Opening
Chapters 6–10 braid three timelines to reveal how the killer’s victims—each now a ghost—learn to navigate the afterlife and push the living toward truth. Skye haunts the present; Meghan endures a yearlong vigil; Brecia Collier wages a rage-fueled crusade two years prior. As their powers sharpen, emotion becomes action: grief shatters light, rage crashes computers, and a single word can stop a car.
What Happens
Chapter 6: Skye
In Kuna, Idaho, Skye’s ghost watches police recover her body in the foothills, led there by pings from her “useless phone.” Detached from the corpse, she accepts that what lies on the ground is no longer her. No light comes. No summons arrives. She simply turns toward home.
Her walk becomes a test of boundaries. Cars pass through her; deer startle at her presence, as if they sense what people cannot. At home, she finds her mother Marisa asleep in Skye’s bed, face crumpled with grief. Skye lies beside her and whispers comfort, but the sound rips a scream from Marisa, who cannot truly perceive her. The realization lands hard: in the one place she belongs most, Skye is invisible.
Chapter 7: Meghan
One year earlier in Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains, Meghan lingers where she dies, rooted to the wilderness and forced to watch scavengers strip her body to bone. She tests what she can do: she can’t fly, can’t leave, and can only scatter animals by summoning raw spikes of anger or despair. A young couple’s car hums past on a nearby dirt road, and the ordinary happiness devastates her.
Meghan develops a way to cope—she “drifts” into memories with perfect clarity, reliving birthdays, dinners, first love. Then a change in the landscape sparks hope: a raven that has been stealing shiny objects drags one of Meghan’s distinctive coral shoes to the roadside. It’s partially hidden, but visible. The shoe becomes the first fragile breadcrumb toward discovery and a foothold in Vengeance and Post-Mortem Justice.
Chapter 8: Brecia
Two years earlier in Boulder, Colorado, Brecia actively haunts James Carson, the man who kills her. Fueled by rage, she repeatedly crashes his computer while he prowls the dating app MatchStrike. Her power surges and fades with her emotions. When his temper snaps, he snarls at his daughter Kimmie, and guilt rips through Brecia—her vengeance is scarring his innocent children.
From the shadows, she watches the smooth performance of his double life. He lies to his wife April Carson, claiming a contractor meeting so he can sneak out to date Nicole. April, busy packing for their impending move, believes him. The scene crystallizes Deception and Duality: doting dad, devoted husband, active predator. Brecia resolves to follow him and try to stop the next harm, even if her power hurts those who least deserve it.
Chapter 9: Skye
Back in the present, Marisa pleads with police to help find Skye. They stall; at eighteen, Skye is legally an adult. Marisa drives to the Daily Grind, Skye’s workplace, and Skye realizes she is haunting her mother—drawn where Marisa goes. Her boss Ken grows alarmed when he hears Skye is missing.
As Marisa asks about anyone Skye might have been seeing, Ken mentions the “hot chocolate guy”—James—a friendly regular he teased Skye about. At the name, Skye’s agitation spikes. Lights flicker. A bulb pops. Ken blames the wiring, but Skye understands: her feelings have force. The scene ends with momentum—Ken proposes they pull security footage from the day she vanishes.
Chapter 10: Meghan
A year earlier, Meghan notices her ghostly appearance has changed—she now wears soft sweats rather than the clothes she dies in—and learns she can shift her outfit at will. The coral shoe remains her beacon. To pass time, she drifts into a memory of Grandma Rosie teaching her to bake challah. In the middle of the memory, Grandma speaks to Meghan’s present self: “I’ll be right here when you’re ready,” hinting at a wider web of Afterlife and Sisterhood.
A car approaches. Hope from Grandma’s message collides with terror of her murder and fury at her killer. Meghan focuses everything on the oncoming Jeep driven by a young woman. As the vehicle passes through her, she screams one word—Stop—and the driver slams the brakes. For the first time, Meghan directly moves the living world.
Character Development
The girls begin to shift from witnesses to catalysts. Emotion teaches them the rules of their afterlives—and how to break them.
- Skye: Moves from stunned detachment to urgent purpose, discovering that powerful feelings can manipulate electricity and that she can shadow her mother’s search.
- Meghan: Evolves from trapped observer to active agent. She perfects “drifting,” claims small control by changing her clothes, and channels emotion to halt a car.
- Brecia Collier: Refines rage into a weapon that crashes James’s tech, then confronts the collateral damage of her haunting and recommits to prevention.
- James Carson: Polished duplicity hardens. He presents as family man while hunting new prey online, his domestic veneer masking predatory intent.
- Ken: Shifts from casual boss to committed ally, taking concrete action by checking the cafe’s security footage.
Themes & Symbols
Emotion as power defines the supernatural system. Grief, fury, fear, and hope literally alter reality—Skye blows out lights; Brecia wrecks electronics; Meghan stops a car. This inversion of cause and effect reframes trauma: the pain of victims doesn’t just echo; it remakes the world.
The timelines layer a case against predation masked by normalcy. James’s grooming on MatchStrike unfolds beside domestic routines, sharpening the danger that hides in plain sight. Brecia’s haunting embodies direct retribution, while Skye and Meghan pursue indirect justice by prompting discoveries and guiding the living toward clues—threads tied to Vengeance and Post-Mortem Justice and to a growing Afterlife and Sisterhood that offers connection where isolation once reigned.
- Symbol: Meghan’s coral shoe anchors hope and identity—a bright, movable marker in a vast wilderness. The raven that repositions it becomes an unlikely accomplice, blurring the line between decay’s natural order and the unnatural violence that placed Meghan there.
Key Quotes
“useless phone”
- The phone fails Skye in life but guides police to her body in death. The phrase underscores the cruel irony of safety tools that don’t protect victims yet still participate in the aftermath, turning tech into both failed guardian and grim locator.
“I’ll be right here when you’re ready.”
- Grandma Rosie’s words pierce Meghan’s memory from outside it, collapsing time and hinting at a communal afterlife. The comfort reframes Meghan’s isolation as connection and primes her for the emotional surge that follows.
“Stop.”
- Meghan’s single command seizes a driver’s attention and halts a moving car. The moment proves that intense emotion can breach the barrier between dead and living, transforming Meghan from passive witness into an active force for her own discovery.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters lock in the rules of the afterlife and raise the stakes of the investigation. Skye’s electrical disturbances and Ken’s decision to review security footage create the first practical path to identifying James in the present. In the past, Meghan’s coral shoe and her ability to stop a car open real avenues toward her recovery, while Brecia’s surveillance of James reveals the pattern linking all three victims.
Structurally, the braided timelines build dramatic irony: readers know the predator’s face and methods while the “NOW” timeline catches up. The emotional engine—grief, rage, fear, hope—becomes the mechanism by which the ghosts influence outcomes. That shift from voicelessness to agency reframes the story from aftermath to action and prepares the ground for coordinated, post-mortem justice.