound, and it had come from somewhere in this maze, she was certain of it. Beads of sweat began to trickle down her forehead. Natasha swiped them away with a forearm.

Had someone else gotten in here? Maybe one of her team coming back for something? Or it could be Archie, the owner of this place, coming to check on her?

But Archie left her the key to lock up once she was finished, and when he'd said goodbye earlier, he didn't seem to have any intention of returning so soon.

‘Hello. Anyone there?' Natasha called.

No response.

Natasha waited a minute. She strained her ears for any sounds of life, but all she could hear were the running fans – a necessary tool for drying out the corn syrup-turned-blood for tomorrow's test run.

'Get a grip, Langston,' she told herself. It was her overactive imagination, or not enough sleep. She always thought that hanging out with dismembered body parts for a living would harden her to real-life terror, but she'd never really had to put it into practice.

But she couldn't focus. Not until she'd swept this entire place room by room.

So, hammer in hand, Natasha edged out of the Omen room, into the Undead Cave. Plastic stalactites loomed overhead and animatronic zombies stood frozen mid-lurch. Nothing out of place. Next, she moved into the Clown Carousel, the one room that actually gave her the creeps. She looked from prop to prop and found only painted faces smiling at her with their giant red mouths. These things were the stuff of nightmares. Her nightmares, specifically. She'd designed them that way.

Room after room, Natasha found nothing out of place. No fallen props, no signs of intruders. Just the same carefully crafted chaos she'd left behind. By the time she circled back to Granny's Parlor, irritation had begun to overtake her fear.

‘Nothing here,' she said to Mildred. ‘Great, now I'm talking to puppets.'

And then she was back where she started, in the Chamber of Reflections. Natasha let out a shaky breath. She turned back to the control panel, determined to finish her last task and get the hell out of here. All she had to do was test the projections, make sure the ghostly apparitions appeared in the mirrors as planned. Then she could go home, pour herself a stiff drink and sleep until tomorrow afternoon.

‘Right then.' She steeled herself, reached for the room's light switch and plunged the chamber into darkness, then she switched on the show lights. Her reflection fractured and multiplied a hundredfold in the mirrored walls. A hundred Natashas. Imagine how much work she could get done, she idly thought.

‘Okay, now just the…' Natasha reached for the projector, then stopped.

Because she caught something in one of the mirrors.

Natasha's heart stopped. She hadn't turned on the projectors yet. There should be nothing in those mirrors but her own stupid face.

She squinted to adjust her eyes to the darkness.

Stepped closer to the mirror.

Maybe an image had been burned onto the projector lens. Or there was a ghost in the machine. Perhaps she'd overlooked something.

Natasha didn't turn around. She knew, with a bone-deep certainty that chilled her to her core, that if she did, she'd find nothing. The presence was only visible in the mirror, a reflection of something that shouldn't – couldn't – exist.

No.

Something was there.

Natasha's hands began to shake. Only now did she realize she was still gripping the hammer. She raised it to her chest, not daring to take a step in any direction, unsure if she still had full control of her limbs.

Because then she saw it.

The unmistakable outline of a human figure.

Not a trick of the light, not a glitch in the projector system.

Real.

A scream built in Natasha's throat, but before she could release it, the figure moved. Faster than her eyes could track, faster than should be possible. Icy fingers closed around her throat, cutting off her air. Natasha choked, clawing at the inexorable grip. The figure lifted her off her feet as easily as a child lifting a doll and sent her sprawling into the mirror behind her.

A crystalline explosion rained down razor-sharp shards. Pain blossomed across Natasha's back, her arms, her face. She hit the ground hard, the impact driving what little air remained from her lungs.

And then the ghost's hands were around her throat again.

The last thing Natasha saw before the darkness claimed her was her own reflection in the mirrored ceiling.