Adja fell on the floor of Georges Dormeaux's bedroom. She stared intently at the door, the only direction where she could not distinguish the shape of her own body in the bed. She felt the wood under her legs, but in a very different manner than when she was alive. I can feel what's around me, but not inside. Her permanent light pain in the intestines had disappeared, her stomach didn't ask for food. When she touched her wristed, there was no pulse anymore. No tension in her muscles when she moved. Adja touched her eyes and realized what she had no tears at all: there was nothing made of water in her body. No blood, no bile, nothing.

'You can create anything you want.' Sylvana said all of a sudden, kneeling in front of her.

She raised a hand close to her face and focused. Tears started streaming down her cheeks and Adja's, who tried to hide her runny nose under her arm.

'This is the bare minimum, if you want to feel alive,' Sylvana explained. 'If nothing is ever created from our imagination, we are nothing anymore. For example, I am certain that you did not notice you had no clothes left.'

Adja curled up on the floor, in panic, but she understood quickly that there was nothing to hide: she couldn't even distinguish her own body.

'Nothing exists until you think about it, Adja. Imagine a nice dress in your mind's eye, do as you prefer, and you will be able to see yourself. But for the moment...'

Adja found herself dressed with the equivalent of Sylvana's lace dress. She touched the fabric and raised her eyebrows, surprised by the realism of the cloth. I am someone... Not just an invisible ghost, I have still me.

'I had to recreate human sensations so I would not go mad,' Sylvana admitted, embarrassed. 'I can cry, blush, get angry to the point I feel blood beating in my ears... Sometimes, I give myself a stomach ache to feel normal. You will most likely have to do the same thing, Adja, or you will end up like those lost souls who wander aimlessly and speak nonsense when you show them a spirit box.'

Sylvana paused and added:

'Or, so I imagine.'

'I don't think you've said that randomly,' Adja suspected.

'No more secrets between us, right?' Sylvana sighed. 'I analyzed your phone on the first day, I saw hundreds of things at the same time... There are so many videos showing mad spirits, unable to communicate anymore with the devices you use...'

'You can actually go through the internet and watch whatever you want? I don't think that's useful for the moment. Léon can give us all the information we need.'

'Léon will never come back, Adja.'

Sylvana was staring at her with a severe expression. Her cheeks were getting pinker and pinker.

'He will be too scared to investigate, and seeing your body will pierce his heart at each visit.'

'What did you do to kill me, Sylvana?' Adja asked sharply, tired of fighting about Léon.

Sylvana almost pouted, but she seemed to realize that she was in the wrong, there. This wasn't a petty fight about a boy. She grabbed a flap of her dress and twisted it nervously.

'I tried to enter your head to show you something, but it is very difficult to do. I am not even sure it is possible, to be quite honest... It is not like hearing someone's thoughts. As your thoughts were too difficult to change, I tried to lower your pulse, so time would go by more slowly around you...'

'And you did the contrary. You made a mistake,' Adja said, mortified.

'I made a mistake.'

Sylvana's gaze was sheepish, but unmistakably proud, impossible to capsize. She tried her best and thinks very little of death, after all these years. That's why she doesn't seem to care that she murdered me without meaning it...

'Do you blame me?' Sylvana asked, still weirdly smug, her eyes void of any guilt.

'I don't think I do,' Adja admitted. 'Not at the moment. Maybe I'll sleep on it.'

'You do not need to waste your nights away anymore,' she told her with a big smile. 'But you can pretend to sleep!'

'But you... You do it for real, don't you? When someone tells you–'

'Stop it, immediately!'

Adja clenched her jaw without actually feeling it tense. She's finally going to tell me about it!

'I think I have to show you something.'

Sylvana rose and held out a hand to help Adja get back on her feet. Wondering if Sylvana would need a particular strength to pull her up, the ex-ghost hunter let her take care of the situation. She wasn't able to resist anymore, exhausted in her core but not in her fake body. Sylvana took her hand in hers without asking for her opinion. Adja swallowed automatically, without saliva, and blessed the lack of blood in her cheeks. Even with her skin color, it would have been impossible to hide such an embarrassment. Sylvana turned her head towards her and smiled, most likely to appease her.

I stand by what I said... She looks better than on the pictures. Sylvana was gorgeous, and her face was to die for, although rather cold. Adja thought that spending eternity with such a beautiful girl was not a complete nightmare, even if she was explosively jealous about Léon. Will I even be able to have a relationship with Sylvana? That's a weird question... Would it have happened if I hadn't died? If Sylvana had been a random girl at uni? Adja was so horrified of being dead that she was wondering if madness would drown her before making any decision.

'Here,' Sylvana suddenly declared, taking her out of her torpor.

They were standing in front of Sylvana's bedroom. She made Adja take a few steps towards the bed. Adja immediately thought of those horror movies scenes, just before the tragedy occured.

'I died sat on my bed, but not from a heart attack.'

Adja waited, but Sylvana didn't seem ready to go further. Still, I need to know.

'What happened?'

'It is hard...,' Sylvana sighed, and Adja could tell she was not acting. 'I can show you what I looked like before becoming who I am today.'

Sylvana started unbuttoning her lace dress and Adja closed her eyes, troubled.

'You are most likely going to look at me until the end of time, Adja! Do not be embarrassed.'

'Yeah, but... still.'

She looked shyly in her direction, with squinted eyes to see as less as possible, but she abandoned every respect when she saw the gaping wound between her breasts.

'But...'

'I know what you are going to say,' Sylvana interrupted her, tracing the shape of the hole on her chest with her index. 'It is ugly, but I am going to show you the whole thing. I have practiced this for years, so it is rather well done!'

Sylvana raised her arms and closed her eyes, but Adja lost her momentum.

'Get dressed first, please!'

'Oh, sorry.'

Sylvana made the wound disappear. Her skin had gone back to its smooth and pale state.

'Is it better?'

'You're making fun of me, right?' Adja said, unable to suppress a smile. 'You're here, in front of me, bare-chested...'

'I am not cold,' she reassured her, shaking her head.

But... She's mocking me, I can't see any other way! Sylvana was far from being naive, she had never been a reasonable girl at the hotel or when she judged Léon's closeness to Adja. She knows what she's doing, it's obvious. But Adja decided not to insist. After all, it wasn't a bad view, even if very embarrassing.

'The whole scene will unfold before our eyes,' Sylvana explained. 'Watch and listen.'

Adja forced herself to stop staring at Sylvana's cleavage and knew that had she been alive, she would have blushed to death. Calm down, Adja, it's the worst moment to think about this.

All of a sudden, a second Sylvana appeared before her eyes and rushed to the door, which was clumsily barricaded with planks torn from the wooden floor.

'No, no, do not do this...,' 1884's Sylvana muttered, trying to consolidate her weak shielding.

Voices reached Adja's ears through the door.

'Burn everything to the ground! She has to pay!'

After a few dreadful minutes of silence, the door caught fire and Sylvana scurried to her bed. She grabbed a chair and brandished it in front of her, ready to defend herself. Adja crossed her arms, nervous. I don't want to watch this... She's going to die! When the flames finally turned the door into ashes, two men spread a large sheet on the floor to stop the fire from propagate. Adja recognized Georges and Jules Dormeaux, closely followed by Elisa. No... Not them, I can't believe it...

'Jules, Elisa, catch her,' Georges instructed coldly.

'No!' Sylvana cried, holding the chair at arms' length. 'Leave me alone! Father, do not do this!'

Sylvana didn't have the strength to fight two adults motivated by a limitless anger. But why? What do they want from her? Adja could very well see that Sylvana had lived her last moments facing three enraged members of her family, but she couldn't understand it.

'By the power God gave me...,' Georges began, approaching her with a long kitchen knife.

'Father!'

'... be your soul purified by the flames awaiting you in the afterlife...'

'Fatheeeeeeer!' Sylvana repeated, crying and struggling, but Jules and Elisa prevented her from moving.

'... be the world freed from the demonic force you harbor...'

'No...'

'... go back to Hell, and by the power God has given to this knife... Sleep.'

All the silhouettes instantly disappeared when Georges Dormeaux pronounced this last word, the tip of his weapon touching Sylvana's chest. Adja found herself back in the silence of the bedroom, in shock. On the other side of the window, the wind was rising implacably, ignoring the horror that had taken place a few centuries ago.

Sylvana's family had sacrificed her, accusing her of being possessed by a demon, but for what reason? We're back to what Alphonse Dormeaux believes... He saw this tragedy as I did, as a ghost watching it without context, and he interpreted it as I did. But what was she guilty of? Adja turned to finally ask that pressing question, but Sylvana was lying on her bed with empty eyes.

'Sylvana...?'

Adja ran to her, panicking, but remembered this state was not final.

'Is is because you heard him tell you to sleep? Do you associate it to your death and get exhausted?'

Adja took Sylvana by the shoulders and installed her more comfortably on the bed. The young woman looked completely absent, as if her body was frozen in time. Adja lay down next to her, respectfully thirty centimeters away, and asked:

'Can you hear me, right now?'

Sylvana didn't have any reaction.

'It makes me feel like you're dead... Well, more than usually. I don't like it...'

I'm going to monologue all night long, I guess. She couldn't believe she had once wanted to put Sylvana in that state to be able to talk to Alphonse Dormeaux. What a shame! She imagined her collapse on the floor every time she had helped her open a lock. Guilt was consuming her, she found herself despicable. Disgusting. Without thinking, she took Sylvana's hand to comfort her and found it freezing cold.

'You can't control your body anymore, can you? You're too weak to make yourself more human?'

When she saw Sylvana's clothes fade, Adja installed her under the covers to warm her up. What I'm doing is completely useless, she can't feel the cold, but I want to do something nice... Adja wanted to use her last minutes of lucidity in the best way possible. Her mind would surely not be so clear in the next hours, when panic threatened to drown her under the realization that she was indeed not alive anymore.