Before he died, my father taught me the world was solid. Hard facts. Logical inferences. That’s what good stories are about. Then again, I wasn’t exactly an award-winning reporter so what did I know?

When Detective Edward Thomas told me he had seen a phantom, something woke up inside of me. I could have tried to dismiss it as a trick of the lamplight, but how else could I explain the body on the cobblestones? Instead, I simply believed him, and not just because he was arrestingly handsome. I was engaged after all to a sensible, though older man–the same man who published my pathetic excuses for articles, in fact.

No. I believed him because somewhere, deep down, I knew magic was real. What’s worse, I knew it was a part of me. The detective’s ghost story had just woken me up.

As soon as I accepted this truth, everything changed. My writing career, my family, my domestic prospects, and my freedom. Perhaps something was bound to change. Could I escape this journey with my engagement intact? Which course would lead me down a road to the woman my father always believed I should be?

And why did I feel so angry all the time?

My fingers still have that enchanted twitch even as I peck these words out on an old typewriter. Before another episode comes, let me tell you what happened that fateful autumn in Dawnhurst-on-Severn. . .